by Mallory Kane
It was him. As soon as his icy hand had closed around her ankle, she had known. Known even as his concentrated pain and fear and brave dregs of anger knocked the wind from her lungs.
She wanted to jump up and run, wanted to scream for help, but she couldn't. His despair and fear held her more tightly than his grip on her ankle.
"Who are you?" she whispered, trying to move, but his relentless fingers didn’t let up, although his eyes were still glazed and witless.
She reached out to peel his fingers away. Her foot was starting to tingle. When she touched his hand, he groaned and she felt a tightness—a tightness and a searing pain along her midsection. His ribs.
Her fingers froze above his then changed course, stretching to touch his face. It was as cold as his hand, and her fingers came away stained with half-congealed blood. She moaned, her own head throbbing with pain that had to come from him.
Moira's warnings echoed in her brain, but she brushed aside worries about disease or danger. His distress was the only thing that mattered. She had to help him.
"No —" he muttered, his voice cracking like thin ice.
"Can you walk?" Kristen wrapped her fingers around his hand. "Hey, can you walk? We need to get you to a hospital."
"No!" His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in pain.
"Well, can you try? Look, I need to get some help." She maneuvered around until she was sitting up, not easy with his grip still tight on her ankle. "I can't move you by myself, and I think you've got broken ribs. Plus a bad cut on your head."
"No! Hospital!" He spoke shortly, in little bursts, obviously trying to minimize the torment of breathing.
"I can't help you! You've got to let go!" Kristen cried desperately. She couldn't breathe either. The grinding in her midsection had her doubled over.
She pried at his fingers again. If she could stop him from touching her, it wouldn't hurt so bad, and maybe she could concentrate. She'd never experienced anything like the way his every emotion, his every pain, transferred itself to her through his fingers. She gritted her teeth and worked on steeling herself against him.
Finally, he let go. He sat up gingerly, grunting and grimacing with each movement. For a few minutes, he rested his head against the wall and took shallow breaths that puffed out in silver clouds of mist. His hair, wet and plastered to his head, looked to be a dirty brown.
With his incredible eyes shut and his hand no longer transferring sensation to her like an electric charge, Kristen gathered enough wits to study him.
A dark splotch discolored the side of his head, and a knot had risen on his temple. His jaw was clenched tight, his lips compressed and grim with pain, the tendons in his neck corded with tension. He was well muscled but thin like a runner, and she noticed the peculiar odor of starvation about him.
His hands were elegant—a surgeon's hands, or an artist's, with fine tapering fingers, currently white-knuckled against his side. His body was long too, encased in filthy jeans and a pullover jacket.
She looked back at his face, where pale thick lashes rested against his gaunt cheeks. Her chest hurt from compassion and the echo of his bruised ribs.
He opened his eyes.
Kristen started. For the first time, his eyes were lucid, reflecting a wary curiosity and sharp intelligence. They were the most intense blue she had ever seen in eyes, and they seemed to cut right into her soul. She blinked and wiped mist off her face. "Can you stand?" she asked.
He stared at her for a long time, then with a grimace that showed white, even teeth, he nodded. He braced his shoulders against the brick wall and inched himself upward, groaning, but pushing persistently.
She stood and tried to help him, but when she touched him he growled and jerked his head sharply, sending another rending pain through her side and his, no doubt, so she left him alone. She certainly didn't want him to puncture a lung if his ribs were broken. Walking a few steps toward the street, she pretended not to notice how hard it was for him.
A ragged sigh and an easing of the ache in her side told her he had made it. She turned. He was taller than she'd realized, and he slumped against the wall with both arms wrapped as tightly as possible around his middle. His face rivaled the mist for pallor.
"Can you walk?"
A short, sharp laugh surprised her. "Sure, lady," he grated. "Have—this dance?"
She stared at him, her lips twitching. A sense of humor? Even if it was caustic and barbed. "I don't think we'll see many cabs around here, and I've got to get you to a hospital, now!"
