Husband: Some Assembly Required Read online

  “What?”

  The door opened again and they quickly walked down the corridor past a group of workmen. “The patient in E.R. Was it an auto accident?”

  Telma shook her head, lengthening her stride again. “No, he saved a little girl from a burning building.”

  “Oh, a hero. Don’t get many of those these days.”

  Shawna opened the door that separated the corridor from the E.R. waiting room. A small cluster of people sat or stood around the leather-and-glass-furnished room, some watching the television that was constantly on, others merely studying their clenched hands.

  So far, it looked like a light day, Shawna thought absently as she pushed open the swinging door that led into the examining area.

  “Rather a nice-looking hero, too,” Telma added.

  “Well, then we’ll really have to save him now. There’s a shortage of good-looking heroes around.” On either side of the large room was a long row of beds. Shawna raised an eyebrow as she turned toward Telma.

  Telma pointed. “Last bed on the right.” She shadowed Shawna’s steps as she approached the small cubicle.

  Shawna recognized the patient as soon as she pulled back the white curtain, though it had been more than twelve years since she had last seen him.

  Murphy Pendleton.

  Small world, she thought, once her surprise had passed. She reached for his chart.

  Dr. Nathan Scalli, a tall, fastidious neurologist in his late forties, approached from behind. He was glad to see Shawna under any circumstances. Nathan nodded at the patient. “His name’s—”

  “Murphy Pendleton,” Shawna said in a small voice as distant memories rustled the pages of her mind.

  Nathan was surprised. She hadn’t opened the chart. “You know him?”

  She gave a perfunctory nod. “We went to school together, though I don’t suspect he remembers me.” As a matter of fact, she would bet on it.

  Nathan looked at her for a long moment, then laughed. “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Flirt with me later, Nathan.” She opened the chart, perusing it. “For now, fill me in on the patient’s status.”

  * * *

  Light, harsh and invasive, was slicing through his subconscious like a saber wielded by a dueling enthusiast. It probed first one corner, then another. Murphy heard a groan and thought of the child. It was another moment before he realized that the sound was coming from him.

  The stinging sensation along his hands and the left side of his face registered at the exact same moment that he began his ascent to the surface. Layer by hazy layer fell away, like an onion being peeled, until he opened his eyes.

  He blinked twice. Moisture formed at the corner of each eye and slid down his cheeks.

  The light didn’t go away.

  Someone was holding it, a pencil-thin beam that was being shone into his eyes, a prospector searching for an elusive vein of gold.

  “So you’ve decided to join us again. Good. Hold your head still, please. This’ll only take a moment longer.”

  The voice, soft and feminine, felt as if it was cocooning him. It would have been easy to slip away again, into a cottony nothingness. But Murphy struggled against it as he cleared the final hurdle and made it to the surface. He didn’t like not being in control. Things happened to you when you weren’t on top of a situation.

  Everything around him was draped in white, including the woman standing over him. “Where—”

  He hadn’t changed any, Shawna thought. If anything, the years had been kind to him, improving on what nature had so whimsically bestowed.

  “You’re in the Harris Memorial emergency room.”

  The rest of it returned to him in a singeing flash, a kaleidoscopelike coming attraction from a movie. The fire, the girl, everything.

  He attempted to prop himself up on his elbows. “The little girl?”

  Shawna frowned slightly, resisting the temptation to plant her hand in the middle of his chest and push him back down. “She’s fine, I’m told, thanks to you. Just very scared. She promises never to play with matches again. Her mother is thinking of building a shrine to you.” Telma had filled her in after Dr. Scalli had left.

  He sighed. Relief blanketed him. “That’s good, about the girl, I mean.”

  Murphy’s head felt as if it was spinning off. Groaning, he held it, aware of the small bandage at his temple. He sank down on the bed again. There was no pillow beneath his head and the mattress was completely horizontal. He felt awkward and tense, lying there. And decidedly miserable.

  Concentrating, he looked at the woman beside his bed. Her image was slightly shimmery.

