The Sergeant's Secret Son

The streets were strewn with fallen trees and branches and other debris she could only guess about. Many of the roads were impassable, and she’d had difficulty making her way through. Every time she’d found one clear street, it would lead to another dead end. The destruction she encountered in the beams of her headlights was chilling.

And she hadn’t yet reached the site of the real disaster.

Finally, she reached Faron’s Trailer Park, which had sustained a direct hit from the tornado, and her heart broke at the sight she found. In the flickering lightning from the departing storm, she could see that trailers were overturned, twisted and flattened like tin cans for the recycling bin. Fires raged from broken gas tanks, and firefighters were doing what they could to put them out. How could anyone have survived this?

A siren blipped as Macy climbed out of her car and as the damp air hit her face, she felt the cold and the rain, and she smelled the acrid odor of fire and fear. She looked to where a sheriff’s department cruiser flashed its blue lights. In the meager illumination of the headlights, Macy could see several victims huddling or stretched out on the littered ground.

She felt a flicker of unease as she approached the cruiser, then stood bathed in the flashing blue light, but she shook it away. Maybe it was a throwback to her childhood when a black child was always under suspicion, even one as light-skinned as she. Then her attention was drawn back to the devastation.

Spotlighted by the occasional flicker of lightning and flames, a huge man, the color of polished mahogany, bare-chested, magnificently muscled, and wet in the sporadic rain, ripped at the torn and shredded metal of what was once a mobile home. The only part of him that didn’t seem to be shining in the flickering light was his short hair. In the red-and-blue glow of the fires and police lights, he looked almost diabolic, but Macy sensed that he was one of the good guys. As Macy watched, the man pulled a small bundle from the shredded mess.

Something, she didn’t know what, had drawn her attention to the powerful man working so hard in the rubble. “Who is that?” Macy asked the sheriff’s deputy, as the huge man waded purposefully through the debris carrying what looked like a pile of rags.

“Don’t know,” the deputy said. “Claimed he’d had rescue and first-aid training, and at the time, he was all we had.”

“Thank goodness he was here to help,” Macy said as she leaned over the first of her patients. It looked as though she would have a long night’s work ahead of her.

“I think this is the last victim from the trailers,” a deep voice grunted as he lowered a trembling and rain-soaked little girl to the ground beside Macy.

Macy cast a startled sideways glance at the speaker and discovered the man she’d been admiring was none other than Alex Blocker. The man she had hoped she’d never see again, though she’d longed for him in her dreams, loomed, broad-shouldered and capable, above her. Now she knew why she’d been so attracted to him. This was the man with whom she’d made both the worst and the best mistake of her life.

“I’ve had enough first-aid training that I can help out with triage,” he said tersely as he tried to make the child comfortable on the wet, cold ground. “Her name is Leticia. She’s probably all right. She’s wet and cold and scared, but I didn’t find any obvious trauma.”

He didn’t act as though he recognized her, but then, maybe he was feeling just as awkward about this meeting as she was. Deciding to plunge right in, Macy took the first step. “Thank you, Alex,” she said, looking into his deep, dark brown eyes.

Suddenly recognition dawned in his eyes, and his face lit up for a brief instant. Then the cool, calm, rescuer facade returned. “Hello, Macy,” he said slowly. “I see you finally made it through medical school.”

“Yes.” Macy nodded. “I’d love to catch up, but we’ve got a long night ahead of us, and Leticia needs attention now. She might have internal injuries,” she said, under her breath so that only Alex could hear. “We’ll have to watch her.” She looked around. “Where are her parents?”

Alex jerked his head in the direction of a distraught woman huddled over a mound covered by a tattered sheet. “That’s her folks. I think you can tell what the sheet is covering without me having to spell it out in front of the k-i-d. She’s traumatized enough as it is.”

Macy swallowed a lump in her throat when she saw the debris and the devastation. She’d known there would be casualties, but she’d hoped that there would be no deaths. Now that her worst fears had been realized, she could do nothing but help the living.

Macy had never met Leticia Haley’s father, but she knew both Leticia and her mother from her clinic. Macy swallowed again and averted her eyes. As much as she was saddened by Mr. Haley’s death, she didn’t have time to deal with that now.

She drew in a deep breath and turned to Alex.

He hunkered down beside her. “The worst cases are closest to the cruiser. I figured you’d need more light to attend to them.”

“Good thinking,” Macy said without taking her eyes, filled with unshed tears, off her patient. Although she wanted to stop and look at Alex, his broad chest glistening with rain and perspiration, she knew that Leticia needed her full attention. She gave the child a reassuring smile.

Alex touched Macy’s face and turned her chin up to look at him. He drew her into his arms and folded her into an embrace. How warm and gentle Alex’s touch was, even with hands that were hard and calloused, and how much Macy needed it. A tingle of awareness shuddered through her as Alex inclined his head toward the headlights focused on the victims.

“We’ll get through this,” he said gently, letting her go. Then he stepped away and started clearing more debris to make an open area. He glanced over his shoulder. “So Medevac can land,” he explained, then went back to work.

Macy glanced back at him once more; she longed to watch the play of Alex’s muscles as he worked, but she directed her attention to the most seriously injured. At least, most of her attention. It was hard not to look at Alex when all she wanted was to drink in the sight of him after all those years.

