Return by Karen Kingsbury

matter how hard she tried, Reagan couldn’t lift her head, couldn’t even open her eyes. She frowned. Maybe she wasn’t dreaming; maybe she was in trouble. She wanted to pray but her mouth wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t remember the right words.
    Quieter. Darker. More distant.
    Reagan felt herself slipping further away from the sirens and voices and people gathered around her. The last thought she had was of Luke. He’d been her everything. The one she’d known she would marry. But somehow it had all gone wrong, and now she’d never see him again, never hold his hand or look into his eyes and tell him they had a son.
    Worst of all she would never get to apologize for taking what had been so wonderful and somehow destroying it for both of them.
    X
    Landon Blake was at the station supper table when the call came in.
    Pregnant woman hemorrhaging, one engine company, one paramedic team needed to an apartment complex east of Fifth Avenue. Another station was closer to the location, but those units were at a fire near one of the theaters. The call was a common one. Get to the scene, aid paramedics in the assessment and transport of the patient, and make the report.
    Landon slipped into his turnouts and shouted across the station at his partner, Doug Phillips. Doug drove on-calls when the captain didn’t come. “Make time, will ya, Phillips. We’re ten
    blocks away, easy.”
    Five of them rode the engine to the call, and little conversa73
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    tion took place as they sped toward the apartment. Minutes later they burst through the door and were greeted by a group of middle-aged women, each of them pale-faced and frantic. According to radio reports, the ambulance was at least a full minute behind.
    Most firefighters were trained as EMTs, emergency medical technicians, and on this call Landon’s partner would get the nod. He was a medic, capable of handling any rescue.
    “Where’s the ambulance? Are you with the ambulance?” A heavyset woman in a red sweater stepped forward. “She needs a doctor.”
    “An ambulance is on the way.” Landon was first in the line of firefighters who had entered the apartment. “Take us to the victim.
    “
    “This way.” The woman led them into the kitchen. More women were gathered there, squatted on the floor in a circle around a young blonde woman lying in a pool of blood.
    Landon made a quick assessment. First, the woman was very pregnant and very young, not much older than a teenager. And second, she’d already lost too much blood. He directed the women away from the girl, clearing enough room for them to work.
    At the same time, another woman stood and faced them. She was crying and her teeth chattered as she spoke. “I’m her mother.” Her words ran fast together. “She’s … she’s three weeks from her due date. Her stomach hurt today, but we didn’t think it was anything, and then she was making tea and she collapsed here on the floor and started bleeding, and …”
    Landon’s partner took his position near the victim’s side and felt her pulse.
    “Weak and thready.” His words were too low for most of the people in the room to hear. But the urgency there was undeniable. “Possible ruptured uterus. We need to stop the blood.”
    A pile of towels lay nearby, two of which were already soaked red. Landon grabbed a clean one and pressed it between the 74
    woman’s legs. It was then that he focused on her face, and the shock hit him dead center and almost knocked him back.
    The victim looked like Reagan Decker, Luke Baxter’s girlfriend . The girl who had ridden the bus to Manhattan with Landon in the hours after the terrorist attacks. He narrowed his eyes. It couldn’t be her, could it? For one thing, Reagan wouldn’t be pregnant. Landon tried to remember what Ashley had said about her brother. He was struggling … hadn’t talked to Reagan, and something about his moving in with some wacky girl from school. Luke hadn’t talked to Reagan once since she moved