The Pull Of The Moon

“Fathers are important.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE EPILOGUE Copyright

“Fathers are important.”

Matt spoke simply. “And I think my baby deserves a good one.”

Olivia’s smile softened. “I agree, Mr. Creed. But I’m afraid that with my daughter, there is little either of us can do to change her mind.”

Matt leaned forward on the couch. “Oh, there’s plenty I can do,” he said. “I can take her to court and sue for joint custody”

Olivia answered quickly. “Nasty legal proceedings will solve nothing. Besides, you have no claim to the baby. Danni would have to name you as the father for you to have any legal standing.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then Matt spoke. “Your daughter didn’t tell you?”

Olivia looked confused.

“Mrs. Goodlove, your daughter and I are married.”

“THE PULL OF THE MOON is a tender, memorable story of a remarkable man and a dedicated woman, who, through loving each other, heal the wounds upon their souls. It is a page-turning, feel-good book from beginning to end.”

—Sharon Sala, award-winning author of Reunion

Dear Reader,

I worked as a labor and delivery nurse for many years and allays wanted to write a story about a dedicated, funny, sawy, but lonely obstetrician who yearns for a love of her own. Dr. Danni Goodlove began forming in my mind all those years ago.

But it wasn’t until I met the firefighters/rescuers after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City (I was privileged to work as a volunteer at the site during the rescue effort) that I found the hero who would be Danni’s match.

I hope my portrayal of Matthew Creed does justice to the tireless and truly heroic men and women who gave their all during that terrible time. To my own son Damon, a television reporter who was one of the first to arrive at the scene, and to everyone who suffered in the wake of that heinous crime, I hope that the references in this book provide only consolation and validation.

Though deeply emotional issues are woven into this story, it is a joyous account Because it shows one woman’s journey as she chooses change and growth, finds true love and receives the family of her dreams.

I enjoy hearing from my readers. You can write to me at

P.O. Box 720224, Norman, Oklahoma 73070.

Darlene Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Ray and Tonie Lueb.

Thank you for answering God’s call

to become loving parents.

CHAPTER ONE

THE FULL MOON WAS THE trouble, and everybody knew it.

As Dr. Danielle Goodlove shoved her long, thick hair under a disposable cap and began the routine surgical scrub, she thought how ironic it was that all the simpering romantics out there in TV- and movie-land considered the moon a symbol of romance.

Romance. Ha!

In obstetrics everybody knew that all hell broke loose when Old Man Moon turned his fat face on the unsuspecting earth. Why did stuff like this—an emergency C-section with a life in the balance—always seem to happen when the moon was full?

Correction: two lives.

She nudged the knee handle to cut the water off, raised her dripping hands, and headed toward delivery room one.

A woman’s scream from within caused Danni to break into a trot. She knocked the heavy door open with her bottom and yelled: “Fetal heart rate?”

A nurse turned up the volume on a state-of-theart monitor and called back, “Sixties!” as the ominously slow beeps filled the otherwise-silent room.

Another nurse rushed forward to dry Danni’s hands with a sterile towel while a third nurse came at her with a surgical gown mittened over fists. The circulating nurse filled Danni in on the case, her words fast and low. “It’s a bad deal. The whole family was in the fire. Couple of toddlers. Mom’s water ruptured at the scene—”

“When?” Danni interrupted.

The nurse glanced at the large clock on the tiled wall.

“Just before midnight—about thirty minutes ago. We’ve got a prolapsed cord and fetal distress.”

“I hear it,” Danni said. The beeps got slower.

The nurse with the towel finished the drying and dodged aside so the other could thrust the gown onto Danni’s outstretched arms. The circulator continued to talk rapidly as she reached up and pushed Danni’s glasses firmly onto the bridge of her nose.

“Mom ran into the trailer when they realized the toddlers were missing. A fireman pulled her back out, then went in for the kids himself. The dad’s drunk, started the fire with a cigarette. The cops have him. She’s about thirty-four weeks. No prenatal care. You’re flying blind.”

Danni nodded while she jammed her hands into the sterile gloves held open before her. Then she stepped up to the surgery table.

The patient was no longer screaming. She now lay gravely silent with eyes closed, her skin pale and smudged beneath pathetically singed eyebrows and hair. She cracked her eyes open as Danni adjusted the paper drapes. When she saw Danni she tried to talk through the anesthesia mask, then reached sooty fingers from under the drape and grabbed for Danni’s arm. The circulator caught the woman’s hand before she could contaminate Danni’s sterile gown.

