“Doctor,” Maris, the head nurse behind the counter nodded in the direction of the cubicles. “Mr Bennett’s in cubicle three. Twenty-nine, with a broken nose and a three-inch laceration to his forehead and a four-inch laceration on his scalp; he walked face first through a glass sliding door. He’ll need sutures.”
Michael nodded at the nurse and headed for the cubicle.
The patient was sitting on the edge of the narrow hospital bed, a pretty, curvy strawberry blonde sitting on the chair beside the bed with her hand-bag clutched in her lap, a modest diamond glinting on her ring-finger.
The man had removed his, no doubt blood-soaked shirt to reveal the toned, flat planes and muscles of a serious athlete. His shaggy dark hair was matted with drying blood, and he had the makings of a raccoon mask starting along the bottom edge of his eye sockets, but these temporary blemishes couldn’t disguise his sensual mouth. At Michael’s approach, the patient sat up straighter and looked Michael’s way, and he felt a hitch in his step when those stormy grey eyes focused on him.
Michael cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, I’m Doctor McIan. I see we’ve had an accident,” he said, moving to stand before the patient. He took a moment to appreciate the shirtless torso before him, then turned his attention to the injury.
“Yes, Doctor,” his wife said. She was no less stunning. Soft and voluptuous, she radiated softness and sensuality. He could imagine her cradling his head to her bosom, or burrowing into her while his hands clutched her soft curves; a pocket-sized, strawberry blonde, Marilyn Monroe.
“Sorry, what was that?” He mentally shook his head to clear it. Stop lusting after your patients! Or their wives. Just… mind back on the job, McIan!
“His nose, forehead and further back, in his hair,” she said. “I was worried; he was bleeding a lot.”
“Yes, those injuries would,” Michael agreed, taking Mr Bennett’s chin between thumb and forefinger and turning his face so that he could see it from another angle, stubble rasping against the pad of Michael’s thumb. “Your nose looks fine. Did you set it yourself?”
“Yes,” said Bennett. “It’s not the first time I broke it; Rugby, high school.”
“I see,” he murmured and looked up to the gash on his face. The bleeding had slowed to an ooze, but he could see the bone underneath. It could’ve been worse; it was right above his eye. “This cut will need stitches. I think I can mostly hide the scar here at the top edge of your eyebrow.” He stepped away. “I’ll just go get some local anaesthetic and a suture kit –”
“No!”
Michael paused and looked back at his patient. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of needles?”
“Well, yes, I don’t like needles, but I’m allergic to local anaesthetic.”
“Which one?” Michael asked.
“So far? I’ve had a bad reaction to each one we’ve tried. The last time was scary enough; I couldn’t breathe.”
“Then you have a problem,” Michael said. “This is your face; you need stitches to minimise scarring and the chance of infection. This is too close to your eyelid for Steri-strips; half the strip would have to attach to your eyelid, and I’m sure you know that won’t work. And suture glue… well, it’s not a good idea to have that near your eye.”
Mr Bennett closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You’ll have to stitch without it, then.”
“Mr Bennett –”
“The sooner you start, the sooner it’s over. How’s your sewing, doc?”
Michael’s mouth quirked. “Like your grandmother’s embroidery.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “My grandmother’s embroidery was terrible. She was more into crocheting.”
Michael laughed. “The other grandmother; the one who won prizes for embroidery.”
“Well, as long as she won prizes,” Mr Bennett grinned, and Michael felt a visceral reaction to that smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this attracted to another man; too bad the man in question was his patient. And straight. And married.
“Just give me a moment to gather what we need, and we’ll move to the procedure room. We’ll be more comfortable there.”
After a short conversation with Maris, he escorted the Bennetts to the theatre. “Should I wait outside?” Mrs Bennett asked.
“Are you squeamish?” Michael asked.
“No,” she scoffed. “Who do you think cleaned him up?”
