Teresa Southwick - When A Hero Comes Along

“Not so fast. I’m here now.” He’d have been here sooner if not for mission debriefing, medical clearance and military retirement paperwork. And this conversation wasn’t one he’d wanted to have over the phone. Or in front of her neighbors. Or, apparently, sitting down on the sofa. He met her accusing gaze. “There is an explanation. And I’d like you to hear me out.”

“Okay.” She folded her arms over her breasts and stared him straight in the eye.

“The letter arrived just as I was getting ready for a mission and I was going to answer it when I got back.”

“I see.”

“The thing is—it took me some time to get back.”

“What?” There was a wary look in her eyes. “Why?”

“My helicopter was shot down and the Taliban extended their hospitality for a while.”

And that was all she needed to know, all he would tell her.

Her eyes went from dark brown back to warm cocoa as she put her hand on his arm. “Joe—”

The touch of her fingers felt too good and he backed up a step. “I got in a little while ago and came straight from McCarran.”

That was important for her to know.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Tell me about my son.”

A smile curved up the corners of her mouth. “He’s perfect, the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“What’s his—what did you name him?”

She walked over to the end table beside the sofa and picked up a framed photo, then handed it to him. “J.T.”

As Joe stared at the chubby-faced infant in the picture something inside him went tight and his heart skipped. The baby’s eyes were big, blue like his own, but he had his mother’s dimples. “What does J.T. stand for?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Joseph Turner—that was my grandfather’s name.”

He slid his gaze to hers and grinned. “Has a nice ring.”

“I thought so.” She shrugged.

“He’s about four months old?”

She nodded and his gaze lowered to Kate’s now-flat abdomen. He wondered what she’d looked like pregnant. “Can I see him?”

“He’s asleep,” she said quickly, protectively.

“I just want to see him.”

She thought about that for too long and frowned while she was at it. Finally, she nodded. “This way.”

He followed her into the baby’s room. A night-light kept it from being too dark and he could see the crib, some kind of box overflowing with toys and a changing table. There were stuffed animals everywhere. Slowly, he walked over and stared down at the child, peacefully sleeping on his back. His small mouth pursed and worked in a sucking movement, then a little sigh escaped. His chest had felt tight many times before, but this was a sensation he’d never before experienced.

Joe reached out a finger and touched one tiny fist. He had to clear the lump in his throat before he could state the obvious, “He’s so little.”

A tender expression softened her face. “You should have seen him when he was born.”

But he hadn’t, although that wasn’t her fault. For six months he hadn’t even known there was going to be a baby and that was her fault. He hadn’t been there while his child grew inside her, or when she went into labor and gave birth. She’d robbed him of the beginning and an enemy on the other side of the world had stolen the rest. What if an attack of conscience hadn’t forced her to let him know? In his experience women kept a lot of things to themselves and none of it was in his best interest.

He met her gaze. “We need to talk.”

“Agreed. But not here and not tonight. Call me tomorrow?”

Sounded like an evasive maneuver to him. To fly choppers in a war theater, Joe had trained to run and dive to stay alive. But good training went hand in hand with tactics. Surprise was the best strategy.

“All right,” he said. “You’ll hear from me tomorrow.”

Near Mercy Medical’s emergency entrance Kate Carpenter stood about twenty yards from the square concrete slab with the big red X in the center of a circle marked with a blue H. This was where the medical evacuation helicopters landed. One was on its way with a fifty-eight-year-old male. Possible heart attack. The patient was from Pahrump. Because her mother lived there, she knew it was an hour from Las Vegas on a winding two-lane road. Medical intervention would have taken too long if he’d been brought in by regular ambulance.

Mercy Medical Center E.R. nurses alternated meeting the medevac chopper and today was Kate’s turn. The emergency-room doctor had already seen the EKG strip and was keeping in touch with the situation via radio and the readings from the heart monitor hooked up to the patient. This was a level-three trauma center, and it was where she’d met Joe Morgan for the first time. Talk about trauma.

She still couldn’t believe he’d shown up last night without warning. Not that a warning would have helped her on the inside, but her outside would have looked a lot better. At least she could have put on lip gloss and mascara. A woman shouldn’t have to meet the man from her past without benefit of cosmetics.

She’d half expected to see him when the calendar said his twelve months overseas were over. But one day had turned into another and time had passed without any word from Joe. Finally, she’d figured he was one of those guys who was nothing more than a sperm donor. The look on his face when he’d seen his son for the first time told her she’d been wrong. That worried her more, even though he’d never asked to hold J.T.

Her emotional reserves had been about depleted when she’d finally suggested they meet another time to discuss the situation. He’d agreed, then left, looking tired. He was a little leaner than when she’d last seen him and she wondered what he’d been through. His cavalier explanation about the Taliban extending their hospitality wasn’t much information, but she had her suspicions—and a very bad feeling. He might be leaner and meaner, but he still packed that Morgan punch that kicked her pulse, heart rate and respiration into the danger zone.

