LITMIR.BIZ

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Noelle with that kit? Shouldn’t she—”

      “Just do it!” Jill shouted.

      The sound of multiple footsteps reached them from the marble-tiled front entryway.

      “Noelle?” Jill called to them. “Is that you? Did you get the intubation—”

      Cheyenne burst into the room with a crash cart, followed by Noelle and Karah Lee and a bearded man she didn’t recognize—

      For a millisecond, Jill glanced at him again. Not a stranger. She knew that face, in spite of the short, salt-and-pepper beard she’d never seen before, and the cropped dark hair, receding hairline and slight creases of maturity around the calm, gray eyes….

      Jill knew that man. Very, very well. Or she had known him once.

      But there was no time to react, no time to think. “Chey, she’s gone unresponsive—”

      “We’ve got it.” Cheyenne ripped the intubation kit open and started giving orders.

      Jill gave a quiet sigh as she scrambled out of the way of the doctors and waited for her first orders. If anyone could bring Edith back, these people could do it.

      

      Rex endured the expected sense of déjà vu, unable, for a few seconds, to drag his gaze from Jill Cooper’s face, which was, at this moment, smeared with some kind of green stuff. Several strands of her hair, dark and thick as he remembered it, had fallen from the confines of a floral turban, grazing the tops of her shoulders. Her body was wrapped in a matching green-and-lavender floral gown.

      After a very brief double take at the sight of him, she returned her attention to the still figure of her beloved mentor lying on the floor.

      He set to work moving a lounger and a magazine rack out of the way to give the rescue team freedom of movement as they worked.

      He remembered Edith Potts, even after all this time, and as he worked he said a silent prayer for her. It had been Edith to whom Jill turned for wisdom and for motherly love.

      It had been the strong, wise Edith on whom Jill had depended for advice when her younger sister skipped school or decided not to return home after an evening of partying.

      The older woman had also been the one to prepare special meals for Rex when he visited Hideaway on those rare weekends of freedom from the hospital. When there wasn’t room at the bed and breakfast, he had stayed at her house. That was before she and Bertie Meyer purchased the bed and breakfast.

      “Get a rhythm,” Cheyenne barked, crouching at Edith’s head.

      Karah Lee grabbed the paddles from the cart and placed them on Edith’s chest. “Stop CPR.” She then looked at the monitor. “I’ve got it. Is there a pulse?”

      “None,” Cheyenne said, also looking at the monitor while feeling for a pulse in the neck. “It’s PEA. Not shock-able.”

      Rex slumped. Pulseless electrical activity. Bad news.

      “Continue CPR,” Cheyenne said. “I’m going to set up for intubation. Noelle, bag her while I get ready.”

      The doctor worked with quick efficiency. Karah Lee stopped compressions long enough for Cheyenne to insert the breathing tube. Simultaneously, Jill established an IV in the patient’s arm, and drew blood, following normal code protocol. The breathing tube was in place in little over half a minute.

      Cheyenne had been an ER doc in Columbia, Missouri, and she had obviously not gotten rusty on her skills. Rex couldn’t help being impressed by this precise teamwork.

      Cheyenne secured the tube and allowed Noelle to resume bagging. “Breath sounds?”

      Karah Lee pressed her stethoscope over the belly first, then moved the bell to the chest. “Good. The tube is in place.”

      “Resume compressions. Sheena, I need you to call an airlift for us.”

      Sheena looked up at her. “Who do I call? What do I say?”

      “I’ll give you the number. Get a pad and pen and write it down.”

      The young woman scrambled toward the doorway.

      Cheyenne’s voice was calm but firm as she shot orders to the others. Rex took over the job of recording the proceedings on a sheet of notebook paper he found on a table.

      He knew he should be observing this scene with professional detachment in order to best evaluate the staff’s strengths and weaknesses. They would need that evaluation later as they applied for hospital designation.

      He couldn’t detach. He felt the desperation in this room, could hear it in the quickened breathing of each person. He wanted to reassure Jill that everything would be okay, but she might not welcome any kind of comment from him right now. Every moment they worked over Edith with no response, he was more convinced that she was gone for good. Though he knew Jill was a woman of faith, a word from him would be an intrusion. Lord, please help us. Guide our hands, give us wisdom.

      Why had he asked Cheyenne to keep his identity a secret from the staff? He had seldom been more sorry about a decision. His intention had been to reconnect with Jill personally before they met in a cold, professional environment. He wanted to reassure her he wasn’t still the ogre she’d once thought he was.

      If they lost Edith, it would break her heart. She didn’t need any additional stress on top of that.

      Chapter Three

      Fawn Morrison sat behind the counter in the lobby of the Lakeside Bed and Breakfast, entering numbers from a ledger sheet onto the computer program Blaze Farmer had set up. She loved this part of the job. It was mindless yet engaging enough to keep her from worrying about her plans for the upcoming wedding, her adjustments to college, her preparations for the pig races at the festival.

      She was racing her very own pig this year. Why had she agreed to do that, with everything else going on? She was practically the sole planner for Karah Lee’s wedding, and she wasn’t getting a whole lot of help from Karah Lee.

      Fawn loved her foster mother, but the woman had no fashion sense, no concept of the amount of time it would take to complete their plans. Furthermore, those plans kept changing.

      The front door squeaked open and the old-fashioned bell rang above it. She glanced over her shoulder to see a tall man with broad shoulders and thick, gray-streaked auburn hair step into the lobby. He looked awkward, nervous.

      He wasn’t bad-looking, for someone in his forties, at least. Bertie or Edith might threaten to stick him out in the garden to scare away the crows because he was a little on the skinny side. He had a turkey wattle beneath his chin and dark circles under his eyes.

      Okay, so he wasn’t that good-looking. He just looked like maybe he had been, once upon a time.

      “Be there in a minute,” Bertie called from the dining room at the far side of the lobby.

      Fawn started to get up to help the man.

      “Why, Bertie Meyer,” the man drawled, his voice deep as the growl of a big dog, “you’re just the person I was hoping to run into. What a welcome sight you are.”

      Fawn sat back down.

      Eighty-something-year-old Bertie stopped midstride in the broad entryway between the dining room and the lobby. She held an empty waffle plate, and her white apron was stained with strawberry syrup and bacon grease. Her white hair tufted down over her forehead, and her eyes looked like those of a cat caught in headlights.

      “Austin?” Bertie’s voice suddenly sounded her age, which didn’t happen often.

      “I bet you thought I was gone for good, huh?”

      Bertie set her waffle plate on a nearby table and entered the lobby, absently wiping her hands on her apron. “I heard you and your mom had moved to California.”

      Fawn

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