The Alaskan Rescue. Dominique Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ for me by now. Asking for me by name? It’s touching.” Cole shook his head. “Come on, let’s get more personal. I’ll even get you a bed here on the rehab floor.”

      At that comment Cid’s fisherman buddies, who’d brought him in, started laughing. “Doc, Cid’s a good fisherman if he could ever stay out of a bar. More importantly, out of a bet!” His captain, Lee Jarvis, always vouched for him.

      Cole turned back to his patient. “Cid’s got a drinking problem. I’m worried that one night he might walk off one of your crabbing boats in a drunken stupor straight into the ocean.”

      “We all have a drinkin’ problem. Just sew him up,” Lee said, getting testy. “He’s too good of an engineer to lose for the season. I’ll look into his problem after we catch our quota.”

      Cole turned around in his chair. “Is that a promise?”

      “No. It’s a maybe.”

      Cole got up and began to strip off his sterile gloves. “Cid, I truly hope to see you in the spring. It would make my Easter dreams come true.”

      Lee jumped in. “We’ll do our best, Doc.”

      With that Cole left the room and began the long walk from the patients’ rooms to the hub of the E.R. He stripped his long body of the rest of the protective clothing and turned his smile on one of the new nurses.

      “Stacey? The patient in room three needs another round of meds. Take either Heather or Mildred in with you. The boys can be a rough crew.”

      Stacey just stared at him.

      Cole turned to Mildred, who said, “Come on, Stacey. Let’s get you used to the crabbers.” But she looked back at Cole and shook her head.

      “What?” he said.

      “You and that amazing smile of yours. If I were twenty years younger, you’d be mine, Cole.”

      “I am yours, Mildred,” he said.

      “Don’t flirt with me, big boy, even if it still works.”

      Cole walked away, chuckling to himself. He was looking forward to tomorrow’s reunion with Sashi.

      * * *

      “WE’VE ARRIVED, LADIES,” Joe Running Bear exclaimed from the cockpit. Speaking into the enormous headphone, he began discussing landing procedures. The plane circled the lake one time, then made its descent toward the pristine waters of Red Bay. The landing was as smooth and soft as silk.

      As the plane taxied the two women stared out the cabin windows. A bald eagle who’d stood proud on a tree took off, its magnificent wings spread in flight. Sashi spotted startled Sitka deer moving back from the shore, robins flying to and from their nests, squirrels scampering into the undergrowth. Ancient trees stood in various states of decay. Cedars and spruce covered in moss and lichen peeked out of the morning mist hovering just above the ground.

      The sun poked through the clouds, casting a blanket of diamonds over the water. The diamonds shimmered as the plane drew closer to the dock of the Pan-Abode cabin, one of many prefab cabins dotting the Alaskan bush.

      Sashi lifted her eyebrows, trying to decide if she dared ask their pilot-cum-tour guide the question on her mind: Had the trees been planted on purpose to look like a wreath around the lake, or had nature created its own perfection? But where questions about Alaska were concerned, she’d learned to keep her mouth shut in case she sounded too naive.

      Over the past three months Sashi had learned Alaska was a land of mystery. It was hard to believe that it was just last March her best friend from childhood had begged her to come up here.

      It had all sprung from Kendra’s falling in love with Freddy, which had happened when both she and Frank Marshall’s son had attended school together in Washington, D.C. Freddy had asked Kendra to come up to the resort and spend time with him. She went because she believed she had found the man she was going to marry, and this time with him would make for a perfect summer.

      Kendra had asked Sashi to come because she knew her friend needed the money to make her dream become a reality.

      Sashi took in Kendra’s silhouette up front. They’d been best friends since they were three years old. Sashi couldn’t believe the past twenty-five years had gone by so quickly. During that time Kendra had become a tall, striking woman, one just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. She was one of those rare types of people who would hold some fund-raiser or another for a cause no one had ever heard of just because she cared. Sashi never knew Kendra to be unkind to another soul.

      If people thought Kendra was odd, it was only because she was so smart. Kendra had a different way of thinking from most people. Sometimes it made her seem snobby, but nothing could be further from the truth.

      “My friends,” Joe said through the headphones in his deep, rich voice. “It appears Mother Nature has looked kindly on us this morning. We had the bald eagle to welcome us and the sun to shine on us. We will be docking momentarily. Since no one has arrived yet, we will prepare for a wet docking and hike to the cabin.”

      “Uh, Joe?” said Kendra. “Can you elaborate on what a wet docking is?”

      His eyes twinkled as he looked back. “The parks department hasn’t kept up the dock here at the lake. So we have to wade to shore.”

      Kendra poked Joe in a friendly manner. “Please tell us you have waders.”

      He laughed. “Nothing to worry about, ladies. Joe takes care of everything.”

      Kendra and Sashi looked at each other and smiled. On their tour yesterday, Joe had been quite a character, providing them with anecdotes about his ancestors. Then he’d made fun of Kendra’s pronunciations of some Tlingit words and told story after story until their stomachs hurt from laughing so hard.

      Sashi loved this man’s company and thought it was a shame they were cutting their tour short, all because of Freddy. But it wasn’t her place to say anything. After all, Kendra was the one paying for this three-day adventure trip with Joe.

      For some reason, Sashi feared that this last hurrah in Red Bay would be a disaster. She’d told Kendra that if Freddy Marshall had been serious about her, he would have wanted to be alone with Kendra. But her friend had refused to listen. She had insisted she needed to see Freddy and the group one more time before they left Alaska.

      All these thoughts filled Sashi’s mind as she watched Joe exit the plane first and walk up the slope to the split-level cabin. Once he felt the area was safe, he called to them. They put on the fishing waders Joe had given them, then grabbed their night packs.

      Kendra got out of the plane ahead of Sashi, visibly bursting with excitement and the knowledge that Sashi, whose waders were two sizes too big for her and whose pack weighed half as much as she did, was going to need help. Sashi watched her friend walk up the moss- and rock-laden hill.

      After throwing down her pack, Kendra returned to the shore and stood half in, half out of the water. She grinned as Sashi was planning her next move.

      “Sashi, what are you doin’?”

      “I’m sitting here thinking of all the predicaments I’ve been in this summer. I have to СКАЧАТЬ