"No!" The pain faded from his eyes and an unreasoning anger took its place. "Leave!"
"I can't," she whispered, wanting to cry because he was so desperate, wanting to cheer because he had regained the will to be angry.
His eyes darkened to indigo and narrowed to slits. "Can't?"
She shook her head, dislodging droplets of mist from her hair, and wiped her face with both hands. "No. You hurt too badly. I can't leave you." I can't leave you and I can't stand to be close to you.
"No!"
"Look, we're not getting anywhere," she sighed, spreading her hands helplessly. "The Street Clinic's about two blocks over."
His eyes blazed as fear, anger, suspicion, all flashed across his face in a matter of seconds. "No ID, no credit," he whispered, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall.
Kristen knew most of the strength that had served to get him upright was failing him. He wouldn't stay conscious much longer. In fact she could feel the warning buzz inside his head that signaled he would soon pass out.
"Okay, okay. I don't know what your problem is, but I'm not standing out here in the cold all night. Come on."
He shook his head and she wasn't sure if he was trying to clear the buzzing, or if he was still refusing to be helped.
"Look, dammit! I'm not going to hurt you," she shouted.
His head fell back against the wall and water dripped down his cheeks like tears. He'd given up fighting. Even as triumph lifted her spirits, her breast tightened with pity, because she could feel from within him he wasn't used to defeat.
She gritted her teeth as she lifted his arm and placed it around her shoulders, steeling herself against the sensations caused by his touch. He growled again, but he didn't protest. Kristen was fairly sure that if he could have found the strength to push her away, he would.
He leaned on her helplessly, his rock hard body heavy against her, his breath shallow, uneven. The taut muscles of his abdomen moved against her side.
He was in superb physical condition. Probably a good thing too, otherwise he would have been dead by now. His body had obviously started digesting protein because he had no fat reserves. That accounted for the odor of starvation that clung to him. As her doctor's brain clinically analyzed his condition, her woman's body began to react to his physical presence.
The waist she had her arm around was hard, the muscles like long straps of steel. The arm clutching her shoulders was corded with tendons and muscles, their suppleness undulating against her skin as they walked. If she looked down, she could see the hard thighs under the material of his jeans.
A thrill tightened her stomach and embarrassment flooded her face with heat. Where had that unprofessional reaction come from? She was a doctor, and he was a sick man.
But she couldn't ignore the unfamiliar ripple deep in her belly as his body moved next to hers. She'd never been affected like this by a man before. She'd never felt so aware of another human being in her life.
She concentrated on his feelings, rather than hers. From every square centimeter of him, she absorbed his fear and pain. She wished she could wall herself up, away from the feelings, but strangely, she craved them too, because they were an echo of everything she'd lost when Skipper died.
CHAPTER TWO
They stumbled into the clinic, Kristen staggering under the weight of the barely conscious man. "Bill, get Walt out of the exam room!" she snapped.
"What the hell?”
<
br /> "Go! I can't hold him up much longer."
"Let me—"
She shook her head. "No! Just clear out the room." She urged the man in her arms to take just a few more steps, to make it just a little farther. He muttered something that sounded like "little general," his head lolling drunkenly on his neck.
Walt came out of the exam room squinting against the bright florescent lights, cursing and snorting. "Can't even get a good night's sleep anymore!" he grumbled, shrugging into a decrepit coat.
"Get out of here, you old reprobate," Bill laughed. "You've slept all day long. Just because you're too cheap to get a hotel room when your wife kicks you out for drinking. Go home!"
Bill helped Kristen get her vagrant settled on the exam table.
"Where'd you find this one? Was he attacked by aliens?" he asked, peering into the man's eye.
She made a face at him. "That only happened one time, and you know that poor guy was diagnosed as schizophrenic."
Bill chuckled as he checked the other eye. "Concussion. Nasty bump."
She nodded, her own head aching. She rubbed her temples and examined the cut on his forehead. It wasn't bad, but Kristen felt the torn skin, the bruised flesh, as if it were her own.
