14. Ruth
Chapter fourteen
Ruth
Ruth
M y blood had become the molten core of the earth. It raged through my veins, scalding the tissue and burning away my organs from the inside out. I vaguely remembered calling in sick to work, and I’d managed to grab a glass of water from the kitchen, but after that, I’d found myself welded to the couch. And then the inferno had cooled with an icy blast, like the lava in my veins had turned into a glacial fjord, and I started shivering uncontrollably. I wanted to find a blanket, but I couldn’t put weight on my knee after I’d slammed it into the door.
And really, the only thing worse than the fever racking my body in torturous waves was the pulsing pain along my leg. I needed to find a hospital. I knew that. But between the fever and the pain, I couldn’t find the will to overcome my fears. With bleary eyes, I risked a look down to my knee. It had swollen more overnight, and my failed attempt to dig out the wooden sliver the night before had only inflamed it and caused the agony to double. I rolled my face into the small throw pillow on my couch. Not good. It had to subside eventually, right?
Could I die from a splinter? That didn’t seem possible. I hadn’t ever heard of such a thing—death by splinter. Nothing could be more ridiculous than that, and I reasoned that I was simply being dramatic because I had a fever, and the pain wasn’t abating. Unless there was something I was missing. Not the right kind of doctor , I thought despairingly. I tried not to think about the fact that I was the kind of doctor Vaughn needed. I tried to push away the anger and hurt from his threats, but they knotted around inside of me, festering just as badly as the wood in my knee.
I let myself fall back into a fitful sleep, but it wasn’t very restful between the sweating, burning fever that faded away into teeth-chattering chills. I thought distantly that a bath would be nice, but I wasn’t sure I could make it to the bathroom. So, instead, I spiraled into dreams with locked doors and silverpoint pens that scratched aching patterns all over my leg until it bled. I dreamed of liquid silver mixing with my blood in a contrasting swirl, draining out of me and onto a medieval stone floor until it reached the feet of laughing giants.
One of the giants made a grumbling sound, muffled even in my dreams, and he reached down to grab my arm in a vice grip. Vaughn? No! Get off me !
I struggled, and the giant pressed his hand to my face. Then, he dipped his massive fingers into his gold goblet to pull out an ice cube. He pressed it to my arm, and I gasped so loudly, it wrenched me from the dream.
I opened my eyes. My blurry living room took shape slowly, and the swinging, faded image of my ceiling fan converged in dizzying sweeps before settling into a solid picture. A soft, hydraulic kind of sound puffed in the quiet room, taking on a rapid rhythm, and it was only then that I realized each clenching sound was followed by an increasing tightness around my arm.
I looked down and saw Callum. I almost passed out. “What?” I croaked.
He was kneeling on one knee next to me, one elbow resting on the brown couch cushion and his hands on my right arm that lay out flat at my side. Somehow, I’d gotten turned from my side to my back, and he had a blood pressure cuff around my arm. His stethoscope had been pressed to the inside of my elbow, and as his shadowed, green eyes found mine, his lips counted soundlessly. He dropped his gaze back to my arm, still counting as he took my blood pressure.
“Cal?” I scratched out, trying to sit up. Was I dreaming? What was he doing here?
His watch beeped, and with practiced ease, he lowered the earbuds from the stethoscope and looped it around his neck. He released the pressure on the cuff. Feeling returned to my fingers in a prickly rush. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” he said with a sarcastic pull of his lips. He unlatched the Velcro from the cuff, freeing my upper arm. “If you’re conscious, I have to ask for your consent to treat you. That should go over well.”
I blinked, thoroughly confused. “Is this real?”
“Unfortunately, Dr. Coldwell,” he said, and his expression took on a hard glint, “it is. Believe me, I wish it wasn’t.” Cal had on a light gray dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his dark bronze hair looked a little more disheveled than usual. Although that faded buzz along the bottom kept it neat, the longer top had been swept away from his forehead like he’d been running his hands through it.
If he was here, then… “Gemma?” I asked. Why did my voice sound like radio static?
