Flight Path to Forever – Chapter 2
Wind clawed at Sloane’s helmet as she knelt in the churned mud beside Mike Rogerson, her gloved fingers working with practiced efficiency despite the helicopter’s downwash trying to knock her sideways. The pelvic binder felt slick in her grip. Blood and rainwater making everything treacherous.
“Easy, Mike,” she murmured, though she doubted he could hear her over the rotor wash. His face had gone gray, pupils dilated with shock and pain medication, but his chest still rose and fell in steady rhythm. Good. Keep breathing.
She threaded the orange webbing beneath his hips, feeling the unnatural give where bone should be solid. The injury was bad. She could see the telltale asymmetry, the way his left leg canted inward at an impossible angle. Without stabilization, every jostle during transport would grind broken pelvic fragments against arteries that were already bleeding internally.
Two clicks as the buckles engaged. The sound was swallowed by wind and engine noise, but she felt the mechanism catch through her fingertips. Now came the crucial part. How to give enough compression to stop the bleeding, but not so much that she crushed what remained.
“Hold him steady,” she called to the loggers flanking Mike’s shoulders. Their faces were grim, and mud-streaked, but their hands were gentle as they braced him against the downdraft.
Sloane gripped the ratchet handle and pulled. The binder drew tight around Mike’s pelvis with mechanical precision, each click drawing the broken geometry of his lower body inward by degrees. Half an inch. An inch. She watched his face for signs of distress, felt for the pulse point at his wrist.
Bone fragments that had been grinding like broken glass settled into approximate alignment. Internal bleeding slowed as compressed tissue found new equilibrium. It wasn’t pretty, but it was life-saving and in her business, pretty didn’t matter.
“There,” she breathed, securing the final strap. The binder held Mike’s pelvis like a mechanical embrace, buying them time to get him to the trauma surgeons who could put him back together properly.
Mike’s breath hitched. “Baby… due in three weeks,” he rasped, voice thready over the rotor thunder.
Sloane slid two grams of TXA into the yellow port of his IV. “And you’re going to be there handing out cigars.”
She shot a glance at Zach, still in the cockpit, holding the Bell 429 in a hover just high enough to keep the skids from sinking into churned mud. He gave her a thumb-and-forefinger circle—ready when you are.
“Let’s package,” she told the two loggers assisting. They lifted Mike in a single count, laid him into the litter, and snapped the restraint straps. One logger swiped his eyes with a muck-smeared sleeve. The other pressed a crumpled photo of a sonogram into Sloane’s free hand.
“For luck,” he mouthed.
She tucked it into her vest pocket, latched the litter to the floor rails, and hit the intercom. “Cabin secure.”
Zach settled the bird just long enough for her to slam the side door. Then the world kicked upward.
Trees dropped away in a blur of snow-dusted green. Sloane knelt beside the litter, left knee braced against the turbulence.
“BP ninety-four over sixty,” she called forward. “Heart rate one-thirty, maintaining.”
“Copy,” Zach answered, voice steady.
A sudden downdraft smacked the cabin. The stretcher jumped; Sloane caught the rail with her elbow before the IV line could tear loose.
Mike’s eyelids fluttered. “Emma,” he whispered.
“Talk to me about Emma,” Sloane said, widening the saline drip. “What color will you paint her room?”
“Yellow… brighter than this mud pit.” A ghost of a smile.
“Good choice.” She kept him talking, one-skein conversation, one-skein vitals, weaving hope and medicine together because sometimes they were the same thread.
Five miles out she heard Zach inhale sharply. Ahead, a flash of grey swooped across the windscreen. Celeste Chong’s news drone, camera eye gleaming.
“Seriously?” Sloane muttered.
“Free advertising,” Zach said, and tipped the nose just enough to dodge.
Zach set the skids down feather-soft. The trauma team was already double-timing across the pad, gurney wheels squealing. Sloane rattled the hand-off—“Crushed pelvis, femur fracture, TXA on scene, liter in, stabilized vitals”—and jogged alongside until the automatic doors closed behind the stretcher.
Inside the airlock, adrenaline left her in one long shiver. She steadied herself against the wall, then felt a warm touch. Zach, handing her the sonogram photo she’d forgotten she’d tucked away.
