Home > Up Close and Dangerous(11)

Up Close and Dangerous(11)
Author: Linda Howard

BAILEY COUGHED.

Her brain faintly registered the involuntary response. Something was wrong; she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. She felt a vague sense of alarm and tried to move, tried to get up, but neither her legs nor arms worked. She concentrated, hard, her entire being focused on moving, but the effort was too much and she drifted back down into nothingness.

The next time she surfaced, she struggled and concentrated and was finally able to twitch the fingers of her left hand.

At first she was aware only of small things, immediate things: how hard it was to move, how her right arm felt as if something was cutting into it, the need to cough again. Saturating all of those small things was pain, insistent and unwavering. Her entire body hurt, as if she’d fallen—

Falling. Yes. She’d been falling. That was it. She remembered hitting—

No. The plane…the plane had crashed.

Realization filled her, a realization mixed with both wonder and trepidation. The plane had crashed, but she was alive. She was alive!

She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to see the extent of her injuries. If she was missing any body parts she didn’t want to know about it. If she was, she would die anyway, of shock and blood loss, on this isolated mountaintop both miles and hours from any possible rescue. She wanted to just lie there with her eyes closed and let whatever would happen, happen. Everything hurt so much she couldn’t imagine moving and risking pain that was more intense.

But it was annoying, the way something was interfering with her breathing, and her right arm really hurt where something sharp was digging into it. She needed to move, she needed to get away from the wreckage. Fire. There was always the danger of a fire in a plane crash, wasn’t there? She had to move.

Groaning, she opened her eyes. At first she couldn’t focus; all she could see was a brownish blur. She kept blinking, and finally the blur became some sort of fabric. Silk. It was her silk jacket, covering most of her head. Laboriously she lifted her left arm and swiped at the jacket, managing to drag it away from her eyes. Pieces of glass made small tinkling sounds as the motion dislodged them.

Okay. Her left arm worked. That was good.

She tried to push herself upright, but something was wrong. Nothing was where it should be. She made a few more feeble, futile efforts to sit up, then made a low sound of frustration. Instead of struggling like a worm on a hook, she needed to take stock of the situation, see exactly what she was dealing with.

Concentrating was difficult, but she had to focus. Taking deep breaths, she looked around, trying to make sense of what she saw. Mist, trees, occasional glimpses of blue sky. She saw her own feet, the left one sans shoe. Where was her other shoe? Then, like a bolt of lightning, another thought shot through her brain. Captain Justice! Where was he? She lifted her head as much as possible, and immediately saw him. He was slumped in his seat, his head dropped forward. She couldn’t make out his features; they were covered by what looked like a sea of blood.

Urgently she tried to surge upright, only to fall back once more. Her position confused her. She was lying on the floor of the cabin—no, that wasn’t right. Fiercely she concentrated, forcing her brain to make the adjustment from what it expected to the reality of her position, and abruptly things made sense. She was still buckled in her seat, and she was lying against the right side of the plane, which was resting at a fairly sharp angle. She couldn’t sit up because she needed to haul herself up and to the left, and she couldn’t do that unless she could use both arms, but her right arm was trapped and she couldn’t free it unless she first got her weight off it.

If Justice wasn’t already dead, he soon would be if she didn’t get in a position to help him. Get out of the seat. That’s what she needed to do. With her left hand she fumbled for the seat belt, popped the clasp open. When the belt released, her lower body rolled off the seat and dropped with a painful thud that made her groan again, but she was still tangled in the shoulder strap. She struggled free of it, and managed to get to her knees.

No wonder her right arm had felt as if something was cutting into it: something was. A triangular shard of metal protruded from her triceps. Feeling irrationally insulted by the injury, she jerked the shard out and threw it away, then scrambled forward until she could reach Justice. The angle at which the plane was resting made balance difficult even if she hadn’t been woozy and dealing with her own aches and injuries, but she braced her right foot against the side of the plane and hauled herself up so she could reach the scant space between the two pilots’ seats.

Oh, God, there was so much blood. Was he dead? He’d fought so hard to bring the plane down at a survivable angle, she couldn’t bear it if he’d saved her life and died in the attempt. Her hand shaking, she reached out and touched his neck, but her body was too outraged by the abuse it had taken to stop trembling and she couldn’t tell if he had a pulse or not. “You can’t be dead,” she whispered desperately, holding her hand under his nose to see if she could feel his breath. She thought she did, and stared hard at his chest. Finally she saw the up-and-down movement, and the relief that swamped her was so acute she almost burst into tears.

He was still alive, but unconscious, and injured. What should she do? Should she move him? What if he had spinal injuries? But what if she did nothing, and he bled to death?

She leaned her aching head against the side of his seat, just for a moment. Think, Bailey! she commanded herself. She had to do something. She had to deal with what she knew was wrong with him, not what might be wrong, and she knew for a fact he was losing a lot of blood. So, first things first: stop the bleeding.

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