The Pull Of The Moon

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.