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load you into the ’copter now. Let’s just check this cardiac monitor before we go. Your friend did a great job on these emergency splints, but we’re putting our own on. All done there, Mac? Good. Let’s move him.”
    Didn’t they know he was a doctor? Greg tried to answer, to give exact instructions as to what should be done, but once again the intensity of the pain didn’t allow for speech. With utter amazement, he realized that the sound he’d heard was coming from his own throat, that familiar primeval moaning howl he’d heard so many times before. Even as it escaped him, some detached medical part of his brain again celebrated the fact that he could feel his body.
    Feeling is better than not feeling. Feeling means my spinal cord is probably intact. Please, God, let my spinal cord be intact....
    They’d fitted him with a hard collar. At least they were taking all the necessary precautions.
    In spite of the morphine, the torment grew unbearable, and again he relinquished consciousness.
     
     

 
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    At three-thirty on Sunday afternoon, Lily was in the downstairs bathroom helping Zoe off the toilet when the phone rang. She grumbled under her breath and hollered, “Can you get that, Gram?”
    Fortunately Hannah was having a fairly good day, and Lily heard her pick up the receiver and say a hello.
    “No, I’m sorry, she’s not interested in any blood,” Hannah said next in an aggrieved tone. “I really don’t think you people should be making obscene phone calls like this.” Then, sounding puzzled, she added, “Now why did I call you, anyway?”
    “Yoicks.” Lily hastily swiped Zoe’s tiny bottom and pulled up her training panties. “Auntie has to go to the phone. You flush and then wash your hands, okay, missy?”
    “Yoicks,” Zoe parroted. “Flush, wash, flush, wash,” she sing-songed, turning the cold tap on full and sending spray cascading up the wall.
    Well, the walls needed washing anyway, Lily told herself as she sprinted across the kitchen, taking the receiver an instant before Hannah banged it down.
    “Lily Sullivan here.”
    “Ms. Sullivan, sorry to disturb you, especially on a Sunday. It’s the blood bank calling. I have you on our emergency donor list, and I wondered if there’s any possibility you might be able to come down immediately and donate blood? We’ve had an urgent request for AB negative and we don’t have enough in stock.”
    Lily glanced at the clock. Kaleb would be home in a few minutes and she’d planned to go out for a run after a hectic day spent caring for her two charges.
    Donating blood was the last thing she felt like doing, but she also knew that if she refused, images of some poor soul bleeding out because of her selfishness would haunt her. Twice before she’d been called in when the blood bank supplies ran low on her rare type.
    “Sure, I guess I can come down.” She sighed, trying to figure out how best to juggle her schedule. “I’ll be there within an hour.”
    “Thank you so much, Ms. Sullivan. We’ll be expecting you.” There was palpable relief in the woman’s voice.
    Shortly afterward, Lily lay on a cot at the blood bank center, feeling the familiar deep ache in her arm from the needle the nurse had just inserted in the brachial vein at the bend of her elbow. The agitator rocked back and forth, and the small plastic container slowly filled with dark liquid.
    Apart from a dizzy, slightly nauseated feeling, giving blood didn’t really affect her. It wasn’t the physical act of giving blood that took time, it was the barrage of questions a donor was required to answer beforehand that ate up the better part of an hour. She was good at it by now; she practically knew the questions off by heart.
    Have you ever had hepatitis? Epilepsy? Heart or blood-pressure problems? Cancer? Diabetes?
    Have you had multiple sexual partners? Accepted money or drugs in exchange for sex? Shared needles? Had sex, even once, with