Riptide

He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Streeter. 'If you can recover those legs without risk of life, do it.'

He turned his attention back to the injured man. The pulse was lousy but holding steady. More importantly, the man was beginning to regain consciousness, thrashing feebly and moaning. Hatch felt another wave of relief; if he'd stayed unconscious much longer, the prognosis would have been poor. He sorted through his kit and gave the man five milligrams of morphine, enough to give him some relief but not enough to lower his pulse any further. Then he turned to what remained of the legs. He winced inwardly at the raggedness of the wounds and the shattered ends of bone; the dull blade of the ax was nothing like the nice, neat saws of the operating room. He could see some bleeders, especially the femoral artery of the right leg. Sorting among the refuse of his medical kit, he grabbed a needle and some thread and began tying off the veins and arteries.

'Dr. Hatch?' Streeter asked.

'What?' Hatch replied, head inches from the stump, using tweezers to fish out a medium-sized vein that had already retracted.

'When you have a moment, Captain Neidelman would like to talk to you.'

Hatch nodded, tied off the vein, checked the tourniquets, and rinsed the wounds. He picked up the radio. 'Yes?'

'How is he?' Neidelman asked.

'He's got a fair chance of survival,' Hatch said. 'Provided there's no screwup with the helicopter.'

'Thank God. And his legs?'

'Even if they recover them, I doubt there's much chance of reattachment. You better review some basic safety procedures with your team leader here. This accident was entirely avoidable.'

'I understand,' said Neidelman.

Hatch switched off the phone and looked toward the northeast and the nearest Coast Guard station. In three minutes, perhaps four, they should see the bird on the horizon. He turned to Streeter. 'You'd better drop a marker flare. And get this area cleared, we don't want another accident on our hands. When the chopper comes in, we'll need four men to lift him onto the stretcher, no more.'

'Right,' said Streeter, his lips tightening.

Hatch saw that the man's face was unnaturally dark, blood throbbing angrily in a vein on his forehead. Tough luck, he thought. I'll repair that relationship later. Besides, he's not the guy who's going to live without legs for the rest of his life, He glanced again at the horizon. A black speck was approaching fast. In a few moments, the dull thud of heavy rotors filled the air as the helicopter shot across the island, banked sharply, then approached the small group gathered around the pit. The backwash from the blades whipped the sawgrass into a frenzy and kicked dirt into Hatch's eyes. The door of the cargo bay slid back and a rescue platform came bobbing down. The injured man was strapped aboard and sent up, and Hatch signaled for the platform to be sent down again for himself. Once he was safely on board, the waiting paramedic shut the door and gave the pilot a thumbs-up. Immediately, the chopper banked to the right and dug its nose into the air, heading for the southwest.

Hatch looked around. There was saline already hung, an oxygen bottle and mask, a rack of antibiotics, bandages, tourniquets, and antiseptics.

'We didn't have any O negative, Doctor,' the paramedic said.

'Don't worry,' Hatch replied, 'you've done okay. But let's get an IV into him. We've got to expand this guy's blood volume.' He noticed the paramedic looking at him strangely, then realized why: shirtless, covered in a crust of mud and dried blood, he didn't look much like a Maine country doctor.

There was a moan from the stretcher, and the thrashing began again.

An hour later, Hatch found himself alone in the silence of an empty operating room, breathing in the smell of Betadine and blood. Ken Field, the wounded man, was in the next bay, being cared for by Bangor's best surgeon. The legs could not be recovered, but the man would live. Hatch's work was over.

He fetched a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to drain the day's accumulated poisons out with it. He took another breath, then another. At last he sank heavily onto the operating table, leaned forward, and pressed his balled fists tightly against his temples. This didn't have to happen, a cold voice was whispering inside his head. The thought of how he'd sat there on the Plain Jane, idly eating lunch and playing with the seagulls, made him ill. He cursed himself for not being on the island when the accident happened, for letting them proceed before his office and equipment were in place. This was the second time he'd been unprepared, the second time he had underestimated the power of the island. Never again, he thought, raging: Never again.

As calm slowly returned, another thought insinuated itself into his mind. Today was the first time he had set foot on Ragged Island since the death of his brother. During the emergency, there had been no time to think. Now, in the darkened operating theater, alone with his thoughts, it took all the self-control Hatch could muster to control the fit of shaking that threatened to overwhelm him.

Chapter 9

Doris Bowditch, licensed Realtor, strode briskly up the front steps of 5 Ocean Lane. The old boards of the porch groaned beneath the unaccustomed weight. As she bent forward to try the front door key, a vast assortment of silver bracelets cascaded down her forearm with a jingling that reminded Hatch of sleigh bells. There was a brief struggle with the key, then she turned the knob and threw the front door open with a little flourish.

Hatch waited until she had stepped through the door, muumuu billowing out behind, then followed her into the cool, dark interior of the house. It hit him immediately, like a blow to the gut: the same smell of old pinewood, mothballs, and pipesmoke. Though he hadn't inhaled that scent for twenty-five years, it was all he could do not to step back into the sunlight as the intense scent of childhood threatened to bypass all his defenses.

'Well!' came Doris's bright voice as she shut the door behind them. 'It's a beautiful old thing, isn't it? I've always said, what a shame it was shut up for so long!' The woman swept into the center of the room in a swirl of pink. 'What do you think?'

'Fine,' said Hatch, taking a tentative step forward. The front parlor was just as he remembered it, the day his mother had finally given up and they'd left for Boston: the chintz easy chairs, the old canvas sofa, the print of the