Icebound (7 page)

Tom set himself against her and pressed slowly inside. “Let’s get to it then.”

Pleasure rippled through her. “Thank God.”

The phone was ringing.

Emilie tried to lift her arm to answer it, but couldn’t budge an inch. She put her free hand out to remove the obstruction and ran into a hot muscled wall.

Memory flooded in, and she relived the previous hours. Tom touching, teasing and kissing her until she was drunk on his taste, his scent.

The searing heat as they came together.

Achieving the most powerful climax of her life.

The phone kept ringing.

Emilie carefully pulled her arm out from underneath him and picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she whispered.

“This is your wake-up call, Doctor. The guys need their IV bags changed.”

Sitting up, she glanced at the alarm clock. 10:10 a.m. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute.”

She sneaked out of bed. Tom never moved. She searched through the tangle of clothes on the floor for her pants and sweater, and then pulled them on and stumbled out without bothering with socks.

She was a little more awake by the time she arrived at the clinic, and hung new bags of saline for each of her three patients. She took their vitals and was more than satisfied with normal results, then returned to her room.

She opened the door, anticipating the sinful pleasure of cuddling with a warm and yummy-smelling Tom.

Her bed was empty.

His clothes were gone.

For a moment she simply stared at the rumpled blankets and bare floor. Perhaps an emergency had called him away? Or maybe two hours of sleep was enough for him. It certainly wasn’t enough for her. That or he’d had an attack of morning-after doubts.

She frowned. Their lovemaking had been amazing and overwhelming, and it…she…deserved more than a cold, empty bed to return to. Damn it, he’d been just as needy, just as desperate for the comfort they could give each other.

She walked to the dresser and picked up her wedding ring. The bottom of her stomach sank into the ice beneath the station. She didn’t have affairs, she had relationships. But to start one with a man who would always do what needed doing despite the danger, had she made a mistake? She glanced at the bed, then lay down, not bothering to take her clothes off again. It was too much to try to figure out now while she was sleep-deprived. She’d get a couple more hours of sleep then track Tom down.

At noon Emilie found him in the cafeteria sitting at a coffee cup-littered table with Tyler, Bob and another guy whose name she couldn’t remember.

“How goes the battle?” she asked, putting what she hoped was a smile on her face.

“We’ve been discussing what happened to Stan,” Tom said, serious. In front of him lay a paper napkin covered in barely legible hieroglyphics. “We’re going over all the things that had to go wrong for him to get lost outside.”

“Good thinking,” she said with a brisk nod. “Maybe we can prevent another occurrence like this.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“One or two, but I’m not sure they’re not already in use.”

He took a sip from his cup, his gaze on his writing-scrawled napkin. “I’ll come by later so we can discuss it.”

Tyler ducked his head and coughed. None of the other men would meet her eyes.

She switched her gaze to Tom, who still wasn’t looking at her, and a chill ran through her body. They all knew. Every man at that table knew she and Tom had slept together.

“Now would be better,” she said, not bothering to hide the edge in her voice. “I need to give you a report on my patients. Besides, if you leave it too long, you’ll probably find another excuse to avoid me.” She sent him a cold smile then turned on her heel and walked out.

Bozo.

Jerk.

Man
.

Emilie stomped down the hall toward the clinic. Of all the infantile things to do, telling his friends of his conquest.

She stopped cold in the middle of the hallway.

Conquest?
Was that how she thought of it? No, she’d needed him that morning and unless she read him completely wrong, he’d needed her just as much. So, what happened? Had he woken up and realized starting a relationship with the station doctor wasn’t a good idea?

Did she want a relationship?

Her breath caught as the question crossed her mind and lingered, echoing for some time, but found no answer.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.
She couldn’t stand around woolgathering all day.

She entered the clinic, grabbed her patient charts and performed another set of vitals on all three men. All three showed improvement. In fact, Stan was doing so well he offered to give her a hand and a mouth and anything else she might want, to do anything she might want.

All three guys laughed as she turned him down.

