To Love a Man (21 page)

“But, Sam . . .” Lisa started to protest, then gave it up. If he could so calmly contemplate her performing makeshift surgery on him, then he must think that it needed to be done. Because he knew as well as she did that it was going to cause him a lot of pain. . . .

She had to weight the rope down with a rock before she could throw it over one of the poles, but at last she managed to get the light arranged as Sam had instructed. When finally she had the flashlight adjusted so that it hung about a foot above Sam’s back, he turned his head to regard her handywork and gave her a thumbs-up sign. She herself was impressed with the efficient way the light illuminated his whole left-shoulder area. At least she would be able to see what she was doing—if she didn’t faint right in the middle, that is.

“Now what?” she asked with trepidation when the light was adjusted to both her and Sam’s satisfaction.

“Find the needle and thread it. You shouldn’t need much—probably about a foot.” He lay quietly while Lisa did as he told her. It took a little while, because her hands weren’t quite steady as she guided the thread through the tiny needle’s eye, but at last it was done.

“All right,” she said.

“Don’t forget to soak it in the antiseptic before you use it,” he cautioned. She nodded silently. He continued, “Now get the knife out of my boot. You know where it is.”

Lisa did indeed. She moved down his body to reach the knife he kept in a leather sheath inside his right boot. It was a wicked-looking thing, she thought as she held it in her hands, with a crooked blade and a razor-sharp point. Sam had told her previously that the Africans called it a kris. . . . She blanched as she contemplated using it to cut into Sam’s hard brown flesh.

“I don’t think I can do this.” She gulped, crawling back up to sit beside him and staring down at the gleaming knife as if she had never seen it before.

“Yes, you can.” She wished she felt as confident as he sounded, she thought nervously. Then he added, “You have to,” and Lisa knew she had no choice.

Lisa stared at the knife a moment longer, then resolutely squared her shoulders. She had to. For herself and for Sam.

At Sam’s instructions, she got out gauze and antiseptic and tape. Then there seemed nothing else to do.

“Ready?” Sam asked when it became obvious that she was merely puttering for the sake of delaying the inevitable for as long as she could.

“I—guess.” If she sounded doubtful, there was a very good reason: she felt doubtful.

“Okay. Take a swallow of whiskey and then pass it here. I think I might need it.”

“Don’t you dare get drunk on me,” Lisa warned shrilly, assailed by a horrible vision of him crazy drunk and not able to help her should she need it.

“With you holding that knife? Not a chance,” he said with a grimace. “Now come on. Get some whiskey down you. You’re probably going to need it more than I will.”

Lisa had never drunk raw liquor before in her life, but Sam was right—she needed a drink badly. She uncapped the bottle, put it to her lips, and swallowed a huge mouthful. It burned like liquid Drano all the way down. Coughing and spluttering, she gasped for air. But she had to admit, when her shocked system had settled down a little, that she did feel warmer—and, marginally, braver.

“Here.” She passed the bottle to Sam, who took it in his good hand and tilted his head so that he could drink. As he guzzled, a quantity of amber liquid missed his mouth to pool on the floor beneath his head, but enough hit its target to faintly alarm Lisa.

“You promised you wouldn’t get drunk,” she reminded him reproachfully when at last he took the bottle from his lips.

He gave her a derisive look. “Honey, that little bit of whiskey barely gives me a buzz,” he said scornfully. Lisa, looking down at the bottle which was now just about a fourth full, hoped he was right.

“Sam, are you sure you want to go through with this?” She gave him one last chance to change his mind.

“I’m sure,” he said, handing the bottle back to her and closing his eyes. Then, as Lisa set the whiskey aside and leaned over him, the knife poised uncertainly, he flicked a look up at her.

“Think you can get my belt loose?” he asked unexpectedly, reaching down to undo the buckle as he spoke. Lisa’s hands slid around his hard middle, brushing his aside, grappling with the buckle. In just a moment she had pulled the belt free.

“What do you want me to do with it?” she asked dubiously, visions of using the thick leather strap as some sort of a torniquet dancing in her brain.

“Give it to me,” he directed. She did so. He very carefully folded the belt in half.

“What are you going to do with it?”

