What she could offer was a long way from standard of care. An agreement to help would be a malpractice suit waiting to happen. Needing to think such a thought made her insides twist in disgust. She hated to practice defensive medicine, thinking first of lawsuits rather than the patient’s needs.
“Even if my office were set up, if you have a genuine emergency, an ER can help you more than I can.”
“My problem is I don’t know much about babies. It could be nothing, or it could be life threatening. The nearest ER is an hour away—if the storm keeps up, maybe two hours.”
Bronwyn wished she could see his face to read his expression. She squinted. “The light’s in my eyes. Where is the baby?”
He drew aside the poncho with one hand and brought forward a bundle cradled like a football in the crook of his elbow.
Seeing the baby, Mildred lunged forward. Bronwyn tightened her grip on the dog’s collar. In the headlights’ glare, Bronwyn could make out nothing but a silky halo surrounding a little round head and a tiny bare foot dangling. In the headlights, it glowed translucent pink, the tiny toes edged in deeper rose.
Bronwyn’s heart squeezed at the sight of the vulnerable little foot. She forced herself not to react. It changed nothing. “My power has gone out. I’m sorry. I really am. I can’t examine what I can’t see.” She felt for the doorknob behind her. She pushed the door open while trying to make her tone final. “Take her to a hospital. That’s my best advice.”
Lightning flashed. A strong gust dashed rain across the porch and billowed the man’s poncho behind him. The house exhaled a cold draft and slammed the door on Bronwyn’s heels.
Bronwyn jumped out of its way and lost her grip on Mildred.
Mildred was a good dog, but Bronwyn knew very well that she controlled her only because Mildred preferred for her to. Right now, Mildred, unrestrained at last, preferred to sniff their visitors. Dogs saw with their noses. Mildred wanted a good look. The man calmly stood his ground while the big animal sniffed his feet and then his crotch.
She hated to turn her back on the man, but Mildred was between them. She turned around and wrestled with the knob with both hands. It didn’t budge.
Chapter 8
Technology will always let you down.
—The Moscow Rules
Someone should tell her, “Technology will always let you down.” Garth watched her struggle with the door, unsurprised it gave her trouble. Calling a door mechanism “technology” wasn’t really a stretch. When Murphy’s Law was in control, anything with more moving parts than a toothpick constituted technology.
Garth often reminded his men that every operation went to shit thirty seconds after it got on the ground. God knows this one had the second she stepped through the door. Wouldn’t you know, since it was crucial not to leave a trail that led from the plane to wherever he took the baby, then the first person he approached would be an acquaintance?
A good memory for faces was a longevity-enhancing attribute in an operator. In the harsh white glare of the headlights, he’d recognized her. He’d left the truck’s lights on only to see his way to the porch. It was sheer dumb luck that the light had been in her eyes and she hadn’t recognized him the instant he recognized her.
He’d felt the ground shift under his feet. Hoping he couldn’t believe his eyes, he had blurted out, “Are you the doctor?”
He couldn’t remember her name; he’d only met her once. They’d been introduced, and that was all. Nobody had said she was a doctor.
Watching her struggle with the door, Garth felt a certain dour amusement. Murphy was dangling him like a puppet on a string. If Murphy had to screw up everything, at least he was being evenhanded. She had wanted to ditch him, and now Murphy wouldn’t let her. His head told him to take her refusal and get out. But going with his gut, he didn’t get an overwhelming feeling that he should abort.
The doctor’s little grunts of aggravation crescendoed. He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “Can I help you?”
“This door! The latch is broken or something. It seems to have a will of its own when it comes to opening and closing.” She rubbed her brow and visibly recovered her dignity. “No,” she corrected herself, “that’s a ridiculous thing to say. In the dark, I must have put the night latch on, instead of taking it off.”
“A night latch? Don’t you know it’s practically worthless? Any burglar with a pocketknife can jimmy it.”
“Well then, I hope a burglar will come by soon! But if he wants to rob the place, he’d better bring his own flashlight!” She whirled to face him. She crossed her arms under her breasts. Smallish, high, round breasts that her T-shirt, thin from many washings, did little to hide. Nice. She cocked an eyebrow. “Do burglars go out in thunderstorms?”
Garth grinned, partly because he appreciated the snappy comeback, partly because he saw an opportunity. The game might not be over. She hadn’t recognized him so far. If he could stay in control of the light, he could keep his face in shadow. He might just brush through this. “You don’t have a flashlight?”
“Of course I do. Somewhere. I was looking for it, so I could go looking for the fuse box, when I heard you knock.”
“Your problem isn’t a fuse. The power is off all over town, not just here. I’m not a burglar, but I do have flashlights. Let me try the door.”
She acknowledged his humor with a smile while she thought it over. After a second she shrugged and patted her thigh. “Mildred, come here.”
She needn’t have called the dog. Despite the dog’s size, he could see the animal was a pushover. With unhurried confidence he forced the dog to give way just by walking toward her. Reaching past the doctor, he thumbed the lever and pushed. It definitely wasn’t locked. The mechanism must have been jammed when she was trying it. The door swung open with the lightest push.
