скачать книгу бесплатно
THE SUPPLY ROOM WAS cramped, even without the gurney, even without the over-six-feet of massive male snoring under the buzzing fluorescent light.
He was all alone, out cold, taking straight oxygen from a mask attached to a tank. He reeked of smoke and sweat, a few plastic cups littered the floor around him—at least they’d given him some water—and a thin blanket covered him to his chin. The dressing and cold compresses on the injured arm were pink-tinged with blood now, and the IV dripping into his other arm was almost empty.
Shameful, Danni thought. This is how we treat our heroes? She slipped the chart from under a corner of the gurney mattress and read.
Matthew Creed, age thirty-six. In addition to the Ativan, they’d given him a wallop of Demerol in the IV. There were third-degree bums on the same arm that had been gashed—by glass, the triage nurse had written.
As with every firefighter who plunged into a raging fire, the guy’s lungs were the big worry. But so far, everything—electrolytes, blood gases—looked okay. And his color was within normal limits.
Assessing his face at rest, Danni decided that he was handsome. His eyelids, though puffy—she made a note of the edema—were framed by thick dark brows and a line of lush black lashes any cover model would envy. Beneath the mask his square jaw was darkly shadowed with new-grown stubble.
His black hair, probably cut in a short, professional style, was now plastered straight up above a red crease where his helmet band had fit tightly. There was no apparent head trauma. She scribbled another note.
She handed the chart to Carol, peeled back the blanket to check the rest of him. He continued to snore into the oxygen mask.
“Holy cow,” Carol muttered, and Danni shot her a censuring frown.
But Carol persisted. “Man!” she mumbled as she turned to prepare the suture tray. “I feel like I need a hit of that oxygen myself.”
Though Danni disapproved of Carol’s attitude, she could see her point. The patient had been stripped to the waist and he was big. Bronze. Amazingly fit. “Is there a weight recorded on the chart?” Danni asked. He was probably a lot heavier than he looked. She wanted to be sure he’d gotten enough pain medication.
“Two hundred fifteen,” Carol read.
Danni nodded as she scanned his frame, looking for further damage, signs, symptoms.
He had huge muscular arms, massive hands, and a trail of black body hair that swirled neatly down taut abdominals. When she woke him up she’d have to make sure everything under his turnout pants and fire boots was okay.
She gently raised the edge of the dressing on his arm and called his name. “Mr. Creed?”
There was no response.
“Matthew?” As she reached for a pulse on the uninjured arm, a rolled-up, faded-red bandanna, knotted around his wrist, got in the way. She muttered something to Carol about why the EMTs hadn’t cut the thing off before they started the IV, then added, “Gimme your bandage scissors,” as she hooked a finger under the kerchief.
Without warning, the patient’s other hand snapped up and seized Danni’s wrist.
“Leave it alone,” he growled in a deep bass voice that sounded hoarse and dry. The oxygen mask fogged with his breath, but nothing else about him moved. His grip on Danni’s wrist, though, was like an iron band. His fingers felt hot, and Danni made a mental note to recheck his temp and then briefly wondered if it was her fatigue, her hunger, or what, that was making her suddenly weak.
“Mr. Creed,” she said as she peeled his fingers from her flesh. “I need to get this thing off so I can evaluate you properly.” She pulled on the bandanna, but he jerked his arm out of her reach. For an injured man, his reflexes were certainly quick.
He raised his head, opened bright-blue eyes and frowned at her. “I said, it stays where it is.”
Something about his gaze made Danni swallow. “Of course,” she answered softly.
His eyes slid closed, and he laid his head back, groaning in that deep voice that made Danni’s heart beat faster. Then he lowered his chin and looked down his long frame toward the door of the tiny room. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital.”
“Oh, yeah? You a nurse?”
“No. I’m Dr. Dann...Dr. Goodlove. I gave you a sedative earlier.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did. Right now I’m going to stitch up that laceration you have there.”
He glanced at his arm, then groaned, “Have at it,” in his wonderful voice, and laid his good arm across his eyes.
Carol gently rearranged the IV to accommodate his position.
“Did those kids make it?” he asked.
Danni felt her heart constrict because, even through the mask, she could see his wide, handsome mouth tighten and pull down at the corners, betraying the emotion he was holding back.
She had to swallow before she spoke. “Yes,” she said, although she feared that by now they had not. “And the mother’s upstairs in maternity. She’s fine.”
“She’s pregnant?” He moved the arm and stared, unbelieving, into Danni’s eyes.
“Not anymore. I delivered her preemie by C-section.”
“Damn,” he said quietly and closed his eyes.
“The baby’s okay. Let’s tend to you, now.” Danni forced herself to sound calm, professional. She leaned over him and placed a stethoscope on his chest, moving it periodically as she listened. “Lungs sound clear,” she said to Carol.
