The Pull Of The Moon

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAD NURSE IN THE emergency room called upstairs herself.

“Have you seen Dr. Goodlove this morning?” she asked the young ward clerk, who hung up the phone, whirled her chair around and repeated the whole juicy conversation for the entire staff.

“That good-lookin’ fireman—you know, the one that looks like Tom Selleck?—he’s down in the E.R. to get his sutures removed, insisting that Dr. Goodlove do it herself. Says—get this—he likes her laugh.”

“Woooo!” the staff all crooned and turned to Danni, who stood at the chest-high desk, writing a note on a chart.

“I never laugh, and you all know it,” she quipped without glancing up from her work.

But as soon as she finished examining a patient in labor, she hurried downstairs, telling herself she was agreeing to do this out of simple curiosity. Was the guy really as gorgeous as she’d remembered?

Oh my, yes. He really was.

He was waiting behind a curtain, sitting up on a gurney, shirtless, with his legs dangling in snug jeans and cowboy boots. Danni decided his chest was even more amazing than she’d remembered—well-defined pectorals tapering down into hard ridges of the intercostals, small dark nipples, that perfect pattern of hair, and so tanned—or was that his natural skin color?

Danni grabbed up the chart and spoke to him without looking up from the pages. “Mr. Creed, I trust everything healed nicely.”

“You are Dr. Goodlove, aren’t you?” he answered.

She glanced up at him and only then did she realize that he was staring at her somewhat incredulously.

“The same woman who stitched me up?” he asked.

“Yes.” Danni frowned.

“You look so...so different.”

“Well—” she smiled “—you were drugged the first time we met.”

“No, really.” He tilted his head, studying her, like a painter assessing a model. “You look really... different.”

Danni felt a small surge of satisfaction. “Just a few pounds lighter.”

She took his arm and examined the nearly-healed burns, the well-mended suture line. As she traced her fingers over his firm, smooth skin she wondered why she was feeling so self-conscious. He was only a man. But when she glanced up into those blue eyes, which were peering at her intently, she knew why. He was not just any man, he was the first man, ever, to actually cause her breathing to become unsteady.

He leaned forward and glanced down at her hips, and Danni felt her cheeks grow warm. “If you say so,” he replied. “But there’s something else. Hey!” He pointed with his free hand. “It’s your hair, isn’t it? It was a lot longer before, and—” he squinted “—it was...different”

“Yeah.” Danni reached up and flipped one of the offending strands back. “It’s different, all right. The haircut-of-the-month featured in Beauty Doo.”

He laughed as she turned to unwrap the suture removal tray. “I take it you don’t like it,” he said.

Danni shrugged, slipped on her gloves. “Thank the Lord I don’t have to look at it.”

“Well, it’s kind of pretty.”

When she cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder, he protested, “Really.” Then he gave her a teasing, dimpled grin. “But personally, I like my women more...natural.”

Danni turned her blushing face back toward the tray and gathered up tweezers, suture-removal scissors, gauze. “Well, this is anything but natural. It takes a gallon of superglue and an Act of Congress to make it behave.”

“So—” he tried to lean around to see her face “—this is not the real you. That’s good. I liked the tourniquet better,” he added, which made Danni smirk, remembering what a mess her hair had been when they’d met in the E.R.

She turned to him and reached up to snip the first suture. “Nope. This is certainly not the real me.”

“That’s good,” he repeated—so quietly, so sincerely, that her hands stilled. Their eyes met.

They seemed suddenly to have run out of banter and fell into an awkward silence. Danni worked on his arm and, with a mixture of embarrassment, building excitement and hope, mulled over the fact that he actually remembered her makeshift ponytail holder.

His eyes traveled slowly from his biceps to her face while she worked. And just as she had on the night. when they’d met, Danni tried to keep her mind firmly on what she was doing. But, with his eyes only inches from hers, watching every move she made, it was an effort. And this time instead of smoke, he smelled like English Leather. Had he slapped on the aftershave because of her?

When she’d finished removing all twenty-four sutures, she probed the area gently with her fingers to test the integrity of her work. He didn’t even grimace.

“You’ve healed quite nicely,” she said.

“Are you married?” he asked.

Danni, caught off guard, even a little shocked by his directness, managed not to show her reaction. “You know,” she joked, “my mother warned me about firemen.” She looked at him with wide-eyed mock seriousness.

“Oh yeah?” he challenged.

“Yeah. Always rushing into hot spots.”

“Are you married?” he repeated. “Involved with someone? Yes or no?”

“N-n-no,” she stammered, trapped by those eyes.

“Then could I call you sometime?”

“Call me? Well...I don’t know....” Danni didn’t know why in the world she was hesitating. “You’d probably just end up having me paged. I’m...I’m an awfully busy woman.”

