Nursing The Doctor Read Online Free PDF

peaks.
    It was a spectacular day, the sky a clear denim blue, the sun sending shards of white light glancing off the miles of snowy mountaintops below. The pilot dipped the ’copter and indicated the spot near the bottom of the mountain, marked by a red X, where he would pick them up that afternoon. Greg gave him a thumbs-up signal.
    The pilot had supplied them each with a two-way radio unit just as a precaution. Greg’s was tucked in his backpack along with his lunch.
    Fifteen minutes later the ’copter was landing on a hard-packed snow surface on the peak of a rugged mountain. They were well above the tree line. Below them stretched deep powder, bright sun and long, treacherous slopes, a skilled skier’s dream.
    They unloaded their gear and the ’copter lifted off. As the sound of its rotor faded, a deep and peaceful silence seemed to settle all around them.
    Greg took a deep lungful of the cold, clear air as he strapped his helmet on and then donned his wraparound sunglasses. Even in a few moments, the glare from the snow and sun had made his unprotected eyes water.
    “Helps you understand the thrill of mountain climbing, doesn’t it, Ben?”
    His friend nodded, adjusting the chin-strap on his own headgear. “Maybe we oughta give that a go one of these days.” It was one of the few outdoor activities they hadn’t tried.
    “I’m game. Just not Everest to start with, huh?”
    Ben laughed, and they companionably shouldered their backpacks and strapped on their skis. When at last they were ready, they agreed on an approximate route.
    Ben pushed off first, with Greg was only a few seconds behind. He gave a hefty shove with his poles, and in a millisecond he was flying. The slope was steep, demanding every ounce of his skill.
    The cold air whipped against his face, bringing tears to his eyes even behind his sunglasses. Recklessly, he picked up even more speed, and the edges of the whiteness surrounding him began to blur. His arms and legs worked in unison, the instinctive, near-automatic response of the natural athlete, poles and skis extensions of his being.
    An unholy ecstasy seized him. He was young, he was free, he was strong. His body was a finely tuned tool, and the snowy world around him was his to conquer.
    Ahead was a dip and then a sharp rise, and he negotiated both with ease.
    He laughed aloud. It seemed the whiteness of snow penetrated his very soul and cleansed it of all shadows. Unheeding, he veered left where Ben had gone right, up and over a mogul.
    He shot up an icy incline...and in the space of a heartbeat the earth was no longer there. A ravine dropped away as if a giant’s ax had taken one gigantic sweep of rock and snow, cutting it free. Greg struggled frantically, reaching for solidity with poles and skis and desperate will. Failing... failing...
    Falling. He was falling, and he opened his mouth to scream, but fear had stolen his voice. He seemed to drop forever before his body finally impacted on something solid, and he bounced and tumbled, waiting for pain, but there was none, and time seemed to stretch endlessly as he rolled.
    At last he was motionless, lying on his back. He stared up and saw the blueness of sky far above him, and for a fraction of a second he marveled that the day could still be there.
    And then the pain struck like a thunderbolt and there was only blessed, infinite darkness.
    Greg slowly became aware of his surroundings, although he couldn’t seem to tell how long the darkness had lasted. He knew only that he was cold, an icy, bone-deep chill that somehow penetrated the very core of his being. There was a voice somewhere far away, but when he struggled up through the thick layers of darkness toward it, pain exploded with vicious intensity, pain that consumed his entire body in an agony such as he had never known, and the shock sent him plummeting back down, down and down into blessed oblivion.
    Timelessness.
    And then the voice again, urgent. “...hear me, buddy? It’s