Trapped
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Then she’d said his name and he about jumped out of his own skin.
How many times over the years had he heard her say Brody? Her tone rich, a little lower than the average woman’s. In friendship—that had come first. In passion—it had followed pretty quickly. In joy—he liked to think so. Maybe he’d have heard it in sorrow when she left, but he’d never know. All he’d gotten was a note.
And now didn’t exactly seem like the right time to ask for more information. Now was the time to do what he did best.
“Either of you injured?” he asked.
The woman next to Elle stepped forward. “We have to get out. You have to help us.”
“Are you injured?” Brody repeated.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. We have to go now. The plane might explode.”
Elle had introduced her. What was her name? “Pamela, right?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to sit tight for just a minute.” He turned his attention to Elle. “I heard you say something about your arm.”
“It’s fine,” she said, dismissing the inquiry. “What about you?”
He rolled his shoulders back and considered his own injuries. He’d been lucky. He was going to have a hell of a lump on his head, but he could get past that. Something from above had hit his back and it was definitely going to be bruised and sore tomorrow, but if the angle of the hit had been a little sharper and a couple inches higher, it likely would have fractured his spine and he would never have walked again.
He stood up, careful not to hit his head on parts of the hanging interior. “I’m good to go. I’ll check the crew first,” he said.
She moved, shrinking far enough back in the small space to let him pass without touching her. He was grateful for that. His nerves felt pretty raw. When the copilot announced that they should prepare to crash, he’d prepared to die. Had said a quick prayer, said a mental goodbye to his parents and to both Ethan and Mack, the best friends a man could have had. And he’d thought about Elle, whom he’d loved and lost and never known why.
“I’ll need some light,” he said. She handed him the flashlight. He took it, careful not to brush up against her fingers.
He saw the young copilot sitting in his chair and moved toward him. “My name is Brody Donovan. I’m a doctor,” he said.
“Thank God, a doctor,” the young man said, his jaw clenched tight. “I hope you don’t deliver babies for a living.”
“Orthopedic surgeon,” Brody said.
“My lucky day,” the copilot said.
Brody wasn’t so sure of that. He’d seen enough to know that the young man had a compound fracture of the tibia.
“What’s your name?” Brody asked.
“Angus Bayfield.”
“Angus, I’m going to be able to help you, but for now, I need you to not move that leg.” When a bone broke and one end protruded through the skin, that meant that there was another sharp end still inside the leg, able to do all kinds of damage to veins and arteries. The blood loss wasn’t bad and he wanted to keep it that way.
“I’m going to quickly assess the others,” Brody said. He’d been in a combat zone for a long time. Triage was the name of the game. Assess everyone, identify the wounded, identify those most critically wounded that would benefit from treatment, and proceed from there. “Are there any other flashlights on board and what about a first-aid kit?”
The man pointed over his shoulder toward a big flashlight that was still miraculously hanging on the wall. Brody reached over and unsnapped the straps that kept it in place and flipped it on. It lit up the whole space, much better than the small flashlight that Elle had given him.
There were sections of the roof of the plane hanging down and exposed wires. The front windshield was shattered, making it difficult to see anything outside.
He heard movement behind him and turned. It was Elle. He handed her back her flashlight.
“I’m going to sit with the Hardys,” Elle said.
“Tell them I’ll be there in just a minute.”
“Sir,” Angus said, “there’s a first-aid kit under the captain’s seat.”
Brody fished around and pulled out the rectangular aluminum box. Holding the flashlight in one hand, he used his other to flip open the lid. He made a quick assessment. Basic stuff. Bandages. Gauze. Alcohol sponges. Ibuprofen. Antiseptic wipes. Antibiotic ointment. Adhesive tape. Scissors. Several pairs of gloves.
He turned toward the pilot. The man was still strapped in and he was regaining consciousness. He pushed himself back from the controls, almost to the point where he was sitting up. He looked stunned. There was blood running down the side of his face from a hell of a gash on the side of his head where something had obviously hit him.
“I’m a doctor,” Brody said, his voice gentle. “I can help you.”
