Chapter 8

The soft beeping of the machines in the room woke Daniel up. Opening his eyes he smiled at the young woman, who lay on her left side, in the hospital bed next to his chair. Leaning forward, Daniel reached out and brushed the loose hair out of her eyes.

"Just five more minutes Father," she muttered under the oxygen mask that she wore.

Daniel frowned. He was concerned about her. The hospital had told him they would release her after eight hours of observation if she had no change in her mental status or behavior, but with Echo muttering for her father, he didn't know if the hospital would let her go.

"Okay Echo," he said, "five more minutes."

Echo muttered a thank you as she snuggled further down into the warm blanket that lie on top of her.

Daniel sighed and removed his hand from her face. "No wonder she called out for her father," he thought, "he's always been there for her and I haven't."

Leaning back in his chair, Daniel let his head fall backwards so that he was looking up at the hospital's white, dropped ceiling. He still blamed himself for what had happened. If he hadn't startled Echo in Owl Creek she wouldn't have tripped and nearly drowned.

After Kane and Egon had revived Echo, the three men had all agreed that she should go to the emergency room. Echo had tried to protest, but was out voted, as Egon and him helped her get dressed and Kane went after a horse. In the backcountry the only way to get help in the event of an emergency was self-evacuation. The men knew that it would take too long for the whole camp to pack up, so Daniel had agreed to take Echo out on horseback to Flagg Ranch Resort.

Kane had come back, with Hawkeye, when Echo was dressed and sitting in Daniel's lap trying to get warm. Egon was french braiding her hair to keep it out of the way. Daniel was going to have to ride "double" with Echo in front of him. They were going to have to canter back to Flagg Ranch Resort, if they walked the horse it would take longer. Echo needed to be seen by a medical doctor sooner than later.

Kane walked Hawkeye across Owl Creek and up the steep bank on the other side while Daniel carried Echo across, with Egon following.

"I'm sorry I did this," Daniel told Egon as they cleared the creek and started up the steep slope.

"Daniel," Egon said as they reached the top of the slope, "it was an accident. Now stop blaming yourself for what happened. Concentrate on getting Echo to the hospital for me instead."

"But…," Daniel started to say before Egon cut him off.

"Look Daniel," Egon said taking Echo from his arms, "if you come away with anything from today, remember this saying."

"What saying is that?" Daniel asked as he mounted Hawkeye and then slid back to sit behind the saddle.

"The only thing constant in life is change," Egon said as he handed Echo up to Daniel. "If you truly love my daughter then change for her."

Daniel closed his eyes, with his head still back on the chair. He didn't know what Egon was trying to tell him at the time, but he had a lot of time to think about it during the ride home.

After Kane had wrapped the same wool blanket that he had used yesterday around Echo, Daniel had spurred the horse forward. Hawkeye didn't have to be guided and that made Daniel's job easier. Placing his left arm around Echo, and holding onto the saddle horn, the pair had cantered back home for as long as Daniel could take the constant jarring on his already tired body.

He would slow Hawkeye to a walk and then when Daniel was rested enough would ask the horse to canter again.

On the way Daniel got to thinking about what Egon had said to him. Daniel was "courting" Echo because that was what he was raised with, but Echo was beyond that. Daniel was being challenged to change, and join in with what Echo wanted to do, whether he liked it or not.

Daniel was so conditioned to his way of life that he had established a habitual response to everything. Egon was telling him to stop and wake up to how he was treating his daughter. Not that Daniel was treating his daughter poorly, but he needed to put more effort into his relationship with her.

Bringing his head forward, Daniel placed it into his hands. He knew that everything in life was only temporary. Things and people could be around for a day or for hundreds of years, but eventually everything would cease to exist in the way that he knew it.

Someone young, strong, and perfectly healthy, like Echo, could be taken from him at a moments notice, while someone who smoked and drank everyday could live till they were ninety years old.

Daniel's old habits, while useful, were preventing him from being open and receptive to new ideas. In Echo's eyes, he had adopted an outdated map of reality and had limited his belief about who he was and what he was capable of becoming.

Egon was telling him to change. Echo was telling him to change, but Daniel was afraid of change. Change to him, from what he knew, was scary and drastic. It seemed that if he succumbed to change, it would mean shedding everything he was and diving head first into a deep pool of muddy, murky water. Even though Daniel could grow and learn from it, it was still completely foreign to him. He wanted to do everything in his power to stick to his original course of direction but he knew that wasn't possible anymore.

