CHAPTER THIRTY

Mason

"Hold on back there!" The helicopter pilot shouts into the headsets, his voice sounds distant over the crack of thunder that seems like it's right next to us in the clouds. The cabin of the small aircraft shudders. "We need to make a rapid descent to get out of these storm clouds!"

I'm useless back here as the flight crew secures everything a little tighter, including the stretcher where Charlie is laying.

The helicopter sways, fighting against the wind. The floor drops out from beneath me, my stomach lurching up into my throat as we drop what feels like two hundred feet. An alarm blares in the cabin up front, warning the pilot about the rapid descent. The sudden drop was necessary to get us out of the turbulent cloud cover that had enveloped us faster than expected, but I can't quell the nausea as my gut roils.

This is it. This is where I die. And on my tombstone, it will read, this asshole should have listened to Winnie. She'll carve it into the stone herself.

The gusts still rock the helicopter, but overall, the jarring bumps have settled out down here at a lower altitude. We're almost out of the mountains, and the stretch of the flight across open prairies should be smoother.

"What's the ETA on touchdown?" The flight nurse, the one with the slicked back bun, shouts into her mouthpiece.

"Not long now. Another thirty-five minutes or so."

I notice the nurse's expression shift, her mouth forming a tight line as she looks over at Charlie. The epinephrine infusion is helping with his blood pressure, but his breathing has become more laboured. His eyes are wide, and he has a look of panic on his boyish face. I've learned through my years in medicine that a patient looking panicked is an ominous sign. People can often sense when things are going sideways before healthcare professionals do.

"We're almost there, Charlie. Hang in there a little longer," the nurse says, pulling her stethoscope from around her neck to listen to his lungs. Her mouth forms that same grim expression.

"Is my mom coming to the hospital?" The question comes out as a broken rasp as Charlie rests his head back on the stretcher and closes his eyes.

"Charlie? Stay with me, Charlie," the nurse says, giving his shoulder a shake. "We're losing his airway!" She shouts to her partner through her mouthpiece, who places a mask over Charlie's little face and starts pumping air into his lungs, helping him breathe.

"Prepare the intubation supplies." He instructs her. "We're going to need to intubate before his airway swells shut."

Patient transport isn't my area of expertise, but anyone can figure out that inserting a breathing tube is a risky decision in flight.

"Are you sure we can't make it to the hospital? We're only about twenty minutes out now," the nurse says as she opens a kit containing an array of tubes and equipment that would help Charlie breathe.

"Not if you want him to survive," the partner says, a bleak truth. The nurse nods.

"How can I help?" I ask. I fidget in my seat, not quite knowing what to do with my hands. This was my bread and butter in Toronto, for the brief period that I worked in the emergency department. Now I'm frozen, unsure how to help or if I would end up being in the way.

"Keep talking to him, Dr. Landry. We're taking care of it." It's a menial task, when I could help in more meaningful ways. I'm a trained physician, and this nurse and respiratory therapist are barking orders at me. To be fair, I haven't had to intubate a patient in years, let alone a child, and this crew does it day in and day out. But it makes me wonder how many times I barked orders at Ally when she was only trying to help?

I lean down next to Charlie so I can speak into his ear.

"Everything's going to be okay, Charlie. You're safe. We've got you, buddy." My voice quakes. "We're going to put you to sleep now, so we can help you breathe, alright? And when you wake up, Mom's going to be at the hospital with Lainey, and you'll be okay." I don't know if he can hear me, who exactly I'm trying to convince.

First Noah, and now Charlie. If Susan lost both of her boys, it would be the end of my career. For no other reason than I wouldn't be able to endure one more day.

The nurse pushes a few syringes of medications through the IV that I had inserted earlier. All of Charlie's muscles relax, the paralytic drugs taking over. The tube is placed in mere seconds, the ventilator beeping to life and taking over Charlie's breathing. I release a breath of my own. Charlie is stable for now.

"Another rocky descent coming!" the pilot announces over our headsets.

Rocky is putting it lightly. Next to the children's hospital, the helicopter pad is coming into view, but the storm has caught up with us as we slow to come in for a landing. The small aircraft struggles against the gusts, swaying side to side as the pilot attempts to line us up with the fifty-foot concrete pad. I can picture us making it all this way, only to plummet to our deaths during landing. The statistic that most aircraft crash during take-off and landing comes to mind and I try to shove the knowledge out of my head. The thought that replaces it is Ally.

Ally. If I die here today, I will have never gotten the chance to tell her how much she means to me. And worse, the last words I would have spoken to her were bitter ones. I called her a distraction. I told her she was useless to me when she was anything but.

