Joy in His Heart (3 page)

She was awake now. Wide awake.

It didn’t take a genius to realize what had happened.
Especially since there was a harness holding her weight and it hung from a tangle of lines. Eyes still closed, Joy tried to slow her pounding heart.

She carefully cracked her eyelids open again and took stock of her situation. Slowly she pivoted her head downward. She was a good seventy feet off the ground and tangled in some of her lines and the branches of a tree.

Starting with her fingers and toes, Joy moved each extremity. Tensed each muscle group. Counted her injuries. Her right ankle was sprained or broken. Her right knee, too. Her hands and elbows seemed to be okay but her left forearm stung. That shoulder was out of commission, too, but in a way she couldn’t quite grasp. All she knew was nothing had ever hurt quite the way her shoulder did.

Then she looked up and added another injury to the growing list. Judging from the pain in her head, dizziness and the fact that she’d apparently been napping high in a tree while hanging from some pretty thin branches, Joy figured she probably had at least a mild concussion, too.

What made things even more dicey was that she was scared spitless. Oh, not of the tenuous hold she had on safety hanging in a tree but of all that wilderness below and around her. She was still the big, stupid ’fraidy-cat she’d been as a girl after watching
The Wizard of Oz.
The dark forest and poor Dorothy’s trek through it had been her worst childhood nightmare. It had been the threat of lions and tigers and bears, and not the wicked witch, that used to have her screaming in the night. She
looked around and refused to think about those flying monkeys.

Joy Lovell—pilot extraordinaire—was afraid of the wide open spaces she usually soared over as she was of nothing else in the world.

Even death.

Brian’s call from below dragged Joy from her fear-induced musings. But the situation didn’t get better with examination. She was stuck good and proper, and Brian Peterson, her ex-fiancé, was her only hope of getting down in one piece.

She searched her mind for an alternative to asking for his help. Unfortunately, no ideas came to mind other than just keeping quiet and starving to death in a tree. The idea had a certain amount of merit, she thought wryly.

After all, this was the man who’d valued her and her goals so little that he’d expected her to give up her dreams to play Little Susy Homemaker to his Doctor Brain. This was the man who couldn’t wait for her while she established a career in her chosen field while he was engrossed in medical school. This was the man who’d made her hope that she’d actually found someone who had accepted her for herself. But he had turned on a dime and demanded that she mold herself into someone who would be his image of the ideal doctor’s wife—someone she couldn’t be.

This was the man who’d broken her heart.

Then there was her responsibility for the entire situation to consider. It was her fault Brian was out there and in danger. She should never have given in to his de
mand that she include him. She’d known he’d be safer at Piseco than on a search and rescue mission. She
never
second-guessed herself! Why had she done it this time?

Now she was going to have to risk his life further. He’d talked about not wanting to face her mother and brother if she hadn’t managed a safe landing. She looked at the distance separating them. He could easily fall while climbing the tree. And if he fell rescuing her, she’d have to face
his
parents and brother. Did he think that would be any easier for her just because he happened to be male? She was the one in charge. The one responsible for his safety.

Still, she didn’t see how she could cut herself loose. She couldn’t even raise her left arm. And even if she could cut and unbuckle herself and get loose of the chute, there was still the long climb to the ground with only one good arm and one good leg, thanks to her injuries. “And let’s not forget a brain that feels like it’s made of pudding,” she muttered just before realizing her left hand felt wet and sticky. She looked down and noticed for the first time that blood flowed from somewhere on her forearm under her jacket sleeve.

Just then a scuffling sound from below drew her attention. “Joy!” Brian called.

She rolled her eyes. Since dying out here wasn’t now, nor had it ever been, an option, it looked as if Doctor Brain was her only hope.

Great! She groaned. Just great!

B
rian cupped his hands around his mouth. “Joy.” His voice was nearly gone from calling her name. Fear choked him. Fear for her. She was a royal pain in the neck but he couldn’t think of the world without her in it—somewhere. Panic overwhelmed him. If she’d jumped why couldn’t he find her? He should never have left her in that plane with only a promise that she’d follow. But she’d been so convincing.