  A minute smile lifted a corner of her mouth. “I thought you’d like to get that out of your system by yourself,” Shawna said, answering the question in his eyes. “Now maybe you’ll lie flat the way you’re supposed to.”

  He wasn’t happy about it, but at the moment there wasn’t anything he felt up to doing.

  Murphy suddenly remembered his meeting. Damn, but he was late. He blinked furiously, trying to clear the blurriness from his eyes. “Where’s the doctor?”

  Shawna watched his eyes. He was having trouble seeing her. Scalli might have had something, she thought, though her initial probing had shown nothing.

  “You’re looking at her. Or attempting to,” she amended. Shawna leaned over him. “How many of me do you see?”

  His vision might have been fuzzy but not so fuzzy that he couldn’t see she was an exceptionally attractive woman. When she leaned over him like that, he caught a whiff of very faint, very sensual perfume.

  He attempted to smile. The effort hurt his head. “Enough to fill my dreams.”

  Shawna shook her head. “You haven’t changed any.”

  Did he know her? No, he would have remembered someone like her. He glanced for a name tag, but there wasn’t one. He probably couldn’t have made it out right now, anyway.

  He tried to think. That hurt, too. “Excuse me?”

  Shawna realized her slip. She retreated. “Nothing. I was just reminded of something.”

  But there was something about her voice that nagged at the corners of his mind. He did know her, but from where? A former client? Someone at a party? Where? It all remained obscured. “You look vaguely familiar.”

  Shawna picked up his chart again and scanned it once more to quickly reinforce her decision. She flipped to the X-ray report. “I bet you say that to all the E.R. physicians.”

  Murphy narrowed his eyes. The milky borders diminished when he did that. He struggled to remember, to place her. His mind was a frustrating blank, wrapped in pain. “No, this is my first time in an emergency room.”

  She stopped writing and glanced up. He was going to need an M.R.I. “First time at playing hero, too?”

  His mouth curved with just a shade of cynicism. He’d been one hell of a scared hero. “Yeah.”

  She watched the way he massaged his forehead. That had been some blow he’d received, though fortunately, no stitches had been required. Just a butterfly bandage. “Head hurt?”

  He lowered his hand and looked at her again, responding to the sympathy in her voice. “Like a thousand devils marching in double time.”

  She made a notation about his medication. “That’ll pass.” She flipped the chart closed and laid it at the foot of the bed. “You have a mild concussion.”

  He groaned. “Doesn’t feel very mild.”

  Shawna nodded. That was to be expected. He’d been lucky, at least at first glance. There was a huge lump on the side of his head where he’d been struck, plus a mild burn on his fingers. The preliminary X rays, taken while he was unconscious, showed nothing. But she liked being thorough.

  “I’m having you admitted for observation. We’ll check you out.”

  Murphy frowned. “No.”

  He just had a headache, albeit a really bad one. And maybe things were a little blurred around the edges. But under the circumstances, that was to be expected. Murphy
didn’t like hospitals and wasn’t about to remain in one if he could help it.

  Based on the Murphy she knew from years ago, Shawna had expected some snappy retort, not a refusal. “Excuse me?”

  Someone had draped him in a blue-and-white flowered hospital gown. He wondered where his clothes were and who he’d have to bribe to get them. “I have a meeting to go to.”

  A stern look entered her eyes as she bent over him, pushing him back down on the mattress. There was little physical resistance, which reinforced her point.

  “You have a room to go to.” She lifted his hand by the wrist and held it up as if it was exhibit A. “Your hands, luckily, are not badly burned.” She released it again. “But you do have a mild concussion, and I am concerned that the blow to your head might be affecting your vision.” She drew herself up, looking for all the world like a staff sergeant issuing orders to a green recruit. “We’ll both feel a lot better if you’re admitted for a day.”

  She assumed that was the end of it. Shawna wasn’t accustomed to having her judgment questioned.

