Her little girl was already wailing. With a light touch, Jules swabbed the deltoid muscle with an alcohol wipe, stretched the skin taut, inserted the tip, injected the vaccine, and was done in less than five seconds. Not that it mattered to the toddler, who was clinging to her mom’s neck for dear life.

“I know, sweetie,” Jules said, real empathy in her voice. Keeping pressure on the site of the injection, she set the needle down, gave the area another wipe, and deftly applied the Hello Kitty bandaid. “All done,” she announced quietly.

Mom patted the little girl’s back as the wailing continued and Jules gave them both a sympathetic smile. It always hurt the moms more than the kids. After hearing all the other toddlers cry while waiting in the clinic’s little lobby, Jules wouldn’t blame the moms for crying too.

“Look what I’ve got for you,” came Logan’s cheery but deep voice.

In her peripheral vision, Jules saw a green lollipop twirling. As she backed away from the little girl, she removed her latex gloves. Without having to get a new vaccine ready, she took a moment to watch.

Logan bent down, so his eyes were level with the little girl’s and waited, twirling the lollipop. Her mom turned so that her daughter could see him, even though the crying had yet to stop.

“It’s your favorite flavor,” he said, trying to pitch his voice higher. “
Green
.” He smiled and Jules found herself smiling with him. His jet black hair was cropped short, contrasting sharply with his blue eyes. Then, in the way he’d done with every other child, he produced a red version in his other hand. “Or is your favorite red?”

Now he had the little girl’s attention.

Logan Sanders wasn’t Jules’ assistant although she wished he was. In fact, he had nothing to do with medicine at all. He was her bush pilot. The little girl looked from one lollipop to the other as the crying slowed to infrequent sobs and sniffles.

“I just don’t know,” Logan said, his tall frame bent low. He looked from one sucker to the other and cocked his head. “Is your favorite red or is it green?”

He twirled each between an index finger and thumb. Jules fetched a facial tissue and passed it to the mom, who used it to wipe the little girl’s nose.

“Hmm,” Logan said frowning but then he suddenly smiled. “I know!” he said cheerily. “I don’t have to decide!” He put them together in one hand and extended them to the little girl. “Because the bravest patients get two.”

The little girl looked at her mom, who smiled and nodded. Still sniffling, the little girl hardly had to extend her hand and Logan had the suckers in it. She stared at them, a little wide-eyed.

“Thank you,” her mom said. She glanced at Jules and then back to Logan. “Thank you for making it out here.”

The city of Spallumcheen, British Columbia, was an RSA community, type D–a small Rural Subsidiary Agreement town. As a member of the RSA program, Jules had committed to practicing medicine on a traveling basis and reaching out to patients in places who didn’t have ready access to other medical help. Although she and Logan came through regularly, today the need was urgent. Avian flu had begun to spread. Despite the weather and already crushing workload, they’d made an extra effort to get the vaccinations out to the patients most at risk–the elderly and the young.

Jules smiled in return but knew the young woman was waiting for a reply from Logan–and not just because he was the pilot. Though he was probably thirty years old and a former Canadian Royal Air Force pilot, his face had a boyish charm that was captivating. When she’d asked him about the name “Razor” printed on his gear bag, he’d said his call sign came from his buddies joking that he looked too young to shave. Under the jeans and polo shirt, it was obvious he worked out but, even so, Jules thought it was probably the winning smile that had the moms hanging on his every word.

He stood up to his full height, easily over six feet tall, and beamed down at the little girl as she tugged on the plastic wrapper of the red lollipop.

“We’re happy to be of service,” he said and Jules knew that was true.

But today, Logan had pitched in above and beyond the call. The rocky start at her house in the morning had no doubt triggered that. Bursting into tears hadn’t exactly been a great way to begin the day. The mother and daughter exited the small patient room as Logan held the door for them. As he let it close, Jules rubbed her tired eyes. They still had one more stop to make.

• • • • •

“Another happy customer,” Logan said, as he stole another glance at Jules.

She had leaned back against the exam table and was rubbing her eyes. Working with the kids always buoyed her but today was different. He’d known from the moment she’d opened the front door that she was upset.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said. “The divorce papers just arrived.”

Then she’d started to cry.

It’d been building for some time. He’d sensed something had been bothering her, almost from the time they’d first met. Then she had moved–without her husband. Over the last few months of working together, the story had come out bit by bit.

Her ex was also a doctor but apparently he’d been less than thrilled with the small town life of Chilliwack. Run of the mill surgeries weren’t challenging enough, life was too slow, and the social life was too nil. Though Jules had said from the start that she wanted to work in rural medicine, the reality of what that life would be like hadn’t sunk in. In the RSA program, doctors didn’t wait for their patients to come to the hospital. Medical practitioners traveled to those in need because the hospitals were too far. The work meant long hours.

He watched her take a deep breath and quickly looked away just as she dropped her hands. Her eyes had been tinged with red most of the day. As he bundled up the remaining candy in the plastic grocery bag, he was careful not to look at her. He’d been doing too much of that.

“Of course they’re satisfied,” she said. “Candy from the nice man and an escape from the evil doctor?” She laughed a little. “I’d be satisfied too.”

