Red Sky At Morning - DK4 (37 page)

“Okay, behind the shield, Kerry.”

Kerry gave Dar’s toes one last squeeze, then joined Dr. Steve behind the lead shield. “Remember to get her neck while you’re in there,” she whispered to the gray-haired man. “She’s been having backaches.”

“Got it already,” Dr. Steve whispered back.

“What the hell are you two whispering about?” Dar growled.

Kerry and the doctor exchanged amused glances. “How cute you look in your sports bra, hon,” Kerry piped. “Didn’t want to embarrass you.”“Got it,” Dr. Steve managed to say around a snicker. “Okay, Dar.

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You’re finished.” He removed his apron and pulled the machine arm back, freeing his very reluctant and now noticeably blushing patient to sit up. “Hmm. Guess I don’t have to check your cardiovascular system; seems to be pumping just fine.” He pulled the X-ray plates out and winked at them. “Lemme go get these processed.”

Kerry waited for him to leave before she circled the table and faced her lover, who was now sitting up with her legs dangling off the table, cradling her injured arm with her good one. “See? Not so bad.” She deliberately sidled between Dar’s knees and gazed into the stormy blue eyes facing her. “C’mon, Dar, don’t you want to feel better? I know you can’t be comfortable with that.” She touched Dar’s elbow, where the lurid bruise had extended to during the night.

Dar sighed. “I know,” she muttered. “I just—”

“Hate doctors,” Kerry finished for her. “Honey, it’s almost over.”

She stroked Dar’s cheek gently. “Just relax.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dar grumbled. “You’re not sitting here half-naked, having people whisper about your sports bra.” She slid off the table and stretched, sidling away from the X-ray machine toward the large louvered window in the examination room.

Kerry took the opportunity to admire the body under the garment being discussed, and smiled. She walked up behind Dar and slipped her arms around her, hugging her and planting a kiss right between Dar’s shoulder blades. “Mm.” She breathed out softly, watching goose bumps travel over the skin her cheek was pressed against. “I’m glad you decided to get checked, Dar.”

Dar peered over her shoulder at her engaging blonde limpet.

“Yeah, well, maybe he’ll give me a pat on the head and a bottle of Percodan. You going to help me analyze that base data when we get home? Typing’s going to be hell.”

“Of course.” Kerry released her and stepped back as they heard Dr.

Steve coming down the hall. “You really think there’s something there?”

Dar’s face grew quiet and rather grim. “Yes.” She looked up as Dr.

Steve entered. “If you’re back for more pictures, forget it.”

Her old friend whipped his hand up and focused. He snapped a picture of the surprised and very off-guard Dar, then grinned at her.

“Gotcha. Okay, kiddo. C’mon down the hall, and I’ll tell you the bad news.”

“What was that for?” Dar objected, pointing at the camera.

“Family scrapbook.” Dr. Steve picked up her shirt and tossed it to her. “Here, don’t scandalize the nurses. They’ve got delicate egos.”

Dar allowed Kerry to help her ease her shirt on, and then they followed Dr. Steve down the hall to his office. This was a fairly large room, lined with book-covered shelves and an impressive set of diplomas scattered over the wall. On the opposite wall, pictures took pride of place—of Dr. Steve and his family, and some of him at a much
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younger age in uniform.

He also had nice, comfortable leather chairs. Dar sat down in one and leaned back. Kerry studied the pictures, reacting a little when she found one with a familiar, if younger Andrew Roberts in it. “Hey. It’s Dad.” She half turned. “Ooh...he was a cutie.”

“Kerry, if you’d just consent to repeat that if I dragged that old sea dog in here, I’d pay you, big time.” Dr. Steve laughed, then put his hands on his desk. “Now, young lady,” he fixed his eyes on Dar, “you have a nasty bone bruise.”

Dar eyed him warily. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the doctor replied. “You’re a very lucky little munchkin, my friend. If it wasn’t for the fact that you have a nice, big, juicy deltoid muscle there, you’d be looking at a fracture, and putting a cast there ain’t fun.” He stood and walked over to the X-ray box, pointing at a dark spot in the long bone of Dar’s arm. “Right there.”

Kerry and Dar peered at it. “And?” Dar finally asked. “What’s the treatment?”

