Under Alaskan Skies (4 page)

Carrie felt herself warming up at last. From her toes to her head. It was partly the heater and it was also his soothing words that gave her confidence that everything was going to be all right. Or maybe it was the fact that she had someone to share her concern with. It had been a long time. When her father was here things were different. Theirs was a relationship based on respect and admiration and, of course, love. Growing up, he’d been her mother and father both. She missed him badly. When he died, friends asked what she was going to do. She’d answered automatically:
“Stay right here, of course. Take over the business.”

But sometimes in the middle of the night, when the wolves howled in the distance and the brown bears knocked over the garbage can, or when she flew into the sunrise by herself, leaving an empty house on a cold, dark morning, she wondered if she was doing the right thing, staying on by herself.

Down a dirt road, past the post office and the store, in the doorway of a small prefabricated house, Donny’s mother, Tillie, waited in the doorway, her broad face creased with worry lines.

“Thank God you’ve come,” she told Carrie.

“I’ve brought the doctor,” Carrie said. The woman nodded gratefully, her eyes on the tall man with the black bag under his arm. She led Matt to the kitchen so he could wash up.

Carrie stayed in the living room with five or ten friends, Donny’s younger sisters and brothers, and some aunts and uncles, while Matt went into the boy’s bedroom. She wanted to go in the bedroom to see for herself what Donny’s condition really was, but she sensed they didn’t need any more bodies than the immediate family in there, any other voices to add to the confusion. The group in the living room spoke in hushed voices. Carrie quietly told the story of how she’d found Matt and what a lucky chance it was.

When Matt finally came out of the bedroom with Donny’s parents, he told everyone he’d given Donny some pain medicine and a shot of cortisone to reduce the swelling along his spinal cord. He was already much more comfortable. He said that he didn’t know for sure without an X ray or a CAT scan, but in his
opinion, the accident had caused a compression injury to Donny’s spinal cord. By stabilizing his condition, he ought to get well enough to travel and get treatment at the nearest hospital. But not for a while.

“It’s important for him to get bed rest. If he regains movement in his lower body within a week that will mean that he’ll probably recover completely in time with treatment and rehabilitation. But I don’t know anything for sure. If I had an X-ray machine, I’d have a better idea. All I can tell you is he’ll need lots of attention as well as your love and your prayers.”

They looked somewhat relieved. They nodded and they all talked at once. Everyone had a question.

“Will he get well?”

“Will he ever walk again?’

“When can he be moved?”

“How long can you stay?”

Matt answered them all as patiently and diplomatically as he could. But Carrie thought he must be anxious to leave. She glanced out the window. In the excitement she’d forgotten her concern with the weather. She hadn’t even noticed the rain pelting the glass and the wind whistling around the house. Oh, Lord, what if she couldn’t take off? What if she couldn’t get Matt back as she’d promised? After all he’d done for her and for Donny and for his family.

Though worried about the weather, she felt such a huge surge of relief to hear Matt’s diagnosis. She hoped he wasn’t giving them false hopes. She too had more questions, but she’d wait her turn. She sat on the arm of a padded chair and let her muscles relax and the tension ooze out of her body for the first time since she’d started out that morning. She didn’t realize
until that moment how very tired she was. The muscles in her legs ached, and she longed to sink down into the chair and close her eyes. But that wouldn’t do. She had to be the pillar of strength everyone expected.

After more questions and more expressions of gratitude and tea that Tillie made and served to the whole group, Carrie asked Matt if she could see Donny.

After Matt had a brief word with his parents, Carrie tiptoed into the small bedroom with the posters of rock stars on the walls. The boy’s eyes were closed. His face was almost as white as the sheet tucked around him. His head was propped on two pillows and he looked terribly uncomfortable. She blinked back a tear.

“Hi, sport,” she said softly. “I hope you get better soon.”

His eyelids fluttered. Maybe he heard her. Maybe he didn’t. She turned and left.

