The Reef Roamer (The Roamer Series Book 1)

by Deborah D. Moore

  “Yes, I know,” Jayme murmured as they sped along, clipping the crests of the waves.

  Jayme was soon sitting on the deck, her back up against the dry locker, letting Daniel slosh fresh water over her head, the jostling at a minimum now.

  “Daniel, I need you to help me with something before we get to shore and everyone starts making an even bigger fuss.”

  “Anything. What do you want me to do?”

  After Daniel retrieved the pair of scissors out of a pocket on Jayme’s dry bag, he sat beside her. “What do you want me to do with these?”

  “I know you’re not squeamish, Daniel. First, on my right arm, pull the wetsuit sleeve down while Miguel holds my left arm steady.” Jayme groaned as the suit came loose. “Now, at the wound, carefully cut my wet suit up the sleeve to the shoulder and then around the lure. Careful not to cut the dive skins yet.” Miguel took the scissors and made the cuts as Jayme indicated. She stood, and they pulled the suit the rest of the way off of her. Jayme sat down, exhausted.

  “Did that hurt too much, Jayme?” Marge was hovering like a mother hen.

  “Not as much as if we had waited for the doctor. The suit is trashed anyway.”

  Marge grimaced, patting Jayme’s good hand.

  “The skins should be much easier to do.”

  They went through a similar procedure, only this time just cutting the sleeve off and stretching the material to go over the embedded lure. After freeing her arm, Jayme left the skins on from the waist down for protection from the sun and wind.

  Miguel sat down next to her. “Jayme, I’m so sorry this happened. We will find who’s responsible for this.”

  ***

  Dr. Steele was examining a very pregnant and soon to be new mother when Daniel brought Jayme into the clinic’s outer office. The young girl seated at the reception desk smiled brightly at Daniel.

  “Hi, Daniel. What’s the problem?” Naomi asked sweetly, eyeing Jayme.

  “Hi, Naomi. Is Dr. Steele in? One of my divers got hooked by a fishing lure.” It was clear Daniel was angered by the situation. “When I find out who was out there today, there will be hell to pay!”

  “Dr. Steele is with Lana right now. He should be finished soon. Bring her back to, ah, room three.” The young girl glanced over her shoulder to check which rooms were occupied. “Yeah, room three is open.” The young woman eyed Jayme cautiously.

  Daniel escorted a weak-kneed Jayme to the examination table and then was shooed out by Naomi. “I’m an assistant in training to Dr. Steele,” Naomi boasted. “I man the desk and answer the phones when he doesn’t need my help,” she explained further, feeling the need to justify her presence in the exam room.

  “That must keep you busy,” Jayme answered in her throaty voice, deepened with exhaustion.

  “Very.” The young girl was clearly startled by Jayme’s reply, as much by the voice as by being answered at all. “I’m going to put your arm in these restraints so the doctor can work more easily to remove that lure, okay?”

  “And if it isn’t?” Jayme’s mild voice took on an unusual edge.

  “If what isn’t what?”

  “If it isn’t okay to restrain my arm, then what?” Jayme briefly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if I was harsh. Since I lean toward being claustrophobic, let’s wait to strap me down until the doctor is ready, okay?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Naomi smiled widely at Jayme, not use to being countermanded. “I’ll get things ready and get your information and then be out of your way.”

  ***

  When Mark Steele came into room three, he saw a long-legged female, clad in drying diving skins that clung to every shapely curve of her body. She was facing the window, away from him, and he could see her water-darkened hair was starting to dry in salt-encrusted waves at the nape of her shapely neck. He thought he detected a faint hum coming from her direction.

  Crazy tourist. Probably was standing too close to some fool who was trying to cast his deep sea line like a fly rod and got hooked in the process.

  Mark picked up her chart. “Hello, Mrs. Haller. I’m Dr. Steele.”

  Why did that name sound familiar?

  Her head turned, and he was startled by the intensity of her green eyes.