“Amputation.” Dr. Steve turned and gave her a deadpan look, getting a halfway hysterical giggle from Kerry. “You get a sling which you will keep on, young lady, a bottle of blood thinner in case anything in there is considering doing something icky like clotting, and some painkillers.” He pointed at Dar. “I want you off your feet and doing nothing stressful for at least the rest of the weekend.”

“Okay,” Dar agreed readily, having planned to spend the day on the couch with her laptop anyway. So far, it didn’t sound too bad, and as long as the process did not involve plaster or fiberglass in any incarnation, she was happy. “That it?”

Dr. Steve sat on the edge of his desk and leaned forward.

“Sweetheart, I mean it.” He reached out and traced a line from the injury up Dar’s neck. “Do you see how close this is to your noggin? I don’t want any clots getting any ideas and sending you into the hospital with a stroke.”

Dar blinked. “A stroke?”

“You heard me,” Steve stated. “So I want you to make like a vegetable for the next few days, and take those damn pills. I wish you’d called me yesterday.”

Dar drew breath to answer him, but Kerry got a word in first. “It was late,” she told him, leaning over Dar’s chair. “We got home near midnight.” She tousled Dar’s hair. “We thought about going over to Sinai, but—”

“But you’d still be sitting there, with a sore butt and the same problem,” Dr. Steve finished. “Yeah, well, next time, forget the hospital, just give me a call, hmm?”

“We will,” Kerry stated, then glanced down. “Won’t we?”

Dar smiled wanly.
A stroke?
Her mind jerked in horror at a threat she’d never even considered. Getting injured was nothing new to her, 202
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but this was different. She could imagine living with losing a limb, but strokes were a crapshoot. She could end up half-paralyzed, which was bad enough, but worse—she could lose part of who she was if it hit the wrong spot at the wrong time. “Yeah, we will,” she muttered hoarsely.

“Good girl.” Dr. Steve patted her knee. “Let me get you set up with that sling. I already called in your prescription to that high-society mambo pusher they call a pharmacist on your Fantasy Island.”

KERRY REACHED OVER and picked up her mug, taking a sip of the strawberry tea as she reviewed the data on the laptop screen for the nth time. She was curled up on the soft, comfortable leather chair in the living room, one leg slung lazily over the chair arm. Her eyes lifted over the mug’s rim and eyed the nearby couch, and then she put the cup down and went back to her statistics.

She could, she knew, have gone into either of their offices and used the large monitors to make viewing the data easier, but she preferred to stay where she was and suffer the eye strain so she could keep an eye on Dar. The drive home had been very quiet, and her usually unruly lover had meekly taken the medicine the island pharmacy delivered, then settled down on the couch. She’d even let Kerry fuss and put a pillow behind her head and tuck a soft fleece blanket around her.

Waiting for me to say I told you so,
Kerry mused. The blood thinner and vasodilator Dr. Steve had prescribed, along with the painkiller, knocked Dar out in no time flat, and her lover had been sleeping for the past few hours. Which was good, Kerry thought, because if Dar was sleeping, it meant she wasn’t awake and worrying, having had the living daylights scared out of her by Dr. Steve’s warning.

Poor Dar.
Kerry leaned toward the couch and gently pushed a bit of Dar’s hair back away from her closed eyes. She had a white cotton sling fastened around her neck, holding her injured arm close to her body, and even in sleep a tiny crease was present across her forehead. As much as Kerry appreciated Dr. Steve’s forcing Dar to take her injury seriously, it hurt her to see her lover so subdued, obviously scared and keeping silent about it.

Kerry riffled her fingers through the dark hair spilling over the pillow, straightening its silky strands as she watched Dar sleep. Then she sighed and returned her attention to the damn laptop.

So, what was all this, Dar?
She scrolled through files, seeing Dar’s notations but not seeing the patterns her lover had painstakingly constructed or the significance of them in the data stream. It wasn’t that she was oblivious to the method; she just didn’t understand where Dar got the little hooks she was using to connect all the pieces together.

Maybe that was because Dar had worked on the original system software? Kerry pushed her hair back behind one ear and leaned closer
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to the screen. Sure, that must be it. She knew how this whole thing worked, so naturally she could...

Kerry let the thought trail off as her eyes found something.

Curiously, she left the bowels of Dar’s program and called up the associated data files, studying the personnel assignments and the ship schedules coming in and out of the base. Slowly, her forefinger lifted and touched the screen, making a little scratching noise against the LCD.

