As soon as the door closed, things felt almost eerily quiet. The only sounds for a full minute were the soft beeps indicating that the pressurization sequence was working. When it finally finished, a computerized voice announced, “Pressurization complete. Air is safe for oxygen-breathing life forms.”
With a sigh, Kromin stripped off his helmet and looked around. The inside of the airlock was a mess. A thick layer of red dust from the outside planet covered the floor, as did piles of small rocks that had been blown in. It had been crazy to come out here and walk in like this. He and Anya were lucky to be alive. One more big gust of wind out there and they probably wouldn’t have made it.
Anya reached up to pull her helmet off, and Kromin felt a shiver of delight as he saw her curly red hair bouncing loose from the helmet prison it had been in. The curls were kinky right now, flattened in weird places or extra curly in others, thanks to the strange pressure they’d been under in the survival suit. Kromin found the effect strangely sexy, and he had to fight the urge to reach up and brush some of those curls back from Anya’s face. He pushed away the thought, and told himself once again to get a grip. Anya might be beautiful, but he had to remember that she was obnoxious and trying to make a bunch of changes in his hospital.
Right now, she didn’t look threatening at all. Her face, which always looked a little pale to Kromin, had turned almost completely white. Her eyes were round and wide as she stared at him, looking a little dumbfounded.
“Well, that was crazy,” she finally said.
Kromin allowed himself a small chuckle. “That might be the understatement of the century.”
But Anya didn’t laugh. Instead, she shook her head slowly, as though still trying to come to grips with the adventure of the last few minutes. “I almost died, Kromin. You saved my life.”
He shrugged, although deep down he was pleased with the way she was looking at him with such admiration. “It was nothing. I was acting on pure instinct, and I would have done the same for anyone.”
“Still,” she said softly, the wonder in her voice giving him shivers again. “You did it for me.” When she looked at him a certain way, or spoke to him in a certain tone of voice, it absolutely undid him. He swallowed hard as he met her gaze, and he knew that something had somehow changed between them. He felt drawn to her, like some sort of magnetic power was pulling them together. He felt his dick growing harder, and he hoped to Jupiter that Anya wouldn’t look down at it right now. He wasn’t sure what her reaction would be if she saw it, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for whatever that reaction might be. If she was horrified, he’d be crushed by that. But if she was interested, well, he probably wouldn’t be able to keep himself from throwing her on the ground right now, stripping off her survival suit, and making love to her.
And that would be a very bad idea. He had to remind himself that she was the enemy. She was the one he had to keep at arm’s length, and to push out of his hospital. Sleeping with her definitely wouldn’t help things. Not to mention, there was a miner in here somewhere in desperate need of medical attention. He was sure that miner wouldn’t appreciate a delay in treatment because the senior doctor was busy banging the junior doctor.
“Come on,” Kromin said gruffly as he turned to walk deeper into the mines. “Let’s go find our patient.”
He tried to act as though nothing had changed between them, but he knew that somehow everything had changed. There had been a moment, when their eyes were locked on each other’s, that some deeper emotion had passed between them.
Kromin told himself over and over as he walked into the mines that he could not let himself fall for Anya. She was beautiful and smart, yes. But he had been doing pretty well in his life up until now by always staying alone. With no one in his personal life, and no one working at his hospital, he hadn’t had to answer to anyone. Everything was under his control, and that was the way he liked things. That was the way he would keep things. He couldn’t help being physically attracted to Anya, but he didn’t have to act on those attractions. He would do whatever it took to push her away.
Still, it was damn hard to walk with a full blown erection between his legs. He cursed his body, feeling like it was betraying him, and he tried to force himself to think about anything other than Anya’s body in an attempt to get his cock to settle down. He was careful to walk in front of Anya so that she couldn’t see what was going on, but he knew that in a few minutes they would be reaching the portion of the mine where other Zocronians would be anxiously waiting for them, ready to take them to the injured miner. Kromin wasn’t interested in having any of those miners notice his arousal.
