"What about Captain O'Connell?" Lori nodded to the woman across the runway. "I thought she was a flight surgeon, too."
"She is, but didn't Gray ever explain the difference? He probably didn't want to brag. A flight surgeon is a doctor who specializes in medicine pertaining to flyer ailments! Only a few of them are actually flyers themselves, about a dozen I think."
"A dozen?" Lori answered absently, scanning the horizon, searching for a dot, each minute weighing on her. Wind stirred, swirled, plastering her silk wraparound dress to her body. "Here?"
"No. In the Air Force."
Julia's words sank in, slowly, heavily. A flash of admiration mixed with a wayward twinge of pride. Only a dozen people in the entire Air Force held that distinction, and Gray was one of them.
There wasn't a chance he could give it up. That doused the last of her hopes, banked though they may have been. No reserves or weekend warriors after his stint in Washington. He'd charted his life.
A nimble sounded in the background. Lori straightened, her breath catching as she searched the sky and runway. Was that the plane? She jerked to look over her shoulder.
Hangar doors growled open, not aircraft sounds at all.
Sirens split the air.
Numbness fell away.
Fire trucks tore out, six of them screaming across the tarmac toward the runway.
Lori stopped breathing altogether. She looked around frantically. Gray had said a fire truck would hose him down, a tradition for finit flights, but he hadn't said anything about six trucks with sirens.
Julia's pale face didn't calm Lori in the least. Just as she started to search for Gray's parents, a handheld radio crackled, blaring loudly enough to be heard over any flight line pandemonium, "Wolf One, this is command post."
Lori followed the noise to a small group between the bleachers and line of planes.
The squadron commander, Lori searched for his name and couldn't find it, raised the radio to his mouth, "Yeah, Wolf One here, over."
"Sir," the radio broadcast, "Lifter one-three has declared an in-flight emergency. Experienced a rapid decompression. They're on twenty-five-mile approach."
In-flight emergency. Just the words horrified her. Lori held herself still, desperate to absorb and decode every word.
"Roger that, command post. Rapid decompression. And the crew?"
"No injuries."
No injuries. Lori clung to those words as tightly as she held Julia's arm. When had she grabbed it?
"Roger," the commander barked. "Send Foxtrot over to pick me up at spot twelve. I'm heading out for landing. Over."
Seconds later the commander leaped into a truck. Sirens blaring, it followed the fire trucks past the line of parked planes next to the lengthy runway.
As quickly as that, her world rocked.
Lori felt a hand on her shoulder and startled. She found Gray's father standing behind her, Magda still on his shoulders jingling Angela's bracelet.
"He'll be fine, Lori." Dave held his wife's hand, her face pale but in control. "Rapid dees happen all the time. The trucks, the noise, it's all procedure. Since he's only twenty-five miles out, he'll be here in minutes. Probably landing in less than five. Should be breaking the horizon right about … now."
Like magic, a speck appeared.
Lori exhaled. She pulled the fragmented pieces of her reason together. What right did she have to accept comfort, anyway? She wasn't anyone to Gray, not like his parents beside her. And Julia had a husband to worry about.
That didn't stop Lori's heart from punching her rib cage or her hands from shaking.
Julia's hand fluttered to rest on Lori's arm. "Really, thank goodness it's just a rapid dee. Those can be absolutely nothing big."
Lori looked around at the fire trucks positioned along the runway. If this was "nothing" she didn't want to consider "something." How could they all be so blasé?