“Don’t worry,” Danni said and leaned over to look directly in the patient’s eyes as they grew heavy with the anesthetic. “We’ll get your baby out in time.”

She opened her gloved palm for the scalpel and peered over her mask at the anesthetist. He adjusted the nitrous oxide and nodded.

“Let’s go.” Danni flipped the knife into position and cut.

Dr. Danni Goodlove prided herself on her head-spinning, machinelike speed in emergencies. The C-section team at Tulsa’s Holy Cross Hospital—one of the best in the city—had scrambled to meet her exacting standard: six minutes from decision, to incision, to squalling baby.

In this business, sometimes you had to hurt the patient in order to help them. Sometimes they cried out. Danni might have let that affect her work, but she didn’t. While still in her teens she had learned to ignore her emotions and focus on her goal. She’d acquired that skill the hard way—in a tragedy she didn’t like to think about—but on a night like this she was grateful for it.

Because on a night like this—when the moon was full—Danni couldn’t help thinking of Lisa.

On a night like this, Lisa and her baby had died.

But tonight’s baby was lifted out, free of the strangling cord, squirming under the Ohio warmer a mere ninety seconds after Danni’s first swift, sure cut.

Danni hadn’t even broken a sweat, but the rest of the team released a collectively held breath when they heard the first weak cries from the corner where a pediatric team labored over the tiny patient. Danni tried to ignore the palpable relief all around her. She never allowed herself to get emotional during a delivery, but tonight she was feeling the tiniest twinge of—something—as the infant’s crying picked up steam.

Then the bang of the operating-room door startled them all.

A perky young ward clerk, breathless from her sprint down the hall, held a paper mask to her face, her eyes huge above it. “Dr. Danni!” she huffed. “Dr. Stone’s having a fit down in the E.R. He said to close this case fast and get down there stat. A ton of OB’s have flooded in.”

“The moon,” a nurse behind Danni moaned.

The girl spread a palm over her chest as if to calm herself, then noticed the baby. “That baby made it?”

One of the pediatric nurses called out, “He’s perfect!” above the infant’s wailing.

“You know,” the transfixed young woman said, nodding at the unconscious mother, “that fireman that got injured saving her?”

The team, busy with their tasks, didn’t acknowledge the question.

“Well,” she announced with an air of importance, “Cooper said he looks just like Tom Selleck.”

Danni gave the girl a cutting glance over her mask, then said, “Go tell Stone to cool his jets. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

ONCE SHE GOT DOWN to the E.R., Danni took a second to look in the exam room where two toddler-size bodies lay side by side on two gurneys. The bustling E.R. teams obstructed her view, but she knew it was bad. The teams were too controlled, too quiet. It was the deafening silence of hopelessness. What would she tell the mother?

A commotion behind her caused her to turn.

Some nurses and an orderly had stopped the gurney they’d been pushing and struggled with the huge man on it. He was wearing a bloodstained T-shirt, and a fresh dressing and ice packs swaddled one arm. His turnout pants and fire boots told Danni he must be the fireman the ward clerk had been talking about upstairs. He was fighting to sit up and pushed the burly orderly back with one hand while he jerked the oxygen mask off his face with the other.

That ward clerk was wrong, Danni thought as she rushed forward to help. This guy doesn’t look anything like Tom Selleck, And right now his face was so contorted with anger, his eyes were so wild with delirium, you couldn’t even call him handsome.

“Let me see them!” he yelled as he shoved the nurses’ hands away. “Dammit! I have to see if they’re okay!”

One of his fireman buddies, a black man in full regalia except for the helmet, ran up alongside the gurney and got into the act. “Matt, you need that oxygen,” he said as he forced the mask over the patient’s face and fought to get his mighty shoulders back down on the gurney.

“What’s he had?” Danni yelled across to a nurse, and as soon as she heard the answer added, “Get me some Ativan.” The other nurse had gone off, anticipating the order, and a full syringe was instantly in Danni’s hand.

“You hold him,” Danni ordered the black fireman.

The patient fought like a bull, still ranting about the toddlers, while Danni shot the sedative into a vein.

When the patient finally moaned into semiconsciousness, the black man released his hold and turned to Danni. “It’s not Matt’s fault. This is old stuff—” The big man suddenly seemed choked up. “He worked the bombing. Saving these babies tonight kind of brought it all back.”

The bombing. In Oklahoma they simply called it that—the bombing.