He lifted the man’s wrist and took his pulse. Steady. Maybe a little slow but not alarmingly. He needed to get the bleeding stopped. “You’ve got a head injury. Are you in pain anywhere else?” he asked.
The man shook his head, very slowly. Brody didn’t believe him. He wasn’t confident the man even realized that he was a pilot and that his plane had just crashed in the Amazon jungle.
“What the hell happened?” Brody asked, turning towards the copilot.
“I’m not sure. There was some kind of malfunction with the electrical system. We lost power. Captain Ramano did a hell of a job keeping us out of a spin.”
Captain Ramano didn’t add anything to the conversation, confirming for Brody that he was definitely injured.
“The lightning?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve flown through storms before with Captain Ramano and we’ve never had any trouble.”
First time for everything. “Did you get a distress call through?”
“We did. Although I’m not sure how much good it will do. Even using satellite imaging, it’s hard to find a plane in the rain forest.”
He was probably right. Rain forests were known for their dense canopy of trees, and that would complicate an air search. But he couldn’t focus on that right now.
“I’ll be back,” Brody said.
Pamela was sitting in the first row, staring at the door, looking as if she intended to make a break for it. He did not relish the idea of chasing after someone in the dark jungle. “Pamela, I need your help,” he said.
She didn’t answer but she did stand up. He led her back to the cockpit, where he opened the first-aid kit again, removed a wrapped gauze pad and opened it.
He motioned for her to get as close to the pilot as she could. “I need you to press this hard against that cut. Can you do that, Pamela?”
“I’m not touching blood.”
He’d been just about to get to that. He pulled a pair of gloves out of the first-aid kit and handed them to Pamela. She hesitated and then put them on.
“Okay,” he said. “Put pressure on and don’t stop until I come back.”
He shone his flashlight ahead of him. At the back of the small plane, Elle was kneeling next to the elderly couple. Her hair was still dark, cut shorter than it had been in college when she’d worn it past her shoulders. He could see her slender neck, her collarbone.
Elle had always been slim and in good shape. She’d been a good athlete, too. The bar where she’d worked had fielded a volleyball team that played on Sunday afternoons, and he’d loved watching her. So graceful yet she could jam the ball down an opponent’s throat.
Now she had one arm out, patting the shoulder of Mrs. Hardy, who was talking a mile a minute. She had her other arm tucked into her side.
When she heard him moving down the aisle, she stepped aside.
The elderly woman stared at him. “My husband says it doesn’t hurt, but he can’t move. Please help him. You have to help him. We’re on our fiftieth anniversary trip. He’s—”
“I’m going to do everything I can,” Brody said. He looked at the woman’s cheek. She had a cut that was bleeding, but it didn’t look deep. “But here’s what I need from you. I want you to stand up and move to the other side of the plane. I’m going to need your spot.”
The woman shut up now that she had some direction. She got out of her seat and stood next to Elle. That’s when he realized that Elle also had blood on her face. And her eyes held the look of someone in pain.
He reached for her.
She jerked back.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“It’s nothing. Help the others first.”
He gave the cut on her forehead another look. Head wounds always bled a lot, and this one was no exception. But it appeared to have stopped bleeding. Still, there could be glass in it. He took a quick glance at her very brown eyes. Pupils were the same size.
“Him first,” she said.
“Okay. But I’m going to look at that arm, too.”
She nodded.
He stepped into the seat that Mrs. Hardy had vacated. It was awkward, but he got a good hold of the debris and shoved it away from her husband. He put a hand on the man’s back, assuring him. “Don’t move just yet,” Brody said. He ran his hand down the man’s spine. “Are you in pain?”
“No. Damn thing didn’t hit me hard, thank goodness.”
“Okay. Then try to sit back.” The man had been very lucky. He was at an age when it became difficult to recover from severe injuries. When the man was upright, Brody took his pulse and used the flashlight to check his pupils. Both okay.
Brody stepped back. It was quite frankly amazing that everyone on board had survived the crash. He’d seen enough aircraft-crash-scene victims over the years to know that there were common injuries caused by the pressure of rapid descent. Vertebrae compression. Or a ring fracture at the base of the skull caused by force traveling through the spinal column. Sometimes even internal injuries caused by the jerk of the lap belt. Lower-limb injuries were common as legs flailed around and struck things, so Angus’s fractured tibia didn’t surprise him.
