Once a Father

“That’s Jake Anderson.” She pressed her lips together, her heart going out to the boy. “Those were his parents you just…you just…” She couldn’t make herself finish her statement.

She didn’t have to.

Someone at the baseline of the fire called to MacIntire and he hurried away, all under the watchful eye of Chief Stone.

Adam made up his mind. “I’m going with the boy.”

Working over Jake, K.C. slanted a look toward Adam. There was understanding in the paramedic’s eyes. But sympathy, they’d learned, was the last thing anyone offered Adam Collins.

“Suit yourself.” K.C. snapped the legs on the gurney and they popped upright. With Adam walking alongside him, holding the boy’s hand, he guided the gurney to the rear of the ambulance. “But being the good Samaritan won’t keep the captain from getting on your case for playing Superman again.”

“Yeah, but it’ll postpone it for a while.” Adam stepped back to allow the gurney to be hoisted into the ambulance. Jake’s fingers remained around his. Adam twisted around to maintain the connection, then got into the ambulance himself.

Dr. Tracy Walker felt beat and ready to call it a day. And it wasn’t even one o’clock.

She felt as if she’d been running on fast-forward all morning, with no signs of a letup anytime soon. It had started when her alarm had failed to go off at five. Five a.m. was not her idea of an ideal hour to get up, but it would have given her sufficient time to pull herself together for the surgery she had to perform this morning. Five o’clock came and went, as did six and then almost seven.

Fortunately, Tracy had what she fondly liked to refer to as an alarm pig, a gentle, quick-footed Vietnamese potbellied pig that was still very much a baby and went by the name of Petunia. Petunia, it turned out, was trainable and far more intelligent than some of the people Tracy knew.

At five to seven, Petunia had snuggled in at her feet and tickled her awake. Any one-sided dialogue Tracy had felt up to rendering was immediately curtailed the instant she’d rolled over in her bed and saw that according to her non-ringing clock, she had exactly twenty minutes to shower, eat and get herself to the hospital for the skin grafting surgery she was scheduled to perform.

Weighing her options and the somewhat seductive power hot water had over her, Tracy decided to sacrifice the shower and breakfast as she hurried into clothes, put out a bowl of fresh water for Petunia and threw herself behind the wheel of her car in less time than it took for an ordinary citizen to floss their teeth.

As she ran out the door she promised a disgruntled Petunia to return during her own lunch break to feed her choice leftovers from the refrigerator. Petunia had said nothing.

With one eye on the rearview mirror, watching for dancing blue and red lights, Tracy had bent a few speeding rules and made it to the operating room with two minutes to spare.

The three-hour surgery had been as successful as possible, given the circumstances. There were no instant cures, no huge miracles in her line of work. Only many small miracles that were eventually hooked up into one large one. She was a pediatric burn specialist, and there was nothing in the world she would rather have been, even though it meant having her heart torn out of her chest whenever she saw another victim being wheeled into the hospital. Pain went with the territory. But someone had to help these children and she had elected herself to be one of the ones on the front lines. It gave her life a purpose.

“Out of my way, Myra,” she wearily told a nurse who had somehow materialized in her path. “I’m on my way home to feed a hungry pig.”

But the dark-skinned woman shook her head. “’Fraid your boyfriend’s going to have to wait, Doctor,” the thrice-divorced woman told her. “We just got a call in on the scanner. There’s been a bombing at the Lone Star Country Club.”

“A bombing?” Here? In Mission Creek? They were a peaceful little town of some twenty thousand people. Who would want to bomb them? Had the world gone completely crazy? “Does anyone know who did it?”

“Beats me,” Myra lamented. “But dispatch says they’re bringing in a little boy who’s going to need your gentle touch.”

Tracy took the new sterile, yellow paper gown Myra held up for her and donned it to cover her regular scrubs. “Do we know how many people were hurt?”

“About fifteen or so.” The wail of approaching sirens disturbed the tranquil atmosphere, growing louder by the second. “But according to the dispatch, there were only two fatalities.” Myra’s dark eyes met hers. “The kid’s parents.”

