2. Prescription For Love

T-shirt came to the middle of her dark briefs. Her legs were lean and muscular. Abby focused on the ten-inch laceration angled across the anterior portion of her thigh, deep enough to have separated the tissue down to muscle. The saline had cleared most of the clot, but she couldn’t tell yet how serious it was. “Can you step out of your boots and jeans?”

Carefully, Flann eased one foot free and then the other.

Abby rose and slid an arm around Flann’s waist. Flann was pale, her pupils wide and dark with pain. Abby steeled herself against the surge of sympathy. She couldn’t stroke away her hurt the way she wanted to. She’d have to hurt her a little more before she could help her. “Come on, sit down so I can get a good look at it. I need to clean it up a little bit more.”

Flann looped an arm around Abby’s shoulders and leaned into her, a sure sign she was in more pain than she wanted to admit. “How’s your suturing?”

“Very good, as a matter of fact.” Abby recognized Flann’s attempt to deflect her attention with humor. Flann was very good at hiding her feelings behind a cavalier attitude, but that wouldn’t work here. “However, I don’t plan on sewing you up here. It’ll be easier in the OR.”

“It would be, if there were a surgeon around to do it, but there won’t be. I’m telling you, you and I and Harper, probably my father and a couple other local GPs who can get in to the hospital, are going to be it tonight. We’ll be swamped. We’ve got two choices—either suture it now or pack it open and suture it later.”

“If we don’t close it right away,” Abby said, propping a cushion against the arm of the sofa for Flann’s head as Flann slowly stretched out, “the scarring will be much worse and there’s a greater chance it will get infected.”

“I agree. So like I said, let’s get suturing.”

Abby didn’t intend to commit herself until she had a better look at the wound. Flann’s reasoning wasn’t bad, but she didn’t altogether trust her motives. Flann was the macho type, and she’d likely risk her own well-being and certainly risk being in pain for the entire night if it meant she’d be able to work. Abby had handled plenty of patients like her, and part of her job was protecting them from themselves. Although she doubted anyone had much success with Flannery, she intended to win this contest.

She found an impermeable drape in the med kit and slid it under Flann’s thigh to protect the sofa.

After donning another pair of gloves, she soaked gauze with more sterile saline, carefully cleaned around the wound, and pulsed saline into it from a sterile syringe. Flann tensed as she worked but said nothing, and Abby ignored the fist of anxiety in her middle. She stirred up a little bit of bleeding, but it wasn’t excessive, and as she got a better look at the wound, her unease lessened. “Is there any sensory loss in your calf or foot?”

“No numbness that I’ve noticed. The leg feels weak, but I think that’s just me in general.” Flann laughed. “I missed dinner.”

Abby smiled faintly. “The wound is down to muscle but nothing major seems involved. It’s deep and long and will hurt like hell if you try to stand on it tonight. You know that as well as I do.”

“I know.” Flann sighed. “Look, I’ll get off my feet as much as I can, if I can.”

“If you agree to that, I’ll suture this here. But I’ll want you to check in with me every few hours.” “If I—”

Abby rose and folded her arms. “No ifs, Flann. You come by the ER every two hours and let me check you over, or I tell Harper you’re not fit for duty.”

Flann’s eyebrows rose. “That’s blackmail.”

Abby shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

“Harper always has lidocaine in her emergency supplies. You’ll find a suture pack in there too.”

Abby turned away to hide her smile. She drew up local anesthetic, changed gloves, and after wiping down the periphery of the wound with Betadine, anesthetized the laceration. It took her half an hour to close the wound with several layers of suture. While she worked, Flann lay back with her eyes closed. “I thought you’d be supervising.”

Flann kept her eyes closed, but her lips curved into a smile. “I trust you.”

“Why?” Abby asked absently as she tied and snipped a suture. She loaded the needle holder with nylon for the skin and started a running suture to close the long laceration. “You’ve only seen me work that one time.”

“That’s all I needed to see.”

“I could have terrible hands, though.”

Flann laughed. “Do you?”

“No,” Abby said, suturing steadily. “I actually have good hands.”

“Then why aren’t you a surgeon?”

Abby smiled. “I like the variety in the ER. There’s more patient education involved too. And I like working with doctors whose egos don’t come through the door before they do.”

“Yours seems pretty healthy.”

Abby laughed. “You noticed.”

Flann opened her eyes at the same moment as Abby looked up at her. Flann’s eyes had lost their sheen of pain. They were dark and intense again, the intensity Abby was coming to like when turned on her. She stilled.