She moved the stethoscope to crucial points over his heart and concentrated. The beat was regular, but rapid. Stress maybe.
She glanced into his face. He was watching her like—Well, she didn’t know like what. It was eerie, looking into those steady blue eyes while listening to his strong heartbeat.
She finished, pulled the stethoscope from her ears, and straightened. “Okay. Let’s fix your arm.”
Danni rolled a stool up beside the gurney, and while the patient watched them with drugged-sleepy detachment, Carol treated the bums and Danni checked the gash for foreign bodies, then started carefully stitching it up.
As Danni worked, she waited for his reaction to the painful things she was doing to him. He never once flinched. But every time she glanced into his blue eyes, she wished she hadn’t. They sent a quiver through her, threatening to dissolve her professional armor.
The little supply room began to feel tighter than a tomb. Every time he moved—to raise a knee or fill that massive chest with a deep breath—Danni thought she might drop her hemostat.
It didn’t help matters that Carol was acting strangely. She kept passing supplies in unnecessary anticipation; kept calling Danni “Doctor” in reverent tones; kept muttering in medical jargon as if this were brain surgery.
“You are being stitched up by the best of the best,” Carol reassured the drowsy fireman, and Danni wanted to smack her. It was obvious what Carol was doing; she had noted the absence of a wedding band on his finger. Everybody was always trying to fix Danni up with men—but trying to impress a patient? Good grief.
“That so?” The firefighter turned his head and winked at Danni.
“Oh, yes.” Carol seemed encouraged. “Dr. Goodlove—we all call her Dr. Danni—will stitch you up so fine, that scar will be almost invisible.”
Danni frowned daggers at her friend, but the patient seemed to be enjoying himself. He grinned sleepily behind his oxygen mask. “Darn. I was hoping for a big old scar to show the boys at the station.”
“Well, sorry, you won’t get a scar from this dedicated doctor.” Carol just couldn’t seem to shut it up. “She prides herself on her handiwork.”
Danni put her head down and worked doggedly, praying Carol would be struck mute.
“She’s been at this awhile?” he asked through the mask. “She looks so young.”
Danni could feel him staring at her blushing cheeks and slipping glasses. Don’t mind me, folks, she thought. I’m just stitching up this gaping wound, here.
“About ten years,” Carol assured him. “It’s her whole life.”
“Nurse Hollis!” Danni snapped. “I think the patient needs another drink of water.”
Carol had the good grace to turn red, then she spun on her crepe soles and left the tiny room.
Suddenly the patient seemed, to Danni, too alert. She’d been more comfortable with him drugged.
As she cleaned up the exterior of the closed wound, and applied a sterile dressing, he continued to watch her like a—Well, now she knew what it was like—it was the way an interested man watched a pretty woman, only Danni hadn’t ever thought of herself as pretty.
She finished the bandaging with a thick dressing. She was applying enough cling wrap to seal a mummy when he cleared his throat, reached up, pulled the oxygen mask down, and said, “Thanks for leaving the kerchief alone.”
When she looked into his solemn eyes, Danni realized the kerchief had some special meaning, but he cleared his throat and quickly looked away. “And thanks for stitching me up.”
“No problem.” She continued to tape the dressing. “Just don’t make a habit of this.”
After a heartbeat he said, “If I do, would you be my doctor?”
Danni stopped her taping and looked back up into those blue eyes. This time the interest and flirtation there was unmistakable. And with the oxygen mask gone, she could see his mouth clearly. Beautifully formed lips. Firm. Utterly male. Curving into a lopsided, teasing grin.
Danni finished her taping with tense fingers and burning cheeks.
He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly relaxed. He raised his good arm and propped it under his head, revealing a massive, muscled armpit with the densest growth of black axillary hair Danni had ever seen.
She had a photo-flash memory of another time when she and Carol had been dragged down to the E.R. to help stitch up the aftermath of a big gang fight. One of the teenage victims had B.O. so bad that Carol had clamped wads of alcohol-soaked gauze over his armpits, claiming it was standard procedure.
Suddenly Danni was overcome by the worst attack of inappropriate laughter ever visited on a human being.
She tried to stifle it, and bent her head down below the gurney as if looking for something she’d dropped. Her shoulders shook and she thought she’d choke, but the silliest thoughts kept coming, all incredibly hilarious. She wondered fleetingly if there was a leaking nitrous-oxide tank in here somewhere. Even that horrifying idea couldn’t sober her.
“You okay down there?” She heard his deep voice above her.
She tried to say yes, but that was a horrible mistake that opened the door to a new eruption of giggles. She was forced to sit up in order to breathe, and pushed with weak feet to roll the stool away from the table, away from him and his serious blue eyes, so she could regain her composure.