Stan raised a bandaged hand. “Hey, Tom.”

Emilie turned.

Tom strode forward, a grin creasing his face. “It’s good to see you awake and harassing the medical staff.” He patted Stan on the shoulder then winked at her.

Her smiled faded and she shook her head. Was he pretending this morning never happened? “Stan is an exemplary patient. I wish they were all so cooperative.” She arched a brow at Wally, who rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. “Much.”

“That’s part of the problem, Wally. You need to do your share. Recovery is as much up to the patient as the doctor.”

“Maybe I like the view here,” he said with a glance toward Tom.

“I wouldn’t count on the view staying the same for long,” Tom told him. “It can get stormy awfully fast.”

Emilie snorted, grabbed a chart and took it to her desk across the room.

Tom leaned forward to tell the other guys in a loud whisper, “Definitely thunderclouds heading this way.”

They chuckled.

She rolled her eyes.

The laughter was gone a moment later when he said to Stan, “You know, for a while there, I wasn’t sure we were going to find you. You had me pretty worried.”

“Me too.”

Tom tilted his head to one side. “Has your memory come back?”

“Parts of it. Not all.”

“Any info is better than none.”

Stan nodded. “It was going pretty well at first. We found a couple of broken cables and fixed those, but power still wasn’t restored to the entire station, so we kept looking.”

“How long had you been out by that point?”

Emilie grabbed Stan’s chart and started writing down everything he said. They needed to know the sequence of events for the incident and medical reports. She walked over to stand on the other side of Stan’s gurney. Tom nodded at her, but didn’t interrupt Stan’s account.

“About twenty minutes, give or take a few. My fingers had started to hurt by that time, but I ignored them. We had a job to do and not a lot of time to do it.”

“Do you remember what happened next?” Tom asked.

“Tyler and Bob found another broken cable and were working on it when I thought I saw something loose flying around. I went to investigate and found another one. I fixed it, but by the time I was done, the wind had whipped up the snow and I couldn’t see so well. I had a headache and was breathing pretty heavy. My legs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each.” He shook his head. “Things get confused after that.”

“Cerebral edema,” Emilie said. “Probably due to the extreme physical stress you were under out there.” She turned to Tom, all business. “How long was he outside?”

“Eighty minutes total.”

Way too long. “Perhaps we need to reevaluate our safety procedures.”

Tom nodded. “Good idea.”

Well, at least on this topic they agreed.

She gave Stan a small smile. “Let’s have another look at that hand.”

He held out his left hand and she carefully removed the bandages. His pinkie and ring finger were black, the others varying shades of purple. “I can’t feel the black ones anymore.”

Emilie didn’t reply as she inspected them, then gave Tom an opportunity to look at them also.

“I’m going to lose them, aren’t I?” Stan asked.

“Probably. I’ll do some nerve tests later today, but too long of a delay will only serve to invite infection.”

“That’s the last thing I need. When do you want to do it?”

Emilie looked at Tom.

“You’re the boss,” he said. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

She turned back to Stan. “In a couple of days, then. In the meantime I’ll administer antibiotics through your IV.” She glanced at Wally and Jack, listening in. “Wally should be able to go back to work day after tomorrow. Jack is going to need a week of recovery time at least.”

“I’ll go stark-raving bonkers in here with nothing to do for a week,” Jack said through his oxygen mask.

“I’ve got some paperwork you can do,” Tom said. “It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“Thanks.”

Tom’s grin was positively evil. “Don’t thank me until you’ve seen it.”

“Tom,” she said. “I’d like some time to discuss Stan’s surgery with you, go over some of the finer points of the procedure.”

“Sure.” He gave his guys one last nod and followed Emilie to her desk. “You said two days. What time?”

“How about 8:00 a.m.? It’ll take a few hours.”

“That’ll be no problem.”

“Have you ever done anything like this before?”

“An amputation?” He shook his head. “Not on purpose.”

She frowned. “You’ve done one by accident?”

