A Twist in Time (13 page)

Panic surged up inside her along with wild thoughts. Had Colonel Casey taken Galen from under her sleeping nose? Was he trying to escape from her? She’d come straight through from the forward cabin. He wasn’t in the galley or the salon. She checked the head that opened on both his cabin and the passage. Nothing. A series of thuds sounded on the deck above.

She dashed up the ladder into the cold air of evening on the bay. An icy March wind had kicked up. She stood in the cockpit and surveyed the deck above. The outline of his naked form at the prow was just visible against the black of the water beyond. He teetered at the line railing, holding on to the shrouds with his good hand at the edge of the deck. His other hand was at his groin. A trickle hit the water. She sighed in relief. He snapped his head around.

“You should stay below,” she said in Latin, hugging her arms against herself. He must be freezing. Lights were on in one or two of the boats moored at the little docks. Across the bay, the lights of Vallejo and Richmond made a glow. Somewhere behind her she could just hear the faint sound of a truck up on the 37 over the creaking of the docks.

“You like linen clean. I like linen dry.”

“Sorry.” She should have showed him the head. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Fine fugitive she was. And now he’d probably fall overboard trying to relieve himself. But decency and her own embarrassment required that she hang back until he was finished.

His flow went on and on. He’d really had to go. At last he shook his penis and turned, wavering.

Thank goodness she couldn’t see him well in this light. She climbed up out of the cockpit and took his good arm. It was trembling either with cold or with the effort it had taken to make it

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

Page 59 of 219

outside to pee. Or both. That should have been only a reminder that he was sick, but the feel of warm flesh and hard muscle had what was becoming a familiar effect on her.

“Down the ladder, big guy.” She felt so helpless as she watched him stagger down into the cockpit and then down once more below decks. No way to help him. She got down after him as fast as she could and squeezed ahead to flip the light switch. Too close. She was definitely too close to a really big, naked man. He made the boat seem small. And hot. She opened the door to the head and demonstrated how the lid opened with a foot pedal. What was the word for pee in Latin? “Do that here,” she said, and pointed.

He raised his brows. “Inside?”

She flushed the toilet to illustrate.

He started back as the water swirled around the basin and down into the holding tank. A small smile dawned and he nodded thoughtfully. “
Es g d
.”

“Now, to bed.” She gestured forward. She expected protest, but he was obviously exhausted by his foray up the ladder. He eased himself into the bed while she turned on the bedside light. In the golden glow, the fact that his wounds had seeped fluid into his bandages was obvious. That could not be good. She went to her shoulder bag on the table in the galley and pulled out the white paper bag of pharmacy supplies she’d meant to send back in time with him.

First things first. He hadn’t had any painkillers all day. How had he made it through? She would have been screaming. No wonder he’d been trembling. She poured a glass of water and grabbed the pharmacy bag and headed to the bedroom.

Could she do this? She was no nurse. But soiled bandages had to be bad. And how hard could it be to change bandages?

It would be harder if she had to stare at his impressive male equipment. She set the water down and resolutely pulled the covers up to his waist. There were lines around his eyes and between his brows. He might be a stoic, but the pain was taking its toll. She poured the contents of the bag onto the table. Pill bottles, bandages, surgical tape, some Betadine. She read the directions, then shook out two Vicodin and a Keflex. “Take these.” She held out the pills.

He looked suspicious.

“For pain.” That didn’t make him relax. “No sleep. But no pain.”

When he still looked rebellious, she decided on threats. “No pills, no food.”

His glower said he was thinking about the deal. Why she didn’t know. He had no choice. She was his lifeline in this time. And then she saw a strange expression cross his face. Shame. He

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

Page 60 of 219

was ashamed. Of what? He set his mouth in a grim line as he took the capsules and the proffered glass. He downed the pills and made a face. The Vicodin was bitter.

She wasn’t sure what was going on with him. Who knew what a Viking thought or felt? He seemed like a creature from another planet. At least he responded to threats.

“Okay. Got to keep those bandages clean and dry,” she muttered to herself. She sat beside him like he wasn’t staring at her and leaned over to work at the surgical tape that held the bandages in place. Her braid slid over her shoulder onto his belly. “Sorry,” she murmured as she pulled carefully at the upper tape. As it came away, it pulled at the skin. Was she pulling at the wound? She glanced up. His lips were set and grim. This wasn’t feeling great, obviously. Should she wait until the Vicodin took hold?

She sat back, unsure.

“D hit,”
he said through his teeth. He was too distressed for Latin, but she understood.

She swallowed. “Okay.” She bent back over his shoulder and pulled at the tape. “I know this hurts,” she murmured, refusing to glance up at his face. “But all this oozing can’t be good. I’m afraid getting you to the car or the boat maybe opened something up. Or climbing up on deck instead of lying in a hospital bed where real doctors and nurses could take care of you.” So what if he couldn’t understand? She wasn’t talking to communicate but to keep her mind off the fact that she was totally inadequate to care for him. “But I’m all you’ve got, and Lord knows, I’m not much.” She peeled back the pad.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
.

Lucy couldn’t help her intake of breath. The swollen wound, held together with stitches like black caterpillars, wound across his inflamed flesh diagonally from the point of his shoulder across his collarbone to the top of his pectoral. A small tube inserted in the bottom was the culprit for most of the oozing. Maybe it was supposed to ooze. What did she know? She began to shake her head convulsively. “That looks really evil.”

He peered down at his own shoulder. “
Ne yfel
,” he said.

That was pretty clearly “not evil.” She looked up at him, her panic receding. Funny. Just the fact that he understood her made her feel not quite so alone in all of this.

“
Ic cn we wundes
.” He grimaced.

She took a breath. It sounded like he said he knew wounds. With a pronounced accent, of course. Surprising that the words were the same, or almost. He said “ic” for “I.” But not surprising that he knew about wounds, what with all the scars on his body. She soaked some gauze with Betadine and daubed at his shoulder. It made the skin around the stitches a sickly yellow-orange.

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

Page 61 of 219

“
Hw et thes es
?”

That was pretty clear, too. “For infection?” He didn’t understand and she didn’t know the word in Latin. “For rot?” That word she knew.

Rot he understood. He nodded again. “
Ilca acetum
.”

Yeah. That was what the Romans used on wounds. They might just be able to communicate in English sooner or later. What a relief that would be. Her Latin sucked for actually talking.

Reading and translating were entirely different from speaking. Where could she get a Latin dictionary? Jake had said she couldn’t go online. A library? She couldn’t apply for a library card.

Maybe she was no longer destined to own any kind of identification, even a library card. Sad, really. If she didn’t know herself, no one else would know her, either.

She daubed at the wound. Nothing she could do about the sticky gray streaks of adhesive the tape had left. She used the Betadine to loosen the tape on the bottom of the bandage. They’d shaved some of his right pectoral, or ripping off the tape might have hurt even more. How long until the stitches could come out? How would she know? Could she pull them out? Her stomach threatened rebellion and she pushed down the thought. Time enough for that later. She made a pad with the bandages and put it over the stitches, then took his good hand and pressed it against the pad so he could hold it in place while she taped it. She was going to need a lot more gauze, for sure. Target had a pharmacy. Definitely a trip to Target tomorrow.