“Murphy, are you in there? It’s me, Jake!” Jake called out.
Entering a room that appeared to have even more piles of debris than the first, all kinds of boxes and papers, Dan saw a freestanding bookcase that was no longer standing. It was over on its side, as if unable to put up with its weight. However, it appeared to still be half-filled with books.
When they came closer, they saw that the bookcase was also pinning George Murphy’s lower torso down beneath it.
“Dr. Livingston, I presume,” Dan heard himself mumbling as he pushed closer to the man. He bent down to press his fingers to the man’s neck to check for a pulse.
Murphy’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hell, no, that’s Murphy,” Jake told the doctor. Squatting down beside his friend, Jake asked, “What the hell are you doing on the floor like that?”
“Wasn’t my idea,” the other man snapped, coming to fully. “Damn thing just decided to fall over.”
“Might have something to do with it being perched on a mound of papers in the first place,” Tina pointed out tactfully. Her words were ignored by the two older men as if she’d never spoken them.
“What time is it?” Murphy demanded.
“Almost nine o’clock,” Tina replied, looking at her watch.
“Damn it, I’ve been here since last night.” Murphy looked accusingly at his friend. “What took you so long?”
Jake didn’t answer. Instead, while Dan and Tina worked together to raise the bookcase off his lower half, Jake angled his arms underneath Murphy’s and managed to drag the man back enough to be free of the weight. Murphy yelled out in pain throughout the entire ordeal.
“You’re going to raise the dead,” Jake accused.
“As long as I ain’t joining them.” Murphy snapped. He bit his lower lip to keep from yelling out again.
A quick exam told Dan that Murphy had been right in his unprofessional assessment. The man’s left leg was broken. At the very least, the man would need a cast. But first they needed to get him to the clinic—and out of here.
“I need to make a splint,” he told Murphy.
“Do whatever you have to, just make it stop,” Murphy groaned. He was sweating profusely at this point.
“Think you can find me two straight sticks and some tape or rope?” Dan asked Jake.
“Hell, give me enough time and I’d probably be able to find Dallas in here,” Jake quipped, rising unsteadily to his feet. They were planted on an uneven mound of papers.
“Sticks and tape’ll do,” Dan said.
“Wiseass,” Murphy grumbled, then looked almost sheepish as his eyes slid over toward Tina. “Sorry.”
Tina waved the apology away. “You’re not yourself right now, Mr. Murphy,” she said, absolving him.
Within minutes, Jake came stumbling back with his find. He held out what appeared to be two yardsticks, the origin of which were anyone’s guess. He also had a huge ball of twine. “This do?”
Dan took the items from him. “They’ll do just fine,” he assured Jake. “Tina, hold these in place for me just like this,” he asked, buffering Murphy’s leg.
Squatting beside Dan, a sense of pleased purpose wove through her as she did as he asked. This, she couldn’t help thinking as she glanced at his profile while Dan worked, was the way things were supposed to be. Her whole life felt as if it had fallen into place, into sync.
Working swiftly, ignoring his patient’s angry shouts of pain and bitten-off half curses, Dan fashioned a makeshift splint. All he needed was to have it hold until they could get Murphy to the clinic.
Rising, he looked toward Jake. “We need to take him back to the clinic.”
Jake sighed dramatically. “I figured as much. Man never did nothing simple,” he complained, shaking his head as he looked down at his friend.
Murphy took offense. “Nobody’s telling you to hang around,” he growled.
Jake hooted. “Then who’d pull your bacon out of the fire?”
The question obviously hit a sore spot. “Don’t need it pulled out by nobody,” Murphy declared angrily. “I can pull out my own bacon.”
“Why don’t you two settle all that later?” Tina suggested, raising her voice and cutting in like a mother refereeing two squabbling children. “Right now Doc needs you to concentrate on getting over to the clinic. Understood?” she asked sternly.
“Understood,” Jake mumbled.
“Yeah,” Murphy acknowledged even more quietly.
Dan merely grinned, amused. Tina was certainly something. Dynamite in a diminutive container. He could feel the smile spreading inside of him.
Getting his mind back on what needed doing, he indicated for Jake to get on Murphy’s other side. After draping one of his arms on each of their shoulders, between the two of them, they lifted the injured man into an upright position.
Murphy yelled in protest throughout the entire process.
“Sorry, this is going to keep on hurting until I can get a cast on that leg and some painkillers into you,” Dan predicted.
Wincing as Murphy screamed again, Jake had a proposition for the doctor. “How about you just hit him in the head with a hammer?”
“It’s a thought,” Dan muttered, doing his best to block out the man’s cries.
“How about we hit you with a hammer?” Murphy cried irritably to his friend.
Maneuvering was difficult and slow, even with Tina trying to lead the way and kick aside the worst mounds. “Shut up, old man, or the next time I ain’t calling nobody when I hear you screaming in pain,” Jake threatened.
As they made progress toward the front door, Dan had to ask, “Why do you keep all this stuff?”
Jake inclined his head, peering at him from around his friend’s torso. “I thought you said it was a disease.”