“Gemma asked me to check on you, yes.” Cal dropped the blood pressure cuff into a leather bag on the floor next to his knee. “Do I have your consent to treat you, Ruth?”
“Uh,” I tried to force my brain to work again. It was like pedaling a bike with the chain off the gears. Gemma had asked Cal to look in on me, which meant she’d told him about the spare key I kept out back. And that meant he was looking at me… right now… in my long nightshirt with no bra. I sucked in a breath. “No. Oh my God.” I put a hand to my scalding forehead. “Oh no.”
Cal’s handsome features fell in irritation. “Is this because you don’t want to be treated or because it’s me doing the treating?”
“Both?” I tried to sit up, but his hands held me back with gentle pressure.
“Ordinarily, I’d say that coercive consent is a no-go, but your fever is out of control, Ruth. Your knee is badly infected, and if you don’t get it treated—by me or someone else—then you’re running the risk of that infection entering your bloodstream. Do you know what that is?”
“No.” My voice sounded small, strained. I couldn’t stop looking at him, at the intensity in his expression and the fascinating way his neck moved when he tightened his jaw in anger.
“It’s called sepsis. You could die,” he added slowly. His dark brown eyebrows tilted up with concern. “Let me help you, Shortstop. Please?”
I lowered my hand, letting my head fall back against the pillow. I held those bright green eyes as they skipped over my face in concern, and I swallowed hard. My fever felt unbearably hot and achy, and I would have gleefully sawed my own leg off if it would have made the pain stop. Yes, my embarrassment might actually kill me after Cal fixed my infection, but at the moment, it took a back seat to the agony my body was in. Sighing, I closed my eyes. “Alright.”
Cal reached behind him and brought an enormous, black utility bag over to sit next to his smaller leather satchel. “Okay, give me the quick and dirty of your medical history. Anything of note from your parents?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I mumbled, lifting my eyes to the ceiling and wanting to just melt into a puddle of misery. Why did I have to see him again like this? It wasn’t fair. And he was in my house. Wait, I have dishes in the sink. Shit, my underwear is on the bathroom floor !
“I relate,” he said as he unzipped the bag. “Any medical conditions? Medications you take?”
“No,” I eked out. This has to be a nightmare. Did I remember to take out the trash? I sniffed the air. It did smell a little stale. Fuck me.
“Allergies?” Cal pulled a bunch of plastic and paper packages out of the bag.
“No.” I forced myself to rise onto my elbow. “Wait, Cal, what are you doing? Can’t I just take some Tylenol and get you to pull the stupid splinter out?”
Cal paused, and his eyes bounced to the wound on my knee, which lay exposed below the hem of my nightshirt. “It’s a splinter?”
“Yeah, from the boardwalk.”
He looked silently horrified. “You… got that because of me ?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I clarified. “It wasn’t a big deal until like… a few days ago maybe.”
“You’ve had this since Friday ?” he asked. He looked mutinous. “It’s Wednesday.”
“And tomorrow is Thursday,” I agreed.
“Ruth.” Cal tossed packets of supplies onto the couch between my hip and the back of the couch. He’d gone from sympathetic and worried to flat-out furious. “Even if you didn’t want to see me specifically, how could you walk around with a wound like that for days?”
“Not very well,” I admitted with a bad attempt at humor.
He glared. “If it’s a sliver, then yes, I need to get it out. First, we need to address the infection before it goes septic.”
I spied the IV bag in his hand and covered my eyes again. “This is humiliating.”
“Good,” he replied heartlessly. “Serves you right for ignoring medical care. I told you my practice makes house calls. Even if you don’t like doctors’ offices—”
“I should have, what?” I snapped, taking my hand away from my eyes to scowl at him. “I should have called the doctor I’d fully humiliated myself in front of?”
Cal didn’t stop working, ripping open packages and placing them in a neat little row along the edge of the couch. But he gave me a gentle glance. “You didn’t embarrass yourself. I don’t know why you were scared, but I understood it. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Ruth. Your boundaries are yours to make.”
