Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries (3 page)

Chapter  4

The helicopter noise faded and this time it didn’t come back.

Phoebe’s vision wasn’t great, but she’d seen enough to confirm that the helicopter wasn’t one of the types used for medical rescue. It wasn’t rigged with a basket on the side for transport of a body, either. This wasn’t adding up.

“That was super-weird,” Ivy said, “Those guys didn’t wave or anything. They just looked.”

The man mumbled again, still keeping his eyes closed tightly, but this time he was easier to understand. He said, “Uh oh.”

The guy really had a knack for hitting the nail on the head. He was a man of few words, but every one of them was right on target.

Phoebe was getting a cramp from kneeling on the ropes. She needed to change position. “I’m gonna lay you over on your stomach for just a second,” she said. His eyelids fluttered open just as she rolled him facedown.

“Oh God!” he gasped, and flailed his arms and legs wildly. Then he screamed.

Phoebe threw herself across him to keep him from thrashing and flinging himself off the edge of the platform in his frenzy. “Stop that!” Phoebe barked. “Stop it right now!”

“It’s not over,” he moaned. “I’m still falling!”

“Close your eyes,” Phoebe said in her most authoritative voice. “You are
not
falling.”

“Uhhhh,” he groaned, but he closed his eyes, then whispered, “That’s better.”

Ivy and Phoebe exchanged concerned looks.

After a couple of minutes his breathing became more regular and, he asked in a husky voice, “Am I dead?”

“No,” said Phoebe. “I’m gonna get off you now. I need you to roll back up onto your side when I do that, okay? Keep your eyes closed and just roll onto your side. I’ll help you. Don’t try to go anywhere else.”

When she lifted herself off him he made an ungentlemanly grunt like she weighed a ton. She held him in a firm grip and leaned in close to check his pupils, as she said, “I need to take a quick look at your eyes. Hold still.”

When she pried open one of his eyelids he looked up into Phoebe’s face at nearly point blank range, and shouted, “Oh God, I’m in Hell!”

Phoebe was used to verbal abuse from patients. She knew people weren’t at their best when they were sick, scared, in pain, or heavily medicated, but Ivy was shocked and wouldn’t stand for this stranger insulting her friend.

“Hey, buddy, watch your mouth. We’re trying to help you,” Ivy said, pulling off her fleece jacket and tossing it toward his private parts. “And cover up, you’re not exactly Chippendales material yourself.”

Phoebe snorted. She didn’t mind his outburst. Some people were just bad patients. No matter what you did for them they were cranky and a pain in the ass to deal with. This fellow was obviously one of those.

“I’ve heard of people getting bumped from a flight,” Ivy said, still miffed at him, “but you just took it to a whole new level.”

That made him cough and sputter in what might have been a laugh.

“If you keep you eyes closed it’ll help you stay calm,” Phoebe said. The height was scaring her, too. “We’ll figure out a way to get you down.”

“Who
are
you people?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Who are
you
?” Ivy demanded.

He mumbled, “I asked first.”

As the helicopter left the mountains, the shorter of the two men said, “The boss isn’t gonna like this.”

“What say we clean up the mess ourselves and not mention it to him?”

“Agreed,” he said. No one would ever want to have to admit a mistake to the man they knew only as the Gryphon.

They radioed their associates, described the situation, requested emergency ground-based assistance, and relayed the precise GPS coordinates of the body drop.

“Yeah, retrieval and secure disposal,” the tall guy said, “Of the target and any and all subjects in the area. We have a female witness.”

He listened to the response, then said, “Thanks. I owe you one,” before terminating the connection.

What a crazy day. It had started out as a typical job. They’d snatched some geek from his basement in Cleveland, cleaned the place, and torched it. Then they’d taken him five hundred miles south, stripped him of all identification, and tossed him out of the chopper to kill him and get rid of the body in one fell swoop, so to speak. Why do the extra labor of burying some schmuck if you didn’t have to?

And then what? The guy didn’t die from the fall! How had that happened?

Things were really crazy when you couldn’t even toss a guy out in mid-air and be sure he’d end up dead. It made no sense. Somehow they’d thrown the nerd out onto the few square feet he could’ve landed on that wouldn’t have killed him outright.

That was some freakin guardian angel he had.

Chapter  5

“Are you saying that he didn’t fall? That this wasn’t an accident?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t think it was,” Ivy said.

“You think they
threw
him out? Of a helicopter?”

Ivy nodded reluctantly.

“Why?”

