Where There's Smoke (2 page)

"Doc?"
 
He raised his fist and pounded on the door again.
 
"Hey, Doc, open up!
 
I'm making a hell of a mess on your back steps."

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and Lara saw blood.

Putting aside her caution, she disengaged the alarm system and unlocked the door.
 
As soon as the latch gave way, he shouldered his way through and stumbled, barefoot, into the room.

"You took long enough," he mumbled.
 
"But all's forgiven if you still keep a bottle of Jack Daniel's stashed in here."
 
He moved straight to a white enamel cabinet and bent down to open the bottom drawer.

"There's no Jack Daniel's in there."

At the sound of her voice, he spun around.
 
He gaped at her for several seconds.
 
Lara gaped back.
 
He had an animalistic quality that both attracted and repelled her, and although she was inured to the smell of fresh blood, she could smell his.

Instinctively she wanted to recoil, but not from fear.
 
Her impulse was a feminine one of self-defense.
 
She held her ground, however, subjecting herself to his disbelieving and disapproving stare.

"Who the hell are you?
 
Where's Doc?"
 
He was scowling darkly and holding the bloodied tail of his unbuttoned shirt against his side.

"You'd better sit down.
 
You're hurt."

"No shit, lady.
 
Where's Doc?"

"Probably asleep in his bed at his fishing cabin on the lake.
 
He retired and moved out there several months ago."

He glared at her.
 
Finally, in disgust, he said, "Great.
 
That's just fuckin' great."
 
He muttered curses as he shoved his fingers through his hair.
 
Then he took a few lurching steps toward the door and careened into the examination table.

Reflexively Lara reached for him.
 
He staved her off but remained leaning against the padded table.
 
Breathing heavily and wincing in pain, he said, "Can I have some whiskey?"

"What happened to you?"

"What's it to you?"

"I didn't just move into Dr. Patton's house.
 
I took over his medical practice."

His sapphire eyes snapped up to meet hers.
 
"You're a doctor?"

She nodded and spread her arms to indicate the examination room.

"Well I'll be damned."
 
His eyes moved over her.
 
"You must be a real hit at the hospital wearing that getup," he said, lifting his chin to indicate her attire.
 
"Is that the latest thing in lady doctor outfits?"

She had on a long white shirt over a pair of leggings that ended at her knees.
 
Despite her bare feet and legs, she assumed an authoritarian tone.
 
"1 don't generally wear my lady doctor outfits past midnight.

It's after hours, but I'm still licensed to practice medicine, so why don't you forget how I'm dressed and let me look at your wound.

What happened?"

"A little accident."

As she slipped his shirt from his shoulders, she noticed that his belt was unbuckled and only half the buttons of his fly were fastened.

She prized his bloody hand away from the wound on his left side, about waist level.

"That's a gunshot!"

"Naw.
 
Like I told you, I had a little accident."

Clearly, he was lying, something he seemed accustomed to doing frequently and without repentance.
 
"What kind of accident'?"

"I fell on a pitchfork."
 
He motioned down at the wound.
 
"Just clean it out, put a Band-Aid on it, and tomorrow I'll be fine."

She straightened up and unsmilingly met his grinning face.
 
"Cut the crap, all right?
 
I know a bullet wound when I see one," she said.

"I can't take care of this here.
 
You belong in the county hospital."

Turning her back on him, she moved to the phone and began punching out numbers.
 
"I'll make you as comfortable as I can until the ambulance arrives.
 
Please lie down.
 
As soon as I've completed the call, I'll do what I can to stop the bleeding.
 
Yes, hello," she said into the receiver when her call was answered.
 
"This is Dr. Mallory in
Eden
Pass.
 
I have an emer His hand came from behind her and broke the connection.

Alarmed, she looked at him over her shoulder.

"I'm not going to any damn hospital," he said succinctly.
 
"No ambulance.
 
This is nothing.
 
Nothing, understand?
 
Just stop the bleeding and slap a bandage on it.
 
Easy as pie.
 
Have you got any whiskey?"
 
he asked for the third time.

Stubbornly, Lara began redialing.
 
Before she completed the sequence of numbers, he plucked the receiver from her hand and angrily yanked it out of the phone, leaving the cord dangling from his fist.

She turned and confronted him, but, for the first time since opening the door, she was afraid.
 
Even in this small
East Texas town, drug abuse was a problem.
 
Shortly after moving into the clinic, she had installed a burglar alarm system to prevent thefts of prescription drugs and narcotic painkillers.

He must have sensed her apprehension.
 
With a clatter, he dropped the telephone receiver onto a cabinet and smiled grimly.
 
"Look, Doc, if I'd come here to hurt you, I'd have already done it and gotten the hell out.
 