Danni nodded and felt her eyes mist when she turned to look at the man on the gurney as the nurses rolled him away, and saw the top of his dark head as he tossed it miserably from side to side.

The bombing—after all this time, so many still suffered from its aftershocks. Like that poor man.

“Matt’s usually a really nice guy,” the black man said from behind her. “Are you gonna take care of his arm?” he added anxiously.

Danni turned and looked up at him. This one was a handsome man, even though he looked thoroughly exhausted. “No. I’m an obstetrician, but one of the E.R. docs—”

Before she could finish, a harried-looking nurse rushed up and said, “Dr. Goodlove, please,” while she hauled Danni by the sleeve of her lab coat into an open area where the sight of five mounded tummies on five beds made Danni groan.

“All in active labor.” The nurse held out a stack of intake charts. “Stone says they’re all yours.”

“Gee. Could the Old Man be testing me again?” Danni took the charts.

“Again? When did he stop?” The nurse plunked a Doppler device and a bottle of blue gel on top of the charts. “Don’t worry, we finally located Dr. Bryant. Claimed his pager wasn’t working.”

Danni made a sarcastic face. “Oh, goody. Bryant.” Bryant, if anything, was a bigger pain than Stone. As the chief of staff, Kenneth Stone, at least, was supremely confident and above petty one-upsmanship. Bryant was not. Only a hair older than Danni, he was fiercely competitive.

Moments later, when Roger Bryant came blasting through the E.R. doors like a Viking god to the rescue, Danni studiously ignored him and let the triage nurse give him report.

Another hour flew by while Bryant and Danni got the OB patients examined and admitted.

“I’ll go up and cover Labor and Delivery now,” Bryant said and ran a hand through his fine, sandy-blond hair, then pointed at Danni as he backed toward the elevator, beating an obvious retreat from the E.R. chaos. “You’d better take a break, sister. You look terrible.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Danni framed her cheeks with her palms. “Imagine that! I look terrible!” She addressed this remark to Carol Hollis, her best friend and a top-notch scrub nurse, who’d appeared on her left.

“Gee,” Carol deadpanned, then raised her voice as the elevator doors slid closed over Bryant’s sour expression. “Could four deliveries and two C-sections have anything to do with it?”

Carol straightened, tossed her salt-and-pepper curls toward the elevator and muttered, “Prick.” She turned to Danni. “But unfortunately, the prick can’t handle what’s developing upstairs.”

“What’s that?”

“Another C-section.”

“When?”

“Maybe an hour. That’s why I came down to find you.”

Danni held up a palm. “Okay. But first I gotta eat something or I’ll pass out.”

But just as Danni and Carol plopped down in the break area, a nurse poked her head in the door and pleaded, “Dr. Goodlove, before you go back to OB could you possibly see the fireman?”

Danni gulped milk from a carton, then rubbed the back of her neck, not comprehending something this nurse obviously thought she should. “The fireman?”

“Yeah. The guy who pulled the twins out of the trailer. He’s been waiting for over an hour. Somebody needs to check his lungs again and he has a nasty wound that needs stitches.” The nurse shrugged apologetically while she held out a disposable suture tray. “We’re swamped. In fact, we’re so crowded we had to put the poor man in the supply room. Could you?”

“I’ll help,” Carol offered. “Bryant can survive a little while without you.”

Danni sighed. Would this night never end? “Okay.” She stood, tilted the milk carton up and drained it. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE SUPPLY ROOM WAS cramped, even without the gurney, even without the over-six-feet of massive male snoring under the buzzing fluorescent light.

He was all alone, out cold, taking straight oxygen from a mask attached to a tank. He reeked of smoke and sweat, a few plastic cups littered the floor around him—at least they’d given him some water—and a thin blanket covered him to his chin. The dressing and cold compresses on the injured arm were pink-tinged with blood now, and the IV dripping into his other arm was almost empty.

Shameful, Danni thought. This is how we treat our heroes? She slipped the chart from under a corner of the gurney mattress and read.

Matthew Creed, age thirty-six. In addition to the Ativan, they’d given him a wallop of Demerol in the IV. There were third-degree bums on the same arm that had been gashed—by glass, the triage nurse had written.

As with every firefighter who plunged into a raging fire, the guy’s lungs were the big worry. But so far, everything—electrolytes, blood gases—looked okay. And his color was within normal limits.

Assessing his face at rest, Danni decided that he was handsome. His eyelids, though puffy—she made a note of the edema—were framed by thick dark brows and a line of lush black lashes any cover model would envy. Beneath the mask his square jaw was darkly shadowed with new-grown stubble.