He hopped off the gurney. “Yeah, I guess you are,” he said as he tugged a navy blue fireman’s T-shirt over his head, then stretched it down over his massive chest. “Thanks for taking my stitches out.”

With a sense of dismay, Danni realized she’d succeeded in putting him off. She wanted to kick herself. “You’re welcome,” she said lamely to his back while he jammed the tail of the T-shirt into the waistband of his jeans.

“Have a good day, Doctor.” He turned to her and nodded. His mouth formed a tight line of disappointment as he picked up his ball cap.

“You, too.” Danni turned her burning face to his chart, and before she could think of some way to recover the situation, he pushed the curtain aside and left the cubicle.

She stared down at his intake info. Why the heck didn’t she give him her phone number like any normal woman would?

She noted his phone number, debating the ethics of copying it from the chart.

“Listen.”

Danni whirled around at the sound of his voice.

He had come back behind the curtain, so quietly she hadn’t heard him.

“You probably are really busy. Tell you what, let’s do it this way.” He held a business card out to her. “Why don’t you call me if you feel like getting together sometime?”

Danni looked down at the card. It had the city seal of Tulsa in one corner and in the center it read: Matthew Creed, Firefighter. The address, fax, and phone number of his station were in the other corners. Firemen carry business cards? “Oh. I—I couldn’t bother you at work,” she stammered.

“No, you couldn’t.” He flipped the card over. “That’s why I wrote this stuff on the back.” His home phone number was written in a neat, bold hand. Below that, of all things, he’d written an e-mail address. Firemen have e-mail?

He smiled when she looked up with a tiny, puzzled frown. “The e-mail’s for the truly shy.” His smile softened. “Is that the problem? Are you ‘truly shy’?”

“No!” Danni protested and took the card from him. Shy was definitely not a word she would use to describe herself, except that right now her cheeks were blazing and she couldn’t come up with a single word to say.

“Well, then, you’re not stuck-up, are you?” He grinned.

“No!” Danni protested again and found herself grinning back at him. This guy really was cute.

“Okay, then.” He took a big breath that stretched the T-shirt across his chest. “Not shy. Not stuck-up. So call me.” He winked and walked away.

No, I am not shy, Danni thought, And I don’t think I’m stuck-up. What I am, she admitted as she watched his broad back and long legs, is scared clean out of my wits.

MATT FOUND THE ELEVATORS, punched the up button, and planted his feet in a wide stance as he waited for one to arrive. Two young female physical therapists were chatting and waiting for an elevator going down. One of them, a pretty, athletic-looking blonde, smiled and said, “Hi,” to Matt.

He responded with a polite “Hi,” then took a couple of long strides to the nearby window and pretended to look out.

Damn. He should have asked Dr. Goodlove about the twins’ condition while he’d had the chance. She probably thought he was completely cold, not to have even mentioned them.

But the woman was so beautiful he couldn’t seem to think straight around her. It had been a long time since he’d been this interested in a woman, and it scared the hell out of him. A doctor. Was he crazy?

Well, at least he’d given her his card and put the ball in her court. This time he was going to be sure. No more messing up his life. He was getting too old for that.

The elevator bell dinged and, as soon as the doors closed and he was alone, hurtling skyward to the pediatric burn unit, his thoughts focused on the twins.

Over the past ten days, while he’d been home on medical leave, he’d thought of little else. Had he saved their lives, he worried, only to leave them to a future of endless pain, surgeries, rehabilitation, scarring, misery? When he’d gone in to see the babies last week, the scene had been haunting.

After he’d changed into scrubs, a tall, wiry nurse had given him a brisk rundown on how to do a surgical scrub. When he’d finished that, she’d helped him don the sterile garb—gown, mask, hat, gloves, paper shoes—and he’d followed her into the pediatric intensive care unit. All this trouble. Matt thought as he hurried to keep up with the nurse whose paper gown billowed out at her sides like wings, because the mother had given her permission for him to be in the room. And what would he say to her? What good could he do?

The room seemed bathed in bright light and a torrent of perpetual whispering white noise—monitors and pumps beeping and clicking, the rhythmic whoosh of two respirators. A nurse was there—busy, busy. He focused on the mother first; he couldn’t look directly at the loosely gauzed little mummies in the two crib-size beds. The mother’s bums looked better than the last time he’d seen her—they had been mostly second degree—but otherwise she looked considerably worse. Exhausted. She got out of her rocking chair and hugged him, their sterile gowns rustling between them. Who was taking care of her other baby now, Matt wondered, the one born a few days ago?

Matt released her and, silently, she took his hand and led him to the beds. It seemed important to her that he look. He’d seen burn victims before—other firefighters, mostly. Victims who had healed eventually. Nothing like this.