Why...she wondered. Why would one ship get all the new recruits?

Operationally, it made no sense, especially to someone steeped in day-to-day operations, as she was. You don’t put all your newbies in the same bucket, because then you have a useless bucket of confusion. You spread them out among other, more experienced workers, so they can learn from them.

Kerry looked up the operational record of the craft in question, a supply ship that apparently worked with larger groups of vessels but was small enough to dock in small ports. Slowly, she picked up her cup and took another sip, not taking her eyes from the screen.

DAR BECAME VAGUELY aware of her surroundings, the medicated sleep still having a fairly firm hold on her. There was a slightly tinny quality to the sounds she was hearing, and she had no inclination to open her eyes.

Her shoulder ached, but it was a far-off kind of ache, and it took several minutes for her to sort through a very foggy mind and remember what had happened.
Oh yeah.
Dar wondered if the medication was supposed to make her feel so completely washed out.

A soft clicking was coming from nearby, and she heard a faint sound of ceramic on wood, then a sigh and the shift of a body against a leather surface. Dar spent a moment drawing a mental picture, imagining Kerry in the chair with the laptop. Very slowly, she opened one eye, then turned her head and blinked, the image in her mind resolving into reality.

Kerry was intent on the screen, her brow furrowed and the end of a pencil being gnawed on between her teeth.

For some reason, that made Dar smile.

After a second, Kerry looked up and their eyes met. “Oh.” She put the machine down and leaned on the chair arm. “Was I making too much noise?”

“No.” Dar cleared her throat. “Wow. I feel like I’m swimming in clam chowder.”

A blonde brow arched. “Clam chowder? Ew.”

“What time is it?”

Kerry checked the laptop’s system tray. “Two.” She studied her injured partner. “Here, take a sip of this; you look dry.” She handed 204
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over her tea, then paused and changed her mind, getting up out of the chair to hold the cup for Dar to sip from. “I forgot how awkward it is when you’re wearing one of these.” Her free hand plucked the sling.

Dar sucked thirstily at the tea, enjoying the sweet taste. “Glad you put some tea leaves in this sugar water,” she teased.

Kerry stuck out her tongue. “It’s your fault,” she accused Dar. “I didn’t used to.” She leaned over and kissed her partner on the lips.

“Want some of your own? I was going to put some soup up.”

“Soup?” Dar felt a little more alert. “Was that inspired by my chowder, or do you think a bone bruise requires that for healing?”

Firmly, she pushed aside thoughts of clots, halfway convinced she’d have been better off just letting the damn thing heal on its own, with her in blissful ignorance of her risk.

“Hon, I’ll order in baby back ribs if you want them.” Kerry laughed. “I’m hungry, and I’ve got a container of that spicy Thai soup in the fridge, so...”

Dar’s eyes lit up. “With the coconut milk?”

“Uh-huh.” Kerry had to muffle a smile. “That changes things, hmm?” She ruffled Dar’s hair. “I need a break anyway. I found something I think you need to look at when you’re a little more awake.”

She made her way past the coffee table toward the kitchen.

Dar knew she should get up and look at the computer, but the drugs still had a tight hold on her, and her body was more than content to remain where it was.
Probably so fuzzy I wouldn’t know what the hell I
was looking at anyway,
she mocked herself. But the thought started her mind churning over the problems she’d seen the day before.

As if on signal, her cell phone rang. However, since Dar was dressed in a pair of soft gym shorts and not much else, she didn’t have the phone near her. “Hey, Ker?”

“I hear it.” Kerry came trotting out of the kitchen sucking on a wooden spoon. “Ooh...you’re gonna like this. There’s more chicken than vegetables in it.” She picked up the buzzing phone and opened it.

“Hello?”

“Is that Roberts?” a female voice asked crisply.

“No.” Kerry glanced at her lover. “Can I ask who’s calling?”

There was a brief silence. “Chief Daniel.”

Ooh...Kerry narrowed her eyes. The bulldog. “She’s—”

The chief interrupted Kerry. “Look. I need to talk to her. Just tell her who it is. Believe me, lady, I wouldn’t be on this phone if I didn’t need to be.”

Hmm. Fair enough
. “It’s that petty person,” she told Dar, after muting the phone.

Dar’s brows lifted. “Chief Daniel?” she asked in surprise. “Damn.