  “Ms. Haller, Dr. Steele. I’ve been a widow for five years. I don’t feel much like a married woman anymore.” Her honesty and bluntness was refreshing if not startling. “At the moment, what I do feel like is a pincushion.”

  Her comment snapped him out of his daydreaming. “Have we met before, Ms. Haller?”

  Jayme gazed into his smoky gray eyes long and hard, trying to steady her increasing heart rate as she took in his nearness. “Yes.”

  I knew it! he thought triumphantly.

  “At breakfast last week. I almost spilled my coffee on you.” Jayme was having difficulty breaking away from the look in his eyes.

  “No, I mean before that.”

  Confound this woman, Mark seethed. She knows what I mean!

  “Oh, I thought you were pulling a fast line on me that morning. I still don’t recollect meeting you before, Dr. Steele.” He looked disappointed. “Now, could you do something about this thing sticking out of my arm? It really hurts.”

  “Oh, of course. Let’s take a look.” He turned her arm over and brought an intensity light closer. “It’s pretty deep. I’ll have to give you a local and then have it out in no time.” He reached for the restraint board and Velcro-ed her arm in position. Swabbing her arm down with a cleansing alcohol, Mark found all the Vaseline. “What in the hell is this?”

  “The Vaseline? It stopped the flow of blood.”

  “That wasn’t very smart.”

  “Well, it seemed like a good idea at fifty feet underwater,” Jayme snapped back. “I wasn’t too crazy about becoming shark bait!”

  “You were diving when this happened? Don’t you know to stay out of a fishing area? You’re right about one thing, though; you could have become shark food. I’ve seen shark in this area…” He trailed off, leaving his thoughts unspoken.

  “Look, just get the damn thing out of my arm and I’ll get out of your way!” There was something about this doctor that was indeed familiar. Maybe they had met before. If that was so, it couldn’t have been a pleasant experience, for Jayme felt the familiarity came with a darkness, and she didn’t like that, not at all.

  Mark shut his mouth. What was he doing? He normally didn’t talk that way to his patients. Her eyes. He lost all his senses, including his common sense when she turned those emeralds in his direction.

  “I’m going to numb your upper arm. Look at the wall, please. Good.” He moved the needle every few inches, numbing the jagged five-inch tear. It was irregular, nasty, and deep, and had to be causing her excruciating pain. He gentled his voice. “Can you feel this now?” He tapped her arm with the needle.

  “No,” Jayme answered curtly. If he wanted to be a bully, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of responding, which would also make it easier for her to ignore him. In spite of the dark shadow over her mind he seemed to bring, she was definitely attracted to him and she couldn’t let him know that.

  Mark worked swiftly, cleaning the wound of all the jelly. At fifty feet down, it was probably the smartest thing she could have done and was lucky to have the jelly with her. He spread the wound wider to assess the damage. The grappling hook-styled lure was popular in the area, sure to sink into whatever it touched that was soft and fleshy. Right now, Mark could see that it had punctured deeply; only two of the three sharp tips could be seen. He picked up a pair of sterile wire cutters to free the main body of the lure from her tender flesh. Soon he dropped the offending object into a metal dish with a loud clatter. It was large, about eight inches long, and bright yellow with deep blue stripes, made to look like a blue-striped grunt, no doubt. Knowing the local would wear off too soon, he re-anesthetized the area.

  “Done so soon?” Jayme queried.

  “Not quite.
” He kept his voice steady, keeping in check his rising anger at the fisherman who did this to her. “The hooks are imbedded pretty deep. I just cut the lure off to get a better grip on them. There are three tines on each post, like this.” He handed her the lure in the tray. As she examined it with interest, he went on, relieved to have something technical to talk about, though he was sure under different circumstances, they wouldn’t be at a loss for words.

  “Two of the hooks passed through the epidermis and dermas; their tips are exposed and should come out easily. The third, however, appears to be still in the superficial fascia layer. I’m going to force it the rest of the way.”

  “Of course,” Jayme said, “you can’t pull it back through the skin without causing additional injury. The only logical way to minimize the damage is to continue its path.”

