To Love and Protect (2 page)

Matt seemed almost amused by Shelley's insistence.  "Okay," he said reluctantly, rolling up his sleeve.

Shelley tried not to look too alarmed at the deep cut that was surrounded by both caked and fresh blood. "You won't go to the hospital for this?"

"Nah.  They'll probably make me wait six hours just to put a band-aid on it.  I'd rather go home and get things ready for Carly."

Shelley sighed, but she smiled as well.  "Will you at least let me clean this up?  Then you can look in on Carly for a few minutes."

"Will you let me see her otherwise?"

"Nope."

He grinned.  "You know, that sounds an awful lot like a bribe to me."

"Yup."

"All right," Matt laughed.  "I can see I'm not going to win this one."

He followed Shelley to an empty exam room, then sat down as she pointed to a seat in the corner.  "Boy, oh boy, are you this much of a drill instructor with all your patients?"

Shelley tried to hide her smile.  "No, because animals don't give me a hard time when they know I'm trying to help them."

"Ouch," Matt exclaimed, though Shelley couldn't be sure if it was from the pressure she had just applied to the cut, or her observation on human nature.

"So how long have you been on the force?" she asked as she cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe.

"Almost four months."

"I figured you might be somewhat new."

"Why, is it that obvious?"

Shelley laughed.  "No, I just happen to know a lot of people in the department."

Matt looked up, his brown eyes both kind and strong.  His clean-cut, wholesome good looks   were contrasted by an air of raw masculinity – Shelley could easily picture him collaring a criminal with a quick grasp of the perpetuator in his muscular arms.  He was magnetically attractive in that confident, brawny way that few women could resist, but Shelley also sensed an air of stability and dependability about him.  It was a combination of qualities that pulled her in deeper.

"So have you been in a lot of trouble with the law for forcing people to get medical treatment or something?"

Shelley looked up from the wound, which she had been carefully cleaning.  "Huh?"

"You said you knew a lot of people in the department."

"My husband was a Fairfax officer like yourself."

"Really?  What's his name?"  Matt looked surprised, though she couldn’t be sure if it was from learning that her husband had been a police officer, or that she had a husband in the first place. 

Refusing to meet his eyes as she dabbed some antibiotic cream on the wound, Shelley replied, "Ted Dougan."

"Ted–"  Matt stopped, as though recognizing the name halfway through.  Of course he did, thought Shelley.  Everyone knew of Ted Dougan, the only police officer ever killed in the line of duty in the small Massachusetts town of Fairfax.  Matt looked down at the floor, appearing more uncomfortable than he probably did when his arm was gashed.

Not wanting to add to the awkwardness of the situation, Shelley changed the subject. "Have you had Carly since you joined the force?"

"They placed us together during my second month.  Fairfax never had a K-9 unit before, so they asked us who wanted to go through the training program.  I jumped at the chance."

"How come?"

"It just seemed like something I was cut out for.  I love dogs, and I lost my lab, Maggie, a year before.  She was a part of my life for twelve years, you know?"

"Oh, I know," Shelley replied, easily relating to Matt’s attachment to his dog.

"Plus, there's just something about the challenge of bonding with a dog and really understanding him – or in my case, her – and being a real team."

"She told me the same thing earlier."

Matt started to nod, then stopped.  "She
what
?"  He shook his head and laughed.  "So you're making fun of me now, is that it?"

"No, not at all.  I just wanted to see you smile.  I know it hasn't exactly been a wonderful day for you."

"It didn’t start out that way, but I tell you – knowing Carly's going to be okay is just the best feeling in the world right now."

Shelley looked into Matt's eyes, and then smiled.  She could see the sheer joy in his face, and she knew the relief he must have felt knowing that Carly would survive.  She understood how deep such a feeling could go.  To think you're losing a loved one, only to find out that it wasn't so....  It wasn’t how things had happened for her two and a half years ago, but she could remember as though it were yesterday how desperately she had hung onto that glimmer of hope before it was certain that she had lost Ted. So, yes, she could imagine, and viscerally so, how wonderful it would feel to welcome a loved one back from the brink of death.

"Thanks," Matt said once Shelley put the last strip of adhesive tape over the bandage.

"You're welcome."

He stood up, his solid, five-foot, eleven-inch frame bulking next to Shelley's petite stature.  "Can I see Carly now?"

"Follow me."

"She looks so peaceful," he said as they peered inside the large cage where she lay stretched out on a blanket. 

"The anesthesia hasn't fully worn off yet.  She's probably dreaming about a giant T-bone right now."

Matt laughed.  "Anything but that guy with a gun, I hope."  His smile quickly faded, as though he, too, were wrestling with the demons left behind from such a traumatic situation.

Shelley silently watched Carly, hoping she would recover emotionally as well as physically from the ordeal.  Would she still have the fire in her to chase down a perpetrator if it meant staring down the barrel of a gun?  Shelley couldn't blame her if she didn't.  Her heroic deed had been accomplished, and fortunately she hadn't paid for it with her life.  But it had been close.  Very close.

