A Family for Christmas Read online

  He noticed the jeans, the sweater. The feminine curve of hips. But only briefly. Cursorily. His trained good eye had already seen the moving rib cage, indicating life, as he dropped down to the woman lying on her stomach. Her dark hair was long, tangled. Dirty.

  And she hadn’t said a word.

  Of their own accord, his fingers reached for her pulse, registering a steady, strong beat. Yet she made no sound. No reaction to being touched.

  She was sweating, though. In a thick sweater, exposed to the sun, so sweat by itself wasn’t alarming.

  “What the hell...”

  He needed to see her face, some age identifier, to look at her eyes, her pupils, her lips, but he didn’t dare move her. Not until he knew that her neck was okay...

  Already feeling for breaks, he gave an inward shudder as he pictured his idiot self, prodding this poor person with his walking stick.

  What had he been thinking?

  Finding no obvious breaks, he leaned down, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’m going to roll you over now,” he said. “I’m a doctor and I’m here to help you.”

  She appeared comatose, but many could hear while in that state.

  Lying beside her, he used himself to support her entire body, and turned with her. Then, sliding aside, he sat up. She had major maxillofacial trauma. Severe facial edema. Her face was badly bruised, so swollen he couldn’t make out her normal features, with open lacerations on the right cheek and chin. Medical terms came to him, but as a doctor of children who had to remember he was speaking to children even in tense or emergency situations, he’d begun translating in his thoughts as well as his words. Her lips were oddly healthy looking, considering the rest of her face, with no cuts or signs of bleeding. He lifted her lids enough to note pupil activity. Gums had good color. No immediate sign of oxygen deprivation.

  Breathing was shallow. Skin warm, but not hot.

  Lifting up her sweater, he made a cursory check of her torso, finding nothing unusual.

  He couldn’t be sure about internal injuries. What he was sure about was getting her inside. Assessing more thoroughly. Doing what he could in the moment.

  And then, as loath as he was to expose himself to anyone, anywhere—he was going to have to call for an ambulance to come get her.

  Either that or pray that she regained consciousness and could tell him who to call on her behalf.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HIS ARMS WERE GENTLE. Lying inert, as much by instinct and habit as anything else, Cara remained limp as she awoke to feel him lifting her. He settled her against his body.

  Her head shrieked with pain. Please God, let him be in a good mood.

  Shawn was kind to her, caring, when he wasn’t tense.

  He’d changed his shirt. The day before he’d had on the denim one over his T-shirt, but this one was softer. Must be the blue flannel she’d bought him for his birthday...

  The fact that he was carrying her so carefully boded well. Her head fell sideways, settling against his chest and she almost drifted out again.

  But the smell. It was unfamiliar.

  Shawn didn’t wear aftershave. Or cologne. But they’d been on the run. Maybe he’d stolen a bar of soap from someplace?

  He smelled like more than just different toiletries. Nothing that she recognized. Why such a small detail was keeping her conscious, she didn’t know. She kept trying to place the scent.

  She liked it.

  A lot.

  It reminded her of something. She had no idea what. But it felt...safe.

  He felt safe.

  So maybe he was in a good mood. Maybe she’d be okay for a while. At least long enough to sleep off the headache so she could figure out what she was going to do...

  * * *

  “OKAY, MY DEAR, let’s get you more comfortable so I can get a look at you.” Simon spoke aloud more out of habit than because he expected a response.

  The reaction of the woman in his arms was an instantaneous stiffening. She didn’t fight him as he carried her through the cabin’s main room to the one bedroom. Didn’t say a word. She could still be unconscious, but she was coming back to him.

  So he kept talking.

  “I’m just going to lay you down on the bed,” he said, leaning over to keep her against him until the bed took her weight. Slowly, watching as her face came into view, searching for signs of consciousness, he stood up. Cursing the right eye that hindered the normal speed of his initial assessment.

  She was older than his usual patients, to be sure, but not old. “You look to be about thirty,” he told her. Maybe late twenties. It was hard to tell with the state of her face. In the light from the ceiling fixture he saw something else.

  Two things registered at once.

  Her eyes had moved beneath her closed lids. Which meant she was conscious.

  And the bruises on her face weren’t all recent.

  “You’ve been hurt before,” he said softly, his mind racing with possibilities. The obvious first one...a spouse hitting her? If they lived off the grid, as he was doing, it could have been happening for years without anyone being the wiser.

  It could also mean that the son of a bitch could turn up at his cabin at any time. Looking for his “goods.”

  “Recently, too,” he added, looking for other explanations for the varying degrees of discoloration on her. He could come up with nothing but deliberate torture of some kind. Some of the bruises and lacerations were more than a week old. Maybe even two or three. Some only a day or so.

  He’d need to get them cleaned up...

  He caught another eyelid movement. Not a twitch. More like an attempt to remain still. And he thought of how this might seem to her. A man carrying her, telling her he was laying her on the bed...

