Читать книгу The Pull Of The Moon - Darlene Graham - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

LATER, IN THE GRAY predawn hours, as she turned off Peoria Avenue onto her own street, Danni’s mood had not improved. The glamorous life of a doctor, she thought ruefully as she struggled to keep her eyes open, grateful that she lived less than a mile from the hospital.

Precisely the reason she’d chosen this upscale, historic neighborhood in Tulsa’s Woodward Park area.

She drove her BMW up the gentle incline of her driveway and wearily clicked the remote control. The garage door slid up with a flawless hum and Danni pulled into her immaculate, uncluttered garage, then punched the button again to seal out the world. Letting herself in through the utility room, she entered a completely dark, silent house.

Her silver weimaraners, Pearl and Smoky, rose like ghosts from their beds and brushed against her legs. “Well, hello,” Danni crooned as she reached down and petted them. “How are my doggies?”

She pressed the intercom button on the security panel. “Jackie?” she called, and waited for her housekeeper to awaken and answer from upstairs. “Jackie?” No answer. Was it Jackie’s night off? She reached over to punch in the security code, then realized the alarm was off.

Dadgum that harebrained girl, she thought. How many times did she have to remind Jackie to turn on the security system when she went out? Danni hit another button and soft safety lights illuminated the stairwell, bathrooms and hallways of the entire 3,700-square-foot house. Last spring, Danni had hired the top builder in Tulsa to renovate this vintage house on a split lot, with impeccable attention to details like copper awnings, custom stonework, and real plaster walls with bullnose moldings. Underneath the gracious antique facade was every amenity of modern construction imaginable, from zoned heat and air to underground sprinklers. The house with everything, Danni sometimes thought, except people to share it with.

She took a sharp right into a central hall where a narrow oak stairway wound upward and a smaller hallway veered back toward the study and master suite. Arched doorways from this central hall led to the kitchen/great room, and the formal dining living areas. The dogs padded off in the direction of the kitchen.

Danni stood in the hallway, feeling like a laboratory mouse choosing between competing drives. The bathroom? The kitchen? The bed? She needed them all at once.

She trudged as far as the small guest bathroom next to her study, then washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face.

As she blotted dry she studied her reflection in the mirror, and didn’t like what she saw: sallow complexion, bloodshot eyes, limp hair. She gave her high cheekbones a pinch. Precious little color appeared, and her skin felt oily and coarse. She looked down at her bluntly trimmed nails and bleached, cracked cuticles. Well, scrubbing for surgery wasn’t exactly a manicure. She backed away from the mirror, pulled off her wrinkled scrubs and dropped them in a heap at her feet.

Hopeless, she thought as she turned sideways and sucked in her tummy. That bulge was the result of too many fast-food meals on the run, those hips from too much horseback riding and not enough jogging, and these—she pushed her D-cup breasts up a notch in the utilitarian support bra—what could she possibly do about these?

Disheartened, she cut through the study to the master suite where she threw on her trusty old pink chenille robe, then, pushing back the guilt by telling herself she deserved some comfort food, she headed for the fridge.

The kitchen/great room, a massive area with atrium doors flanking a huge stone fireplace, would have been dark except that, predictably, Jackie had not drawn the drapes. Moonlight streamed in through a bank of Colonial windows on the south wall, casting an eerie glow over the space. By daylight this was a stunning room with its pale taupe cabinetwork, oak flooring, and muted tapestry fabrics, but tonight it seemed as cold as a cave.

She hit the replay button on her answering machine as she rounded the granite-topped island in the kitchen, then padded to the double-sided refrigerator. She jerked the door open and stood in the blast of artificial light and cold air, surveying a staggering array of food. Jackie could cook—Danni would give her that.

Beep. “Danni, dear!” It was her mother’s voice, sounding annoyingly cheerful at four in the morning. “Are you never to be found in your lovely home? Aunt Hetra and Aunt Dottie and I are going shopping at Utica Square tomorrow and I thought we’d drop by first so they could see how beautifully your house turned out. Would that be okay? By the way, Wesley Fuerbome’s mother called me today, and guess what? Wesley is coming back to Tulsa! Isn’t that nice?”

Danni rolled her eyes. Would her mother never give up? Wesley Fuerborne. Danni hadn’t seen him since college. Their relationship had seemed to please all of Tulsa society—everybody but Danni. What was it about Wesley? Well, for one thing the sex had been terrible. Awkward and juvenile. Had that been her fault or his? Didn’t matter. It certainly hadn’t been good enough to offset Danni’s irrational fear of becoming pregnant every time their relationship had gotten physical, despite the precautions she’d insisted on.

Her mother’s voice was going on brightly. “Such a nice young man. He wants to see you while he’s here, and I was thinking maybe you two could join me for the Tulsa Performing Arts Gala.”

