The M.D. Courts His Nurse (6 page)

R
ebecca's interaction with her employer in the supply room left her in a foul mood for much of the day. At first, catching him staring at her had been flattering—even a little bit of a turn-on. But then it had all blown to kingdom come with their chilly exchange of words.

Hazel's frustrating secrecy hadn't helped her mood any, either. As the disastrous date with Rick Collins proved, Hazel's good intentions could become a major pain. Rebecca still suspected Hazel was behind the strange events of the date with Rick. No way could Hazel ever have believed she and Rick would get along. Too, Hazel's cowboys were intensely loyal, and it would have been simple for one of them to have deflated Rick's tire in the parking lot.

And evidently the canny old matchmaker hadn't emptied her bag of tricks just yet.

The splendid spring day waiting for her outside after work was a tonic to Rebecca's mood. The short drive from
Mystery to her apartment near Valley General took her across some of the prettiest country in the valley. The area's magnificent silver spruces were swollen with new sap and budding into leaf, the meadows and pastures dotted with bright-red Indian paintbrush.

At one point she passed the outlying pastures of the Lazy M. She backed her foot off the gas pedal, slowing down to watch a six-year-old sorrel stud Hazel had named King Solomon.

Drunk on spring sunshine, the stallion raced along beside her in the huge pasture. His muscular quarters gleamed with the power and length of his stride; the breathtaking speed increased as the bunched muscles contracted and released like tightly wound springs exploding, thrusting and again thrusting, powerful and forceful….

Again she saw John Saville athletically leaping out of his roadster, again she felt his hand brushing her calf with charged force….

Rebecca realized she was breathing more quickly, her heart thumping loudly in her ears.

“Girl,” she muttered out loud, “forget about that disaster with Rick Collins. You
do
need another date.”

There was a certain growing priority that she needed to take care of, and that wasn't about to happen without an eligible guy. Not necessarily Mr. Right. Maybe Mr. Right-Now would do.

 

Feeling like a confirmed old maid already, Rebecca passed an uneventful evening reading and then watching an old Bogart movie on cable until bedtime. Not too long after she opened out the studio couch into her bed and fell asleep, the telephone on the end table startled her awake.

“Huh?' was all she could manage when she first answered the phone, speaking through clinging cobwebs of
sleep. The ruby-red numerals on the digital clock showed it was just past 2:00 a.m.

“Becky, hon, wake up, it's Lois. There's been a terrible accident.”

Lois's words had the force of cold water in the face.

Rebecca shot up to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake.

An accident. She thought instantly of her father, who spent most of his life driving. The consummate travelling salesman. Then logic assured her that that news would not be coming from Lois. No sooner did the fear pass, however, when another possibility seemed to make her blood turn in her veins: Hazel.

“Do you have any idea,” Lois pressed on before she could ask her anything, “where Dr. Saville might be?”

“Isn't he at home? But how would I—Lois, what happened?”

“Oh, Becky, it sounds just awful. A crowded bus lost its brakes on the interstate. It overturned on the western slope of Copper Mountain and went over the embankment.”

“Copper Mountain.” Ice encased Rebecca's spine. “Lois, that stretch is almost all cliffs, not just an embankment.”

“We've been monitoring it at home on Merrill's police-band radio. It's pure chaos right now, Becky. There are several fatalities and a whole lot of serious injuries. Trouble is it's impossible to get to the seriously wounded until a special evacuation team with the right equipment can arrive from Fort Mackenzie.”

Rebecca, trapping the cordless phone between her ear and her shoulder to free her hands, was already hurriedly stepping into a pair of jeans.

“State troopers have been able to lower two doctors and a nurse from Lutheran Hospital down on ropes,” Lois con
tinued. “They've set up a triage, but they still desperately need surgeons to do emergency intervention for a few of the badly injured who can't hold out much longer. Just to stop internal bleeding until they can get them out of there.”

