“No. Brain trauma. I couldn’t understand half of what the doctor was saying to Paul, but from what I gathered, every minute counts. It was awful in there, Russ. They weren’t going to let Paul go in the helicopter because he wasn’t a spouse or a blood relative. What a stupid, bureaucratic waste of time….” She pulled a hank of hair off her neck, twisted it viciously, and shoved it back into her knot. “Paul is just…well, you can imagine. Oh, I got so mad. I told them if he couldn’t go in their helicopter I would rent one and fly him myself. Jackasses.”
Russ grinned in spite of himself. “Can you afford to rent a helicopter?”
“No.” She looked up at him and grinned back. “But I think they were so taken aback at the idea of the flying priest that it inspired them to come up with another solution. Turns out Paul and Emil have medical power of attorney for each other, and we got a copy faxed over from the Washington County Hospital.” She glanced back at the ER’s doors. “I’ve got to go get the car. He’s going to be ready to transport in just a minute, and I’m driving Paul. They land the helo at the West Glens Falls fire station’s parking lot, and I haven’t the faintest idea where that is. If I don’t follow the ambulance, I’ll get lost for sure.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “You will come, won’t you?”
He had a bizarre urge to take her hand in both of his and kiss it. He squelched the notion, nodding instead. “Yeah. Absolutely. You get your car and I’ll follow you.” She flashed him another smile and jogged off toward the parking lot, her long black skirt flapping around her ankles. How the hell did she manage to be so damn pleasant and open and normal, when he felt like a seventeen-year-old around her? Ever since he had crossed that line last December, he had pretty much avoided her, on the theory that his feelings must be middle-aged idiocy and absence would make the heart grow indifferent. It hadn’t worked that he could tell. Spotting her in the park, running into her at the IGA, or even driving past the rectory made his chest squeeze and the back of his throat ache. Maybe this would be better, to go on as friends, ignoring that other thing. Hell, maybe if he acted normal, he’d come to feel normal, too.
A blast of noise and movement swung his attention back to the entrance to the ER. Two EMTs, a doctor, and a nurse were moving a gurney in a carefully controlled frenzy through the bay, heading toward the open doors of the waiting ambulance. Between the bodies surrounding him, Russ could catch glimpses of Emil’s face. He winced. Christ. “Careful! Keep those lines clear!” the doctor said, levering himself into the ambulance as the EMTs maneuvered Emil, strapped to a spine board, from the gurney to the ambulance bed. The nurse passed over the IV bag she was holding above her head and scrambled up into her seat.
The doors into the ER hissed open again and Paul emerged, accompanied by another nurse. On his face was the look Russ knew from Vietnam—the face of someone who has just seen his buddy blown away beside him. A mix of shock, fear, and terrible comprehension. “Paul!” he called out. The oversized man looked up. “Clare’s gone to get her car. I’ll follow you to the airport.” Paul nodded, as if speech was too much of an effort right then.
One EMT had finished strapping Emil in and was jumping out of the back of the ambulance when Clare screeched in behind the wheel of her little white-and-red Shelby Cobra. She waved to Paul, who lumbered over and squeezed himself into the tiny passenger seat. The EMT slammed and sealed the door and dashed to the cab of the ambulance. It began moving before the cab door had swung shut.
Russ and the ambulance both kept their lights flashing all the way to the fire station. He couldn’t shake the image of Emil’s ground-meat face. They had never been more than professional friends—he had precious few real friends for someone who had come back to his hometown, Russ realized—but in the five years he had headed up the department, he had spent a lot of time with Emil Dvorak—in the ME’s office, at the hospital, in courthouse hallways. He thought about the pathologist’s razor-sharp wit, his orderly office, full of thick books and opera CDs, his addiction to Sunday-morning political debates. The damage to that fragile brain when Emil’s skull had been pounded again and again—bile rose in Russ’s throat, threatening to choke him. He followed the ambulance across the intersection and into the fire station’s parking lot. Lights blazed from the station bays, burnishing the garaged fire trucks and emergency vehicles, glittering off the blaze-reflective strips on the life-flight helicopter, which was hunkered down in the middle of the asphalt. Several firefighters stood inside their bays, watching. He followed Clare’s car to the farthest corner of the lot, where the firefighters’ cars were parked.
The life-flight team—a paramedic, a nurse, and a pilot—jogged over to the ambulance to help the EMTs off-load Emil on his spine board. Clare leaped from her driver’s seat and paused while Paul wriggled his way out of the passenger side. Russ joined them, a little apart from the medical team, which was carefully transferring Emil into the helicopter.
“Paul,” he said, “I wanted to ask you—what was Emil doing tonight?” One of the nurses hoisted the IV high as they smoothly lifted the board into the belly of the chopper. “Do you know where he was? Who he was with?”
Paul kept his gaze fixed on the figure disappearing into the helicopter. He rubbed his hands up and down, up and down along the seam of his shorts. “He had dinner with some friends of ours. Stephen Obrowski and Ron Handler. At their bed-and-breakfast, the Stuyvesant Inn. He was going to come straight home….” his voice trailed off.
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll be talking with them tomorrow. We’re going to get whoever did this.” Russ knew that was cold comfort when measured against Emil’s broken body in the helicopter. Paul looked at him, his eyes wide and red-rimmed.
“Paul,” Clare said, “it’s time. The pilot’s going to warm up the engines now.”
The pilot had been tying down straps by the door and didn’t look as if he was headed for the cockpit, but Clare was the one who had flown these monsters in the army, not Russ, so he walked with them to the open door. Sure enough, the pilot disappeared, and a second later, he heard the unpleasant whine of turbines kicking in.
Paul stepped forward. Stopped. “The dogs,” he said to Clare. “Did I ask you about taking care of the dogs?”
“You did.” She rubbed his arm. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll collect them and take them to the kennel. Don’t worry about them.”
“C’mon, sir,” the paramedic said, jumping from the chopper. “Time to go.” He held out a helmet to Paul and helped the big man strap it on correctly, then pointed out the stepping bar and straps where Paul could climb up into an empty jump seat. The IV bag trembled where it hung from a hook in the ceiling and the flight suit–clad nurse bent over Emil to adjust something.
Paul turned toward Clare, his brown hair and beard sticking out improbably from beneath the helmet. “Clare,” he said too loudly, “I’ve never been one for religion, but Emil is Catholic…he was…”
Clare stepped close and spoke directly to his face, enabling Paul to see her lips moving, an aid to hearing inside the bulky helmet. “I’ll pray for him,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “I’ll pray for both of you.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to reach out to God the Comforter if you feel the urge. You can always go back to being an agnostic after Emil is well. I won’t tell on you.”
“Sir, we have to go!” The EMT beckoned Paul urgently. Paul hoisted himself into the belly of the chopper as
