Hale's Point (10 page)

“Sounds like heat exhaustion, all right.” Phil agreed. “See
if you can get some fluids into her. Mix a teaspoon of salt in a quart of water
and make her drink some.” Despite Tucker’s distress, he found his friend’s
brusque professionalism amusing. Was this really the same Phil
Zelin
who had lifted his robe, dropped his bell-bottoms,
and mooned all the school administrators at his high-school graduation? “And
keep sponging her off. I just finished up my rounds—I can be there in half an
hour.”

Tucker mixed a glass of salt water and set it on the night
table. “Come on, honey. You’ve got to drink this. Doctor’s orders.” He sat her
up, cradling her against his chest, her head supported by his shoulder. “Come
on. Wake up.” Had she gotten hotter? Was that even possible? She was flushed
all over now, her skin a deep pink. He patted her cheek, which was no longer
clammy, but dry. No response. He put the rim of the glass to her lips. “Come
on, Harley, drink.
Please
.”

He gave up and bathed her face and arms with the cool
washcloth until the doorbell rang.

Phil greeted him with a warm hug and a slap on the back. “Trade
you my house for that Jag.”

Even after twenty-one years, Tucker would have known him
anywhere. His lanky frame and dark, perpetually amused eyes hadn’t changed,
although now those eyes were surrounded by a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. The
main difference between the teenage Phil and the thirty-something Phil was the
scattering of gray in his wiry black hair, now much shorter than the shoulder
length he’d
worn
it in high school. And, of course,
his natty attire—pleated linen trousers with suspenders, a striped shirt with
rolled-up sleeves, and a loosened polka-dot tie—was a far cry from the tie-dye
and faded denim of his youth.

Dodging further time-consuming conversation, Tucker quickly
turned and led Phil to the maid’s room.

“Your face has more character.” Phil said as he followed
behind. ‘‘And that leg of yours has a
lot
more character. What happened?”

“I got hurt.” Tucker said.

“That part I already figured out, tough guy.”

“She’s in here.” Tucker said, standing aside at the door.

Phil walked straight to Harley and thumped his black bag on
the night table. He sat on the edge of the bed, took her head in his hands, and
pried her eyes open. “She been comatose long?”

Comatose.
The word snapped a memory
into focus: a young doctor’s moon face and the words,
Mr. Hale, you’ve been comatose for nearly a week.
He had thought,
comatose, as in coma
? Phil was looking
at him, waiting for an answer. “Uh, in and out for a while. Completely out for
the better part of an hour. Is she okay? Is she going to be okay?”

“How long she been flushed like this?” He took her pulse.

“Not long. Since I spoke to you.”

Phil withdrew a stethoscope and blood-pressure kit from his
bag, wrapped the cuff around her arm, and pumped the bulb. “You get any fluids
into her?”

“No. That was hopeless.” He bit off the impulse to ask again
if she was going to be okay. If the answer had been an unequivocal yes, Phil
would have given it. He hunched his shoulder to wipe his brow on his
shirtsleeve, thinking,
Please let her be
okay. Please.

“Blood pressure’s a little high,” Phil said. “That’s good,
that’s what we want.” He opened the top two buttons of her shirt and listened
to her chest with the stethoscope, then rolled her onto her side, pulled out
her shirttail, and slid the stethoscope under it. “Lungs are clear.” He
sheathed an electronic thermometer and inserted it in her mouth. “Her clothes
are damp, but she’s dry, meaning she perspired heavily for a while and then
stopped. Her body’s cooling mechanism shut down and she overheated, just like a
car.” The thermometer beeped and he checked it.

Tucker looked over his shoulder at the digital readout. “Is
that right?” he asked. “Her temperature’s 104.8?”

Phil put away the instrument. “That’s her temperature.”

“So it’s heat exhaustion?”

Phil glanced up at him. “No, she’s graduated to heat
stroke
.” He stood.

Stroke?
Heat
stroke
? “Does she have to go to the hospital?”