“Then no, you can stay.” Michael led them to a narrow operating table and had Mr Bennett lie down with his head under the overhead light. Michael retrieved a tall rolling stool that was standing out of the way and wheeled it closer.
“What’s wrong?” Mrs Bennett asked. Michael looked over at her; she was looking at his left leg. “You’re limping.”
“Old injury,” he said curtly and sat down on the rolling stool. Thankfully, she left it at that. He reached up to switch on the overhead light, and repositioned it to where he needed. Mr Bennett grimaced at the bright light shining into his eyes. “Sorry, Mr Bennett.”
“Tristan, please.”
“And please call me Judith,” she said softly. She took her husband’s hand in both of hers.
Michael pulled the trolley with his instruments closer, then ripped open the package of the sterile suture kit and pulled on the pair of latex gloves. “You’ve had injections before, you’ve had blood drawn before. You can do this. Just think of it as lots of injections.”
“Got it,” Tristan said.
Michael picked up his instruments and bent over Tristan. He seemed calm. Serene. And then Michael gently pierced his skin with the suture needle.
He could see Tristan clench, then consciously relax his jaw, and for Michael’s part, he tugged the thread through his skin as gently and smoothly as possible, aiming for the optimal balance of gentleness and speed. Michael tied off the first stitch and snipped the ends, then waited a few moments for Tristan’s breathing to become calm.
He glanced up and saw Judith running the fingers of one hand gently up and down her husband’s inner arm. Her hair was falling over her shoulder, and her face held an expression of care and affection as she looked down at Tristan. With the overhead light glinting on her red-gold hair and her porcelain skin, she could have been an angel.
Would anyone ever gift him with that expression? Envy clenched in the region of his heart, and then she looked up, her blue eyes catching his, and he saw her pupils dilate. “Keep doing that,” he murmured and nodded at her fingers. “Tristan? I want you to concentrate on Judith’s touch.” She nodded and looked down at her husband again.
He pierced Tristan’s skin again, slowly but steadily pushing the needle through, and felt a rush of calm control wash through his system. His brother Gabriel sometimes said Michael thought he was God; Michael had to concede that in this moment, he could imagine what it felt like. This man laid out before him had put his faith unreservedly in him, trusted Michael to heal him, and Michael would do all in his power not to let them down.
After seven stitches Tristan let out a slow, deep breath. Michael allowed himself a satisfied smile; the endorphins were taking effect.
Focusing even more on each stitch, and watching Tristan’s reaction after each one, Michael completed the line of sutures, counting twenty-four stitches when he was done. He could have done with fewer stitches, but considering how calm Tristan was being, he allowed himself the luxury of smaller, neater sutures, that would ultimately mean less scarring. Now the laceration on the scalp…
~*~
The first stitch had hurt. As had the second one. Especially when the thread had slithered through the skin and he felt the tug as the two flaps of skin were pulled together. He focused on Judith’s grip on his right hand, and soon he felt the soft fingers of her free hand caressing his inner forearm. He focused on it for a while, and feeling himself calm, he turned his attention back to the suture needle.
Perhaps it was because the doctor was working gently and not racing to get it over with. Sometimes has
te equated to being rough, and Tristan appreciated the care he was taking. Tristan felt the needle pierce him slowly, inexorably, then the thread sliding smoothly after; the edges of the cut being pulled together; the ends of the thread being snipped.
The doctor gave him a moment to ride the tail end of the pain, and when that faded, he felt the end of the needle rest against his skin for a moment before firmly sliding into his flesh again.
When the needle pierced his skin for the seventh time, he experienced a zen-like rush of peace. Tension he hadn’t even realized he had, leached from his muscles. Stresses from work, Hennessey and the new class he had to teach, the stressful athletics coaching season, and the argument with Judith somehow no longer seemed to matter, and all his attention focused on the sharp point of pain, interspersed by warm caresses of pleasure from Judith. Pain… pleasure… anticipation, then pain… pleasure. He felt himself sinking into the operating table, Judith’s caresses on his arm forming a soothing counterpoint to the warm, sharp pinch on his face, and later his scalp.