“I witnessed one,” he corrected. “About five years ago. I was working in Saudi Arabia at an oil field. There was an explosion and the guy next to me lost his hand. One second we were working on a valve, the next second, we were lying ten feet away, flat on our backs and Jess was missing his right hand. He was screaming, blood was pouring out the stump and my ears were ringing. I put a tourniquet near the end of his arm and half-dragged, half-carried him to safety.”

“Were you injured?”

“Nothing major, just a few burns on my face and arms, like Wally got. A steam valve blew. Jess was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her frown dissolved. “You saved his life.”

“He would have done the same for me.”

She stared at him, her expression softening. “The surgery won’t be so exciting. Removing the dead tissue won’t take long, but I like to take my time making sure everything is neat and tidy before I finish. Can you set aside the morning?”

“No problem.”

“Good. I’ll convert the exam room into an OR the evening before the surgery.” She bit her lip and looked down at the floor for a second. Was he going to pretend nothing had happened between them? Pretend other people didn’t know about it?

“Excellent.” He glanced at his watch then headed for the door. “If you need help, call me.”

He was leaving? “Tom, wait.” She took several steps after him. “I’m not finished.” She needed to talk to him, to understand what had happened, why he’d told the others they’d been together.

“It’ll have to keep.”

Keep? She stared at the swinging doors to the clinic. Was that any way to treat the station doctor—just walk out on her while she was talking? What the hell was wrong with him?

Emilie shook her head and grabbed her digital camera off her desk. “Stan, I want to take some pictures of your hand and send them to the surgeon back in the States, so I can consult with him.”

He held his arm up. “Sure. This guy a plastic surgeon?”

“Yeah. He specializes in amputations.”

“Cool.”

She raised a brow at the comment and Stan started to laugh.

“I meant groovy.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“You okay, Doc?” he asked quietly as she took pictures of his hand from several angles.

His concern was a balm on her hurt feelings. “I’m tired. And I’m still adjusting to this place.”

He patted her on the hand. “You’re doing great. Tom told me if it weren’t for you I might not have made it.”

“Actually, Tom never left your side once until you woke up. He deserves most of the credit.”

“That’s not how he put it.”

She shrugged and rewrapped his hand in fresh bandages. “I’m going to email these to the surgeon. Try to get some sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Emilie sat down at her desk and uploaded the pictures from the camera. They were good photos, fully showing the extent of the frostbite damage to Stan’s fingers. Maybe she should talk to Tom about writing Stan’s case up for a medical journal.

She sighed. Tom was a puzzle she couldn’t put down. A contradiction. A man who obviously cared deeply for those under his protection, yet vowed to never get married or have a family.

She could picture him coaching Little League baseball or soccer.

But he’d have to come in out of the cold first, and that didn’t seem likely.

She blinked her daydreams away and emailed Stan’s photos attached to a message for the surgeon.

She was just finishing up when a male voice said, “I need a little first aid.”

“Who got hurt?” She glanced up, then did a double-take. Tom stood in front of her with a large piece of wood stuck in his arm. Both ends of the wood protruded from his biceps, wrapped in bloody gauze. “What happened?” she asked as she jumped to her feet and ran around her desk.

“Flying object in the power house.”

“You could have been killed,” she said, examining the wound from several angles. “Sit, sit,” she ordered as she guided him into her exam room and shut the door. She pulled on a pair of gloves, brought over a high tray table and had him rest his arm on it, then carefully took the bandage off.

Blood oozed out to pool on the metal tabletop. The wound was large and ragged, but the piece of wood appeared to have pierced the muscle cleanly.

“You’re going to need stitches.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

He sounded so calm, when he had to be in pain.

“I’ll give you a shot of Demerol.”

His face hardened. “No thanks.”

“But—”

“No drugs,” he said interrupting her.

She stared at him and saw something wary, something scared.

“What about codeine?”

He watched her hands as she inspected the wound as if they were mice and he a hawk. “Only if necessary.”

“Would you tell me if you needed it?”

He lifted his head and met her gaze with eyes that challenged her to insist. She stared back unflinching.