Flight Path to Forever – Chapter 3
Sloane liked the way mountains looked from a helicopter. Enormous yet manageable, their lethal beauty flattened into a relief map slipping under the skids. Raider Peak, however, seemed to lean in and bare its teeth as Zach nudged the Bell 429 through an invisible fist of turbulence.
“Wind’s jumped five knots,” he warned over the intercom.
Sloane steadied the medical kit between her boots. “Route still clear?”
“For now. Ceiling’s dropping behind us, though. If we don’t boogie, we’ll be sipping cocoa with the ice climbers till spring.”
“Cocoa sounds nice. Hypothermia, less so.”
A crackle from the ridge team burst in. “Patient unresponsive, weak carotid. Litter ready. Hoist recommended. Visibility variable, blowing spindrift.”
Sloane toggled her mic. “Copy. Warm saline primed, heated blankets standing by.”
She braced as Zach banked into a tight orbit. Below, two red jackets flagged a makeshift landing zone no bigger than a pool table perched on a thirty-degree slope. Spindrift swirled like powdered sugar in a snow globe shaken by giants.
“Hauling you down thirty feet,” Zach said. “I’ll keep the cable short. The gusts are messy.”
“That’s one way to say terrifying.” She clipped in and sidestepped out the door into a roar of rotors and needle-sharp snow.
Her boots kissed ice. The world narrowed to wind whip, rotor thunder, and the sprawled form of the climber: male, twenties, helmet cracked, skin the color of skim milk. A search and rescue tech shouted vitals. Core temp eighty-nine, pulse thirty-four, respirations shallow.
Bad but salvageable. Sloane slid in a warmed saline line, slapped heat packs against axilla and groin, and secured a cervical collar. The litter clips locked and she flashed the winch-up signal. The world jerked skyward.
Inside the cabin she wrestled the laden litter into brackets while Zach lifted clear of the ridge, ice crystals hissing along the fuselage. The patient’s face had gained a shade of pink but his breathing still came in shallow puffs that barely fogged the oxygen mask.
“Core eighty-nine and rising,” she called over the steady thrum of rotors, fingers dancing across the portable monitor. The numbers climbed with agonizing slowness.
“Roger,” Zach answered, voice tight as a guitar string. The altimeter dipped. So did Sloane’s stomach, that familiar elevator-drop sensation that meant they were riding thermals like a leaf in a hurricane.
She pressed her palm against the patient’s forehead. Still too cold, but warming. Come on, she willed him silently. Stay with us.
“Easy,” she murmured to him or the mountain or maybe to the helicopter that bucked beneath them like a spooked horse, she wasn’t sure.
Zach’s voice was soft in her ears. “You always hum when it gets hairy?”
Heat bloomed across her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed the song slipping out. It was the same pop hook from June’s playlist that had been stuck in her head since hearing it. The melody had escaped without thought.
“Side effect of altitude,” she said and felt the flush deepen despite the cabin chill.
Through the headset, she caught Zach’s soft chuckle—warm, surprised, intimate somehow in the cramped space filled with medical equipment.
Five minutes from Whitewater Bay, clouds slammed shut like sliding warehouse doors. Snowflakes fat as feathers plastered the windscreen, each one a tiny star that bloomed and melted against the glass.
The world beyond turned into a white void, erasing the horizon line that pilots needed like a lifeline.
“Visibility just went to peas-on-a-plate,” Zach muttered, tension threading through his voice like wire. “I can pick IFR vectors or hug the tree line.”
Sloane glanced at the monitor. The patient’s oxygen saturation wavered at ninety-two percent, stable but fragile. Altitude changes could tip him backward into crisis.
“Patient won’t like altitude pressure,” she said, making the call. “Hug trees. I’ll keep breathing for him if needed.”
“Copy.” His voice sounded carved from granite, steady despite the helicopter’s increasing shudder as crosswinds tried to push them sideways into the white maze of storm and mountain.
She tightened her grip on the litter rail and found herself humming again, softer this time, almost unconsciously, as if the melody could somehow guide them all safely home.
Peas-on-a-plate, she repeated silently, tucking it away. The man had poetry buried under his layers.
