Husband: Some Assembly Required

by Marie Ferrarella

  Murphy had a feeling that if he took in a deep breath his chest would scrape against either wall. “You certainly make a guy feel wanted.”

  Shawna turned and brushed up against him. She raised her eyes to his as she felt that flash of electricity again. The one she didn’t want.

  “That was never my intention, Murphy,” she retorted. “You were the one who asked to come along for the ride.”

  “So I was.” Murphy leaned over her, lowering his voice. His breath pushed through the stagnant air, caressing her face as he issued a promise, one that seemed to come almost involuntarily, as much a prophecy to him as to her. “The ride hasn’t even begun.”

  She had an uneasy feeling that he was right. And she didn’t want him to be. She wanted no more rides, no more lunges at the brass ring. She’d done that once and had fallen off her horse in the end. She wasn’t about to hazard it happening again.

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” The greeting broke the tense moment into a thousand little pieces.

  Shawna turned to see Dr. Simon McGuire standing in the doorway of the small room shared by all the doctors who volunteered at the clinic. She glanced unintentionally at Murphy. “So was I.”

  McGuire shrugged out of his lab coat. His last patient had just walked into the reception area a moment ago and he felt bone weary. Piercing blue eyes that scrutinized everything in their path were already fastening themselves on Murphy. Odd. Shawna never brought anyone with her, never mentioned any sort of a private life whatsoever. He and the other doctors thought she lived and breathed work and nothing more. In his opinion that seemed such a waste for someone so young and attractive.

  He raised a brow, regarding Murphy. “I’m Dr. Simon McGuire. And you are?”

  “Murphy Pendleton.” Murphy extended his hand to the silver-haired man. “Shawna’s work in progress.”

  McGuire shook the offered hand. Despite his age, there was strength in his grip. He looked like one of those men who, a hundred years ago, would have fit well into the life of a mountain man.

  He cocked a shaggy brow in Shawna’s direction. “There’s a translation to this?”

  “He’s a patient of mine,” Shawna muttered. The look of amusement creasing McGuire’s lined face had her hastening to add, “I’m attempting to convince him to have surgery. But he came here of his own volition.” She crossed to the small locker and took out the white lab coat that was her badge of authority. Slipping it over her dress, she pulled out her hair from beneath it. “It looks like more than the usual full house out there.”

  “It is,” he acknowledged. It had been like that for the past three hours.

  McGuire walked with her to the front, then laid a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “I could stay around for a while, give you a hand. There’s nothing pressing waiting for me.”

  Shawna shook her head firmly. “No, I can handle it from here,” she assured him. If given half a chance, the man would sleep here. “You need to go home.”

  A raspy voice followed her words. “She thinks she’s mothering me,” he confided to Murphy. He had long since given up his desire to set the world on fire. Now he took the time to notice the small things. The smile of a pretty woman was near the top of his list, right after the cry of a healthy baby. “At my age, I love it.”

  It was safe to flirt with McGuire. Safe and comfortable. He was old enough to be her father by a wide margin. “You need a wife.”

  He cocked a wicked brow as he made a final notation in Caro’s book. “You volunteering?”

  But Shawna shook her head as she picked up the first chart. She was already perusing it. “You’re too young for me, Simon.”

  The man chuckled and nodded sagely. “That’s what they all say.” He looked from Shawna to Murphy, then smiled to himself. “Good night.”

  A chorus of voices, some loud, some muffled, followed him out the door.

  Shawna announced the name on the chart. A boy about seventeen came forward. “First room on the left,” she told him, then looked at Murphy doubtfully. “I don’t have time to entertain you.” She frowned. This was not his element. “I don’t know what you’re going to do here.”

  There had to be something he could do, he thought, looking toward Caro. He could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking the same thing.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Murphy assured the back of Shawna’s head, “I’ll manage.”

  “Leave him to me,” Caro called after Shawna, though the door to exam room one had already closed.

