Filthy Doctor(310)

“Cody is right,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at Cody and Alvin Lee, who were just a couple of steps behind us. “Some things never change.”



Shelby

Cody got Luke settled into his old bed in his old room on the second floor while I found clean gauze and bandages in the pantry in the kitchen. This was a working cattle ranch.

There was always somebody getting scraped, cut, burned, stomped, or worse. Most of the men working the ranch were tough as nails cowboys who could cut off a finger and not even skip a beat.

The bandages were left over from when I was a kid. If I so much as scraped a knee or got a bee sting Daddy acted like it was the end of the world. He was always protective of his little girl. And watching him give me and Luke the eye told me that he had not lightened up one bit. He was glad to have Luke home, but he’d run him off in a heartbeat if he knew what we did behind his back.

I took the bandages, tape, scissors, and a bottle of Peroxide that had expired a year before into Luke’s bedroom. Luke was lying back on the pillows with the sheet up to his waist and his eyes closed. The scrub shirt was off already, lying on the floor. His muscular chest rose and fell gently as I quietly entered the room. For a moment, I thought he was asleep.

Luckily, the bloody spot on the bandage had not gotten bigger.

I sat down on the side of the bed and tugged at the corners of the tape holding the bandage to Luke’s skin.

“Your hands are cold,” he said, opening one eye to smile at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, cupping my hands and blowing into them.

He chuckled, winced. “I’m just messing with you.” He set his hand on my thigh and scratched his dirty nails to my jeans. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“Don’t thank me until you see what kind of nurse I am,” I said. I sucked in a breath and held it as I slowly stripped the tape from his skin. Luke closed his eyes and breathed deeply in and out.

I peeled the damp bandage from the wound. I swallowed hard when I saw the gash in his side. I’d never been good at this sort of thing. The sight of blood usually made me sick. True to form, I felt nauseous and sweaty, like I was gonna throw up all over his beautiful chest.

“You okay?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and gave him a little nod, and swallowed back the taste of vomit that was burning at my throat. “Yep, I’m fine. Just hold still.”

He had a line of stitches holding together an incision six inches long that ran down his left side and across the left side of his stomach. The stitches were caked with dried blood and the incision was fiery red. The blood had seeped through the gash at the center.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, knowing it was a stupid question.

“Only when I breathe,” he said, forcing a smile for my benefit. He closed his eyes and blew out a long breath. “Just do what you gotta do and get it over with.”

I opened the bottle of Peroxide and soaked a cotton ball, then dabbed the cotton ball to the stitches and gash to wash away the blood. I tried to be careful because each time Luke winced or sucked in a quick breath it made me jerk my hand back.

“Don’t be such a baby,” I said as I doused a clean cotton ball with Peroxide and finished cleaning off the blood. I leaned in and squinted at the stitches. “The bleeding’s stopped, but you still need to take it easy.”

“Does that mean no more hanky-panky for a while?” he asked, his fingers scratching their way toward my crotch, which was so warm I thought my panties had caught fire. I slapped his hand away.

“That’s exactly what it means,” I said. I playfully put my hand on the sheet covering his cock, which was draped lazily across his thigh like a snake sleeping on a rock. It jumped at my touch.

“You’re going to have to keep the monster in his cage, at least for a few days.”

He leaned back and sighed. “Shit. Okay. You’re the boss.”

“Yes, I am,” I said, scraping a fingernail down his cheek. “After you rest for a while maybe you can take a shower and get a shave.”

“You ever shave a man before?” he asked.

I glanced toward the door to make sure we were alone, then leaned in to give him a kiss. “No, but I’ve done a lot of firsts with you. I’m sure I can figure out how to shave you without cutting your throat.”

I redressed the wound, gave him four Tylenol and a bottle of water, and told him to go to sleep.

By the time I had gathered up the old bandages, his eyes were closed and he was snoring like a baby.



Shelby

Cody was sitting at the kitchen table when I came back downstairs. He was finishing off one of his famous bologna, cheese, dill pickle, mustard, and potato chip sandwiches, and drinking a tall glass of iced tea.

“He okay?” he asked as I stuffed the bloody bandages into the trash can and went to the sink to wash my hands.

“I think he will be if we can keep him off the back of a damn bull,” I said, shaking my head. “I swear, I will never see the attraction in bull riding. It’s just insanely dangerous. I hope this convinces him to give it up for good.”

“It’s what he does, Shelby,” Cody said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It’s who he is. I guarantee you that soon as he’s healed, he’ll be out there in the corral looking for something to ride.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I said. I opened the fridge and took down a glass from the cupboard. I dropped in a few ice cubes, then filled the glass with sweet tea and moved to sit down across the table from Cody.

“If you have anything to say about it?” Cody probed his back teeth with his tongue and gave me a hard look. “Since when do you have any say in what Luke does or does not do? You haven’t seen him in six years.”

I took a sip of tea and shrugged my eyebrows. “I don’t have a say, necessarily. But he almost died and I intend to remind him of that until he gets it through his thick head that riding bulls is gonna be the death of him.” I glanced out the open kitchen door. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Daddy’s already gone back to work,” Cody said, leaning into the table and cocking his head at me. He stared at me for a moment, like he was trying to see through me.

“What?” I asked.

“What did you do, Shelby?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

He lifted his chin to look me in the eye. “What happened last night?”

I tried to feign ignorance, but it was no use. Cody had always been able to work the truth out of me.

I said, “We were in a motel, all right. Is that okay with you? We are consenting adults, you know. What we do is none of your business.”

Cody spread out his big hands like he was releasing a pair of doves into the air. “I don’t give a good goddamn that you two are fucking again, Shelby,” he growled. “What I care about is the fact that Luke hasn’t been home ten minutes and you’re already back trying to control his life.”

“That’s bullshit,” I snapped, giving him a hard frown. “I’m just trying to keep him safe.”

“No, Shelby, you’re not. You’re doing exactly what you did six years ago, and if you’re not careful, things are gonna end up the same way and you won’t see him for another six years. Maybe more this time.”

I blinked at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You wanted to go to A&M and Luke wanted to ride the rodeo circuit,” Cody said, leaning back and folding his arms over his chest. “You pestered the living hell out of him. You wanted him to move to College Station and enroll in classes and play house with you.”

“I did not.” Yes, I did, but I didn’t want to admit it to him.

“You harped on the boy until he was almost ready to do it, too,” Cody said, head bobbing. “He came to me and said he was gonna give it a try just to make you happy. Fuck, Shelby, the boy barely graduated high school and you wanted him to apply to A&M? He wasn’t gonna get into A&M. And if he had, he would have been miserable because he put his dreams on hold for you.”

“He could have gone to the community college there,” I said. “Or the tech school. He could have made something of himself and be earning a good living now.”

“Doing what? Working as a mechanic at the Ford dealership? Or crawling under houses running fucking sewer pipes? Do you seriously think that would have made him happy?”

“I would have made him happy,” I said, though it didn’t come out as convincing as I’d hoped. “Besides, if he had come away with me he wouldn’t be upstairs right now with a big gash in his side.”

“No, he’d probably be somewhere working his ass off at some shit job he hated just to pay you child support.”

“You’re such an asshole,” I said, gritting my teeth, trying not to cry.

“And you’re such a selfish little girl.”

“Fuck you, Cody.”

“Fuck you, Shelby.”

I clenched my jaws and looked away from him. I wiped my eyes with the tips of my fingers and shook my head. “I can’t believe you’re acting like this. Such an asshole.”