But she ended up leaning against the supply shelves, snickering and gasping and finally holding her middle and waving her hand, pointing at him, the way people do when they are helpless to explain their stupid behavior.
“What’s so funny?” His face was as solemn as a judge’s.
Nothing! Danni thought. Nothing at all. That’s the problem! But she continued to titter helplessly. Then she wondered—and this thought only made more giggles come—if she looked like some kind of deranged woman, masquerading as a doctor.
He raised himself up on his good elbow, and stared with an expression so alarmed and serious that every time Danni glanced at him to try to explain that she was reacting to exhaustion, she broke up all over again. She laughed so hard, tears rolled down her cheeks.
Carol came in bearing a cup of water, which Danni snatched and gulped. Finally the urge to laugh subsided.
With a frown at Danni, Carol helped the patient sit up. He tested his injured arm, then flexed his amazing muscles as if they were sore. He glanced at Danni and smiled when he caught her watching him over the rim of the cup.
Firemen and cops, Danni thought. All as cocky as the devil.
Carol started helping him into the hospital gown she’d brought for him.
Danni finished drinking the water, let out a huge sigh, then pulled off her paper hat, and lifted her thick mane of hair away from her neck, fanning herself. “I’m really sorry,” she said to the patient. She dug a latex tourniquet out of the pocket of her scrubs and tied her hair into a crude ponytail at her nape. “That was an attack of inappropriate laughter, precipitated by fatigue.” She tossed the cup into a trash container. “We’ll get you some more water.”
“That’s okay. I’m not thirsty. And I understand fatigue,” he said, but his expression was skeptical as his eyes took in the haphazard ponytail.
He probably thinks I’m totally nuts, Danni thought.
Apparently so did Carol, judging from the scowl she gave Danni as she tied the gown strings at the patient’s back.
Danni took another deep breath and stood. “I’m shipping you upstairs for overnight observation, okay?”
She took his mended arm in her hands, examined the fingers gently, checking the circulation one last time. She knew her cheeks were red, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “This looks fine so far. Tell me again, exactly how’d you cut it?”
“Squeezing through the broken patio door.” He raised one eyebrow, then studied his boots. “Kicked it out when I couldn’t follow the attack hose back. The crew thought I was going the other way.”
“I see,” Danni said, although she didn’t, exactly. She assumed he was telling her that something went wrong during the rescue. Her fingers trembled on his large ones for a moment, imagining the inferno, imagining him curling his body around the two babies, imagining such bravery. “And everything under your turnout pants...” Danni hesitated and reframed the question. “Uh, you’re sure your feet and legs are okay?”
“Yeah, everything feels fine.” He smiled at her with gorgeous, perfect white teeth and she noticed that he did, in fact, have deep dimples like Tom Selleck’s. But there was something else familiar about him. Danni couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Well, then—” she snatched up the chart, pushed her glasses up on her nose, clicked her pen “—all we need to do is add some strong antibiotics to your IV. Is your pain medicine still working okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks again for stitching me up, Doctor. Especially considering that you’re exhausted and all, I really appreciate it.” He spoke in a controlled monotone, but the look in his eyes was so sincere, so warm that Danni thought she’d melt.
“No problem.” She resumed writing on the chart.
He turned to Carol. “Nurse, will they be taking me upstairs in a wheelchair?”
“I expect so,” she answered.
“Well, then, would it be too much trouble to wheel me by to see the twins on the way?”
Danni turned her head, studied his handsome profile. He’d endured over twenty stitches, had enough drugs in him to knock out a horse, and had to be tired enough to die, but all the man could think about were those twins. Matthew Creed was an amazing man.
UPSTAIRS IN LABOR AND Delivery, Dr. Stone was pacing like a wiry little fox sniffing for prey.
“Sorry to disturb your nap, Dr. Goodlove,” he said as soon as Danni and Carol stepped off the elevator.
“She wasn’t taking a nap—” Carol, who could make two of Stone, jumped in to defend her boss “—she was stitching up a patient.”
Stone’s nostrils flared, his tufted reddish-gray eyebrows puckered, and his pointy little teeth flashed briefly as if he might bite Carol. But then he turned to Danni, and peered up over his glasses at her. “Dr. Bryant told me you had gone to sleep.”
Danni folded her arms across her chest and turned a composed smile on Stone. “Now, why would I want to sleep through all this fun?”
Stone didn’t even bother to smile at the quip. “We have several more drop-ins in active labor. I’ll take them. Your C-section is waiting in Delivery One.”
Danni didn’t ask—although she’d love to have known—what the mighty Dr. Bryant was doing with his precious time.