He’d set the leg as best he could. Unfortunately, however, what might be a relatively minor injury in a fully equipped operating room became potentially life threatening when there were nonsterile conditions and delayed treatment. And the humidity in this part of the world was a virtual breeding ground of bacteria.
He turned, only to realize that Elle had returned to the cockpit. She was talking to Angus, obviously trying to comfort him.
It was difficult to tell how badly the captain was hurt. Angus definitely needed the most immediate treatment, and there wasn’t any room in the cockpit area to do that.
Elle saw him start back down the aisle and met him halfway. “What do you think?” she asked.
“On the plus side, I think Mr. and Mrs. Hardy are fine. They’re probably going to be stiff and sore as the night wears on. The biggest risk for Pamela is to keep her from running off into the rain forest. You, I’d like to see that shoulder.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He shook his head. When she’d moved out of the way earlier so that he could get to Mr. Hardy, he’d seen enough to realize that it wasn’t her arm that was injured, but rather her shoulder. “Elle, please don’t be stubborn about this. It’s just wasting time. I’m going to need help with Angus and you’re the only logical person to do it. I need you to have two arms and hands that are working.”
It was the right approach. She clearly didn’t want to impede the others receiving medical care.
She put her flashlight down and moved so that she stood in front of him. They were just inches apart and he was reminded of how nicely her head used to fit under his chin. He took a deep breath, put his hand on her shoulder joint and probed gently. “You dislocated your shoulder,” he said.
“My seat belt broke,” she said. “I got tossed out and hit the back of another seat with my shoulder.”
“When you hit it, your humerus popped out of the shoulder socket. I can pop it back into place, but it’s going to hurt. Maybe a lot.”
She nodded. “Just get it over with.”
Chapter Three
He stretched out her arm, raised it above her head and, at exactly the right spot, used the heel of his hand to pop the joint back into place.
She let out a hiss of air. He’d seen big, tough guys yelp when they experienced the same thing. “Okay?” he asked.
“Lovely,” she managed.
He almost smiled. “I think it’s possible that the captain has some internal injuries that we’ll have to watch for. He probably hit the dash pretty hard. I’ll bandage his head after I set the copilot’s leg. Unfortunately for Angus, we don’t have any ice and it’s going to be difficult to keep the swelling down. His leg really needs stitches, but I didn’t see any needles or thread in the first-aid kit. Same issue with Captain Ramano. I’d like to stitch up his head wound.”
“I have a sewing kit,” Elle said. “It’s just a small one. I think it was a giveaway at a conference I attended a couple years ago and I toss it in my carry-on when I travel, just in case.”
It was better than nothing. The needles wouldn’t be nearly as sharp as what he was used to, but he could make them work. He could sterilize the needle and the thread with one of the antiseptic wipes in the first-aid kit. Not great but better than leaving a gaping wound. “Please get it,” he said.
She found her bag in the rubble and dug through it, pulling out a tiny plastic box with three needles and six small coils of thread in it. She handed it to him.
“What else do you need me to do?” she asked.
The Elle he remembered had turned a little green when he discussed the surgeries he was observing in medical school. “There’s going to be blood,” he said.
“I’ll be okay,” she said, swallowing hard.
He studied her. So familiar. Yet so different. It was hard to get his head around it, so he did what was simple. He pushed it to the back of his mind. There were wounded. That’s where his energies needed to be.
“Okay. Clear some space in the aisles. It’s the only place where there will be room to work. I really need something to...” He let his voice trail off. He saw something that would work. In Mr. Hardy’s seat pocket, there were several newspapers. Brody grabbed one and handed it to Elle. “Once the space is clear, lay this down on the floor.”
He was going to need something to sop up the blood, especially if he got unlucky and the sharp edges of bone cut a vein or an artery.
“If I only had a scalpel, I’d be in good shape,” he said, under his breath.
