Chapter Fifteen
C onnor had only thought he was worried before he saw Sierra go down. He believed she’d hit her head when the chopper slid, which was borne out by the fact she wasn’t moving or responding when he called her name. “Are we stable?” he asked Bart.
“Don’t know. To be safe…don’t move.”
To hell with that. “Sierra hit her head. I think she’s out.” He’d been struggling with his seat belt, trying to go to Sierra, but he was still stuck. He kept a pocketknife in his pocket so he pulled it out and sliced through the seat belt. He managed to get out of his seat but cursed when he tried to put weight on his left ankle. He didn’t think he’d broken it, but it hurt like hell. He grabbed a blood pressure cuff, then basically crawled to Sierra. Reaching her, he felt for her pulse, and said her name loudly. No response. “She has a pulse and her breathing isn’t obstructed,” he told Bart as soon as he checked Sierra. “I saw her go down. She must have hit her head. She’s out cold.” He put the cuff on her and checked her blood pressure. It was high, which wasn’t surprising given what had happened. “Bart, can you hold on until I can get to you?”
“Yeah. Still trying to reach someone.” He paused between each word and Connor knew he must be in bad pain.
He waited, willing Sierra to wake up and be all right.
The two and a half minutes she was unconscious seemed like an eternity. He asked Bart again if he needed help immediately, not wanting to leave Sierra but continuing to worry about Bart.
“Not…going anywhere.” His voice was weaker and his words even slower than they’d been. And they’d been plenty slow.
“Any other injuries? Are you bleeding?”
“Yeah, windshield broke.”
“Shit. How bad is it?”
“Don’t know. Everything hurts.”
Connor heard him trying the radio again, but there was no response. He hoped like hell the damn thing wasn’t broken.
“How’s…Sierra?”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Her vitals are good. I think she’s coming around.” She opened her eyes and looked at him, puzzled.
“What happened?” she asked, sounding groggy.
“The helicopter crashed. You were going to help Bart. We think you hit your head.”
“What helicopter? Why is your face bleeding?”
Oh, shit. Not a good sign. “Be still and let me check you out.” He heard Bart using the radio but this time someone responded. He heard Bart giving the man their coordinates. “Are they sending someone?”
“Ski patrol. No one else…can get here. Landed on…the ski mountain. In the trees.”
Connor had to strain to hear him and understand him. “How long?”
“No idea. I hope…not long.”
“Stay there,” Connor told Sierra sternly as she tried to get up. “I’ve got to get to Bart and see what I can do for him.” If the pilot had as many broken bones as he feared then Connor couldn’t move him. A moot point since his chances of getting Bart out of his seat by himself without injuring him worse were somewhere between slim and none. He’d obviously have to wait for the rescue team. But he could at least take Bart’s vitals. And if he could get to it, splint his arm if necessary.
“How’s your pain?” Connor asked as he examined the pilot.
“Bad.”
He looked terrible, his face ashen, extreme pain written all over it. Connor hoped he wasn’t hurt worse than the obvious. Bart could easily have internal injuries, but he couldn’t be sure. In fact, given his other injuries, internal ones were not only possible but likely. “You allergic to anything?”
“No.”
“I’m going to get you something for the pain.”
He crawled back to get a painkiller and checked on Sierra. “How are you doing?”
She was sitting up but at least she hadn’t moved otherwise. “I’m fine. I can help you.”
“You were out cold for over two minutes. You’re not ‘fine.’ Bart’s in a lot of pain. I’m going to give him morphine and splint his arm and then we’ll assess your symptoms.”
“Is it his arm that’s crushed against the frame?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to splint his arm with no help? And why are you crawling?”
“Sprained an ankle. It’ll be fine. I told you, just a little banged up. Cuts and bruises.” He’d broken bones before. He was 99.9% certain that if anything, he had a mild sprain. Had it hurt? Yes, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to be anything major.
She looked him over critically, even though her eyes were still a bit hazy. “Let me take care of the worst of your cuts.”
“After I take care of Bart.” When she tried to get up, she would have fallen if he hadn’t been right there. He managed to convince her to stay put.
He took the morphine and another couple of air splints—one for the arm and another for Bart’s ankle and leg—with him. But Bart was wedged in against the side of the helicopter that had smashed into the ground. In order to splint it he needed to get Bart out and that wasn’t happening without help. He could probably splint the leg and ankle that wasn’t trapped, and he could clean up Bart’s facial lacerations from the broken glass. Anything else would have to wait for the ski patrol.
*
Spending the next several hours either in transit to the hospital or at the hospital was not Connor’s idea of fun. At least not as a patient. They were rescued by the ski patrol, as no one else was able to gain access to the wrecked helicopter. Their only bit of luck was that they’d landed on a ski mountain even if it was in the woods. Fortunately the team made it to the chopper quickly. A good thing because Connor was worried about both of his patients. Bart had gone silent, pain etched on his face, and Sierra had stopped arguing about helping him, which was unlike her.
Extracting Bart was going to take significant time. Connor was torn between helping with Bart and staying with Sierra. She’d been taken out of the chopper already. One of the ski patrol asked him if he wanted to go with her. “You need to take care of those cuts and get your leg looked at.”
“I will. Once Sierra and Bart are taken care of.”
“We’ll handle the pilot. No sense you sticking around. Someone should be with your flight nurse.”
The ski patrol put Sierra on a stretcher and skied down the mountain with her. Connor hooked a ride on the back of a snowmobile, down to where a helicopter waited to fly Connor and Sierra to Marietta. Before they left Connor talked to the guy who’d taken him down and was preparing to go back to help with Bart.
