Page 43 of Sheltering Instinct

Each of those thoughts was a crashing wave that pulled her under. She was drowning in the profound grief for what she’d lost.

Pulling at her shirt as if that would give her more space to inhale, Tess gasped for air.

“Tessy. Tess!” Levi’s face hovered over hers, his thumb stroked over her cheek. “What’s going on right now?”

She had no idea.

Was this cobra venom attacking her system? Or was this Levi?

Chapter Thirteen

Levi

“Okay, Tessy, listen to me.” Levi modulated his voice to the tone he’d used when they were young and together. The tone that had pulled Tess out of her nightmares without waking her. Because if she woke from the nightmare, she’d be awake and terrified. “I know this is scary. I know that. You’re not alone. I’ve got you.” Levi stopped himself.

That was from before. And the last thing he wanted to do right now was make her more uncomfortable than she already was.

His focus was squarely on the emergency.

So he amended. “You’ve got a good team here. We’re taking care of you.”

Goose sent her a smile. “You’re doing great, Tess. And the next step is for me to do a blood draw. I have dog equipment, so we’re making do.”

“Thank you,” Tess closed her eyes. She always hated the sight of blood.

“What’s the reason for the blood sample?” Enrico asked.

Goose wrapped a rubber tourniquet around Tess’s bicep, then swiped an alcohol swab over the crook of her arm. “I’m capturing a blood sample so the pathologists have a sample from earliest possible. It might be informative to do a comparison over a sequence of time. I’ll take another once we’re down and a third on the way to the hospital.”

Tapping Tess’s vein, he inserted the needle. As the rich dark maroon filled the vial, Goose said, “In case it’s helpful to you in the future, Enrico, there are different ways the hospital can test for venom. I’m thinking specifically of the D-dimertest for blood coagulation. That’s usually taken at the two-hour mark.”

“If someone survives that long,” Tess murmured.

“We’re just over the one-hour time marker.” He laid the vial on a cotton square, put a Band-Aid on Tess’s arm, and released the tourniquet. “If the snake experts don’t have enough information to identify the snake from the skin pattern, they’ll do an enzyme test. It’s imperative to get the diagnosis right because they need to balance the amount of venom in Tess’s system with the amount of anti-venom they’ll administer.” Goose wrote Tess’s name, date, and time on the white label. “If you don’t want to open your eyes, Tess, that’s fine. You do what you need to keep your system calm. But be aware, I’m about to stomp on this chemical pack to get the ice reaction going. I want to keep the blood sample at the right temperature.”

“Thank you.”

Enrico took over that process.

Levi kept his hands on Tess, so she didn’t need to exert to lay still on her side.

“You’ll feel my fingers on your right leg,” Goose said. “I’m going to inspect your wound and take a picture.” His finger pressed into Tess’s flesh.

Levi watched to find any subtle clue that Goose might not be sharing with Tess. “So far, your tissue looks like it’s in good shape. In the few minutes I’ve been treating you, I haven’t seen any degradation. Having said that. Levi and Enrico, you two need to come up with an extraction plan. There’s a saying,” Goose said, “Time is tissue. We need to get her down to the vehicle stat.”

Goose produced two telescoping splints to stabilize her right leg, pulling them snuggly in place with hook and loop closures.

“Once we’re down. It’s an hour to the hospital,” Enrico said.

Gwen sat cross-legged at the far corner, staying out of the way. “You all sprinted up the side of the hill. But it took us forty-five minutes to get up here, walking steadily. From past experience, down is slower.”

“We’ll put in the effort,” Goose said. “I want Tess in the hospital by the three-hour mark. It’s an hour’s drive. We’ll aim for thirty minutes carrying her down.”

Enrico scanned the path. “That’s aggressive.” He turned to Levi. “Typically, we’d run a line to keep everyone safe. No rope. And no time. We need to factor that in when we’re weighing the risk.”

In his mind, Levi formed a workable plan. It was going to be a trick. Not only did he need to jog down the mountain with Tess in his arms. But she needed to feel secure. Any anxiety that caused an increased heartbeat or the tensing of her muscles meant the venom might be speeding to her organs, speeding the degradation of her system.

“Tess,” Levi squeezed her shoulder, and she blinked her lids open.

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