Just think about the job you have to do here. You can deal with all the other feelings later. Easier said than done, but Kromin had always been a professional. He’d managed to keep the Zocronians healthy on his own for the last several years. He could block Anya from his mind for an hour or two and take care of this problem, whatever it was.
After that, well, he wasn’t so sure what to do with the new tornado of emotions filling him. But he’d worry about that later. Now, it was time to get to work.
Chapter Seven
Kromin could feel the sweat trickling down his back as he placed a layer of skinsealer over the miner’s bloody arm. Anya and he had been working on the man for the last two hours, and the arm was the last thing that needed to be closed up.
The situation had been much worse than Kromin had anticipated. When he first arrived, Kromin had thought there was no way the man was going to make it. The miner looked like a mess of blood and bone, and he was screaming in agony despite all of the pain meds that the other miners had given him. The first thing Kromin had done was to anesthetize the man. That had stopped the screaming and the thrashing around, which made life easier for everyone involved. Then, Kromin had started the long, drawn out process of cleaning up the wounds and patching them closed. The amount of skinsealer he’d had to use to get the job done was incredible. Kromin had never seen a man so torn apart. He still didn’t know if the poor guy would make it, but at least he’d done everything he could.
Kromin placed the last skinsealer into position and pushed on the edges until the self-sealing material latched onto the man’s skin. With a sigh of relief, he took a step back and surveyed his work. The miner was bandaged from head to toe, but at least the bleeding had been stopped and the anesthesia was giving him relief from the pain. All the broken bones were set and secured in casts, and now the only thing left to do was wait and see how well everything healed up. Kromin’s work was done, at least for the moment.
He looked up across the man’s body and met Anya’s eyes. She looked as tired and harried as he himself felt, and beneath her surgical scrubs he could see sweat spots. She’d been working just as hard, if not harder, than he had. Kromin suddenly felt shame wash over him for the way he’d been treating her. She was a good doctor. A sludging good doctor. And he couldn’t have taken care of this man so quickly without her help. It would have taken him at least twice as long to finish the job without Anya here, and while no one could say with certainty whether that delay would have been fatal to the miner or not, Kromin knew that working quickly had been important here. The man had been losing so much blood, despite the other miners’ makeshift attempts at tourniquets. Quick action thanks to Anya’s help had very likely been what saved the man’s life.
Kromin pulled off his surgical mask and gave Anya a small smile. “Good work,” he said softly. “Really good work.”
In the small portion of her face that was visible, he saw her blush. She looked down at the miner, then looked back up at him and shrugged. “I’m a doctor. It’s what I do.”
Kromin nodded. Of course it was. He’d been so bullheaded, wanting to get rid of her or anyone else that tried to help out at the hospital, that he’d missed the fact that a lot of people just wanted to help. Just because someone tried to work at the hospital, that didn’t mean they were trying to take over the job of running things. It j
ust meant that they wanted to work hard and do something positive. They wanted to save people’s lives, or at least make people’s lives better.
I’m such a sludging idiot.
“Is he gonna be alright?” a worried voice beside Kromin asked. He looked over to see one of the other miners next to him, peering skeptically over at his heavily bandaged friend.
“His chances are good,” Kromin said. “He needs to rest, and to be kept sedated as much as possible to help with the pain. The biggest worry is keeping out infection. If he can heal up without running into that problem, then he should be good.”
To Kromin’s surprise, the man’s eyes teared up a bit. It wasn’t like Zocronian men to cry, so this guy must have been really close friends with the injured miner. “Well, thanks, Doc. I know it wasn’t easy to get here in that storm, but he wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t come.”
“Always happy to help,” Kromin said. “But speaking of getting places in storms…what are the odds that I’ll be getting out of here and back to the city dome any time soon?”
The miner sighed. “Not good, I’m afraid to say. The storm has only gotten worse since you arrived. We’ll all have to hunker down for at least the night, I’d say.”