“Oh God,” Tracy groaned just as the emergency room doors parted and the ambulances began arriving.

First on the scene were the two paramedics with the boy Tracy assumed was her patient. Hurrying alongside of the gurney, holding tightly onto the boy’s hand, was a firefighter, still wearing his heavy yellow slicker. The sight had a dramatic impact.

A relative? she wondered.

The next moment, Tracy was looking at the boy and ceased wondering about anything else.

Chapter 2

She never got used to it.

Never got used to seeing the anguish in their eyes, on their faces, could never anesthetize herself not to take note of the pitiful, fearful conditions in which so many of her patients arrived.

Tracy never bothered wasting time trying to find answers to unanswered questions or an order to the universe. She was just grateful that her training allowed her to make a difference in these children’s lives, however small. To help start these innocent victims, who had unwittingly stood in the path of a cruel and feelingless fate, back on the road to recovery.

She gave each patient a hundred and ten percent of her skills and, despite numerous warnings to the contrary by superiors and friends who cared about her, a piece of her heart.

It was no different with this newest victim that the two paramedics brought her. The instant she saw the terrified look on the boy’s face, she forgot about the firefighter hurrying at his side.

Petunia and her dilemma were placed on temporary hold in her mind as well. Tracy tried not to think of what the small pig might begin eating in lieu of her belated breakfast. That was something she would have to deal with later.

Listening to the paramedics rattle off vital signs, Tracy shot questions back at them and swiftly assessed the boy’s injuries. She did her best not to disturb the raw, blistered flesh on his arms and legs.

“Put him in trauma room three,” she instructed the orderly who’d rushed up to the first gurney with her. “I need someone to cut off his clothes. And be gentle about it,” she added. Looking down at the sooty, bruised face, she did her best to make her smile encouraging. “You’re going to be fine, honey, I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

The only response she got was a whimper.

There was something about the way he seemed to stare right through her that chilled her heart.

Shock, she thought. She felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Moving quickly, Tracy helped guide the gurney into the trauma room.

“That’s okay, sweetheart. I don’t need your name right now. Mine’s Dr. Walker in case you need to call me later.” Belatedly, she realized that the firefighter was still with them and about to enter the trauma room. She shook her head, automatically placing a hand against his chest. It felt as if she was pressing against a wall, not a man. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to stay out here.”

“I won’t get in the way.” Adam had no idea why, but he wanted to be in there with the boy, to somehow assure him, as well as himself, that everything was going to be all right.

“I’m sorry, only staff members are allowed past these doors.” He looked perturbed at the restriction. She paused longer than she should have. “Are you a relative?”

He shook his head. “No. I just wanted to make sure he was all right.”

She of all people understood becoming involved with the people you were responsible for saving. She offered him an encouraging smile. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Why don’t you wait in the hall?” She made the suggestion just before she slipped behind the door.

Tracy quickly crossed to the examining table. Her team had transferred the boy while she’d hung back with the firefighter. The orderly, Max, pushed the gurney out of the way.

With a nod of her head, she was all business again. “Okay, people, every moment we waste is another moment he has to suffer.”

She worked as swiftly as she dared, making the little boy as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, issuing orders to the two nurses who buffered her sides. They moved like a well-oiled machine. A machine whose only purpose was to help this small child who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tracy checked her tears until after the job was over. Unleashing them wouldn’t do the boy any good.

What the hell was taking so long?

And what was he doing here, anyway? Adam wondered, exasperated with himself. This wasn’t part of his job. His job had ended the instant he had brought the boy out of the burning building.

He paced the length of the hallway, his impatience mounting with each step he took. That was his job description, saving people from burning buildings, and he’d done that. End of story.

So why was he here, pacing up and down a pastel-colored hallway, sweaty, sooty and smelling of smoke when he should be at the fire station, taking a well-earned shower and trying to wind down from a job well done?