“It wasn’t a boundary,” I muttered, and despite my fever, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “It was just a… weird hiccup. I don’t know. But I did… like it. Our date.”
“I see,” he said slowly, his brows furrowing a little as he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his bag. He blinked rapidly like he was banishing a thought, and pulling in a breath, he slipped the gloves on. “I did wash my hands,” he offered with a half-smile, “when I first found you.”
“Oh good,” I croaked. “You saw my dishes then.”
“Underwear,” he grinned crookedly. “I used your bathroom.”
“Fuck me,” I groaned .
Cal quirked a brow. “Not in my usual list of services.”
“On second thought, maybe you should let me die.”
Cal puffed out a laugh, and laying my arm out again, he wrapped a rubber tourniquet just above my elbow. With the blue vein on the inside of my arm glowing through my pale skin, he swabbed the area with disinfectant. “After you just told me you enjoyed our date, now you want me to let you die? I don’t think so.” He tossed the swab aside and palpated the vein with his black-gloved fingers. His eyes seemed focused on my vein, but he murmured, “And what about our kiss?”
I started, but he kept my arm still. “Oh, uh,” I swallowed hard. “Is this really a good time?”
“What, stabbings aren’t romantic?” he asked, holding up the IV set in its package. I let out a high-pitched sound of uncertainty. Cal’s face broke into a grin, and he peeled the backing off the package. “It’s probably better if you don’t answer that. I’m not sure my ego can take it.” He tore off the rubber tourniquet, and with gentle fingers, he aligned the IV needle with my vein. “Fast pinch.”
I screwed my eyes shut, but he was quick, and in a rapid succession of practiced movements, he had the IV catheter inserted, the needle discarded in a plastic bin at his side, and the tubing taped to my arm. I watched him fiddle with the tubing and a portable, retracting IV stand that he set up a little higher than the couch. He hung a saline bag from it, his face pinched with concentration.
“I liked it,” I said suddenly.
Cal paused, lowering his hands from the bag. His gaze fused to mine. “Did you?” he asked softly.
I swallowed hard. Nodding, I whispered, “I did.”
Cal removed his gloves, bending to one knee beside me again. He tossed the gloves into the plastic receptacle and leaned his arm on his bent knee. “And why are you telling me that now?”
I threaded my bottom lip through my teeth. “I’m just worried about your ego.”
He fought a smile. “Okay. I’ll worry about your body, and you worry about my ego. Sounds like a fair trade.”
“You’re an excellent doctor,” I told him primly. “Amazing. I’d be dead without you.”
“Why is that working?” he murmured, letting the smile escape his tightened lips. He reached up and pushed a stray curl away from my cheek. “Just sit tight for a minute while I get you set up with some broad-spectrum antibiotics.” He grimaced and added, “And on that note, I’ll need to poke you again. Sorry. I want to get CRP and Cbr tests to make sure we get you the right antibiotics to fight the infection.”
“I take it back,” I said with fake solemnity. “You are the worst doctor.”
Cal-the-Worst-Doctor actually ended up being anything but. He found me a blanket from my messy bedroom, but I was so grateful to feel a little more comfortable that I didn’t think too hard about what he’d seen. He drew blood samples in tubes topped with purple and red caps, and then he added antibiotics to my IV line. More and more, my living room started to look like a pseudo-hospital setup with the IV bag on its stand, and then Cal dragged over my small plastic table from the dining area. He laid out disposable blue medical sheets over the surface and arranged things from his bag on it so they weren’t sitting on the carpet.
My heart clenched with discomfort at the tang of disinfectant in the air and the sight of all that blue and silver, but the fact that it was in my living room did take the edge off. By the time half my IV bag had emptied, Cal had brought over a dining room chair to sit between the couch and the table. He’d also washed his hands again, and with a sigh, he gave me a resigned look. “Okay, Shortstop. Let’s fix your knee.”
“You don’t look very happy about it,” I observed, reclining on the couch and feeling weirdly lightheaded from the painkillers he’d added to the IV line. “Should I be worried?”