Kromin saw Anya peel off her surgical mask and raise an eyebrow. “Is this normal? I don’t remember there being so many bad storms last year. I mean, there were a couple bad ones. But this year it seems almost constant.”
Kromin shook his head. “It’s worse than usual this year. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen a stormy season this bad.”
“Agreed,” the miner beside him said. “And we’re only at the beginning of the stormy season.”
Anya visibly shuddered, and Kromin decided that maybe talking about the storms and trying to get back wasn’t the best idea right now. Anya must be exhausted, and he was, too. If they weren’t going to be heading back to the city dome for a while, then they should go get something to eat.
“Come on, Anya,” Kromin said, starting to take off the surgical cap that had been covering his hair. “Let’s get out of these scrubs and then head to the supply room. We can rest and have some food. I think we both could do with a little nourishment.”
“Anything we should know about taking care of this guy?” the miner asked, pointing down to the injured man.
Kromin shrugged. “Just make sure you have someone staying with him at all times, in case he wakes up and needs assistance. He should be out for quite some time now, though. I’ll be by again a little later to check on him.”
With that, Kromin turned and started walking toward the elevator pod, with Anya trailing after him. In the supply room, they found clean clothes and stripped out of their dirty scrubs. The clothes were plain shirts and sweatpants, kept on hand as extras for times like this, when storms kept the miners from going home. Kromin found his size easily enough, but Anya had trouble finding anything that would even stay on her body. These were all men’s clothes, and even the smallest size in Zocronian men’s clothing was about five sizes too big for her. She finally settled for rolling up the pant legs and sleeves, and cinching the waist of the pants as best she could. She looked ridiculous and yet somehow adorable. Even though these clothes didn’t show off her curves the way her survival suit had, seeing her in them still turned Kromin on. She looked so delicate and small underneath all that fabric, and he felt that primal protective instinct rising within him once again. Besides, there was something about everything being left to the imagination that was irresistibly tantalizing.
Kromin turned away from Anya and started heading toward the shelves where food and drink supplies were kept. His clothes might not be as skin tight as his survival suit, but they weren’t nearly as loose as Anya’s. They fit snugly enough that his stiffening dick was going to soon be obvious, and he didn’t want Anya to notice. How would he explain it if she asked him about it? Hey, I know I’ve been an asshole and tried to kick you out of my hospital, but actually now I’ve changed my mind and think you’re great. Oh, and you’re pretty hot, too. My cock gets hard when I look at you.
No, that would never do. He had to somehow pretend like everything was reasonably normal between Anya and him. Forcing himself to focus on the supply shelves, he grabbed a gallon of water, an assortment of food bars, and a bottle of Eiwort, a favorite liquor in Zocrone.
“Come on,” he said as he handed the gallon of water to Anya. “Let’s go find an open bunk to sit on. We can relax while we eat something and warm up with a bit of liquor.”
The supply room was a large room set up with plenty of food and water, and extra clothes and blankets. There were twenty bunks alongside one of the walls, which gave any miners caught down here for a while somewhere to sleep. Kromin chose one of the lower bunks and sat down, leaning his back against the wall and letting his long legs dangle a bit over the opposite edge. Anya sat next to him, her much shorter legs staying completely on the mattress. There were tables in the room where the two of them could have sat to eat, but Kromin was so tired that he just wanted to sit somewhere soft and relaxing. So what if he got a few crumbs on the bed? He’d brush them off. Besides, he wanted to sit somewhere semi-private with Anya to talk. The bunks weren’t exactly secluded, but they were less in the open than the tables. At least no one could come sit next to them here. They were reasonably on their own.