Even if he could mean big trouble, Macy couldn’t help wondering what might have been. No, she had work to do now. Thinking or worrying about Alex would have to wait. Besides, he’d made it perfectly clear five years ago that he was not interested in her.

If he had been, five years would not have passed before she saw him again.

But he had been right on the money with all his triage decisions, Macy realized with appreciation as she looked over her patients. There were only two serious cases: a head trauma and a possible spinal-cord injury. She did what she could to stabilize them until they could be evacuated to hospitals in Florence or Columbia. She just hoped that more help would get there soon.

The remaining victims needed splints and bandaging, and some only needed shelter and something warm to drink. She could probably treat them at the clinic, she thought. Lord, she didn’t know if she still had a clinic in the aftermath of the storm.

“Anybody know if the clinic made it through?” she asked, dreading what she might learn.

No one had an answer.

Another cruiser pulled up. Sheriff MacEachern left the engine running and the lights on, but he stepped out of the car. He scanned the devastation, ducking as a propane tank from a gas grill exploded on the other side of the trailer park, adding more orange light to the hellish scene. Then he moved over to Macy. “A medical evacuation team is on its way. It shouldn’t be long,” he said, squatting to be closer to where Macy knelt over one of her patients.

“How long?” Macy demanded, her heart still pounding like a wild drum solo from the exploding tank. “I have two here that need more specialized treatment than I can give. The rest I can treat at the clinic.” She glanced up at the sheriff. “Assuming I still have a clinic.”

“Clinic’s fine,” the sheriff assured her. “Some minor damage, but the generator is on, and the equipment is functioning. One of your nurses is there. She’s started giving first aid to walk-ins. I reckon we’ll have the roads cleared between here and there by the time the chopper makes it.”

As if to underscore the sheriff’s statement, a helicopter swooped out of the roiling clouds. The reassuring whump of the helicopter’s rotors was music to Macy’s ears. MacEachern grinned. “See? The cavalry to the rescue.”

Macy issued a silent prayer of thanks for the helicopter’s arrival. “Amen to that,” she said over the roar of the approaching helicopter. She turned back to her patient. It was hard to monitor a comatose patient with no equipment, so the helicopter was a chariot of hope sent from heaven.

Macy watched in amazement as Alex waved the chopper in with flashlights. He seemed to actually know what he was doing.

Damp air swirled around them, stirring up the water from puddles and drenching everyone with the chilly spray. Macy shivered.

The sheriff, still in crouch position, moved away toward the helicopter as it settled onto the open space that Alex had cleared.

“As soon as we get these two priorities attended to, I’d like to try to move this operation to the clinic,” Macy said to no one in particular. Then she was too busy to worry about what the sheriff or Alex were doing.

“WELCOME HOME, Block,” Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Alex Blocker muttered to himself as he watched the chopper lift off with the most badly injured of Macy Jackson’s patients.

He’d dreaded coming home to Lyndonville, and so far, his homecoming hadn’t been all that great. That was an understatement! He’d barely gotten settled into the spare room at Gramma’s house when the tornado sirens had gone off. He’d hustled Gramma Willadean into her storm cellar, and they’d waited for the all-clear signal. As soon as he’d heard it, he’d taken off to see where he could help.

He was combining leave with an official trip to interview for a recruiting position in Florence, South Carolina. While he was here, he would attend Willadean Blocker’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration. He had mixed emotions about returning to Lyndonville, the town he’d seen as a dead end and had left as soon as he was old enough. But now it looked as if life were throwing him a curve. If he took that job in Florence, he’d be almost next door to Lyndonville.

Though the docs had patched up the knee he’d torn while saving the life of one of his teammates—Ski Warsinski’s parachute had malfunctioned at three thousand feet over Hurlburt Field, Florida—it was no longer sound enough for him to land on in a parachute jump. Jumping had been a big part of his job as a member of Silver team, one of the elite special operations branches of his combat control squadron. He’d worked hard to be the best of the best, and now that was over. He could take the recruiting position long enough to retire with a pension, or he could leave the air force now and blow everything he’d worked for.

If you asked him, it wasn’t much of a choice.

Still, he had more important things to think about now. There was a helluva mess to clean up here in Lyndonville. He glanced over to where Macy was herding some of her patients to her car. Just looking at her had stirred up old emotions and passions, and he was glad that it was dark and he was alone at the moment.

He pushed a memory of twisted sheets and hot sweaty bodies out of his mind and turned back to the business of cleaning up the storm damage.

Macy turned, the car door open, and directed a tentative wave toward him. Block mustered a tired smile that was probably more of a grimace, and waved back. Then Macy got into the car and drove away.

IT SEEMED as if days had passed, but it had only been hours of grueling labor. Block was glad for the work. With a borrowed chainsaw, he had cleared a forest of fallen tree limbs from roads, and now cars and trucks had begun to pass by slowly.

Block stopped for a break. As warm as he had been while he was working, the chilly autumn breeze from the encroaching cold front cooled his heated bare skin and caused it to break out in gooseflesh. He gulped down a soda and then helped himself to hot coffee that had miraculously appeared as neighbor after neighbor had come out of their homes or shelters and had set about making the world right again.

Or as close as it could get, considering.