Turbulence

She searched his face. “Are you hurt?”

He ignored the question, bending over to buckle the seat belt around her waist. His voice was quieter now. “Please stay here, Maddie. I’m going to see if I can help Dr. Wrigley.”

Through the hole where the window had been, freezing air barreled in. Alternate streaks of white and green flashed by, pine trees against a blanket of snow. Close. Too close.

She did not fight any more. “I’ll do it, but only if you stay here, too.”

He gave her a quizzical look. Then he rubbed a hand across his face, smearing the soot into oozy spirals. Without a word, he moved to take the seat behind her, but before he did he pulled a blanket loose and tucked it around her, giving her a corner to hold. “Protect your face from any flying glass.”

The blanket smelled of singed plastic, but she huddled behind it anyway, thinking she must be in the grip of a powerful nightmare. It could not be true that she was sitting in a crashing plane, and the device that would save her father’s life was going down with it. Not now, not when she had a chance to fix things.

She eased the blanket aside and peeked behind her at Paul, eyes closed, lips moving.

He was praying to a God she used to know, a God that let little children die in pain and adults live in agony.

The pain swirled inside her with vicious intensity. She wished in that moment she still had someone to pray to, to help her with the fear that choked the breath out of her.

When Paul was done, he opened his eyes and looked out the window. “It won’t be long now,” he said.

He didn’t look scared, only perplexed, as if he wondered how he came to be aboard a crashing plane. Absently, he patted the pocket of his coat.

“What are you looking for?”

He started, then grinned. “Candy.”

She knew he’d given up smoking at age nineteen and developed a ferocious candy habit, encouraged by long nights eating out of vending machines at the hospital. The gesture brought tears to her eyes for a reason she couldn’t understand. “Paul, are we going to die?”

His expression was one of myriad emotions, probably the same ones he showed to families when there was no hope to give, no comfort left to offer. He pushed his hand through the gap between the chairs and squeezed her hand. “We’ll make it.”

She was grateful for the lie.

Paul watched as the ground loomed closer with every passing moment. The smoke that filled the cabin made it impossible to see Dr. Wrigley or Maddie’s seatmate as they careened on. He couldn’t hear anything over the deafening roar of the dying aircraft.

They were low enough now that the trees slapped and crunched under the belly of the plane. He suspected the pilot was either unconscious or disabled. Paul wished for a crazy moment that he had the arsenal of skills of the ex-marine in the novel. He could take over the controls and find a flat spot to land. The galling reality was, he was powerless to do anything. He had no idea how to fly a plane, and the cockpit doors were reinforced against any kind of breach, and if two experienced pilots couldn’t land it, neither could he.

Another window ripped free and hurtled through the cabin behind them. With a wild swing of his arm, he batted it away from Maddie. She was huddled under the blanket. He was glad. Better for her not to see the mountain rushing up at them.

Ironically, he remembered the last airplane-crash victim he’d treated. It was a nine-month-old baby who survived the horror with only a slight scratch on her cheek. Rescuers named her Sunny, since she greeted them in the midst of the smoke and fire with a tiny-toothed smile.

Her parents hadn’t been so lucky.

He considered trying to free his cell and call someone to alert them of their location, but he didn’t think he could hold the phone steady against the vicious tremors of the plane.

The wing struck a projection of rock and spun around, cartwheeling them into dizzying circles. The whirling dislodged cushions and broken equipment, hurling them around the cabin. Metal gave way and a fissure ripped through the roof, raining a mixture of hot steel and freezing snow down on them.

Maddie screamed.

He shouted to her, but the din covered his words. The only thing he could do was grip her shoulder around the side of the seat and ask God to spare her.

She’d been through enough.

Her father had, too, and Paul knew Berlin Heart or no Berlin Heart, Bruce Lambert wouldn’t survive the death of his daughter.

The plane flipped and rolled. Paul heard the sound of shearing metal and he hoped the seats were not ripping loose from the floor. Another crack appeared in the ceiling. The aircraft was beginning to break apart.

“Paul!” Maddie screamed. “We’re—”

Her words were snatched away in the wind.

