Cowboy On Call. Leigh Riker

tried to sound calm, in control, but his most recent talk with Nick’s doctors hadn’t eased his mind. Nick’s brain swelling was now worse. So was Sawyer’s approaching panic attack. Olivia was right to resent him for keeping his distance from her son, for not stepping up, just as she’d been right to blame him for Jasmine’s death, but Sawyer was having enough trouble holding himself together. She probably didn’t want him taking part in Nick’s care now.

      “Hey, Charlie.”

      At the other end of the line, Charles Banfield IV, a true Boston Brahman who’d attended Exeter and Harvard before meeting Sawyer at KU School of Medicine, launched into all the reasons why Sawyer should be in Kedar. Yesterday. He finished, “I’m doing what I can, but the twenty-hour days are taking their toll. I’ve lost ten pounds and I look like hell—so bad I’ve been avoiding the mirror when I shave.”

      “Sorry, Charlie. I don’t know what to tell you.”

      “Tell me you’re coming back.”

      “I had the impression you didn’t want me there.”

      Charlie ignored that. “The other day we had—I should say, I had—a dozen kids come in. There are no more hospital beds since the landslide leveled the infirmary. I haven’t had saline solution in over a week, so I can’t even hang IVs. Two women gave birth in the clinic last night. One of the babies, a preemie, sadly didn’t make it. And I’m still stitching up cuts, treating abrasions as well as I can without enough gauze, bandages, disinfectant...”

      As Charlie trailed off, Sawyer remembered all too clearly the day he’d left Kedar as if he were being chased off the mountain by his demons. He’d left Charlie to handle everything in his absence, the one he wasn’t sure wouldn’t be permanent.

      “I couldn’t stay there. Not after what happened to...Khalil,” he said. But now, after dealing with the clinic’s overload of desperate patients for a while, Charlie needed Sawyer, though he probably didn’t want to.

      Was Olivia right? Had he made the wrong decision years ago with Jasmine, too? At least he hadn’t tried to manage Olivia’s son’s case.

      Sawyer rubbed his neck. His pulse beat in his ears so loud he could hardly hear himself. His palms grew damp.

      Charlie only said, “When are you coming back?”

      Maybe I’m not. At the same time, Sawyer knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself unless he returned, made up for his mistake somehow. Still, he feared he couldn’t make the trip to the Himalayas again. Not yet. “How’s the road in?”

      “Still blocked much of the way. Helicopters have been flying in whatever supplies are available. Sawyer, I know we had a pretty bad fight before you left. I apologize for anything I said that may have come across as, well, blameful. We’re still partners, aren’t we? The clinic needs you.” He hesitated, as if he hated having to say “So do I.”

      Sawyer cleared his throat. Through the windshield, he watched a man walk out of the hospital, an arm around a crying woman’s shoulders. Then he saw Everett and Liza coming across the parking lot holding hands, and he fought an urge to slink down in his seat so as not to be seen. But if they were leaving, that was a good thing, right? Nick must still be holding his own. He didn’t want to talk to them, though.

      “Listen, Charlie. I have to go.” Briefly, he filled him in about Nick. “I hope you can understand why I have to stay here awhile longer.”

      “Of course.” But Charlie sounded disappointed. No, resigned.

      “He’s close to...Khalil’s age.” And Sawyer hadn’t said five words to Nick. Why use him as an excuse?

      But Charlie understood family. He was an only child whose parents, a Harvard archaeologist and a well-known pediatrician who headed her department at Boston Children’s Hospital, had left him to be raised mostly by nannies before shipping him off to boarding school when he was Nick’s age. He’d often spent his college breaks and summer vacations with other people’s families.

      When they’d founded the clinic a few years ago, full of great plans to give back and make a difference in the world, Charlie had truly come alive. He’d found his passion. Before that, during his training, he’d met Piper, and they’d married and had two children. Sawyer had never seen a man take more readily to having a family of his own, as if to make up for his lonely childhood.

      “I hate to let you down, Charlie. But I need more time.”

      For a few minutes longer, they discussed Nick’s case as if they were together at the clinic, treating him rather than scores of needy people with more drastic conditions and worse prognoses. Struggling to cure diseases that couldn’t be cured in the end, performing surgeries that often failed to make the difference they’d hoped to make.

      “How much time?” Charlie asked, his tone strained.

      “I don’t know. I’ll keep in touch.” After he hung up, Sawyer wiped his damp hands on his jeans, then stared off into the distance.

      An ambulance raced toward the ER entrance. A young couple, the wife holding what appeared to be a newborn baby, got into a waiting car, headed home to begin their family life together.

      He seemed to be letting everyone down. Including—no, especially—Olivia. He could almost feel tonight’s nightmare coming on.

      Where did he belong? Here, or there with Charlie?

      Or in neither place?

      Sitara, Kedar...last spring

      THE EARTHQUAKE HAD come first. Without warning, the land began to shake, tremors shifting the simple huts of the village, sending people running into the street. The few two-story buildings swayed and windows shattered.

      From his office at the clinic, which was shaking right along with the rest of Sitara, Sawyer watched it happen. There was little he could do. Such quakes happened now and then, more often than he cared to think about. People huddled together, babies cried, dogs and chickens ran for shelter.

      After a minute or two, the quake subsided. Sawyer peered out the window but saw little damage. During the monsoon season after summer, he’d worry more about landslides, but in spring...

      The thought hadn’t left his mind before he heard the rumble of sudden movement, and to his utter horror the whole side of the mountain that reared up at the end of the main street began to shift.

      People looked up, screamed, then ran again, fleeing toward the clinic where he stood, waving their arms, looking back with their mouths open, gaping in terror.

      Sawyer froze. In a wide swath of grayish-tan dirt and a gathering cloud of dust, rocks and boulders swept toward them, toward him, ripping trees out by the roots, consuming houses and sheds and farm animals like some giant hand clearing the green mountainside, the growing crops and anything else in its path. Like some monster, roaring like thunder. He would never get that sound out of his head.

      Before he could move—but where to go?—some of the townspeople had swarmed into the waiting room of the clinic, weeping and moaning. Others hadn’t been as lucky; the landslide had buried them at the end of the street, sliding past the clinic but destroying the outbuilding that served as his and Charlie’s hospital. He knew the people inside would be crushed as the infirmary collapsed under the weight of rock and soil.

      A woman rushed through the clinic door, one arm hanging, obviously broken. A compound fracture. He had to move, to help.

      But shock had stunned him, and where was Khalil? After seeing him at the clinic earlier for a minor complaint, Sawyer had sent the boy back to school. Sawyer tried to move but couldn’t. He felt stuck, as if in cement or quicksand, and people were still yelling. Help us!

      * * *

      IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Sawyer jerked awake. He’d been dreaming, just as he’d expected he would, but the horrific images followed him into consciousness. He fell back against his pillow, sweating, remembering how he’d failed in