He opened the bag, grabbed two suckers and turned to her. In his right hand, he slowly twirled an orange one.

“Let’s see,” he said smiling.

She broke into a smile that cheered him. It was as though a heaviness in his chest, that he hadn’t realized was there, had lifted. When Jules was happy, her prettiness became stunning. Petite and fine-boned, with chestnut-colored hair, she was a china doll in a white doctor’s coat. Her hazel eyes glittered but it was the curve of her pink lips that he stared at.

“How did you know orange was my favorite?” she asked, taking it.

“Call it a hunch,” he said, as he opened the other one.

She opened hers as well and popped it in her mouth. Still grinning, she turned and started to pack up the syringes.

People got divorced. That part Logan understood. What he couldn’t believe was her ex-husband had been cheating on her. On
her
. Logan shook his head a little as he tucked the bag of candy into a plastic, hinge-top box. The ex had been seeing a nurse at the hospital and everyone there had known–except Jules. She’d been devastated.

Logan could relate.

He shook out his right leg. The knee with the shrapnel got stiff after hours of standing. Although the physical therapists had called his workout plan ‘extreme,’ he credited it with regaining his mobility when their therapy hadn’t. All the upper body work might not have been necessary but he was determined to be strong. Lower body, upper body, and mind–they went together.

He picked up the vaccine information sheets and laid them in the bottom of the box. He checked his watch–noon. If the weather held, they’d have plenty of time to get to Lumby and back to Chilliwack before dark. Mountain flying in reduced visibility wasn’t ideal but mountain flying in the dark was suicidal. The famed wet weather of British Columbia was almost always an issue. Although he was used to it from having grown up in the region, the majority of his flight hours were, ironically, over the desert.

Logan packed up the box of latex gloves, the tissues and wipes, the few dressing gowns and disposable sheets they always carried, and the anti-bacterial soap. Jules dropped the last needle into the sharps container and packed it into another plastic box. The stethoscope went into the leather doctor’s bag and the lid of the small cooler with the vaccines was snapped into place. The last step was always to take off the white lab coat, as though she were stepping out of the role for a while.

Without the attire and accoutrements, she might have been any other woman in her late twenties. She wore what she called her uniform: dark slacks and a crisp, white, long-sleeve shirt, open a couple of buttons at the collar. It supposedly instilled confidence in the patients but they didn’t see most of it. They didn’t see how well the tight slacks and tapered shirt fit under the loose coat.

As she closed up her box, he did the same. Almost like a choreographed dance, he put on his leather flight jacket and she put on her red rain jacket. He slipped on the amber tinted aviator sunglasses as she piled her plastic box on his. He picked them both up as she took her bag and the handle of the cooler.

“Next stop…” she said.

“Lumby,” he replied.

• • • • •

Jules never tired of the view because the Monashee Mountains never looked the same. Sometimes, like today, the tops of the snow-capped peaks were obscured by cloud cover. The green of the dense slopes and deep river valleys turned emerald under grey skies. Below them, the Shuswap River was a silvery ribbon, looping its way to the north and the lake behind them. Logan had said that some pilots like to look at the sky and some at the ground–some flew low-wings and some high-wings. She was glad he flew a high-wing.

“How many kids do you want?” she asked, looking out her window.

She’d become used to the fuzzy sound of her voice in the headsets. In the beginning, when they’d first started their in-flight chats, she’d worried they might be recorded. Logan had found that amusing and had assured her that the headset chatter in little civilian planes wasn’t archived in any way. If he were recording them, there’d be an MP3 player sitting on the dash.

“Oh, I don’t know,” his voice came back. “As many as I can afford.”

The plane buffeted and Jules put her hands down on the map and small binder in her lap. In the beginning, that sort of thing had frightened her. But now she knew that, even if the wings flexed, they were still all right.

“That many?” she said, still looking out at the rolling and hilly country stretching away to the south.

Logan laughed.

“I didn’t say how many I could afford,” he said.

She looked over at him as he swung his gaze from his window, to the windshield, to her, and then out her window. She’d gotten used to this too. His visual scan of the airspace never stopped but he was smiling.

It was so easy to forget the real world up here in the sky. She looked out the windshield and through the spinning propeller. With just a couple of headsets and the planet passing by below, it felt like they were riding in a tiny bubble.

Jules looked forward to these rides more and more over the last few weeks. It was a getaway from her troubles and a chance to talk. They chatted about everything and anything in the plane but almost nothing on the ground. It was a pattern they’d fallen into almost from the start. In their private and isolated world, the topics went everywhere–except for her marriage and his years in the Iraq war.

He was still smiling as he looked back out the front windshield and glanced at the dash.

It’d be a shame if he didn’t have kids. He’s so good with them.

She watched the playful curve of his lips, looked at the strong jaw, and knew from memory the powerful arms just under the leather jacket. His kids couldn’t help but be good looking. Making kids
with
him would be–

Jules blinked as she realized what she’d pictured and her cheeks flushed hot.

Oh my god.

“And how about you?” he asked.

Stricken, she gaped at him.

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