Husband: Some Assembly Required

by Marie Ferrarella

  “It appears that there’s no stopping him.” Thomas, she thought, was the more reasonable one. She presented her case to him. “At the very least, I would like to see him in my office for a follow-up.” Though Murphy had said he’d come, she had her doubts.

  “I’ll see that he gets there,” Thomas promised.

  Very carefully, Murphy turned and, gripping the side of the bed, swung his legs out from under the covers.

  Thomas didn’t bother to hide his amused smile. Murphy looked completely out of place in the hospital gown, which had hiked high up on his thigh. “Nice legs.”

  Murphy glared at Thomas. He tugged down the edge of the gown as far as it would go. “Where are my clothes?” Murphy looked at Shawna and second-guessed her response. She’d be the type to pretend that they had been misplaced. “Or would you rather that I streaked out of the hospital?”

  Streaking was a fad that was twenty years in the past. Men with bodies like Murphy’s could definitely bring back a demand for it. But she wasn’t about to test him, or set a precedent at Harris.

  “God forbid.” She nodded toward the other curtained-off beds. “Some of the people in here are heart patients. No telling how they might respond to seeing you making a dash for the parking lot wearing only a grimace.” He wasn’t about to dash out anywhere, she thought as she studied him, at least not without intense pain. If nothing else, that bump on the head was giving him one hell of a headache.

  Shawna pointed to the metal drawer housed beneath the foot of his bed. “Everything you came in with is right there. I expect to see you soon. Very soon.” It wasn’t a polite remark, but an order. To punctuate her statement, she pulled the curtain closed after her as she withdrew.

  “I’m sure you will,” Thomas muttered under his breath. He’d seen the way Murphy had looked at the woman. Bump on the head notwithstanding, Murphy was definitely interested. After more than twenty years with him, Thomas knew the signs.

  Ignoring the doctor’s edict, Murphy slid off the bed and almost continued onto the floor in one fluid motion. Thomas grabbed his arm, stopping Murphy’s descent just in time.

  Concern was resurrected as Thomas helped Murphy onto the bed. “Maybe you’d better listen to her and check in here.”

  Out of habit, Murphy began to shake his head. He stopped abruptly as the room threatened to tilt to a forty-five-degree angle. “I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all, Thomas.” He curbed the annoyance he felt. “I’d like to see how you’d take a drapery rod coming down on your head.”

  “Lying down.” Thomas bent and fished Murphy’s clothes out of the open-faced drawer. They were neatly folded and tucked into a blue-and-white plastic hospital bag. “In a hospital bed.”

  “That’s because you have Kelly to nag you,” Murphy observed. He indicated the closed curtain. “Make sure nobody comes in.” He pulled open the bag and dumped the contents onto the bed.

  Why did they have to take your clothes off if you had a head injury, he wondered, annoyed as he struggled into his trousers.

  His back partially to Murphy, Thomas stood sentry, watching as shadows representing nurses and orderlies hurrying to other beds filtered through the white curtain. “Kelly would nag you about this, believe me.”

  “It’s not the same thing.” Murphy closed his belt and felt infinitely better. There was something almost dehumanizing about wearing an abbreviated, flapping gown. “Besides, she doesn’t live with me.”

  Thomas thought about inviting Murphy over for a few days, just in case. “That could be arranged.”

  Murphy looked at him. He knew exactly what Thomas was thinking. But he didn’t want to stay with them and have Kelly fussing over him.

  “Thomas, be a friend and don’t argue. I had enough of that from the good doctor.” An image of Shawna, crisp and cool as she peered into his eyes, crossed his mind. “Funny thing.” Murphy slipped into his shoes as he rose from the bed, a little more steadily this time. “I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I know her from somewhere. But how could I forget someone who looked like that?”

  He picked up his jacket and decided against slipping it on. Instead, he slung it over his shoulder.

  “The bump on the head?” Thomas suggested innocently.