“I’d much rather do this in the center,” he admitted with a squint of one eye. “But I think your answer to that is probably ‘no.’”
“Very smart, Doctor.”
Sighing again, he stood from the chair, and moving it further down the length of the couch, he lifted a tray with supplies from the dining room table and placed it on the seat. Then he gently slid his arm under my legs, and I did my best to raise them up for him while he sat on the couch. He placed my knees on his lap and gave me an amused glance. “This is not considered best practice. Just so you know.”
I saluted him. “I won’t tell.”
He angled his body toward me, making it easier to reach the instruments on the chair. My hands trembled as I realized he was actually going to touch that inflamed area, and it was likely going to hurt like a son of a bitch. Cal pulled on another pair of black gloves, and his attention fixed on my knee as his fingers tenderly probed the area. Sharp pain cracked up my thigh and down to my toes.
I sucked in a breath, tensing. Cal glanced up briefly before returning to the infection. “This is gnarly. What did you do to it?”
“I uh,” I swallowed convulsively, pressing my hands into the couch to support my weight like that might take some of the pressure off my wound. “I might have… poked it. With tweezers, last night.”
Cal’s green eyes hooded with annoyance. “Seriously?”
“I was trying to fix it,” I said breathlessly.
He reached over and grabbed a green medical sheet. With a snap, he unfolded it, and then with the utmost care, he shimmied it under my knee and over his lap. “Well, I’ll do what I can here. But if I can’t get it all out, you’re going to the hospital. Deal?”
“Yeah,” I said thinly. My stomach was roiling around like a tempestuous sea, and I worried that I’d add to my ignominy by barfing all over him.
Cal gave me another look. “You okay? I haven’t actually done anything yet.”
“I get,” I swallowed again. “ I get pukey.”
Understanding lit his features. “Lie back, Ruth. Close your eyes and relax.” He pointed to the packages and instruments on the green sheet at his side. “Look, I’ll walk you through exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you a local anesthetic—that’s the only part that should hurt. It might pinch and burn, especially with how tender it is, but after that, it shouldn’t hurt. If it hurts after that, you tell me right away. Okay?”
I nodded, trying to uncoil my tense muscles. I couldn’t make myself sit back and look away. I gave him a worried look. “Then what?”
“Then I’m going to open up this site where the splinter entered your knee initially.” He pointed to where my knee still leaked a thin stream of blood and fluid. “If I can see it, I’ll pull it out. If not,” he shrugged, catching my gaze. “We have to go in. Ideally, I’d have an ultrasound of what we’re working with. And Ruth, honestly, even if I get this out, we need to get one done to make sure there aren’t any foreign bodies left in there. But we’ll see how it goes.”
“But for now?” I prompted, my heart thudding in my chest.
He smoothed his knuckles along the shin of my uninjured left leg. “For now, let’s get it out. It’s a good first step either way.”
“Okay,” I breathed out. I coaxed my body to lie back against the pillows, letting my head relax and my eyes close. “I trust you.”
“God only knows why,” he said under his breath with some amusement .
“You’re my husband, aren’t you?” I joked with a grin.
His laugh sounded softly through the quiet living room. “If I was your husband, I’d be absolutely furious with you for this. So, count yourself lucky I’m not.”
I picked up my head with a shrewd eye squint. “And what would you do, exactly?”
Cal lifted his gaze to mine, and in those shadowed, emerald depths, I saw a flash of hardness. “Should I show you later?”
My mouth went dry. I ran my tongue along the inside of my lip, and my breathing hitched as a sudden wave of warmth spiraled at my core. Something in his expression hinted at shadowed, forbidden things. Things I wanted to shed light on. “Um.”
His features softened into a smile, and he returned his attention to my knee. He opened a packet with a glistening, orange-tipped swab. “Lie back Dr. Coldwell. You have my ego, remember?”
“And you have my body,” I said distantly, resting my head against the pillows again.
His voice shimmered with mirth. “Exactly.”