“It is,” he acknowledged. “Doesn’t mean I understand it. You really need to clear out this place,” he told his patient. “You’re not going to be able to get around here otherwise. Especially not with your leg in a cast.”
“I’ll manage,” Murphy sniffed indignantly. “And I’m gonna get this all cleared out. Been meaning to get around to it for a while now,” he confessed, saying it as if it was gospel.
Apparently Jake knew better. “Ha!”
Murphy took the sound as a battle cry. “You wait and see, old man,” he snapped at his friend. “You just wait and see. I’m gonna get to it.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, angling out of the front door with his burden. “When pigs fly.”
“Before that,” Murphy growled. And then he cried out sharply in pain again as Dan and Jake tried to get him into the backseat of Dan’s car.
Dan shook his head. This wasn’t going to work and he knew it. “There’s no way I can get him into that.” And then he heard himself making a suggestion that would have never even occurred to him when he was back in New York. “We’re going to need a truck so he can lie in the flatbed.”
“I’ll go get mine,” Jake volunteered, hurrying off to where he’d parked his vehicle.
“That house is a health hazard. It really needs to be cleared out,” Dan said to Tina as they waited for Jake to return.
“I said I’ve been meaning to,” Murphy protested.
Tina said nothing. But Dan had a feeling from the expression on her face that she had definitely come up with a thought on the matter. He also had a feeling that now wasn’t the time to ask.
At least, not in front of his patient. But, knowing Tina, this was going to be good.
The subtle ease with which the phrase had gone through his head suddenly struck him.
Knowing Tina.
He hadn’t realized, until just now, that it was true. He did know her, knew the workings of her mind. And he found an extreme source of heartwarming comfort in that.
As well as something more. Something, Dan knew in his heart, had been missing from his life until just recently.
He smiled to himself and focused on his patient.
Chapter Fifteen
There were several patients already standing outside the clinic, waiting to see Dan when they arrived back.
Several patients and one man Tina didn’t recognize. In his early thirties with a privileged air about him, the man definitely didn’t belong here. As it was, he stood apart from the four patients, an expression of vague amusement on his dark, handsome face.
Unlocking the front door, she let them in. The next moment, her attention was diverted as concern and questions came from the other people entering the waiting room.
“What happened to him?”
“Not enough business, Doc?” Henry Albert chuckled. “Goin’ out and drummin’ it up yourself?”
“Anything I can do to help?”
The last question came from Miss Joan. She stood in the doorway, having come in a beat after them. One of her customers had reported that Dan was bringing an injured George Murphy into the clinic. Her desire to be on top of any and all news had her driving over just in time to see the procession from the truck into the clinic.
He had enough helping hands, Dan thought. But there was something that Miss Joan could do. “Yes, there is. Why don’t you see if you can get someone to make Mr. Murphy’s house inhabitable again.”
“I can take care of my own damn place,” Murphy grumbled.
Miss Joan ignored the man’s protest. She and Murphy went way back. “Knew this would happen to you some day, George. You’ve just got too much junk in that place of yours.”
As other voices in the waiting room joined in with questions and helpful comments of their own, George Murphy began to holler with pain.
“Let’s get him into the first exam room,” Dan said to Jake. Tina hurried ahead to open the door for them. “It’s the bigger of the two.”
“You got it, Doc,” Jake answered, trying not to sound as if he was panting. “You could stand to lose some weight, George.”
Because, in all likelihood, he would keep the patients waiting for a bit, Dan felt he had to say something to them. “Sorry, folks. You’re going to have to wait a little longer. I’ve got to set Mr. Murphy’s leg.”
“We understand, Doc. Just help old George there,” Edna O’Malley told him. At eighty, she was the oldest patient in the room and felt she was speaking for all of them.
“Want a hand?”
The deep-voice, rumbling offer came from the stranger on the far side of the room. As he made it, he rose to his feet.
The vaguely familiar voice had Dan turning his head rather than just telling the person that he and Tina would handle it from here. It didn’t even occur to Dan until later just how much he’d come to, consciously and unconsciously, rely on Tina.
That epiphany along with everything else, temporarily faded in the face of his surprise.
It couldn’t be.
Even as he looked at the man, for one moment he thought he was just imagining him.
“Knox?” The man’s surname came to his lips almost involuntarily.
By now, Dan was aware that he had a curious audience as everyone in the waiting room, including Tina, eyed the stranger and him, apparently waiting for some further clue to be tossed their way.
Dr. William Knox, neurosurgeon, grinned and spread his hands before him as if prepared to be examined more closely. “In the flesh.”
Knox was possibly the last man on earth Dan would have expected to see in Forever. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to see what you’re doing here.” Knox nodded at the less-than-jovial-looking man currently being held up between Dan and a tall, wiry man. “So, do you need a hand, Davenport?”
Except on those occasions when he’d taken trips to the hospital at Pine Ridge for supplies, Dan hadn’t so much as seen, much less talked to, another doctor. The familiar face of his fellow resident and one-time drinking buddy felt like a godsend.
“Hell, yes,” Dan answered. “Two hands if you can spare them.”
Bill Knox held his up as if to demonstrate. “Got ’em right here at your disposal, Dan.” He moved in to take the older man’s place, easing Jake out of the way. “Here, I’ll take over,” Knox told him, not expecting any sort of opposition.
