He’d made it a point to buy a ring for her during the week, and now it was being sized. Next week it would be out to the world, official, and not something to back out of on a whim. Because that was how it felt right now. She was with him in the heat of every sexy moment, but she still didn’t trust him and he felt the need to run everything he might say to her through his mind three times before letting the words out. The idea that she could lose her nerve was hard to ignore.
He settled back onto her, shifting his hips to make sure she felt him, and angled his head and caught her lower lip between his.
Then she yawned, and he let go, leaning up to look at her. “All right?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded, then reached her arms around his shoulders to pull him back against her.
He wanted her mouth, though having just seen her yawn, he barely got back into their marathon-like kissing groove when his own mouth rebelled, stretching out in a wide yawn.
“Bored or tired?”
“Tired,” he answered immediately, and let his head loll forward against her shoulder.
“You know, we don’t have to have sex tonight. I always want to, but we need to sleep too, and we have made it through my fertile time already, all without spraining anything or developing some kind of repetitive stress injury.”
“You want to sleep?”
“I’ve napped in the exam rooms every day during lunch. I didn’t think I was this dependent on a full eight hours, but I guess I am.”
“Sleep deprivation,” he mumbled against her neck, not caring to get any distance between them even if the night was starting to turn into a sexless sleepover. “And being overworked doesn’t help.” Today had been a long day.
It only seemed allowable to him to let himself enjoy closeness and holding her if it involved other elements and could end in conception. They’d become engaged outside the usual expectations of marriage—their relationship worked fine with it based on sex and mutual interest, but the idea of affection outside sex didn’t fit neatly into what he knew to be acceptable. Cuddling seemed to lean toward the wrong end of the spectrum. The messier end.
But they were so tired. Tonight didn’t count.
The steady rise and fall of her chest made him smile against her neck. Already asleep. The woman could fall asleep faster than a narcoleptic.
The bedside lamp, still burning, let him lean back enough to see her face.
His kisses had turned her lips pink, and how she could drop off while still flushed with pre-climax arousal he couldn’t even guess.
How had he failed to really notice for two years how pretty she was?
Mentally and physically, he was exhausted, but it was Thursday—there was no work tomorrow. He could watch her a little longer, see if she talked in her sleep, then sleep in tomorrow. She couldn’t grump at him about it if she didn’t know.
Which was the same way he’d been appreciating her for the last two years, he realized. Only when no one was watching.
He’d seen her, but he’d shoved her into the box marked Work, and maintained his distance except for acceptable ways. Like requesting her for every surgery he could justify to himself.
He hadn’t failed to see her because she’d always hidden in her oversized scrubs and ever-present scrub cap. He’d failed to allow any other context for her until she’d blithely wandered into his play yard. He’d limited her, and never acknowledged his attraction to her.
Maybe she was right about coming clean about the club to his brothers. Maybe he was limiting them in the same way.
Or maybe he was right to limit them. The Inferno’s existence seemed like a gate he couldn’t ever let them pass through without risking them finding out all the rest of the things he didn’t want them to know. The dark things he had to hide.
His instincts had always protected them before.
He switched off the lamp and let himself lie half on her, his face buried in her long silky hair, and closed his eyes.
* * *
Dante jerked awake, his heart pounding, with no idea what had woken him.
He leaned off the soft beauty he’d been sleeping with, and noticed her eyes were open too, and she looked as confused as he felt. “Who’s yelling?”
Yelling. That was what had woken him.
“What did they yell?” He sprang from the bed, grabbed his shorts and pulled them on.
“Your name.”
“Man?” He crouched beside the bed, reached beneath and pulled out the baseball bat he only kept around for security—not that he’d ever needed it in this house, but old habits died hard.
“Man,” she confirmed, stumbling around too, getting dressed.
“Where did the yell—?” He stopped when his name rang through the house again, answering the question before it got out.”
“Stay here,” he said, and, almost to the door, finally came awake enough to recognize the voice. He knew that voice. And there was something wrong with it.
“Dios!” He dropped the bat, wrenched open the bedroom door and broke into a dead run for the veranda.
Not one of his brothers, but at one point he might as well have been.
Middle of night, pitch-black out there, he couldn’t see. He fumbled on the wall for the light and it glowed to life for him to see his old friend, flat on his back on the white-painted wooden deck.
Mateo was conscious, but wounded. He had a bloom of sticky dark red on the right side of his gray T-shirt.
“Lise!” He yelled for her, opening the door to help him. “I need you!”
Without a thought, he switched to Spanish as he crouched beside his friend. “Are you shot or was it a blade?”
Please say blade.
Wedging his arm under Mateo’s head, he lifted him to a sitting position and held him so he could sling the man’s arm around his own shoulders and get him off the ground.
“Gun,” Mateo breathed when they stopped moving long enough for him to get enough air to speak.
They met Lise coming out, the bat he’d dropped held in her dainty hands, ready to defend him.