 
“Not if we can get her
cooled down. Let’s try a cold bath with the fan on.” He quickly finished
unbuttoning her shirt, opened it, then unclasped the front closure of her white
bra and stripped her of both garments, revealing her from the waist up.

She had a beautiful body, her breasts taut and perfect, but
Tucker had known that; what Lycra had not revealed, his imagination had filled
in. It tugged at his heart for her to be exposed this way. She was a private
person, with a highly developed sense of dignity. She would not knowingly have
him see her like this.

When Phil unzipped her shorts, Tucker turned away. “I’ll run
a bath,” Tucker said.

“Great.”

In the little bathroom, he
stoppered
the claw-footed tub and turned the cold water on all the way, contemplating the
discomfort he had felt when Phil undressed Harley. It wasn’t just her
vulnerability that had gotten to him. He was jealous of Phil for having the
right, as a doctor, to touch Harley, to take her clothes off, to see her naked.
Phil, of course, was merely doing his job. The problem, if there was one, was
Tucker’s.

The tub filled quickly, and Tucker turned the water off. Phil
brought the fan in and handed it to him, then left again. While Tucker was
crouched under the sink plugging it in, he heard Phil’s footsteps again, heavier
this time, and the sound of water being displaced. He wrestled himself to his
feet, turned the fan on, and carefully aimed it toward the tub and Harley.

It astounded him that she could remain completely unconscious
through all of this. Immersion in cold water should jolt anyone awake, but
there she was, as peacefully unaware of her situation as if she were asleep.

She had settled into an artlessly graceful pose, head back
against the curved lip of the tub, arms crossed at the waist, lower body curled
modestly toward the wall. She looked so lithe and fragile.

“The point of all this.” Phil said as he knelt beside the tub
and dipped a washcloth into the water, “is to lower her body temperature, and
fast. If it keeps rising, she’ll go into circulatory collapse.” He looked up at
Tucker to underline the seriousness of his words. “Shock.”

“Shock,” Tucker repeated dumbly. He lowered the lid of the
toilet and sat, rubbing the back of his neck. “How will you know if she’s—”

“You see how pink her skin is? Flushed?” Phil ran the wet
washcloth over Harley’s shoulders and upper chest, which were not immersed. “The
blood is on the surface. If her circulation gives out and she goes into shock,
shell go gray, pallid—we’ve got to watch for that. Her blood pressure will plummet.”

“What do we do then?”

“We find out how fast that Jag of yours can make it to the
medical center.”

Tucker mulled that over. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Phil hesitated, as if weighing his words. “Don’t be coy,
Zelin
.
Just answer the question.”

“I’m not being coy, Tucker, I’m just being careful. I’ve had
years of experience explaining to people what’s happening with their loved
ones. It’s not always an easy call. People tell you they want the unvarnished
truth, but they really—”

“Relax. We’re not talking about a loved one here—she’s the
house sitter.” Not the whole story, perhaps, but Tucker wasn’t in the mood to
split hairs. He wanted answers.

“House sitter.” Phil looked at Harley and then at Tucker. “I thought
she was your—”

“Well, she’s not. She’s the house sitter, so tell me.”

“All right, then.” He wiped her face with the washcloth. “She
could
die. It’s been known to happen.”

Tucker lapsed into a stunned silence. Finally he swallowed
and asked, “What’s the likelihood of that?”

Phil felt her forehead. “Not as likely as brain damage.”
Tucker felt something slowly whirl inside him. He put a hand on the edge of the
tub to steady himself as Phil continued, oblivious: “Which, in turn, is less
likely than heart, liver, or kidney damage.” Phil nodded to himself. “Which, in
turn, is less likely than no permanent damage at all, in this particular case.
In my opinion.”

“No permanent damage,” Tucker said. “That’s the likeliest?”
Phil nodded.

Tucker patted the pocket of his T-shirt, felt his sunglasses and
nothing else, and sighed. Phil, recognizing the gesture for what it was, pulled
a pack of
Newports
from his own shirt pocket and
offered them to Tucker.

