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But there was no levity in Jeff’s voice now as he clasped her wrists and anchored them to the floor on either side of her head. “Stop it, now.” He shook her slightly. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t stop flailing around.”
She came awake and opened her eyes. It wasn’t Jeffs well-remembered, well-loved face she stared into, but the man’s. The Loner’s. She was glad he was alive, but she didn’t like him very much. What was his name? Oh, yes, Cooper. Cooper...? Cooper something. Or something Cooper.
“Lie still,” he commanded her.
She stopped thrashing. The air was cold on her exposed skin, and she realized that she’d kicked off all the furs he’d piled over them for the night. On his knees, he was straddling her chest and bending over her. Her wrists were stapled behind her head by his hard fingers.
“Get off me.”
“Are you all right now?”
She nodded. She was as all right as a woman could be upon waking up to find a man the size and shape of Cooper Landry—that was it, Landry—straddling her with thighs that rose like columns above her, coming together... She averted her eyes from that mouth-drying juncture. “Please,” she gasped. “I’m fine.”
He eased himself off her. She sucked in frigidly cold air that hurt her lungs. But God, it felt good against her hot face. It felt good for only a second. Then she shivered with a chill and her teeth started clicking together. Cooper’s brows were drawn together worriedly. Or crossly. She couldn’t tell. He was either concerned or annoyed.
“You’re burning up with fever,” he told her bluntly. “I left the bed to build up the fire. You were delirious and started shouting for somebody called Jeff.”
“My brother.” Her shudders were convulsive. She pulled one of the furs around her.
It hadn’t rained or drizzled anymore during the night. She could actually see flames and glowing coals beneath the sticks Cooper had added to the fire. The flames were so hot they burned her eyeballs until they hurt.
No, impossible. That must be the fever.
Leaving the fur covering her upper body alone, Cooper lifted the lower half of it off her leg. Once again he painstakingly unwrapped the bandage and stared down at the open wound. Rusty stared at him.
Finally he looked at her, his mouth set in a bleak line. “I won’t try to fool you. It’s bad. Infected. There’s a bottle of antibiotics in the first-aid kit. I was saving them in case this happened, but I’m not sure they’ll be adequate to take care of it.”
She swallowed with difficulty. Even her feverish brain could assimilate what he was telling her. Raising herself to her elbows, she looked down at her leg. She wanted to gag. On either side of the deep gash, the skin was raised and puckered with infection. Flopping back down, she drew in shallow, rapid breaths. She wet her lips, ineffectually because the fever was making her mouth drier than it had been before. “I could get gangrene and di
e, couldn’t I?”
He forced a half smile. “Not yet. We’ve got to do what we can to prevent that.”
“Like cut it off?”
“God, you’re morbid. What I had in mind was lancing out the pus and then closing the gash with stitches.”
Her face turned ashen. “That sounds morbid enough.”
“Not as bad as cauterizing it. Which it might come to.” Her face went as colorless as chalk. “But, for right now, let’s put some stitches in. Don’t look relieved,” he said, frowning deeply, “it’s gonna hurt like hell.”
She stared into the depths of his eyes. Strange as it was, rocky as their beginning had been, she trusted him. “Do whatever you have to do.”
He nodded brusquely, then went to work. First he withdrew a pair of her silk long johns from the sweater cum backpack. “I’m glad you wear silk undies.” She smiled waveringly at his mild joke as he began to unravel the casing of the waistband.
“We’ll use these threads for the sutures.” He nodded down toward the silver flask. “Better start on that brandy. Use it to swallow one of those penicillin tablets. You’re not allergic to it, are you? Good,” he said when she shook her head. “Sip the brandy steadily. Don’t stop until you’re good and drunk. But don’t drink all of it. I’ll have to sterilize the threads and bathe the gash with it.”
She wasn’t anesthetized nearly enough when he bent over her leg. The hunting knife, which he’d sterilized in the fire, was held poised in readiness over the infected wound. “Ready?” She nodded. “Try to keep still.” She nodded again. “And don’t fight unconsciousness. We’d both be better off if you passed out.”
The first tiny puncture he made into the red, puffy skin caused her to cry out and yank her leg back. “No, Rusty! You’ve got to lie still.”
It was an agonizing process and seemed to go on forever. He meticulously lanced the areas that needed it. When he doused the entire wound with brandy, Rusty screamed. After that, the stitches didn’t seem so bad. He used the sewing needle from the matchbook kit they’d brought with them. After soaking individual threads in brandy, he drew them through her skin and tied them, firmly pulling the edges of the wound together.
Rusty stared at the spot where his tawny eyebrows grew together above the bridge of his nose. His forehead was sweating in spite of the cold. He never took his eyes off his work except to occasionally glance down at her face. He was sensitive to her pain. Even sympathetic toward it. His hands were amazingly tender for a man so large, and for one who had a cold, unfeeling stone where his heart should have been.
Eventually that spot between his eyebrows began to swim in and out of focus. Although she was lying still, her head was spinning, reeling with pain and trauma and the anesthetizing effects of the brandy. Despite Cooper’s advice, she struggled to stay awake, afraid that if she went to sleep she might never wake up. Finally, she gave up the fight and let her eyes drift closed.
Her last conscious thought was that it was a shame her father would never know how brave she’d been right up to the moment of her death.