As tears fell from Daniel's eyes he knew that he needed to move forward. He was going to have to allow himself to change for Echo's sake, but he still wasn't going to let his standards fall. He wasn't going to sleep with her until they were married, if she would even have him after this.

Raising his head up, Daniel dried his eyes with his sleeve as he looked Echo's way again.

When he had been half a mile from the ranch, Daniel had given Hawkeye his head and hung onto Echo for dear life as the horse galloped back home. Matt, the ranch hand, had been outside as Hawkeye came barreling up to him and performed a sliding stop.

"What happened?" Matt questioned him as he took Hawkeye's bridle in his hands. "Where is Ranger Parnell?"

Daniel explained what had happened as the Parnell's youngest son, Emmanuel, came out the back door to greet what he thought was his father. When he saw it was Daniel, with his niece Echo, he called back into the house for his mother to call the local EMT's and send an ambulance.

Removing the wool blanket, Emmanuel helped Daniel take Echo down from Hawkeye. Emmanuel noticed that she was cold and her pants were wet. He carried Echo inside the house as Matt attended to the hot, sweaty horse. Daniel had followed, feeling useless at the time.

It seemed to Daniel that the whole Parnell family knew more about first aid than he did, as Emmanuel laid Echo down on the kitchen table and started to undress her.

"Daniel, hand me those two red bags over there in the corner please," Emmanuel said pointing to the corner of the kitchen by the back door.

Daniel had retrieved the bags and brought them back to Emmanuel as Mrs. Parnell came in from the next room with two towels that she had just taken from the dryer.

"I have more in the dryer if you need them Manny," Mrs. Parnell said placing the warm towels over her granddaughter's cold, trembling body. "Why are Echo's pants still wet?"

"Thanks Mother," Manny said as he placed an oxygen mask over Echo's face and turned the green cylinder tank on full. "Echo's pants are wet because I believe she has cold diuresis."

"That's not good," Mrs. Parnell said as she rummaged around inside her son's emergency pack for a thermometer.

Finding what she needed, she took Echo's temperature while Manny removed Echo's wet pants by cutting them off with his bandage scissors.

"32 degrees Celsius," she announced to her son, "mild hypothermia."

"Moderate hypothermia Mother," Manny replied as he placed a silver tin-foil looking blanket around his niece, tucking it in on all sides as he did so and removing the now cold towels.

"Moderate?" Mrs. Parnell questioned.

"Yes," Manny replied, "Echo is shivering, has cold diuresis, she is pale, and her movements are slow and labored. Daniel here," Manny said handing him an unopened bag of intravenous fluids, "fill up the sink in the kitchen with hot water and place the bag inside for me please."

Daniel did as he was told, as he saw Manny carefully remove Echo's right arm from the foil blanket and tie a blue colored rubber tourniquet around her bicep. Mrs. Parnell handed Manny chlorhexidine scrub and gauze squares, which he used to swab the site. Manny asked Echo if she could make a fist. Echo had tried weakly to make a fist, as Daniel came back over to the kitchen table.

Manny shook his head at his mother, afraid to say anything in front of Echo, as Mrs. Parnell asked him what size catheter he wanted.

"Eighteen gauge."

Mrs. Parnell let out a small gasp.

"Manny what are you thinking? Echo isn't going into major surgery and I don't see massive hemorrhage."

"I know Mother," he replied, "but I do need to warm her back up and I can't place a foley catheter for warm peritoneal lavage."

Quietly nodding her head, Mrs. Parnell handed her son the catheter that he requested as she turned her head towards the front door. The sounds of an ambulance in the driveway could be heard.

"Jason's here," she told her son as she asked Daniel to go and let the EMT's inside for her.

As Daniel went to answer the door, Manny placed the catheter into Echo's arm and taped it in place with adhesive tape. Daniel opened the door to find two male EMT's with a stretcher standing outside.

"Jason," Manny called out, "we're in the kitchen."

Daniel had followed behind the EMT's as the men talked to each other. Daniel had no idea what they were talking about and helplessly stood at Echo's head, stroking her hair. He heard the men say "vitals" with the answers of "temperature 32, pulse weak, respiratory slow and labored, blood pressure taking it now."