It felt like he could breathe for the first time in weeks.
“Done; that was the last one,” Doctor McIan finally said quietly. Dimly, Tristan was aware that the bright light that shone on his face had been switched off, and he felt hands at his elbows.
Leave me alone, he thought, but felt too uncoordinated to push them away. He felt drunk. They helped him to shuffle out of the theatre, down the passage to the nurses’ station, and soon he was ensconced in a hospital bed in one of the cubicles. The mattress felt softer than earlier, and a warm, fluffy blanket was tossed over him. He was cocooned in warmth and softness.
He was vaguely aware of the doctor murmuring in the far distance, and then Judith’s hand was in his again.
What would make this perfect was if Judith would climb into this bed and hold him. He really wanted to be held, but instead, he just drifted, like an unmoored boat, slowly drifting further and further away…
~*~
“Careful,” Michael murmured to Tristan as he helped Judith to assist her husband onto bed in the nurses’ station. When Tristan was stretched out on the bed, his head on the pillow, Michael grabbed the folded fleece blanket from the foot of the bed and tossed it over him.
The man was well and truly in subspace.
If this were a scene, and Michael were his Dom, he’d be administering aftercare, but this situation was trickier than that. Tristan was not Michael’s submissive. They didn’t have an intimate relationship, and they were in the middle of his practice.
“What’s wrong with him?” Judith asked.
“His body is high on endorphins,” Michael said softly. “He’ll be out of it for a while. Let him rest for a bit, and don’t let him drive for the rest of the day.”
“So he has to sleep it off?” Judith asked doubtfully.
“Yes. Try to get him to drink plenty of water, and eat some chocolate.”
“Chocolate?” She wrinkled her nose. “I wonder if I can claim that from medical aid.”
Michael stared at her for a moment, then let out a full-throated laugh. “I must have that printed on a mug for my office,” he grinned. The corners of her lips quirked into an almost-smile. Stop flirting with your patient’s wife, he chastised himself.
“Doctor?” Maris tapped him on the shoulder. “Could you perhaps come have a look at Mrs Joseph in cubicle four? She came in for a routine blood pressure check, and we can’t get the same reading twice in a row. We’re a little worried, because she’s also seven months pregnant.”
“Thanks, Maris – I’ll be there in a moment.” He nodded at the nurse, then turned back to Judith. “I’ve got to go. Remember, give him a few minutes, then have him drink some water, and eat some chocolate. I think they sell a few chocolates at the pharmacy in reception.”
“Thank you doctor,” she smiled. Call me Michael. It was on the tip of his tongue. But at the last moment, he reminded himself it would be better to maintain a professional distance.
You’re their doctor, McIan, he reminded himself, not their Dom.
~*~
Judith stared at the report on her screen and tamped down her frustration. It was a complicated spreadsheet, outlining selected data from the last trade exhibition her firm had been involved in, but it was a spreadsheet supplied by one of their stakeholders, and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to complete it.
Highlighting the relevant cells on the spreadsheet, she pressed “print”, and then “print selection”, but before she could get up from her desk to retrieve it from the shared printer, her desktop phone rang. She sank back down into her chair and snatched the handset off its cradle. For a moment her mind blanked on whether to answer the phone using the generic greeting meant for external callers, or the less formal departmental greeting reserved for internal calls.
“Research and Development, good afternoon,” she said smoothly, her tone betraying none of her frustration of a moment ago.
“Judith,” Ariel, the CEO’s personal assistant, said on the other end of the line. “Mr De Villiers wants to know if Mr Anderson has finished the report he asked for. He needs it for the meeting this afternoon.”
“No, I’m still busy with it,” Judith said. “I was just about to ask him about one of the columns.”
