Dead Calm. Lindsay Longford

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СКАЧАТЬ Sophie shoved open the far curtain and glared at the newest patient.

      In front of her, Santa sagged on the examining-room table. Blood dripped from his shoulder onto his seen-better-days polyester fur trim. His belly drooped over a cracked plastic black belt, and he clutched his fine acrylic beard with a lean, callused hand. A nurse had already cut him out of part of his suit, and a saline drip snaked down over his smooth tanned shoulder.

      For a second Sophie paused, puzzled by a faint sense of familiarity. Something about the tilt of Santa’s head.

      The reek of liquor filled the room.

      He snugged the beard closer to his face, his long fingers disappearing into the crisp curls. Chilly blue eyes met hers impatiently. Warily.

      Santa with an edge.

      Not dying.

      Just drunk and damaged.

      Sophie shook her head and picked up the chart. Three wise men with frankincense, gold and myrrh would come waltzing through the door next. And they’d probably be two-stepping with the Easter bunny.

      “Hey there, Mr. C. Rushing the season a little, aren’t you?” She flipped open Santa’s chart and scanned the nurse’s notes.

      “Look, sugar, I don’t have all night.”

      Sophie snapped the examining-room curtain shut. The rings rattled and skittered along the dividing rod. “Incidentally, that’s Dr. Sugar to you, Claus.”

      Santa tugged at his beard, adjusting it around his face. Shifted one black-booted foot irritably. “I’ve got things to do, places to be.”

      “Of course you do. And all before midnight, I’ll bet.” She smiled sweetly, acid etching her words. No sidewalk Santa reeking of gin was going to give her grief. Not tonight.

      “Nah,” he grunted as she brushed by him and reached for the blood-pressure cuff. “No midnight curfew until the end of the month. Just working the elves overtime tonight.”

      “Working’s what they call it these days, huh?” She pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and watched the numbers. One-thirty over eighty. He was in better shape than he looked.

      From behind the beard and the cloud of white hair, his unfriendly eyes met hers.

      Eyes that were almost sober. Their hostility caught her off guard.

      Once more that sense of the familiar teased her brain.

      Snapping on gloves, she inspected the jagged red line that began at the edge of his neck and disappeared under the ratty faux velvet of his suit. “Knife?”

      Santa nodded, grunted a second time as he shifted uncomfortably on the table.

      She touched the wound. A long, shallow cut. “Nasty bunch of elves you hang with, Claus.”

      “Yeah, they can get testy. Like a lot of people.” His gaze held hers, and some emotion she couldn’t name stirred in the pissed-off blue depths.

      With a flick of her hand, she stuck a digital thermometer in his mouth.

      As her hand fell away, his gaze still held hers, and he tightened his mouth around the thermometer. It rose slowly, toward the ceiling.

      A snotty challenge in the tilt of that whisker-hidden chin.

      And that fast, triggered by his take-no-prisoners arrogance, by the heavy smell of alcohol on him, by too many cases gone wrong today, her exhaustion slid over into irritation.

      She wanted to smack him.

      Zipping down her veins like a skater on speed, her pulse skittered and jumped. This two-bit Santa with an attitude was getting under her skin, pushing buttons, making her jumpy. Damn him. This was her turf.

      “Okay, Claus, let’s get the rest of your vitals.” Sophie picked up his wrist, counted his wrist and peripheral pulses, did her ABCs. Airway, breathing, circulation. Looking him over, assessing him, she focused on her job instead of the lick of anger that crisped along her skin whenever his eyes caught hers.

      His heart beat steadily under her fingers, his skin hot to her touch even through her gloves. On his index finger the oximeter glowed cheerily. His fingernails were pinked up, not cyanotic blue.

      An image of the Asian woman’s bruised face flashed through her mind, and she wanted to tell this Santa off the street that he was wasting her time, that she had really sick people needing her out there in the waiting room. She wanted to tell him to go home, stick a bandage on his wound, and sleep it off.

      The strength of her reaction startled her.

      She inhaled deeply and moved to his back, lifted his jacket. “Easy, will you? I’d like to salvage this damned outfit, if you don’t have any objections?” he snarled around the thermometer.

      She managed not to grind her teeth. “Certainly. Whatever you say. I’ll give it my best shot.”

      Slotting the thermometer to the side of his mouth, he sent her a quick look. “Best shot? You working the comedy clubs in between stitch jobs?”

      “Be still. Please.” She eased the jacket away from his ribs where blood had caked it to his skin. This rag-tag Santa shouldn’t have been allowed away from whatever place passed for his North Pole. The tatty fabric brushed against her arm, and once again the smell of liquor rose pungently, gagging her.

      Eau d’ER, they called it. Poinciana County Hospital’s Friday-night, any-night cologne.

      “Don’t want to lecture you—” she began.

      “But you’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”

      Her teeth clicked audibly as she shut her mouth.

      She was seriously tempted to slap the cold stethoscope up against his broad back. But, earning her pay, she warmed the disk and ordered, “Breathe in, Claus. Hold it.” Checking for temperature and dehydration, she pressed her finger to his skin. Oddly, the sleek skin and ridged muscles of his back didn’t fit his air of dissipation. Her eyes narrowing, she tapped his back with her hand, checking his lungs, moving around him to check the bronchial breath sounds under his armpits, around to his chest. “Exhale.”

      And her busy brain went on autopilot, thinking, observing.

      His chest moved easily with his long sigh. With the thermometer still in his mouth, he was finally, blessedly, silent as she quickly finished the basics.

      Tapping his belly, she listened for fluid accumulation, not expecting to find any, but still checking. His stomach was flat, the muscles taut and elegantly shaped. The trace of a scar curled around one rib.

      Caught by surprise, she hesitated as she stared at his lean, sharply defined abs. Santa’s smooth, hard belly was a six-pack, a world away from what he’d been drinking. The tiny hip-hop of her pulse embarrassed her. A sudden flush of heat in her face kept her silent, her face turned away from him.

      Damn. She was a well-trained, thirty-four-year-old physician, not some fifteen-year-old star-struck by the school jock. All speechless and hormonal.

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