Kromin cracked open the Eiwort bottle and took a swig directly from the bottle. It was a strong but sweet liquor made from the nectar of the Eiwort blossom, one of the many tropical plants that thrived in the humid rainforest climate inside of Zocrone’s city dome. The liquor burned his throat a bit in a good way, and just the familiar taste of it helped him relax a bit. Today had been one of the more stressful days he’d had in a while, as had yesterday. It felt good to sit down and rest for a minute. He wondered how the patients back in the city dome hospital were doing, but he figured they must be fine. The fact that there hadn’t been any news was good. If there had been any problems, Daxar or Jarmuk would have called him. Not that they could have expected him to get to the city dome quickly in these storms, but they would have called him, anyway.
But thinking about the fact that the city dome was currently left without a doctor made Kromin feel guilty. What if someone needed serious medical assistance right now? Sure, some of the military guys knew first aid. But there was no one back in the city dome who could do surgery. Kromin saw clearly in that moment how much of an idiot he’d been to try to keep himself as the only doctor in Zocrone, and he vowed to himself that things would change. The very first thing he needed to do was apologize to Anya. He took a deep breath, handed her the bottle of liquor to try, and then waited until she’d taken a sip to start talking.
“Listen, Anya. I owe you a huge apology.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised at his words. And why wouldn’t she be? He wasn’t the type to apologize, and he’d been nothing but harsh with her. But Kromin’s father had always told him that a true man knew when he was wrong, and wasn’t afraid to own up to it. Kromin figured now was as good a time as any to man up.
“Yeah. Let me start out by saying that I never should have gotten onto you about the mistake you made with the steroid shot. It was a mistake, yes, but not a huge one. No harm was done, and I know that you’re normally very precise with your work.”
Anya’s cheeks reddened. “I’m so sorry about that. I feel terrible. I don’t even know what happened, exactly. I was so determined to show you how perfectly I could do everything, and then I somehow messed up on the very first patient.”
“You were putting too much pressure on yourself. No, actually, the right thing to say is probably that I was putting too much pressure on you, which was what caused you to put too much pressure on yourself.”
“Still. I was the one responsible. I screwed up.”
Kromin shrugged. “So you did. But you made a good point when I brought it up this morning: we’ve all made mistakes. I’ve made pl
enty of mistakes myself, some of them that I was lucky didn’t turn out deadly. And you know when most of those mistakes were made? When I was tired and overwhelmed with too much work.”
Anya nodded slowly. “I know, Kromin. That’s why I’ve been trying to tell you—”
“That I can’t do this alone? I know. You’re right. I’ve been holding everything together by some force of sheer willpower, but honestly the last few days have made me realize that I’m lucky that things haven’t imploded sooner. Zocrone’s population isn’t all that impressive when you stack it up against the rest of the planets in the Seven Galaxies, but still. We do have a decent amount of people here. Far too many people for one doctor to handle.”
“So does that mean you’ll let me stay at the hospital? I promise I won’t try to undermine whatever decisions you make about how to run the place. I just want to work as a doctor again. It’s what I’m good at. It’s my passion.”
Kromin looked over at Anya and gave her a sheepish grin. He took the Eiwort bottle from her and took another long swig before answering. “Yes, you can stay. And I’ll try to be more open to feedback. I hated my last bosses so much that in a sense I let them continue to antagonize me even after they died. Just because they were awful to work with doesn’t mean that everyone is. I’ve been a total idiot about all of this.”
To her credit, Anya didn’t agree with him that he was an idiot. But she didn’t disagree, either. Instead she shrugged noncommittally and grabbed the Eiwort bottle back from him, taking a long sip. Then she smiled at him and said, “Sometimes when someone treats you horribly, it can be hard to get past it. But if you hold on to anger or bitterness, you’re only hurting yourself.”
She passed the Eiwort back to Kromin and he took another swig. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience?”
“Yeah. You could say that. It was a totally different situation, but… I had a boyfriend back on Earth who was everything to me. We made a lot of plans—marriage, house, babies, the whole thing. Long story short, it never happened because it turned out he was cheating on me. And not just with one other woman. He had a whole slew of side ass he was enjoying.”
The Alphas of the Seven Galaxies Page 36