The whine of the engines stopped abruptly. His stomach fell as the plane began a steep dive to the ground. He held on to her until the turbulence tore them apart. The grinding of metal sounded from under their feet and Paul watched in horror as Maddie’s seat began to shudder from its moorings.

He tried to unbuckle himself to grab at her chair, to somehow keep her anchored to him through what was to come, but his own seat pulled loose and he was pitched backward into the smoke-filled rear of the craft.

There was a final, bone-jarring impact, a bombardment of burning shards and jagged metal, and the plane slammed into the ground.

Flickers of color appeared in front of Maddie’s eyes as she blinked back to consciousness. Black smoke and white snow. Her brain fought to make sense of it. Neatly strapped into her seat, yet feeling the sting of icy flakes on her arms? The terrible noise was gone, replaced by an eerie silence broken only by the rush of wind and a crackling she could not identify. The smoke cleared enough for her to assess the situation.

She was in her seat, yes, but the seat was loose, tumbled to the side of a section of aircraft that had broken away from the main body of the plane. From her semiupright position, she looked out onto the snow, dotted with dark pockets of still-smoking debris. Frigid air seared her lungs as she fumbled for the seat-belt release. She had somehow survived the crash.

Had Paul? She could still feel his hands clutching her, trying to keep her from whirling away.

There was no sign of him in the smoke-filled gloom.

She did not know whether to feel grateful or afraid.

She gritted her teeth as the buckle came loose. Half stupefied with fear, she forced herself to look at her body. There was no obvious bleeding, no pain to indicate she’d suffered a traumatic blow. Slowly, she wiggled both feet and gingerly moved her legs. Aside from myriad cuts and abrasions, her body appeared to be working fine. Pressing a hand to her temple, she felt the warm trickle of blood and a dull ache in her wrist. Jaw clenched, she struggled to her feet, head ducked low under the twisted fragment of the plane. She shuffled to the opening, still taking inventory of her injuries. As she approached the lip of the shredded cabin, her stomach tightened.

What would she find tangled in the twisted metal?

Dr. Wrigley?

Tai Jaden?

She swallowed hard. Paul?

And what had become of the Berlin Heart?

Her instincts screamed at her not to cross that smoking threshold.

Stay in shelter. Stay away from the gruesome sights that might be waiting.

Still, she found herself drawn to the opening.

The cold air hit her like a fist, her eyes tearing, vision blurred.

She blinked them away. The piece of the wreckage she stood in was cratered on a snowy hill, wedged against a stand of pines that must have stopped the chunk of wreckage from sliding any farther. Plumes of steam rose from the snow where grotesquely twisted shards of metal protruded like the skeleton of some long-dead thing. She couldn’t see any more pieces of intact plane from her position. The impact must have thrown her some distance.

Wishing she had managed to hold on to her purse, she fumbled in her pocket and retrieved the cell phone.

Please work. Please work.

No signal available, the screen read. She would not be summoning help, or calling Paul. Maybe it was a blessing, anyway. What would it be like to hear Paul’s phone ring endlessly, imagining all the reasons why he was not able to answer? What would it be like to know she would never hear his voice again? Those ridiculous ideas that made her groan. The Donald Duck impressions he did for his young patients.

Her breath froze.

Perhaps the rest of the plane had disintegrated and she was the only one, the only survivor.

The thought paralyzed her until she balled the fear up in her mind and transformed it into rage, penetrating and intense as the cold all around her.

No. It wouldn’t be death for all these innocent people.

“That’s not the way it’s going to end.” She hadn’t realized she’d shouted aloud until the words echoed back to her. It was time to go find the others and help them.

She put out a hand to brace herself for the climb down, but yanked her fingers away when the metal burned her skin. Grabbing a couple of blackened cushions, she held one in front of her and sat on the other, skidding down the side of the plane.

Even with the fabric insulation, she could feel the heat seep into her pants. When her feet crunched into knee-deep snow, she floundered for a moment before she climbed up on a wide section of metal lying on the ground, grateful it wasn’t smoking hot. The realization hit her. It was a section of wing, broken loose.