Please, Lord, let her be safe. Let me find her.

“I’m up
here.
”

Brian snapped his head upward toward Joy’s muffled but annoyed voice and found a sight he’d never even considered. Joy Lovell trussed up like a Christmas turkey high in a tree. He laughed and the tension that had been building in him drained just seeing her safely on the ground. Well, not exactly on the ground but he’d been close to believing she’d lied—that she hadn’t intended to jump at all.

“Forget to watch where you were going?” he teased,
reveling in overwhelming relief that she wasn’t in the air fighting for her life and that stupid plane. “You really ought to take your own advice. You know? ‘Watch out for the trees’ I think you said.”

“I was trying to track the plane to the ground, idiot,” Joy shouted down at him. He grinned at the escalating annoyance in her tone. He figured if there was a way to shout through gritted teeth, she had.

Relief washed over him. Joy was all right. What was that old saying he’d once heard from her uncle? “Any landing you walk away from was a good one.” Brian had to add, “any crash you walked away from wasn’t too bad, either.”

Though her obsession with saving that plane nearly overshadowed his relief. He forced the troubling thoughts away, once again promising himself to take it up with her later. “Why? I understand that you were attached to the plane but it isn’t going to help us get home. I think that had better be our priority, don’t you?”

“Actually it
could
help us get rescued. Right now, though, I have a bigger problem. This isn’t funny, Peterson,” she shouted. “I can’t get myself free.”

So she might actually have to admit to needing his help? He was pretty sure that hadn’t happened to Joy in years—if ever. Oh, this was nearly worth the price of admission. And, considering that the price had been diving out of that plane and floating to the ground under a glorified umbrella, Brian really thought he deserved a little fun. “You’re stuck? Leave your Swiss Army knife at home, Joyless?” he chided, using an old nickname he knew really bugged her.

“No! I have my knife in a pocket but I did something indescribably nasty to my shoulder and arm. If I could cut myself loose, I’d fall because I also sprained or broke my right knee and ankle…. Oh, and don’t make yourself sick laughing over this one, but if all that isn’t enough fun, I think I’ve got a concussion, too.”

Brian stared up at her for a protracted moment, waiting for one of her usual one-line zingers that were always designed to make him feel like a fool for believing one of her wild tales. She’d been suckering him since she was just out of diapers.

But this time she didn’t follow up with a single word. His stomach sank. “You aren’t kidding, are you?” he asked, feeling like a first-class creep. He’d let old hurts and rivalries goad him into betraying his Hippocratic oath.

“No, Doctor
Brain,
I’m not kidding. And the really sad thing is, I have to depend on you and you’ve probably never climbed a tree in your life. How’s that for the end of a perfect day?”

Now it was Brian’s turn to grit his teeth. He let the Doctor Brain moniker slide. He’d started this round of nastiness after all. But why did she always have to make him sound like a bumbling weakling?

He slowly circled the tree, looking at it, all the while feeling her eyes on him. “I
have
climbed trees, Joy. In fact, I was quite good at it.” The first branch was over twelve feet off the ground and the first thirty feet of the branches were spread pretty far apart. “I need to tie the lines from my chute together and use it to scale the main trunk before I can get anywhere near you,” he told her.

“There’s a rope with a grappling hook in your emergency pack. One in mine, too,” she said, then after some awkward twisting and turning, she managed to toss her rope to the ground. “Can you hurry?” she added softly. The soft winded sound of her voice shook Brian. Joy never used that tone of voice. The exertion and pain of unpacking the rope must have worn her out.

Brian cringed, feeling like an idiot for having goaded her. But then, feeling like that around Joy was nothing unusual. No one on earth had ever gotten to him the way she could. But this time it wasn’t her fault. He was the one who’d made light of her situation. Why hadn’t he assumed she’d have injuries since she’d obviously crashed into a tree?