On the way to her truck, Carrie scanned the skies. As the wind whipped her hair across her face and the rain drenched her jacket, she knew what she’d feared was true. She couldn’t fly in this weather. She and Matt drove slowly down the dirt road to her house, as the rain filled the potholes and beat against the windshield. She had to tell him that he wasn’t going back to the ship today. She pulled into the garage and sat there. Instead of saying what she had to say, she first had to ask him a question.

“Is it true what you said?” she asked. “You really think it’s possible he’s going to be all right? Or was that just wishful thinking?”

“Doctors don’t deal in wishful thinking,” he said
with a frown, turning to face her. “At least I don’t. Patients deserve to hear the truth. Most people can deal with it. From what I observed, I think it’s possible he could have a good chance for a complete recovery. Or he could be paralyzed from the hips down for the rest of his life. It’s just hard to say without a workup in a hospital. I hope I didn’t convey the impression that everything was okay and that complete recovery is guaranteed. I couldn’t possibly know that. The best thing to do is get him to a hospital after his swelling has gone down, he’ll get a workup and a diagnosis and the proper treatment, whatever it is.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll have him med-evaced or take him to Anchorage myself if I have to. But why did they tell us he was dying?”

“He didn’t look good when we got there. He was in pain and he thought he was going to die. Sudden disability in an active young person is almost always followed by shock and acute depression. But he’s got some reflex action. Not much, but some. There are other encouraging signs. Enough signs to be hopeful, cautiously hopeful. He’s lucky he didn’t land on his head.”

“How will we know when it’s all right to move him?”

“I told his parents and I’ll tell you what signs to look for. As I said, we’ll know a lot more in one week.”

She nodded. “I’m so relieved. I was terribly worried. I had no idea what was going to happen. I’ve known Donny all his life. Well, I’ve known most of the kids in town for that long. But he’s special, he’s
the oldest of eight kids and the brightest. We talk about books and he asks me questions about the world outside. I hope he’ll get a chance to see it for himself. He should go to college, though most of the kids here don’t. I’d like to see to it he has an opportunity to go on.”

“Like you did.”

“Yes.”

“But you came back.”

“That was my choice. He might make a different one. The point is I had a choice. Most of the young people here don’t. They don’t have the money or the drive to go anywhere.”

“Tell me, Carrie,” he said, running his hand through his damp hair. Her startled gaze collided briefly with his. He’d never called her by her name before. She’d never called him by his. She knew what he was going to say.
Tell me, Carrie, when can I get out of this godforsaken town?
She knew because she’d heard it before.

But he didn’t. He seemed to forget what he was going to say. He sat there for a good long minute while he looked at her. The tension built. She knotted her fingers together in her lap. Their glances held and something passed between them. She didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know what it meant, but it left her wondering what was going to happen if she let it.

She was conscious of his lean, tall body, of the strength in his hands. Of his eyes and the way he looked at her as if he knew everything about her. How could he know that if he kissed her she would kiss him back, before she even knew it herself? How could
he possibly know how much she needed someone like him. Someone strong and smart and capable and sexy. Oh yes, very sexy.

She knew he could save lives. She knew he was going to be a great doctor. Even more important, she knew he was a good man. There was only a small space between them. She knew how little it would take to bridge that space. He did, too. The windows fogged up and it was just the two of them inside a truck in a remote corner of the world. If she leaned toward him, just a fraction of an inch…if he leaned toward her…

But she didn’t. Neither did he.

Finally he spoke and snapped the cord that stretched between them. “Tell me, Carrie, if this is the friendliest village in Alaska, why are we sitting in your truck instead of going inside your house?”

She almost laughed with relief. Relief tinged with disappointment. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing was going to happen. She had to tell him they weren’t going to get out of this friendly town anytime soon, but maybe she could postpone it for a few more minutes. The least she could do was invite him in and give him something to eat and drink. And the most? She didn’t want to consider that.

