On Wings of Love (2 page)

Wholesome and innocent. For someone else. Not him.

The woman sitting in the first row wasn’t Michelle. His wife had died three years ago and taken his heart with her, but Noah saw the same vulnerability in Ruth that brought out a protective streak he fought to control.

A tightness rivaling a wound rubber band tensed his shoulder and neck muscles. He concentrated on forcing oxygen into his lungs. Passing out behind the controls topped the preflight imaginary checklist of things not to do. He didn’t need the FAA breathing down his neck.

It wasn’t as if they could afford to be choosy at what jobs became available. A fledgling business didn’t have the luxury of saying no—not when they had overhead and payroll and other people depending on them. Guilt threatened to consume the shred of sanity Noah grappled to hold on to.

He forced his thoughts back to flying the plane.

“Thanks for the update. We’ll be there shortly.” Ruth’s melodic voice drifted around him through the headset.

He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to listen to her words. But his fingers refused to isolate her from his communication.

“Okay, team. Here’s what we’ve got. A seven-year-old male.”

Noah’s grip tightened.
Don’t listen.

“He was struck by a car while riding his bike.”

Sweat broke out underneath Noah’s arms and across his
forehead. A chill seared his nerves, and beside him he sensed Brad shifting in the co-pilot’s seat.

It’s okay. I’m over it.

“Medium build, type O blood.”

Jeremy…

Maybe I’m not over it.

Disgust wrapped around all the other emotions struggling to surface. How could the woman sitting behind him be so detached to the situation? That boy lying in a hospital bed was a person, not a turkey to carve up and distribute to the neediest person.

His first thoughts had been right. Vultures. Every one of them. Worse than vultures. They were lower than the scum he’d washed off his shoes each summer night on his granddad’s farm.

A disembodied voice from air traffic control crackled in his ears. His attention focused on the preparations needed to land the plane safely even though he’d done it a thousand times before.

“ETA is twenty minutes, people. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened,” Noah announced, managing to keep all emotion inside him.

“Thanks, Noah.” Ruth’s voice surrounded him again, lulling him into a false sense of peace.

As he heard Ruth update the hospital, Noah tilted the nose of the plane down, starting their descent into San Diego. He eased back into his chair and concentrated on relaxing.

He needed a vacation away from a past that wouldn’t change no matter how many different scenarios played out in his mind.

Once the plane stopped on the tarmac by the waiting ambulance, Noah unclasped his seat belt and looked at
the woman in the seat directly behind him. He couldn’t help himself.

She represented everything he hated about the medical community. Yet something about her played on his misguided sense of chivalry. Was it a vulnerability he sensed under her professionalism? Or the fear of flying she so gallantly tried to cover?

He watched her rise from her seat. The gold cross suspended from a thin chain around her neck winked at him. The irony that she wore a cross around her neck mocked him. She had the audacity to worship the God he’d turned his back on years ago. Noah didn’t have time for all that religious mumbo jumbo, anyway. It meant nothing. But to her, it obviously meant something.

“Here’s the dinner list. We should be back in just over an hour.” Ruth said softly, her feminine voice cocooning Noah into a false sense of comfort. He shook his head to dispel the feeling. It was part of his job to provide her crew with food for the ride home. He noticed her hand tremble when she handed him the paper. Their fingers never touched; yet he could almost feel her warmth.

“Okay.” Noah willed the underlying current running between them to disappear.

“Mr. Barton? Are you all right?” Ruth’s eyebrows drew together again, accentuating the tiny crease between them. Her deep green eyes softened as she gazed at him.

“Fine. And call me Noah,” Noah responded, but he was anything but fine.

“We need to get going then, Noah. We’ll see you later.” Her charm bracelet jangled when she placed her hand on his arm. Her touch magnified just how alone he’d been these last few years. He stared in her eyes. For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. Her mouth opened as if to say
something else. She clamped her lips shut and tilted her head a fraction before a smile emerged. As she stepped away, her light, distracting scent disappeared with her. “Bye.”

Noah fisted his hands to keep from reaching out to her as he strode to the entrance of the aircraft and watched Ruth descend the stairs.

“If she interests you that much, why don’t you ask her out?” Brad joined him.

“I’m not interested.” Noah breathed in a lungful of ocean air laced with the distinct scent of jet fuel.

