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Eric looked curious, but told her, “Okay. Probably none of my business. Sorry for jumping to the wrong conclusion.” He looked over at Marcus. “Heather is my friend — we hang-glide together, we rock climb together. I once spent six days in a cave system with her, and you can’t get much closer to someone than that. Don’t hurt her.”
Marcus gave Eric a look Heather didn’t know how to interpret. “Did you hear what she called herself a few minutes ago? She said she was broken. It is my intention to teach her that she isnotbroken.”
Heather sighed and turned so she was leaning against Marcus again. She watched Kyle a few moments — he was working much too slowly for her, but she resisted jumping in and doing it for him. “Ignoring the facts won’t help anyone, Marcus. Part of me is broken. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is. When someone has a broken arm, you don’t correct them when they say it’s broken. My brain doesn’t do something it’s supposed to do. It got broken when I was little, and it can’t be fixed.”
“There’s a difference in realizing something doesn’t work right, and in sayingyouare broken, Heather.”
She leaned forward to get a better look at her leg. Kyle had removed most of the gravel and was looking at the biggest rock. Since he seemed to have stopped, Heather reached down, plucked it out, and squirted water into the hole. It was going to be a bleeder, so she reached for the gauze in Kyle’s hand, and stuck it into the hole the rock came out of.
“I need a few pieces of tape, each about three inches long, please.”
Kyle sighed, tore a piece off, and handed it to her. She used the tape to pull the two sides of the hole together around the gauze, and he said, “I could’ve done that, but I was looking to see if there was a better option.”
“There isn’t, and you were taking too long. I get that with normal people you’d have to do it the least painful way, but you can treat the area as if it’s been deadened when you work on me.” She applied another piece of tape. “I’ll shower and put some betadine on it when I get home, and we can decide whether it might need a few stitches.” She sat up straight, touched her left shoulder with her right hand, and looked at Eric. “My left shoulder isn’t moving quite right. Can you take a look at it and see if there’s anything obviously wrong?”
Eric leaned in, and Marcus shifted to the right to give him room.
“Lift your arm up a few inches, now rotate it. Actually, let’s get your shirt off so I can see how the muscles are moving.”
Heather was used to being out in only an exercise bra, so she pulled her right arm out of the shirt’s armhole and then lifted it over her head sideways before sliding it off her possibly-injured arm. While it wouldn’t hurt to take it off the normal way, she might exacerbate an injury doing so.
Eric pulled the shirt the rest of the way off her right arm, and Kyle said, “It looks like ya’ll have done this before.”
Eric had a hand at the front and back of her shoulder, holding to feel the joint as it moved. “When you do extreme stuff, you learn what you can power through and what you need to back off and allow to heal. We’ve all helped each other out on occasion.” He concentrated for a moment while Heather rotated her arm, “I’m not sensing anything wrong. No heat, no swelling, and the joint’s moving as it’s supposed to. You initially landed on your knees and shins, not sure how you hurt your shoulder, but if I had to guess I’d say you wrenched it while trying to hold onto the handlebars too long.”
“I think you’re probably right. Something isn’t quite right, but it’s smoother than it was, so maybe it’ll be okay. And yeah, I probably held onto the handlebars too long trying for a save. I’ll know more in an hour or so if it starts to swell. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back on your bike long enough to do the trick I was doing when I fell.”
Eric said, “Sure thing,” at the same time Kyle said, “No, you’re not!”
Heather stood and looked down at Kyle. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do, Kyle.”
Her voice came out a bit sharper than she’d intended, and Kyle stood to stand beside her. “You’re hurt — and you want to do what you were doing when you got hurt? You don’t have to prove anything to me. Let’s just go lay down. I’ll even try to crawl out onto the rock with you.”
What had she done to deserve this man? She leaned into him and let him put his arms around her. “I know I don’t have to prove anything to you, but I messed the trick up, and I need to do it right or it’ll bug me. It was a silly mistake — not seeing the rut that caught the wheel. I just need to do it smoothly once and then I’ll be good. And I’m not hurt. I’ve got a few bumps. Don’t make it into something it isn’t.”
Eric had brought the bike to her by that time, and she thanked him and climbed on. Her shoulder seemed fine while she maneuvered through a dozen figure eights, so she picked up speed, flew down a hill onto an embankment, and then went airborne, hanging in the air a few seconds before landing, and then picking her way through a rocky area and bouncing the tires over the areas the tires couldn’t roll over.
When she was satisfied that she was in control, she coasted back to the guys, jumped off the bike as she neared Eric, and made a point of handing it back to him. “Thanks. You want me to adjust it back, or would you rather do it?”
“I’ve got it. Go have a seat with your guys. Ranger may want to talk to you about taking him up for some jumps. He asked me the other day if I had a pilot I could recommend, and I told him I did, but we hadn’t gotten around to doing more than that yet.”
Ranger had been sitting on the ground out of the way, leaned against a tree, but he effortlessly rolled up to his feet and walked towards them. “You’re a pilot?”
Heather nodded. “What kind of jump experience do you have?”
“Plenty. What do you fly?”
“I can fly most anything. I have an R44, but if you prefer fixed wing, I have access to rent a few planes. I also have access to rent an Astar, if you want a bigger ’copter.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I trust you have Eric’s email address. Send your hourly piloted helo prices to him and he can get it to me, and then I’ll respond to you and we’ll see what we can work out. What days are you available?”
“I’m scheduled for most of this week, and I know I’m flying people on Monday and Friday of the following week. I’ll let Eric know what days I’m free in the next couple of weeks when I send him my pricing schedule. What kind of experience do you have?”
Eric answered for him this time. “He’s been in the military most of my life, and the last twelve years as spec ops.”
“Alrighty then, you know what you’re doing, and you’re probably going to want to go several times, not just once. Do you have your own equipment?”
Eric answered for him again. “Yeah, we’re good.”
