It's a Love Thing (32 page)

Blanca drove back to the
clinic thinking of the things she’d need for patients with burns,
sprains, and heat exhaustion. When she arrived, she noticed a
package on the clinic doorstep. The box contained an eight by ten
recessed picture frame with a bullet mounted in the center of it.
The note at the bottom of the box read,
Therapeutic touch does save lives. Thank you, Jax
Reynolds.
She left the picture frame on her
desk and began setting up triage stations with burn salve,
dressings, and oxygen masks. She didn’t want to think about the man
who could’ve died as a result of her treatment just as easily as
lived. And she definitely didn’t want to think about his uncle who
had threatened her.

She worked sporadically through the
night: a dehydrated volunteer firefighter here, a burn patient
there, a tourist who’d broken his ankle falling off a rock trying
to take pictures of the blaze, and another with road rash from
crashing his motorcycle while bypassing the road block.

Nikki found Blanca the next morning,
dosing on the waiting room couch. “Have you been here all night?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled Blanca up and pushed her
toward the door. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll call you when
something comes in.”

But as Blanca reached the door, a
truck pulled up with a bed full of injured firefighters. By the
time she got home Sunday evening she was so beat she could barely
lift her arms to unlock her door. She mindlessly wandered around
her apartment checking the fridge, cupboards, and looking longingly
at her bed. She ended up grabbing a Gatorade and sitting on the
back porch.

The sunset beamed a ray of light onto
the garden she’d helped plant the day before. Longbow was likely
working the fire and would not return until it was out, she
figured. Despite her complete exhaustions she forced herself out of
the chair and found a hose to water the seedlings. Light reflected
off the spray of the water and created a rainbow against the
backdrop of mountains surrounding her. A contented smile crossed
her face and lit her eyes. She continued watering until the sun
went down.

Monday morning Blanca noticed Longbow
leaving their driveway on foot. He was dressed in his firefighter
gear, a helmet in one hand and a shovel in the other. She hollered
out her door, “Longbow, wait! I’ll give you a ride.”

He stood by her car as she scrambled
for her keys and wallet. As she unlocked Daisy she gave him a
questioning look. “Did you put me to bed again last night? I don’t
remember much after collapsing on the porch swing. I take it I fell
asleep out there and you carried me in.”

Longbow didn’t acknowledge her one way
or the other. He folded his long body into her car and sat
blank-faced, waiting for her to start the engine and pull out.
Blanca shook her head at him and let the subject drop until she was
on the road, driving to Banks.

“
You know, you keep
sneaking me into my room like that and people might start getting
ideas.”

He didn’t answer, but Blanca sensed
him stiffen against the seat and suddenly there was a tension
between them like the first day they’d met: cold, impersonal, and
distant.

When Longbow finally spoke, it was
with a controlled, clipped voice Blanca didn’t like. “What has
happened in your life that makes you think men just want to get
close to you so they can seduce you?” he asked. “Why are you
suspicious of a simple kindness?”

Blanca’s face heated with
embarrassment. She’d offended him. She was only teasing. She didn’t
mean to accuse him of being after
one
thing
. Or had she?

“
Not all men are like that
you know,” Longbow continued. “Some men enjoy the company of the
opposite sex for reasons much less sinister than seducing and
conquering them.”

Blanca opened and closed her mouth a
couple of times before finally saying, “Name them.”

“
What?” he
asked.

“
Name them. Give me the
names of some men who don’t want to learn a woman’s weaknesses,
flaunt her faults, and suck every ounce of dignity from her very
bones.”

Longbow blinked, looking even more
offended. Blanca stared out the front windshield wishing she hadn’t
said so much. He had no way of knowing about the vipers she’d dated
in Chicago. He probably thought she was a nut case.

Longbow put his hand over hers as she
shifted gears. “I don’t know what kind of men you’ve been dealing
with, but I assure you we’re not all like that. Some men actually
feel privileged to learn a woman’s weaknesses, find their little
faults endearing, and would place the dignity of a woman before
their own every time.”

Blanca slid her hand out from under
his and placed it on the wheel while she discreetly used her
opposite hand to wipe away a tear. The rest of the drive from
Crouch to Banks went by without either of them speaking another
word.

At Banks, several men with water
tankers and four-wheel drives were parked along the highway
preparing to drive out and meet the fire. Longbow slammed the door
getting out of her car, and didn’t look back as he walked toward
one of the trucks.

Blanca punched Daisy’s gas pedal and
spun the car to block Longbow’s path. Longbow stopped, but didn’t
make any effort to see what she wanted.

Blanca rolled down the passenger side
window and said, “Stay safe out there today, okay?”

Longbow leaned down and peered in at
her. There was a smirk on his face but the smile fell short of its
usual warmth. “It seems I’m safer already.” He backed away with his
hands held up as if he were surrendering.

The rest of the day didn’t go much
better for Blanca. She treated multiple burns, a patient with
asthma, and even a firefighter with a rattlesnake bite, but nothing
made the ache in the pit of her stomach go away. She told herself
she was upset over what Longbow said, but the truth was it went
much deeper than that and she knew it. She had unhealed wounds,
burns below her skin no one would ever see, but that didn’t take
away the fact they were there, nor the memories of the men who’d
burned her.

It was four days before she saw
Longbow again. He left for work before she got up and didn’t come
home until long after she was in bed. She was beginning to think
he’d never give her a chance to apologize when he showed up at the
clinic on Friday afternoon. Nikki was just leaving to go to the
Dirty Shame as he walked in.

“
Hey, Forest,” Nikki said.
“Where’ve ya been? It seems I haven’t seen you in
forever.”