Scooting out as far as the metal surface would allow, she peered through the smoke. Just south of her was a deep furrow of snow, gouged wide, until it disappeared over the rise ahead. She walked to the end of the wingtip and stepped off gingerly, sinking again into the whiteness. Ignoring the chill, she made her way laboriously toward the edge of the slope where she would be able to get a view of what lay below.

Stomach knotted, muscles complaining with every step, she moved on, wishing she had more than a wool blazer for warmth. The edge neared, and in spite of her earlier bravado, fear nibbled at the corners of her mind. What would she find? How could he have survived?

She realized she was thinking not of Wrigley or Jaden, but of Paul. Only of Paul.

The anger she nursed was alive as ever, bitter as gall, yet fear rose up right alongside it.

She wanted to shout, to tear through the oppressive stillness and hear the comfort of a reply. Far worse would be an answering silence. Shuddering, skin prickled with goose bumps, she forced her feet to the top of the rise.

Looking down with eyes streaming from the acrid smoke that filled the air, she saw the rest of the plane, upside down, half-buried in snow. There was no sign of movement from inside.

She continued on. Downslope, the snow was harder, fused into sheets of icy crust.

Her mind wandered back to her nieces, Ginny and Beth, on their annual trip to Bear Valley. The shrill cries of Ginny as she raced along on a toboggan with her sister close behind, Maddie’s sister, Katie, watching, eyes dancing, Maddie waiting at the bottom, where Katie’s husband, Roger, should have been if he hadn’t had an affair that ended their marriage. Katie had once told Maddie she wondered if his affair wasn’t a reaction to his Huntington’s disease diagnosis.

Maddie refused to listen. Katie had to deal not only with Roger’s life-altering diagnosis, but the terror of wondering if the girls had inherited the disease. And she’d never considered having an affair. Roger had been weak and selfish. When he left, Maddie tried to fill in for him as much as she could. They’d made their own odd little family, bound together by love and loss, and always overseeing everything was Bruce Lambert, father, grandfather and steadfast rock.

The moisture on her face hardened into icy trails, and she scraped them away as she tried to inject some logical thinking into her half-frozen mind.

She had no idea how much time had passed since the accident, or if their sudden disappearance off the radar had been noticed by airport officials. Was there a rescue crew on the way? Had her father and sister been alerted?

She hoped her family hadn’t been told. The worry could prove too much for her father’s damaged heart.

Gritting her teeth, she pressed on. The Berlin Heart would be in this section, and if she could save it, the rescuers would be able to get it to her dad. Her own heart tumbled in her chest as she drew closer to the wreck. Her feet were so cold in her leather slip-ons, she felt as if she were walking on two frozen stumps.

How long before frostbite would begin to kill her extremities, she wondered? Fifty feet away, and she could see the details now. Windows blown out, sharp twists of metal, blackened bits of plastic littered like flakes of pepper on salt-white snow.

A plume of flame erupted from behind one of the windows. Maddie screamed, the sound echoing through the snowy hollow. She waited to see if the flames would escalate into a roaring inferno, but they died away again.

She had to get in there and find Paul and Dr. Wrigley and the heart, before it was too late.

In spite of her determination, she stopped again.

The images of other deaths came back to her in all their brutality. When the girls died, it kindled an impenetrable fear inside Maddie that froze her in her tracks. She’d once armored herself against that fear with faith, but it had been ripped away in the moments after the car crash, leaving her soul tattered and exposed.

The fear had rooted deep then.

And threatened to overwhelm her now.

She could not move.

Another plume of flame erupted from a different location, bringing with it black smoke that swirled through the open side of the plane.

Through the haze, a man staggered out.

Maddie’s heart thundered and she reached a hand toward him. “Here.”

She could not tell if he reacted to her voice, or if he even heard her as he fell facedown in the snow.

THREE

Breaking free of her numbing paralysis, she ran, falling and floundering, through the snow. He was so covered with black that she could not tell his identity at first, until she saw the twisted glasses lying next to him.

Dr. Wrigley.

Not allowing herself to acknowledge the keen surge of disappointment, she rolled him over as gently as she could, to prevent him from suffocating in the snow. His eyelids fluttered as he came to.