Jake stepped back, looking a little miffed but saying nothing as he obligingly nodded his head.
Stunned by this sudden turn of events, and possibly a little worried, Tina called after Dan. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just stay with the patients,” Dan answered without bothering to turn around or look over his shoulder. It was obvious that the stranger and Murphy had his full attention.
There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of Tina’s stomach that she couldn’t quite understand. She did her best to ignore it. There was nothing to worry about. Everything was going to be fine.
“Right,” Tina murmured, more to herself than to Dan.
The second the door to exam room one closed, the waiting room suddenly swelled with the sound of raised voices. Questions went flying back and forth, aided and abetted by half-formed speculations.
When one of the people in the room put the question to Tina, asking who the man with Dan was, it was Miss Joan who stepped in to answer.
“Don’t you have eyes, Fred? He’s obviously a doctor who Doc knew back in New York City. A friend would be my guess since he came all the way out to see how Doc was doing,” Miss Joan added.
“Think maybe he’ll stay?” Mrs. O’Malley asked hopefully. “Two doctors are always better than one.” The woman’s face was positively cherubic as she smiled. “And he’s cute.”
“Not as good-looking as Doc,” Miss Joan said loyally. “I’ve gotta be getting back. The girls don’t like me leaving them for long.” The last sentence was addressed to Tina.
Tina smiled. The woman had a very gruff way of mothering her, but she’d gotten used to it over the months and really did appreciate the woman’s efforts.
“How long a wait, you think?” Fred Anderson pressed Tina as she returned to her desk.
On her way out, Miss Joan stopped to look over her shoulder at the man.
“Doc’ll be done when he’s finished,” she informed Fred matter-of-factly, sparing Tina the trouble. “Why? You’ve got somewhere else to be?” It was clear by her tone that she knew he didn’t.
The retired railroad engineer raised his wide shoulders in a hapless shrug. Very few people ever foolishly went toe-to-toe with Miss Joan. “Just asking,” he mumbled timidly.
“And I’m just answering, Fred. No harm intended,” Miss Joan told him. She glanced one last time at Tina. “See you later, honey. If you need to hang around longer,” she said as an afterthought occurred to her, “don’t worry about Bobby. Lupe’s bringing him to the diner when she starts her shift. The little guy won’t lack having eyes watching him,” she promised.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful, she was. But at this point, Tina couldn’t help thinking, the women who worked in the diner saw her son more than she did. She would have to cut back on the accounts she handled out of the house, she decided. Working at the medical clinic took up a great deal of her time and whatever time she had left—that wasn’t spent with Dan—needed to be devoted to Bobby or he would grow up thinking he had half a dozen “Mommies” and she would just be part of the group.
He slept less these days and wanted to play more. She really didn’t want to miss out on this part of his life.
But she also didn’t want to miss being with Dan, she thought ruefully.
To his credit, Dan spent a lot of time with her and Bobby. Still, it would be a lot easier if they were actually a real family unit, she mused. But for that to happen, a couple of steps in between were needed.
You can’t rush this. All good things take time to come around. You know that.
She did know that. She just wished she could bridle her impatience a little better. Waiting was not one of her fortes.
The next moment, Fred Anderson approached her with another question obviously on his mind and she put he
r own thoughts and life on hold to give her job her full attention. After all, Dan depended on her to keep things running smoothly, she reminded herself.
The idea of Dan depending on her pleased her a great deal.
IT HAD BEEN A ROUGH AFTERNOON, following on the heels of a rougher morning. But it would have been a completely overwhelming zoo, Dan readily acknowledged, if he hadn’t had Bill Knox pitching in and working right beside him. As it was, he’d not only had to deal with George Murphy’s broken leg, but another two emergencies, back-to-back, in the afternoon. Emergencies that had to be worked into what was a full complement of patients for both the morning and the afternoon.
But even with the rancher whose horse had managed to throw him and then stomp on his hand, and another who’d gotten his hand impaled on the prong of a pitchfork, things had gone far more smoothly than they had since he’d first arrived in Forever.
That afternoon, the parade of patients had been non-stop for close to four hours straight. And then, finally, the last patient had been seen and treated.
From the sound of it, the reception area was devoid of anyone waiting to see him. Relieved, exhausted but extremely satisfied, Dan collapsed in a chair. He gestured toward the other one in his office, indicating that Knox follow suit.
The latter did, sliding practically bonelessly into the seat. Knox looked even more exhausted than he felt, Dan thought.
“Damn, this is like our E.R. days,” Knox complained. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward his friend. “Is it always this crazy here?”
“No,” Dan answered, tongue in cheek. “This whole day was just for your benefit.”
“Thanks,” Bill said sarcastically. The next moment, he sat up and leaned into his friend. “So, tell me, what’s the deal with Miss Hottie in the waiting room?”
The smile on Dan’s lips retreated a little. He found that he took offense at the glib term that Knox was applying to Tina. “She’s not a hottie—”
Knox laughed shortly. “Then you’ve gone blind, my friend. From where I’m sitting—”
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