  “My name’s Dr. Simon Walsh,” he said, wishing he’d paid more attention when peers at work had mentioned abused patients. They rarely ended up with heart injuries so hadn’t been in his area of expertise. And with his peers, the patients had been children. “I’m a thoracic surgeon. On...vacation,” he added when he realized the absurdity of his current life within the explanation he felt obliged to give. “I just bought this cabin, came up here a month ago.”

  He added the latter in case, as he suspected, she was from the area. Probably living somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Nevada.

  A lot of the residents he’d seen in the nearest burg, Prospector—less than a town, but more than nothing—had been Native American. He was living on the border of their reservation.

  His current patient was clearly Caucasian.

  “I need to see how badly you’re hurt,” he said next. He wanted to remove her outerwear. To make certain that her limbs weren’t misshapen—indicating breaks—or swollen—indicating any number of other things. He needed to see if there were worse lacerations. He needed to call someone.

  But first, he grabbed the bag he never traveled without. Pulled out a blood pressure cuff and, pushing up the sleeve of her sweater, wrapped it around her arm and pumped. If her vitals told him this was an emergency, he wouldn’t have time to wait for help.

  Simon was concentrating so completely on the simple blood-pressure reading—his first medical action since he was attacked and something he hadn’t done himself in years—that he was startled to glance at her face and see her watching him.

  She was cognizant. Her gaze was clear. Assessing.

  She glanced at the cuff, as if asking, Who travels to a cabin on vacation with a blood-pressure cuff?

  “My bag’s on the floor,” he told her. And then said again, “I’m a doctor. Dr. Simon Walsh,” in case she hadn’t been fully aware during his earlier introduction.

  “A thoracic surgeon, you said.” Her voice was soft, a bit rough, her mouth barely moving. Almost as thou
gh her throat was sore—and her jaw broken. He looked at the sweater zipped up around her neck, wondering if he’d find marks on her throat, too.

  Had someone tried to kill her?

  Repeatedly? Based on the bruises.

  Or was she into something he probably didn’t want to know about?

  What if she was the bad guy?

  He took off the cuff and pulled a stethoscope out of his bag.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cara.”

  Pretty sure that a Cara what? would garner him nothing, he nodded. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  Eight years younger than he was.

  “I’d like to listen to your heart, if that’s okay with you?”

  She nodded slightly, timidly. Not like someone who was contemplating some nefarious deed or getaway.

  Not that he’d really know. He spent his life with children. Sick children.

  Children he’d been forced to leave behind because he could no longer help them...

  Leaving her zipper up, he slid the stethoscope chestpiece under the T-shirt he found under her sweater. Her heartbeat was a little fast—nothing to be concerned about, considering the circumstances. Steady. Clear. Even when she took deep breaths as he instructed.

  “Can I feel your abdomen? Check for internal injuries?”

  She gave the barely discernable nod a second time. But added slowly, “He doesn’t ever hit me there.”

  Simon’s fingers didn’t miss a beat. His heart did. His first guess had been accurate. She’d been beaten.

  By a man.

  Her husband?

  An accomplice?

  Someone trying to rob her?

  A kidnapper?

  “What about your extremities? Where do you hurt?”

  She shook her head. Started to sit up. “I need to go,” she said. “My arms and legs are fine. Some bruises, maybe. I fell. But I can walk.”

  With gentle hands used to coddling children, Simon urged her back down. Felt around both sides of her jaw bone. There were no obvious fractures.

  “I can’t just let you walk away from here,” he told her. “The Hippocratic Oath and all.” He could recite the entire thing.

  “It’s no longer binding,” she told him. Talking brought obvious discomfort, based on her small movements and the expression on her face, but didn’t seem to hinder her significantly.

  Because she was used to the pain?

  He studied her. “You were unconscious when I found you. You should have a CAT scan. And an MRI.”

  She closed her eyes. Waited a couple of seconds and opened them again.

  “I’m an able adult. If you called an ambulance, I would simply leave before it got here.” She started to sit up again. “I actually think I’ve outstayed my welcome as it is. I’ll just go ahead and...”

  She winced as she rose up, and Simon lowered her back to the bed once again, pulling a second pillow behind her head.

  “You’ve obviously suffered severe trauma to your head. You could have a brain bleed.” Her speech told him she was educated—and perhaps not suffering from serious brain damage.

  “My vision’s not blurred. I’m not slurring my words.”

  Her Hippocratic Oath comment came back to him. She was right, of course, about how it was no longer binding. Not everyone knew that. “You a doctor?” he asked. Could explain why she was living on or near an Indian reservation.

  “No.”

  “You work in the medical field?”

  “No.”

  The woman had no problem withholding information.

  Her pupils weren’t enlarged. They were identical in size. And when he shone his light in her eyes, they both responded normally.

  “How bad is your headache?” He wasn’t giving her a chance to tell him she didn’t have one.

