Beyond the Breakwater

by Radclyffe

  “That’s a tall order, Doctor.”

  “Stretch yourself, Sheriff. I’m sure you can manage.”

  *

  By the time Tory was finished, they were both awash with sweat.

  “I’m sorry. I know that hurt.” Tory stripped off her gloves and brushed her hand over Reese’s cheek. Almost to herself, she murmured, “You’re so pale.”

  “It’s okay.” Reese tried to smile, but her stomach felt like it had been tied into knots. “It had to be done. I’m glad it was you.”

  “I’d rather it not be anyone at all sewing you up.” Tory sighed, knowing that nothing would stop Reese from doing whatever she felt needed to be done in the line of duty, and tried to put the worries from her mind. She crossed the room, unlocked the drug cabinet, and searched around inside for a minute. After filling a paper cup with water at the sink, she returned to Reese and held out several colored tablets in her hand, along with the cup. “Take these.”

  “What are they?” Reese was suspicious of all things pill-shaped.

  “Antibiotics and a pain pill. Believe me, you’re going to need them when the lidocaine wears off.”

  “Thanks.” Reese complied without protest.

  “Let’s get you home.”

  “That sounds like a great idea.”

  With Tory’s help, Reese climbed wearily down from the table, and the two of them walked slowly from the clinic to Tory’s Jeep. Reese called Lyons with instructions for Smith, then closed her eyes. Ten minutes later, they reversed the process and, arms around one another, made their way inside. Tory let Jed out while Reese continued up to their bedroom.

  “Can you get undressed by yourself?” Tory asked when she appeared a few moments later. “I really need to take a shower.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Not yet. I want you to keep the wounds dry tonight. You can shower in the morning.”

  “Okay.” Reese nodded and sat tiredly on the edge of the bed. “You go ahead. I can manage.”

  For a few seconds, Tory studied Reese intently. She’d seen her injured before, but she’d never seen her appear quite so drained. “I’ll only be a few minutes. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m all right, love.” Reese smiled faintly. “Don’t worry.”

  As soon as she could, Tory returned to the bedroom, wearing only an oversized T-shirt. The room lights were still on, and Reese was lying on her back on the bed, still in her T-shirt and trousers. Fast asleep.

  Carefully, Tory removed Reese’s shoes and socks, unbuckled her belt and slid it free, and pulled her shirt from beneath the waistband of her pants. She didn’t bother trying to undress her further because Reese barely moved for the entire process. Also exhausted, Tory simply stretched out beside her lover and pulled the comforter from the bottom of the bed over them both. Within seconds, she, too, was asleep.

  *

  The insistent buzzing of the alarm finally penetrated Tory’s consciousness. She rolled over and peered at the clock, then settled back with a sigh. “Reese…honey, it’s time to get up.” When there was no response, she gently shook Reese’s shoulder. “Reese?”

  “Tor,” Reese mumbled weakly. “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t…feel very…well.” Reese barely managed to get the words out before she rolled to the side of the bed and vomited onto the floor. “Sor—”

  “Reese!” In a flash, Tory bolted upright and leaned over to stare. What she saw made her heart nearly stop. Reese’s eyes were unfocused, her color gray, and her skin slick with sweat. Worse, her breathing was shallow and rapid. My God, she looks septic!

  “I need to check your wounds,” Tory said as calmly as she could manage. She slid from the bed, grabbed her cane from its customary spot by the night table, and went to the bathroom where she kept a small emergency kit. Returning with gloves and clean dressings, she said, “Let me see your arm, honey.”

  Reese didn’t move but lay with her eyes closed, unresisting, while Tory unwrapped the gauze from her forearm.

  Before Tory had even exposed the entire laceration, she could discern the redness and swelling extending from the wound nearly four inches up Reese’s arm. Cellulitis. To be this bad, this soon, it’s got to be a virulent organism. Without hesitation, she snatched up the bedside phone and punched 911.

  “This is Dr. King. I need an ambulance immediately.”

