“Got it already,” Dr. Steve whispered back.
“What the hell are you two whispering about?” Dar growled.
Kerry and the doctor exchanged amused glances. “How cute you look in your sports bra, hon,” Kerry piped. “Didn’t want to embarrass you.”“Got it,” Dr. Steve managed to say around a snicker. “Okay, Dar.
200 Melissa Good You’re finished.” He removed his apron and pulled the machine arm back, freeing his very reluctant and now noticeably blushing patient to sit up. “Hmm. Guess I don’t have to check your cardiovascular system; seems to be pumping just fine.” He pulled the X-ray plates out and winked at them. “Lemme go get these processed.”
Kerry waited for him to leave before she circled the table and faced her lover, who was now sitting up with her legs dangling off the table, cradling her injured arm with her good one. “See? Not so bad.” She deliberately sidled between Dar’s knees and gazed into the stormy blue eyes facing her. “C’mon, Dar, don’t you want to feel better? I know you can’t be comfortable with that.” She touched Dar’s elbow, where the lurid bruise had extended to during the night.
Dar sighed. “I know,” she muttered. “I just—”
“Hate doctors,” Kerry finished for her. “Honey, it’s almost over.”
She stroked Dar’s cheek gently. “Just relax.”
“Easy for you to say,” Dar grumbled. “You’re not sitting here half-naked, having people whisper about your sports bra.” She slid off the table and stretched, sidling away from the X-ray machine toward the large louvered window in the examination room.
Kerry took the opportunity to admire the body under the garment being discussed, and smiled. She walked up behind Dar and slipped her arms around her, hugging her and planting a kiss right between Dar’s shoulder blades. “Mm.” She breathed out softly, watching goose bumps travel over the skin her cheek was pressed against. “I’m glad you decided to get checked, Dar.”
Dar peered over her shoulder at her engaging blonde limpet.
“Yeah, well, maybe he’ll give me a pat on the head and a bottle of Percodan. You going to help me analyze that base data when we get home? Typing’s going to be hell.”
“Of course.” Kerry released her and stepped back as they heard Dr.
Steve coming down the hall. “You really think there’s something there?”
Dar’s face grew quiet and rather grim. “Yes.” She looked up as Dr.
Steve entered. “If you’re back for more pictures, forget it.”
Her old friend whipped his hand up and focused. He snapped a picture of the surprised and very off-guard Dar, then grinned at her.
“Gotcha. Okay, kiddo. C’mon down the hall, and I’ll tell you the bad news.”
“What was that for?” Dar objected, pointing at the camera.
“Family scrapbook.” Dr. Steve picked up her shirt and tossed it to her. “Here, don’t scandalize the nurses. They’ve got delicate egos.”
Dar allowed Kerry to help her ease her shirt on, and then they followed Dr. Steve down the hall to his office. This was a fairly large room, lined with book-covered shelves and an impressive set of diplomas scattered over the wall. On the opposite wall, pictures took pride of place—of Dr. Steve and his family, and some of him at a much Red Sky At Morning 201
younger age in uniform.
He also had nice, comfortable leather chairs. Dar sat down in one and leaned back. Kerry studied the pictures, reacting a little when she found one with a familiar, if younger Andrew Roberts in it. “Hey. It’s Dad.” She half turned. “Ooh...he was a cutie.”
“Kerry, if you’d just consent to repeat that if I dragged that old sea dog in here, I’d pay you, big time.” Dr. Steve laughed, then put his hands on his desk. “Now, young lady,” he fixed his eyes on Dar, “you have a nasty bone bruise.”
Dar eyed him warily. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” the doctor replied. “You’re a very lucky little munchkin, my friend. If it wasn’t for the fact that you have a nice, big, juicy deltoid muscle there, you’d be looking at a fracture, and putting a cast there ain’t fun.” He stood and walked over to the X-ray box, pointing at a dark spot in the long bone of Dar’s arm. “Right there.”
Kerry and Dar peered at it. “And?” Dar finally asked. “What’s the treatment?”
“Amputation.” Dr. Steve turned and gave her a deadpan look, getting a halfway hysterical giggle from Kerry. “You get a sling which you will keep on, young lady, a bottle of blood thinner in case anything in there is considering doing something icky like clotting, and some painkillers.” He pointed at Dar. “I want you off your feet and doing nothing stressful for at least the rest of the weekend.”
“Okay,” Dar agreed readily, having planned to spend the day on the couch with her laptop anyway. So far, it didn’t sound too bad, and as long as the process did not involve plaster or fiberglass in any incarnation, she was happy. “That it?”
Dr. Steve sat on the edge of his desk and leaned forward.
“Sweetheart, I mean it.” He reached out and traced a line from the injury up Dar’s neck. “Do you see how close this is to your noggin? I don’t want any clots getting any ideas and sending you into the hospital with a stroke.”
Dar blinked. “A stroke?”
“You heard me,” Steve stated. “So I want you to make like a vegetable for the next few days, and take those damn pills. I wish you’d called me yesterday.”
Dar drew breath to answer him, but Kerry got a word in first. “It was late,” she told him, leaning over Dar’s chair. “We got home near midnight.” She tousled Dar’s hair. “We thought about going over to Sinai, but—”
“But you’d still be sitting there, with a sore butt and the same problem,” Dr. Steve finished. “Yeah, well, next time, forget the hospital, just give me a call, hmm?”
“We will,” Kerry stated, then glanced down. “Won’t we?”
Dar smiled wanly. A stroke? Her mind jerked in horror at a threat she’d never even considered. Getting injured was nothing new to her, 202 Melissa Good but this was different. She could imagine living with losing a limb, but strokes were a crapshoot. She could end up half-paralyzed, which was bad enough, but worse—she could lose part of who she was if it hit the wrong spot at the wrong time. “Yeah, we will,” she muttered hoarsely.
“Good girl.” Dr. Steve patted her knee. “Let me get you set up with that sling. I already called in your prescription to that high-society mambo pusher they call a pharmacist on your Fantasy Island.”
KERRY REACHED OVER and picked up her mug, taking a sip of the strawberry tea as she reviewed the data on the laptop screen for the nth time. She was curled up on the soft, comfortable leather chair in the living room, one leg slung lazily over the chair arm. Her eyes lifted over the mug’s rim and eyed the nearby couch, and then she put the cup down and went back to her statistics.
She could, she knew, have gone into either of their offices and used the large monitors to make viewing the data easier, but she preferred to stay where she was and suffer the eye strain so she could keep an eye on Dar. The drive home had been very quiet, and her usually unruly lover had meekly taken the medicine the island pharmacy delivered, then settled down on the couch. She’d even let Kerry fuss and put a pillow behind her head and tuck a soft fleece blanket around her.
Waiting for me to say I told you so, Kerry mused. The blood thinner and vasodilator Dr. Steve had prescribed, along with the painkiller, knocked Dar out in no time flat, and her lover had been sleeping for the past few hours. Which was good, Kerry thought, because if Dar was sleeping, it meant she wasn’t awake and worrying, having had the living daylights scared out of her by Dr. Steve’s warning.