“Dropped this.”
“Thanks. I’m starting a tradition. Pictures go in the ‘they-lived’ file.”
“Good file to keep.” He wasn’t smiling exactly, but the edges of his eyes had softened.
By the time they reached the lobby, her stomach reminded her she’d had nothing but coffee since 5 A.M.
“How long before Celeste’s drone footage hits her channel?” he asked.
“Ten minutes.”
He thunked the wall with his knuckle. “I say six, loser buys the winner a maple macchiato.”
“Deal.”
Doors parted and Ruby was waiting. “Whatever bet you two are making, put me down for eight minutes. I’ve got insider info. Drone Girl’s editing bay is two desks from mine.” She slipped a bill into Sloane’s pocket like a bookie.
The Laughing Moose had food and that was all Sloane wanted. Maggie waved them over, copper braid swinging.
“Flight fuel,” she said, sliding them two latte-laden cups. Maple froth formed perfect hearts. Sloane’s tongue practically sighed.
At the end of the counter, June angled her phone. “Livestream: heroes arrive!”
Sloane saluted with her cup. “Can we get a filter that hides helmet hair?”
June cackled. “I’ll add sparkles.”
A side door slammed. Dmitri Volkov barreled in. “They avoid the kiosk again!” he barked. “For this sugar shack?” He glared at Maggie’s pastry case as if it contained plutonium.
Maggie batted her eyelashes. “They prefer establishments with good customer service.”
Dmitri grumbled in Russian, then thrust two cinnamon rolls at Sloane and Zach. “Eat. You fly better with carbs.” He stomped out not waiting for thanks.
“He’s a cupcake under the espresso crust,” Maggie whispered.
“Cupcakes don’t stomp and fume,” Sloane replied.
They claimed a corner table by the window. Snow flurries blew sideways outside, but the maple latte warmed Sloane from collarbone to boot soles.
“Nice save on-scene,” Zach said, peeling the paper off his cinnamon roll. “Binder placement was textbook.”
“Your landing was needle-threading. That stump was, what, two feet from the tail?”
“Twenty-three inches,” he corrected, and she couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
Her pager buzzed. Just a system check. She tucked it away, then found Zach studying her over the rim of his cup.
“You always talk to your patients like that?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“Like their futures are already fact.”
She shrugged. “If they believe it, sometimes their bodies catch up.”
“Huh.” He looked out the window, as if testing the idea against the pale sprawl of mountains.
A ping sounded on June’s phone. She squealed. “Six minutes, forty-one seconds. Celeste just dropped the reel!”
Zach lifted a brow and Sloane groaned. Fishing in her pocket, she produced the crumpled five from Ruby.
“I’ll tab it later,” he said. “Bragging rights are sweeter.”
Their cups were half-empty when their pagers went off in tandem.
“Ready for round two?” Zach asked.
“Tell Celeste to keep the drone warm,” she said, fastening her collar. “Let’s fly.”
They left the warmth of the café, boots echoing down the corridor, the mountain wind already clawing at the rooftop hatch above. In her pocket, the sonogram photo pressed like a promise that the day’s first save was only the beginning.
You have been reading Flight Path to Forever...
Trust was everything when lives hung in the balance, especially when your pilot made your heart race faster than any emergency call.
Flight nurse Sloane Winters came to Alaska seeking peace, not passion. But working helicopter rescues with Zach Reeves—a brooding former Special Ops pilot whose rare smiles could melt glaciers—was testing every professional boundary she’d ever set.
Their chemistry in the cockpit was electric. Their banter over late-night coffee was addictive. And the way he looked at her during quiet moments between missions? Pure temptation wrapped in flannel and flight gear.
Zach was everything she shouldn’t want: complicated, emotionally guarded, and her direct partner on life-or-death rescues. But beneath his controlled exterior lurked a vulnerability that called to every nurturing instinct she possessed.
The attraction was mutual. She could see it in his heated glances, feel it in the way he found excuses to touch her hand, hear it in the rough edge of his voice when he said her name.
But something was holding him back. Some shadow from his military past that made him believe he wasn’t worth fighting for.
He was wrong. And she was about to prove it.
