of where she laid blame or how she took responsibility, what mattered most for now was the state of Gabe’s health, not rehashing the mistakes or hurts of the past.
“Leah?”
Hearing her name, she pulled her thoughts together and met Jeff’s questioning gaze. He was obviously reading more into her inattentiveness than she wanted.
“Maybe you should take a break,” he suggested softly.
She was tempted to take his advice, but she’d never deserted a patient before and she wouldn’t start now. She shook her head and squared her shoulders. “I’m fine. Really.”
Jeff simply shrugged, then listened to Gabe’s chest sounds as he spoke. “You still have some nasty injuries. What did you do? Hit every tree in the jungle?”
“It seemed like it,” Gabe mentioned ruefully. “I picked up about half of my bruises and bumps during the crash. Splitting my leg open came later.”
“What happened?”
“In regard to my leg or the crash itself?”
“Both.”
Curious about the details surrounding his experience, Leah listened closely.
“Minutes before we crashed, there was a thump, then an engine sputtered, and Ramon yelled something about birds. The next thing I knew, we were going down.” He paused. “When it was all over, I had a dislocated shoulder and a bad wrist. Jack relocated the bone and immobilized my arm with the supplies out of our first-aid kit. Then we went to find help.”
Leah tried not to imagine the pain he must have endured while Jack had worked on his shoulder without any anesthetic. As an internist, Jack’s basic orthopedic skills were no doubt rusty, but he would have had to proceed because the potential complications like a lack of blood supply and damaged nerves were too serious to ignore. As she surreptitiously studied Gabe’s fingers, the pink skin color and lack of swelling were reassuring signs of his success.
“Needless to say, it took us a while to find another human being,” he added wryly, “although, technically, a few locals found us when they stumbled across our path. We stayed in their village overnight but before they took us to the next town, the search team had tracked us there. And here we are.”
“You’re lucky they found you at all,” Leah interjected. “We were told you were dead.” Thank goodness Sheldon had persisted with cutting through the red tape to send in their own team. If they’d accepted the official verdict and let matters lie … the idea of Gabe and his colleagues still wandering through the jungle sent a chill down her spine.
“I’m not surprised the authorities assumed the worst,” Gabe said, his voice pained. “We’d stopped inches away from a ravine and thought we were on safe ground. Not long afterwards, the ground gave way and the plane slid over the edge. On its way down, the fuel tanks blew.”
Mentally picturing the scene, Leah shuddered as her grip tightened on the blood-pressure cuff she was still holding.
“You three are celebrities now,” Jeff remarked. “Not many people walk away from an experience like that.”
Gabe’s face became stoic, his expression shuttered. “Two of my group didn’t.”
“Who?” she asked, hating it that not everyone associated with Montgomery Medical would have a happy ending.
“Will. Will Henderson, and Ramon.”
Will was an information technology guru Gabe had hired about eighteen months ago to facilitate the internet connections between remote medical clinics and hospitals to specialists at centers like Spring Valley. Leah had met him a few times but had never had any dealings with him.
Ramon Diaz, however, was a man she knew quite well. As the first pilot Gabe had ever hired and the organization’s most senior pilot, Ramon had usually taken charge of Gabe’s flights. He’d also begun dating Theresa, one of the foundation’s nurses, right before Leah and Gabe had split up, and had recently proposed to her. No doubt they’d both been thrilled to go on this trip together. How sad it had ended so horribly.
“Oh, Gabe,” she breathed, knowing how the loss of two people who had been more friends than employees must weigh heavily on him. She dropped the cuff and clutched his hand in sympathy. “Did they … suffer?”
“Will didn’t. He died in the crash. Ramon … died later.”
Gabe’s tight-lipped expression suggested there was a lot more to his story, but she didn’t press for details. “I’m sorry, both for you and the company. Theresa must be devastated.”
“She’s having a tough time,” Gabe agreed.
Making a mental note to visit with Theresa as soon as she was able, Leah watched as Jeff unwrapped the bandage around Gabe’s leg. The gash was red and swollen, but didn’t look nearly as bad as Leah had anticipated.
“I’ve seen worse,” the doctor remarked, apparently agreeing with her opinion. “How long ago did this happen?”
“About ten days. I slid down a hill and bumped into a few rocks along the way. One of them sliced my skin.”
“Then it definitely isn’t healing as fast as I’d like.”
“We cleaned it as best we could but, as you can see, our topical ointment couldn’t quite do the job.” Gabe winced as his colleague probed the area and his grip on her hand tightened. “Sutures might have helped, but those weren’t available, either.”
Leah wasn’t fooled by his innocent tone or his condensed version of events. He could probably talk for hours about their struggle for the things she took for granted—food, water, protection from the elements and safety from predators. And he’d definitely had a difficult time because his clothing appeared as if he’d walked through a shredder.
As for his injuries, he’d made them sound as if they were nothing more than minor inconveniences when they were visible proof of his harrowing ordeal. Cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder were painful under ideal conditions and to “slide down a hill and bump into a few rocks” before they’d healed would have been agony. If the truth were known, it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that his so-called “hill” could probably compete with Pikes Peak and his “few rocks” had probably been boulders.
She wanted to throttle him for acting as if his stint in the jungle had been as easy and effortless as a Sunday stroll through the city park. Making a big deal out of bumps and bruises, gashes and cracked bones went against his macho grain, even if he was speaking to a physician who recognized what it took to create this degree of damage. There were two females in the room, too, and it wouldn’t do to appear weak in front of them. In essence, it was a guy thing—part of that caveman, show-the-woman-who’s-strongest mentality.
It was also a Gabe thing. He’d always tried his best to insulate her from the harsh realities of life instead of treating her as a partner in the challenges they faced—and they’d had a number of personal difficulties and tragedies to contend with. Obviously, he still pictured her as being too weak to face the truth. While some women might appreciate being treated like a Fabergé egg, she wasn’t one of them. After ten years of marriage, Gabe should have learned that, but he hadn’t.
As