Seeing her there reminded him to switch back to English. “Get clean towels from the linen closet, alcohol, tweezers, the box of gloves in the bathroom, dental floss, a needle... Anything you think we can use. Then come to the kitchen.”
“He’s hurt.” She took a few minutes to really wake up, but she’d been with it enough to grab her cell phone before rushing to his defense. She flipped it on to dial and Mateo swatted it out of her hand. It landed hard on the tile floor.
Dante grimaced. “Yes, and he needs our help. Get the supplies!”
Order given, he half carried Mateo into the kitchen, kicked the chairs away from the closest side of the table, and helped Mateo onto it and out of his shirt.
Lise returned with the towels and the supplies he’d thought to name to her, and after depositing them on the island she grabbed one of the towels and immediately went to apply pressure to the wound. She really didn’t like this. Neither did he, but still he had to. At least she’d backed him up, but he couldn’t even try to imagine what he’d say to explain this later.
“We need to call for an ambulance,” she said. “You can’t intend to remove a bullet in the kitchen.”
“He needs my help. I owe him.”
“It’s a clean kitchen, but it’s in no way sterile. Kitchens are bacteria havens. And you know as well as I do how much damage bullets can do once they go inside.”
“Is that your wife, jefe?”
Lise blushed, clearly embarrassed. “Your English is just fine, isn’t it? I’m sorry if I came across as inconsiderate to your pain. I didn’t think you’d understand...for some reason.”
“Because you just woke up,” Dante finished for her, and jerked a few knives from the block until
he found the paring knife.
“You’re worried for your man. It’s our wives who take care of the home. Your duty is to your family, senora,” Mateo said. He was breathing a little better now that his only exertion was from pain. But he still could bleed out if they didn’t get this right. “Don’t be afraid. I didn’t bring trouble to the jefe’s door. Just me.”
“We’re not married,” Dante said, then to Lise, “If the bullet bounced around, he’d have bled out already. Boil water, then put this in it.”
“Yet,” Lise said, letting go of the towels and paring knife he handed her, and he was so very glad to have been a stickler about his knives being a single piece of metal, no notches or joints for spores to lurk.
Yet? Oh, they were engaged. Later. He’d walk that back later.
“Ayúdame, jefe. I don’t want to bleed to death.”
“Jefe means boss, right?” Lise asked, as she dug a large glass bowl from the cupboard and began filling it from the tap.
“Not time for a Spanish lesson. Sterilize the knife,” Dante ordered, and lifted the edge of the towel to peek at the wound. “I need more light.” Replacing the towel, he moved one of Mateo’s hands to apply his own pressure. “Press. I’ll be right back.”
In less than a minute he’d scrounged up a flashlight and some mild narcotics he’d had left over after injuring himself last year, and returned to find Lise taking Mateo’s blood pressure. She’d found something else to help them.
“You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”
“Just police.”
Dante smiled a little at the old answer, shook a couple of the pills out, and grabbed a bottle of water from the cabinet. “Take these.”
Not seeing a pot on the stove, he grunted, “Lise? Boil the water!”
“It’s in the microwave. It boils faster there,” she said calmly, but gave him a look, and he understood immediately how his order had sounded.
Not that she wasn’t just as unhappy about every other part of this scenario too, she’d just loudly pointed out how stupid it all was. Something to be grateful for. It gave him some time to think of a way to explain to her why he owed Mateo.
“The pills won’t keep this from hurting, but it should help a little.”
“Shouldn’t we hurry?” his friend asked, handing the bloody bottle back to him. “Doesn’t it need to come out very fast to stop bleeding?”
“No. It’s clotting already. Not bleeding like it was. I’m going to have to make that hole bigger, Mateo. With the knife. You want those pills to kick in first, and we need to sterilize the equipment as much as we can.”
“Are you sure it’s not bleeding too bad to wait?” he asked again.
“It’s not bleeding much at all now, Mateo,” Lise said, her voice gentle as she picked up his name and used it to connect with him. The nursing instincts must have come back when he’d made it clear he wouldn’t be dissuaded.
By the time the paring knife had been in the boiled water for ten minutes, along with the other implements, the oxycodone had begun to kick in. It all came together fairly quickly.
Lise fished the tools out with metal tongs and laid them on a fresh bath towel to cool.
While the metal cooled enough to be handled, she stepped in to whisper, “We can still call an ambulance—it’s not too late.”
Dante took her by the shoulders and steered her away from the table, far enough that Mateo wouldn’t overhear. Just tell her the bare minimum. Few details. Just get her on board.
“I know you don’t understand, but he pulled my ass out of the fire once, and I owe him.”
“He could die. Then what happens? How will we explain a dead man cut open on your kitchen table?!”
“He’s not going to die.”
Dante let go and returned to the table. “Glove up.” He poured the alcohol over his hands and rolled them around, then shook them dry and squeezed his hands into the gloves.
Following his procedure, she did the same and placed the implements far enough apart to make them easy to pick up, hard to drop.