"Daniel," Manny said, "How long was Echo submerged for?"

Daniel stood with his head to the ground, as he shook his head back and forth.

"It's all my fault," Daniel told Manny.

Manny motioned for Jason to take over, as he moved to Daniel's side. Taking the man's hands from Echo's head, Manny held them in his own.

"Daniel, look at me."

Daniel raised his face to see Manny's pleading eyes. They reminded him of Egon's eyes and he quietly said, "a couple of minutes."

"Okay," Manny said to himself and Daniel as well, "I know that Echo doesn't drink so alcohol wasn't involved, but what about drugs?"

"Echo doesn't take drugs," Daniel said getting angry at Manny for even suggesting such a thing.

"Daniel," Mrs. Parnell said, taking Daniel away from Manny so that her son could go back to work on his niece. "If Echo is having her menstrual cycle she may have taken some aspirin for it."

Daniel shook his head 'no' as Mrs. Parnell took over asking the remaining two questions.

"What was the water temperature?"

"Cold," Daniel replied.

"Were rescue maneuvers attempted?"

"Yes," Daniel replied as he watched Manny and Jason lift Echo's body and transfer it to the stretcher. "Kane and Egon did artificial respiration."

"Good memory," Mrs. Parnell told him as she squeezed his hands.

"Daniel," Echo called out to him as she weakly held up her left hand.

"Right here," Daniel said quickly crossing to her side. "I'm sorry," he said as he saw Jason hook Echo up to the now warm fluids.

"It's okay Daniel," Echo replied.

As Jason and his partner started wheeling the stretcher towards the front door, she pleaded to Daniel, "Stay with me."

"Always," Daniel promised before he released her hand so that the EMT's could move the stretcher out the front door.

Daniel smiled as he heard Echo muttering beneath her oxygen mask.

"Father where's Daniel?"

Daniel moved his chair closer to the hospital bed and reached out and took her right hand.

"Echo, I'm right here," he told her squeezing her hand.

"Where did you go?"

"I've been here all the time Echo. I didn't go anywhere," Daniel said as he furled his brows at her.

Echo opened her eyes to see a blurry Daniel sitting before her. She furled her brows at him. She could have sworn that he had left her for a period of time because something terrible had happened between them. Something so bad that she had been hospitalized for it. Yet here she was in a hospital bed with Daniel by her side. Echo decided that she must have been dreaming and smiled at Daniel.

She was feeling much better after receiving oxygen and having a nasogastric tube placed through her nose and into her stomach. The tube helped to remove the water that she had swallowed from Owl Creek. She remembered the doctor and nurses had re-warmed her body with blankets and intravenous fluids too. Echo had been able to relay a good history of the incident, although she was shivering at the time and her teeth were chattering. The doctor had admitted her to the hospital and ran tests, while she rested, under a mandatory six to eight hour observation watch. She watched as Daniel smiled back at her.

Daniel turned his head away from her and towards the door that opened to reveal Doctor Smith from the emergency room. He had been Echo's attending doctor when she was admitted.

"So," a middle aged good looking man with short brown hair said, "Doctor Spengler, how are you feeling now?"

"Oh," groaned Echo as he entered the room. She rolled her eyes back into her head, "No more tests! I've had every inch of me tested, prodded and poked, and then some. And what have you discovered Doctor Smith?"

"That you have a stent in the right frontal lobe of your brain from your endovascular coiling surgery when you were nineteen, along with a titanium rod in your right tibia. And," he teased her, "you don't make a very good patient."

"Doctors never do," a familiar voice said from the doorway.

"Egon!"

"Father!"

Echo and Daniel said together.

Doctor Smith turned around to see two ragged, dirty men standing in the doorway. The first one he didn't know but he knew the second older man.

"Kane!" Doctor Smith said as he stepped forward and took his hand. "Don't tell me this is one of your lost sheep?"

"Will," Kane said shaking his hand and then releasing it, "I see you've met my granddaughter. This is Eden's first child, Doctor Echo Spengler."

"We've met," Echo said as Egon crossed the room to her side. Egon took his hand and caressed her head as Echo finished her thought. "A little too personally if you ask me."

Kane laughed as he proceeded to tell Doctor Will Smith how Echo had three doctorate degrees from Juilliard School of Music, plus two from Columbia University.

