Shelter Mountain (Virgin River 2)

Mike, an L.A. police sergeant, had been activated for an eighteen-month tour in Iraq. He was never injured. He had saved lives.

And now he lay in an L.A. hospital bed, comatose, with three bullet holes in him. The shots were fired by a fourteen-year-old gangbanger. The one place the kid hadn’t hit was square in Mike’s bulletproof vest. Another officer got off a fatal shot to the kid. Investigation suggested it might have been an initiation right of passage to get jumped into the gang—and bringing down the sergeant under which the gang unit served was a major feat.

Preacher had called on Mike about Paige, and Mike had done everything he could to help. Now Preacher had received the call.

It was early—the coffee barely brewed, Chris not yet racing downstairs in his pajamas, the loud crack of the ax in the backyard just begun. The shooting had occurred the night before and it took Ramon Valenzuela, Mike’s oldest brother, a few hours to get to someone in the old Marine squad. In the meantime, Mike had undergone emergency surgery and lay comatose in an intensive care unit.

Preacher went to the back door of the bar. “Jack!” he called. “Come in!”

Jack had an anxious look on his face when he came through the back kitchen door.

“Valenzuela was shot on the job,” Preacher said without preamble. “He’s critical. L.A. trauma center. I’ll call Zeke, have him pass the word, and close up the bar.”

“Jesus,” Jack said, rubbing his chin. “What chance they give him?”

“His brother Ramon said he thinks he’ll make it—but he’s in a coma. He said something about him never being the same.” He shook his head. “See if you can catch a flight. I’ll make the drive.”

Paige appeared at the bottom of the stairs and knew something serious was happening. She stood, waiting.

“What about Paige? Christopher?” Jack asked.

Preacher shrugged. “I’ll have to take them. I’m sure as hell not leaving them here without me.”

“Take me where?” she asked.

Both men turned to look at her. “L.A.,” Preacher said. “One of our boys was shot in the line of duty. He’s in intensive care and I have to go.”

“L.A.? John, I can’t go to L.A.”

“Yeah, you can. You have to. My friend Mike, the one who helped you so much, he’s in the hospital. Jack?” he said, looking at his best friend. “Go ahead. I’ll call Rick’s grandma and have her tell him to check on the bar every day.”

“Right,” Jack said, taking off at once.

Preacher turned back to Paige. “It’ll be all right. You’ll be safe. You can call that treatment center every day. If you want to, you can go get a few of your things while he’s in there. Maybe there’s someone you want to visit—you could do that safely. But I have to go.” She stared at him, unmoving. “I have to go right away, Paige. I need you to do this with me, so I can go to my friend and be sure you and Chris are safe. Please.”

She shook herself. “I’ll get us ready,” she said, running back up the stairs.

She didn’t hear Preacher let out his breath in a long, relieved sigh.

Jack stood on Doc’s front porch with Mel, his packed duffel on the bed of his truck. “Reconsider,” Jack said. “Come with me. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

She put a hand on his chest, looked up at him and said, “I won’t be alone. I have a whole town. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“But Preacher won’t be here. He’s taking Paige and Christopher because he can’t leave them. I think he’s scared to death to leave them.”

“Of course. Jack, Doc needs me. I have things I have to do. And I’ll be fine. No one’s going to bother me. Here’s the name of a doctor to speak to,” she told him, tucking a piece of paper into his shirt pocket. “Just tell him you married his old nurse. He’ll give you any information he can about Mike.”

“You worked with him? When?”

“It’s been a while, but he won’t have forgotten me. He’s a trauma surgeon—he may have operated on Mike. Be sure to tell him the news—that we’re having a baby. That’ll make him so happy.”

“I’ll find him.” He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her deeply, one hand at the small of her back while the other ran over her expanding middle. “Leaving you is the hardest thing I’ve done in some time,” he said.

“You’d better go. You want to get there as quickly as you can.”

Jack drove like mad to Eureka, charging Mel’s old cell phone in the truck so that he could use it to call her from the L.A. hospital. He picked up a flight that made only one stop in Redding, getting him to L.A. in less than three hours. Preacher, however, was making the whole drive, which would take eight, maybe closer to ten, hours.

When Jack got to L.A., he didn’t even stop at a hotel. Mike was still on the respirator with visitors limited to immediate family for just a few minutes every hour, but the crowd at the hospital was very much what Jack expected—impressive in numbers. Cops were known to gather for one of their fallen and there were dozens, in and around the hospital. They had parked an RV in the parking lot where Mike’s family could take occasional breaks from the stress of the hospital and they stood virtual guard around it. Mike had been married twice, but was at present single. There was no shortage of family—a big family of parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. There was probably an ex-wife around somewhere, and an inevitable girlfriend or two. A couple of their boys from the squad were there, the ones who could get away on short notice—Zeke, a firefighter from Fresno, and Paul Haggerty, a builder from Grants Pass. Others might make an appearance if they could. “Where’s Preacher?” they asked.

“He should be here soon. He made the drive. How’s Mike doing?”

“We don’t know too much. Three hits—one each in the head, shoulder and groin. He lost a lot of blood and hasn’t regained consciousness. There was a long surgery.”

Jack pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket. “Anyone know the surgeon’s name?” he asked.