Ivy shrugged. “Where are his clothes?”

Phoebe looked down at him to confirm the absence of clothing. She was so used to working with people in various states of undress that she hadn’t thought about it. “I’ve read that in air disasters, when people fall from a great height, their clothes, even their underwear, usually get blown off during the fall. But, I don’t think he fell far enough for that to have happened.”

“Maybe he’s a terrorist or a criminal who’d just been arrested and strip-searched,” Ivy said. “Or if they’re bad guys, they could’ve been trying to remove any identification before killing him. They always do that on the television shows.”

The women looked at him. “Or maybe he just pissed somebody off. Who knows?”

“He knows,” Phoebe said.

He shook his head slowly, denying it.

“Do you think they saw us?” Phoebe asked.

“I think they must’ve seen something right after they tossed him out,” Ivy said, “and then, when they came back, they saw you both. I doubt if they saw me, though.”

“Do you think they figured out that he’s not dead?”

“He was obviously moving, so they’ve got to be worried that he’s still alive.”

“Do you think they’ll come after us?”

“If they’re good people, they’ll come back to help him. If they’re bad guys they apparently want him dead and I doubt they want any witnesses. So it’s not just him they’re after now. It doesn’t seem likely that they’d just give up. People who have the resources to use a helicopter are professionals. I think all three of us better get outta here as quick as we can.”

Neither of them said anything, but the two women looked at the stranger, wondering what they could do with him.

“Oh don’t worry about me,” he said, in a sarcastic tone, “I’ll be fine.”

“I might be able to get him down using your harness,” said Ivy. “But I’m not sure. He might be too heavy for me to handle.”

“I don’t know if we can move him out of here in a harness without seriously exacerbating his injuries,” Phoebe said.

“If we leave him, his injuries are going to get exacerbated at lot more. Let’s go get Leon,” Ivy suggested. “He can get him down.”

Phoebe thought about it and nodded in agreement. Leon was Ivy’s boyfriend and he taught climbing at Cloud Forest, the local posh resort.

Ivy walked toward the edge of the platform and said, “Let’s go.”

“I’ll stay here with our mystery man,” Phoebe said. “It’s not safe to leave him up here alone.”

“It’s not safe for you to stay here with him, either, but I know better than to argue with you,” Ivy said. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

She checked her gear then stepped off the platform and zipped down toward the ground so fast it made Phoebe dizzy. Ivy was
burning a rope
as the climbers called it when their descent was so fast the friction of the equipment heated the rope enough to melt it, not to mention what it did to a glove—and the hand inside it.

The second her feet touched the ground Ivy stepped out of her harness and took off running through the forest toward her car.

Phoebe crawled to the man’s feet and began a careful examination of her patient. She straightened his legs, put his ankles together, and checked to see that both legs were the same length and that neither foot rotated outwards more than normal. They looked fine, so he hadn’t broken a hip. She felt along the big bone in each of his lower legs to make sure he hadn’t broken a tibia.

Then she pressed against the skin on his thighs. Both thighs were warm, but not hot, and not abnormally hard to the touch, so he hadn’t broken a femur. If he had, at least a pint of blood would’ve leaked into the surrounding area and caused palpable heat and skin tightness from the swelling.

She crawled toward his upper body and examined his arms, shoulders, and chest. By some miracle, he didn’t have any noticeable injuries that looked life-threatening, but of course, there were all sorts of terrible possibilities she couldn’t see, a ruptured spleen, for one—the list was too long to contemplate.

She sat back on her heels and looked at him. He looked a little taller than she was, so she guessed he was maybe six feet. He was muscular, but the muscles were the normal flat kind, not the bulging ones that were the latest craze. Phoebe crawled up toward his head and felt around on his scalp. It was dry. He hadn’t cut his head and she didn’t feel any depressions in his skull.

He looked to be about her age, in his fifties. There was silver mixed in with brown in his wild halo of curls. His hair was clean and soft, longer than normal for someone his age, but she didn’t know if that was due to vanity or simply a failure to get frequent haircuts.

He hadn’t made any sounds during the exam, but she knew he was conscious because he was smiling.

“Don’t stop,” he said. “I’m trying to enjoy this. I haven’t been naked around a woman in a long time.”

“I’m very glad you’re alive, but try not to get carried away.”

“Honey, the shape I’m in, if I don’t get carried, I’m not going anywhere at all.”

He was funny, even when he was in pain. That told Phoebe a lot about his character.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away, but when Phoebe didn’t press him, he finally mumbled, “Nick.”

