a once-over, even if she hadn’t made up her mind about pursuing it.
Truth was, ever since the prom-night accident, she’d embraced her physical changes as a constant, stark reminder of all the pain she’d caused. She never wanted to forget. Brody and the others suffered from garden variety survivor’s guilt, but none of them had truly been at fault for what had happened that night.
None of them, that is, except her.
Lexy shivered, rubbed her palms over her upper arms.
To this day, she could close her eyes and recall the exact moment when she’d irresponsibly tried to crawl on her boyfriend Randy’s lap, even knowing he was driving.
Knowing the twisting roads were treacherous at night.
Knowing all of them had been drinking.
She’d known better and had done it anyway.
Her hip hit the steering wheel, knocking it out of Randy’s grasp, and the slow-motion look of raw fear on his face before they tipped over the cliff side still haunted her. She saw it as she drifted off to sleep, revisited it in her nightmares and she came back to it as she woke up.
Every day.
He had known he’d lost control of the SUV and, though he tried, there was no regaining it. At that moment, seeing his whitened face, their terrified gazes locked, she’d known, too. It was the last expression she’d ever see him make.
Her fault. No one else’s.
If only she could take it all back.
But she couldn’t. Four teens buried. It was done.
All things considered, adapting to the loss of function in her legs seemed a small price to pay for the ripple effect of grief she’d set into motion throughout the community.
Still … when she’d confided in Rayna, a fellow wheelchair triathlete, she had suggested that maybe it was time for Lexy to stop punishing herself.
I just don’t know how.
She blinked down at the paperwork outlining new treatments. Everyone around her was happy. She supposed she could think about finding a new level of happiness herself, whatever that took. She wasn’t sure, though, if this experimental treatment route was the key. If walking was the key. It would take her completely out of her comfort zone, and nothing was guaranteed, anyway.
A 9-1-1 line warbled, cutting through the silence. Lexy gratefully tossed the papers aside and pressed the red button on her phone keyboard to engage the line, relieved by the interruption. She’d reconsider the monumental decision about helping herself later. Right now her job was to help someone else, which fell directly within her comfort zone.
Go time.
Chapter Two
Calm. Cool. Professional. “Nine-one-one, what is the address of your emergency?”
“Help!” raged a small child on the other end, his screams cutting into the calm of the day. “P-please help me! My daddy’s dying.”
Lexy’s body lurched into full adrenaline alert mode, but she maintained her controlled tone through pure force of habit and years of training. Calls from kids were both the worst and the best. No doubt these crises reached out and grabbed you by the throat, but in her experience, children under stress followed instructions much better than adults. “Okay. Where are you?”
“I.I.”
He sounded young. What if he didn’t know his address? She glanced at the ANI-ALI screen, wishing it read differently. But the call had come from a cell phone—no exact location, just the nearest cell tower hit. Dammit. Murphy’s Law. “Take a deep breath, honey. I need to know where you are.”
“Um … um … D-deers make tracks.”
She blinked. “What?”
It came in a breathless tumble of words. “Deer Track T-trailhead. Eleven-eleven. He always has a medicine shot with him but I can’t find it.”
Medicine shot. High-country trail. Experience told her they were dealing with an allergic reaction. She quickly keyed the unfamiliar trailhead into her computer, then snapped her fingers to get Dane’s attention.
He spun around in his chair. Flagging him closer, she pointed at the address field on her computer screen.
Dane leaned forward to read the data, then nodded once and snatched the open-space map out of its upright holder and began flipping pages, tracing the myriad of high-country hiking trails with his index finger.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Lexy said to the caller as Dane tracked down the trailhead.
“I don’t know! I w-was pickin’ flowers! I think he got stung by a bunch of bees,” the boy said, voice wavering and watery. “He’s all red and puffy and I can’t find the medicine shot thing. I looked everywhere!”
Lexy took a deep breath to keep her own emotions in check. Anaphylactic shock could kill in a matter of ten minutes. And they didn’t even have an exact location yet. Press on.
“What’s your name, hon?”
“Ian,” he wailed, sucking in breaths between sobs. “Please, m-my mommy died two years ago today. Please don’t let my daddy die, too.”
Kick to the gut. Lexy squeezed her eyes shut; her stomach churned with empathy. “Listen to me carefully, Ian,” she said almost forcefully before softening her tone. “My name is Lexy and I’m not going to leave you, okay? I’m going to help you through this.”
“’K–’kay,” Ian said, clinging to her promise like a lifeline. “I’m scared, L-Lexy.”
“Be brave for your daddy, Ian, okay? I’m sending paramedics to help him. You can help now by staying calm and answering some important questions. Will you try that?”
“’Kay.”
“Good boy. Is your daddy conscious?”
“Huh?”
“Is he awake?”
“N–no, and I don’t think he’s breathin’ very good. He sounds … funny.”
Lexy’s alert spiked into the red zone. Funny how? she wondered. Funny like the allergic reaction she’d assumed, or funny like agonal breathing just before death? It could be a heart attack, for all she knew. “Do you see bee stings on your daddy? Red bumps?”
“Um … yeah. On his arm. L-lots of ‘em.”
She keyed that into the notes and hit Save. “Okay. You said eleven-eleven. What’s eleveneleven?”
“We, um … um … started hikin’ the Deer Track Trailhead at eleven-eleven. We always m-make our watches m-match just in case something bad happens. Daddy’s SUV is parked by the brown sign. Are they comin'? Hurry!”
“We’re
