LITMIR.BIZ

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it hadn’t been raccoons after all, but simply the wood expanding or shrinking. Certainly the temperatures had been unpredictable this spring. It ought to be greening out there right now, but the trees were showing more intelligence than the calendar. They hadn’t even tried to bud yet, as if they knew darn well there was still snow on the ground and more in the forecast. Weird.

      She was just emerging from the locker room when one of the nurses passing by stopped her. “Do you know Luke Masters?”

      A week of good resolutions seemed to evaporate. “Unfortunately.”

      “Well, he’s in the E.R. asking for you. Dr. Trent sent me to find you.”

      “I’m on my way.” Why would he be asking for her? And what was he doing in the E.R? Her heart sped up, and she figured no amount of resolve was going to cure that until she found out what was going on.

      Part of her just wanted to head for the door and pretend she hadn’t gotten the message. The cowardly part. The part of herself she sometimes believed might have been the cause of a lot of problems in her life.

      Sighing, she headed for the E.R, but she couldn’t imagine any reason Luke would be asking for her. She thought they’d pretty well ended any hope of talking that night last week. On the other hand, as a nurse she’d seen plenty of the worst that could happen to people, and knew how often they wanted to see a familiar face. Any familiar face.

      Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. Luke was in the emergency room? Visions of catastrophe, drawing on graphic memory, suddenly crashed home. She increased her pace to the fast walk hospital staff used because they weren’t supposed to run. It was damn near as fast.

      She reached the nurse’s station in front of the emergency pod. Ira Mason stood there, sorting some files. “Hi, Ira. I hear you have a patient asking for me.”

      He nodded. “Luke Masters? You know him?”

      She caught herself just in time, holding back the statement that he was her husband. Not anymore. Man, was she going to slip into old habits that easily? A little flame of annoyance lit. “From way back.”

      “Bay three.”

      “Is it bad?”

      “Well, he’s not in danger of dying. Pretty messed up, though.”

      That was about all she was going to get from Ira. It wasn’t her case, she wasn’t a relative and the hospital was pretty strict about patient privacy. As it should be, she thought as she walked down the hall to the cubicles.

      Sheila Gardner was hurrying toward the front with a clipboard. “Ah, you must be here to see that guy who’s asking for you. Bay three.”

      Bri didn’t fail to notice the curiosity on Sheila’s face, but this was no time for a heart-to-heart about past heartbreaks. The silly phrase floated through her head, but provided no distraction. Luke was hurt, and the intervening years were slipping away as fast as a speed skater headed for the finish line. Nor did all her training as a nurse prevent her heart from climbing into her throat as she approached the bay. How bad was it? She had plenty of experience to raise horrifying images in her mind’s eye.

      She pulled the curtain aside and stepped in. The sight of Luke’s naked leg raised and surrounded by metal framework didn’t shake her. They’d probably had to stretch his leg a bit to reset bones. There was no evidence that the fracture had broken the skin—a good sign.

      What got to her was the face above the blanket that covered him from chin to hips. He had a huge bruise around his eye, red and angry-looking, and his left cheekbone appeared swollen. Then she noticed that the arm lying along his side already sported a cast.

      Damn, he’d done a number on himself.

      She heard a rubber-soled step behind her and turned to see Dr. Trent. “He’s going to be okay,” he said. “They’re checking the X-rays of his leg right now to see if the reset looks good or if they’ll need to pin it.”

      She nodded quickly, wondering why her mouth was so dry. “His head?”

      “So far the concussion actually appears mild. We did a CT on him and saw only some insignificant bleeding. He also cracked his cheekbone. No displacement, no movement of the bone, so we’re going to leave it. His arm was a simple fracture, but his hand is a mess of lacerations and contusions. He’s not going to be happy when he wakes up from the morphine.”

      Then Dr. Trent touched her arm. “He was pretty angry when he came in here. Aggressive. We need to keep an eye on that concussion, at least overnight. It might be worse than we think. Just watch it. There’s no telling how he might react when he wakes.”

      She knew all of this already, but she didn’t mind having Dr. Trent repeat it. Somehow it was more calming hearing it in his measured, steady voice than from inside her own head.

      Then came the question she had half expected and had been dreading.

      “Bri? Does he have anyone around here? Because he’s going to need help, but mostly he’s going to need some pretty close observation. Of course, we can keep him hospitalized....”

      The idea of Luke putting up with being stuck in a hospital would have been funny under other circumstances. Heck, he was going to be upset enough about the limitations his injuries were going to cause. He was not good patient material.

      “There’s just me,” she said quietly. “We’re divorced.”

      Trent grimaced. “Not good. Although I guess that’s why he kept demanding we get you. I don’t think he knows what decade it is right now. Well, I can sure understand if you don’t want the responsibility. Just let me know so I can make arrangements after we find out how that leg is.”

      Maybe, she thought bitterly, as she stood staring at Luke, she should call Barbara to come watch him.

      Bitterness aside, though, something stronger tugged at her. At last she gave in with a sigh and sat on the one chair beside the bed. She tried to focus on the steady drip of the IV into his uninjured arm, but her eyes kept straying back to his face. God, he was a mess! That cheek alone was going to cause him some huge pain.

      Sheila came in, nodded to her and checked his vitals. Then she pulled out an ice pack, flexed it to activate it, and rested it gently on his cheek. “Twenty minutes,” she said.

      “I’ll take care of it.”

      “You haven’t eaten, have you?”

      “I just got off shift.”

      “Then let me bring you a tray from the cafeteria. They have a passable turkey breast tonight. Potatoes or rice?”

      “Potatoes, please. And coffee. Looks like I’m going to need it.”

      “You should have heard him when they brought him in. Cussing a blue streak. He said somebody pushed him, but the other guy who was up there with him said no one else was around. Then he kept demanding to see you. He said he had to warn you. I mean, man, he was out of it.”

      Bri listened, her heart growing heavy. She knew even mild concussions could cause all sorts of disorientation. It wasn’t unusual for a concussed patient who was conscious to ask every thirty seconds where they were and what had happened. But claims of being pushed? A need to warn her of what? That seemed to go beyond the ordinary confusion.

      Rubbing her forehead, trying to ease the beginnings of a tension headache, she felt the first real fear. Earlier she had been concerned, but not afraid. Looking at him, however, she thought of all the deficits that could arise from even a so-called mild concussion. Sheila’s description of his state when he arrived hadn’t reassured her at all.

      She wished his eyes would open, that he’d look at her, recognize her and be all right. Bad as things had gotten between them, she wished him no ill. None at all. But she had never expected to ever again fear for him.

      Unsettled, she wanted to get up and walk outside, at least for a few minutes, to gather her increasingly scattered

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