The stretcher bumps and sways as the pilot tries to gain control for landing. The final slam onto the pad breaks the landing gear, and we come to a screeching halt. Metal making contact with concrete. Without thinking, I lunge across Charlie, trying to anchor him against the turbulence. The impact pitches me forward, and I use my outstretched arm to break my fall. A searing pain jolts through my arm, dull and electric all at once, as bone crunches against bone.

I grit my teeth against the pain, pushing it aside. Charlie is the priority right now. The epinephrine drip that I started helped to slow the progression of Charlie's shock, but his airway had continued to swell, coming dangerously close to closing completely. He would need to be admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit. Maybe for days.

I watch as the flight crew wheels the stretcher past the triage desk, a team of doctors and nurses waiting to meet Charlie on the other side of the double doors separating the waiting room from the treatment area. The triage nurse gives me a curt nod, and I return it as I watch her eyes move from my face to the arm that I'm bracing against my abdomen. She has the look of a nurse who has worked so many years that at this point, she may as well have X-ray vision. She gives me a knowing glance and waves me over to her desk.

"You're a little old to be coming to the children's hospital, but considering the day you've had, we'll get you in for an X-ray." She holds out her hand for my healthcare card, which I don't have on me since we left in such a hurry. I pat around my jacket pocket and jeans looking for my phone, since I always have a picture of the card, but I come up short. It must have fallen when I lurched forward in the helicopter.

My stomach sinks when I realize how worried Winnie will be waiting by the phone. I answer a few quick questions from the triage nurse and before I know it, she's completed my registration and is ushering me down the hall towards the radiology department.

The X-ray is quick, but I wouldn't say painless. The tech moves my arm around to get the right angle, and each time he does, my bones crunch on each other. It takes everything in me not to be sick.

I can't say how long it will take me to get the results of the X-ray, not that I need them. I could have told the doctor that it was broken the moment I fell, and the searing pain just about blinded me. The triage nurse already did me a favour getting me in for imaging right away, but I sure as hell am not about to skip in front of a child to see the doctor. I consider asking to read the X-ray myself. We haven't had access to imaging for so long that my X-ray reading abilities are a little rusty. I wouldn't trust myself to find an abnormality unless my arm was obviously deformed, and you could tell by looking at it across the room.

That leaves me here, sitting on an old vinyl chair in the hallway, left alone to consider my thoughts, and the one at the forefront is Winnie. She would be sitting at the clinic, waiting for my call, the image of which makes my stomach clench.

My arm is throbbing like a bitch, but it's better now since the triage nurse secured it in a sling, so I get up from the chair and make my way over to the nursing station. Two nurses are sitting behind the desk, clacking away on the computers.

"Can I get a pain killer or something? Some Tylenol?" I ask to no one in particular. The nurse who answers me is young, probably in her early twenties, and she's wearing a similar set of scrubs to the ones Ally liked, just in a dark navy as opposed to the pastel ones Ally prefers. Her expression isn't friendly. How she landed a job in a children's hospital is beyond me.

"Do you want a popsicle and a prize, too?" She jeers as she saunters over to the medication cart and pulls out a couple of pills.

"Actually, yeah. A popsicle would be amazing. Thanks." Nurse Crabby points over to the fridge across the hall from the desk.

"Help yourself." Which I do.

"You mind if I use the phone?" I ask, licking my popsicle, and the other nurse looks up at me this time, taking a second to register what I've requested. Saying nothing, she hands me the receiver over the desk, followed by the phone base so I can dial the number. She turns back to her charting, and I flash her an exaggerated smile.

"Thank you so much," I say asI punch in the numbers to the clinic by memory. The other end of the line rings and rings, over and over, until finally Winnie's voice comes over the speaker to let me know I can leave a message.

I hang up and dial her cell and the phone clicks after only a couple of rings.

"Remind me to stock the fridge in the clinic with popsicles when I get back." Not for the kids. For me.

"Mason! Thank God you're alright." The wind of the sigh she releases nearly blows right through the phone. "I've been so worried. There's been a video circulating on the internet saying that the helicopter crashed."

"Well, it wasn't a smooth landing, but I wouldn't say we crashed. I'm waiting for the result of the X-ray, but I think I fucked my arm up pretty bad. I'm at the hospital now. They had to intubate Charlie en route, but he'll be alright, and so will I."

"I'll let Susan know right away about Charlie. She's going to drive to the hospital as soon as the road conditions are safer," Winnie says, adding, "and Ally will be so relieved that you're mostly in one piece."

