Vigorous nod.
He held up two fingers and grinned. “That’s two days. One, two. Think you can keep it straight?”
Courtney rolled her eyes playfully, her cheeks turning rosy again. Silly me, she thought dryly.
“Absolutely, sir.”
Moments later, Josh walked her into one of the unoccupied rooms and pulled up an extra chair. She sat down and fired up her laptop.
“All right, let’s get started,” he said.
Whew.
Still in the game.
Two
The next day, Nick Bingham peddled through the leafy woods of Door County’s Headland State Park, steering to avoid the muddy center of the well-shaded trail. Knee-high shrubs covered the dense forest on either side of the path and the sweet, earthy scent of hemlock and pine filled the air.
Rounding a bend, Nick gripped his handlebars tightly and launched himself across a shallow ravine in the trail.
Behind him, Tom Garcia, Nick’s roommate, followed suit. It was Tom who had talked Nick into joining the team last fall, once they’d become roommates by convenience and then friends by choice.
Sunlight shot between the trees in various places, speckling the forest floor with a random shock of light every here and there. The park butted up against the lake and boasted flowery meadows, convenient boat launches, a few sandy beaches, and miles of easily accessible trails.
Nick and Tom were expert mountain bikers and knew by heart the elaborate trail system throughout the park. The problem was that not all of the tourists who used it could say the same.
It was midmorning, Wednesday, and Nick had just started taking inventory at the Inlet Outfitters Sports Gear and Rental Shop where he worked, when the call from the search-and rescue dispatch center had come in. He expected it to be a slow day, so he’d been able to drop what he was doing and leave. Two other employees were there who could handle things.
This time, it was a couple of thirteen-year-old boys who needed help. Apparently, they’d gone deep into the woods on their mountain bikes, planning to record a video for their social media channel.
Three miles in, the stunt man of the two had underestimated what it would take to clear the steep vertical double jump at the bottom of a long hill.
Nick slowed his bike and pressed the button on his two-way radio to reach the dispatch center. “We’ll be there in ten.”
He and Tom knew exactly the jump the boy had attempted. It was a long and steady ride down, then at the bottom, a short but steep ascent allowed for an experienced rider to catch some air. Unfortunately, it was a common place for brave hearts like these two to hurt themselves.
According to dispatch, the boy’s front tire came up short on the double jump and he spun over the handlebars.
Rookie mistake, and sometimes deadly.
The next thing the boy knew, he was sailing headfirst over the bike, smacking the ground with his helmet. He’d slid further down the trail, as did the bicycle, and come to rest another eight or nine yards ahead.
Fortunately, the other boy, the one with the camera, managed to find cell service and dialed 911. The dispatcher apparently had kept the boy on the line long enough to get the whole story out of him.
With another tight grip on the handlebars, Nick raised his six-feet-two-inch frame in the seat and pedaled up a short but steep hill, with Tom close on his heels.
Because the boys were too far away from a road wide enough to accommodate a motor vehicle, the fastest way for an emergency crew to reach them was on a bicycle.
Nick and Tom would head in with gear, stabilize the injured boy, and, in this case, assemble the collapsible stretcher that Tom was currently wearing on his back.
They’d lock their mountain bikes to a tree and carry the boy out on foot to the closest fire road, where an ambulance would be waiting.
From there, the nearest major medical center was about half an hour’s drive down the shoreline to Sturgeon Bay. Once the victims were taken away in the ambulance, Nick and Tom would go back on foot for the bikes.
Nick carried the medical supplies on his back. He had licensed as an emergency medical services paramedic for the state of Illinois during the summer between his first and second years at medical school in Chicago.
And while, on the surface, he was cut out for medicine—he didn’t mind blood or needles or the nauseating smell of formaldehyde—the pressures of med school had eventually become too intense for him. After months contemplating the issue, he’d finally made the decision to drop out after his second year.
But it had been complicated.
Nick’s father was a highly respected cardiologist at a prominent Chicago medical center, and Nick’s older brother, Kenny, was completing his first year of residency there with a focus on orthopedics.
It had been more or less expected that Nick would follow Dr. Bingham, senior and junior, on a similar path. No questions asked.
Nick steered into a turn and tried to shake off the troubling thoughts.
The problem was that Nick had spent his entire life watching his father adhere to an extremely stressful existence. People’s lives hanging in the balance, dependent upon the man’s every move. Frequent sixteen-hour days. Insurance costs through the roof. The ever-present threat of malpractice suits. Kenny was already feeling the effects of such extreme pressure, the likes of which Nick wasn’t ready to handle.
Was that the life that Nick really wanted? Was the money really worth it? Those questions had burned in him as one semester turned into another.
Finally, as his motivation wore thin and his grades began to fall, he decided to leave it all behind. As much as he’d wished things were different, he’d eventually faced the truth—he just didn’t want it badly enough. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted, but he knew it was an altogether different kind of life than that.
Once, he’d googled the numbers on how many students actually made it through medical school programs in the U.S. each year and gone on to graduate. The average was only fifteen percent. Fifteen percent! Still, he was glad to know he probably hadn’t been the only one coming undone.
Dr. Bingham, Sr. had nearly gone through the roof when Nick told him what he’d done. “How does someone just drop out? How can you throw this away, Nick?” he’d roared. “And all for what? So you can find yourself? Waste a few years scraping by and then start over? And do what?”
It had not gone well, to say the least. Nick had offered to pay back the money somehow, over time. But his father had thrown up his hands and walked away. “Don’t bother.”
Nick had never been one for quitting things, but this time, he just felt it had to be done.
His father hadn’t forgiven him yet.
Shortly after it all went down, Nick had escaped Chicago for Heritage Bay. He certified as a medic for the state of Wisconsin and, by the fall, had taken the volunteer search-and-rescue position. Unfortunately, his father still did not entirely approve. He wanted Nick at the top of the food chain if Nick was going to be saving lives at all, not working as an unpaid medic.
Nick braced himself for a jump over one of the muddy tributaries of the main stream that ran through the forest. He missed the dry edge by a couple of feet and mud instantly sprayed up onto his tires, shoes, and shorts.
He cursed under his breath. Getting sprayed with messy brown liquids was becoming a pastime lately. He laughed. Oh well. What was one more day in stained clothing? No big deal.