Chapter 1 Flight from Chaos
Liz elliot looked up at a huge brizzly mount in the Anchorage air terminal. The ominous bear reminded her of danger in a new land where she knew no one. Liz retrieved her bag and boarded a hotel shuttle.
Unfamiliar scenery flashed past the window, carrying Liz through a sea of rundown trailers, businesses, high rises and finally to the Captain Cook Hotel. She entered the opulent lobby and waited behind three rugged young men at the registration desk. Lugging heavy frame packs and talking of climbing Denali, the trio headed to the elevator. Liz placed her credit card on the counter and sopie to a cheery woman. "I have a reservation."
"Welcome to Alaska, Liz. Our last single room is on the thenth floor. Two-hundred dollars per night plus tax."
At that price, Liz decided she wouldn't be staying long, but being downtown had advantages for a stranger on foot. "Just one night will work for me."
In a plush older room, Liz tossed her bag on a king-sized bed and parted the drapes. She looked down at a busy city street lined wiht tour buses and throngs of people. Across the bay toward the west, distant snowy mountians edged the earth. The mountains stood white and serene against surreal colors of purple and orange bleeding togehter in a brilliant sunset reflected on tidal water.
Liz closed the drapes blocking the bright sky, trying to stop memories of passionate Arizon sunsets she'd spent with Jack Sullivan, a medical helicopter pilot, her lover, until all that changed. Two months earlier a fiery crash killed him and to of her cohorts. With a gnawing fear of flying twisting with waves of panic and tears, she quit her flight nursing job. Liz left the desert heat and terrible memories behind to look for ER work with both feet on the ground in a hospital far away.
A wireless connection to the outside world tied Liz to the worried parents she'd left in Washington State, and to her friend Ann back in Red Bluff, Arizona. She emailed them and then scanned the Alaska Native Hospital website for an Anchorage nursing job.
Past ER positions had proved enought stimulation to keep Liz interested, until she'd discovered the thrill of flight nursing. Completing many advanced certifications, she learned to deliver babies, align fractures, tube airways, shock hearts, and stick needles in chests to re-inflate collapsed lungs. The training led to exhilarating work. For three years, she helped airlift people from canyons, off mountainsides, and cut them from wrecked cars. But now, a burned out emotional wreck, she fled her past and the stressful job
When the hospital website listed no ER positions, she logged off and decided to go to the personnel office the the morning, resume in hand. She hadn't heard back from them after submitting an online application. Liz fluffedher her curly black hair and put on a little lipstick before going to the hotel restaurant on the top floor.
Elevator doors gaped open and then swallowed her, rattling closed, locking her inside. Claustrophobia set her heart pounding as the elevator crept upward. Her first panic attack occurred in Red Bluff at Jack's funeral when she was introduced ot a wife she didn't know existed. Two weeks with her parents suppresed her angst enough to press on with life. She tried to calm herself by thinking about open spaces instead of being locked in a slow-moving box.
By the time she reached the top floor, hyperventilation left her hands tingling and her throat tight. When the doors finally opened at the elegant Crow's Nest restaurant, Liz stepped off and into the gaze of a handsome man with coal-black hair and eyes, just like Jack's. His likeness stopped her breath. He seated her at a small candlelit window table where her lonely reflection sipping Cabernet blurred by tears melted in an orange sunset.
The wine stopped her trembling.
Blackened Pacific salmon brought her thoughts back from the Tex-Mex food of Red Bluff to the realization her new life had begun.