“Oh, shoot. How did you do that? I’m telling you, it would not open for me.” Bronwyn grasped Mildred’s collar and sidled into the doorway. “Well, um,” she told her visitor, “thank you.”
“Wait. I’d take it as a favor if you’d just give me your opinion of whether I have a real emergency on my hands or not. Let me go get my lights. We can set one up for general illumination, and I’ll direct the other wherever you tell me to. If you say she needs attention she can only get in an ER, I’ll get her there.”
And he would. Bronwyn knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Though the medical profession was known for unassailable egos, she had never heard anyone speak with more confidence. At the same time, there had been no hint of inadequacy in the way he had said, “I don’t know much about babies.” That, too, was a simple statement of fact requiring no elaboration.
Every intuition she had developed as an ER physician said there was more here than met the eye. She wished she could see his face, though she’d bet it would give away no more than his voice did. She had experience with men like this. Troy had been one. They could be damn unstoppable once they had taken on a task.
***
Bronwyn took the baby, and with Garth holding the flashlight, she led the way to the kitchen. Examining patients in her kitchen formed no part of her plan to convert part of the house into a medical office; however in its present shabby state, the house offered no other room that was remotely suitable.
Once there, the baby’s father placed flashlights on the counter that were so huge and bright that they could have been used to signal the moon. One he turned on end to bounce light off the ceiling. It gave surprisingly adequate light—enough, anyway, to keep them from stumbling over the packing boxes everywhere. Bronwyn hastily extracted a towel from the dryer, spread it on the butcher-block table in the center of the room, and laid the infant on it. Once the baby was in place, the man switched on the other light and aimed its beam directly on her.
Mildred was quivering with curiosity, so Bronwyn motioned her to come forward. “This is a baby,”
she told the dog, while keeping one hand firmly on the infant. “You’ve never seen one before, have you? You may smell, but you need to be respectful.”
Mildred passed her nose over the little one, not, Bronwyn was proud to see, crowding the baby’s space. Wuffling softy, Mildred sniffed the child’s breath, her ears, her crotch, her tiny feet. She lingered over the top of the baby’s head, returning to it several times as if something about it puzzled her.
“All done?” she asked, when Mildred began to lose interest.
“You’re real patient with her.”
“She’s a good dog, but she’s very curious and very determined. It’s really better if I let her get it out of her system. She is a dog, after all.” Bronwyn chuckled wryly. “If I command her to do what she wants to do anyway, it helps us both maintain the illusion that she’s obedient.”
The man huffed softly—an almost silent laugh. Bronwyn relaxed slightly. “I just wish she could tell me all she just learned. Dogs can be trained to be better than the most sensitive diagnostic equipment at detecting cancer and at anticipating seizures. All right, Mildred, go lie down now.”
Attuned to her dog as she was, Bronwyn could tell without turning around to look that Mildred was lying down but still alert and curiously watching everything. Mildred was sensitive to atmosphere. Bronwyn felt reassured to know that Mildred apparently found her visitors interesting but unalarming.
After the wild wetness of the storm outside, the kitchen felt stuffy and airless.
Keeping the light trained on the baby, the man pulled off his poncho. It was like the top had been lifted from a jar of scent. Essence of young, healthy male, a little sweaty from being enveloped in waterproof fabric, bloomed through the kitchen. In the way of odors, it bypassed the cerebral cortex and zoomed straight to the older, emotionally driven, more primitive parts of Bronwyn’s brain.
She had to grab the counter to stay on her feet when her knees went weak with sudden sexual hunger. Hunger she hadn’t felt since Troy’s death. In the middle of a storm with the power out and a strange man in her house was a fine time for her body to assert its interest in joining the living.
Without the poncho, he didn’t seem quite so huge, but he was still a large man—over six feet, with broad shoulders and muscular arms revealed by his short-sleeved, flower-patterned shirt. Cargo shorts exposed calf muscles as clearly delineated as in an anatomy diagram. The pockets and loops on the shorts drooped as if they had actually been used to carry things. This was a man who not only worked out but also worked with his body.
An incongruous note to his casual look was provided by combat boots with socks turned down over the tops just so. Again, he reminded her of Troy. Troy had been a Marine before becoming a Baltimore cop and similarly would don bits of military gear when mowing grass and doing other off-duty chores.
There was something familiar about this man, but she couldn’t place him. Neither light skinned nor dark, his features—what features she could make out in the dim light—were hard to categorize by either race or national origin. Maybe he had come through some ER when she was on duty. She dismissed the question, and with a will developed by years of staying focused even though her body clamored for sleep or food or just a chance to pee, she stifled her libido’s untimely awakening.
Bronwyn unwrapped the baby from the man’s T-shirt that had swathed her and touched the material wadded and bunched around her hips with the aid of duct tape. She’d never seen a worse diaper job. She would pursue the questions raised by the child’s lack of even the most basic clothing in a minute. First she needed to establish rapport.
She extended her hand. “I’m Dr. Whitescarver.”