Mrs. Hardy pointed to one of the large suitcases that had spilled out of the cabinet. “I’ve got a knife in with my makeup. Never gets caught by airline security.”
Brody figured security had seen it but just decided they didn’t want to have the twenty-minute conversation with Mrs. Hardy about why she had to fly with a knife. He opened the suitcase. Mrs. Hardy’s makeup was in the zipper pocket. He was surprised when he saw the lovely pearl-handled instrument, tucked in beside lipsticks and powders. He’d expected something like a butter knife or at best a little pocketknife. No. Mrs. Hardy was packin’. Fully unfolded, the knife had at least a three-inch blade. The woman could have done some serious damage with it.
Brody looked from the knife to Mrs. Hardy and then back again. “And I had to give up my four ounces of shaving cream,” he said.
Mrs. Hardy smiled. “There are advantages to being an old woman.”
Brody tested the point against the palm of his hand. It was very sharp and would make a difference. “Thank you,” he said, and started for the cockpit.
When Brody got there, Angus had his head back and his eyes were closed. Captain Ramano also had his eyes shut. Pamela was wide-awake and looking pretty agitated.
She was still dutifully pressing down on the pilot’s head wound. “How is he?” Brody asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not the doctor,” she said crossly.
“You’re doing fine,” Brody assured her. “The bleeding looks as if it has stopped. You can go back to your seat.”
He’d assist Captain Ramano once he finished with Angus. He tapped the young man on the shoulder. Angus opened his eyes.
“So it wasn’t a dream?” Angus said.
Brody shook his head. “Wish it was, my friend. Once we get that leg set, you’ll feel better. I promise.”
He helped Angus up out of his seat. There was so little room that as careful as they were, at one point Angus brushed his injured leg against something and let out a yelp as if he were an injured dog.
The young man leaned heavily on Brody as they carefully maneuvered back to the main cabin area, where Brody helped him lie down. Angus wasn’t a big guy, but he filled the small center aisle, and right now he looked as if he was about ready to pass out. His pant leg was still rolled up and Brody got his first really good look at the leg. It was already starting to swell. Brody untied the man’s shoe and took it off.
It was going to get worse before it got better. This was frontier medicine and he didn’t even have any rotgut whiskey to give to Angus.
Elle took a spot on one side, Brody on the other, each of them shoehorned in the seating area. Both were on their knees.
She could see the pain on Angus’s face and she looked up at Brody. “He’s lucky you were on this plane,” she said.
He didn’t answer her.
When Brody didn’t answer, Elle realized that the young man she’d loved was gone. Instead, there was a stranger, who didn’t feel the need to be particularly polite to her.
The Brody Donovan she remembered was always polite. She’d met him during his first year of med school. Had known he was supersmart after an hour of conversation, not because he told her he was—he just was. She’d enjoyed it when he and his friends came into the little bar where she’d been cocktailing. And when he asked her out, it had been flattering.
She’d declined. Men like Brody Donovan were out of her league. But he hadn’t given up. Finally, she’d agreed, thinking it might be a nice holiday romance, and to her great surprise, and great joy, it had worked. They had clicked.
Loved the same movies, enjoyed the same food, laughed at the same things. She hadn’t been a bit surprised when she learned that he’d been an Eagle Scout in middle school and the senior class president in high school. When he casually mentioned that his father was a novelist, she’d rather belatedly put together that Larry Donovan, hottest thriller writer around, was Brody’s dad. Learning that his mother was a scientist who worked off and on for NASA didn’t even make her blink an eye.
Brody was special.
When he graduated from med school with honors and had been accepted into his first choice for a residency program, everybody had assumed that he was rightfully on his way.
Everybody loved Brody. And she had, too. Which had made leaving him the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
Brody opened the sewing kit, threaded a needle with a piece of dark blue thread and set it down on the spread newspaper.
He opened a couple packages of antiseptic wipes, then handed her a pair of gloves and slipped a pair onto his own hands. “Angus, I’m going to move your bone back into position. To do that, I’m going to make a very small incision, but given that I don’t have anything to numb the pain, it’s going to hurt. I need you to keep the leg as still as you possibly can. Can you do that for me?”