They looked at one another, shaking their heads.

“Okay, let me look for this guy,” Jack said. “An old friend of Mel’s. He’s a doctor here—might be able to tell us something. I’ll be back.”

Jack spent the better part of an hour going from nurses’ station to nurses’ station, looking for Dr. Sean Wilke, leaving messages for him to no avail. It wasn’t until two hours later that a man about forty years old wearing a white coat over scrubs was heading for the ICU and the name embroidered on his coat in blue thread read “Wilke.”

“Dr. Wilke,” Jack said, stepping forward and stopping him. Jack put out a hand. “Jack Sheridan, Doctor. I’m here for Mike Valenzuela.” The doctor seemed cool and distracted, accepting the handshake absently. After all, there were a ton of people here for Mike—the doctor couldn’t speak to all of them. “I’m married to Mel Monroe,” he blurted.

The man’s expression changed instantly and dramatically. “My God,” he said, grasping Jack’s hand enthusiastically in both of his. “Mel? How is she?”

“Great. She gave me your name. Said you might be able to get me some information about my friend.”

“Let me see my patient, then I’ll tell you whatever I can. That work for you?”

“You bet,” Jack said. “Thanks.”

About fifteen minutes later Jack realized he had hit the jackpot when he saw Wilke pausing outside the ICU to have a brief conversation with Mike’s mother, father and brother. So—he was the surgeon. After leaving the family so they could go back into ICU, Wilke walked toward Jack. “Come on,” he said to Jack. “I’ve got a little time.”

“He’s gonna make it, isn’t he?”

“I’d give him a ninety-eight percent chance of making it—but we don’t know the extent of his potential disabilities.” Dr. Wilke took Jack to the employee lounge in the back of a busy emergency room. Wilke poured himself and Jack coffee. Jack took a sip and almost gagged. It was horrible. He wondered if it was possible they got the tap water mixed up with the mop-pail water. “Yeah,” Wilke said. “I know. Pretty bad.”

“I own a bar and restaurant up north. Our coffee is fantastic, better than Starbucks. I think I hooked Mel with the coffee first—she’s a caffeine junky. Tell me about Mike, Dr. Wilke.”

“Please, call me Sean. Here’s the situation so far. He remains unconscious because of the head wound, although it was really the least traumatic. The bullet, miraculously, doesn’t seem to have damaged the brain, but we had to do a craniotomy to remove it, and that has caused swelling, for which a shunt and drain has had to be inserted, and I believe that explains his coma. The bullet to the groin was his worst injury—the most complicated repair. We repaired bowel and bladder and he lost a lot of blood.”

“Jesus. He made it through eighteen months in Iraq without a scratch….”

“The shoulder is bad. We’re looking at a permanent disability there, I’m almost certain.”

“Damn,” Jack said, shaking his head. “What about his job?”

Sean shook his head. “I don’t see it. His injuries are critical. We’re looking at long-term rehab. The shoulder’s stitched up real nice, but it’s going to be weak. He’d be compromised in defensive tactics.”

“But he’s tough,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s keeping him alive.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. “For everything you’ve done. For taking the time to tell me—”

“You’re welcome.” He leaned forward. “I know he’s your first concern right now, but I’d love to know how Mel’s doing. I haven’t heard from her in a long time.”

Jack smiled, happy to catch him up on Mel’s trek to the mountains, her first inclination to bolt, get the hell out of there. And how all that turned into not only her decision to stay, but remarriage and a baby on the way.

The shock on Wilke’s face was evident.

“Yeah, plenty of surprise to go around there. I know she didn’t think that was possible. Here she was, a woman who didn’t think she could ever be happy again, a midwife who would never have a baby. And I’m almost forty-one, a retired marine who never married. Hell, I was never attached, never intended to be. The day I met her was the best day of my life. A new life for both of us, I guess. She’s everything to me.”

There was a tablet on the table and Jack pulled it toward him. He reached toward Sean, holding out a hand for his pen, which the doctor took out of his coat pocket.

“You should call her. Don’t take my word for it—ask her how she’s doing. She’d love to hear from you. She gave me your name—told me to look you up.” He scribbled the number on the yellow pad and turned it toward Sean.

After a moment’s hesitation, Sean tore the page off, folded it and put it in his pocket.

“Really, give her a call. She’d like that. And one more thing. Any chance you can sneak me into ICU? Mike—he was one of my best guys. He was a fine marine. He saved lives. He was a hero. I love the guy. I do. Lotta people do.”

“You bet,” Sean said.

Jack sat at Mike’s side through the night so that the family could sleep. Mike’s head was shaved on one side, tubes and drains everywhere, but probably the hardest thing to see was the respirator breathing for him. Nurses and therapists moved his extremities, but Mike didn’t move them himself.

After briefly talking with Mike’s family, Preacher took Paige and Jack’s duffel and secured a couple of hotel rooms nearby and came back in the morning to give Jack a key. Jack went there to take a nap, but was back by afternoon, and again, spent the whole night at Mike’s bedside. Every hour at least he would stand up, lean over the bed and talk to him. “Everyone is here, buddy. Your family, your cops, some of your squad. Everyone’s waiting for you to get up. Wake up, buddy.”