“I just found her down here.” The old man was saying. “She’s bleeding too.”
The Park Ranger knelt down in the cold water beside her.
“You’re getting wet.” Jo mumbled to him.
The Park Ranger chuckled. “Let's worry about you okay?”
Jo sent him a feeble smile.
After he thoroughly inspected her for broken bones and after she showed him that she could move her neck, arms and legs the Park Ranger lifted her from the cold stream, walked her up the steep embankment, and gently placed her on the side of the trail. He ran back to his ATV and returned with a silver thermal blanket, placing it around her.
“Thanks.” Jo said as her teeth chattered.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked as he cleaned her head wound.
“I was running and someone pushed me over the side of the bridge.”
“Well that wasn’t very nice.” The Ranger tried to keep her talking, but Jo’s eyes began to close.
“What’s your name?” He asked.
“Jo.” Jo’s head lolled back and she was out again.
The next time she awoke she was in the back of an ambulance. When she opened her eyes she moaned.
“Hey there.” A cheery EMT greeted her. “We’re almost at the hospital. You banged your head pretty good and if that man hadn’t found you when he did you could have gotten hypothermia. You’re lucky.”
Jo gave her a weak smile. “I don’t feel so lucky.” She groaned.
The EMT chuckled. “That’s good honey, keep talking. We understand you passed out after Ranger Ron fished you out of the creek.”
“Ranger Ron?”
“He’s a looker isn’t he? Been working that park for a year now. Came to us from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We had to take a survival course in June and he taught it. Easy on the eyes that one.”
Jo was barely following the chatty EMT’s conversation all she knew was her body ached and her head throbbed. The ambulance came to a stop and Jo saw the tell tale red light cutting through the dark sky and bouncing off the hospitals brick exterior
The chirpy EMT and another man, who Jo thought had probably been the driver, lifted her gurney from the back of the a
mbulance and rolled her into the Emergency Room Entrance. A nurse met them and directed them through a double door and to a curtained enclosed cubicle. The nurse passed the EMT an iPad that she was holding, and then she began to administer a battery of tests checking Jo for further injuries.
The nurse looked up from the iPad. “Name?”
“Betty Jo Ross” The EMT typed in her answer on the iPad.
The nurse ran through the regular host of questions, birth date, and she finished by asking if she could call anyone for her.
Jo shook her head. She knew her parents were visiting her Aunt and Uncle in Ohio and she didn’t want to pull Lou away from Pete for some bumps and bruises. The nurse finished her questions just as a doctor came into the curtained room. He checked the iPad that the nurse had been using.
“Hi Betty Jo.” The doctor said as he used a pen on her eyes. “I’m Dr. Chase. Can you tell me what happened?”
Jo repeated what she had told Ranger Ron as the doctor poked and prodded her. Satisfied that nothing was broken Dr. Chase wrote something on the iPad with a small pen, handed it back to the nurse and looked back to Jo.
“Well I’m going to close that head wound with skin glue and add a few steri-strips, but I won’t have to shave you.”
Jo felt a lump clog her throat as she mumbled, “Shave?”
“No we won’t have to shave you. The wounds close to the hair line, but I think we can save that pretty hair.” He said kindly. The doctor continued talking.