“What…?”

“Our plane crashed. Are you badly injured?”

He blinked and struggled to sit up. She considered pushing him back to keep him from further injury, but exposure to the icy ground would kill him as certainly as any internal damage. She helped him sit up.

He clutched a hand to his front. “I think my clavicle is broken.”

She didn’t dare peel away any layers of clothing to assess. “We’ve got to get to shelter somehow. Have—did you see what happened to Paul or the other passenger?”

Wrigley gently bent his glasses back into position and put them on. “No. I didn’t see anyone inside. But the smoke was so thick.”

He scrambled to his knees, sliding against the slick surface as she helped him to his feet. They moved to the shelter of a copse of fir trees.

Maddie made sure he was not going into shock before she turned away. “I’m going back. Stay here.”

Wrigley stiffened as if he wasn’t used to taking orders. “Going back in there? The plane is on fire. We need to stay away before it blows.”

The flames were visible now, dancing through the shattered windows.

“Not until I know about the survivors and I get my father’s heart.”

He didn’t raise a hand to stop her, and she moved quickly toward the burning wreck.

The smoke was thicker now, as she approached the threshold. An overnight bag flew out the opening, almost knocking her over.

Another followed.

“Hey,” she managed.

Tai Jaden appeared in the opening. He gaped at her.

“You made it.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe anybody did. The plane is shredded.”

“Dr. Wrigley is alive.” She watched him pull out blankets and toss them onto the snow. “What are you doing?”

“We’ve gotta get any warm clothes and supplies out of here before it goes up in flames.”

“I need the Berlin Heart.”

His eyes glittered in the dim light. “I’ll get it.”

“Where’s Paul? Have you seen him?”

“The tall guy who was with Dr. Wrigley?”

“Yes.”

Jaden looked around, prowling between the piles of loosened seats. “He’s not in here. Could have been thrown out when the plane cracked apart. Some of the seats are just plain gone, from what I can see. The rear is hard to get to, but maybe I can access it from the tail end. I’ll look for the box, and then we’ll find him.” Jaden disappeared back inside.

Maddie’s mind raced. Then Paul might be lying somewhere in the snow, covered by wreckage. Had she passed right by him and not known? She felt a surge of anger. He shouldn’t have even been on the plane. He had no reason to be a part of her life anymore.

Still, she strained her eyes through the smoke and the curtain of snow that had begun to fall. He’d been right behind her, or so she’d thought, but it was clear he was not in the wreckage now. The side they’d sat on was crushed against the ground. Had he been thrown clear? The only way to get a good look was to move around to the other side of the plane. Floundering in deep pockets of snow, she traced the perimeter of the tail end, though the rudder appeared to have been sheared off. The smoke nearly blinded her, and she kept her head down to avoid breathing the toxic fumes.

The crackle of flames grew louder, along with the sound of Jaden throwing bags off the plane. He would find the Berlin Heart; and if he didn’t she would get it herself, after she found Paul. She tried to move faster, but the snow seemed to pull her down. The glint of glass shone in the sunlight, and Maddie arrived at the cockpit.

The pilots.

She realized with a start that she hadn’t given a thought to their fate.

Teeth clenched, she peered in.

The glass was veined with cracks, the far door twisted off, allowing cold air to find its way in. There was no one inside.

More missing people, she thought.

A sound caught her attention, a half shout that died away abruptly. It came from the bottom of a small, snow-covered hill. She didn’t wait to hear more. Trying to run, Maddie slipped and skidded until she crested the hill and looked down to find two men, one prone, one on his knees.

Terror filled her, thick and weighty, as she tumbled toward them.

Paul looked up from his examination of the pilot, and felt a relief so profound he thought it might drown him. For a moment, he couldn’t get the words out. “Maddie. I looked everywhere to find you. I thought…”

Maddie closed her eyes for a moment and wrapped her arms around herself. He thought he saw tears glistening on her face, but decided it must be the dazzle of sun and snow.

She was alive. Alive. He wanted to grab hold and crush her in his arms, but instead he continued to monitor the pilot’s breathing, his hands suddenly shaking. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay. Jaden is, too. Wrigley’s hurt, but alive. What about you?”