  Caro gave Murphy another long, appraising look. The expression she wore said she was trying to find a slot to put him in other than the one he was apparently suited to. His hands were soft, but his smile genuine. He could be worked with.

  She glanced at the tall, haphazard manila stack in the corner. She’d been tossing files there all morning. The ones on the bottom were from yesterday. She hadn’t found two minutes to rub together in order to get to them.

  “How are you at filing, sugar?”

  He glanced at the leaning tower of Pisa. “Haven’t done it since my law clerk days.”

  Caro looked up toward the front entrance as a woman with three children hanging on to her walked in. From the looks of it, all four of them were sharing a bug or something. “Alphabet’s still the same.”

  Murphy had already stripped off his jacket. He hung it on the back of the chair next to Caro’s reception desk. He began rolling up his sleeves. “Reassuring.”

  Caro smiled, looking over her shoulder as she saw Murphy pick up the first armload. “She should have brought you along with her months ago.”

  He grinned. “Be sure you remember to tell her that.”

  “I will. File bays are on the other side.” She pointed to the makeshift shelves her son had put up for them six months ago.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Caro laughed softly to herself as she took down the information the woman on the other side of the desk was giving her.

  * * *

  The next three hours were filled to overflowing with people. Murphy saw an endless parade of patients telling Caro that they had everything from colds to intestinal disorders; one man had a relentless rash that was spreading rather rapidly along his extremities.

  Shawna handled it all, dispensing medicine, comforting words and advice. She sent one woman to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. The woman needed to see someone with more knowledge in the area of urinary-tract infections than she possessed.

  Murphy observed and was duly impressed. He didn’t get a chance to talk to her the way he wanted. The only time he even saw her was whenever she came out to deposit a folder on Caro’s scarred desk and pick up another. He’d catch bits and pieces of her dialogue with patients then.

  He shook his head, watching her disappear into the back for the twentieth time.

  “Keeps busy, doesn’t she?” Caro commented for his benefit. She’d had time to pass her own judgments on this man Shawna had brought. She liked him. And she hoped that Shawna had the good sense to like him, as well.

  Murphy nodded. That was the last of the files, he thought, settling down into a chair near Caro. He’d been filing since they’d arrived at the clinic. He was tired. He could only imagine what Shawna felt like. “I had no idea how busy.”

  Caro nodded. There was a special place in her heart for the people who ran this clinic, and she felt very protective of them. She was particularly partial to Shawna.

  “She’s a whiz, all right. Goes on pure energy.” She handed Murphy the folder that Shawna had just brought out. Caro grinned as he groaned, reaching for it. “It’s almost as if she’s trying to outrun something.” Caro realized that perhaps she’d said just a little too much. She lifted thin shoulders, then let them fall. “But, hey, we don’t question our good fortune.”

  She’d used the word our. “Are you from around here?”

  Caro raised her chin proudly. The neighborhood wasn’t much, but it defined who she w
as.

  “Born and bred. Left for a while, got a nursing degree,” she confided. That was when she had thought of nothing but escape. It had taken her ten years to realize that you couldn’t escape who you were. And you always took a piece of the old neighborhood with you. “Then I thought if anyone who ever made anything of themselves left, who was going to stick around to help?”

  She sat down for a moment as she thought back to the day she’d made her decision to return. There were no regrets. “So I came back when they opened this clinic.” Her lips curved in a cynical smile. “Pay and hours are lousy, but there are rewards.”

  As if to emphasize what she meant, Shawna emerged, her arm around the shoulders of a girl hardly out of her teens. The girl was holding a fretful baby in her arms. The baby, Shawna had just diagnosed, was allergic to milk. She’d given the girl a list of things she could substitute. Cans of soybean-based formula were peering out of her oversize diaper bag.

  Caro looked pointedly at them, then shifted her eyes toward Murphy. He rose, rolling his sleeves back down along his forearms. “I see what you mean.”

  Shawna dropped the baby’s folder on the desk beside Caro. She felt as if she had been dragged around and used as a human mop. A tired, satisfied human mop.

