I stared at the intern's ear. He was not looking at me anymore. “Wait a minute. That's it? Don't I need IV antibiotics?”
“Ma'am, you may have needed that a week ago, but not today.”
I looked at Red for support. “But there was charring, tissue damage, loss of sensation …”
“Listen, ma'am, you can wait to speak with the admitting doctor who saw you first, or you can look at your chart—second-degree burns.” The intern pulled his latex gloves off with a flourish. “Now, do you want the instructions, or not?”
Red placed one hand on my shoulder, and said, “We'll take the instructions—boy.”
I didn't pay attention as the surly intern told Red how to care for my injured paws. As we were about to leave, a tall woman in a tomato red jacket came up to me. Her blond hair had been sculpted into a shape faintly reminiscent of a turkey, and I wondered if this was intentional, as a nod to the holiday.
“Are you Ms. Barrow? I'm sorry, but we weren't able to find a number for the contact you gave us.” She checked her file. “Red Mallin. Is there anyone else I can try to call for you?”
I turned to Red, confused. “But someone must have called him.”
“No,” the woman said, rechecking her information. “We tried, but there's no number available from Information.”
“It's okay,” Red said, giving the woman an easy smile. “I got here, and that's the important thing. Now, I guess I'd better take this lady home.” As the lady in the red jacket frowned in puzzlement, I let Red put his arm around my shoulders and guide me out of the hospital without comment, aware of his head, not so far above mine, and of his lean strength. He half-lifted me into the passenger side of his pickup truck and then walked around to the driver's seat.
“You're not in shock, are you, Doc?”
“I should be. They were third-degree burns.”
It is not so easy to lean across the interior of a pickup truck, particularly one with a stick shift. Red managed it, his hand under my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“I know they were, Doc. But by the time that little shitheel looked at you, they were healed up some.”
“That's impossible.”
“I would have smelled the deep tissue if it had been exposed. You won't be havin' the use of your hands for a while yet, and the rest of the healing's gonna take a mite longer, but you don't have third-degree burns, I can assure you of that.”
“Red, burns just don't heal up that way. Especially deep tissue damage. It doesn't just go away.”
Red stroked the underside of my jaw with his thumb. “It does when your husband gives you a dose of what your husband did.”
A jazzy little jingle from an old public ser vice announcement flashed through my mind: VD Gets Around! No wonder Red hadn't wanted to make love with me that night. And then I realized what he was really saying. “You've known all along, haven't you? About the virus?” Red nodded. “But he said I couldn't catch it. There has to be a genetic predisposition.”
His hand came up to the back of my head, and he leaned his forehead to rest against mine. “I guess you're predisposed.”
“You know, in all the movies I've ever seen, you can only catch this from a werewolf in wolf form.”
Red started the car. “That part's pretty accurate.”
“But Hunter never—I've never seen him turn into a wolf, and he sure didn't bite me.”
Red looked uncomfortable. “Well,” he said, turning on his headlights, “it doesn't have to be blood-to-blood transmission. And if, you know, you were tired or a little tipsy one night …” His voice trailed off.
That night, after I'd drunk wine and smoked pot with Red. When Hunter's back had seemed to ripple underneath my touch. I curled up in the seat as far as the belt would allow, my head turned toward the window. “Just take me home.”
It was very dark and the headlights cast a weak beam over the winding roads, but Red seemed to know his way. For a moment, I remembered that I hadn't asked Red how he'd known to come to the hospital if no one had contacted him. And then I wondered why an animal removal operator would have an unlisted number. But before I could form any questions, I nodded off, and when I woke up I thought, for a moment, that I was a child again, and my father was carrying me to my bed.
He's really very strong, I thought, as Red settled me down and pulled back the covers.
“I have insomnia, you know. I'm not going to just fall asleep.”
Red turned the light off. “You always have trouble?”
I yawned. “For the past few years.”