“Mat, man. We’re going to start. Try not to move. Breathe as steady as you can until I tell you otherwise, okay?”
Lise took a moment to pour some of the alcohol on paper towels and rounded the table to better reach the wounded area. “I’m trying not to get the alcohol on the actual wound while minimizing the infection risk everyone carries on their skin. If I get any on there, I’m sorry.”
The blood didn’t much want to wipe away with the alcohol-saturated paper towels, but she did the best she could, and apologized every time she grazed the raw flesh and paused to fan it dry with her other hand.
“Keep an eye on his pulse. If it weakens, tell me and get another BP immediately.”
He needed a third hand or a second nurse when he could already hardly believe he’d dragged one nurse into this.
She’d prepared pre-torn paper towels as part of her little makeshift surgery prep, and he was glad for it. Snatching the top one, he used it to pick up the flashlight, turn it on, and shine it into the hole in Mateo’s side.
But all this would’ve been too easy if he could’ve seen the bullet without cutting.
Still using the paper towel to protect his gloved hand, he stuffed the butt of the flashlight into his mouth and aimed by tilting his head, and then couldn’t announce what he was doing.
He garbled around the flashlight, and Lise translated—probably only because she could anticipate him, not because she understood him.
“Cutting now, Mateo. Take a deep breath and hold it. One, two, three...”
His ribs expanded, and Lise grabbed his hand as she counted down. Dante made a quick, deep cut, his stomach lurching from the pain he knew he caused, and retracted the blade as fresh blood began to flow.
“Breathe,” Lise directed, still holding his hand, but also leaning onto his shoulders with her face near his so she could look into his eyes. “You’re doing really great, Mateo. Deep breaths. It’s going to be okay. You know he’s used to operating on brains, that’s way harder than operating on bellies.”
Dante didn’t smile, but he wanted to. The little Truth Teller was lying to comfort. Maybe he was wearing off on her, though it would’ve been better for everyone if she made him a better person instead.
Putting the knife back on the towel, he pulled the extra half-inch of wound apart—causing Mateo to hiss in pain—so he could see inside, and aimed his mouth light into the bloody depths.
And he saw it—the flash of metal.
Muchas gracias, senor.
He sent up the prayer and noticed Lise had leaned off Mateo and put his stethoscope back into her ears. She grabbed the bulb on the pressure cuff still wrapped around Mateo’s arm and began pumping.
His pulse was weakening. But stopping now would just mean that he lost blood for longer.
Pulling the wound open again, Dante reached deep with the tweezers for the bullet, but they were too short.
She pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and said, “One hundred and five over sixty.”
Not great. Not as bad as it could be. He nodded, then gestured toward the wound.
“What?”
“Fashite...” he garbled.
She grabbed another paper towel to take the end of the flashlight and pulled it from his mouth.
“It’s too deep for the tweezers. To get my fingers in there, I’d have to really enlarge the opening.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“See if your little fingers can reach. Use middle and index.”
She winced and looked at the wound. It only took her a moment to decide to do it. She changed her gloves and mimicked his method for holding the flashlight. She moved around to his left, where she could better access the wound.
&nb
sp; He pulled the wound open and she shined the light inside, then nodded when she saw it.
“Slide them in together, slowly. Don’t push it in deeper.”
The look she gave him hit like a shot in the chest.
Why didn’t he have his own surgery kit? This would be so much easier with forceps.
Taking a deep breath, she did as instructed. When Mateo screamed in pain, her breathing sped up and her eyebrows started to turn red. He’d seen that reddening pattern when she’d cried over baby Eli.
The opening was just about perfect for her slender fingers, so there was no seeing inside to guide her.
“The first hard thing you feel is it.”
She nodded, flashlight bobbing.
“Feel it?”
Another nod from her, another cry from Mateo. He couldn’t help them both at the same time.
He focused on Lise. “Open the tips of your fingers using only the second knuckles for movement. If you use your whole finger, it will flex at the opening and tear more.”
She tried the motion with her left hand—the hand not shoved into Mateo’s side—and then when she felt confident to do it, her eyes went a little distant as she felt her way around.
He knew the second she’d got it.
“Squeeze firmly. It’ll be slippery.”
Another nod.
“Deep breath, Matty. Last big pain, man.”
He hoped.
When the patient complied, she drew her fingers out, and as soon as they were free, the bullet slipped from her grasp, hit the table, and bounced onto the floor.
Grabbing another fresh bath towel, he put it over the wound and applied pressure again, “Breathe. Breathe however you like now.”
Then added to Lise, “Find it. See if it looks whole, or like there are any pieces that have broken off.”
She ripped her glove off, got the light from her mouth, and used it to find the bullet.
Within half a minute she had it in her hand, both of them studying it in the bright light.
“Looks a bit smashed, but I’d call that whole, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, relief flooding through him. Surgery survived. Now he just had to close and keep infection at bay until Mateo healed. “Get new gloves and thread the floss onto the needle.”
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