“Got one right over here,” Paula replied.

“Good enough.” Flannery leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, looking as relaxed as if she was waiting for a bus. Presley caught her eye and Flannery winked.

Presley understood then that Flannery had total confidence in Harper and was content, despite her obvious instinct to take charge, to wait until Harper needed her. What an interesting and foreign dynamic that was. To trust and be trusted so completely. Presley turned back to Harper, a disconcerting ache in her chest.

“Flann,” Harper said, peering into the child’s throat, “can you give me some cricoid pressure? I can’t see around the epiglottis it’s so swollen.”

“Sure thing.” Flannery pushed away from the wall and pinched her thumb and forefinger in the center of the baby’s throat. “That help?”

“Better,” Harper said, her focus absolute.

The frightened young woman—the baby’s mother, Presley assumed—started to sway, all the color drained from her face. “Oh my God.” Her voice echoed with hollow horror.

“Here,” Presley said, sliding an arm around the young woman’s waist. “There’s a chair right behind you. Sit down and let the doctors and nurses work. Everything will be all right.” The words came so automatically she couldn’t take them back and hoped she hadn’t lied. And yet, watching Harper and Flannery, she couldn’t believe anything else.

Alarms rang, jagged green lines jumped across a monitor on a high shelf above the bed, and the child lay so still. Never had stillness been so terrifying.

“I think I’m in.” Harper hooked a line connected to an oxygen tank up to the tube she’d inserted in the child’s throat. “Somebody listen.”

Flannery tugged the stethoscope from around Harper’s neck and placed the end on the toddler’s chest, the instrument looking far too large against the miniature rib cage. She moved it quickly over both sides of the tiny torso. “Sounds good.”

“Color’s coming back,” Rose said.

Flannery glanced up the monitor. “O2 looks good too. Nice job.”

Harper looked up at her sister and flashed a quick grin. “Thanks. Appreciate the backup.”

“No problem. Need anything else?”

“We’ve got it.”

Flann nodded and stepped over to Presley. “I see you’re getting a firsthand, up-close-and-personal introduction to the place.”

“Yes.” Presley took a deep breath. The room jumped into stark relief, as if a curtain had been swept aside. Harper’s hands moved with quick certainty as she secured the tube to the child’s cheek with strips of tape. Her fingers were long and tapered, elegant as an artist’s at work. “A bit more dramatic than I’d expected.”

“Harper has always been the showy one,” Flannery murmured.

Presley laughed softly at the obvious lie. “I noticed.”

“I’m still free later.”

“I’ll have to see how my schedule is running.” Presley wasn’t certain she could take any more of the Rivers clan in one day. There was something so raw about them, as if they’d somehow escaped the veneer of civilization that created an invisible shield around everyone else she knew. Their intensity scraped against her nerve endings and stirred feelings both uncomfortable and intriguing.

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you when you’re free.”

Flannery disappeared and Presley knelt by the young mother. “Everything is going very well. Do you need anything?”

The young woman, a girl really, turned eyes dilated and nearly blank with shock to Presley. “She was fine last night. Just a little runny nose. Then this morning she had a cough, and I didn’t like the way it sounded. All raspy, like. My husband said I should bring her in. Maybe I waited too long.”

Presley searched for the right words. God, this was awful.

Harper squatted down and took the mother’s hand. Her shoulder touched Presley’s and for an instant, Presley absorbed the hard strength of her. The unexpected comfort shocked her into pulling away.

“You didn’t wait too long,” Harper said. “She developed swelling at the back of her tongue, and it blocked her airway. Kids get this sometimes and it happens really quickly. You brought her in and that’s what matters.”

The mother clenched Harper’s hand so hard her knuckles turned white. “She’s going to be all right?”

“We’re going to put her in the intensive care unit and watch her really closely. She’ll be getting antibiotics. You should go to the cafeteria and have something to eat. One of the nurses will come down and find you when it’s time to see her.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Rose came over and took her by the arm. “Come on, sweetie, I’ll walk you down.”