The bed dipped with Red's weight. “Anything help? Hypnosis, exercise, massage, sex?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe you're one of those people meant to stay up most of the night and sleep all day.”
I leaned back and found my head on Red's arm. How warm he was. “But I want to go to sleep now. I just know I won't be able to.”
“Just lie here and let me rub your back.”
“That doesn't work.”
Red moved his hand up until it was on my stomach. “Roll over,” he said.
I turned, and he pulled my dress up at the same time as he covered me with the sheet. With his hand against my naked skin, he began tracing some sort of letters on my back. “This is silly, Red.”
“Shh. Don't try to look. Just breathe. Relax.”
I closed my eyes and he traced some foreign alphabet down my spine, to the very edge of my underwear, and then back up again. “I tried to call you. After that night with the storm.”
“I know. I'm sorry, Red.” I took a breath, then forced myself to say it. “I found out I'm pregnant with Hunter's child.”
Red didn't say anything, but his hand stilled for a moment before resuming its slow rhythmic stroking of my back. His touch was soothing in its certainty, and I found myself half-wishing his hand would move lower. Pregnancy hormones, I thought. Not my fault. After a while we left the room and were standing in the forest, and Red was a wolf that kept running ahead.
“Hold on,” I said, “I can't keep up with you.” But he'd scented a rabbit or something and kept lunging forward, and by the time I caught up with him he'd been sprayed by a skunk and sat with his tail tucked between his legs.
“You really are an idiot, Red.”
“You'll never make love to me now,” he said, and I put an arm around him, thinking, Oh, what the hell, at least he isn't screwing around.
THIRTY
The three little words “I fell asleep” may sound simple to some, but to me they are a rare and elusive delight. Whether it was emotional or physical exhaustion, or the unexpected security of Red's embrace, I slept in his arms better than I had slept in all my years in my husband's bed.
I awoke to find myself curled into a fetal position, my bandaged hands crossed in front of me, my dress balled up around my waist. Red was nestled against my back. I'd read once that the happiest couples slept this way. “Tell If Your Relationship Is Happy From Your Sleep Styles,” or some such article. Hunter and I slept on opposite sides of the bed, or else I spooned around him, because he claimed his once-broken nose did not permit him to lie on his left side, facing me.
Red held me with loose possessiveness, one hand across my lower abdomen.
“Red?”
“Mmm.” He sleepily pressed his erection against my bottom, and for a moment, without thinking, I pressed back. Then he groaned and woke up, although I could feel him pretending not to.
“Red? I need to go to the bathroom.”
“What? Oh. Right.” He sat up, tousled and almost boyish with his hair tufted in different directions. He wore boxer shorts, dark red ones. I realized he'd gained weight since I'd first met him, that late summer day in the subway. He was carrying a good fifteen more pounds, all of it muscle now padding his shoulders and ribs.
I walked self-consciously to my mother's bathroom and then confronted the predicament of being without opposable thumbs in a floor-length gown. I don't know how long
I might have continued standing there had Red not knocked on the door.
“Need help?”
“No!”
“Sure about that?”
“Oh, Christ, Red, I have no idea how to do this.”
Red opened the door, and I was slightly amused to note that his face was scarlet. “I could, ah, lift the skirt.”
Now my face was scarlet. “I can't even wipe myself. Oh, God, Red, I can't do this with you here, I need a nurse, I should still be in the hospital.”
“I'm a former EMT.”
“You are?”
“Couldn't take all the dead children. Seems each July a good ten children would wind up in the bottom of pools and lakes. But anyway, I'm still a professional. Your privates are safe with me.”
We both burst out laughing the kind of relieved, embarrassed laughter that lasts too long and sounds too loud. But when you have to go to the bathroom badly enough, in the end, that's all you can think about. “Just help me out of the dress.”
He did, looking away from my naked breasts. The dress hadn't left room for a bra. I had a moment to remember that I was wearing ratty cotton pan ties, and then Red caught my eye. “Anything else?”