At least the drone problem solved itself. Celeste’s quad-rotor couldn’t penetrate the snow wall.
Ten feet above the helipad a gust smacked them sideways. Zach fought the yaw pedals and the helicopter skidded left, right, then kissed the deck like a sullen cat deciding to allow affection.
“Skids down, rotors hot,” he breathed.
“Cabin clear.” Sloane’s pulse was still galloping to match the wild flight path they’d flown.
Inside the ER bay, Sloane rattled the hand-off: “Male twenty-seven, basilar skull fracture likely, moderate hypothermia, warmed fluids, sats improving.”
Dr Harrison’s team swept the climber toward CT.
She peeled off her gloves, expecting the adrenaline drain, but it didn’t come. The air outside the automatic doors howled like a jet engine, rattling windowpanes.
Ruby hustled past carrying armloads of blankets. “National Weather Service just upgraded us. Blizzard warning till midnight. CEO’s locking nonessential doors.”
“So we’re essentials?” Zach asked behind her.
“Some would say,” Ruby said.
Overhead, lights flickered. A generator hummed. The nurse’s station erupted in groans.
Zach arched a brow at Sloane. “Looks like cocoa and hypothermia might still be on the menu, just here instead of the ridge.”
Ten minutes later they found the staff lounge converted into a storm bunkhouse. Maggie appeared, cheeks wind-burned, clutching two thermoses.
“Laughing Moose to the rescue,” she announced. “Triple-maple hot chocolate, no charge. Dmitri’s roasting beans upstairs and swearing in five languages.”
“If he snarls, toss him a scone,” Sloane suggested.
“Already did. He snarled in Russian, then ate two.”
Maggie vanished to med-surg. Zach unscrewed a thermos, steam curling between them.
“Peace offering,” he said, handing it over.
Their fingers brushed and a static spark jolted them apart.
They sat on adjacent cots, cups steaming. Snow hammered the window like thrown rice, blotting out everything beyond, cocooning them in white noise.
“Busy first morning,” Zach said.
“Is it always like this?”
He considered. “Some days it’s worse.”
She laughed into the rim of the cup. Chocolate and maple coated her tongue.
After a silence measured in heartbeats, he asked, “Why leave Seattle? Level I trauma center’s a hard gig to walk away from.”
She traced a circle on the thermos cap. “I needed somewhere my work mattered without swallowing me whole. Whitewater was hiring. Plus”—she gestured at the wall of white—“I like extreme sports.”
“May tag you in next time I heli-ski,” he said.
“Is that an invite?”
“Depends whether you hum on descents too.”
She rolled her eyes, but the teasing eased something tight behind her ribs. His turn, she thought. “And you? Rumor says Special Ops. Why trade deserts for glaciers?”
His grin vanished, replaced by a hitch in his throat. “I, uh, thought Alaska would be quiet.”
Thunderous gust rattled the pane, as if mocking the idea. Sloane waited. He swallowed, eyes fixed on swirling white.
“Sometimes quiet isn’t a place,” she said softly. “It’s when the noise inside finally fades.”
His gaze found hers, surprised, almost raw. The moment stretched—cozy, electric—until a pager chirped from the doorway.
Dmitri stomped in, dusted with snow, brandishing a tray of espresso shots. “Ceiling’s down to four hundred feet. We caffeinate. We survive.”
He thrust tiny cups like rationed ammunition. Sloane accepted one. Zach did likewise, nodding thanks. Ruby popped her head in. “Waiting room’s filling with stranded day-surgery patients. Anyone who can swing an IV pole or play UNO is drafted.”
Dmitri harrumphed. “I pour. You poke.” He marched out, espresso tray held aloft like a standard.
Zach stood, offering his hand. “Come on, Seattle. Let’s make ourselves useful.”
She took it and let him pull her to her feet. Their palms lingered half a heartbeat longer than strictly professional. Snow hissed against glass. Somewhere overhead, a generator coughed.
“Race you to the supply closet,” she said.
“Loser sings pop covers at karaoke.”
Horrified grin. “You wouldn’t.”
He laughed, and they set off side-by-side into the controlled chaos, cups sloshing, storm howling, something unspoken crackling hotter than maple cocoa.
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.