“Let us know about Bart.”
“Give me your number. It’s going to take a while to get him out and stabilized enough to take him to a hospital.”
When they rolled in to the Marietta hospital both were taken to the ER but then they were separated. As he’d suspected, nothing was broken. Dr. Wyatt Gallagher, a friend of Connor’s, was on call for orthopedics. He read his X-ray while his cuts were finally taken care of. The nurse had tried to talk him into stitches for one of the facial lacerations but he’d vetoed it. “Steri-Strips are good,” he told her. She frowned but did what he said.
“No break. You’ll limp for a bit, but your ankle should heal pretty quickly.”
“Can I go back to work?”
“I’d give it a couple of days, but I’m sure you can soon. You won’t be 100% for a while yet. Come see me if you have any trouble,” Wyatt told him. “And take it easy on your ankle. Ice and elevate. But you know what to do.”
“So why are you telling me?”
“I’m a doctor. It’s my job,” he said with a grin. “Touchy, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He was worried about Sierra, not his damn ankle. “Where is Sierra? Have they finished assessing her yet?”
“I don’t know but I can find out. If she does have a concussion, they’ll probably have her stay the night.”
“I’m not sure she’ll agree to that. Hopefully, she will, because I’m almost positive she has one. She was out cold.”
“Let me track down Sierra.”
A short time later he found her where Wyatt had told him she’d be, arguing with the doctor about staying overnight.
Shocker. Not.
“You need someone to keep an eye on you tonight. You live alone, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—” She broke off when she saw Wyatt. “You’re limping. What did you do?”
“Sprained my ankle.” Which he’d told her earlier, but she’d clearly forgotten. Not surprising given she had a concussion. To the doctor he said, “I can watch her, Doc.”
“Not if you’re taking pain pills.”
“I’m not. It’s just a sprain. I can take care of her.”
“That’s ridiculous, Connor. You’re bound to be in pain.”
“I’m okay.”
“I swear you’re doing this on purpose. Damn it, now I have no choice. I’ll stay here tonight.”
They argued a bit more but Sierra wouldn’t budge. She was worried about him. Crazy, since she had the worst of it by far. Shortly after that a room was found for Sierra and she was admitted. His ankle was throbbing, but he knew once he got off of it and iced it, it would be a lot better. And it was his left ankle so he could drive with no problem. “You scared the hell out of me,” he told Sierra.
“I’m fine. It’s a mild concussion.”
“You were out for two and a half minutes. Those were the longest minutes of my life.”
Her expression softened and she grasped his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I scared you. And I’m glad you’re not hurt worse than you are. Have you heard anything about Bart?”
He nodded. “Good news is, he only broke one ankle. The other one is sprained. A bad one but still, no break. One arm is broken. I’m not sure what else is wrong, but they haven’t found any internal injuries. He’s going to be okay.”
“Thank God. It’s a good thing the ski patrol showed up when they did.”
“Yeah, we’re lucky we landed on the ski mountain.” A thickly wooded part of the mountain, but the ski patrol had answered their call quickly, even if it did take what seemed like forever to get things sorted out. “If not for them we’d have been stuck there much longer. So many of the EMS people were tied up with the pileup.” The ski patrol had gotten Connor and Sierra out of the chopper and down the mountain quickly, and then put them on another chopper to be ferried to the appropriate hospital. It had taken much longer to get Bart out and stabilized but Connor felt better once he heard Bart was on his way to a closer hospital by ground ambulance.
Logan showed up not long after Connor had talked to Cici, while he was waiting in Sierra’s room. “Damn, Connor, your helicopter landed in a tree?”
“Pretty much.”
“What happened? Why did you crash?”
“A drone hit us.”
“Shit. A drone? That shouldn’t have happened. Are they going to investigate?”
“I’m sure someone will. Maybe the FAA. Don’t you have patients?”
“Yes, but I’m taking a break to see how you and Sierra are doing.”
“Sierra’s staying overnight. She has a mild concussion.” He glanced at her, but her eyes were closed. She’d gone silent after greeting Logan. He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll be back to get you in the morning.” He would let the nurses know when he left so they could continue to check on her.
He and Logan stepped out of the room. “How are you going to come get her when your car is here? Besides, you can’t drive if you’re on painkillers.”
“Damn, does everyone think I’m an idiot? I’m not on painkillers. I have a few cuts and bruises and a sprained ankle. I’ll be fine.”
“Cici could bring her home.”
“No need for that. I’ll be fine, Logan. Nothing broken. Hell, I’ve had much worse from the rodeo.”
“You’ve never gone down in a chopper before. There was no word other than that your helicopter had gone down until we were able to talk to the ski patrol. We didn’t know if you were injured or—Shit, never mind.”
Connor realized Logan had been really worried. He should have thought of that but he’d been so focused on Sierra, he hadn’t. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “Thanks for worrying, but I’m fine. Do Liam, Val, and Mom know?”
“Yes. I waited until you were on your way here to tell them. Like I said, we weren’t sure how any of you were, although the pilot who flew you here told us you were both stable and not critical. By the way, don’t be surprised if Mom shows up at your apartment. She made me promise to call when you got out of the hospital.”
“Hell. Couldn’t you have stopped her?”
“Are you kidding? You’re her baby boy. You’re just lucky she’s not already here at the hospital. You owe me. I convinced her to wait until you got home.”