He felt buoyed by the thought that the four of them had miraculously survived. “Couple of cracked ribs, I think. I was looking for you and I found the pilot wandering. The copilot is dead. I saw him under a chunk of wreckage, but I couldn’t move it.”

The pilot’s face was ashen, and his lips moved.

Paul bent low. “I’m here, buddy. Right here. You’re going to be okay.”

His lips moved several times before the words came out. “I think…coffee was drugged.”

Paul looked at Maddie, whose face showed shock and disbelief.

“Did he say…?” Maddie started.

Paul gently lifted the man’s eyelids. “His pupils are dilated. It could be from a narcotic or a concussion.” Drugged? He didn’t have time to think more about it as the pilot’s breathing died and his heartbeat fluttered to a halt. The man was in cardiac arrest. Paul immediately began chest compressions.

Maddie knelt next to him and gave the man two breaths.

They kept up a full cycle of CPR before Maddie felt for a pulse. “Nothing.”

Paul continued, feeling guilty that he was so happy to see Maddie while a man lay in cardiac arrest before him. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking it. Thank You, God, for sparing her life. Above all things, he did not want to find her dead or dying in the wreckage. And now she knelt next to him, cheeks pink, breath making puffs in the cold air.

Maddie was alive. When he brought the pilot back, there would be only one fatality from the horrific crash. They’d wait for rescue. They would all survive.

He was so lost in the feeling, he didn’t hear her at first.

“Still no heartbeat.”

Paul blinked. “What?”

Maddie gestured to the pilot. “No heartbeat, Paul. Nothing.”

Jaden joined them. “Took me a while to find you. What can I do?”

Paul waited to answer until Maddie was giving the rescue breaths. “Do you have any medical training?”

“No, I’m just a Heartline rep.”

Paul nodded. “Can you find a tarp or piece of plastic? Anything we can use to get him off this snow?”

Jaden hesitated a moment before he disappeared over the rise.

Maddie touched Paul’s arm. “Paul, I don’t think you’re going to save him.”

Paul shook his head. “Hasn’t been down that long. I can get him started.” Though his arms were aching with fatigue, and each movement aggravated his ribs and made the wounds on his back sting, Paul kept on. “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand,” he counted with each thrust of his hands on the man’s chest.

Maddie gave the next set of breaths, though the urgency seemed to have gone out of her. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t a doctor. She didn’t know the wildly persistent quality of human life. He’d seen people in comas suddenly wake up when doctors said there was no hope. He’d known small children to survive inhuman conditions with smiles on their faces.

A part of him filled in the rest.

And you’ve also seen plenty of people you couldn’t save with any amount of effort.

Not this time.

The pilot’s name was N. Fisher. The man thought he had been drugged, if he’d heard right, yet somehow the guy had managed to get them down alive. Paul recalled the scuffle he’d heard in the cabin and wondered about the copilot’s part in the crash. He steeled his arms and did the compressions more aggressively.

The next time he looked up, Jaden was there, and Dr. Wrigley.

Dr. Wrigley looked at him from behind glasses that sat slightly cockeyed on his face. “Dr. Ford, your patient is gone. You need to call it.”

“No,” Paul said, feeling his stomach clench. “I can get him back.”

“Four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand.” His shoulder muscles screamed at him, his injured ribs stabbing at him with every movement. The end of the cycle came and he looked to Maddie. Her face was damp with tears.

“It’s over, Paul.”

Anger surged inside him. “I’m a doctor. I know when it’s time to quit. I say I can save him.”

He pushed past her and administered the two rescue breaths himself. When he returned for compressions, Dr. Wrigley took a step forward and gripped his upper arm with surprising strength.

“Dr. Ford, the pilot is dead. There is no hope of resuscitation, in spite of your efforts.” He looked at his watch. “The time of death is ten-fifteen a.m.”

Paul looked at them and read it in their faces. He knew they were right. He was not going to make a save this time. Despair rose inside, along with a deep fatigue. He slowly got to his feet and Jaden stepped forward with a blanket he’d retrieved, draping the body against the falling snow.