The twins were swaddled from head to toe in the gauze—even their eyes were covered—and under that, Matt knew, were the pigskin grafts. They were flat on their backs with their small feet supported on footrests and their tiny arms strapped out to their sides, the pose of the crucified. The kneecap of one baby was exposed. Perfect skin with no damage. That was all Matt could see. Matt focused on that little kneecap, concentrated on it.

Finally he whispered, “How are they doing?” Because, what else could he say?

Instantly, one twin’s heartbeat shot up—the out-of-control beeping was terrifying—and Matt understood why the mother hadn’t spoken. The nurse busied herself adjusting an IV drip.

Suddenly the beds started humming, and Matt startled again, wondering if he’d set something else off, until one side of each mattress tilted up. Then he remembered—automatic pressure beds.

Another nurse came in. She’d obviously been on a cigarette break, and in this sterile room, to Matt the smell seemed as odious as a skunk. He didn’t want anything contaminating the twins environment. She signaled for them to leave. Report time, he supposed.

Out in the waiting room, he had told the mother, before he’d left, to take things one day at a time. He needed to take his own advice, didn’t he?

The elevator doors opened, facing the large chest-high counter that wrapped around the nurses’ station. A man and woman, both wearing blue scrubs and all the other telltale paraphernalia of busy nurses, stood behind it, concentrating on a chart they had opened on the counter.

“I think we should call Dr. Miller and see what he thinks about staggering the dose,” the man was saying.

The woman looked up at Matt and asked, “May we help you?”

“I’m here to check on the Taylor twins,” Matt said quietly. “I wondered if I could look in on them.”

The two nurses exchanged a sad, secretive glance that gave Matt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Who are you?” the male nurse asked kindly.

“I’m Matthew Creed, the firefighter who rescued them. I’ve been up here before. Their mother gave her permission for me to see them.”

The female nurse was flipping through something below Matt’s line of vision. “Yes, Mr. Creed—” she looked up “—your name is on the Kardex, but I’m afraid...” The nurses exchanged that look again and just then an older couple who looked like grandparents came out of a nearby room and started walking down the hall toward them.

“Let’s step in here, okay?” the male nurse said, indicating a small cubicle off the nurses’ station.

Matt followed the nurse inside. There was a large window in the wall, apparently soundproof, because when the nurse closed the door Matt could no longer hear the phone beeping or the voices of the grandparents as they stood earnestly talking to the female nurse.

“Have a seat, Mr. Creed,” the nurse said as he lowered himself into an institutional plastic chair.

Matt took the other plastic chair, facing the window, and awkwardly arranged himself—arms folded across his chest, feet planted wide—for what he guessed was going to be a blow.

“Mr. Creed, the Taylor twins died an hour ago, within minutes of each other.”

Matt leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and hung his head. He honestly didn’t even know what he felt most at that moment: relief for the babies or sadness for their mother.

God, sometimes he hated his job.

“The hospital media coordinator has asked us not to speak to anyone about it yet,” the nurse continued. “She wants to control media access to the mother if she can. This case has generated a lot of local publicity, as you know. But I figured you, of all people, deserved to be told. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Matt said, when it was anything but.

Burn-unit nurses and firefighters, sharing a common enemy, knew how to talk to each other. “The twins couldn’t sustain any kind of fluid or electrolyte levels,” the nurse explained. “They’d been in kidney failure for a week.” Then he clamped his beefy hand on Matt’s broad shoulder. “We all do our best, but sometimes we lose.”

“I know.” Matt had started to think about the babies, how little they’d felt when he’d lifted them out of their smoldering crib, how limp, and tears stung his eyes.

“Listen.” He cleared his throat and stood. “I really appreciate your telling me.” He extended his hand to the nurse and they shook hands. “I won’t tell the other firefighters until your media person has had time to deal with it.”

“I appreciate that,” the nurse said, opening the door.

A ward clerk and a couple of nurses gave Matt sympathetic smiles. Matt knew he looked stricken, knew his nose was as red as a cherry. It always turned red like that when he tried to suppress tears.

As he walked toward the elevators he realized that, just like after the bombing, he had no place to go except a lonely apartment, and no one to share this with. Later there would be Ty, of course, and the other guys. They’d understand the hollow sense of loss, the horrible ambivalence. But now, there was no—his mouth twisted in a derisive smile—“significant other.”

An irrational urge grabbed him as he stepped onto the elevator. He wanted, very badly, to push the button for the fourth noor—the OB ward—and find Danni Goodlove and tell her. She’d listen, he felt sure. There was something about her—something deep. She’d understand. But he could be wrong—hadn’t he been way wrong before? They hardly knew each other, and she hadn’t seemed too keen when he’d mentioned getting together for a date. If he showed up now, only minutes after he’d left the next step to her, with his red nose and these unshed tears threatening, wanting... what? Well, sympathy, obviously.

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