he must be cautious. His faith in his own judgment wasn’t what it used to be. Perhaps that was a good thing, perhaps not.
“May I ask who it is you’re concerned about?” The expression in Cheyenne’s dark brown eyes was direct.
He hesitated, feeling foolish. His request had been impulsive, which was uncharacteristic of him. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get out of this situation without looking unprofessional, even silly, to these two serious, obviously dedicated physicians. Karah Lee Fletcher’s frown deepened.
He cleared his throat. “I simply wished to speak with this particular person in private before any—”
There was a clatter beyond the closed conference room door. Someone had come running into the waiting room of the clinic.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” came an urgent, feminine voice—a voice familiar to Rex, even after all these years, and even with the sharp edge of urgency that carried it down the hallway.
Cheyenne frowned at Karah Lee, who rose quickly, opened the door and stuck her head out into the hallway. “Noelle? What are you doing here? It’s Saturday.”
“Oh, thank goodness! I didn’t expect anyone to be here, or I’d have called. Jill and Sheena are doing CPR on Edith Potts at the spa. Not sure what happened. I came to get—”
“She’s unresponsive?” Cheyenne shoved away from the table and came out of her chair, yanking the door open wide.
Through the doorway, Rex caught sight of a beautiful woman with thick brown hair and small, exquisitely feminine features. She would be in her midthirties now. The only thing that marred her beauty were those blue eyes filled with dark concern. She was very obviously pregnant. Jill’s younger sister.
“She stopped breathing,” Noelle said. “Jill is—”
“Karah Lee,” Cheyenne said over her shoulder, “grab the crash cart. Make sure there’s a cric kit on it. We may have to do a cricothyroidotomy.”
“There is a cric kit,” Noelle said. “I checked it myself yesterday.”
“Let’s get it to the spa,” Cheyenne said. Without a backward glance, both doctors followed Noelle from the clinic, pushing a fully loaded crash cart in front of them.
Rex rushed out behind them. It had been three years since his last official stint in an emergency department, but he would be there if he was needed.
And besides, he, too, needed to know what was wrong with dear old Edith Potts.
In frustration and despair, Jill forced her own breath into Edith’s lungs through the protective pocket mask Noelle kept in each massage room, while the young massage therapist pumped rhythmically on Edith’s chest. The soothing background music was a stark contrast to the sound of hard breathing. This spacious room suddenly felt far too confining.
Sheena’s face was red from exertion and anxiety. Though she obviously knew the procedure, it was just as obvious she had never handled an emergency like this before.
“She isn’t responding, Jill. It isn’t working!” The young woman’s blond hair had darkened around her neck with perspiration. “What are we going to do?”
“Stop a second.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m not tired, I’m just—”
“Stop, Sheena! I need to check her.”
The masseuse withdrew her trembling hands from their locked position over Edith’s chest.
Jill knelt close to Edith’s mouth and listened for air movement. None. She pressed her fingers against the carotid artery and checked for a pulse. Nothing. Lord, please don’t take Edith!
“Come and do rescue breathing, and I’ll take over the chest compressions,” she told Sheena.
“No, I can do the compressions. I’m not tired.”
“I’m not asking, I’m telling you, trade places with me.”
“Where’s Noelle with that kit? Shouldn’t she—”
“Just do it!” Jill shouted.
The sound of multiple footsteps reached them from the marble-tiled front entryway.
“Noelle?” Jill called to them. “Is that you? Did you get the intubation—”
Cheyenne burst into the room with a crash cart, followed by Noelle and Karah Lee and a bearded man she didn’t recognize—
For a millisecond, Jill glanced at him again. Not a stranger. She knew that face, in spite of the short, salt-and-pepper beard she’d never seen before, and the cropped dark hair, receding hairline and slight creases of maturity around the calm, gray eyes….
Jill knew that man. Very, very well. Or she had known him once.
But there was no time to react, no time to think. “Chey, she’s gone unresponsive—”
“We’ve got it.” Cheyenne ripped the intubation kit open and started giving orders.
Jill gave a quiet sigh as she scrambled out of the way of the doctors and waited for her first orders. If anyone could bring Edith back, these people could do it.
Rex endured the expected sense of déjà vu, unable, for a few seconds, to drag his gaze from Jill Cooper’s face, which was, at this moment, smeared with some kind of green stuff. Several strands of her hair, dark and thick as he remembered it, had fallen from the confines of a floral turban, grazing the tops of her shoulders. Her body was wrapped in a matching green-and-lavender floral gown.
After a very brief double take at the sight of him, she returned her attention to the still figure of her beloved mentor lying on the floor.
He set to work moving a lounger and a magazine rack out of the way to give the rescue team freedom of movement as they worked.
He remembered Edith Potts, even after all this time, and as he worked he said a silent prayer for her. It had been Edith to whom Jill turned for wisdom and for motherly love.
It had been the strong, wise Edith on whom Jill had depended for advice when her younger sister skipped school or decided not to return home after an evening of partying.
The older woman had also been the one to prepare special meals for Rex when he visited Hideaway on those rare weekends of freedom from the hospital. When there wasn’t room at the bed and breakfast, he had stayed at her house. That was before she and Bertie Meyer purchased the bed and breakfast.
“Get a rhythm,” Cheyenne barked, crouching at Edith’s head.
Karah Lee grabbed the paddles from the cart and placed them on Edith’s chest. “Stop CPR.” She then looked at the monitor. “I’ve got it. Is there a pulse?”
“None,” Cheyenne said, also looking at the monitor while feeling for a pulse in the neck. “It’s PEA. Not shock-able.”
Rex slumped. Pulseless electrical