  Murphy was in no mood for levity. Or harassment. “Very funny. Spring me out of here, Thomas, or I’ll thumb a ride and my sister’ll never forgive you.”

  Thomas sighed. “You always did know how to phrase a threat.” Thomas took his arm. Murphy gave him a malevolent look, but Thomas didn’t release him. “Humor me. It’ll be a lot more embarrassing for you if you do a pratfall in front of everyone in the waiting room.”

  Too weary to argue, and feeling just the slightest bit wobbly on his feet, Murphy acquiesced.

  He remained silent until he got into the passenger side of Thomas’s car, as if talking would somehow sap the strength away from his legs. Once in the car, Murphy leaned back and strapped in, breathing a sigh of relief. That blow to the head had affected him more than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

  He turned and looked at Thomas as the latter started up the car. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven. I’ve just got enough time to get you home and get to the campus to prepare for my class.”

  Thomas debated calling the department and asking someone to take over his history class, but he knew Murphy would look upon his sticking around as baby-sitting.

  Murphy had stopped listening to the rest of the explanation. “Home?” he echoed.

  “You know, that place with the curtains and the bed? A few blocks away from the scene of your derring-do?”

  Thomas’s suggestion was unacceptable. “I can’t go home. I’ve got to get to the office.”

  “Talk sense, Murph.”

  As far as Murphy was concerned, he was talking sense. “I’ve got to review a case this afternoon. I’ve already missed the morning meeting.” Nothing that couldn’t be made up, of course, but he hated thinking of himself as vulnerable.

  “You should have thought of that before you decided to play hero.” Looking at him out of the corner of his eye as he took the off ramp, Thomas saw Murphy’s mouth harden. “Besides, you can’t go to the office wearing that.” He waved at Murphy’s clothing. “It brings new meaning to the term ‘smoking jacket.’”

  Murphy looked down at his clothes, consciously seeing them for the first time. They were sooty and badly in need of cleaning. He slumped in his seat, resigned. As usual, Thomas was making perfect sense. He could see how that could irritate his sister. “All right, you win. I’ll go home.”

  Murphy smiled to himself. “Don’t see how you have much choice in the matter.” He turned to look at Murphy as they came to a stop at a light. “I’m driving and I’m bigger than you are.” He saw the small, rigid line of pain and the clenched jaw. “How’s your head?”

  There was no reason to lie. “It feels as if someone used it to punt with and everything’s a little fuzzy around the edges, but I’ll be all right.”

  Annoyance at the situation crept into his voice. He didn’t think of himself as superhuman, of course, but neither did he see himself as being capable of being injured. It got in the way of how he viewed himself. He’d played three years of football in high school and four more years in college with little more than a scratch and some strained muscles. This was his first brush with mortality and he didn’t like it. “Just give me a little while, okay?”

  The light changed and Thomas resumed driving. “I can give you as much time as you want.”

  Murphy frowned. He hadn’t meant to snap at Thomas like that. This wasn’t anyone’s fault. “Figure of speech. I didn’t mean to get surly with you.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Frustrated, Murphy looked out the car window. Everything was slightly blurry, but he had only to blink his eyes several times to get everything back into focus. No big deal. It would pass, he told himself. No need to have a doctor hovering, poking and prodding him.<
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  The word poking brought the emergency-room doctor back to him. “Damn, but I can’t get her out of my head.”

  Thomas didn’t have to be told who Murphy was thinking about. “Must be crowded in there for her, what with all those tantalizing memories you keep tucked away.”

  Murphy bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “No, I mean, I really think I know her, but...” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. “I just can’t place her.”

  That made two of them. She had to be someone they both knew, which narrowed the scope somewhat. “What was her name again?”

  “Shawna something.” Murphy felt chagrined at his oversight. And then he remembered. “But hey, wait, she gave me her card.” He fished the stone gray card out of his shirt pocket.

  The small black letters seemed to squeeze together in a football huddle, defying him to discern one from the other. He felt his exasperation mounting.

  “Here, you read it.” Murphy practically slapped the card into Thomas’s hand.

