Love On Call

Now the chance to slip into her own bed for forty-five minutes, to slide her arm around Abby’s waist and press against her back, to cradle her face in Abby’s hair and breathe her scent, was worth every second of the rushed trip home from the Rivers and back. Maybe Abby would wake up and turn to her with a murmur of welcome and a soft kiss, and they’d have a minute or two or ten, enough time for her to feel Abby’s heart quicken as she stroked her, hear Abby’s low moan as she teased her. A precious minute to feel Abby turn into her with a muffled cry as she exploded. Oh yeah. A few minutes with Abby was everything.

Flann bounded up the front steps and slowed when she saw the inner door was open, with just the screen keeping out the bugs and the night. Abby tended to lock up at night—city habit, and like most doctors, she was a creature of habit. Flann frowned, wondering why Abby had forgotten to close up. She eased the screen open as quietly as she could, took two steps inside, and stopped. The sun was just rising, and dim dawn light illuminated the single big room with the living area in front and kitchen in the rear. Blake sprawled in the corner of the big sofa, his head angled in an unnatural position that was going to hurt when he woke up.

“Hey,” Flann whispered, moving closer.

“Hey.” Blake sprang upright, shot a hand through his tousled hair, and stared at her.

“Too hot in the loft to sleep?” Flann asked.

“Wasn’t so bad.”

“Okay.” Flann thought about Abby behind the bedroom door down the hall. Her stomach still quivered with thoughts of warm flesh and hungry kisses. She looked at Blake. “Something going on?”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure. Want to take a walk so we don’t wake your mom?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Flann turned around, walked back outside, down the short walk, and out the picket fence. Every time she saw that fence she smiled. Yep, she had the picket fence and soon she’d have the wife, officially, and one kid and maybe another one day soon. Nothing she’d ever wanted, and all that mattered to her.

“Tough case?” Blake asked as they walked toward the center of the village.

“Perforated diverticulum—you know what that is?”

“Yes, it’s an outpouching of the colon, a thinning of the muscle layer, which can become inflamed and sometimes rupture. Sort of like an appendix.”

Flann laughed. “Very good. You’ve been studying.”

“Some animals get them too.”

“I didn’t realize that. I’d think with their diet it wouldn’t be as common.”

“It isn’t. Dogs get it pretty often. Volvulus and other malrotations of the intestine are more common in ruminants, because of the extra stomachs.”

“Uh-huh.” Flann waved to the daughter of a local farmer who beeped the horn as she rattled by in an old pickup truck loaded down with hay. “Feels like I could use an extra stomach this morning. I’m starving. Think we should pick up some breakfast for your mom?”

“The café will be open any minute,” Blake said, a hopeful note in his voice.

“We’ll head that way, then.” Flann figured the ten-minute walk would clear the last of the churning arousal from her system and give him a chance to get to the point. A minute passed in silence.

“I want to have my top surgery before school starts. Will you do it this summer?”

Oh, boy. For one second, Flann wanted to punt. Let Abby make the decision. But Blake hadn’t asked Abby, he’d asked her. They’d have to talk, the three of them, but for right now, she was the one he’d chosen. “Let’s back up a couple steps, okay?”

His shoulder stiffened, as if he expected a rejection, but he nodded.

“First off, we’re family now. Some people would say you ought to have a different surgeon because of that.”

“Why?”

“’Cause maybe my judgment will be off because you’re extra-special to me, and my focus will be split worrying about you instead of doing my job.”

“Will it?”

“No.”

“Okay. It’s not illegal or anything. You can’t get in trouble?”

“No, I can’t. And just so you know, if I do it, I’ll get Glenn to assist. You couldn’t have a better team.”

Blake nodded seriously. “I know that.”

“Okay. So, you’ve read about it, right?”

“Lots of times, and I’ve read blogs, and I’ve seen what it looks like,” Blake said all in a rush.

“What do you mean? You’ve seen what it looks like?”

“On YouTube, guys have documented their surgeries. You know, before and right after when the bandages first come off, and then when it’s all healed.”

“You realize there’s more than one way to do the surgery, and everybody heals differently. You might not look at all like any of those guys.”

“I know. And you have to look at me to decide how to make the incisions.”

“That’s right.”

“I know all that. I know about the scars.”

“I have to say this, okay,” Flann said, halting on the corner across from the café. “It’s part of what I have to do as your surgeon, not because I don’t trust you or believe in you. Do you understand?”

Blake shoved his hands in the pockets of his baggy basketball shorts and looked her in the eye. “Okay. I get it. Go ahead.”