Darlene Graham - The Pull Of The Moon

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.

“MAN! I HOPE THAT’S the last one,” Carol mumbled through her mask after Danni had delivered another baby safely, verified the sponge count and started the routine stitching.

“Yep,” Danni said while she tied off a stitch. “It’s that damn moon, folks.” She raised her voice. “Brings in the pregnant ladies like a truckload of pumpkins.”

The weary team chuckled in agreement from behind their masks.

But Carol merely inflated hers with a sigh. Danni glanced into her friend’s bloodshot eyes. “After this,” she said in a low voice, “you’re going home.”

“And what about you, Doc? You going home?” Carol reached across for more suture, a flip of her wrist conveying that she’d stay as long as Danni did. After three years of working side by side, Danni and Carol read each other’s movements like Morse code.

Danni said nothing. Only three years in private practice and already it was all getting to her. Carol’s aggressive protectiveness. The full moon. Babies.

Babies.

Babies.

Danni’s hands shook a little as she opened a palm for the subcuticular suture. Carol shot her a sharp, appraising look before she slapped the hemostat down on her glove.

Danni pursed her lips behind her mask. Damn Carol and the way she saw through everything, through everyone. Damn her with her big, brown, understanding eyes. Why were nurses always so ridiculously kind and well-adjusted?

Danni finished the suturing, stripped off her gloves and announced, “I’m taking a snore. Don’t wake me until the next one’s ears are out.”

She heard Carol order someone else to dress the incision, and sensed her friend right on her heels as she hurried to the doctors’ locker room.

The door hadn’t even swung back before Carol banged it open again. Danni was just lowering herself into the recliner where the doctors slept fitfully while they monitored troubled cases in the wee hours.