“Right. Then why do you keep staring at her?”

Okay, so maybe he was a little interested, and it scared him. He hadn’t thought of another woman since his wife died, and he didn’t plan on starting to even though this one caused a tiny blip on his radar screen. Noah wouldn’t risk his heart and put himself through the pain and agony of falling in love again and losing her like he’d lost Michelle.

Brad spoke quietly again. “You have to admit she’s appealing in a girl-next-door way.”

“Not my type.” Noah’s gaze betrayed his words as it lingered on the blonde coordinator again. Now he knew how the moths that fluttered around his back porch light felt.

“Then what is?” Brad asked.

“I don’t know. Not someone like her.” Noah ground out. He forced his fingers to uncurl. Even if the only thing that remained from his fighting days was a crooked nose and a few tiny scars, Noah knew better than to tangle with the taller, heavier and younger Brad again. Still his gaze lingered on the woman jumping inside the white and blue ambulance behind the rest of her team. Her hesitant wave before her blond head and white lab coat disappeared
inside sucker punched his gut. Anger wrestled with disgust.

The lights flashed against the metal of the hangar to his right. He couldn’t shake the image of a big black bird hovering over the emergency vehicle as the sirens echoed in his ears. He continued to watch until it passed through the gate and out onto the street running parallel to the small airport.

“Let me have the dinner list. I’ll go pick it up.” Brad grabbed the slip of paper Ruth had given him and took off to find the flight-based operation’s courtesy car.

Noah’s fingers gripped the strap of Houston’s leash when he and the dog descended to the tarmac. A walk in the strip of grass would do both of them good after being cooped up in the plane. It might also release the tension tightening his neck and shoulder muscles.

“Come on, boy, we’ve got some time to kill.” He frowned at his choice of words. “Make that some time to waste.”

Not really. As if he hadn’t learned that every second was precious and not to be frittered away. All those years flying commercial aircraft had eaten away the hours he could have been spending with his family. Now he had the time, but his family existed only in photographs.

His shoes crushed the grass beneath his sneakers as Houston did his business. Why did his partner agree to this contract? Maybe because Brad had recognized what Noah hadn’t. He hadn’t come to terms with the death of his wife and son.

Too bad. Noah would face his nightmares by himself, not be forced into it by someone who didn’t understand. Tomorrow he’d flip the pilot schedules so he wouldn’t be called out to do any more organ recovery fly-outs.

Once the distant siren melted into the hum of early evening traffic, Noah relaxed.

Slightly. They still had to get the team and whatever piece of human anatomy they’d removed back to Phoenix. But for now, it was him and his dog. Noah knelt down and scratched the dog his son had picked out behind his ears. The only thing he had left from his happier days. The days when he was half of a whole. Now he wandered around as one of those left behind.

Houston’s body wriggled in delight while the dog licked Noah’s hand. The adjustment hadn’t been easy for him, either, and every once in a while before they’d moved from the house, Noah caught Houston staring into Jeremy’s empty room.

Waiting for a boy who would never come home.

He picked up the dog and held his body close to his chest. The dog’s heat permeated the thin cotton of his shirt. The nightmares rose to the surface, clawing their way through layers of protective coating meant to shelter his heart. Noah buried his face into the dog’s fur. When would the pain go away? When would he feel normal again?

Enough.

He opened his eyes as the almost full moon peeked over the horizon. A light breeze kicked up some of the litter by the chain link fence. With the onset of dusk, he retreated back inside his airplane. Then he settled back in the seat Ruth had occupied because it gave him quicker access to the front.

Her warmth and scent lingered, creating an unwanted longing for female conversation he’d thought was buried behind three years of bitter emotions. He closed off the tap feeding the thoughts and forced them back to the dry recesses of his brain.

With over an hour before Brad, Ruth and the medical team came back, he decided to rest.

As best he could under the circumstances. Noah closed his eyes and almost immediately fell into that bottomless nightmare that had become a part of him.

“Just sign here, Mr. Barton.” A jumble of words wavered before his eyes.

“No!”

“There is nothing else we can do, sir. Your son is brain-dead. But there is something you can.” The bright red lipstick worn by the garish woman dressed in hospital garb reminded him of an old Japanese movie. The one dubbed over in English where the lips moved independently of the words.

