Crash Into You (5 page)

             
In the living room, he gently placed the girl on a cream suede bench.  She didn’t move a muscle, as if she had no strength of her own at all.  

“Is there some place that hurts worse than others?”
he asked, kneeling down on the floor beside her.   May stood beside him, trying to sniff her, and Mark gently pushed her back.  

             
“Ribs,” she said.

             
“Okay, I’m going to very carefully examine your ribs.  I promise I’ll try not to hurt you.”

             
Another damn promise. 

             
Mark gingerly opened her torn and ragged jacket.  Beneath it, she wore a plain light blue knit shirt.  It was filthy.  Vomit and dirt covered the front of it.   He gently pushed it up and looked at her chest. 

             
He surveyed the extensive bruising, particularly on the left side of her body. A deep, shining, purple bruise bloomed over the waistband of her cargo pants, meaning her internal organs were damaged.   A lacerated spleen or liver was an immediate concern.   For now he focused on her ribs, gently manipulating them with his fingertips.  He detected a very slight suspicious ridge on one and in the full light of the living room he saw that she did have a bluish cast to her skin – possibly from her cells not getting enough oxygen due to a collapsed lung, caused by a broken rib.

             
“Does your chest hurt?”

             
She nodded.             

“Hard to breathe?”

She nodded again.

“Okay.  I need to check out the bruising right here,” he said, not daring to touch the tortured flesh
over her waistband, just pointing to it.  

             
She didn’t reply.  He unbuttoned her pants and lowered the fly.  A black bruise had formed on the side of her smooth, gently curved belly, some of it covered by her red cotton panties.   That was bad news.

             
“I have to get you to a hospital.  Before you argue, you have some internal injuries have to be addressed.  I don’t have the tools here to examine you or fix you up.  You need an MRI, a CT scan and surgery.”  He didn’t say
you are bleeding internally and will die very soon if I don’t fix it.
   But he was thinking it.

             
“Can’t,” she whispered.  Her face crumpled and fresh tears rolled down the side of her face. 

He
buttoned her up and pulled her shirt down to preserve her modesty.   He gently tried to wipe away her tears without hurting her bruises.   “Don’t cry, darlin’, it will only make your chest hurt worse.”

Her dazed gaze foun
d him.  He had seen that look before, the naked eyes of the animal trapped and in agony.    It alarmed him, and touched something deep inside.  Beyond professional compassion as a physician, he felt deeply touched by this lost girl.  

“If you take me to the hospital, he will find me and kill me.”

Mark sat back on his heels.  Of all the things he might have expected her to say, that was the absolute last.   “Who?”

She didn’t answer. 
She was used to keeping secrets, he thought.  

The girl looked very young;
she was small-boned and petite.   A strong wind could knock her over. The thought of some man even threatening to hurt her made him want to destroy that person.   

“I was trying to escape,” she whispered.  “My
ex is looking for me.  He’s a cop.”  She took in some unsteady breaths that all but confirmed his diagnosis of a collapsed lung.   “He is crazy.  If he finds me, he’ll kill me.”

Mark considered that for a moment.   “Okay, just
rest.  I’ll be right back.”

In the kitchen he made a phone call.  He returned to the girl a few moments later to find her
in exactly the same position.   Either she lacked the energy to get comfortable, or her body was so battered that every position and angle hurt.  

“W
e’re going to a clinic,” he said.  “It’s run by a friend.  I’ve asked him to keep this quiet.”

Her huge green eyes took on sheen of terror
, but he wasn’t going to negotiate or relent.  Not about this.  Once again he picked her up, regretting that he was jostling her.   He tried to be gentle.   In the garage, he placed her in the back seat of the Bronco and covered her with a warm woolen blanket. 

Once on the main blacktop, he pushed the SUV up to seventy miles per hour; no other cars were around.  It was wild country out here.   N
o stoplights or traffic jams.  A few russet-coated white-faced Hereford cows looked up as he passed the farthest acres of his property; they belonged to the Darmstadt family, who were leasing acreage from him.

The
pastoral peace of Spanner, Montana was the opposite of his life in Washington D.C.    Until he found the girl in his barn,  the most interesting thing to happen in Spanner was the birth of the new filly.

Dr. Kevin
McKinsey, an old family friend, had not seemed particularly alarmed by Mark’s request for total secrecy.   When Mark graduated medical school, McKinsey had tried to lure him back to Spanner, even offering to make him a partner in the small regional practice.   But Mark had his sights set on big city emergency rooms.  He got really good at treating gunshot wounds, a skill he didn’t think would be in high demand in a town of five thousand people.   As it happened, he only worked at George Washington University ER for two years before his life took a wildly divergent turn, into a period of time he preferred to forget.

             
Spanner Health Clinic was a low-slung white building on Bangor Street, across from a small park with a fountain honoring two World War Two veterans from the town.  The clinic was a sophisticated facility for such a small town.  Last summer, McKinsey bought a CT scan.  The next closest one was sixty miles away in Whitefish.

             
McKinsey was already waiting just inside.  He held the door open for Mark as he walked in carrying the girl.  “Thanks for seeing her,” Mark said.

             
“No trouble at all,” McKinsey replied, directing him from the tiny reception area to the first exam room.  “I do have patients scheduled in an hour though.   My new nurse will be here in half an hour.  I don’t know if that will be a problem with all your cloak and dagger stuff.”

Ma
rk didn’t bother to answer that.  He placed Lauren on the table.  “She’s got extensive contusions over the left side of her body.  Possible ruptured spleen or liver and collapsed lung.”