"Five!" Will said, shocked to learn more about his patient that he didn't know before.

"Four," Echo replied as she released Daniel's hand and reached towards her father, glad that he was there.

Will turned towards the older man who was clearly her father. Egon took his daughter's hand in his as he explained to Doctor Smith what Echo meant.

"Echo is starting up her residency in reproductive endocrinology and infertility medicine. She doesn't consider herself a doctor of that, just quiet yet."

Kane smiled at Will's bewildered look and added to it.

"Yep," he said as he patted Will on the back, "and my son-in-law here, Professor Egon Spengler, has seventeen doctorate degrees."

"Eighteen," Echo said as she released her father's hand.

"You told me seventeen Egon?" Kane questioned the man.

"I got the eighteenth when I went for my professor title after Eden was killed," Egon said remembering his promise to his dead wife.

"Okay," Will said tossing his hands up into the air. "I know when I've been had. I'll come back later to see how you are doing Doctor Spengler."

"Kane," Will said, as he shook his hand once more before leaving, "I'll see you for that search and rescue exercise next month."

Egon watched Doctor Smith leave the room and then questioned Kane how he knew the man.

"Major/Doctor William 'Will' Smith is currently the medical director for Grand Teton National Park, Teton County Search and Rescue, Jackson Hole Fire/EMS, and is an emergency department physician here at St. John's Medical Center. He also actively serves in the U.S. Army Reserves. He teaches Wildness and Rescue Medicine, Technical Rescue and Medical Considerations, Disaster Medicine, International Medicine, Combat/Tactical EMS, Urban/Rural EMS, Medical Oversight for EMS Systems, and Wilderness Advanced Life Support known as WALS."

"Will also founded "Wildness and Emergency Medicine Consulting, (WEMC), LLC" and is currently providing comprehensive up-to-date consulting services in EMS, Wildness Medicine and Emergence Medicine. And," Kane said proudly, "a all around good friend of mine."

"WOW!" Daniel said.

"And he was impressed by my degrees," Egon stated. "I'm impressed by him."

"Who are you impressed by?" Mrs. Parnell's voice asked.

Kane turned around to see his wife standing in the doorway to Echo's room. She had driven Daniel to the emergency room, following the ambulance, when they left the house.

"Lizzie!" Kane said as he went to his wife and gathered her into a bear hug. "Egon was saying that he was impressed by Doctor Smith's achievements. But more importantly, how are you feeling?"

"I still have my headache," she said smiling up at her husband.

Echo furled her brows at her grandmother as she sat up in bed. Something wasn't right with her Grandma. Lizzie was paler than when they had left for their week long trail ride. She had complained about a headache back then too, with neck pain and pain behind her eyes. Unless Grandma Parnell was suffering from migraines, she should have been over her headache by now.

"Anyways, Will is a good friend of my husband's Egon," she said as she stepped into the room. "He taught our son, Manny, to be an Wildness EMT for the Teton County Search and Rescue group."

Lizzie grabbed her husband for support, as she suddenly felt very weak, but continued talking to Egon although it was suddenly painful to do so.

"I'm very proud..of…Manny…," she slurred out before she collapsed in her husband's arms.

"Lizzie!" Kane shouted as Egon rushed forward to help him.

Echo reached behind her and grabbed the emergency cord, to call for the nurse, as she ripped off the oxygen mask and tried to get out of bed to help her Grandmother. Egon saw what Echo was trying to do and pointed a finger her way.

"Oh, no you don't sweetheart," he told her as he helped Kane lower Lizzie's limp body to the floor. "Stay put!"

"Stay put my…," Echo started to say as Daniel placed his hand on her chest and pushed her back into bed.

Echo scolded up at Daniel as he took his hand away from her chest.

"We're in a hospital Echo," he said gently taking her hand and bringing it up to his mouth, he kissed it gently. "For once in your life, let someone else play hero."

"LIZZIE!" Kane shouted louder as he held his wife in his arms, waiting for help, sitting on the floor of Echo's hospital room.

Lizzie opened her eyes and weakly raised her right hand to tenderly touch Kane's face.

"Forever my love," she said smiling up at her husband before she closed her eyes and her hand dropped to her side.

Kane's tears fell from his eyes and landed upon his wife's face, as he buried his head into her bosom and gently rocked his dead wife back and forth.

"Forever Lizzie," he said, "I promise."