“Oh, my God,” Rebecca breathed as the real shock of it started to settle in. Lois was talking about the most difficult kind of medical care imaginable—surgery at the trauma scene itself. But this was Mystery Valley, a quiet, uneventful place where little besides routine accidents ever stressed the medical community. They simply weren't ready for this.

“I've tried Dr. Saville's house and the office,” Lois lamented. “Repeatedly. But it's no use. I get the message machine both places. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, he's not exactly a party animal—not during the week, anyway. Besides, he had back-to-back surgeries this afternoon. He should've gone home tired long ago.”

“Yeah, that's right, he had surgery,” Rebecca chimed in, moving the phone so she could tug on a warm pullover. “I know where he might be. One morning when I was early at work, I found him asleep on that big couch in his office. He told me he sleeps there sometimes when he's working late on his journal articles or tired after surgery. It's lots closer than going out to his place.”

“That makes sense, all right, especially with the phone on his desk,” Lois added. “It only rings on low volume, remember? Loud ringing always startled Dr. Winthrop, he had that crazy theory that every startle reflex takes one day off the heart. So he set it on low volume, then broke the selector off.”

“Sure, we both teased him about it. Well, keep dialing the number,” Rebecca implored her. “I'll drive to the office right now. If he's not there, I'm going to the accident scene on my own. They may need more nurses.”

“Last I heard, they do. You be careful, babe, and good luck. I'll keep trying the office.”

 

The old Bronco was no speed demon, but with the nighttime roads empty, Rebecca floored it. She made it to the clinic in Mystery in less than ten minutes.

“Thank God,” she murmured aloud as she wheeled into the asphalt parking lot, and the headlights revealed the doctor's long, low-slung Alfa Romeo parked close to the building.

She unlocked the glass double doors and slapped at the master light switch, filling the entire suite with soft, indirect lighting. Even as she raced back toward the private office at the end of the hall, she heard the low, insistent chirring of his phone as Lois dialed.

She flung open his door and saw a supine form stretched out on the couch even before she switched on the lights.

“Dr. Saville! Doctor, wake up!”

In the few seconds before he responded, she got a strong impression of the slumbering man. A gray exhaustion was evident in the handsome face, the cumulative toll of his secret weekend plus a grueling session in surgery.

Despite her urgency, however, she couldn't help appreciating the fact that his shirt was off. His pectorals were hard and sloping, his abs and lats like taut steel bands. A fine mat of dark hair formed a silky vee on his chest. His stomach was flat and hard, and for a moment she couldn't help wishing he'd taken his trousers off, too.

“What?” he demanded, sitting up quickly. “What's wrong?”

First she picked up the ringing phone and told Lois she'd found him. Then she quickly filled him in on the emergency.

He took it in stride with his usual calm efficiency, al
ready collecting extra surgical instruments and supplies for his leather jump kit even before she finished speaking.

“Get plenty of sterile gauze, sponges and alcohol wipes,” he instructed her. “Bring clamps and silk sutures and number-three catgut for closing up. It doesn't have to be fancy work up there, it just has to hold until we can get them stabilized in a hospital. Looks like you'll be doing some sewing tonight, Becky.”

Becky.

It startled her, coming from his lips.

“The big problem,” he worried aloud, “will be anesthetic. I can do locals, but that won't be enough. I wish we had a general anesthetic to put them under.”

“I was taught the emergency procedures for administering chloroform with a pad,” she told him. “We have a few bottles.”

“Sure, that'll help. It's a little crude and risky, but better than nothing if the choice is life or death.”

As they let themselves out into the nighttime chill, he asked her if she knew the way to the accident scene.

She nodded.

“My car is pretty quick,” he worried out loud, “but I'm almost out of gas and there's no place to fill up close by.”

“I'll drive. My Bronco's probably more useful up there, anyway. It's got four-wheel drive.”

“How far away are we talking?”

“Twenty minutes north on Route 23.”

“If those victims are lucky—” he hoped out loud as they climbed into the Bronco “—they'll be airlifted before we even get there.”