"I wonder if she'll be the same," Matt said quietly, as though reading Shelley's thoughts.

"She'll still be your pal − that I'm sure of.  As to whether or not she's up to police work, I guess only time will tell."

"Well, she has a home with me either way, that's for sure."

Shelley smiled.  She was liking Matt more and more.  "I'm glad to hear that." 

Dave entered the room, his gaunt, bearded face looking simultaneously frazzled and exhausted.

"How's the cat?" Shelley asked, having been so caught up in Carly's dilemma that she forgot Dave was in the midst of a dire medical situation himself.

"A fractured leg and a broken pelvis.  I operated and reset everything, but it's going to be a tough recovery."

"I'd like to look in on her after," Shelley said.  She caught Matt looking at her out of the corner of her eye, an expression on his face that she could only surmise was one of approval, if not admiration.  For a moment, she felt uncomfortable, as if under the glare of an unwanted spotlight.  "Call me later if you want an update on Carly," she said to him, her face slightly flushed. 

"Will you be here?"

"I'll probably hang around here another hour just to make sure she comes out of the anesthesia okay, then I'm heading home.  But there'll be staff here until eight tonight checking on her, and I'll probably come back around ten-thirty just to make sure our two surgery patients here are comfortable and doing well."

"You might say she's dedicated," Dave said, managing a weary smile.

Matt grinned. "I noticed."

Shelley fought the urge to cringe.  She hated being praised when all she was doing was her job.

"Can I leave my number with you?" Matt asked.

Shelley's heart surged.  "Your number?"  Now that was an unusual reaction, she thought as she waited for her pulse to even out.

"So you can call me when you come by at ten-thirty to check on Carly."

"Oh – sure.  Here," she said, handing him a piece of scrap paper and a pen from the counter.

"Call anytime, as late as you want," he said as he wrote down his number.

"Okay.  I'll probably call you right from here when I check on her tonight."

"Thanks again, Dr. Dougan."

"Shelley. And I'm just glad I could help."

Her eyes met his, but this time, she didn't look away.  Not at first, at least.  But as she glanced over at his bandaged arm and then at his uniform shirt, a sinking feeling pulled her stomach down to the floor.  A police officer, just like Ted.  She had lost the love of her life once.  She couldn’t let the same thing happen twice.  Not even tempt the notion, for that matter.

TWO

The ten-minute drive into the clinic that morning turned into a twenty-minute excursion back home.  No doubt the fact that she ignored every speed limit earlier had something to do with this, but as far as Shelley was concerned, an emergency was an emergency.  If that meant driving 60 miles per hour – carefully – on a 35-miles-per-hour country road, then that's what she would do.  It didn't hurt that her red pickup truck was well known by the Fairfax police.  If one of the officers saw a streak of red barreling down the road, he or she usually assumed it was Shelley responding to an emergency.  Besides, no one wanted to pull over the widow Dougan for a ticket.  She had been through enough, they all said.

But there was also another reason for Shelley's lingering ride home this afternoon.  It was a beautiful Indian summer day, and the kind that made New England seem like the only place to be.  The leaves were just beginning to change on the trees, and the road was lined with a blur of oranges, yellows and reds.  Even the air smelled fresher than ever, like a crisp, pine-filled perfume.  Fairfax was indeed "small town," with its quaint shops and one post office in the center, surrounded by well-kept Victorian-style homes.  But the town quickly expanded beyond this center to include a fair number of homes separated by sprawling acreage and country lanes.  So Fairfax
did
have people living amongst the deer and coyotes and snapping turtles, but no one would mistake the town for a Boston suburb, that was for certain.  Shelley pulled into her long, cobblestone driveway, coming to a stop in front of her house.

She turned off the engine and remained seated in the truck.  It had been an emotional morning for her on many levels.  There was always the surge of adrenaline mixed with incredible focus that came into play when she was responding to an emergency.   But it was more than that.  There was also an unsettling sensation of reliving the events of two and a half years ago.  A Fairfax police officer caught up in gunfire during an armed robbery.  Part of the shock of Ted's death had been the unexpected nature of the crime.  Fairfax wasn't a town that was host to most modern-day crime.  There were no drive-by shootings, no drug deals gone bad, no random homicides.  The typical police emergency was responding to a traffic mishap or a brawl at one of the local bars, and maybe the occasional cat stuck in a tree.  But just as in other small American towns in recent years, Fairfax was apparently not immune to the seedy underside of crime at unexpected moments.  Two teenagers had decided to rob a liquor store, backed up with enough gunfire to ambush an entire police unit, never mind the single police officer responding to the store alarm.

Shelley closed her eyes, blocking out the rest of the details.  The insanity of it all, the absurdity that a good man could be killed in an instant by one pull of a gun trigger.

"Hi, Shelley," a voice said, startling her.

"Marge!" she exclaimed as her neighbor peered in the truck window. "You scared me."