  She looked around at the empty chairs as the young mother left. Darkness was attempting to push its way into the clinic, seeking the light. “Is that it?”

  “That’s it,” Caro confirmed. She pulled out a huge floral purse that she kept tucked under the desk. She sighed, glad to call it a day. And a night. She’d put in a fourteen-hour day today, taking over the shift for the woman who worked before her. The woman had come down with the flu. “Guess I’ll go home.” She stopped halfway to the door. The brown eyes swept up and down Murphy one last time. “Unless you want me to close up?”

  Shawna shook her head as she suddenly thought of her mother. Sally was undoubtedly upset about being abandoned this way, and Shawna was far too tired to face going home for a lengthy lecture about how she was using up her life without ever having lived it. The longer she could put it off, the better. “No, I’ll take care of it, Caro. You just go home to Jamal.”

  “Have it your way. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” She turned her attention to Murphy and slid a thin hand along his arm by way of parting. “I’m going home to my own sugar now.” She looked at Shawna. She knew what the woman was capable of. “Don’t stay too long, you hear?” she warned. “You close up as soon as I go.”

  Shawna hardly noticed Murphy disappearing to the rear of the clinic as she commented on Caro’s warning. “I’m so tired I’m liable to misdiagnose anything that comes in.”

  “You work too hard, lady.”

  “Go home.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice. I’m not the stubborn one.” Caro waved as she slipped out the door, closing it behind her.

  Shawna turned in time to see Murphy coming toward her with a mug of coffee. She silently blessed him. The only way she was going to make it to her car was if there was caffeine renewing her system. How could a twenty-four-hour day seem as if it had forty-eight hours in it?

  She accepted the mug with gratitude as he slipped it into her hands. “So, what did you do?” She took a long, fortifying sip before continuing, “While I cleaned and sutured and medicated?”

  “I filed.” He gestured to the empty corner.

  She vaguely recalled that there had been a tower of files there when she’d entered. And that there had been a collection on either side of Caro’s desk. They were all gone.

  “You really did that?”

  He didn’t know why she looked so skeptical about it. “Sure, why not?”

  She wrapped both hands around the mug. Though it was still hot in the clinic, there was something comforting about the warmth coming from the mug. Almost as comforting as the warmth in Murphy’s eyes.

  “Filing isn’t beneath you?” There was a hint of amusement in her voice.

  He leaned a hip against the desk, looking at her. Even exhausted, there was a radiance about her. How could he have gone through high school and not noticed her, he wondered. “It wasn’t as if it was latrine duty. And work that has to be done is not something that’s beneath anyone.” He waited until she lowered her mug again. “Tell me something.”

  If she hadn’t been so tired, her guard would have gone up. As it was, all she could do was qualify her ability. “If I can.”

  He crossed his arms before him as he continued studying her. This was an unorthodox way to spend an evening with someone you were interested in, but it had its merits. At least he had gotten to see the real Shawna in action.

  “How does an eye specialist wind up volunteering at a free clinic?”

  “It needed doing,” she said, echoing his earlier sentiment. “Besides, that silver-haired fox you met earlier this evening can be very persuasive. And he said he needed someone to pitch in.” It hadn’t been a hard sell, really. She had been looking for something just like this to take up her free time. If it hadn’t been at this clinic, it would have been at another one. “I’m a doctor first, a specialist second. I know how to diagnose a cold from appendicitis. Besides, since I’ve come here, I’ve been boning up.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Murphy never got a chance to finish his statement.

  When he heard the door behind him open, he realized his error. They should have locked up as soon as Caro left. Now they would have to remain here awhile longer.

  With a sigh he turned, and then instinctively froze.

  Two men entered. Both were nondescript, of medium height and wearing worn army fatigue jackets that appeared to have come to them secondhand.

  Murphy felt every muscle in his body tense. There was an aura about them, the kind he was willing to bet wolves had when they stalked a prey. They weren’t here looking for anything that Shawna would willingly dispense.

