board.
‘How are they?’ Landis asked a paramedic by the car.
‘One’s unconscious, with possible internal injuries. The other one’s banged up, but not too badly. The doors on the car are a mess, so we’ll have to tear them off. Both of these people have been bounced around a lot, but the woman took the worst of it.’
The firemen were working their hydraulic cutters on the passenger-side door of the Mustang. The car’s steel skin and frame groaned as the hydraulic pressure increased inside the device, tearing away at the crumpled metal of the car. Landis quickly glanced at the black body bag on the ground, a few feet away from the Mustang, before squeezing into the narrow space beside the driver’s door. The driver was bruised and bloodied as he held the unconscious woman beneath a protective cover that the firemen had placed over her.
‘Sir,’ Landis said as she placed her hand on Kilkenny’s shoulder, ‘my name is Michelle. I’m here to help you. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?’
Kilkenny turned toward the voice and saw a woman in a dark blue flight suit. ‘To be honest, I feel like shit, but I’m alive, so I guess that’s a start. I’m Nolan Kilkenny and this is Kelsey Newton. I can’t say for sure how she’s doing, but Kelsey’s been out for a while, and she doesn’t look too good. We took a hell of a shot from that semi before it rolled.’
Byrd was now on the Mustang’s hood, assessing Newton’s condition while Landis checked Kilkenny’s vital sings and kept him talking. The metal of the car’s door groaned loudly before releasing its hold and pulling free from the car. Byrd moved over to the opened side and began treating Newton. Kilkenny eased away to give Byrd room to work, but his hand remained firmly wrapped around Newton’s.
Landis gently wiped away the blood from Kilkenny’s face to inspect the gash across his forehead. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘The fuel truck blew a tire and started jumping all over the road. A pickup rammed us from behind, and we got hit by the back end of that burning hunk of junk.’
Landis placed a dressing on his forehead.’sounds awful.’
‘It got worse,’ Kilkenny replied.
The paramedics cut Newton out of her safety belt and eased her gently onto a backboard. Her slender neck was already wrapped in a cervical collar and a breathing tube was inserted down her throat. Byrd rolled out a pair of MAST pants and zipped them up around Newton’s legs; the inflatable device acting as both a splint for any broken bones and as an antishock aid for the trip back to Ann Arbor. After setting an IV, Byrd and a paramedic hustled Newton to the waiting helicopter.
‘All things considered, you’re looking pretty good,’ Landis commented as she packed up her kit. ‘I’m going to leave you with the paramedics; they’ll get you to Ann Arbor. I’ve got a flight to catch with your lady friend.’
‘Take good care of her,’ Kilkenny asked as he squeezed Landis’s hand. ‘She means a lot to me.’
‘We’ll do our best for her,’ she assured him. ‘See you soon.’ A moment later, the helicopter bearing Newton lifted off into the sky.
Kilkenny’s condition, though more stable than Newton’s, was still considered serious. The paramedics gingerly extracted him from the driver’s seat and strapped him to a backboard. A waiting ambulance rushed Kilkenny away from the hellish scene.
37
Kilkenny awoke several hours after his arrival at University Hospital. The EMTs had given him a painkiller in the ambulance, and after that, everything seemed just a blur. Gradually, memories of the accident came back to him: the truck, the fire, and the man with the gun. And Kelsey.
He remembered Kelsey lying there beside him in the mangled car, covered in blood. He tried to sit up, but he was still sore and his eyes were swollen to narrow slits.
‘Easy, Nolan. Save your strength,’ his father said quietly to him. He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ve had a rough ride, but you’ll be fine.’
‘Dad, how’s Kelsey?’ Nolan asked with a raspy throat that felt parched.
‘She’s hurt pretty badly, but the doctors think she’ll pull through. They finished up with her about an hour ago.’ Sean Kilkenny couldn’t hide the concern he felt over the seriousness of Kelsey’s condition.
Nolan took several short sips from a glass of ice water; the first few seemed to evaporate halfway down his throat. ‘Can I see her?’
‘Tomorrow,’ his father advised, patting him on the leg for reassurance. ‘You both need your rest. Everything will be fine.’
Exhausted from the effort, Nolan closed his eyes as the painkillers took hold once more and he drifted into an uneasy sleep.
It was almost two in the morning when he awoke again. His face still throbbed from the bruises, but the swelling around his eyes seemed to have receded a little. Slowly, Nolan eased himself off the hospital bed, carefully testing his strength. He found a gym bag that his father had left for him and with only a few muffled groans managed to change into a pair of sweats. He remembered only a handful of missions where he’d felt this bad afterward, and those pains were the result of selfinflicted hangovers.
At this hour of the night, most patients were asleep and the medical staff was at a minimum. Kilkenny quietly made his way down the empty hallway. He could hear one of the nurses attending to a patient as he passed, but he didn’t know how many others would be on duty at this hour. Kilkenny quietly walked down the hallway, following the signs to the Intensive Care Unit.
Once inside the ICU, he found Kelsey’s name written in bold black letters on the bed-assignment chart. He slid the curtain open slowly and only wide enough to squeeze inside before closing it again. If she was asleep, he didn’t want the bright lights of the nurses’ station to wake her.
Kelsey lay in the hospital bed with her upper body slightly elevated. Several tubes flowed to and from her body and one of the machines beside her bed made an ungodly hissing sound. Under the faint glow of the room’s indirect lights, she looked so fragile.
Memories of his mother’s final days returned in a painful flood of emotion. No, he thought, pushing the memories of that loss back, this is different. Kelsey will survive.
He approached the bed slowly, moving as quietly as he could, hoping not to disturb her. At her side, he grasped her hand and felt the warmth of the life still within her. Kelsey’s face, now framed with sterile dressings instead of a flowing mane of blond hair, still radiated beauty and peace in her sleep. The guilt and responsibility Nolan felt over her injuries subsided as he memorized every detail of her exquisite face.
A sudden flash of light nearly blinded him, ending his quiet meditation. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a woman silhouetted in a fluorescent halo.
‘All right, Mr Kilkenny,’ a hushed but stern voice called out to him like an arresting officer, ‘it’s time for you to get back to bed.’
The nurse was right, of course, but that still wouldn’t have kept him from Kelsey’s side tonight.
‘You caught me, warden,’ Kilkenny said with his most charming smile. ‘I’ll go peacefully. How’s she doing?’
‘They ran some tests on her, but the results won’t be back until morning.’ The nurse closed the curtain around Kelsey’s bed and escorted Kilkenny back to his room. ‘Your parents warned us about you two. They said if either of you was missing, just go looking for the other.’
‘How’s she doing?’ Nolan asked more emphatically.
‘She’s in pretty rough shape,’ the nurse said gravely, ‘but I’ve seen cases much worse than hers make a full recovery. Only time will tell if there will be any lasting effect from her injuries. Now, if I catch you out of your room again tonight, I’m going to have to give you an icewater sponge bath.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be good,’ Kilkenny replied in surrender. ‘I haven’t been treated like this since boot camp.’
The nurse saw Kilkenny to his door, where he bid her a good night and walked back to his bed. The room was dark, as he had left it, but something seemd out of place. Throughout his years of martial arts and military training,