He smiled politely and shrugged. “I’ve
been around, just busy. We’ve got the fire under control and should
have it completely contained by tonight. You should plan on a rowdy
crowd. I imagine the guys will be up for a celebration.”

“
You gonna join in?” she
asked. “You’ve been promising me a dance for over a year now. I’m
beginning to think you’re just leading me on,” Nikki said with a
wink.

Longbow patted Nikki on the shoulder.
“You save me a table, and I’ll save you a dance, how’s
that?”

Nikki giggled, a high pitched sound
that said she was pleased with how she’d cornered him, and then she
looked back at Blanca on her way out the door. “I’ll see you both
there. Bring your dancing shoes.”

Longbow held the door open for a
minute after Nikki left, staring after her like he was making sure
she made it across the street to her other job before closing the
door and coming in.

Blanca stood abruptly from the
reception desk and spoke before he had a chance to open his mouth.
“I’m sorry I was such a jerk the other day. From now on I promise I
will simply thank you for any kindness you show me and not question
the motive behind it.”

“
I was the one being a
jerk,” Longbow said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“
It’s not?” Blanca looked
him up and down.

Longbow unbuttoned his flame retardant
shirt and slowly opened it revealing his chiseled chest, and the
six-inch long wood splinter that was completely embedded in it. If
it weren’t for the blood at the entry site of the wound, Blanca
would’ve thought the abnormal bulging of his left pec muscle was
the result of a previous branding.

She gasped and stepped forward placing
her ungloved hands on either side of the foreign body. “What
happened?”

“
We were creating a
back-burn and a tree fell on me. I guess one of the branches
snapped and I caught a splinter.”

The splinter was the size of a small
ruler. She moved it slightly from side to side. It had penetrated
the skin and grazed the muscle but not gone to the bone. It
wouldn’t need an x-ray.

Longbow didn’t flinch or make a sound.
He stood, waiting for her to finish her assessment and then he
asked, “Are you going to remove it right here, or should I go into
one of the treatment rooms you’ve got back there?”

She snapped to attention and pointed
to the first empty room in the hallway behind her. Blanca could’ve
kicked herself. She’d forgotten herself entirely. She didn’t offer
him a room or a gown, take a history, or even pre-warn him she was
going to examine his injury. What happened to professionalism in
the presence of any challenge? It must’ve gone out the window with
her ability to think. She’d practically stroked the man.

Longbow had worn a flimsy tank top
while he’d mowed their lawns the other day, but this was different.
Standing there watching him undress messed with her mind. She
hadn’t been thinking like a doctor. She actually had visions of him
continuing further and moving on to undressing her, until she’d
seen the wound.

It took her ten minutes to cool the
flush of her skin and slow her breathing enough to enter the
treatment room. She carried a suture tray and dressing in one hand
and a scalpel in the other.

*****

Blanca leaned over Longbow’s bruised
chest preparing to excise the splinter when he hollered, “Ouch!”
making her jump and the seat beneath her roll backwards.

Longbow busted out laughing. “Are you
skittish, Doc? ‘Cause if you are, I can go down to Ogden’s tire
shop around the corner and have one of their grease monkeys remove
it instead.”

She slapped at his shoulder making him
flinch. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt you? Serves you right.
You get infection in this wound and you and I will go the rounds.
Now hold still.”

He lay on the table, no shirt, no
gown. He’d refused the gown, which made it easier to work on him,
but a little voice in her head kept chiding her for being so
susceptible to his toned body and bare skin. She hated to mar the
perfection of his chest any more than had already been done, but
the best way to get wood out was to excise it. Pushing it back out
the entry site was too risky. Wood and bark shards could be left in
the wound, which would eventually cause infection. The splinter had
to be cut out and the area thoroughly flushed with sterile saline
before she could suture it back up. Even then the man would need a
week’s worth of oral antibiotics and a tetanus shot.

She’d offered to give him a shot of
pain meds, but he’d declined. He wouldn’t let her numb the area
with Lidocaine either. So, she was going at it without an assistant
and without meds to deaden his pain. Of course she was a little
skittish. Slicing open someone’s chest with a scalpel was hard
enough to do without worrying about how much pain you were causing
them. Could he really be that stoic, tolerate the pain without
lashing out at her? She lowered her head to start again when the
treatment room door flew open and Dr. Phelps stormed in.

“
May I have a word with
you?” he asked, in a tone that said he wasn’t really asking at
all.

Blanca straightened, replaced her
tools on the cart by her side, and then turned to address the
doctor. “As you can plainly see, I am busy at the moment. If you
need to have a word with me, you can call my secretary and make an
appointment. Now I would appreciate it if you would leave before I
get mean and threaten to slap you with a HIPPA violation for
storming in on me and my patient during a procedure.”

Dr. Phelps sputtered, turned bright
red, and then spun on his heel and left. The front door slammed
shut a moment later.

“
You were a little hard on
him, don’t you think?” Longbow asked.

“
Absolutely not. That man
threatened to have my license taken away, and now he barges in here
and orders me around. I don’t think so. This is my clinic, and I
won’t be pushed around by men like him anymore.”

When she’d finished suturing him up,
Longbow had beads of sweat across his forehead and upper lip, but
he hadn’t budged or let out a single sound throughout the entire
procedure. She bandaged the now T-shaped wound and offered him a
hand up. He tensed upon sitting, but didn’t utter a
sound.

“
I think I should do a
chest x-ray,” Blanca said, eyeing the purple bruise along his
ribcage. “You could’ve broken a rib.

Longbow shook his head and stood.
“It’ll mend.” He looked down at his chest as he put his shirt back
on. “Nice work, Doc. Now that you’ve fixed me up, I’ll be on my
way.”