“My name’s Phoebe. That was Ivy who just left to get help so we can get you down from here. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I fell.”

“We got that part,” Phoebe said. “Was it an accident?”

There was a pause, then he murmured, “No.”

Chapter  6

“Why would someone do that to you?”

This time the pause was even longer, and he shifted slightly before answering. He was obviously in pain when he said, “I guess I made em mad.”

“Are they the mafia?”

He barked a short laugh, and that started him coughing. Phoebe held his hand until he quieted.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Didn’t introduce themselves.”

“What did you do that made someone mad enough to kill you?”

His brow furrowed, “My research…maybe.”

Phoebe didn’t say anything, hoping he’d continue, but if he didn’t she wouldn’t press him. His lack of clothing prevented her from getting any clues about him that way, but he had no tattoos or scars except for an old straight line cut just underneath his chin. That was a scar nearly every active little boy got at some point. There were no surgical scars and no suspicious marks like from knife wounds or bullet holes. She decided he didn’t look like a criminal.

She could tell he was gradually settling down, but he was still keeping his eyes tightly closed. She wondered if he was simply afraid of heights, like her, or if he was seeing double or had vertigo. “I need to check your vision again,” she said, as she touched his face and began to peel back an eyelid.

“No!” he said, and knocked her arm away.

“What’s wrong?”

He breathed several deep breaths and let them out through his nose before saying, “I have some … issues. Serious issues.”

She waited to hear what they were, but he remained quiet.

“What sort of issues?”

“Agoraphobia,” he whispered, like even the word scared him.

Ohhhh
, that explained a lot. This was what the helicopter had been about. Torture. How horrible to have been swept out of his safe place and tossed out into the wild blue yonder. It was the worst possible thing they could’ve done to him. Someone must really hate him.

“Okay,” she said, “I understand.” His fear of wide spaces might’ve been what caused the vomiting. If he was bleeding into his brain, and she saw one or both of his pupils become fixed, there was nothing she could do about it anyway, so she wouldn’t pry his eyes open again. She took off the fleece headband she used to hold her hair back.

She told him what she was going to do, then put it around his head and over his eyes like a blindfold. She’d seen her ranger friend Henry do something similar to wild animals when he was working on them. He said it was a kindness that helped them stay calm, like a hood for a falcon.

The man’s breathing slowed and his heart rate came down after that.

“What were you researching?” she asked.

He took a deep breath and swallowed audibly. She could tell he was waiting for nausea to subside, then he said, “The cause of war.”

Wow, she hadn’t seen that coming. She knew it was likely that he was still a bit addled. A fall like that would temporarily scramble anyone’s brains.

“Why would that make anybody mad?” she asked.

“They don’t want … wars to stop.”

“Oh,” Phoebe said, “the military-industrial complex.”

He laughed again, and started retching. Phoebe rolled him onto his side and held him steady until the gagging subsided. “Who do you think it is?”

“It’s complicated,” he sighed, “It could be anybody.”

Phoebe wondered if he was crazy, or if this was evidence of a head injury that was getting worse, but then she remembered he’d been shoved out of a helicopter. That certainly leant credence to any outlandish story he might come out with.

After something like that you couldn’t blame a guy for feeling paranoid. She didn’t ask him any more questions, though, because talking was difficult for him. There’d be plenty of time to sort things out later.

She sat with him in silence, contemplating the situation. The scene was like something out of a religious painting or
Paradise Lost
. A man had fallen out of the sky and nearly into her lap. She briefly entertained the notion that he might be an angel, but then realized the cynical and sarcastic tone of his few utterances would seem to indicate a fallen angel at best.

Phoebe knew her Bible. She knew that Lucifer had gotten himself cast out of heaven and that he was said to be the most beautiful of all the angels. She looked at the man carefully. She hadn’t really noticed before because she was worried about him, but he was kinda gorgeous.

Since his eyes were closed, she was free to admire his charmingly disheveled hair, dark eyebrows, straight nose, and long thick dark eyelashes. She tried to remember the color of his eyes, but she hadn’t gotten much of a look. He seemed to be sleeping. That was either a good thing, or not.

Neither of them spoke again as they waited for Ivy to return, but Phoebe kept a close watch over Nick. And she prayed. The image of Lucifer wouldn’t go away, though, so at one point she stopped, worried that she might praying for the Devil.

Then she started back up again, thinking that the Devil probably needed our prayers most of all.