I just don't want to involve a bunch of people in this.

No hospital, okay?
 
Take care of me here, and I'll be on my merry way."

Even as he spoke, his lips became taut and colorless.
 
He drew an audible breath through clenched teeth.

"Are you about to pass out?"

"Not if I can help it."

"You're in a lot of pain."

"Yeah," he conceded, slowly nodding his head.
 
"It hurts like a son of a bitch.
 
Are you going to let me bleed to death while we argue about it?"

She studied his resolute face for a moment longer and reached the conclusion that she either had to do it his way or he'd leave.
 
The former was preferable to the latter, in which case she would be risking the patient's health and possibly his life.
 
She ordered him to lie down and lower his jeans.

"I've used that same line a dozen times myself," he drawled as he eased himself onto the table.

"That doesn't surprise me."
 
Unimpressed by his boast, she moved to a basin and washed her hands with disinfectant soap.
 
"If you know Doc Patton well enough to know where he stashed his Jack Daniel's, you must live here."

"Born and raised."

"Then why didn't you know he'd retired?"

"I've been away for a while."

"Were you a regular patient of his?"

"All my life.
 
He got me through chicken pox, tonsillitis, two broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a broken arm, and an altercation with a rusty tin can that was serving as second base.
 
Still got the scar on my thigh where I landed when I slid in."

"Were you called out?"

"Hell no," he replied, as though that were beyond the realm of possibility.
 
"More than once I've come through that back door in the middle of the night, needing Doc to patch me up for one reason or another.
 
He wasn't as stingy with the medicinal whiskey as you are.

What's that you're fixing there?"

"A sedative."
 
She calmly depressed the plunger of a syringe and sent a spurt of medication into the air.

She then set it down and swabbed his upper arm with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol.
 
Before she knew what he was about to do, he picked up the syringe, pushed the plunger with his thumb and squirted the fluid onto the floor.

"Do you think I'm stupid, or what?"

"Mr. "If you want me anesthetized, get me a glass of whiskey.
 
You're not pumping anything into my bloodstream that'll knock me out and give you an opportunity to call the hospital."

"And the sheriff.
 
I'm required by law to report a gunshot wound to the authorities."

He struggled to sit up and when he did, the open wound gushed bright red blood.
 
He groaned.
 
Lara hastily slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and began stanching the flow with gauze pads so that she could determine how serious the wound was.

"Afraid I'll give you AIDS?"
 
he asked, nodding at her gloved hands.

"Professional precaution."

"No worry," he said with a slow grin.
 
"I've been real careful all my life."

"You weren't so careful tonight.
 
Were you caught cheating at poker?

Flirting with the wrong woman?
 
Or were you cleaning your pistol when it accidentally went off?"

"I told you, it was a "Yes.
 
A pitchfork.
 
Which would have punctured instead of tearing off a chunk of tissue."
 
She worked quickly and effectively.
 
"Look, I've got to trim off the rough edges of the wound and put in some deep sutures.
 
It's going to be painful.
 
I must anesthetize you."

"Forget it' He hitched his hip over the side of the table as though to leave.

Lara stopped him by placing the heels of her hands on his shoulders.

The fingers of her gloves were bloody.
 
"Lidocaine?
 
Local anesthetic," she explained.
 
She took a vial from her cabinet and let him read the label.
 
"Okay?"

He nodded tersely and watched as she prepared another syringe.

She injected him near the wound.
 
When the surrounding tissue was deadened, she clipped the debris from around the wound, irrigated it with a saline solution, sutured the interior, and put in a drain.

"What the hell is that?"
 
he asked.
 
He was pale and sweating profusely, but he had watched every swift and economic movement of her hands.

"It's called a penrose drain.
 
It drains off blood and fluid and helps prevent infection.
 
I'll remove it in a few days."
 
She closed the wound with sutures and placed a sterile bandage over it.

After dropping the bloody gloves into a marked metal trash can that designated contaminated materials, Lara returned to the sink to wash her hands.
 
She then asked him to sit up while she wrapped an Ace bandage around his trunk to keep the dressing in place.

She stepped away from him and looked critically at her handiwork.

"You're lucky he wasn't a better marksman.
 
A few inches to the right and the bullet could have penetrated several vital organs.

"Or a few inches lower, and I couldn't have penetrated anything ever again."

Lara gave him a retiring look.
 
"How lucky for you.

She had remained professionally detached, although each time her arms had encircled him while bandaging his wound, her cheek had come close to his wide chest.
 
He had a lean, sunbaked, hairspattered torso.
 
The Ace bandage bisected his hard, flat belly.
 
She'd worked the emergency rooms of major city hospitals; she'd stitched up shady characters before-but none quite this glib, amusing, and handsome.