  “On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a six.”

  Medical professionals commonly asked patients to rate their pain on the one to ten scale. But a scale of one to ten was used so much it was almost cliché, too.

  “Who hit you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  He wanted to push. Didn’t want her to leave. Legally, he couldn’t make her stay. He could only call for emergency service and hope that she didn’t get far enough that they couldn’t find her. But she could refuse to go with them even if he did that.

  And what if she did manage to escape? And then died out in the wilderness?

  “You need to get checked out at a hospital.”

  “You think the doctors there are better than you?”

  They could see with both eyes. He didn’t speak aloud. For what he was doing there with her...one eye was plenty.

  “They have the equipment to do the proper tests,” he told her. He had to advise her. It was his job. His life’s work.

  “I’m not going to any hospital.”

  She also didn’t try to sit up again.

  “So...I’ll make a deal with you,” he told her, talking on the fly. “You agree to let me get you cleaned up, get a good look at you, do what I can here...you agree to let me take your vitals regularly and to watch you for any sign of more serious injury...and I won’t make any calls. For now.”

  “Okay,” she said. Closing her eyes again and opening them. “For now.”

  She was watching him but looked like the effort to do so was costing her.

  He couldn’t help but wonder what she was really thinking. But he was pretty sure it had to do with leaving as soon as she could.

  “You can trust me,” he told her. And then, reaching down into his bag, he pulled out his ID, showing it to her.

  She read. “Los Angeles Children’s?”

  He nodded and was left with the impression that she knew of the place. Los Angeles was a good ten-hour drive from Prospector, with only enough stops to pee and gas up. Did she know someone from there? Or someone who’d been treated there?

  “Do you have any other questions?” He couldn’t guarantee he’d answer them, but if he could prove that he wouldn’t hurt her, he’d do his best.

  “No.”

  He had questions. And wondered if she’d declined his invitation to ask him anything so that he wouldn’t feel free to do the same.

  “Who hit you?”

  She turned her head.

  “You said he doesn’t ever hit you in the abdomen.”

  “Nor on the mouth.”

  “Your bruises show signs of previous abuse.”

  “He gets tense and...”

  “Who is he?” Simon was pretty sure he knew. But he had to make sure. Had to know what he was letting himself in for.

  What he might have to protect them both against.

  He had a hunting rifle with him. A basic .22 in case of unwanted varmints.

  “My husband.”

  His heart dropped. Confirmation...and yet...wow. She was so young. With such soulful, intelligent eyes.

  And a face swollen almost out of recognition.

  “Is he coming after you?” He had to know.

  “I don’t think so.” For the first time, she looked away when she answered him.

  “I need to know the truth.”

  Glancing back at him, she said, “That is the truth. I think he thinks I’m as good as dead, if not gone already. I slurred my words. Started walking crooked. Talking crazy. Told him he had two faces.”

  Symptoms of a brain bleed. “You need to get to a hospital.”

  “I lied and faked it all. I just wanted him to quit hitting me.”

  He had a feeling it hadn’t been nearly as easy to fool the bastard as she made it sound.

  “Won’t he get suspicious when he finds
you gone?”

  “He drove me up here, hauled me out into the woods and left me there. That was sometime yesterday. I think.”

  Holy hell! What kind of a beast did that to his own wife?

  Studying her face, seeing small lines in her stretched skin, indicating previously healed lacerations, he knew he’d already answered his own silent question. Only a beast would do something like that.

  He’d left her to die. And...

  Their gazes met. For the first time, he saw stark fear in hers. It was almost as though he’d heard her words before she said them aloud. “He can’t know I’m still alive. If you alert anyone, he might find out...”

  Simon wasn’t in the market for company. At all. Of any kind.

  But he wasn’t turning her away.

  He might be half-blind. A failure. He was not cruel.

  “If you stay here, I won’t alert anyone. If you go, I will.”

  “How long do plan to keep me prisoner?” The unflappable voice was back.

  Maybe he should have seen the question coming. Figured a woman who was used to beatings might think that way. He was used to trying to put himself in young minds when it came to his patients.

  “As a doctor, I can’t just let you walk out of here in this condition. You die and it’s on me. Believe me, I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now. I want you to stay here for as long as it takes to get you healthy. I need to start you on antibiotics, too,” he told her, hurrying there at the end.

  He’d said too much. I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now.

  Clearly, he was out of practice when it came to acting like a rational member of society, or even holding a normal conversation.

  Hence his extended trip to the woods. And...maybe...a little bit because of it.

  She was studying him. He waited for some takedown regarding his guilt comment. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “Fair enough, Dr. Walsh. I don’t leave, you don’t call. Just until I’m recovered enough to disappear on my own.”

  Simon nodded, not sure if he’d come out from the conversation—the day—unscathed. He’d load his gun—just in case her story didn’t hold up. Or whoever had beaten her came looking.