Presley waited at the nurse’s station while Harper wrote notes and orders and called the intensive care unit to tell them about the little girl. Finally, Harper pushed back her chair and stretched her shoulders. She seemed completely calm, as if she hadn’t just saved a child’s life. Her disheveled hair was the only sign she’d just been in the middle of an emergency, and on anyone else the look would probably have been a studied effect. On Harper the result was rakishly appealing.

“What was that?” Presley asked, squelching the flicker of unsettling allure.

“Acute epiglottitis—it’s uncommon, but not really rare. Kids decompensate really quickly. If she hadn’t been here when the episode started…” She raised her shoulder.

Presley got the message. Harper was conditioned by generations of tradition to believe the hospital was essential to dispensing care, but in twenty-first century America, there were other more cost-effective models. “What about urgent care centers? According to our geographic searches, there are quite a few within reasonable driving distance.”

A muscle in Harper’s jaw jumped. “Urgent care centers have their place. They’re great for routine problems, but they’re not designed for emergency care. They transfer out anything of a serious nature. And this?” She shook her head. “I had trouble getting that tube in.”

“And if you hadn’t been able to? Couldn’t she have been transported to a medical center with pediatric intensivists?”

“Not safely. Flann would’ve had to do an emergency tracheostomy. In the emergency room, on a child? Not many people could do it.”

“I see,” Presley said. “And what if you and your sister hadn’t been immediately available? I’m guessing no one else here could have done what you did.”

“We’re always available.”

“Unusual, and admirable. All the same, let’s say the mother hadn’t had the option of coming here. Then she would have driven to a tertiary care center to begin with.”

“Why would I want to assume that?”

“Just hypothesizing, Dr. Rivers,” Presley said carefully. “We consider such things when determining risk management, for one thing.”

Harper rose, her expression shuttered. “Peggy. That’s the little girl’s name. Peggy Giles is going to be fine. Her mother brought her to the right place.”

“Of course.” Presley couldn’t argue, at least not now. She’d seen the truth of Harper’s statement. “You—all of you—were impressive.”

Harper’s gaze captured hers. “Will you take the time to know who we are? What we do?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Is it?”

Presley searched for a truthful answer. “We work on different sides of the same street, Harper.”

“Then walk on mine awhile. A month—spend a month with me in my practice.”

Presley laughed. “I can’t do that—I’ve got a schedule to keep. I…” I need to wrap this up before Preston shuts me out.

“Afraid to see the faces of the people behind the numbers?”

“That’s not fair,” Presley shot back. “You don’t know me or what I do.”

Harper raked a hand through her hair, her jaw clenching. “You’re right. So educate me.”

“Fine. I will.”

Harper grinned and Presley glowered. What had she just agreed to?

*

Presley left the ER and, halfway back to her office, abruptly changed her mind. She followed the exit signs to the side entrance and walked around to where she’d parked her car. She had too much nervous energy to sit behind her desk. The restlessness was a totally alien sensation. Work was her touchstone, her office the place she escaped to when the emotional ups and downs of dealing with her parents and the mental stress of jousting with Preston wore her down. But right now, her body refused to settle, and she climbed into her car and drove down the winding road away from the hospital with the windows open and the wind whipping through her hair. The image of Peggy Giles, so limp and lifeless, and the primal keening of her mother pursued her.

She pulled into the long dirt drive leading to the Whites’ and sat gripping the steering wheel, the faint mechanical ticking of the cooling engine loud in her ears. She hadn’t really let Harper goad her into wasting hours trailing after her, had she? She’d have to find a plausible excuse to withdraw. The more time she spent with Harper, the more she’d have to defend a position Harper could never appreciate or accept. Harper was an idealist, the worst kind of person to involve in business decisions. God. She needed to draw a firm line in the sand before a simple job got out of hand.

When she finally looked up and saw the rental car parked by the barn, she almost cheered. A little bit of normality at last. Carrie was here, solid, reliable, dependable Carrie, who understood the way she thought and didn’t take issue with her simply for being realistic. She hurried up the walk into the house. “Carrie?”

“Out here,” Carrie’s lilting voice announced.

Presley left her briefcase by the stairs and strode to the kitchen. The room was empty, a covered plate of what she hoped were more of Lila’s muffins on the table, and the screen door open. Outside, Carrie leaned against the back-porch post. “Hi! You found the place, I see.”