“Why on earth are you working on it? It was his name on the e-mail.” Ariel asked. “Never mind – Mr De Villiers needs it in the next half hour. What did you want to know, perhaps I can help you.”
“Well, were you looking for the figures from this year or last year in column BT?” Judith asked.
Five minutes later she hung up, only to be startled by a heavy hand landing on her shoulder. “You really should be less careless with leaving print-outs in the copier,” her boss, said, dropping her print-out on top of her keyboard. He was standing too close, and she tried to sink lower into her chair. “You are entrusted with confidential information.”
“Sir, if you’d authorize a printer for my desk, it would reduce the chances of documents being intercepted,” she said softly. “I was just about to come find you with a few questions.”
“Oh?” He put his hands on both her shoulders and started to massage the knotted muscles between her shoulder blades; her boss had absolutely no concept about personal space. “Perhaps we could discuss it over lunch. There is this new little restaurant in the mall down the road that I hear serves excellent seafood.”
“Thank you, sir, but that won’t be necessary. Ariel helped me.”
“Then you’re free for lunch.”
“Sir, I really have a lot of work to get to.”
She was trapped between him and her desk, and couldn’t escape without escalating the situation. “Of course,” he said, giving her shoulder a last squeeze and stepping away. “I’ll expect that report on my desk in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, staring at her desk.
He trailed his hand along her shoulder as he left. Judith didn’t need ten minutes; she glanced at the column of information she’d just copied and pasted in, then forwarded it in an e-mail to the CEO, and copied in Anderson and Ariel. Glancing at the time on her computer screen, she grabbed her handbag from her bottom drawer and headed for the lift
Perhaps if she treated herself to a luxury coffee from the coffee shop down the street, rather than a breakroom chicory atrocity, she could start feeling normal again.
She stepped onto the lift and just as the doors were about to close, she saw Ariel hurrying towards her, designer handbag clutched under her arm. “Wait for me!” Judith caught the closing door with her shoulder, and once Ariel stepped onto the lift, she pressed the ‘door close’ and ‘G’ buttons.
The tall, elegant brunette glanced at her reflection in the mirrored door, smoothed her skirt suit jacket over her flat waist, and neatened a lipstick smudge at the edge of her lip using her little finger.
Ariel was a difficult person to get to know. She came across as aloof and self-possessed, but behind those C-c
ups beat a generous heart.
“I take it you need something stronger than breakroom coffee today,” Ariel smirked. “The least they could do for making us deal with asshole bosses, is give us decent coffee.”
“But then we’d have no reason to leave the office,” Judith countered. “Half the reason I want the coffee is to get away from said asshole.”
“Good point,” Ariel gave a half-grin.
~*~
Chapter 3
Tristan rubbed vigorously at the whiteboard, erasing the diagram of a plant cell he’d drawn before the lesson. He’d spent a good few minutes drawing the cell, knowing from experience where to place nucleus, chloroplasts and mitochondria in the drawing in order to make the changes easily on the board to show cell division. Various lines had been erased with a fingertip to be edited during the lesson, and Tristan felt a little sad to erase it as if nothing had happened, but cleaning it before going on his lunch break would be easier than leaving the whiteboard marker ink to dry out further. Judging by how hard he had to rub just to clean these lines, he made a mental note to ask for fresh markers from Frances, the receptionist.
It felt good to take out some of his frustration on the whiteboard. He’d felt on top of the world on Saturday evening when he’d come back from the doctor. At first, he’d felt tired and relaxed, and then he’d had energy enough to mow the lawn and clean the garage, both chores he’d been putting off. He’d been in a good mood.
The next day he’d gotten up with a thundercloud hanging over his head. He’d ascribed the headache to the head injury. The body aches had to have been from the physical exertion of mowing the lawn. He hadn’t felt like eating anything at all, and mostly picked at his food not to offend Judith, especially when he already felt guilty about snapping at her for absolutely nothing.
The depression and insomnia he blamed on work stress.
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