  It wasn’t a good sign. Murphy normally had twenty-twenty vision. Thomas glanced at the card. The writing wasn’t particularly small. “You can’t make out the letters?”

  Murphy didn’t answer him.

  Thomas curbed the urge to turn the car around and head back to the hospital. Instead, he looked at the card as he eased the car to another stop. “Her name’s Shawna Saunders.”

  Murphy turned the name over slowly in his mind. “Doesn’t ring a bell with me.” He looked at his brother-in-law. “How about you?”

  Something clicked as Thomas repeated the name aloud and thought of the woman in the E.R. “Not Saunders.” He handed the card back. “But we went to school with a Shawna.”

  Murphy tried to think, but concentration was out of the question. The war party in his head forbade it. “We did?”

  “We did. High school,” Thomas clarified. “Shawna Rowen.” A clearer picture began to form in his mind as he remembered. “Quiet, shy, braces, glasses. Straight-A student. She was in our biology class and a couple of others, I think, although I wouldn’t swear to it.” He remembered her because their seats had been alphabetically arranged and he’d sat behind her.

  Murphy leaned back, trying to think. Thomas’s verbal sketch was bringing her to life for him. He began to vaguely remember. “You think—?”

  Now that he was describing her, Thomas was almost certain that the two were one and the same. Besides, how many women named Shawna were there?

  “I think,” Thomas confirmed. He slowed as they passed a school area. “She’s the right age and coloring. Give her contact lenses, straightened teeth and a different hairstyle and presto. It’s her. Otherwise, why would she look so familiar to both of us?”

  It made sense. Murphy let out a low whistle. “Talk about a late bloomer...” The Shawna Rowen he vaguely recalled had been on the plain side.

  Thomas took the turn that eventually led into Murphy’s development. “I’d rather talk about what the late bloomer said.”

  Thomas could talk about it all he wanted to. Murphy’s mind was made up. “I’m not going back to the hospital.”

  Thomas shook his head. “No, I meant the visit to her office—and the test.”

  He’d already forgotten that she’d said anything at all about that. What was it that she wanted him to have? An R.I.M. test? No, an M.R.I. test.

  Murphy frowned. “You know I hate tests.”

  Thomas laughed. “You won’t have to cram for this one.”

  Murphy sighed. He could tell he was going to get no peace about this. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a nag?”

  “Only you, but I forgive you.” Thomas grinned broadly. “Kelly tells me that nagging means you love someone.”

  Murphy leaned back in his seat. “Kelly’d be the one to know.”

  * * *

  Thomas retrieved Murphy’s car from in front of the partially gutted house after he had brought Murphy home. Extracting a promise from his brother-in-law that he would stay put for the day, Thomas hurried off to the university.

  Murphy began going stir-crazy as soon as he had shut the door. It wasn’t as if there weren’t things he could be doing. There were. He just didn’t feel like doing any of them.

  And he certainly didn’t want to lie down. Somehow, doing that, even in the privacy of his own home with no one around, would be tantamount to admitting his own vulnerability. He wasn’t willing to do that.

  So instead, he roamed about his living room like a freshly trapped tiger who took no interest in his new surroundings.

  When the telephone rang some fifteen minutes later, Murphy sprang to answer it, grasping the receiver as if it was a lifeline being thrown to him in a tempestuous sea. “Hello?”

  “Thomas tells me that you’re a hero.”

  Murphy grinned and settled back on the sofa next to the telephone. “Hello to you, too, Kelly.”

  “Thomas just called me from the university with all the lurid details.”

  Although she was aiming for a casual tone, Murphy could hear the underlying tension in her voice. He blew out a breath. “After twenty years I find out that he’s a tattletale. What a disappointment that man turned out to be.”

  “This isn’t funny, Murphy. You could have been killed.”

  The last thing he wanted was a lecture. “But I wasn’t. I’m fine.”

  “Not from what Thomas told me.”

