There was no one else in the rented SUV to hear Conor Madison’s observation as he drove through a Montana snowstorm that was getting worse by the minute.
When his plane had landed in Billings on that mid-January Sunday, snow had been falling. As promised, he’d called his sister Kinsey to tell her he’d arrived safely. But when he did, he’d discovered that Kinsey wasn’t in their small hometown of Northbridge, where she and Conor were slated to meet. Instead, she was snowed in inside her Denver home.
And by now, the snow was in his path, piling up fast. Conor could barely see two feet in front of him on this mountain road.
And on top of that, he was worried about his brother and thinking this whole idea might have been a mistake.
When he’d left the veterans’ hospital in Maryland, his younger brother Declan’s condition had been stable. In fact, Declan—who had been severely wounded in Afghanistan—had been doing so well he’d pushed Conor to make this trip. But when Conor had talked to Declan from the Billings airport, Declan hadn’t sounded very well, though he’d insisted that Conor stay.
But an hour and a half into the drive, when he’d called to check in with Declan again, Declan had been even more sluggish and lethargic, and had informed Conor that he’d spiked a fever—which could herald a dangerous complication that Conor wouldn’t be there to monitor.
As a doctor Conor couldn’t treat family, but he could follow what was being done closely. Monitoring his brother’s condition was the reason he was on leave from his own duties from the navy. Now he wasn’t where he felt he should be—by his brother’s side. If he hadn’t learned that all flights in and out had been canceled due to the storm, he might have headed back.
But there was no going back either to Billings or to Maryland, so all Conor could do was get somewhere safe—and get back to worrying about his brother once he arrived.
He’d grown up around here so he recognized where he was—about fifteen miles outside of Northbridge. But visibility was getting worse by the minute, and he was having more and more trouble plowing through the deepest of the drifts. There was no way he was going to make those last fifteen miles.
Luckily he wasn’t far from a cabin owned by the family of an old friend. When he noticed his patchy cell service was working for the moment, he’d called Rickie Dale to find out if the cabin was still standing and if he could use it.
Thankfully, the answer to both of those questions had been yes.
Just before he reached the turnoff, he saw the first car he’d seen in the last hour—nose-first in a ditch.
The sedan’s horn was blaring and the driver’s side door was ajar so the dome light was on. In the dim glow he could see that the driver was still in the car, slumped over the steering wheel.
As a doctor, his duty was clear. He came to a slippery stop and ran against the wind to the other vehicle.
The driver was a woman. In a sleeveless wedding dress without so much as a coat on over it. There was an abundance of blood from a head wound, likely the result of hitting the windshield since—for some unknown reason—the airbag hadn’t activated.
She didn’t react to him opening her door. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. So the first thing he did was check for a pulse, grateful to note that it was strong. She might be unconscious, but she was alive.
“Miss!” he shouted to be heard over the howling wind. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t so much as moan.
But Conor was a doctor of emergency and trauma medicine and a commander in the United States Navy, trained to work in the field. He knew what to do.
He took off his jacket and wrapped it firmly around her neck to stabilize it. Then, keeping her head and neck aligned, he eased her back against the seat.
She had a massive amount of hair and much of it had fallen forward into her face, heavily coated in blood. Still, something about her struck him as familiar. But nothing concrete clicked for him, with his focus on her condition. Right now, all that mattered was getting her out of this cold.
He dashed back to his SUV and opened the passenger door, lowering that seat so it was as flat as it would go. Then he ran back to the sedan. With special care to keep her head and neck supported, he eased her from behind the steering wheel into his arms, took her to the SUV and laid her on the passenger seat.
Conor reached across her to crank up the heat, closed that door, ran back to the sedan to turn it off, lock it and pocket the keys before he rushed back behind the wheel of his own vehicle and put it into gear again.
It was a little less than a mile to the cabin. But already the dirt drive was covered in snow and drifts. The only thing Conor could do was go slow enough to feel that his tires were in the wheel ruts, letting them guide him. And hoping like hell that he’d opted for the right road and was headed toward shelter.
Just as he was beginning to doubt it, he caught sight of the small log cabin in the clearing of trees.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he drove the SUV up to the cabin’s front porch and stopped. Leaving the engine—and the heat—running for his passenger, he made his way onto the porch and found the key in Rickie’s hiding spot. He unlocked the door and entered with a mental thank-you to whoever had used the cabin last and left wood and tinder in the fireplace, ready to be lit.
If only he could find matches.
Matches. Matches. Matches...
After a moment of searching, he finally found a box of stick matches near a bucket of wood to the side of the hearth.
With a fire going, he returned to the SUV and carefully removed his passenger.
Inside with her, he laid her on the floor in front of the fire, letting the hard wooden surface act as the backboard he would have used had he had one.
She was breathing without any problems—that was good.
As he covered her with a blanket from the worn sofa nearby, the woman groaned.
“Good girl,” he praised. “Come on, come to...”
But when she didn’t stir again, he ran outside to turn off the SUV and then returned to survey the territory.
With the exception of shelter, the cabin didn’t likely offer much in terms of medical tools or supplies. Rickie had assured him that there was plenty of bottled water so Conor went in search of that, a cloth of some sort to clean the wound as best he could and a first-aid kit.
Returning to his patient—who was moaning again—he saw that bleeding from her head wound was increasing as she warmed up.
Working fast, he dampened the cloth with the bottled water and cleaned the wound.
“Can you wake up for me?” he urged. “Come on, open your eyes...”
More moaning but her eyes remained closed.
The wound was a clean cut free of debris. It could have used a couple of stitches but he had to settle for three butterfly bandages covered with a compression wrap.
