The Pull Of The Moon. Darlene Graham
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pants...” Danni hesitated and reframed the question. “Uh, you’re sure your feet and legs are okay?”
“Yeah, everything feels fine.” He smiled at her with gorgeous, perfect white teeth and she noticed that he did, in fact, have deep dimples like Tom Selleck’s. But there was something else familiar about him. Danni couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Well, then—” she snatched up the chart, pushed her glasses up on her nose, clicked her pen “—all we need to do is add some strong antibiotics to your IV. Is your pain medicine still working okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks again for stitching me up, Doctor. Especially considering that you’re exhausted and all, I really appreciate it.” He spoke in a controlled monotone, but the look in his eyes was so sincere, so warm that Danni thought she’d melt.
“No problem.” She resumed writing on the chart.
He turned to Carol. “Nurse, will they be taking me upstairs in a wheelchair?”
“I expect so,” she answered.
“Well, then, would it be too much trouble to wheel me by to see the twins on the way?”
Danni turned her head, studied his handsome profile. He’d endured over twenty stitches, had enough drugs in him to knock out a horse, and had to be tired enough to die, but all the man could think about were those twins. Matthew Creed was an amazing man.
UPSTAIRS IN LABOR AND Delivery, Dr. Stone was pacing like a wiry little fox sniffing for prey.
“Sorry to disturb your nap, Dr. Goodlove,” he said as soon as Danni and Carol stepped off the elevator.
“She wasn’t taking a nap—” Carol, who could make two of Stone, jumped in to defend her boss “—she was stitching up a patient.”
Stone’s nostrils flared, his tufted reddish-gray eyebrows puckered, and his pointy little teeth flashed briefly as if he might bite Carol. But then he turned to Danni, and peered up over his glasses at her. “Dr. Bryant told me you had gone to sleep.”
Danni folded her arms across her chest and turned a composed smile on Stone. “Now, why would I want to sleep through all this fun?”
Stone didn’t even bother to smile at the quip. “We have several more drop-ins in active labor. I’ll take them. Your C-section is waiting in Delivery One.”
Danni didn’t ask—although she’d love to have known—what the mighty Dr. Bryant was doing with his precious time.
“MAN! I HOPE THAT’S the last one,” Carol mumbled through her mask after Danni had delivered another baby safely, verified the sponge count and started the routine stitching.
“Yep,” Danni said while she tied off a stitch. “It’s that damn moon, folks.” She raised her voice. “Brings in the pregnant ladies like a truckload of pumpkins.”
The weary team chuckled in agreement from behind their masks.
But Carol merely inflated hers with a sigh. Danni glanced into her friend’s bloodshot eyes. “After this,” she said in a low voice, “you’re going home.”
“And what about you, Doc? You going home?” Carol reached across for more suture, a flip of her wrist conveying that she’d stay as long as Danni did. After three years of working side by side, Danni and Carol read each other’s movements like Morse code.
Danni said nothing. Only three years in private practice and already it was all getting to her. Carol’s aggressive protectiveness. The full moon. Babies.
Babies.
Babies.
Danni’s hands shook a little as she opened a palm for the subcuticular suture. Carol shot her a sharp, appraising look before she slapped the hemostat down on her glove.
Danni pursed her lips behind her mask. Damn Carol and the way she saw through everything, through everyone. Damn her with her big, brown, understanding eyes. Why were nurses always so ridiculously kind and well-adjusted?
Danni finished the suturing, stripped off her gloves and announced, “I’m taking a snore. Don’t wake me until the next one’s ears are out.”
She heard Carol order someone else to dress the incision, and sensed her friend right on her heels as she hurried to the doctors’ locker room.
The door hadn’t even swung back before Carol banged it open again. Danni was just lowering herself into the recliner where the doctors slept fitfully while they monitored troubled cases in the wee hours.
“What is eating you?” Carol asked calmly as she reached up and took a blanket from the top of the lockers. “I mean, besides the fact that the whole month of August has been chaos, and now the moon is full to boot—” she shook the blanket out “—and it’s three o’clock in the morning and you’ve done four deliveries and three emergency C-sections in the last twelve hours—” she spread the blanket out over Danni “—not to mention stitching up Mr. Universe downstairs.”
Danni reached up, pulled off her surgical cap and tugged the tourniquet from her tangled hair.
“I mean, I’ve never seen you like this. What the hell was that laughing business?”
Danni winced, remembering how she’d acted in front of the firefighter. “Me?” she countered. “What was that stuff you were pulling?”
“Huh?” Carol’s expression was all innocence.
“You know what I mean.” Danni adopted a mimicking tone. “You are being stitched up by the best of the best.”
“Hey. I was only trying to help. The guy was cute. And I think he liked you. Somebody’s gotta help you meet men.” She pulled her own cap off and ran her fingers through her thick, graying curls as she studied Danni’s face. “What on God’s green earth is eating you?”
“Nothing.” Danni twitched around under the blanket for a second, then sighed. “Oh, all right, it’s just that... Oh, I don’t know.” But she did know, and trying to hold it back gave rise to a spurt of sudden, surprising tears. For heavens sake, don’t bawl now, she commanded herself. Not with Stone coming back any second. He’ll assume you can’t handle the pressure.
“You do know,” Carol said flatly. She dragged a plastic chair up beside the recliner. “Out with it.”
“No, I don’t know, exactly. I mean, I’ve got everything I ever wanted. A thriving practice, a gorgeous house, my horse and my dogs...” Then why the tears? she wondered without Carol having to ask.
Carol extended a tissue. Danni dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “I never cry,” she said. “But tonight, it seems like every little thing brings tears to my eyes. I almost cried when I first saw that fireman in the E.R”
Carol shook her fingers as if they’d been burned. “Me too, honey.”
“No! I mean when I found out he’d been a rescuer at the bombing.”
Carol grew solemn. “He was?”
Danni nodded. “But all kinds of other things have been getting to me, too. I’m just not myself. That inappropriate laughter...” Danni twisted the tissue. “It sounds weird, but I honestly think what’s really bugging me is all this damned...fecundity.”
Carol’s eyebrows shot up. “Fecundity?” she repeated.
“Yes, fecundity,” Danni sniffed. “I’ve got everything I ever dreamed of while I was struggling through med school and that hellish residency. The trouble is, I guess I didn’t dream hard enough. The trouble is... ” Danni’s eyes filled with tears again as she stared at the acoustical tile ceiling. What was the matter with her?
But Carol Hollis was a trusted friend, and when Danni felt Carol’s warm, plump palm close over her