  Mark raised his eyebrow, impressed at her knowledge. “That’s right, to a point. No pun intended.” He smiled warmly at her, trying to lighten the tenseness in the room. Jayme could feel herself melt inside as his lips parted over even white teeth.

  “Once the third tip is exposed, I’m going to cut the end off where the three tines join, and pull each one out along the path it has already created.” Soon four pieces of metal landed in the metal bowl sitting on the instrument tray at Mark’s side.

  Jayme let out a long sigh. “Was there any damage below the fascia?”

  “As in the muscle layer? No, it doesn’t appear so. You were lucky. The hooks must have caught on your dive skins, keeping it from getting too deep.”

  “The skins are quite thin. It must have been the neoprene wet suit that caught the hooks.”

  “You were wearing a wet suit? I didn’t see…” He glanced around the room.

  “I had a friend help me take it off. I was afraid you’d probably be less gentle with it than we were, and I wanted to keep all the damage to a minimum.”

  Jayme gave him a dazzling smile then. His heart skipped a beat, and he momentarily forgot to breathe. He found her more and more amazing with each passing minute. The pain she must have endured to remove the wet suit! Very few people he knew would have been able to stand it. She must have a high pain threshold.

  “I’m nearly done. You have a choice, Ms. Haller. Would you like pink sutures or standard black?”

  “Neon pink or regular pink?” she teased back, finding it easier to like him than stay angry at him.

  “Only regular,” Mark replied. Were they really yelling at each other only a few minutes ago? He couldn’t even remember why.

  “Ah, well, regular pink it is then,” Jayme answered, mock disappointment in her voice.

  He quickly and expertly stitched up the gaping wound. Mark wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. When he finished, he selected another syringe, this one with a light painkiller. Touching the still-numb arm, he injected her with 10cc of Demerol.

  “All done, Ms. Haller. You can take a look now if you want. You took forty stitches, some of them inside,” he informed her as he reached for yet another syringe, this one with penicillin.

  Jayme turned her head in time to see the doctor dimple her arm with the needle. “Stop! What is that? I don’t handle sedatives well.”

  “It’s only penicillin.”

  She tried to jerk her arm away, but it was held fast by the restraint board. “I’m allergic!”

  Mark pulled the needle back before it punctured her delicate skin. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

  “I did!” she retorted. “Why didn’t you read my chart?” She was getting darned tired of his vacillating attitude.

  Mark pushed away from her and reached for the clipboard that held her stats. Naomi had written “penicillin” across the top of the page in neat block letters but failed to highlight it in red which would bring to his attention there was an allergy. “Anything else I should know about?” His voice was only slightly humbled.

  “Like I said, I don’t handle sedatives or painkillers well.”

  The Demerol! “What do you mean by ‘don’t handle well’, Ms. Haller?” Had he screwed up royally in being distracted by their easy banter and those lovely green eyes of hers?

  “A little goes a long way with me. I take less than half of a normal dose. The last time I had a sedative, when my husband died, I was in la-la land for three days thanks to some doctor in Marsh Harbor who acted first and asked questions later. Maybe I was better off there, though.” Her voice drifted away. It was getting hard to concentrate. “Why am I so fuzzy all of a sudden, Dr. Steele?”

  “Ms. Haller, I’m afraid I already gave you a painkiller. I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware. It was a light dose, though. However, considering your apparent history, you’ll probably sleep for the next twelve to eighteen hours. I’ll arrange to have someone stay with you.” Maybe even myself, he added silently, mulling over her comments about her experience in Marsh Harbor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dr. Steele was normally a patient man with his young assistant. Naomi was bright, enthusiastic, better educated than most of her people, and she knew or was related to nearly everyone on half the islands, which made her an asset. When he burst out of room three in an obvious rage, Naomi was shocked.

  “Naomi! Why didn’t you complete Ms. Haller’s chart? She told you she was allergic. I almost gave her a shot of penicillin!” Mark ran his fingers through his dark hair, pacing.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Steele. I guess when she started going on about the arm restraint and being claustrophobic, I got distracted. It won’t happen again,” Naomi explained contritely.