Bill slit the jacket with a scalpel and slid it off the man's arms. "Look at this, it's filthy. No, it's beyond filthy! We'll find him something from the stash. Whew!"
Bill dropped the offensive garment in the trashcan.
"Think he's got any broken ribs?” Kristen said, but Bill interrupted her.
"Kristen, you're going to have to stop bringing in these bums. One of these days you're going to pick up somebody dangerous."
She glanced at him irritably. "Trust me. I've told you before, I can spot them. They won't hurt me." She probed delicately around the man's rib cage, marveling at his physical condition. A monstrous dark blue bruise marred his pale skin. She probed it gently, eliciting a ragged groan, although he didn't wake up.
"I can't feel any breaks. Could be he's cracked a couple. Hard to tell without x-rays," she said shortly, tamping down the well of sympathy and pity that were overwhelming her. Her emotions were rampant, out of control. What was the matter with her?
"Yeah, look at the contusions," Bill remarked. "He's black and blue all over. Did he get hit by a truck?"
Kristen shrugged. "That or he ran into a very angry mugger," she muttered.
"Where'd you find this guy?" Bill's voice was tinged with suspicion and awe. "This is no homeless derelict. Look at that muscle tone. He's been working out, or he's in the service. Never saw this kind of physical conditioning outside of sports or the military." He grinned at her. "Going to take him home to live with your other tom cat?"
"Bill! Don't be crude. He is strange, isn't he? He's starving, you can smell it, but with his lack of fat stores, it wouldn't take but a couple of days for his body to start digesting protein. Maybe somebody dumped him there in the alley."
"Any ID on him?"
Kristen shrugged again. "He said he didn't have any."
"Yeah, right," Bill snorted. "Take a look."
The thought of searching his pockets made her face grow hot. She couldn't believe she was acting like a schoolgirl about this guy's body.
Bill must be right, she thought, her brain latching onto a logical reason why the thought of touching a man—no, a patient—would stir her so. It must be the perfection of his form that fascinated her. That was all. Determinedly she thrust her hands into his pockets, her eyes closed, her mind deliberately blank.
The bell rang out front.
"I'd better wait on that customer," Bill said wryly. "Let me know if you find anything interesting in there!" He leered at her as he left. She made a face at him, humiliated that he'd noticed her reaction to the man.
Kristen didn't find anything in his pockets, so she turned her attention back to his injuries. It was a relief, him being unconscious, because when he was awake she could hardly think. She worked quickly, trying to finish before he woke up. She cleaned the cut on his head and quickly closed the ragged edges with sterile strips, then bathed his face where sweat and blood and dust had mingled.
His features were cleanly sculpted and strikingly beautiful except for the grim, set lips and the furrowed brow. He looked to be about thirty-five or so. It was hard to tell because of his youthful body, but his face looked old and jaded, deep lines running from his nose to the edges of his mouth, deep creases at the corners of his eyes. She didn't think those creases were from laughter.
She traced a finger down one of the lines, a finger that trembled as it smoothed the skin across his gaunt cheek.
She was amazed at her sudden boldness and at the depth of feelings he evoked in her. She would have never touched him so gently, so intimately, had he been awake. In fact, she'd never really touched a man at all, not like this. Her entire experience with men had been the few kisses and dates she'd endured in high school before she'd decided she wasn't cut out for romance. Her empath's brain had never been able to endure the duplicity of the boys who'd touched her and whispered sweet words while, inside, they churned with single-minded lust.
As her thoughts wandered, her finger traced the deep creases at the corners of his mouth. Unless she was very much mistaken, those were lines of pain. She'd even seen them in children on the cancer ward.
Her heart filled to bursting with compassion. The pain etched into his face wasn't the brief trauma of cracked ribs or bruises. It was old pain, deep pain. Pain no one should have to bear.
Blinking hard, and chagrined at her reaction, she distracted herself with familiar, professional acts. She took her penlight from her pocket and lifted his eyelid. Yes, he was concussed. She flashed the light in his eye, then away, then back, watching the response of the pupils.