“You want to carve up my son and dole him out like pineapple slices,” Noah spat back. Guilt over not being able to do enough to save his son coursed through him like a jolt of electricity.

“Sign the paper, Noah. It’s what Michelle would have wanted.” His sister spoke softly and rubbed his back. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”

The clipboard dangled in front of his vision. The line marked with an X tormented him but not as much as the shame. He’d failed his son. A hand he recognized as his own grabbed the pen and scribbled his name.

“Thank you, Mr. Barton. This will save someone’s life.”

But what about my life?

Noah jolted awake to find Houston licking the tears from his face.

“A
re you okay, Ruth?” Nancy asked as she strapped herself into the seat in the rear of the ambulance to ride back to the waiting airplane.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

Exhaustion seeped into her pores again. Child donors were always the hardest. And not very common, which was why so many sick children died while waiting for organs. A fact she tried to change with each donation she coordinated, but sometimes she felt like a hamster trapped inside one of those wheels getting nowhere fast. There weren’t enough organs to go around.

She stared out the tiny window in the back over Nancy’s shoulder. No need to let the staff know this particular donation had affected her. She wouldn’t fall apart in front of the team that depended on her to be the calm one. The reliable one. Boy, did she have them fooled.

But that wasn’t what made her unusually quiet. Her silence stemmed from the glimpse she’d caught of the donor’s parents’ faces as she passed them in the hallway on the way to surgery. A look her own parents had once
worn when they realized one of their children was dead. Grief curled around Ruth’s heart and opened the door for memories to flood in, carrying debris and fallout from an earlier time.

She’d hoped and prayed for a miracle for her sister that never came. Sometimes she didn’t understand God’s ways. But she never questioned His intentions, which was why she followed His calling and dedicated her life to making sure every possible donation was a success.

Digging into her purse, she grabbed two pain relievers and plopped them into her mouth with hopes that they would deaden the pain emerging behind her eye again. The heart Dr. Cavanaugh carried in the cooler was two decades too late to help her twin, but another child would have a second chance at life.

“How about you? How are you holding up?” Ruth asked Nancy. The fatigue lines bracketing the first assistant’s mouth mirrored her own. The surgery had gone well once they’d finally had their chance to operate.

“Fine, though things could have gone a little quicker.”

“That kidney team sure took their sweet time,” one of the med students announced. “I didn’t think they’d ever get finished. Why did it take so long?”

With six years’ experience as an O.R. nurse before becoming a coordinator, Ruth had been involved in hundreds of operations—many successful, others not. Since the heart was the last organ recovered, her team had to wait almost an hour and a half before they could operate.

Things had gotten tricky during the surgery, too, but Dr. Cavanaugh pulled it off. Ruth’s team had not lost an organ yet.

“Sometimes things don’t quite go as planned. I’m not familiar with that surgeon, but from his appearance, I’d say he doesn’t quite have the experience Dr. Cavanaugh has.”

“He sure was good-looking though.” The other med student piped in. “Too bad that team was from L.A. and not Phoenix.”

Ruth leaned against the padded bench and closed her eyes to the inane conversation swirling around her. She put pressure on her eyelid in hopes of alleviating the pain made worse when she realized she still had to get inside a plane and fly back to Phoenix. Instead of finding relief, she saw a sad Noah Barton staring back at her.

“Ready to fly back, Ruth?” Noah’s question sounded more like a sigh once she’d picked up her food from the cardboard box next to the door.

“Yes.” Ruth had a feeling this flight wasn’t going to be one of the more enjoyable ones with a lively conversation. By the looks of the fatigue written on the faces of her team and the tension that still lingered in the air between the two pilots, she predicted it would be totally silent.

Ruth took the same seat she’d sat in on the flight out. Funny how it wasn’t as comfortable as before, or maybe she attributed the feeling to the uneasy atmosphere inside. Or more specifically, the heart inside the cooler that seemed to make the air surrounding Noah even chillier. The atmosphere had definitely degraded since their arrival back from the hospital.

As Noah secured the door, her gaze roamed over his profile. She wondered about his slightly crooked nose. A fight? Or some daredevil childhood stunt? Not that it mattered. She wasn’t interested. Her hours were consumed with work or volunteering in the children’s wing at the hospital. She didn’t have time for romance. Not when there was another life to save or another soul in need of spiritual guidance, though Noah looked like he could use a little advice.