Pearl and Smoky had positioned themselves on their haunches at Danni’s feet, staring expectantly upward. She tossed them each a chunk of cheese and said, “Go lie down!” in a stern voice that the dogs ignored.

“Call me soon, sweetheart. We’ll drop by tomorrow.” Beep.

Danni rolled her eyes again and focused on the food. She passed on the sensible tuna-and-pasta salad, and grabbed a grilled pork chop. She stood at the kitchen island and devoured it without benefit of silverware as she stared out at her moonlit backyard.

That moon.

Silent. Waiting. Calling.

How far the moon was from Earth, yet how intimately close it felt. How compelling. And how she hated the haunting sight of it.

Danni wasn’t even aware of her movements as she wandered around the island and dropped onto the leather couch facing the southern windows. She keeled to her side and lay there, watching the moon float high over the trees.

She was so, so tired.

She wanted to sleep, not visit her old, sad memories; not think about all that she had seen tonight. “Sometimes I hate this job,” she murmured to the moon, and closed her eyes, willing that last scene at the hospital—especially that one—away.

The things a doctor saw—birth and death and everything in between—were frequently heartrending, but sometimes they actually marked your soul. That was the risk.

By three o’clock this morning, Labor and Delivery had slowed down enough for Danni to dash out to Postpartum to check on the burn victim. The patient was stable, Carol had called in the social worker and the chaplain to counsel and console, and there had been little else they could do. But Danni had wanted to make sure the woman’s sedatives were working. As she’d approached the patient’s door she’d heard her, quietly sobbing.

Danni turned to go back to the nurses’ station to get more sedative when she heard the firefighter’s deep voice. “I’ll stay here as long as you need me.”

Danni frowned and crept back to the doorjamb and looked in. He was standing by the mother’s bed, holding her hand, with his back to Danni. He had put his fire pants back on under the hospital gown, and now wore paper hospital shoes.

“I’m so afraid,” Danni heard the mother say.

“They’re doing everything they can. You just have to be strong,” his deep voice answered.

The mother broke into fresh sobs and Danni watched him bend forward and wrap his uninjured arm around her in a protective hug, causing the hospital gown to gape open, exposing his tanned back.

“Th-thank you for saving my babies!” the woman sobbed, and clung to his bare skin.

“I only wish I could have gotten them out sooner, ma’am.” Danni heard a tightness in his voice. Was he crying? She turned to go, thinking she shouldn’t eavesdrop, when something the mother said stopped her.

“Do you pray?” the woman asked.

For some reason Danni wanted to know. Did he?

He straightened and took the mother’s hand again. “Yes, ma’am. I started praying about four years ago. It helps a lot.”

“Would you pray for my babies?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He got down on one knee, and still holding the mother’s hand, began to pray so quietly, so reverently, that Danni had to strain to hear the words.

“Lord, we’re coming to you now to ask you to help this mother and her babies. We ask only that—”

He stopped as if he had to consider what, exactly, to ask in these dire circumstances. Danni leaned forward.

“We ask that you take the babies into your care. We’re turning them over to you, Lord. We trust in you and your will. Please give this mother the strength she needs... And give her peace. Amen.”

Danni backed away from the door and went down the hall to get the sedatives, knowing that she could not match what this fireman had offered through his presence and his prayers.

Now, the memory of that scene caused tears to spring into Danni’s eyes as she lay on her couch.

That poor, poor woman, Danni thought. She’d needed Matthew Creed’s company and support tonight. Danni hoped there were people in the woman’s life who would give her the strength she was going to need. We all need people, Danni thought, suddenly feeling more lonely than she ever had in her life.

She burrowed her cheek against the couch and allowed a single tear to slide onto the soft leather. “Why can’t I find someone?” she whispered to the moon’s mocking face. But the moon, so silent, had no answer.

Carol had guessed right, at least partially. Danni had been running scared for most of her life—running from what had happened to Lisa. Now that Danni had made it as a doctor, there was nowhere else to go, nothing else to distract her from the emptiness of her personal life; from that old, old pain that she thought she’d successfully sealed off so many years ago.

“Oh, sissy, I’m so scared,” she whispered. Now—in her own home—she should be able to cry, if she wanted to; to sob and scream and break things, if she wanted to. But she’d trained herself for so long to hold her emotions in. She squeezed her eyes shut and, before long, sank into a bottomless sleep, where from deep recesses, disturbing dreams surfaced.

Not the usual dreams of Lisa, still alive.

These were feverish dreams. Dreams of a strong man, carrying her through flames, laying her under a cool moon, making fierce love to her, over and over. Dreams in which her longing and her pain and her loneliness at last melted away.