You could tell a lot from eyes. Hypertension and diabetes both left their marks on the eyes, as did half a dozen other ailments. Not to mention grief, joy, anguish. Kristen touched the lines around his eyes, smoothing the tender skin. Yes. You could tell a lot.
She jerked her hand away, once again dismayed by her unprofessional reaction. Taking a deep breath and blinking slowly, she turned her attention back to her examination. She shined the light through the pupil, leaning closer to look at the back of his eye. Something —
Suddenly alert and intrigued, she didn't have to force herself into professional reaction. Some odd sort of scar tissue shone from the depths of his eye, back toward the retinal wall. Could he have had a detached retina repaired? She looked in his other eye. It was clear. She looked back at the right eye, searching its depths. There was something else, too. Something opaque, foreign-looking. She moved the light so it shone from different angles. The object looked like a minuscule cube, and when the light hit it just right, it reflected, as if at least part of it were made of glass.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. She was too tired to figure it out. When he woke, she would ask him.
Right now, though, she needed to get him undressed and examine him for further injuries. The filthy jeans molded his legs like the hands of a sculptor, the buttons strained across the front. She started to call Bill in to undress him, but if she did that she'd never hear the end of it.
Her face burned as she reached for the buttons. They were some kind of molded plastic, with a logo she'd never seen before. She had undone all but the last one when his hard hand grabbed her wrist.
"No!"
Astonished that she hadn't known he was awake, she jerked against his grip as anger pummeled her through his touch. His fingernails were broken and bloody, his knuckles scraped, as if he'd tried to claw his way out of some dark prison. Looking at them, she could feel the burning pain on her own knuckles. She had an astounding urge to kiss the knuckles and the broken nails, to hold him and tell him he was safe now. What was it about him that stirred these feelings?
She looked at his face. His eyes were like shards of cobalt glass cutting her. Could he tell what she'd been thinking?
&nb
sp; His fear streaked through her, wrenching her thoughts back to her job. She twisted her wrist against his steely grip. "Is the word no the extent of your vocabulary, Mr.—"
"No."
She stared. Was that his caustic sense of humor surfacing again? His hand on her wrist sent flashes of pain up her arm. She couldn't tell whose pain it was, his or hers.
"If you think you can sit up, I need to clean you up and wrap your ribs."
His expression remained unchanged.
"It'll help you breathe. Also, I need to get these filthy clothes off you."
"No."
"Look, Mister!" She said, straining against his grip. "I don't have time to stand here and listen to your limited discourse for hours. I've already put in a full day and I'm ready to go home. But I found you, and I feel responsible for you, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave a job half done. So, you've got two choices. You can get up and walk out of here, or you can let me get your ribs wrapped and give you something to eat so you can rest for a while. I don't really care which!"
Something flickered in his wary eyes, which might have been amusement, although it never reached his lips. He turned over on his side and hoisted himself up using his shoulders and hands. He grunted once. By the time he sat up his breath was shallow and fast, and sweat beaded his brow.
"I'll—take—number one," he whispered and tried to stand. He gasped and stared at her, shock and fury on his face, then his eyes glazed and he collapsed like an abandoned marionette back onto the table.
"So, Mister," Kristen whispered, pushing his hair back from his forehead. "You made your choice." She gently turned him onto his back and strapped his arms down, thankful he had passed out. She couldn't concentrate on her job when he was awake, transmitting his every emotion to her through his touch and piercing blue eyes. It was hard enough to concentrate even when he was unconscious.
She probed his muscled wrist for a good vein and slipped a needle in, then hung an IV of dextrose 10% with normal saline.
"Have some lunch," she muttered as she strapped his legs and his middle. "You need it." A queer pity quivered through her at his defenselessness. She was sure he wasn't used to being helpless. Her fingers lingered on the band she'd tightened around his diaphragm. When they began to curl against his muscled abdomen, she jerked her hand away and quickly prepared a syringe of meperidine and promethazine.