Did he even believe in God?

What was it about the pilot that yanked at her emotions? What about him attracted her? Was it the suppressed need that poured from him like rain off a roof? Or the brokenness he unsuccessfully tried to cover? Would he even welcome her attempt to help him?

Doubtful. Ruth’s fingers curled around her carton of fried rice. Enough about Noah. She still had a job to do. She just needed to concentrate. “Okay, team. Everyone set? Nancy, do you have your airsick bag?”

“Got it.”

“Anyone else need anything?”

No response. Great. With nothing else to think about until they were airborne, her attention drifted back to the pilot.

She watched Noah’s long, lean fingers—sprinkled with a light dusting of dark hair—cradle his headset before he put it on.

She wondered what Noah’s hand would feel like in hers. What would it be like to have someone to talk about her day with? The triumphs. The tragedies. The little things that happened that she couldn’t wait to share?

Ruth shut her eyes as Noah taxied onto the runway. She hadn’t had these thoughts about another man since David. But her ex-boyfriend had taken her heart and squashed it like some unsuspecting bug on the sidewalk more than two years ago. There was no way she’d put herself through that again no matter what.

So why was she suddenly having thoughts of relationships? Of being half of a couple? Of being normal? Her job was her life. The kids where she volunteered needed her. Especially the ones waiting for transplants. But somehow she suspected that Noah needed her as well but would never ask.

She squeezed her stress ball as the plane accelerated, whispered a quick prayer for everyone’s safety and prepared for takeoff.

Once they were at cruising altitude, Ruth folded the top of her nearly full take-out carton together. Her hunger had disappeared somewhere between Noah’s sad, yet bitter, expression and their not so smooth takeoff. In fact, her stomach was probably still hovering somewhere over San Diego County.

“Not hungry? It’s what you ordered.” Noah’s voice whispered through her headset.

Ruth raised her head in time to see disappointment dart through his blue eyes before his gaze slid to Brad. She didn’t miss the flicker of annoyance cross Noah’s features before he schooled it behind that mask of indifference again.

“The food’s fine. I’m tired, that’s all.” Ruth sighed. Food was not the subject she wanted to talk about right now, but since the copilot and any of the other passengers could hear their conversation, she remained silent.

Noah turned his attention back to the windscreen. “Take a catnap then.”

Underneath the pilot’s sparse words, Ruth continued to sense an ache, a loneliness that seemed to consume him from the inside out. She’d picked up on it during their flight out and had grown only more acutely aware of it.

Noah wasn’t the only one affected by some unknown force. At the bottom of her peripheral vision, she saw Houston lift his head from his paws as his tail slowly thumped on the carpeting. Her heart went out to both of them.

Shifting her gaze from Houston, Ruth looked out the tiny window. Suspended above the horizon, the almost
full moon glowed, bathing the interior of the plane in a surreal splash of white. Too bad her emotions couldn’t absorb the peaceful feeling as she thought of Noah’s words.

“I’m better off staying awake until I can actually sleep for more than twenty minutes.” Ruth’s fingers tightened around the container of food.

The seams of the white box threatened to collapse under the pressure, so she forced herself to relax. No need to spill tomorrow’s lunch on the only lab coat not in the overflowing pile of dirty clothes in her hamper. As soon as she placed the container by her feet, Ruth pulled out her latest lame attempt at knitting a scarf. Keeping her fingers and mind occupied during flight usually helped, especially on the flights home when most of her work was done.

“Suit yourself.”

At his words, she closed her eyes again, but Noah’s strong, immobile and anguished face stared back at her. If only she could figure why their presence inside the aircraft caused such tension, then maybe she could bring a smile back to his lips.

Nice move, Barton.

Noah watched Ruth in the tiny mirror again. She sat in the same seat as earlier—the seat directly in front of the older woman, a Nancy something. The one who got airsick. So far so good. He’d been lucky, and up until now, no one had gotten airsick yet on one of his flights. Hopefully the woman wouldn’t break his record.

His attention drifted to the seat across the aisle from Ruth where the doctor sat. More specifically, the cooler by the man’s black shoes. Maybe Noah would be the first
to christen his own plane. What disembodied piece of human anatomy lay packed on ice inside?