“Garth Vale.” He reached across the table to shake. Their hands met in the air over the baby. His hand was a workingman’s, hard, calloused. The outer edges of the palm were calloused, too—characteristic of martial arts training, something else she knew about because of Troy. A strange energy, like hundreds of tiny threads snapping, went through her when their hands connected.
“I feel like I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t place it. Have we met?”
“Hard to see how.” He spoke in an uninflected Western drawl. “You just moved here, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I haven’t had a chance to meet many people.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s one of those mysteries. Let’s see what’s going on with this little one. What’s her name?”
“Julia.”
“A pretty name for a pretty little girl. Why don’t you stand there,” she indicated a place at her left shoulder, “and hold the other light for me?”
Bronwyn’s initial visual impression was of a well-nourished infant, around eight months, with no obvious abnormality. Bronwyn gently spanked the soles of the tiny feet to rouse her. “Wake up, sweetie. Let me see your eyes.”
Her eyes were dull, the pupils not as wide as Bronwyn would have expected, given the dim light. The most striking finding was the deeply sunken look of her eyes. Coupled with her apathetic air and lack of drool, it suggested dehydration.
In children this age, dehydration following vomiting and diarrhea was potentially serious but common and easily treatable. Bronwyn had seen it frequently enough to be sure of her diagnosis, but as one of her teachers used to say, “The road to hell is paved with snap diagnoses.” She needed to make sure she wasn’t missing anything life threatening.
“I need my stethoscope to listen to her heart. I’ll be right back.”
“All right.” The man’s stance didn’t change.
“Put your hand on her,” Bronwyn instructed him. “Don’t let her roll off the counter.” He obviously had spent very little time with his daughter not to know something so basic. He really didn’t know much about babies.
Chapter 9
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels at winning with ease.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Garth rested his hand beside Dr. Whitescarver’s on the baby’s rounded belly. The doctor’s hand was tiny, the unpolished nails trimmed ruthlessly short. As tiny as it was, and as obviously feminine in its covering of smooth white skin, there was something strong, mature, and competent about it. It was a hand made to touch people, full of a latent power that wasn’t physical strength but something else.
He allowed his hand to settle, the way hers did, weightless and yet in firm contact. He was surprised to feel the gentle rise and fall of the baby’s respirations, the movement of willowy ribs. The baby’s skin—he’d noted the condition of her skin before, but now he felt it. It was… perfect. That was all: perfect.
A funny sensation filled his chest and made his eyes suddenly moist.
Julia’s eyes opened and focused on him in limpid trust, went to half-mast, and then opened again, as if she wanted to look at him and was trying to stay awake.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” He tried to make his voice a soft, slow rumble as befitted addressing a person her size. “I’ve got you. You rest now. The doc’s going to make you all better.”
He heard an exasperated huff from the doctor and looked around. She was turning in a slow circle, hands fisted on her hips.
“Looking for something?”
“My medical bag. I unpacked it and put it right there on the counter—I know I did.”
He shone the flashlight in the direction she pointed.
“It’s not there. What did I do with it?”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s an old-fashioned, black Gladstone bag, like doctors used to carry.” She moved a box to look behind it. “It was my great-grandfather’s. It came to my brother, Landreth, when he got his MD, but he gave it to me. He said if I was going to be a country doctor, I needed the bag to help me look the part.”
“Your great-grandfather was a doctor?”
“And my father and grandfath
er. There’s an unbroken line of doctors dating back to the Civil War. Where is it?”
Garth played the light over the counters. “Maybe you’re mistaken about exactly where you put it.” The dog sneezed and jingled her tags. He swung the light in her direction. Beside the dog’s bed rested a dark shape. “Is that it?”
“Yes!” The diminutive doctor knelt beside the large leather satchel and opened it. “It was all I could do to heave it onto the counter. Mildred, how on earth did you get it off the counter? And why?”
The dog lifted a hind leg to scratch behind her ear.
“She’s a tall dog,” Garth objected, “but do you really think she could have taken it?”
The doctor frowned at him over her shoulder. “Well, I know I didn’t move it. And it didn’t move itsel—” her words trailed away. She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know… maybe I did put it here. With the house so disorganized, I can’t seem to find anything where I think I put it.”
She extracted the stethoscope and rose, warming the chest piece between her palms. “All right. Let’s see what’s up with this little one.”
***
The doctor finished listening to the baby’s chest. The way doctors do, she draped her stethoscope around her neck. Why was it that women looked so graceful when they performed movements like that?
If Garth had met her in an ER, swathed in scrubs and a white coat, he might have looked past her essential femininity, interested only in her professional competence. He still needed for her to be a doctor, but in the dim kitchen, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts that revealed the exact sort of plush derriere and smooth, strong thighs he liked on a woman, no way was he going to fail to react to her.
She had won his trust almost instantly with the soft-spoken command she had over her spirited dog, which probably weighed more than she did. When she’d run her hands over the baby’s limbs, gently palpating, learning with every touch, he had wanted her to run such intelligent hands over him.
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