Then she heard the whump, whump of helicopter blades growing louder and looked up as the bird seemed to float closer. When the rotor wash was near enough to blow her hair off her face, she gave herself a mental pinch to get her mind off personal problems and into the trauma.

She waited impatiently until the blades stopped moving, then ducked her head and with the respiratory therapist moved the gurney to the open door of the chopper. The flight nurse helped them offload the patient and handed over Jim Bennett’s paperwork, then they wheeled him to treatment room six in the E.R.

After transferring him to the exam table, Kate wrapped the blood-pressure cuff on his upper arm. “I’m going to get your vitals, Mr. Bennett.”

“Okay.” The man had a full head of brown hair streaked with silver and the pallor of his face reflected his pain and fear.

She removed the stethoscope from around her neck and plugged it into her ears, then put the bell in the bend of his arm and pumped up the cuff. After listening carefully, she noted the results. Next came pulse and respirations which she also marked on his chart. She was giving the patient a couple of aspirin when Dr. Mitch Tenney walked into the room.

The doctor took the chart from her and flipped through it. Without looking at the patient, he said, “Mr. Bennett, you’re having an M.I.”

“What’s that?” The man’s fearful gaze moved back and forth between them. His anxiety quotient was edging him toward panic.

“Myocardial infarction,” Mitch said.

“Heart attack,” Kate translated.

“We’re going to give you some anticoagulants, a clot buster and some morphine for the pain.” Mitch looked at her. “Per my standing orders.”

“Okay,” she said nodding.

“Then we’re going to transfer you upstairs to the cardiac-care unit for observation.” Mitch started to walk out.

“Am I going to die?” Mr. Bennett asked.

Mitch finally looked at him. “Not today.”

Kate shook her head at the doctor’s curtness. Mitch Tenney was the finest trauma specialist she’d ever seen. What he lacked in bedside manner he made up for in skill. And that’s probably the only reason he was still on staff. Mercy Medical administration had received more than one complaint and the doctor was flirting with his third strike.

She stayed with the patient until he was transferred upstairs, then checked in at the nurse’s station. “If I’m all clear, I’m going to grab some lunch.”

The supervisor looked up from her computer monitor. “Go, Kate. It’s late. You must be starving.”

“Yeah. Been one of those mornings.”

And it got just a little more unpredictable when she walked through the waiting room on her way to the cafeteria. Joe stood there dressed in a khaki flight suit, aviator sunglasses hanging from the V where his white T-shirt peeked above the zipper.

“Hi,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

Mentally she smacked her forehead. He wasn’t dressed up for Halloween. These were work clothes for a helicopter pilot. She just hadn’t connected the right dots fast enough to realize that he was her helicopter pilot. He’d brought Mr. Bennett in.

“Scratch that,” she said, shaking her head. She wasn’t prepared to deal with him again so soon. Part of the reason she’d cut last night’s visit short was to pull herself together, but one sleepless night of thinking about him hadn’t been long enough to settle her traumatized nerves. And when he stood there looking like temptation for the taking, she knew her nerves wouldn’t be upgraded from critical to stable any time soon. “I guess what I meant to say was don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Not at the moment.”

He looked good, she thought. The one-piece flight suit should look dorky, but didn’t. Not on Joe. It was impossibly masculine, along with his short dark hair which was mussed in a good way. Dark-blue eyes met hers and he seemed more serious than she remembered. More compelling. And more dangerous.

He was still handsome, and looking at him did scary things to the rhythm of her heart, which had already worked pretty darn hard in less than twenty-four hours. But he was different somehow. The self-confident, cocky air that had first captured her interest was missing in action. He seemed more watchful, wary, on full alert.

His face was strong, with a square jaw and a nose that was not quite straight. Looking closer, she noticed a scar on his chin, a back-slash that she didn’t recall. And she would. She’d kissed every inch of his face during those intense weeks they’d been together, before he’d abruptly told her it was over between them.

Kate slid her hands into the pockets of her scrubs as she looked up at him. “I’m on my way to lunch.”

“Mind if I join you?”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it’s hospital food. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Roger that.”

The cafeteria was on the first floor and she led him through the maze of hallways until the scent of food drifted to them. It was late for lunch and the room was practically empty. They took red plastic trays from the stack and slid them along the metal shelf in front of the steam table while studying the day’s menu choices—beef stroganoff and chicken teriyaki. She looked up at Joe, intending to break the tension and say something light and innocuous about the awful food, but her tongue refused to work. She was immobilized by the expression in his eyes—probing, intense, alive, knowing. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry—at least not for food.