My cheeks burned. “Don't look.”
Red knelt and helped me out of my pan ties, carefully looking down all the time. At my pan ties.
“Leave now!”
Red raised one eyebrow. “What, ah, can I do with these?” He held out my underwear, which looked very small in his large palm.
“Leave them!”
He closed the door, and, after a moment, my bladder relaxed enough to function. I shook myself, flushed the toilet with my right foot, and managed to use my clumsily bandaged paws to get a plush purple towel wrapped around my body. I positioned myself in as ladylike a fashion as I could manage on the toilet seat before calling out.
“Red? Could you—do you think you could run a little bath for me?”
“Sure.” He came in, still bare except for the boxers, but wearing a nurse's expression, very kindly and matter-of-fact. He crouched down to reach the bath taps and I admired the width of his shoulders and the lean shape of his back. When he turned to me I found myself looking at the ridges of muscle that ran down his abdomen. I looked up and found that Red was smiling; he'd left his shirt off on purpose.
“Want me to put your hair up?”
I was surprised he'd thought of it. “Yes, please. It takes forever to dry.”
Red got my brush out of my suitcase and worked it through my hair in long, sure strokes, holding my hair in his left hand so he didn't pull at my scalp when he hit a knot.
“You're good at this.”
“I've worked with horses,” he said, and I laughed. “Is there a hairband somewhere—ah, here on the brush handle.” He caught my hair in a high ponytail, then wrapped it into a loose bun. In a sort of trance, I found myself wishing he could just go on brushing it.
“Thank you,” I said, thinking, Hunter may have loved my hair, but he never offered to do this. It would never have occurred to him.
“If I had my choice, I'd brush your hair every night of my life,” Red said quietly. Then, before I could respond, he added, “Let me help you into the bath, Doc.”
I snorted. “I don't think so.”
“C'mon, you can trust me, I'll keep my eyes to myself.” He held out his hand and grasped me around the wrist, and a little shock of awareness shot through me. As I climbed in I saw that yes, he was looking away, and yes, he was definitely affected. His boxer shorts were standing up in front as if they'd been starched.
I sat down in the bath with a slosh of water and Red moved so that his back was facing me.
“You in okay?” His voice sounded throaty.
“I'm in.”
“Need soaping?”
“Now, just how far do your medical ser vices extend?”
Red turned around and I sank lower in the tub. “At the moment, Doc, they're pretty extensive.”
“Well, I do have a toothbrush in my bag …” And then I remembered something that drained all the humor out of me. “Red, this is probably not an appropriate time for me to be flirting, let alone anything more.” I took a deep breath. “I'm pregnant.”
Red cocked his head to one side, considering. “Listen, Doc, I don't like to be the one to break this to you, but I'm pretty sure you're not.”
“What do you mean you're pretty sure I'm not? I've gone to the doctor. It's confirmed.” And then I remembered her concern about some of my hormone levels.
Red crouched down on his heels, so that his face was more or less level with mine. “It's the virus,” he explained. “It'll play all hell with your hormones at first, and then …” He hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “You don't smell pregnant,” he finished, although I had the sense that he'd started to say something else and then changed his mind. “Not to make you feel self-conscious, Doc, but you smell like you're close to the change.” He cleared his throat. “Which means, uh, that you're also getting your period.”
I cried out in dismay. It was too much, too fast. I'd just been told that everything I'd been building my life around was false, and even though I understood on one level that there was no baby, I felt as though I'd just lost one.
Red moved toward me as if to draw me into an embrace, and I began to flail my arms at him, striking out blindly. Water splashed, wetting his chest, his shorts.
“It's not fair,” I kept saying. “Not fair.”
“I know, darlin', I know.” He knelt beside me, our bodies separated only by the porcelain rim of the tub, his hands stroking the back of my head, animal-tamer hands, calming and wise. But my heartbeat was tripping over itself, unable to slow down. “I'm here. I'm going to take care of you.”
