TONY: Slow Burn (Raging Fire Book 1), Kallypso Masters [classic novels TXT] 📗

can’t put any weight on it.” Tony noticed that her boot had already been removed and that she shivered uncontrollably. The sooner they got her off this mountain, the better. The man shivered less often, but probably had been able to move around more than the woman had.

“Because of her injury, we couldn’t make it back to the campground,” the man said. “We nearly froze to death last night.” Was he blaming her for that? “Luckily, we had the space blankets and these kind folks provided us with water and energy bars a little while ago.”

Tony cut the climber’s pant leg and sock off to expose her swollen ankle. “Can you grab a roll of gauze and the orange SAM splint from my backpack?” The flexible aluminum splint would help him immobilize the leg until she could be treated at a hospital trauma center.

“Sure.” She quickly found the items he wanted and handed them to him.

“Thanks.” He felt his patient’s pedal pulse to confirm she had adequate circulation before asking her to move her foot as best she could. He then tested the bottom of her foot for sensation. Satisfied, he placed the splint on her ankle to stabilize it from further injury.

The wop-wop-wop of the Black Hawk’s rotors drew closer. “Ryder, radio dispatch that we need both the basket and the harness sent down at the same time.” While they lifted the man out on the harness, he and Ryder could prepare the woman for transport.

With the help of another climber, probably from Carmella’s group, Ryder took care of getting the man into the harness soon after and sent him up. Tony checked the woman for further injuries, but none seemed apparent other than the aftereffects of hypothermia. However, her ability to recover without worsening hypothermia would be determined by how fast she reached the hospital.

Twenty minutes later, the hovering helicopter swallowed up the woman in the Stokes. As it flew away, those on the ground watched in silence.

“That was amazing work, Tony,” Carmella said. “You, too, Ryder.”

Tony shrugged off her praise. It’s what he trained for. But he admitted to himself how good it felt to be a part of saving someone after the disastrous call earlier in the week. These two would probably live to see another day.

“They were lucky you found them when you did,” Ryder said to Carmella.

“You did a good job of keeping them calm too,” Tony said, returning her earlier praise. “If they’d spent another night out here, hypothermia would have taken its toll.”

“I’m just glad we were in the right place at the right time.”

There wasn’t anything more they could do there, so he assessed their next steps. Between Ryder and Tony, they’d be able to carry the two extra backpacks down to the staging area. Tony prepared for the descent.

“Let us help with those packs,” Nick said.

“We don’t want to disrupt your climb any more than it already has been,” Ryder said.

Carmella waved away his concern. “We were just finishing up anyway. We can hike down together.”

Although Tony—and probably Ryder—would prefer to go back to the staging area alone, he felt a need to make sure Carmella and her group made it back safely too. However, watching her preparations to rappel over the cliff to the gully, he could see she put safety first and knew what she was doing.

“Where’d you learn mountaineering?” he asked once Carmella and her fellow rappelers joined him and Ryder in the gully.

“Marc mostly,” Carmella said as they began their hike toward the lakeside campground. “He used to bring me up here when I was a teenager, after we’d hiked a lot of Class 1s and 2s and he thought I was ready. I was about thirteen. It was a good four years before he let me anywhere near the peaks of Capitol or K2.”

Good for Marc. This wasn’t a forgiving mountain, even for experts.

“Of course, I continue to train year in and year out. I’m sure as a firefighter, EMT, and SAR volunteer you can appreciate how quickly things change and how you can get rusty fast.”

Sometimes there isn’t enough training in the world to avoid that.

When Carmella cocked her head in his direction, Tony realized he wasn’t acting his usual self. He didn’t need for her to see him sinking into a morass of self-pity like the one he’d been plagued with for days. To lighten the mood, Tony regaled them with tales of some crazy rescues he’d been involved with.

“A few months ago, we had a call for some stranded hikers on Quandary Peak. Well, they called themselves hikers, but it was clear they were more interested in taking advantage of Colorado’s new law legalizing marijuana. They were definitely high on the mountain.”

“I never thought anyone would be stupid enough to mix drugs or alcohol with hiking and climbing,” Shawana said.

“You wouldn’t believe what people do that ends up in a 911 call. But these three were a piece of work. They called us, but when dispatch responded, the guy had no clue why they had called. They also didn’t know where they were, not even which mountain.” He laughed, shaking his head. “It took hours for them to come down off the drug enough to help us locate them. At least they were too stoned to continue hiking and climbing after the call, or it might have been a lot worse.”

“Marc’s shared some wild tales, too,” Carmella said. “Never a dull moment for first responders.”

Sometimes the stupid decisions people made didn’t end with a successful rescue. Anger burned inside him at the woman who’d put herself and her child in jeopardy by attempting to cross a bridge that had overflowed with water from a flooded waterway. A senseless waste. But his remorse over not being able to save them soon subdued his anger. In the end, Tony had failed to save them, plain and simple.

The remainder of the hike back to the campground was filled with stories from Nick and Carmella about