If I Should Die

down here, and his injuries and blood loss could put him into shock.

“Count to three, okay?” she said.

“All right.” She didn’t touch him yet, but positioned her hands so she could push and twist the shoulder back into place in one smooth move. “One,” Sean began and forced his body to relax.

She grasped Sean’s shoulder with one hand and pushed against his chest to hold his body against the cave wall. She pushed and barely heard the bone pop back into place over his sudden scream.

She bit back her own cry. He was right-it had to be done-but she didn’t have to like it.

Sean’s eyes squeezed shut and the muscles on his neck stood out. He’d dropped the flashlight and it rolled a few feet away, casting a ghostly light over their surroundings.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said.

Sean was shaking. She took a blanket from her backpack and put it over his chest. She didn’t want to accidentally bump the wood in his leg. He grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“It’s okay,” he whispered through clenched teeth.

“I hate to hurt you.” She held a water bottle to his lips and he sipped.

She sat with him for a long minute. Dislocated shoulders were painful, but putting them back in place was twice as bad. Fortunately, other than general soreness, the pain dissipated quickly.

He swallowed, drank more water, then breathed deeply. “Better.”

“Your head-”

“Yes, I probably have a mild concussion. I was knocked out for a minute or three. But other than a growing bump on the side of my head and a whopper of a headache, it’s fine. Not even bleeding.”

“Much.” She wetted a clean piece of gauze and wiped dried blood and dirt from his scalp and face. Sean was so much like her brothers-take a beating and still get up fighting, even when they needed to lay low for a while. “I’m keeping an eye on you tonight, since I’m pretty certain you won’t let me take you to a hospital.”

“I’d have to be unconscious before you could get me anywhere near a hospital.”

“I need to take care of your leg,” she said. “Drink some more water.”

“Bossy nurse, aren’t you?”

She smiled. “I’m sure you’re not a model patient.”

“I’ll be a great patient. Especially if I’m bedridden with you.”

She snorted. “One-track mind.”

“We’re still on vacation, Princess.” He paused and gave her a half-smile. “We were on vacation, until someone nearly burned down the lodge. You know what this means, right?”

“Don’t-”

“Exactly. This doesn’t count as our vacation. I should never have let Duke convince me this would be a quick and easy assignment.”

“Well, except for your clumsiness, I’m glad we can help Tim. He’s heartbroken about what’s been happening.” She assessed Sean’s leg with the flashlight. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but she couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t start up again. “I’m going to cut your jeans.”

When her hand brushed against the wood, Sean ground his teeth against the surge of pain.

“Sorry.”

He’d need a tetanus shot, antibiotics as well. She carefully cut away the material. “How did you end up at the bottom of this mine shaft?”

“Just lucky.”

“We found the ATV you were riding by the highway.”

“The kid busted his quad. I chased him, he did a quick turn and I slipped right in here.”

Lucy stopped what she was doing and looked at Sean’s face.

“An intentional trap?”

“I think it was a spontaneous idea on his part.”

“You said he was a kid?”

“No older than seventeen or eighteen. He’s not doing this alone. He was scared of someone. I’m going to find him. I almost had him convinced to trust me-then he bolted. I suspect he planned to circle around back to my quad in the hopes I’d left the keys in and he could get to it before me.”

“You did leave your keys in it.”

He shook his head. “I was stupid. Rookie mistake.”

Lucy gently pulled away the scraps of material. She pulled an emergency combat tourniquet from her first aid kit-the C-A-T used by the military and EMTs were not usually found in an over-the-counter kit, but she’d enhanced her supplies. She wrapped it around Sean’s thigh above the stake and cinched it into place.

“I’m going to pull this straight out, pour water on it, then-”

“Just do it.”

Lucy laid out the rest of her supplies and propped the flashlight on her backpack. This time, she didn’t count. She assessed the angle, then pulled the stake straight out of Sean’s thigh. Nearly an inch of the sharp wood had gone in. She poured water liberally over the wound.

His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched, his face covered in a fresh layer of sweat. The grime and dirt from the mine coated his skin, his dark hair falling forward over one eye. She needed to get him someplace warm, clean, and dry.

She patted the injured area with a thick wad of gauze, then checked the bleeding. The tourniquet was doing its job. She hadn’t thought any major arteries had been hit, considering the location of the stake, but she wouldn’t remove the tourniquet until they got him out of the hole.

She held the gauze there for a long minute. Tim called down. “Lucy? Sean?”

She looked up. The sunlight was brighter. It was eleven in the morning, though it felt as if much longer than four hours had passed since she and Sean first smelled smoke.

“I’m bandaging his leg, then I’ll get him ready to bring up.”

She lifted the gauze. The skin was red and starting to turn purple. She sprayed antiseptic on it and Sean’s body jerked. She bit back another sorry, took a fresh bandage from the kit, and taped it on the wound.

“You’re good for now,” she said.

“A minute,” he said.

She packed up the first aid kit, then sat next to Sean and took his hand. “You’re going to be okay,” she said, more for herself than for him.

He put his arm around her and held her head to his chest.

She squeezed back tears. Why was she about to cry? Sean was fine. It might take him a few days to go running, but he hadn’t broken anything, he hadn’t died.

A tiny sob escaped.

“Luce?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I’m okay. You know that.”

“I know.”

He kissed the top of her head, and that made the tears fall. She didn’t understand why she was so upset. She’d get Sean out of this pit, take him to the cabin, watch him all night to make sure the concussion didn’t cause him more problems, and by tomorrow …

What if he’d died?

There were so many things she wanted to tell him, things she didn’t know how to say. The thought of Sean dying terrified her. She’d lost people in her life, people she cared about. Her cousin. Her ex-boyfriend. Her brother Patrick had been in a coma for nearly two years and though she prayed daily, she never thought he’d wake up. That he’d survived and was now back to his old self was a miracle.

With all her hard-fought strength, her ability to close off her emotions, she found her walls crumbling as she pictured Sean sprawled on the floor of the mine shaft, dead.

To Sean’s credit, he didn’t try to get her to talk about it. Maybe he understood her better than she did-he seemed to get her even when she was confused.

“Are you ready?” she asked.