His black hair, probably cut in a short, professional style, was now plastered straight up above a red crease where his helmet band had fit tightly. There was no apparent head trauma. She scribbled another note.

She handed the chart to Carol, peeled back the blanket to check the rest of him. He continued to snore into the oxygen mask.

“Holy cow,” Carol muttered, and Danni shot her a censuring frown.

But Carol persisted. “Man!” she mumbled as she turned to prepare the suture tray. “I feel like I need a hit of that oxygen myself.”

Though Danni disapproved of Carol’s attitude, she could see her point. The patient had been stripped to the waist and he was big. Bronze. Amazingly fit. “Is there a weight recorded on the chart?” Danni asked. He was probably a lot heavier than he looked. She wanted to be sure he’d gotten enough pain medication.

“Two hundred fifteen,” Carol read.

Danni nodded as she scanned his frame, looking for further damage, signs, symptoms.

He had huge muscular arms, massive hands, and a trail of black body hair that swirled neatly down taut abdominals. When she woke him up she’d have to make sure everything under his turnout pants and fire boots was okay.

She gently raised the edge of the dressing on his arm and called his name. “Mr. Creed?”

There was no response.

“Matthew?” As she reached for a pulse on the uninjured arm, a rolled-up, faded-red bandanna, knotted around his wrist, got in the way. She muttered something to Carol about why the EMTs hadn’t cut the thing off before they started the IV, then added, “Gimme your bandage scissors,” as she hooked a finger under the kerchief.

Without warning, the patient’s other hand snapped up and seized Danni’s wrist.

“Leave it alone,” he growled in a deep bass voice that sounded hoarse and dry. The oxygen mask fogged with his breath, but nothing else about him moved. His grip on Danni’s wrist, though, was like an iron band. His fingers felt hot, and Danni made a mental note to recheck his temp and then briefly wondered if it was her fatigue, her hunger, or what, that was making her suddenly weak.

“Mr. Creed,” she said as she peeled his fingers from her flesh. “I need to get this thing off so I can evaluate you properly.” She pulled on the bandanna, but he jerked his arm out of her reach. For an injured man, his reflexes were certainly quick.

He raised his head, opened bright-blue eyes and frowned at her. “I said, it stays where it is.”

Something about his gaze made Danni swallow. “Of course,” she answered softly.

His eyes slid closed, and he laid his head back, groaning in that deep voice that made Danni’s heart beat faster. Then he lowered his chin and looked down his long frame toward the door of the tiny room. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital.”

“Oh, yeah? You a nurse?”

“No. I’m Dr. Dann...Dr. Goodlove. I gave you a sedative earlier.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I did. Right now I’m going to stitch up that laceration you have there.”

He glanced at his arm, then groaned, “Have at it,” in his wonderful voice, and laid his good arm across his eyes.

Carol gently rearranged the IV to accommodate his position.

“Did those kids make it?” he asked.

Danni felt her heart constrict because, even through the mask, she could see his wide, handsome mouth tighten and pull down at the corners, betraying the emotion he was holding back.

She had to swallow before she spoke. “Yes,” she said, although she feared that by now they had not. “And the mother’s upstairs in maternity. She’s fine.”

“She’s pregnant?” He moved the arm and stared, unbelieving, into Danni’s eyes.

“Not anymore. I delivered her preemie by C-section.”

“Damn,” he said quietly and closed his eyes.

“The baby’s okay. Let’s tend to you, now.” Danni forced herself to sound calm, professional. She leaned over him and placed a stethoscope on his chest, moving it periodically as she listened. “Lungs sound clear,” she said to Carol.

She moved the stethoscope to crucial points over his heart and concentrated. The beat was regular, but rapid. Stress maybe.

She glanced into his face. He was watching her like—Well, she didn’t know like what. It was eerie, looking into those steady blue eyes while listening to his strong heartbeat.

She finished, pulled the stethoscope from her ears, and straightened. “Okay. Let’s fix your arm.”

Danni rolled a stool up beside the gurney, and while the patient watched them with drugged-sleepy detachment, Carol treated the bums and Danni checked the gash for foreign bodies, then started carefully stitching it up.

As Danni worked, she waited for his reaction to the painful things she was doing to him. He never once flinched. But every time she glanced into his blue eyes, she wished she hadn’t. They sent a quiver through her, threatening to dissolve her professional armor.

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.