Venom from Vespids and insects of certain orders contain several vasoactive substances, are hemolytic and neurotoxic and highly potent sensitizing agents. The allergic reaction is usually the result of previous stings, with the immunologic basis being an IgE response—
He sucked in air between his teeth. She had just been stung last week. A classic sensitizing exposure.
Individuals stung by such insects may exhibit the following responses: 1. A local reaction with pain, generally swelling and redness confined to the sting site. 2. Hives, itching and swelling in areas other than the sting site. Symptoms may stop here but could advance swiftly into 3. Hoarse voice, tongue swelling. 4. Dizziness or a sharp drop in blood pressure. 5 Unconsciousness and death.
With his heart pressing against his throat, he realized the woman he loved was going into anaphylactic shock.
Time slowed. The breeze seized, the pattern of dappled light went stony on the forest floor. The birds dimmed to silence. He had to get her to a hospital. But his truck was parked near the entrance to the reservation, three long hiking miles away. EMTs couldn’t get a truck through the woods to this remote spot. There were no roads wide enough, the trail was a winding path. He glanced down at her, the knot rising between her brows as the venom flooded her system. The wheezing was intensifying as she labored to draw in deeper gulps of air. If he didn’t use every ounce of his skill and knowledge to keep her alive.
Anaphylactic shock could kill in twenty minutes.
Then time sped up, stuttering back and racing, ticking off quick seconds in his head, a deadly metronome, and the reflexes he’d thought had abandoned him kicked in like punches. Seizing his phone, he dialed 9-1-1, barking information to the dispatcher, demanding a helicopter, summoning up coordinates to this exact location, probing his memory of the walk here for a clearing wide enough for a copter to land. Help couldn’t come soon enough.
“Logan.” She rasped, her pupils dilating. “I don’t…feel right.”
“You’re having an allergic response.” He laid his palm on her hand, mentally thinking through the gear in his pack. “Try not to scratch.”
“I’m just…” She licked her lips and labored to swallow. “I’m really…tired.”
“Keep talking to me.” A pen, he thought, he could use parts as a straw. “I need to hear you speak, Jenny, it’s important.”
He laid the phone aside, with the dispatcher still on the other end, so she could hear what she was going to do when he did it. Jenny’s tissues were swelling up rapidly. The antihistamine wasn’t yet working.
“Logan?”
“I’ll take care of you.” He pulled off his tee-shirt, balled it up, and used it as a pillow for under her neck, as he eased her down, as she sank into unconsciousness. “Trust me, Jenny.”
When her eyes fluttered closed, he reached in his pack to curl a hand around his Swiss army knife.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Ms. Vance?”
Jenny tried to blink her eyes open. Her lids were heavy. It took a concentrated effort to peel them apart and focus on the clicking, beeping, bright white world around her.
An unfamiliar face loomed in the brightness, and then receded just as fast.
A woman’s voice. “She’s coming around this time, Doctor Nguyen.”
Jenny heard footsteps, sharp heels on a hard floor approaching, and then a beam of light blinded her.
“Ms. Vance,” said a second woman, in a higher voice, “do you know where you are?”
Jenny scraped a dry tongue over cracked lips but her tongue was too sluggish to talk.
“You’re in Spruce Woods Memorial Hospital,” the second woman said.
“Hos…pital?” Was something stuck in her throat?
The bright light clicked off. It was replaced by a big floating black spot, and beyond that, a woman about her age, tucking something in the breast pocket of her white doctor’s coat.
“There you are.” The doctor nodded, pleased, and swiped a drooping pink tress back into her messy, pulled-back hair. “I’m Doctor Nguyen. That’s Nurse Schultz checking your saline bag. And you, Ms. Vance, are the luckiest woman in the world.”
Jenny blinked a few sticky times, confused. Why was every gulp of air scalding its way down her gullet? How did she get to this hospital, in this bed, under these scratchy sheets pulled up to her chest, surrounded by all this strange equipment? The last thing she remembered was being naked in the stream with Logan.
“Logan.” Jenny winced at the soreness in her throat.
“Dr. Macallister left not twenty minutes ago.” Doctor Nguyen leaned over to peer at something on Jenny’s upper chest. “He’ll be disappointed that he missed you. He spent the last few hours at your side. Do you remember what happened?”
She probed the fog in her mind. She remembered the wet, green woods, the gurgle of the stream. She remembered the pull of the stream’s current, the slipperiness of the rocks beneath her feet. She remembered a naked Logan stepping into the water, and the rumble of his laughter.
“You were stung by a bee,” Doctor Nguyen explained. “You had an allergic reaction that led to anaphylactic shock.”
What was this about shock and stinging? Stinging. A bee. She raised her arm to glance at the sting site, but her neck yanked with sharp pains before she could check if the welt still remained. Logan had scolded her, she remembered, playful at first, but then his expression had turned wary. On his cell phone he’d become all clipped and direct and commanding. Talking about…what? She couldn’t recall. Her chest had ached so much. Her whole body had felt squeezed.
“Dr. Macallister administered antihistamine,” the doctor continued, settling back on a swivel-stool by the bed, “but unfortunately that didn’t kick in soon enough to mitigate the allergic response. Your tissues swelled and you had trouble breathing. Do you remember what happened next?”
She shook her head, sensed the tug of something plastered on her throat. She probed her throat with her fingers.
“That’s a blessing,” the doctor said. “In the woods, Dr. Macallister performed an emergency tracheostomy to insert
