Hearts Unfold (16 page)

“I've called for an ambulance,
but it’ll take a while on these roads.
 
And I put out a bulletin, in case anyone's looking for him.
 
Is there anything I can do for him, or for
you, in the meantime?
 
Can you tell me
something about his injuries, Em?”

Without leaving her place on
the floor, she described the ugly gash on his scalp, the probability that he
had lost a considerable amount of blood, and what seemed to be a badly
separated shoulder.
 
“He must have been
walking around out there for a long time.
 
He was half frozen.
 
I can only
imagine how much pain he must have been in.
 
He's been unconscious most of the time, but I think he's sleeping
now.
 
At least he doesn't seem to be too
uncomfortable.”
 
She glanced down as if
to reassure herself of the fact.
 
“Surely
his family's looking for him.
 
Did you
say there were two other people in the car?”

“Yes, a man and a woman, both
young.
 
We've already gotten ID's on
them.
 
No obvious connection to this
boy.
 
The only thing I can figure is he
must have been thrown from the car.
 
Hard
to imagine how anyone could have survived.
 
What time did you find him?”

“A little after one yesterday
afternoon.
 
Not long after the power went
out, I guess.
 
When did the accident
happen?”
 
Jack took note of the way her
hand rested on the man’s shoulder, almost as though she were trying to comfort
him.
 

“Sometime before dawn.
 
A trucker pulled over to put on chains, saw
that the barricade at Charlotte Springs had been crashed and radioed me.
 
We found the car just a little ways
down.
 
It had gone off the road on the
ice, flipped and hit a tree.
 
Like I
said, it's hard to imagine how he walked away from that.”

“So he could have been
wandering around for hours.
 
He must have
been confused, but he certainly seemed determined to make it up the hill.”
 

“How did you get him into the
house?”

She seemed to take a minute to
compose her answer.
 
“I wrapped him in a
quilt and dragged him,” she said simply, as though it was something she did
every day.
 
When his jaw dropped in
astonishment, she shrugged her shoulders.
 
“Lots of adrenaline, I guess.
 
I
was so scared he'd die out there.”

“Want to tell me how you
happened to be here?”

“Not right now, if you don't
mind.
 
I will after he's been taken care
of.”
 
Now as she looked up into the
sunlight, her eyes, a liquid, silvery gray that again reminded him of Lilianne,
were pleading with him in a way he’d never been able to refuse.

“Do you want to go to the
hospital with him?”

“No.
 
You’ll go, won’t you?
 
There’s no need for me to go.”

“You're sure?”
 

“I'm sure.
 
Do you think it will be much longer?”
 
As if on cue, the sound of a distant siren
reached their ears.
 
With one last look,
she got to her feet, gathering up a long black overcoat and the wallet.
 
He watched her hesitate, staring down at her
badly worn boots.
 
“Do you think it would
be okay if I kept these?
 
They’re
his.
 
I lost my shoes in the snow
yesterday, and I don't have another pair with me.
 
I had to put these on to get more firewood
this morning.”

Jack blinked at her in
amazement.
 
“Yes, I think it'll be okay.”

The ambulance was in the yard,
the attendants rushing through the door with an oxygen tank, a stretcher, and a
big box of gear.
 
Emily stepped back,
watching as they rapidly worked over the patient.
 
One of them asked about his injuries and she
went calmly through the list again.
 
Within minutes, they had lifted him onto the stretcher, placed the
oxygen mask over his face, and secured him beneath a mountain of brown
blankets.
 
Only the top of his head was
visible, the makeshift bandage still in place, as they carried him toward the
door.
 

“You're sure you don't want to
go?”

“I'm sure.”
 
She went to the window to watch the progress
down the steps and across the yard, an unreadable expression on her face.

“Okay, but I'll be back.
 
And then we have a lot to talk about, right?”

Emily turned to him with a
tight little smile.
 
“Right.”
 

Jack could see her, as he
backed the car slowly out of the gate, standing at the window watching as the
attendants finished loading the stretcher and closed the rear of the
ambulance.
 
Tall and straight, her head
high, she raised her hand in a tentative wave of farewell.
 
Bone weary as he was, he knew he wouldn’t
rest until he found out at least a little about what had been going on here for
the past few days.

Emily stayed by
the window until the blare of the siren could be heard and she knew the
ambulance had reached the highway.
 
He
was gone, on his way to safety.
 
She
could let go of him now.

Turning back to
the room, she surveyed the displaced furniture, the quilts and towels littering
the floor.
 
Just under the edge of the
couch, she spotted the blood-stained pillow, pushed aside when Stani had been
placed on the stretcher.
 
Picking it up,
she hugged it to her chest, feeling the circle of warmth where his head had
rested.
 
“Godspeed, Stani Moss.”

She allowed a
moment or two to fix him in her memory.
 
The fine features, the dark eyes and his remarkable red hair, the feel
of him beneath her as she had wept on his chest, strong and warm, and the soft
touch of his hand.
 
Then, straightening
her shoulders, she let out a long sigh.
 
There was nothing left to do but pray for him.

She began to
put the room to rights.
 
Folding quilts,
rolling out the rug, and moving the furniture back into place.
 
As if a sign that things were returning to
normal, the lights blinked on and she heard the welcome rumble of the furnace
as it came back to life.
 