  She gave them the address, slammed down the phone, then rushed to get dressed. In a minute, she was back at Reese’s side with a cool towel, which she used to wipe her pallid face. “Reese—sweetheart, can you hear me?”

  “Tor?” Reese’s lids flickered open, and she looked up in confusion. “Wha…what’s wrong?”

  “You’ve got an infection, honey. I need to take you to the emergency room so we can evaluate you. It’s going to be okay.”

  “Nelson…should call…”

  “I’ll call him a little later. It’s okay. Don’t worry about work.” Tory glanced at the clock. Ten minutes. Where are they?

  Then, in the distance, she heard the siren and breathed a sigh of relief. Loath to leave Reese, she raced downstairs, opened the front door wide, and signaled with her arm for the EMTs to come inside. “We’re upstairs,” she called as she hurried back to Reese.

  Thankfully, Reese appeared slightly more coherent when the emergency technicians arrived. Enough to protest, “I don’t need…an ambulance.”

  “Probably not,” Tory said gently as she held Reese’s uninjured hand. “But it will be easier on me if I don’t have to drive to the hospital.”

  “Okay,” Reese replied softly. However, when she sat up, she gasped sharply, pressed her hand to her midsection, and promptly vomited again.

  “Let’s get her on the stretcher,” Tory ordered. “She needs IV hydration and a loading dose of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Come on. Let’s move it!”

  With practiced proficiency, the two male EMTs shifted Reese to the gurney, strapped her on, and pushed her from the room. Tory stayed as close to the side of the moving stretcher as she could. Then she climbed into the back of the van and settled near Reese’s head as one of the techs, a burly redhead, rapidly started an intravenous line in Reese’s left arm.

  “What do you want to give her, Doc?” As he spoke, he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her bicep and took a rapid reading. “Ninety over forty. Heart rate’s one-seventy. She’s pretty dehydrated.”

  “Run the saline wide open. Then give her a gram of Ancef and a hundred milligrams of gentamycin. We need to cover all our bases, because I don’t know what this is.”

  The tech deftly sorted through the drug box and began administering the antibiotics.

  “I need to culture this wound right now,” Tory said as the ambulance screamed east on Route 6 toward the nearest hospital, in Hyannis. Her mind was racing, veering toward near-crippling panic. She forced herself to think about the problem and not about the fact that it was Reese lying unresponsive in the back of an ambulance. “Get me a prep tray and some instruments.”

  The tech’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he voiced no objection. He handed Tory sterile gloves and prepared to assist.

  Meanwhile, Tory removed the dressings on Reese’s arm once again, carefully prepped the area with antiseptic solution, and snipped out several of the sutures she had placed the night before. When she gently squeezed the area, Reese moaned, thrashed weakly on the stretcher, and tried to pull away. Tory did not look at her face.

  “I don’t see any pus in there, do you?” The EMT peered curiously over her shoulder.

  “No. It’s too soon for an abscess. This is a soft tissue infection.”

  “Strep?” His concern was evident in his tone. “Jesus, do you think it’s necrotizing fasciitis?”

  “I don’t know.” Tory carefully pushed a sterile culture swab into the depths of the wound. Reese stiffened at the swift jolt of pain, and Tory’s stomach clenched. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “S’okay,” Reese mumbl
ed before she faded away again.

  “I don’t have my cell phone with me. Can you connect me to the hospital?” Tory questioned.

  “Sure.” He tapped on the sliding glass panel between the front cab and the treatment section in the rear. “Ken, pass me the radio.” He handed it to Tory and pointed to the button on the side. “Push to talk, let go to receive. I’ll get someone in triage for you.”

  After he gave the person in the emergency room their ETA, he handed the transmitter to Tory. She did as directed and spoke firmly, with no hint in her voice of the terror she felt.

  “This is Dr. Victoria King. I have a septic patient coming in. I need an infectious disease consultant and a surgeon standing by.”