 

Up on the slope of Copper Mountain, luck was in short supply. A dozen or more emergency vehicles, lights winking eerily, had assembled just off the shoulder of a sharp, nearly vertical embankment. The new arrivals learned that
the military-rescue team from Fort Mackenzie was still en route. A mix-up had caused the request to be delayed.

“We just now managed to lower a couple of paramedics down there,” a state trooper explained. “That's helped some. But neither one of the guys down there is a surgeon, and they're at wit's end. They'll be mighty glad to see you, Doc.”

Even in the lurid glow of the police vehicle lights Rebecca could see how tired John Saville looked. Far below, flares and a few smaller lights marked the accident scene.

“This rig looks pretty roomy,” John told the cop, meaning the doughnut harness the trooper was buckling around him. “Will it hold two people?”

The trooper nodded. “It's designed to hold up to three, actually.”

The doctor looked at Rebecca.

“Then lower both of us at one time,” he suggested. “You said it takes five minutes to descend. I can't get to work without my assist nurse, and we've already wasted enough time.”

It's a purely practical arrangement, Rebecca reminded herself as she snuggled up close to her employer. He stood behind her, arms encircling her, as the harness was buckled.

“Keep still,” the trooper called out as they were lowered over the berm of the drop-off. “You don't want to start twirling—keep the embankment in front of you. Any problem, just give us a holler.”

At first her nervous jitters kept Rebecca from thinking about how intimately close they were—so close she could feel every muscular contour of his body pressing against her. But the going was easier than she'd expected—in part because he did most of the work to keep them balanced, and the cops up above were handling the weight of descent.

“Piece of cake,” he assured her, lips so close to her ear
she could feel the warmth of his breath. “I'm a rock climber from way back.”

His words jolted her memory of what Hazel had told her. It was during a rock-climbing vacation that he supposedly met Louise Wallant.

She chastised herself when she felt a little inner spasm of jealousy—here she was, being lowered down a mountain in the middle of the night, with people hurt and dying below, yet she had time to feel jealousy for a man who saw her as a social inferior.

All that, however, could not prevent her from physically reacting to his nearness. The hand not clutching his jump kit kept brushing her breasts, unintended caresses that nonetheless triggered tickles of desire—especially since, in her hurry to find him tonight, she hadn't worn a bra. And each time they dropped farther down, gravity made her surge against him. Before long it was obvious he was aroused.

Moments later they reached the scene below, and Rebecca felt her heart sink when she saw the badly mangled and crumpled bus lying on one side, its progress finally stopped by a line of trees. Everywhere she looked, troopers were holding flashlights while various members of the medical team worked over the injured. Almost the only sounds were occasional pitiful groans and the stacatto crackling of radio static.

Dan Woodyard, a pediatrician Rebecca knew slightly from her days at Valley General, took a quick break to help them out of their harness and fill them in.

“Thank God for you two,” he greeted them. “We've treated most of the visible trauma wounds. But there are several with internal bleeding—severed arteries and, in one case, I think a ruptured spleen. Hell, the only surgeries I do are tonsils. All we've been able to do is give them clotting factor and treat them for shock.”

Woodyard sounded close to losing it. Even medical
school, Rebecca realized sympathetically, couldn't harden him for something like this.

John gripped one of his shoulders and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“You've done great, Dan,” he assured his colleague in a firm, calming tone. “Who's the other doctor, and what's his specialty?”

“Jim Routan from Lutheran. He's a semiretired G.P. with little surgical experience, mostly does screening physicals. He's over on the other side of the bus with the burn victims and spinal traumas.”

While this report was forthcoming, Dr. Woodyard led John and Rebecca to a group of four patients lying under blankets.

“They've been sedated,” Dan reported. “The elderly woman on the right is the possible ruptured spleen.”

While Rebecca checked each patient's vital signs, John made a quick check of each victim's injuries to set his priority of treatment. She had already noticed something—his arrival on the scene, his calm, confident competence, had created a sense of purpose and control. Dan and the others seemed to settle down, inspired by John's unflappable manner under duress.