Brody’s voice was calm, reassuring.
Angus nodded.
“Elle, wipe that blood away,” Brody said, his voice still calm.
She took the antiseptic wipe and as gently as possible, tried to clean around the wound so that Brody could see what he was doing. Her stomach was jumping.
“After that, I’ll be ready to stitch up the wound and bandage it. You’ll be on the road to recovery. How’s that sound, Angus?” Brody asked.
He got a nod from the man.
“Okay,” Brody said, his voice soft. He wiped the knife off, using two more antiseptic pads.
With confidence that she could only imagine, he made a small incision on Angus’s leg. The young copilot jerked and moaned but kept his leg fairly still.
Then, using his hands, Brody pressed on the protruding bone and eased it back inside the leg. He was concentrating fiercely and she knew that he was trying to align the two sections of snapped bone so that healing could begin.
“It’s going fine,” he said, smiling at Angus.
The young man nodded and closed his eyes.
She’d always assumed that Dr. Donovan would have a good bedside manner. So confident, so smart. So calm.
Once Brody seemed satisfied with the position of the bone, he looked up at her. “Wipe off the needle and the thread with the antiseptic wipes.”
She did as instructed and then handed him the needle.
“Thank you,” he said automatically. “I need you to gently press the edges of the wound together while I stitch it up.” That part seemed to go relatively well. The stitches closing up the incision were a nice straight line. When he got to the torn jagged edges of skin where the bone had poked through, they weren’t quite as pretty.
Still, Brody looked satisfied when he put the needle back down on the newspaper. The wound was closed and the bleeding had stopped. He opened the tube of antibacterial cream and spread a liberal amount over the whole area. Then it was a bandage and some tightly wrapped gauze.
Brody took off his gloves and dropped them on the newspaper, then patted Angus’s shoulder. “All done.”
“Thank you,” the young man whispered.
Elle didn’t need a medical degree to know that she’d just witnessed something amazing.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I need to find something to immobilize the leg, to give the bones a chance to knit together.”
His gaze settled on Mrs. Hardy’s dark suitcase. It was still open from when he’d gone looking for the knife. The suitcase was a roller, with a nice sturdy handle. He ran a hand down the back of the suitcase before he looked up at Mrs. Hardy, who had been watching the entire process with Angus. “I might be able to use this,” he said.
“Take what you need out of it,” Mrs. Hardy said.
“It’s not quite that easy,” he said. “I hate to do this, but I’m going to need to tear the bag apart. I can use the two rods that connect to the handle.”
Mrs. Hardy shrugged as if to say that she and her husband had survived a plane crash and she didn’t intend to sweat the small stuff.
Brody used Mrs. Hardy’s knife to cut through the fabric, exposing the rods. Elle wasn’t an expert, but they looked perfect. At least twenty inches long with a plate that attached them at the bottom. There were screws that connected the plate to the wheel assembly and another set of screws that fixed the rods to the handle.
Elle leaned toward the young pilot. “Angus,” she said softly, “do you have any tools on board, like a screwdriver?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Brody was already using the end of the knife to turn the screws. It was slow going, but he was making progress. Finally, the rods were loose. He looked up. “I need some strips of cloth.”
“I’ve got T-shirts in my bag, young man,” Mr. Hardy said. He pointed to a small bag that matched Mrs. Hardy’s. It had somehow ended up near the front of the plane.
Brody opened the suitcase and pulled out several white T-shirts. He cut one into strips and used two more to wrap around the metal rods.
Then he put the padded rods in place, one of each side of Angus’s leg. The metal plate at the end of the rods fit underneath Angus’s foot.
Then Brody efficiently used the strips of T-shirt to tie everything tight. When he finally sat back to inspect his work, Elle could tell that he was pleased. He patted Angus’s shoulder. “We’re going to help you get up. You can take a seat in that last row so that you can keep your leg extended straight.”
It was awkward, but between the two of them, they managed to get Angus up from the floor and onto a seat. There were beads of sweat running down the young man’s face by the time they were finished.
“Thanks, Doc,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Brody said, smiling.