  An eternity later, the EMS van careened into the ambulance bay of the regional hospital. Within seconds, they were inside, and a swarm of nurses and ER doctors descended upon them. By the time Tory was done giving a synopsis of the injury and presenting symptoms, Reese had been hooked up to monitors and additional IV lines. Throughout it all, Tory never left her side.

  “I’m Jill Baker. Infectious disease,” a short, trim African-American woman in a conservative blazer and slacks announced as she approached the bed. “What have we got?”

  “Victoria King.” Tory shook her hand and then repeated the details of the previous night and morning. As she spoke, Baker shook her head.

  “Foreign body punctures combined with salt marsh contamination. Jesus. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned dog bites?” The infectious disease specialist surveyed the monitors, frowned, and reached for Reese’s injured arm. “No hypotensive episodes? Nothing to indicate shock?”

  “No.” Tory’s throat was dry, and she suddenly felt light-headed. “I’m sorry. I need to sit for a second.”

  “Here,” a deep alto voice said from behind her as a firm hand took her arm. “There’s a seat right over here.”

  “Thanks,” Tory mumbled, fighting a wave of nausea as she settled onto a stool and put her head down. She was struggling so hard not to pass out, she barely heard the swift intake of breath from the woman beside her.

  “Tory?”

  When she could look up without her vision dimming, Tory found herself staring into the face of a stranger who had once been her whole world. She was Tory’s age, still fit, and still roguishly attractive. She’d been a lady-killer when they’d been lovers. And undoubtedly she still was.

  “Hello, K.T.”

  “Are you all right?” The dark-eyed, dark-haired woman’s expression was one of concern and surprise. She grabbed the arm of a passing tech without moving her eyes from Tory’s face. “Bring us some orange juice, will you?”

  “I’m fine, really.” Tory chanced an upright position. “What are you doing here?”

  “Moonlighting. I’m the surgeon on call. What’s going on? Why are you—”

  “I think it’s Vibrio,” Jill Baker interrupted as she walked over to them. “She’s got a rip-roaring cellulitis that’s climbing up her arm, GI symptoms, and mental confusion. It all fits with an acute marine bacterial infection.”

  “What the hell is that?” K.T. O’Bannon, uncharacteristically, was in the dark.

  “It’s a salt-water organism. Some of them can produce a fulminant infection within hours and eat just about anything in their path while they’re at it.”

  “Does she need to be debrided in the OR?” the surgeon asked curtly.

  “Probably.” Baker lowered her voice. “If it’s the vulnificus variety, it can be fatal if you don’t remove the involved tissue right away.”

  Tory’s head pounded, not with dizziness but with mind-numbing fear. She walked away from them and went to Reese’s side. “Hiya, Sheriff,” she said when she saw that Reese’s eyes were open, and thankfully, clear again. She brushed her fingertips over Reese’s face.

  “Hey,” Reese said hoarsely, holding up the hand with the IV taped to it. “How you doin’?”

  “I’m okay.” Tory’s throat was tight with tears she would not shed as she wrapped her hand around her lover’s.

  “What’s going on? I don’t remember much of how we got here.”

  “You’ve got a bad infection in your arm. How do you feel?”

  “Head hurts.” Reese frowned. “My insides feel like I swallowed nails. Can’t say as I feel much in my arm.” She saw Tory pale. “Tor? What is it? You better tell me now…I’m getting pretty foggy again.”

  “You may need surgery, honey. To remove the infected tissue.”

  “Surgery?” Reese tried to sit up, but failed.

  The sight of her normally strong, commanding partner so weak and ill scared Tory to her depths. Her eyes flooded, and she looked away.

  “Tory, please,” Reese said urgently, summoning all of her strength. “This is my weapon arm. You can’t let them cut pieces out of it.”

  “You’re more important than any job.” Tory’s voice was rough, her eyes dark pools of anguish.

