Chapter 15: Night Standby

Jude's POV

The Priority Line rang at 11:48 on Sunday night, and I had the receiver up before the ring finished.

"Merrick."

A park ranger told me a hiker had slid forty feet down a slope below the Mosquito Ridge fire road and broken his leg.

"Copy," I said. "Hollenbeck Two is airborne in six minutes."

Victoria stood up from the desk.

She had been sitting beside me since ten, drinking tea she never finished, because she wanted to know what the line sounded like at night.

"Take me," she said.

"You don't have to."

"I own the seat. I'd like to sit in it."

I got her a headset and a flight jacket that was not mine, because she had mine on already.

She did not say a word on the climb.

She watched the dark foothills open under the lights, with the little orange scars of old burns along every ridge.

We found the hiker by his headlamp.

He was sixty, scared and swearing, and two medics had him on the litter before the skids settled.

Victoria climbed out and knelt in the dirt with him.

She did it without being asked, and she told him her name and held his hand while they splinted the leg.

"You're a nurse," he said.

"Hospice," she said. "So you're doing very well."

He laughed, and then he cried a little, and she stayed on his hand until the medics lifted him.

We had him on the pad at the hospital in forty minutes.

I stood on the skid pad and watched her walk back from the hospital doors with her hands in her jacket pockets.

I thought, I will never be able to say what this is.

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