  “There’s only one way I’d feel a lot better about remaining in a strange room,” he told her in a voice that wasn’t as loud as he would have liked. If he raised it above the present low level, it throbbed in his head as if every syllable was a physical entity equipped with pointy edges. “And that’s if the room was in the Hyatt Hotel. With you to hold my hand.”

  She wondered how hurt he’d have to feel not to flirt. “Mr. Pendleton, I don’t think you really appreciate the gravity of the situation.” She didn’t have time to stand here, debating with him. Her appointments began at nine-thirty, and it was already ten past that now.

  He wasn’t up to arguing, but there seemed to be no other way out of here. “And you probably don’t appreciate just how hard my head really is.”

  Shawna eyed him as she shoved her hands impotently into the pockets of her smock. There wasn’t anything she could actually do if he demanded to be released. “I’m beginning to get the idea. Well, Mr. Pendleton, I can’t keep you here against your will. I can only make suggestions.”

  He smiled, though he didn’t get up immediately. A couple of seconds more on the bed wouldn’t hurt, he told himself. “I’m not unreasonable. I’m always open to sugges- tions.”

  And the smile on his face told her exactly what kind of suggestions he was thinking of. Or perhaps she was just reading something into it, remembering his reputation in high school.

  She crossed her arms before her. “I’ve been known to get rough with patients.”

  “Stop, you’re exciting me,” Murphy muttered, his teeth clenching as a sudden sharp pain creased his forehead like a lightning bolt. His eyes momentarily fluttered shut as he attempted to absorb the brunt of it.

  He was in no condition to waltz out of here, she thought angrily. What was he trying to prove? “Hurt?” she asked dryly, as if her point had been validated.

  Murphy slowly opened his eyes again. He needed an economy-size bottle of aspirin. And perhaps warm, willing fingers to massage his brow. “If I say yes, will you nag me about staying?”

  She pulled no punches, especially since she already considered the bout won. “Yes.”

  He set his mouth stubbornly. The pain was already mercifully receding. “Then the answer’s no.”

  Shawna sighed. “Have it your way.”

  “I generally do.”

  Yes, I remember.

  Chapter Two

  Murphy began to rise. Shawna placed her hand lightly but firmly on his shoulder, holding him in place. He raised his eyes to hers questioningly.

  She couldn’t, in good conscience, just let him walk out without attempting to convince him to at least have another test done. “Are you up to a compromise?”

  A smile curved Murphy’s lips, instantly turning him into the boyish football hero Shawna had secretly sighed about while poring over her physics textbook. “Such as?”

  She roused herself, pushing aside the fleeting memory that had slipped through her mind. “Stay here long enough to have a cranial M.R.I. done. I can arrange for one to be taken this morning.”

  Shawna was hedging. She had no idea what the imaging lab’s schedule for the morning was like. She was gambling that once Murphy agreed to the test, he’d remain in the lab waiting room until it was his turn.

  He didn’t want to stay in the hospital a minute longer than necessary. “I’ll see your compromise and raise you a visit.”

  Shawna frowned as she looked at Murphy. “Excuse me?”

  He sat up slowly and was pleased that his head wasn’t spinning around like a basketball on the tip of a Harlem Globetrotter’s finger, the way it had before.

  “I go home now and then come by your office for a visit. Officially,” he added when he saw her skeptical expression. “You can poke and prod me to your heart’s content.”

  Despite the situation, Shawna felt a smile rising to her lips. “Don’t ever say the word ‘poke’ around an ophthalmologist.”

  “Sorry.” He grinned and faint hints of dimples lightly indented both cheeks. It gave him an endearing look she was certain he had to be aware of. “How about it, have we got a deal?” Murphy put his hand out toward her.

  Since he appeared to be focusing well enough, and his pupils weren’t dilated, she mentally capitulated. Rather than place her hand in his, though, Shawna took out a card from her smock pocket and put that in his palm instead.

  “I suppose I have no choice. I just hope you don’t regret yours.” She nodded at the card. “Call my nurse for an appointment. Tell her I said to squeeze you in any time.”