But he knew why. Though he forgot about it each and every time she scared a year off his life, he’d always seen her as indestructible. Believing that got him through every wild story her brother ever told him about her escapades. Brian frowned and looked back up at Joy hanging limply in the tree. Maybe she was more fragile than he’d ever realized.

Troubled by his rapidly changing perspective of Joy, Brian quickly unpacked his rope, then tossed the pack next to the parachute, followed by the bundle he’d managed to carry with him from the plane.

He had never used a grappling hook but he managed to hook it to the first branch on the third try. From there to the next level of branches was just as far but he quickly climbed it. His hands, blistered and bleeding, would take some time to heal but he reached Joy ten minutes after starting his climb. Of course, he’d had to
endure a critique of his technique from the moment he entered Joy’s line of sight. She’d made a few good suggestions, but that didn’t make her guidance of his rescue any easier to take.

“I don’t think that branch will hold you,” Joy said when Brian went to move onto the branch he needed to traverse in order to cut the lines tangled with her arm.

“Yes, it will,” he said as he gingerly walked the narrowing branch. “You know, you make a really lousy damsel in distress. This is my rescue. Would you just let me do it my way?”

“Sorry. Maybe I’m out of damsel practice. Oh, no. Wait. It could be because I’ve never needed someone to rescue me.”

“Well, you need one now. I’m sorry it’s me, but it is, so relax and stop nattering at me. I’m using the branch above to support some of my weight. Now shush.”

Her blue eyes blazed. “Don’t ‘shush’ me. I’m getting rescued so I get to help. And I don’t natter. You have to be at least sixty to natter.”

Brian had to grin. “Is that a rule I don’t know about?” he asked, hoping a little nonsensical conversation would calm both their nerves as he made his way to her. Now that he’d reached her level he saw damage to at least three other trees, which meant she’d been dragged through them. He sincerely prayed the injuries she’d already catalogued were all that was wrong with her. He caught his breath when he saw that a branch had punctured the pack at her waist. If it had gone all the way through….

She was lucky to be alive.

“Now let’s see what the problem is with your knee and ankle,” he said, his voice unsteady even though he was on a relatively stable footing next to her.

She glared at him. “Look, just get me free. I didn’t ask you up here to play doctor.”

Insulted, he snapped, “I
am
a doctor, Joy. I don’t play at it. Not now and not ever in my life.”

The fire in her eyes banked a little and she looked away. “I still don’t need you doctoring me. I probably exaggerated my injuries anyway. My head feels better now that I’ve been conscious for a while and I’m sure my knee and ankle are just slightly sprained. In fact, I’m sure I can get down on my own if you cut me free.”

Brian sighed. She was determined to make this just as difficult as possible, even though one look and he knew her shoulder was dislocated. The longer it stayed out of joint the harder it would be to get it back where it belonged and the longer her recovery would be. And since she’d been unconscious there was a good bet she’d been right to guess she might have at least a slight concussion. Her leg was so badly hurt, too, that she winced whenever she tried to move it. Sure it would hold her weight! For 2.2 seconds before she plummeted to the ground.

“You think you can climb down? You can hardly move.” He got nothing but a dirty look in response. “Ever read Proverbs 16, Joy?” he demanded after she remained stubbornly silent. “Verse 18 warns that ‘Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ The way you’re acting I’d say it was written just for you.” He pointed downward. “And that is one long
fall! Now listen. I’m going to get you down—
my way.
Using your harness. You can’t climb and I admit to not being strong enough to get down with you on my back.”

She opened her mouth but he wasn’t going to cling to a branch arguing all day or give her another chance to try sticking pins in his ego. “We both aren’t happy with being stuck out here together,” he told her. “But we are. There’s too much anger and resentment between us. It’s going to get in the way of us relying on each other. We’re going to need to do that to survive. So please just take my hand and pray with me before we make a mess of this whole thing.”

