The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance. Carol Marinelli
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Don’t move her at all, though. I’m going to see if I can help some of the others.”
Robert and Jack arrived within seconds of each other, and while Robert sent the other man an angry glare he didn’t question his right to be there. He’d probably already heard that Jack was a doctor. And judging from the snide comment he’d lobbed at him on the way down the slope, her ex had overheard her and Ellory’s conversation in the bar and knew about that stupid resolution of hers.
No time to worry about any of that right now. They had to get these people out of the snow. And fast. “Robert, I saw at least two others go down about twenty yards to your left.”
“Right.” Her ex headed toward to the spot.
“Help!” yelled someone to her right. “I found someone, but he’s not breathing.”
Suffocation and crush injuries were their biggest worries right now, although the last person she’d found had been closer to the surface than she’d expected.
Jack motioned to her. “I’ll get it, you keep looking.”
Waiting to make sure he successfully navigated to the location, she paused and her cellphone went off. She mashed the button. “Can’t talk now.”
“Anson’s five minutes out.” Chuck’s voice came through.
“Got it.”
She dumped her phone back into her jacket pocket while she fought her way through snow that was now almost hip deep as she joined in the search. No one that she’d seen had been much higher up on the slope than she was now, and even if they had been they’d have been knocked downhill some way from the force of the snow.
“Any idea how many are missing?” she yelled into the general melee. She’d counted seven, but it had been hard to tell how many had actually gone down.
“I don’t know, but my brother is in here somewhere,” a woman called back to her from ten yards down the hill.
Thank God this was a more advanced slope. She’d seen no children on it when that thing had come thundering down the mountain.
She pushed toward the woman, whose black tracks of mascara bore witness to her distress. “Where was he when you last saw him?”
“Right here.” The woman pointed her pole in an arc.
“Okay, let’s start there and work our way down, okay?” She came alongside the distraught woman. “Side by side.” Glancing again at her watch, she saw that five minutes had now passed. Time was running out.
She turned her ski pole upside down so she didn’t hurt whoever was down there.
Chop, chop, chop. She pushed the metal end into the ground repeatedly, hoping to hit something that was obviously not snow.
Chop, chop, chop.
In the background, she heard others as they shouted that they’d also found someone, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. All of her father’s ski instructors were certified in CPR, and they knew the drill about not moving anyone. Her biggest worry right now was finding everyone who was missing before they suffocated.
Chop, chop, thunk. There!
About two feet beneath the white surface, she’d hit something soft. “Here!”
The woman beside her immediately joined her in digging as fast as they could.
They uncovered a hand. Pale and still.
Move up. Hurry, Mira!
The angle of the arm told her the victim was pointed down the slope, but the snow had buoyed the back part of him up, so that his head was buried deeper than the rest of him. It seemed like forever before they’d dug down far enough to reach him. Hair. Hell. He was face down. Mira frantically scooped deeper, digging around his face, until she could reach beneath him.
No breath. She felt the side of his neck. No pulse.
She swore under her breath.
“We need to turn him over.” And pray he didn’t have a fracture along his spine or neck. If they couldn’t get him breathing, that wasn’t going to matter, though. He’d die.
It took an additional fifteen seconds before they’d uncovered enough of his body to try to shift him. He was a big guy. And heavy.
“Get on this side with me.”
They both tried to lift him to turn him over, but there was so much snow packed tightly around him. Tears of frustration came to her eyes. Then Jack was there beside them.
She threw him a look of utter gratitude.
Getting between her and the victim’s sister, he said, “Grab hold of whatever you can on his far side. We need to pull him up sideways first, in order to flip him. There’s not enough room to turn him where he is. On three.”
“One, two...three!” They all pulled as hard as they could. The man budged, started to turn, and then Mira slipped, losing her grip on the man’s jacket. She swore, louder this time.
“Again,” she said.
Robert evidently saw their struggles, because he came up beside her. “Anson’s just gotten here. Let me help.”
He urged the man’s sister to move so he could take her place.
Jack didn’t even spare her ex a glance. “On three.”
This time, when he hit three, they pulled and the victim flipped onto his side as the trio used the momentum to haul him up out of the hole.
Mira glanced over the surface of the snow long enough to see that Anson and his dog were indeed on the scene, the rescue animal already with his nose to the snow.
Jack did what she’d done a moment ago and checked for a pulse. “Nothing. You start chest compressions.”
In the background, the man’s sister started crying.
“Robert.”
That was all she needed to say. Her ex moved toward the woman to keep her back, while she and Jack worked. She ripped open the guy’s jacket, no longer worried about hypothermia or anything that didn’t relate to his heart or lungs.
Quickly finding the sweet spot on his chest, she lapped one hand over the other, her palms thrusting downward in quick bursts as she counted aloud. His body sank in the snow a few inches from the force of her compressions, but the weight helped pack it down to form a solid enough surface to do some good. “One, two, three...”
No liquid came out of the man’s lungs as she continued compressions, so his airway wasn’t blocked by melted snow. Jack had evidently known to wait a few seconds to make sure of that fact, because by the fifth beat he’d tilted the man’s head back and leaned over him to give mouth-to-mouth between her measured pulses. He lifted his head long enough to say, “Tell me when you need me to spell you.”
She couldn’t think about that or anything else right now, except what she was doing. With each push of her joined palms she chanted, “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” willing the victim to fight. To live.
About a minute later she heard the most beautiful sound in the world. A gasp. Then a cough. Mira stopped what she was doing and reached for his neck, only to find that Jack’s fingers were already there. Icy cold without his gloves, but real and alive. Just like their victim, whose eyes now moved beneath his eyelids.
Mira glanced at Jack. Without his quick thinking they might still have been trying to figure out how to turn the man in that hole. A few minutes longer and this scene might have ended very differently.
Jack’s gaze met hers, and he gave a quick nod of triumph. She couldn’t hold back her smile or her mouthed, “Thank you.”
Her fingers were still over his, and he turned his hand and captured them, giving a quick