“It’s a heart.” Ruth whispered through the headset as if she’d read his mind. “What else would you like to know?”

“Nothing.” Noah refused to vocalize the words he wanted to shout in her direction.
Why do you do what you do? Why can’t you leave people alone?
But he’d already said enough.

The less he knew about his passengers, the better off he’d be. He didn’t want to know their business, where they’d gone to college or why they’d chosen to wear a certain sweater. Let Brad or the company’s other pilot Seth be known as the thoughtful, attentive pilots. Emotions got people into trouble. Emotions made people care.

Noah’s fingers tightened around the yoke until the whites of his knuckles gleamed. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t care. He would never fall in love again and experience the pain of having his heart ripped out of him. So why did his mouth go dry when he inhaled the hint of citrus and vanilla when Ruth was around?

“How soon will we be there?” Ruth’s voice intruded on his thoughts, enfolding him in her warmth again. A warmth he didn’t want to feel.

“About nine-thirty,” Noah growled. He couldn’t help it. Ruth Fontaine brought out the kind of behavior best left in the boxing ring of his youth. He’d been kidding himself to think he’d been over the deaths of Michelle and Jeremy. The vultures sitting behind him served as a constant reminder of his experience in the hospital. Different people with the same intention. He squeezed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to keep the nightmares from taking control during his waking hours.

“Thanks.” Her voice caused a spot of light but not enough to make him change his mind about her.

He still believed the doctors hadn’t done enough to save Jeremy because they wanted his organs. Noah would never forgive them for that.

After he heard Ruth update the hospital in Phoenix about their pending arrival, he glanced back again and noticed the knitting project and a ball of yarn she’d pulled out earlier rested in her lap but that the long needles in her hands remained motionless. Houston, his dog, curled up in the aisle by Ruth’s feet.

Traitor.

As if she sensed Noah’s gaze, her head tilted up. Her green eyes widened over the dark circles underneath them. “Did you need something?”

“No. Make sure your seat belts are fastened, folks. We’ll be there shortly.” After twisting around to face the front of the plane again his fingers tightened on the yoke. He needed something, all right. But Ruth Fontaine wasn’t the answer. He wanted the pain to go away. He wanted the clock to spin back three years so he could relive that last day with Jeremy and Michelle and keep them from riding their bikes to the grocery store.

He wanted his old life back.

But most of all, he wanted to know why the God he’d loved with all his heart had forsaken him and left him to wander alone and troubled.

Relief filled Ruth when the wheels of the plane touched the tarmac. After placing her knitting in her duffel bag, she bowed her head and clutched her hands together, her lips forming the prayer she always whispered once they were on the ground.
Thank you, Lord, for our safe return. Please
guide the surgeon’s hand in placing the organ You made available to us and grant the recipient a speedy recovery. Your will be done. Amen.

Her job was done for tonight. Once the ambulance carried the heart and her teammates away, Ruth hitched her duffel bag on her shoulder and turned to face the pilots. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you around.”

“My pleasure. Good night,” Brad responded and waved.

Noah cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Would you like me to walk you to your car?”

“No, thanks. I’ll be fine,” Ruth said, and before she had a chance to change her mind, Noah turned around and started writing in some type of log.

Fatigue followed her down the steps, across the tarmac and into the dimly lit parking lot where she spied her white Accord parked on the far end. Something didn’t look right. Unease scraped her spine and her body protested the pace. She should have taken Noah up on his offer to escort her to her car even if she’d had to wait a few minutes for him to finish his work. She quickly disabled the alarm, unlocked and opened the door and then slipped inside.

She hadn’t driven more than a few yards when the thumping noise started and the steering wheel tugged beneath her hands. Now she knew why her car had looked odd. “Great. Just great. Not now, God. Please. Not now.”

Her grip tightened. Since she could never fall asleep right away after a donation, a cup of tea, a bath and some Ben & Jerry’s were on the agenda for the rest of her evening, not a flat tire.

She pulled the car into the empty space beside a white truck, put it in park and stepped out. Walking around her car, she spied the problem. The right rear tire was flat. She kicked it and winced. Ouch. Now her toe throbbed. Next
time she’d do better to remember to wear steel-toed shoes when taking out her frustration on a hard, inanimate object.