They took off their wet shoes and left them at the back door. He followed her into the kitchen. She handed him a towel, and he mopped the water from his face and took off his jacket. She hadn’t realized how big he was, how much he would fill up her kitchen. He stood in the middle of the room, tall, broad-shouldered, not knowing how he looked almost at home there and what an effect that had on her. He
wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the cast-iron cookstove and the table made from lumber from a fallen spruce. “This is an amazing house.”

“My father built it with stone from the quarry,” she said, lighting the paper under the kindling in the pot-bellied stove in the corner.

“But you decorated it,” he said, looking around at the hand-stenciled cupboards and the tiled counters.

“Well, yes, such as it is. We’re a little short on interior decorators up here, so it’s pretty much do-it-yourself or don’t do it at all.”

Instead of standing there gaping in wonder at the unlikely sight of a handsome, big-city doctor in her kitchen, instead of planning how she was going to tell him he wasn’t going anywhere else that day, she opened the draft on the stove and watched the small sticks of wood catch fire. Then she pulled a jar from the freezer and held it up.

“Do you like salmon?” she asked. “I can offer you some chowder I made.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

She put the frozen soup into a pot and stirred it vigorously over a low flame on the stovetop.

She set her spoon down, reached for a bottle of dark red claret and poured two glasses. Her hand brushed his when she handed one to him. She felt a brief zing like an electric current race through her body. Startled, she looked at him. What had happened? Did he feel anything? Apparently not from the bland expression on his face. He looked more interested in the wine than in her.

He rolled the wine around in the glass, then took an appreciative sip as if nothing had happened. It
hadn’t. Except in her imagination. “Don’t tell me you made this, too?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I tried to make wine once out of berries, but it turned out more like vinegar. I try my best to be self-sufficient, but there are some things I just can’t do. No, someone gave this to me. I gave him a ride in my boat to a nearby island. He gave me the wine in exchange. We do a lot of bartering up here.”

He swirled the wine around in the glass and studied it thoughtfully. “Is there a man in your life, Carrie?”

She set her glass down with a thud.

“I’m sorry. I had no business asking,” he said. “But it’s not every day I meet a beautiful bush pilot with red hair and eyes the color of amber.” He leaned forward, met her gaze and caught a strand of her hair to wind it around his finger. “Or are they more like caramel?”

She felt the heat rise to her head. Her face flamed. If she wasn’t used to strange men in her kitchen who smelled like leather and expensive soap and wore designer khakis, she was even more unused to extravagant compliments from strange men.

“They’re just hazel,” she said, edging backward and forcing him to drop his hand. “You’re not used to bush pilots and I’m not used to strangers in my kitchen. Or flattery. Everyone up here is pretty plain-spoken and they accept me for what I am. They know all about me.”

“Do they?” he said. “Do they know you blush when you get a compliment? That your hair is the color of a new penny?”

She blushed again. She cursed herself for acting
like an adolescent. She cursed herself for not being more worldly, for not having a snappy retort for every compliment. She cursed the weather for preventing her from taking him back to his ship today.

“Well, they know I live alone. And that I like it that way. That I once had a boyfriend, a long time ago. That it didn’t work out and that’s okay. That I’ve never applied for a job in my life. I inherited my job, my plane and this house. I think I’m lucky and I like my life the way it is.”

“That’s it? That’s the whole story?” he asked.

She shrugged. “That’s all there is. Sorry it’s not more exciting.”

“You make a living flying all over in your own floatplane. You grew up in a village with bears and totem poles and you think your life is not exciting? If it isn’t then I don’t know what is.”

He looked at her as if she was some form of rare and exotic Alaskan wildlife. Maybe she was. Apparently he’d never met anyone like her before. She had to admit she felt the same about him. But then, she didn’t get out of the sparsely populated state much, which suited her fine.

She ladled out some soup into two bowls and set them on the wooden table. Then she took a deep breath. “I’m not going to be able to fly you back tonight, Matt.” She almost stumbled over his name. She wished she could call him Dr. Baker, it would help her keep in mind he was a doctor and out of her league, but at this point it would be ridiculous. “I’m sorry. I know I promised but…”