Angel's Rest(100)

This wouldn’t end well. It never did. He never should have let down his guard.

As that thought crystallized in his mind, the car rounded a curve and the animal’s eyes flashed in the beam of the headlights as an elk bounded from the trees directly in front of them. Gabe instinctively braked and twisted the wheel. The tires skidded. The car began to hydroplane. Nic screamed. Jen screamed.

The elk bounced off the front fender and disappeared into the woods as the airbags deployed.

Airbags deployed. Metal crunched. Matt’s cry stopped abruptly.

The Jeep slid off the road and came to rest softly against a stand of piñon pines. Beside him, his wife cried out, “Gabe?”

A chemical scent filled the air. “Jen, are you all right?”

She let out a little whimper of pain. “Nic. I’m Nic. Can we drive? Please tell me we’re not stuck.”

Nic. I’m with Nic. Gabe glanced in the backseat. No smashed car seat. No broken little boy. This was Colorado, not Virginia. Nic, not Jennifer. Twin babies on the way, not his beloved little Matt.

He looked at Nic, barely able to see her in the shadows. She’s moving. She’s talking. Gabe blew out a breath, released his death grip around the steering wheel, and dragged a trembling hand down his face, then switched on the dome light. “Nicole, are you hurt?”

She was as pale as a corpse. Urgently he asked, “Are you bleeding?”

“No. Just scraped up a bit, I think, from the airbag. Are we stranded, Gabe?”

He took stock. The windshield wipers kept up their rhythmic motion. Norah Jones still sang. The motor continued to run. They had four-wheel drive. He’d get them out of here if he had to push the Jeep back onto the road himself. “We’re not stranded,” he told her, opening his door. “I’ll be right back.”

Cold rain doused him and he vaguely noted the scrapes on his own skin stinging as he rounded the front of the car. The dent in the passenger-side front panel sucked the breath right out of his lungs. Two seconds later and the elk would have come through Nic’s window. She could have died.

Nausea struck him and he staggered back a step, leaned over with his hands on his knees, and vomited. Then he stood and lifted his face into the cold, driving rain, but he knew he couldn’t tarry. The clock was still ticking.

He returned to the Jeep. “The ground is spongy but not a quagmire,” he told Nic. “Getting out should be no problem.” With a deft touch he guided the Jeep back onto the road.

Gabe didn’t protest when Nic switched on the heater and ejected the CD. He was cold to the bone, though he doubted anything so simple as a heater could warm him. He was lost in a nightmare made up of now and of then. He could smell blood on the air even while he knew he was in Colorado and not in Virginia. What if the doctor couldn’t stop her labor? What if the babies died? What if Nic died? Jen had died. He’d been alone. He’d be alone again.

He was terrified.

They completed the trip to Gunnison in silence.

At the hospital, he pulled into the circular drive in front of the emergency entrance, shifted into park, and looked at her. Light from the emergency room sign turned her pale complexion bloodred. He saw both fear and urgency in her eyes and knew his own eyes must reflect the same emotions. “Wait here until I get help, okay?”

“Sure.”

Even before he rounded the Jeep, the ER’s automatic doors whooshed open and a man wearing scrubs pushed an empty wheelchair toward them. “Is this Mrs. Callahan?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Marshall is waiting for her.”

Gabe opened Nic’s door and he and the ER employee helped her into the chair. “If you’ll take the first right and go down to the end of the hall, Admitting has paperwork for you to sign, Mr. Callahan. Your wife will be to the left in room three. You’ll want to move your car before you join her.”

“Okay.”

Nic looked back over her shoulder at him, her expression rife with worry, her blue eyes pleading for him to hurry. He tried to smile reassuringly, but he simply couldn’t get his lips to lift.

Gabe made his way to Admitting. In his mind’s eye, he was back in a Virginia hospital, his clothing covered in blood—his blood, hers. Matt’s. Oh, God. Matty.

“May I have your insurance card?”

A policeman saying, His wife is DOA.

“Sir? Your insurance card?”

“What? Oh.” He winced. “Sorry.”