When Jack
returned, she wanted to be able to sit down by the fire with him and explain
what had been going on here before the storm had come.
 
In order to do that, she would need to remove
all evidence that Stani Moss had ever been here.
 
The sooner things looked as they had before,
the sooner she could pretend nothing had been changed by his presence.

Emily ate her
lunch, gazing out over the back yard where the sunshine now beamed off the
blanket of snow.
 
Warmed by hot soup and
the golden light that flooded in the windows, her spirits continued to
rise.
 
She wondered how Stani was faring,
now that he was in the hands of doctors who could start him on the way to
healing and getting back to his life.
 
It
would take time, but he was young.
 
He
would recover and look back at this accident as a tragedy he had survived.
 
Would he wonder about the person who had
pulled him in from the storm?
 
Maybe; but
if she kept her promise to remain just some unknown girl on a farm in the
foothills, Emily was certain it would be best for both of them.
 

Turning her
thoughts to exactly what she would say to Jack, she acknowledged that his
discovery of her here with Stani had not been the ideal way to begin her
campaign to win his support.
 
Best to be
honest about what had brought her here and go forth on the theme that she was
mature enough to handle even the worst situation.
 
And mature enough to know her own mind.
 
Poor Jack, after he got over the shock of
finding her here, he might at least give her a fair hearing.
 

In the
meantime, she needed to get on with the work at hand, wash her dishes and bring
in more firewood; and it was time to move the little figurines along their way
to the stable.
 
Tomorrow, she realized,
was Christmas Eve.

Chapter Ten

The telephone
finally rang at one fifteen.
 
Jana ran
into the bedroom to pick up the extension, as Milo answered at his desk.
 
It wasn't Stani.
 
The man on the line identified himself as a
member of the Virginia Highway Patrol.
 
He asked if he had reached the residence of Stanley Moss.
 
For a moment, Milo couldn't draw a breath to
answer.
 
He felt suddenly cold, as if
he'd been struck by a blast of icy wind.
 
Through the open door, he saw Jana sit down abruptly on the bed, staring
straight ahead.

He must have
replied because the officer then asked him for his name.
 
He asked if Mr. Scheider was a relative, to
which Milo heard himself respond that he and Stani were business partners.
 
By this time, the pounding of his own heart
threatened to prevent him from hearing what the officer was telling him.
 
He knew he must listen very carefully; he was
responsible for whatever had happened to Stani.
 
There had been an accident, the man was saying, early yesterday
morning.
 
A man carrying a driver's
license issued to Stanley Moss had been found after wandering away from the
site.
 
Could Mr. Scheider give him the
number for a member of Mr. Moss's family?

The officer was
obviously taking great care not to say too much.
 
Milo fought the rising urge to scream into
the telephone.
 
He needed to know what
had happened, where he would need to go to get Stani back.
 
He couldn't stand here any longer doing
nothing.
 
He heard himself calmly explain
to the officer that there was no family.
 
He and his wife had raised Stani.

At last, the
officer seemed to let down his guard.
 
He
told Milo that Stani had been taken by ambulance to the hospital at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville where he was being treated for
injuries and exposure.
 
He offered to
give Milo the phone number for the hospital's emergency room.
 
Jana spoke breathlessly into the phone.
 
How seriously was Stani injured?
 
Responding to the maternal concern in her
voice, he replied “Ma'am, from what I understand, he's lucky to be alive.
 
It's a miracle he was able to walk away from
that car.
 
The driver and another
passenger were killed instantly.”
 
Jana
whispered her thanks and dropped the receiver back into its cradle.

Once Milo had
spoken to a doctor who could tell him more about Stani's condition, he began to
make rapid preparations.
 
Finally, here
was something he could do, the kind of thing he did best.
 
He contacted doctors he knew through their
mutual involvement on various arts boards, was referred to the needed
specialists, then in turn telephoned them, explaining the situation, asking
them to contact the emergency room doctor in Virginia.
 
At their recommendation, he made arrangements
for a private ambulance to bring Stani back to New York.
 
He wanted as much control as possible over
Stani's initial treatment.
 
He couldn't
trust the doctors in Virginia to recognize how essential the treatment of the
shoulder injury in particular would be to Stani's ultimate recovery.

Lastly Milo
telephoned Robert, still awaiting his orders in Washington.
 
He was to pick up Stani's bag and his violin
from the hotel and return immediately.
 
He recognized the shock and concern in Robert's voice, as he promised to
go right away.
 
Milo then contacted the
radio production office and the music director at the church.
 
Both assured him they would be praying for
Stani's recovery.

As he made some
final notes on the list he had compiled in the course of arranging for Stani's
return, Milo was struck by the universal response to the boy's situation.
 
Everyone, from his driver to the finest
physicians and surgeons in New York, not to mention his musical colleagues, had
reacted with the same genuine concern, offering whatever support might be
needed.
 
He often worried that he had
somehow isolated the boy, in the effort to protect him from exploitation; but
now Milo had to acknowledge that Stani was respected and loved for
himself.
 
Those prayers offered might
well be needed in the days ahead.
 
But
more than that, Stani would need to be shielded from too much attention, until
the extent of these injuries could be determined.
 
Making an additional note at the bottom of
his list, one word—Security—Milo packed his briefcase and went in search of
Jana.