  Murphy would have rather that the doctor did her own squeezing. She was as impressive and attractive a woman as he’d met in a long time, he mused, slowly running his finger and thumb over the card. If the action smarted a little, because of the tenderness of his digits, he didn’t show it.

  Shawna watched the way he rubbed the card and was struck by the sensuality of the minute motion. Sometimes, she thought, loneliness had a way of taking a bite out of her when she least expected it.

  “On the outside chance that you come to your senses, here.” She wrote out a prescription for the M.R.I., then handed it to him. “Just call the imaging lab for an appointment.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Shawna and Murphy turned almost in unison to find Thomas Sheridan standing just to the right of the curtain he had pulled back. Concern was etched across his chiseled, broad features.

  Murphy attempted to appear nonchalant. “All my parts seem to be moving in the right direction.” He wiggled his toes beneath the sheet and winked, not at his brother-in-law, but at Shawna. The simple action seemed to echo through his system, whispering faintly of pain. He concentrated on Thomas. “What are you doing here?”

  Thomas made his explanation half to Murphy, half to the woman at his side. “Kelly called and asked me to check up on you since she wasn’t getting an answer at your house and you hadn’t arrived at the office yet. I didn’t have to be at the university until eleven today, so when you didn’t answer my call, I swung by your house.”

  Thomas shoved his hands into his pockets as he recalled the sudden wave of nausea he had experienced when he’d seen Murphy’s red sports car parked crookedly at the curb before the partially gutted building, with Murphy nowhere in sight.

  “There was still a ring of people around that house where you played fireman.” Thomas saw the question rise in Murphy’s eyes. “I saw your car parked there and started asking if anyone had seen you. They told me the paramedics took you to the hospital. And that you were unconscious.”

  His tone was casual, but they had been friends since childhood. Murphy didn’t need to be told that Thomas had been really worried.

  Murphy lifted a shoulder and then let it fall again. “They probably blew it all out of proportion. You know what a placid, boring city Bedford is. People magnify any little bit of excitement.”

  Thomas looked at the butterfly
bandage across Murphy’s temple. A jagged circle of blood had seeped through to darken the middle. He turned toward Shawna, knowing better than to expect a truthful assessment of the situation from Murphy. “I’m his brother-in-law, Thomas Sheridan. Is he going to be all right?”

  Brother-in-law. So they had made the friendship official. Shawna remembered Thomas, too. He and Murphy had been inseparable in high school, and while it was Murphy she had had the crush on, it was difficult to forget someone as tall and imposing as Thomas.

  But she gave no indication that she knew him as she nodded in response to Thomas’s introduction. “He seems to think he is.” A shot of hope pushed through the concrete. Perhaps Thomas could talk some sense into Murphy. “I’d like to keep him overnight for observation.”

  Thomas suppressed a smile. She wouldn’t be the first woman who had uttered those words in reference to Murphy, but she’d be the first to say them with a medical intent.

  “And he doesn’t want to stay.” It wasn’t a guess. Thomas knew how Murphy felt about hospitals.

  “I tell you, I’m fine.” Murphy propped himself up farther. He saw the way Thomas was looking at the bandage on his temple. “It’s just a little bump on the head. How many times did you bean me when we were playing catch as kids?”

  “Obviously one too many times,” Shawna commented. It earned her a tolerant grin from Murphy and a soft laugh from Thomas.

  The laugh died slowly as Thomas took a good look at the woman attending Murphy. There was something vaguely familiar, something he couldn’t quite place his finger on. He knew her. Had he run across her when he had brought Kelly here for the birth of their daughter? That would be the logical explanation, but somehow, it didn’t seem to fit. Thomas shrugged mentally. It would come to him eventually.

  Right now he had Murphy to worry about.

  “I’m not staying,” Murphy said quietly.

  Thomas was well acquainted with that tone. Murphy might give the impression of being happy-go-lucky, but whenever he chose to stick with something, heaven and earth couldn’t move his friend from the position he had taken. Thomas turned toward Shawna. “Can he go home?”