  “Claustrophobic?! Oh, Christ!” And he was off again, charging back into room three.

  Daniel looked at the doctor’s back. “Is he like that often?”

  “No. Normally he’s really pleasant, easygoing. Everyone on the islands likes Dr. Steele; you know that. I’ve messed up a lot worse, and it’s hardly fazed him. There must be something about this Haller woman that upsets him.”

  ***

  Mark entered Jayme’s room at a slow run, thinking he’d have a frantic woman on his hands, trying to get out of the restraint he’d left her in. All he saw was the back of her head, again, and heard that low hum coming from her direction.

  He stopped short of bumping into the exam table. “Ms. Haller? Are you alright? Naomi just told me about your claustrophobia. I’d never have left you in restraints if I’d known. I’m sorry.”

  “Jayme.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Jayme. And please get my arm free before I do lose control and start to scream.” Her voice was incredibly calm; there was no way she was on the verge of panic. Then he saw her eyes and the terror hidden beneath the greenness. He moved quickly to free her.

  “You have remarkable control. I don’t think I would have lasted under those conditions,” he admitted, trying to lighten the stress building in the air. “Does it have to do with the humming I heard when I came in? Your control, I mean.”

  “Yes. It’s a…an Oriental form of meditation.” She almost said a Martial Art.

  “Tai Chi or Tae Kwon Do?”

  Jayme moved her drug-fogged head to look up at him. He’d surprised her; he was informed. “Actually, it’s both. Being able to slip into a different ‘mind mode’ has saved me on many different occasions.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about them sometime. For now, I want you to spend the night here with me.” Her eyes widened. “Well, not with me, just here at the clinic. Where I-I can w-watch you,” he stammered, embarrassed, because what he had thought was that he really would like her to spend the night with him, in his arms, in his bed. He flushed at his private thoughts. “There’s a separate room with several beds for patients. Occasionally, I need to keep someone overnight for observation. You can stay there. Naomi will be in shortly to help me get you showered.” Again, Jayme widened her eyes. “In your bathing suit, of course,” he quickly added. “You need to get all the saltwater off of you before I can finish bandaging your arm.” Jayme had to
smile at how flustered he seemed to be around her. “Then Naomi will help you change,” he muttered as he walked out the door, realizing he’d forgotten to tell his assistant that Jayme was staying and he’d need her assistance.

  Once back in the outer office, Dr. Steele noticed Daniel for the first time. He knew Daniel was one of the finest dive masters in the islands and was surprised to see him there.

  “Daniel, hello. What can I do for you?”

  “Hi, Doc. How is Jayme doing?” Daniel stood and approached the reception desk.

  “She’s with you?” Mark quizzed, a surge of jealousy rearing up when he remembered seeing them together the other night and then realized Jayme had said she was diving when she got hooked. “Was she on one of your charters when this happened?”

  “Yeah. We were at Horseshoe Wall and some idiot dropped a line on us in spite of the dive flags. If I find out who…” He let the threat hang. “She okay, Doc? She’s a special person and an exceptional diver. I feel really bad about this.”

  Dr. Steele took this all in. “There was no deeply severe or lasting damage, though she won’t be doing anything for a while, much less diving. She required forty stitches in her arm. She really was lucky. I’ll send my bill to the dive shop.”

  Daniel grinned. “No problem, Doc,” he said, knowing there would never be a bill sent.

  “You might as well go back home, Daniel. She’s having a minor reaction to the painkiller, so I’m going to keep her overnight for observation,” Mark said. “Naomi, come with me please. Ms. Haller will be staying overnight. She’s going to need help showering all the salt off before I can dress her wound. I’ll help you.” When Naomi raised her eyebrows ever so slightly at him, he added, “She’s in her bathing suit! For Pete’s sake! What is it with these women? I am a doctor, you know,” Mark finished, half to himself, walking ahead of her. Naomi had to stifle a smile as she looked back and gave Daniel a parting wink.