He slanted a look up at her. “You ever heard of biting the bullet?” To Lisa’s horrified astonishment, he demonstrated putting the folded belt between his teeth. “This is the approximate equivalent.”

Lisa made a small, strangled sound deep in her throat. She couldn’t do it! She could not. . . . Sam must have read her sudden decision in her face, because he reached around and caught her hand in his. His skin enfolding hers felt very warm and hard. . . .

“It’s all right,” he said steadily. “I’ve been hurt a lot more than you’re going to be able to do to me here. And you don’t have a choice—you have to do it. Okay?”

Lisa looked down, met those blue eyes that were even now darkened with pain, and swallowed. Then she nodded, feebly.

“Good girl.” He gave her hand a bracing squeeze, then released it. “Now let’s get this over with.”

He turned his head away from her, closing his eyes and putting the folded belt between his teeth. Lisa just sat there staring at him. She couldn’t just start digging the knife into his poor shoulder. . . .

Finally he took the belt from between his teeth, and looked around at her. “Well?”

“I—don’t know what to do.”

He sighed, and repeated the instructions he had given her one more time. He made her say them back to him, and when at last he was satisfied that she knew what to do, he put the belt back between his teeth and lay waiting.

Lisa poured antiseptic liberally over her hands and the knife as Sam had instructed. Then there was nothing left to do but begin to cut. She risked a quick glance up at Sam’s face. It was tense, with all his muscles tightened in expectation of the pain she had no choice but to inflict on him. His white teeth bit into the leather belt, and his fists were clenched. Looking at him, registering him as the man she had slept with and argued with and depended on for the last few weeks, she felt butterflies in her stomach. Resolutely she tore her eyes away from his face, dropping them to his shoulder instead, willing herself to think of him as something inanimate, like the frog she had once dissected in biology class.

It worked. After a few minutes her stomach settled down. Then she began.

By the time the knife was imbedded about two inches into Sam’s shoulder, Lisa was biting her lower lip so hard that blood was filling her mouth. More blood, thick scarlet waves of it, rolled from the deepening hole in Sam’s shoulder. Lisa made no effort to wipe it away, and soon it was everywhere, on her hands, the knife, smeared across Sam’s back and the back of his pants. As she probed ever deeper, Sam made one sudden, abortive movement, which he controlled almost at once. Lisa flicked a quick, anguished glance at his face. It was white and clammy, with beads of perspiration rolling down his forehead and across his cheeks. His eyes were clenched as tightly shut as his fists; his teeth had bitten almost halfway through the doubled leather of the belt. Lisa felt tears spring to her eyes. She blinked them away, but immediately they were replaced by more until they ran down her face unchecked. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t mind hurting him, and deliberately thought back over all the times he had humiliated her. He deserved to hurt a little—but even as Lisa tried to convince herself of that, she knew it was a waste of time. Whatever he was, whatever he had done, she could not bear to see him suffer. She realized with a sense of shock that she would gladly have borne the pain of this impromptu operation herself, to spare him. It was illogical, crazy really, considering that she had spent most of the time she’d known him hating his guts, but it was the way she felt. Lisa was conscious of a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she was forced to entertain the suspicion that she had perhaps grown fonder of him than it was wise to be.

Her tears practically blinded her, but it made no difference, because she couldn’t see into the wound anyway with all the blood welling from it. She had to rely on her sense of touch alone as she probed, slowly and carefully, deeper into his shoulder. She was just beginning to despair when the tip of the knife struck something with a small, metallic-sounding chink.

“I think I’ve found it,” she said to herself as much as to Sam. The thankfulness in her voice made the words sound like a prayer. Sam, of course, didn’t reply, but she thought his facial muscles relaxed slightly.

Working as quickly as she could, remembering Sam’s instructions, Lisa poured antiseptic over long tweezers from the first-aid kit and worked them down into the bloody path carved out by the knife. Cautiously nudging aside sections of skin and muscle, she reached the bullet with the tweezers in an amazingly short period of time, especially considering how long it had taken her to locate it in the first place. Then it took merely a couple of seconds to grasp the bullet between the ends of the tweezers and lift it from the wound. Staring down at the blood-covered bit of metal, she felt so relieved that she wanted to sing.

