Death.
Except the child had been alive, even if barely. He’d seen the doll flutter as if tugged.
Walk now. Run then.
He’d pulled the girl out, a child maybe four. They’d even made it to the emergency personnel where he’d passed her off…just as rotten boards gave way underneath him.
Agonizing pain razored through him. The ground sucked him in. Nails and boards cut into skin and muscle. Bones snapped. Wood tore into his legs. Ripped tendons.
Reach up. Out. Trudge. Don’t give up.
His vision tightened the tunnel until he could swear he saw the load ramp at the end of his metal bars. How damn ridiculous was that? Maybe it was just some of that visionary crap the shrink was always telling him about.
Picture what you want. Yeah. That was it. He wanted his job back.
Hell, he wanted his life back.
Okay, the load ramp gaping at the back of the airplane. Go with that image. Move toward it.
Light faded and blazed as he struggled with consciousness. A voice tugged at him from his past. He blinked, cleared his vision and his eyes agreed with his ears. What the…?
He must be delusional thinking of that woman who’d left his bed with only a terse little note five years ago.
Still he couldn’t stop himself from croaking out the name. “Nola?”
The woman moved toward him, stepping into the light streaming through the rehab area’s windows and revealing a face from the past he’d never expected to see again…
At a time when he very likely didn’t have a future.
Putting the past to rest so she could move forward with her future was easier said than done. But Nola was a determined lady.
She needed to wrap her brain around a reality she barely dared dream was real. She’d reached her five-year remission mark.
Her docs all encouraged her to celebrate. The mind and body worked in synch after all.
Easier said than done. Believing in the future was tough after so long of living for today. Milk the most from each second because today was a gift and tomorrow an unknown. Walk to the towering man inching slowly her way.
Her hand closed around her purse, which held her very organized day planner, which held her list.
The list. A list of all the people she needed to make contact with for closure. She’d already contacted every friend she could think of that she may have wronged. A flight student she’d been unnecessarily harsh to during a check ride because in her early days as an instructor perhaps she’d been a bit full of herself.
She’d even contacted a guy from junior high who she’d picked on unmercifully all because she’d liked him and had been too immature to know how to show it. He’d thought she was nuts for calling, but ah well, such was life. She wasn’t as worried about looking cool these days.
Today she’d finally tracked down Rick DeMassi, the man she’d left high and dry and gloriously n**ed in a VOQ room. Once she’d learned of his injuries, her relief at finding him alive had been stronger than she would have expected for someone she’d only spent thirty hours with five years ago. But they’d been a crucial thirty hours. He’d given her a great gift over that weekend, even if he hadn’t known.
His talented touch had been the last she’d felt on her breasts. More importantly, his gentleness and strength had bolstered her to walk into hell alone and she would never forget him.
She’d had a mastectomy, but beaten the cancer. Now she needed to see Rick one more time to complete her list before she could close the door on the recovery part of her cancer journey.
So she’d driven all the way from her home base in Charleston, South Carolina, and here she stood at a physical rehab center connected to the same hospital where she’d started her treatments. How ironic was that? But somehow serendipitous.
How bad must his injuries have been for him to still be recovering a year later? Her stomach knotted at even the mention of hospitals. Walking into one usually had her fighting back an anxiety attack. Striding into this one in particular threatened a flat KO.
But she refused to let anything stop her, especially once she’d heard he was the patient. No way could she turn her back until she was certain he had everything he needed. Theirs may have only been a weekend together where he unwittingly gave her comfort, but those two days stayed with her still. His face on the back of her eyelids, recalling his touch to override pain…
All of it carried her through hell as surely as his arms had carried her across a room to rest her so gently, seductively on a mattress.
Right now, he could barely carry himself across the room.