  Murphy didn’t want to be babied or fussed over. He wanted to get back to work. He enjoyed work almost as much as he enjoyed life. Being put on hold for any amount of time annoyed the hell out of him. He’d never been one to be able to lie in bed with a cold, either. “Thomas exaggerates.”

  Kelly laughed shortly. “When pigs fly. Thomas is the most understated man I know. Call the doctor.”

  Murphy tucked the telephone against his neck, amused. “What shall I call her?”

  He might be her older brother, but there were times when Murphy needed a keeper. “Don’t get cute on me, Murphy. I want you examined thoroughly.”

  He grinned and felt better for the first time. “So do I, but not the way either she or you might have in mind.”

  “Thomas told me about that, too. He says we all went to high school together.”

  “Thomas is getting too gossipy in his old age.”

  “That’s your opinion. I’m finally breaking him in properly so that I can find out what’s really going on in your life.” Her tone grew serious. “I’ll take over your cases here. You do what you have to to make sure everything’s all right. I’ll drop by tonight to look in on you.”

  Murphy groaned. “Please, spare me the Florence Nightingale routine. Use it on Thomas, instead.”

  “Okay.” She played her ace card. “I could always call up Kimberly or Mom and have them come over instead.”

  Kimberly would revert to lectures on safety and his mother would probably be even worse. “You always did play dirty.”

  Kelly laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Are you going to call the doctor for an appointment?”

  He’d already made up his mind to do that, but he didn’t like being bullied into it. “If I start to feel bad after a day or so, I’ll call.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Because his eyes and his head were still giving him trouble, Kelly’s insistence made Murphy just a little irritable. “Kell, I’m a grown man. I can make up my own mind about things.”

  She let out a long breath. “I have to hang up now and call Mom.”

  He knew what that meant. The end of peace as he now knew it. “Uncle.”

  Kelly laughed, victorious. “I thought so.”

  He let his exasperation drain from him. She was, after all, only worried about him. He couldn’t fault her for that. Exactly. “I taught you too well.”

  “And I appreciate it. Now be a good boy and do as I say. Call the doctor and then go to bed. I’ll see you later.”

  “Bye.”

  Murphy hung up and then frowne
d. Where was that card Shawna had given him? He searched his pockets and found it just where he had tucked it in before, his shirt.

  He laid the slightly bent card on the counter and looked down at it. The letters were no longer huddling together. He could make them out clearly. A vindicated feeling wound through him. He’d known it all the time. There was nothing wrong with him that an aspirin and a good night’s rest couldn’t cure.

  Murphy smoothed out the card thoughtfully. Still, this would give him an excuse to see the doctor again and relive old memories.

  And perhaps, eventually, make a few new ones. Nothing serious, of course. He’d gotten serious only once in his life. With Janice. And that had eventually left him with a rather large hole in his heart, not to mention the one in his pride. It had been enough to teach him not to take relationships any deeper than surface level.

  He wondered, as he pressed the numbers on the telephone keypad, if Shawna remembered him. She was still only a vague memory, a name he remembered being called out occasionally by the teacher. A shadow he’d brushed by in the hall as they left the classroom.

  He decided that he’d really like to add a touch of depth to that shadow.

  * * *

  There was one last patient to see for the day and then Shawna could go home. It felt as if she’d put in a forty-eight-hour day.

  She stretched in the privacy of her office, where she’d gone to take a call from another doctor. One more patient and then she’d treat herself to a hot bath and turn in early for a change. She could certainly use the rest. It felt as if she had been running since she’d gotten up this morning, especially since she’d been launched with that phone call from her mother.

  She definitely couldn’t say she was looking forward to the visit. It wasn’t that she disliked her mother; it was that they had nothing in common. Not even, she thought sadly, memories. Her mother had always been far too busy with her own life to really attempt to forge a path in Shawna’s.

  No, there was no need to rehash that now. She’d have plenty of time for thoughts of her mother once Sally swept into town. Right now she had a patient to attend to. And then a bubble bath with her name on it to meet.