"Why would Ally be relieved? Winnie, tell me you didn't call her." This was the last thing Ally needed, to be reminded of me when she's trying to move on. I'm trying to move on too, and failing miserably. Her name on my lips makes my heart flutter. Logically speaking, I shouldn't want to hear about Ally, but every fibre of my being does. I want to know everything about her; I want to feel the tiniest thread connecting us, even if it is only through word of mouth.

"Of course, I did, Mason. I called everyone that you might have been in touch with." I can't blame Winnie. It makes sense. But I also have nothing to say in response that won't fuel an argument.

"Don't get mad at me, Mason. It's on you for whatever happened between you and the sweet girl," Winnie scolds.

"Fuck me, I almost died today. Go easy." I fire back, earning a hostile glare from the nurse behind the desk. Children's hospital. Right.

"Maybe a near-death experience is what you needed."

"You want me to be on the brink of dying? I never took you for a sociopath," I snap back.

"Just saying. You were due for a wake-up call," she says, clucking her tongue.

"You're sick, Winnie."

But she's not lying. I was a piece of shit to Ally when all she did was try to help. It's no wonder she left and wants nothing to do with me anymore. She confided in me, told me about how giving she is, how people take advantage of her. I turned around and did the same thing too, in a way. Even if it wasn't intentional. It didn't matter. I didn't consider how my actions would affect Ally, and that was mistake number one. It was a mistake I fear I won't be able to undo at this point.

It's so like me, too. I dedicate myself to this clinic, to my work, and I think that makes me a good and selfless person, but it doesn't. It's a way of avoiding the discomfort that I'm afraid of. I'm afraid to admit that I can't do it on my own, as Dad did. I pour myself into my job so that I can say that I'm doing it on my own, but at what cost? I push away everyone who cares about me. Even Winnie thinks I'm a piece of shit at this point. I have nothing in my life that means anything other than work. Ally meant something, she meant everything, and I pushed her away.

"Tell me how to fix it, Winnie, and I'll do it. But it's going to take a lot more than an apology at this point."

"Show her she matters to you. Show her you have room for a partner in your life. That you want to share some of your responsibilities with her. That's all she wanted," Winnie says it like it's easy. Like I can snap my fingers and have the solution right in front of me.

A partner. I can't imagine what having a partner would even look like.

I've always believed in this narrative that I can't have both things; a successful career as a doctor and a real life. Now I'm wondering if that's true, or if I was just too damned proud to let anyone in to help me, to take some of my burden. Ally tried. She was willing to help me and not let me feel like I was lesser because of it. Ally understood the weight that I carry and was willing to carry it, too. She made me better, opened me up to new ideas and experiences. She let me have fun .

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I look over to see the flight nurse holding my phone out to me. The screen is cracked.

"I gotta go, Winnie. I'll be home later. I'll text you when I get in, but don't wait up." I click the receiver down and take my phone from the nurse.

"We found it when we were cleaning up," she says before walking away again.

"Thanks," I call after her.

I click on my phone to make sure that it still works, and it's in perfect working order. A little too good. I have an unopened text from Jett. Probably to say something snarky about me causing a plane crash.

Jett: Sorry about you and Ally, buddy. She was too good for you, anyway.

It started off with a decent sentiment, at least. I see that he's also sent a link for an Instagram post I open. I haven't used Instagram in ages, but Jett is always on social media, reading all the comments about how hot all the snow bunnies think he is. I bet he runs his own fan account.

The post is from some woman, @emharrisxo , that I've never heard of before. But I recognize the person she's filming. I would recognize those long strawberry waves anywhere. My chest seizes. Ally is stunning, a shimmering ray of light in a sparkly champagne mini dress, her lean legs on full display and looking toned in her strappy heels.

Unfortunately, I also make out the person who is down on one knee in front of her. I watch in horror as he pulls out a ring box, the diamond inside so massive it's visible from across the room. And Ally, the woman who was, just a few weeks ago, forcing me into a relationship so she could get rid of this guy, raises her hand to her mouth in shock.

The word she utters is almost inaudible, but the shape of her lips forms the word absolutely, and I shut off the phone. I can't watch another second of the woman I love agreeing to marry someone else. Not someone else. Nate. The sleazeball that took advantage of her.

I want to hate Ally for it. I want to let my rage bubble up for her turning around and leaving after everything we shared. Nate is a piece of shit, but he's a piece of shit that dropped everything to find her in Heartwood, who pursued her with such fierce determination. I can't blame Ally for seeing the appeal in that. For choosing that over the small morsels of attention she had to fight to get with me.