He reached out and took her right hand. He took a deep cleansing breath before he began. “Lord, I beg Your forgiveness for not thinking to ask Joy if she was hurt before I started us on the path to yet another argument. We thank You for our deliverance from certain death in the plane. We beg Your help again. Please teach us how to deal fairly and patiently with each other now that You’ve graciously spared us. We also pray for those children who are out here somewhere alone and afraid. Comfort them this night, Lord, and help us all find our way back to our loved ones. Do you want to add anything?” he asked Joy.

“No, that was fine,” she said, her tone much different. “Thanks for thinking of it.” She looked away but not before Brian saw the uncertain expression in her eyes. It was obvious she absolutely hated feeling helpless. “So what’s the plan, boy genius?” she asked, looking toward the ground.

“There is a good sturdy branch a few yards above us
so I thought we’d put it to good use. I can tie your harness to the rope, cut you loose from the chute, then lower you to the ground using the branch as a makeshift pulley.”

“But then you’ll still be up here. And I’ll be down there.”

Brian stared at her. He couldn’t imagine what she was getting at. “And your point is?” he asked, keeping his tone light even as he fought annoyance. He’d gotten up to her. He could get down much more easily, especially without her running commentary on his climbing technique.

“No point. No point at all,” she said still avoiding eye contact but, even so, he could see that somehow it was he who’d scored a point. And he hadn’t even tried. In fact, he didn’t have a clue how he had. It bothered Brian in a way he wouldn’t have suspected it could. Maybe because before that moment, if someone had asked, he would have said he knew everything important there was to know about Joy.

Now he realized he just might not know anything at all about her. It wasn’t the time to explore that now though but, like her reluctance to leave the plane, he promised he’d find out later. So with nothing left to say for the moment, Brian squeezed Joy’s uninjured shoulder and graced her with a serving of his best bedside-manner smile. “It’ll all work out,” he promised.

He’d meant what he’d said in his prayer. They needed to work together—to lean on each other. If they continued to shoot barbs at each other, that wouldn’t happen. And—worst-case scenario—someone could die.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he found himself reassuring the most self-assured person he’d ever met. “Just the way you kept your promise to me up there when you jumped after me. Okay? You don’t have to worry about standing once I get you down. I’ll tie your harness off a couple feet from the ground so you don’t have any weight on your leg and I’ll help you out as soon as I get down.”

He didn’t wait for a reply but got straight to work securing her harness with the length of rope from her pack. Next he started cutting and untangling her lines, then adding them to the length of rope. Then he started the arduous task of lowering her to the ground. There was no straight path down so she had to carefully pick her way through the thickening spring foliage with only one good arm and one good leg.

She made a few startled gasps along the way that he assumed were a result of sudden pain, but soon she called up that she was within feet of the ground and he tied off the rope. Then she added that she would unlatch her harness so he could let the rope fall to the ground in case they needed it later.

He saw the wisdom behind her actions but it annoyed him that she couldn’t seem to stand to let him take care of her. Knowing she was probably resting on his chute, however, let him do something else while he was up there. The parachute material caught high up in the maple called to him. If those storms came back or new ones blew in, they’d be thankful for the shelters he could build for each of them from the chutes. So he climbed higher into the thinning branches and grabbed
it. About ten minutes later he dropped to the ground next to her, startling her awake.

“You took your sweet old time,” she groused.

Joy looked up at Brian towering over her, her chute material bundled under his arm. He was handsome. She had to give him that. He now wore a navy-blue cotton bomber-style jacket over a white T-shirt and well-worn jeans, having shed his white doctor’s coat while in Ogdensburg. Brian didn’t look much like Doctor Brain, with perspiration misting his forehead and dirt smeared on one of his high cheekbones. He was more nimble and resourceful than she would have thought, too. After having grabbed his upper arm earlier to steady herself when he’d cut her loose, she now knew he had quite a lot of muscle definition in his arms.

No. Brian didn’t come across as a nerdy brain now. In fact, he looked entirely too masculine and competent for her peace of mind. And that was ridiculous considering she was totally panic stricken over their circumstances and in need of someone exactly like the man Brian had turned out to be.