“You smoke?” said Tucker. “Still? You’re a doctor. You should
have quit by now.”

“Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. You want one or not?”
Tucker shook his head, and Phil lit one for himself with a monogrammed gold
lighter.

“Uh, Phil…” Tucker hesitated. This was weird. Why was he
doing this? “You mind taking that outside? You’re not supposed to… She doesn’t
like… I’d rather you didn’t smoke in the house.”

Phil stared at Tucker, cigarette in one hand, dripping
washcloth in the other. “
You’d
rather? You’re a smoker—what do you care?” Before Tucker could formulate an
answer, Phil nodded toward Harley. “And
she’s
out cold, so she could care less. And the old man’s in parts unknown, so he’ll
never find out. Besides which, it serves him right for hating me for no reason
whatsoever way back when. I’ll smoke in his house and give him a reason to hate
me. He’ll never know, but it’ll make
me
feel better. I hate it when people hate me for no reason. Better I should have
done something wrong.” He nodded, happy in his logic, all of this making
perfect sense to him.

Tucker looked at Harley, naked and unaware, remembering how
she had snatched the cigarette from his lips and doused it in the pool that
first night. She was powerless now, her authority gone. He didn’t want to order
his friend outside, yet it struck him as profoundly wrong to ignore Harley’s
will simply because she was incapable of exercising it at the moment. It was
like taking advantage of her while she was at her weakest, and he found that
impossible to do.

“Take it outside, Phil,” he said, just soberly enough so that
his friend knew he meant it.

Shaking his head, Phil rose and tossed him the washcloth. “I’ll
go out and sit in the driver’s seat of that nice new Jag while I smoke this.
Hope it doesn’t slip out of my fingers.” He paused in the doorway and smiled. “Nothing
takes burn marks out of leather.”

After Phil left, Tucker sat on the edge of the tub and dabbed
the washcloth on Harley’s face, throat, and shoulders. It struck him as an
intimate thing to be doing—she was naked, after all, and he was bathing her—yet
he felt only tenderness, not lust. This surprised him, since he had an active
libido, and had never been good at reining it in. Witness the way he had tried
to rush her into bed last night, when, as she’d pointed out, they had known
each other less than twenty-four hours. His common sense should have told him
that a woman as conventional and tightly wound as Harley, virgin or not, would
never go for that. He had wanted her, though— badly—and desire had won out over
common sense.

In spite of their differences, he found her very attractive.
Her face was compelling, if not conventionally pretty, and he liked her sleek,
strong little body. But it went beyond looks. It was her aura of health and
purity that drew him to her, he decided. Opposites attract.

He dipped the washcloth and patted her dry lips with it, then
touched them with his fingertips. Perhaps he sought in her what he had once
enjoyed in such abundance but had lost—youth, strength, a clear vision of the
world. Is that what attracted him to her? Something did; something more, or at
least different, from what had attracted him to women in the past.

This might not be a good thing. This felt complicated. Maybe
the best thing he could do would be to pack up his duffel, toss it in the trunk
of his new car, and head back to Alaska in the morning. No, he had to wait
until Harley had recovered from her heatstroke. He would leave in a day or two.

He shook his head, bemused. Responsibility had never kept him
from bolting before. It had also never made him into a member of the Hale’s
Point antismoking vice squad before. He stroked Harley’s cheek, ran a thumb
over a closed eyelid. He had been wrong, thinking of her as powerless just
because she was unconscious. She was more in control than ever.

Phil’s voice jolted him out of his reverie. “What’s with the
dealer plates on that Jag?” He had his black bag in his hand, and now he set it
down on the floor next to the tub and withdrew the thermometer.

“I only bought it this morning.” Tucker stood, and Phil took
his place on the edge of the tub, slipping the thermometer into Harley’s mouth.
“I got up before dawn, thinking I might head home. Then I remembered I hadn’t
seen Liz
Wycliff
yet—you remember Liz?”

“Sure.” The thermometer beeped. Phil checked the readout and
shot a fist. “
Yes!
”