Mount Mercy

“Rebecca,” I told her, “We’re going to reach them so they can fly in and be here when you wake up. But we’re going to have to put you to sleep now so I can fix you up.”

The poor kid’s eyes went huge and scared. “Can’t you wait?! I don’t want to—” She looked around desperately and I realized she was looking for something, anything familiar. But she was hundreds of miles from a friend, a parent, a teacher.

And something happened inside me. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d grabbed her hand. Through a sudden flood of emotion, I said, “You’re not on your own. Okay? Because until someone else gets here, I’m going to take care of you.”

Rebecca pressed her lips together tight... and squeezed my hand and nodded.

I squeezed back, shocked at myself. I was the most awkward, least motherly person in existence. But somehow it felt right.

Krista cleared a path and I wheeled the gurney to the elevator. Just as we got inside, a big, warm hand on my hip stopped me. A stubbled chin rasped against my ear and then there was a hot, Irish whisper. “Take care of her. Okay?”

I looked round... and saw that same vulnerability in his eyes again. In that second, Dominic Corrigan was the most torn-apart soul on earth. What the hell happened to this man?

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

The elevator doors closed and he was gone.

7

Amy

FOUR HOURS LATER, I closed the last stitch and staggered back from the table. “Done,” I managed.

Lina, on anesthesia, and Krista and Adele, my nurses, all gave me exhausted nods and we shared a sigh of relief. “Good job, everybody,” I said, leaning back against the wall. I couldn’t straighten up properly. My whole back had gone into spasm from hunching over the operating table and my fingers were cramped and numb. But we’d saved Rebecca.

I’d repaired the damage to her left lung and removed her ruptured spleen; luckily, spleens aren’t vital and she could live a normal life without it. She’d lost so much blood that it had been too dangerous to try to fix her leg. I’d have to do a second operation tomorrow and she’d be worryingly fragile until then. And I was worried about her kidney function: we’d have to keep an eye on that until she was stable enough to transport to a bigger facility with a specialist renal surgeon. But if all went well, she’d be fine.

I wanted to be there when she woke up, so I sat by her bedside in the intensive care unit while I called her parents in Kansas. They were terrified. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like, to know your kid is sick so far away. “What time does your flight get in?” I asked.

“We can’t fly in!” Rebecca’s mother sounded near-hysterical. “Denver airport’s closed by a blizzard. No flights are getting through. We’re going to try to make it by road, but the roads are bad too.”

I checked out of the window. Nothing but blue skies in Mount Mercy. But then Denver was two hours’ drive away. “Try not to worry, we’re taking good care of her. Just get here when you can.”

I hung up and looked at the slumbering Rebecca. “Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” I whispered. And I sat there as the daylight faded, watching her sleep.

The room was almost dark and I was half-dozing myself when she stirred. I quickly turned on a lamp so that she didn’t panic. “Hey!” I gave her a big smile. “Hey! It’s all over! You did great. You’re going to be fine.”

She gave me a tired smile, but then looked around. “Where’s my mom?”

A big, tight swell of worry filled my chest. “They’re coming, but there’s a lot of snow coming down between us and them. So it may take a little while.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. I grabbed her hand. What do I do? I knew I needed to distract her, but I had no idea what eight year-old girls liked. All I remembered about being eight was memorizing all the types of butterfly because reciting them was the only way to make my dad smile again. And I’d really wanted a cat—“Do you have any pets?” I blurted.

“J—Jupiter,” she croaked. “My hamster.”

“Why did you call him Jupiter?”

“‘Cos he’s big and round, like a planet.”

I grinned. “I always wanted a pet,” I told her. “Tell me about him.”

We wound up talking for over an hour and the longer I stayed, the less awkward I became. She was a really sweet little thing, smart as hell and really into science and math but confident, too. She was a glimpse at what I could have maybe turned out like, if I’d had my mom’s influence to balance me out.