             
McKinsey put a stethoscope to her chest, listening to her heart and lungs for any fluid.  “Who is she?”

             
“I don’t know,” Mark said.  “I found her in my barn.  I suspect she was in a car accident, then, concussed and confused, wandered away.  She said a man will come after her if he knows she’s here.”

             
“Well that accounts for the secrecy,” McKinsey replied.   He lifted her shirt to examine the thoracic bruises and severe discoloration on her belly.  “We need to have a look at this.  Let’s get her to the MRI.”

             
Mark looked at her battered face.  She was a pretty girl under all those bruises.   She stared up at him beseechingly, her eyes lucid, despite the trauma to the rest of her face.  Her eyes had been following him since he brought her through the door.   

He
smiled gently.  “Don’t worry.  You’re going to be fine.”

She forced a weird mockery of a smile and he wanted to tell her not to do that.   Don’t be polite.  Just rest.

He walked back to McKinsey at the monitor behind the glass that divided the MRI operator from the patient.  The older doctor hummed lightly to himself.  “Oh yeah,” he said lightly. “See for yourself,” he said and stood aside.

             
The scans revealed a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen and a cracked rib.

             
“Call ahead to North Valley Hospital in Whitefish,” Mark said.  “Tell them we’re on our way.”             

As Mark carried the patient through the wide automatic doors of North Valley Hospital, they were instantly surrounded by a flurry of doctors and nurses who were prepared to take over.   McKinsey’s call ahead had invigorated a sleepy ten-bed ER into a hive of activity.

             
Mark gently placed Lauren on the table and in the next instant they were rolling her back into surgery.   At the NO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT door, a nurse stopped him.

             
“I’m a doctor,” he said, alarmed at the insistence in his own voice.

             
“But not here,” she replied calmly.  “Sit down, the doctors will be out to talk to you as soon as possible.”  The door swung closed.

             
Strangely stung, Mark meandered back to the waiting room.  He sank into a beige armchair, feeling oddly at loose ends. He was uncomfortable as hell just sitting around, twiddling his thumbs. He forced himself to sit still, jaw clenched.

             
“Sir?”  The receptionist waved a clipboard at him.   “Paperwork.” 

             
Mark hesitated just a moment.  He didn’t know anything about the patient, much less her insurance information.  But he began to fill out the information anyway.   Name:  Lauren…  She hadn’t given a last name.  Her pained pleas were mostly about avoiding the hospital, so there hadn’t been a lot of background gathering.   He scribbled “Spanner” for her last name.   He wrote his ranch address for her address.    Date of birth.  He guessed she was twenty-five, and then gave her a birth date of January 1.

             
The rest of the document asked for information he couldn’t bluff. He didn’t know anything about her medical history, whether she had a history of heart problems or cancer in her family, whether she was allergic to any medications. 

             
After filling it out as best he could, he returned the packet to the receptionist, but couldn’t sit still.   He wandered casually around the hallways, noting the security was lax.  Non-existent, in fact.  A side door was propped open with a big rock.  Mark kicked it out of place and pulled the door closed.  Sauntering through the well-lit but deserted hallways and stairwells, nobody confronted him.  Nurses and doctors chatted at the nurse’s station.  The nurses and orderlies meandering from rooms seemed way too friendly for his liking. No one challenged him drifting by like a big, quiet ghost.

             
If someone were after Lauren, he would have no trouble walking in like he owned the place and being directed to her room by a friendly receptionist.  Lauren had nearly killed herself trying to get away from him. Like a wolf chewing off its own leg to escape a trap.

             
Unbidden images of his sister danced before his eyes.  Maggie Spanner was one of the strongest, most self-reliant women he’d ever known; she’d been treated like one of the boys on the ranch and was capable of handling physical and tasks that would cower men twice her size.   But that didn’t add up to a hill of beans when her former boyfriend made the dire mistake of shoving her in full view of her brothers several Christmases ago.   A football tackle ensued, and the guy was eventually sent to the hospital with a broken wrist.   Since Mark had always been closer to her than the other siblings, she’d trusted him enough to reveal what was really going on in that relationship.   What she thought of as charming protectiveness devolved into a level of control she was not comfortable with.   Maggie swore he’d never laid hands on her before, and thank God for that because Mark would have killed the guy.

             
Mark felt that same murderous impulse toward the person menacing Lauren.  He despised men who used their strength against women.   Reminding himself that he wasn’t responsible for her didn’t stop the locomotive roaring in his chest.   He was free to leave, though he wouldn’t.   Not until he knew she was safe.

There
was something sweetly compelling about Lauren. Her vulnerability appealed to his desire to heal people instead of hurt them, a desire he thought he’d buried long ago in Afghanistan.   She made him feel compassionate and kind.  Like a good person.

             
Who are you fooling, man?  You can’t save her.  You can’t even save yourself.

He had made a full circuit and ended up back at the waiting room.  He noticed
a coffee station.  He poured himself a cup, mixed in some sugar, and tasted it.   The coffee was bitter, no telling how long it had been sitting out.  He added creamer and another teaspoon of sugar, then returned to his seat to settle in for a wait.

He had been in the waiting room for nearly three hours when a stubble-jawed surgeon walked out to meet with Mark. The surgery went off without a hitch; Lauren’s spleen was saved and would be completely fine when she healed from surgery.    Her lung wasn’t collapsed; it was punctured though, which would be eased by holding a soft pillow against the chest wall; it would splint the fracture and lessen the pain of each breath.