“I’ve got it, Sam, I’ve got it!” she said joyfully.

He winced when she poured antiseptic directly into the open wound, and winced again when she started to close the jagged edges with careful, though inexpert, stitches. But she felt that some of the tenseness had left his muscles, and knew that he was as glad to have this ordeal over as she was.

By the time she had finished cleaning the blood from his back and covering the wound with sterile gauze, she felt as limp and wrung out as a used dishrag. Blinking, she sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on Sam’s shirt and looking down at him. He lay sprawled on his stomach, his eyes closed, his skin paper white except where it was streaked by blood or perspiration. Lisa gently removed the nearly bitten-through belt from between his teeth. Then, wetting a small square of gauze, she began to wipe his face.

“Are you okay?” she asked huskily after a moment, when he had made no gesture acknowledging her action. He didn’t answer; Lisa chewed her lower lip anxiously, fearing that he had fainted again. Which she could certainly understand, she thought. She was amazed that he had been able to endure as long as he had. Picturing Jeff in similar circumstances, Lisa knew that he would have been screaming with pain and fear from the very first instant the bullet had entered his flesh.

Then, to her overwhelming relief, Sam’s clenched fists slowly straightened out, and his eyes opened.

“I’m okay,” he said on a long, indrawn breath. “You did a good job, Dr. Collins. I’m proud of you—and you can be proud of yourself.”

“Th-thank you.” Ridiculously, her voice was wobbly. Sam heard the quivery note, and laboriously turned over onto his uninjured side. To her dismay, he pushed himself into a sitting position, propping his right shoulder back against the wall, ignoring her hands outstretched to stop him.

“Sam, you shouldn’t . . .”

“You’ve been crying,” he interrupted. The words sounded like an accusation.

Lisa brought up her fists and rubbed self-consciously at her still-damp eyes, feeling for all the world like she was about ten years old. So she had been crying—it didn’t mean anything, she told herself defiantly. She had been known to cry over sad movies, hurt pets, books, anything and everything. It certainly didn’t mean what it sounded like he was trying to make it mean—that she was beginning to feel a kind of affection for him! She sniffled inelegantly, trying to control the tears that were once again threatening to burst forth.

“Haven’t you?” he persisted softly, making no move to touch her but eating her with those impossible eyes.

“So what?” Her rude reply was defensive. She didn’t want him probing any closer—although she refused to admit why even to herself.

“Why, Lisa?”

He was going to worry the subject to death, she could tell. At all costs, Lisa wanted to keep him from guessing about the absurd soft spot she seemed to have uncovered for him. He would undoubtedly laugh and mock her. And she—she was too uncertain of her feelings where he was concerned to let him catch a glimpse of the unwelcome tenderness she had just discovered she felt for him.

“I always cry when I’m under stress,” she said in a gruff little voice. Then, trying to change the subject, she added, “Shouldn’t you be lying down?”

Sam ignored this last, as she should have known he would. He tilted his head back against the wall, his eyes fixed on her consideringly. Lisa felt color begin to heat her cheeks as she endured that searching perusal.

“You’ve been under stress of one sort or another ever since I met you,” he said slowly. “And I’ve never seen you cry before. Why not admit it, Lisa? You were crying because you didn’t like hurting me.”

Lisa said nothing. Of their own volition her lashes dropped to shield her eyes from his probing gaze. Drat the man anyway, she thought irritably. Was he bound and determined to embarrass her?

“Weren’t you?” he persisted.

Lisa’s lower lip quivered with humiliation. If he made fun of her, she would want to die. . . .

“So what if I was?” she demanded belligerently, her eyes flashing open to meet his head-on. To her surprise, his lips parted in one of those devastatingly sweet smiles that never failed to rock her to her core.

“So I like the idea,” he said softly, his eyes suddenly warm as they moved over her pink face. “Come here, honey.”

He reached for her with his good arm as he spoke. Without knowing quite how it came about, Lisa found herself cuddled against his uninjured side, her face buried in the warm curve between his neck and shoulder. His arm was like a steel band around her back as he held her against him.