  “Don’t cr—oh, fuck…I’m gonna throw—”

  Tory grabbed a basin just in time as Reese vomited again. She slipped her arm beneath Reese’s shoulder and held her as close as the hospital bed would allow. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

  “Please,” Reese muttered when she could catch her breath. “Don’t let them operate.” Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and slipped into darkness.

  Chapter Six

  Bri examined the clock beside her bed for the fourth time in less than ten minutes. Naked, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. It’s too early to call. Carre never gets up this early.

  It was hard getting used to waking up without Caroline beside her. Hell, it was hard doing everything without her. It had been especially weird riding the Harley with a woman pressed against her, arms around her waist, a cheek resting lightly against her shoulder, who hadn’t been Caroline.

  She’d dropped Allie off at her place after they’d left the tavern around one a.m. Allie had said she could walk home or grab a ride with someone else, but Bri had insisted on taking her. It was funny, but watching Allie walk away had left her with an empty feeling. And that didn’t make any sense, because she didn’t even know her. When she got home, even though it was late, she had called Caroline. And no one had answered.

  You wanted to do this. You knew it would be hard. There’s no point in complaining now. Just suck it up, Parker.Sighing, Bri rolled onto her side, buried her face in her pillow, and tried to sleep.

  Fuck. She got up, pulled on sweats and a T-shirt, and padded barefoot out into the living room, where the only phone in the apartment was located. There were two other bedrooms, both occupied by academy trainees like her, bargain basement furniture in all the rooms, threadbare rugs, and not much else. The place had no personality, no personal touches, and not much to recommend it other than the fact that it was cheap and the roof didn’t leak. Fortunately, if she were lucky, she wouldn’t be here long.

  She slumped onto the end of the lumpy couch and reached for the phone. After seven rings, she was about to hang up when she heard Caroline’s sleepy voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Babe? Sorry, did I wake you?”

  “Bri? Hi, yeah. That’s okay.” Caroline laughed. “I’m awake now. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Bri said quietly. “I just…wanted to talk to you. I tried calling last night…”

  “Oh.” There was a beat of silence. “I was out with some of the kids from school. I…I got the scholarship.”

  Bri closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. “That’s great, babe. I’m really proud of you.”

  “I tried to call you, but I guess I missed you.”

  “Yeah. I was with Reese.” Bri straightened her shoulders. “So listen, we should do something to celebrate. I’ll come down today. I can be there by dinnertime.”

  “What about your class?”

  “I’ll skip it.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” The surprise in Caroline’s voice tugge
d at Bri’s heart. Do you think I don’t miss you?

  “That would be so great. I miss you.”

  “Me, too.” Bri heard a muffled voice in the background. “Is somebody there?”

  “Oh. That’s James. It was really late when the party broke up last night, and he walked me home.”

  “And stayed over?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Bri had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. You could spit from one side of that apartment to the other. Everything was turned upside down, and all she could feel was the dark ache of loss. The words were out before she even had time to think.

  “Where did he sleep?”

  “What? Bri!”

  “Well, Jesus, Carre—what am I supposed to think?”

  “You’re supposed to think I love you. And in case you’ve forgotten, I like girls.” Caroline’s voice rose, tight with anger. “It’s pretty clear you’ve forgotten that the only girl I ever wanted was you. No wonder it was so easy for you to leave.”

  “Easy?” Bri whispered, so quietly her voice did not carry over the line.

  “I’m going to go now, Bri, because I don’t want to fight. Call me later.”

  Bri closed her eyes as a soft click broke the connection. Stupid. Jesus, what’s wrong with you?

  She got up and headed for the shower, determined to ride to New York City and apologize. As she stood under the hot spray, trying to purge the misery from her mind and heart, a pounding on the bathroom door penetrated her awareness. She stuck her head outside the shower curtain. “What?”

  The door opened a crack and a male voice called, “Parker, your old man’s on the phone.”

  “Tell him I’ll call him back,” Bri yelled, surprised.

  “He says it’s an emergency.”

  Heart pounding, Bri stepped from the shower and grabbed for a towel.

  *