  Murphy moved closer, stepping forward to shield her.

  If she was nervous, she had the good sense not to show it.

  “I’m Dr. Saunders.” She looked from one man to the other. The one closer to her had pupils that were larger than they should have been in this light. “What can I do to help you? We were about to close up.”

  The man gestured broadly. His gait was a little unsteady as he took a step toward her.

  “You can close if you want to, pretty lady.” He looked back at his friend for confirmation and then smiled almost foolishly. “All we want is for you to open the medical cabinet in the back.”

  She had known as soon as they entered, although she’d hoped otherwise. They wanted drugs. She concentrated on remaining calm. There was nothing to be gained by panic. “Nothing but cotton balls, antiseptic and bandages back there,” she informed him coolly.

  The foolish grin faded into something deadly. It made her blood run cold. From the depths of the oversize pockets the first man pulled out a pistol. By street standards it was almost primitive.

  But it could blow a hole in her very easily.

  Swallowing a curse, Murphy moved in front of Shawna.

  The man with the weapon swore viciously. “Stay out of this,” he warned Murphy. He jerked his hand toward Shawna. “Don’t lie to me, Doc. Everybody knows you’ve got some stuff back there.” His eyes, wild a moment before, almost shone as he said wistfully, “Stuff to take the edge off the pain.”

  Was he hurt? She scrutinized him quickly. He hadn’t favored anything when he entered. Maybe she could divert him. “What hurts?”

  His lips curled away from his teeth. On an animal it would have been a snarl.

  “Life, Doc, life. Now get back there and open it.” He waved her back. When Murphy moved toward him, the barrel of the gun swung in his direction.

  Shawna swallowed a sound born out of fear. Why had she let him come along? “Stay out of this, Murphy.”

  “Listen to her, jerk. Zach and me are real edgy right now. We get that way without our medicine.” He laughed at his own jok
e, his hand tightening on the gun. Murphy noticed that it was shaking. “Make myself clear?”

  Murphy never took his eyes off the man’s face. “Very.”

  “Smart.” His head bobbed up and down like a Ping-Pong ball caught in a riptide. “Good. Nobody gets hurt and everyone’s happy.” It was as if he was saying the words to himself. He roused, blinking his eyes, trying to focus. “Move it, Doc. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  But he would. In an instant. Murphy doubted if the man knew what he was doing. Or cared. “Do as he says, Shawna,” Murphy ordered gruffly.

  It went against everything she believed in, but there was no arguing with the point of a gun. And she couldn’t put Murphy at risk. “All right.” Very carefully she turned around, knowing a sudden move might make the man shoot.

  Murphy saw the way the gunman’s friend was looking at Shawna—as if she were a stick of candy he wanted to unwrap and devour. Murphy didn’t believe that they would leave quietly once they got what they wanted. There was too much at stake for him to place his faith in that.

  “Move it,” the gunman ordered. He was scratching his arm, trying hard to aim the gun.

  He was having withdrawals, Shawna thought.

  “Sure, anything you say,” Murphy agreed, his voice low, soothing. He half turned his body, appearing to follow Shawna into the back. He waited until she was a step farther away and his body was between her and the gunman.

  With a cry meant to throw them off, Murphy swung around. One fist went to the gunman’s throat while Murphy jerked his hand upward with the other. The gun went off, the bullet lodging itself in the ceiling. Murphy tried to shake the weapon from the man’s hand.

  In an instant both men were on Murphy, swearing at him and punching wildly.

  Shawna grabbed the first thing she could, Caro’s portable radio and hit the man on top of Murphy with it. The radio smashed. With a scream the man turned, dazed, and lunged for Shawna.

  Murphy saw it out of the corner of his eye. Rage filled him but there wasn’t anything he could do to help her. The man who had pointed the gun was swinging at him viciously. Murphy ducked and then swung hard, connecting with the man’s nose.