“I'm not pregnant,” I said, trying to get used to the idea. I recalled the doctor telling me that my hormone levels were unusual. “I never was pregnant.”
I felt his hands grow still and pulled back to see his expression. He must have known, or else he controlled his reactions better than anyone I'd ever met.
“Did you really want to be?”
“Yes.” But I was looking into his eyes, and know he saw that the truth was more complicated than that.
Red slipped his hands around to cup my face. “Abra,” he said, then stopped to take a breath before starting again. “I'm sorry about the pregnancy, because I want for you what ever you want for yourself. But in a way, I guess I'm not sorry, because it might have made you stay with Hunter. And even though you probably know it, I'll say it anyway. I'm in love with you.” Red looked at me with a look of such intensity that I found it hard to keep meeting his eyes. “I've never said this to another woman, Doc—I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
And then, because I didn't know how to respond, I said, “Do you know that my father had a television series back in the eighties?”
Red shook his head, clearly befuddled.
“Well, he did. It was called I Married a Werewolf. Pretty ironic, huh?” And then I found myself laughing until tears ran out of my eyes. I guess Red must have thought I was laughing a little too hard, because he started stroking my hair and murmuring to me as though I were crying.
“I went too fast,” he said. “I'm sorry, Doc, I rushed you.”
“No, no, I'm sorry.” I looked at him, realizing how vulnerable he must be feeling. “I remember Halloween. How you—what I did to you, how you changed …” I stopped because I was naked in the bath, and I had just reminded Red of how I'd been desperate to have him in my mouth. Recalling it, I felt a rush of heat between my thighs. “How was it for you when you first found out you had the virus?”
Red cleared his throat again. “It's a little different for me, Doc.” His amber eyes flared gold, their pupils dilating.
“Your eyes—did they just—glow?”
“You have no idea how much I want your mouth on me again. How much I want to put my mouth on you. Ah, God.” Red went up on his knees and w
rapped his arms around me, and I could feel the waves of desire rolling through him, making him shake as my wet body soaked through his clothes. “Let me put my mouth on you.” He kissed my damp hair, my forehead, and then he was kissing me on the mouth, a deep, ravenous kiss that he broke off, gasping for breath. “Abra, oh, God.” He leaned over and took one of my nipples in his mouth, suckling so strongly that I felt my response between my legs. As if he knew, he switched his attention to the other breast and reached down to touch me, his callused fingers surprisingly deft and gentle—more so than Hunter's had ever been.
“You're so slick down there—ah, Jesus, woman,” Red said, and just as his light, skimming touch made me want a deeper contact, his finger began to slide inside me. But thinking of Hunter had broken the spell.
“Hey, hang on—slow down there,” I said. “You're moving too fast.” Despite myself, though, my internal muscles gave a little clench as he withdrew his finger.
“I'm sorry, Doc.” But he didn't look sorry; he inhaled my scent from his hand, and then, as if he couldn't help himself, tasted me on his skin. His eyes were bright with mischief and desire.
“It's just happening a little fast for me, Red.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of my collarbone. “I got you. You want me to help you out of there?”
“Thanks.”
Red lifted me out of the bathtub, and I realized that he was astonishingly strong, much more so than his wiry build suggested. He wrapped me in a towel, and said, “Do you want to see me do it?”
“Excuse me?” I wasn't sure what he was asking, but assumed it had something to do with sex.
Red grinned. “What I meant was, do you want to see me shift?”
“Oh.” I felt myself flush. “Yes. I would.”
“Okay. I can't quite concentrate like this. Do you have any clothes here?”
“In the other room.” I held the towel shut with my hands and walked into the bedroom, followed by Red. “That's my bag, over there,” I said.
“How about this?” Red held up a thick red flannel robe.
“That's fine.” I backed into it and let the towel drop. When I looked over my shoulder, I realized Red hadn't looked away this time.
Sheckley, Alyssa - The Better to Hold You.html Page 21