and liked the sound of his name rolling around in her head. “Where I work not too many physicians like being addressed by their first names, so it’s just habit.”
“A good habit to break, if you ask me. We’re all on the same team, right? And if Bear has any of those Boston cream doughnuts left, snag me one for later, will you?” He smiled and the effect made her hold his gaze a second or two longer than she normally would have. Though thin, he was a handsome man. Intense, but handsome.
“Sure.” The tension in her flashed away as his vibrant energy seemed to move into her. Energy she seemed to need right now, but didn’t know how to find.
“Maybe two if he has them.”
That made her laugh and the sensation was warm in her chest. Laughter had been bountiful in her home as she’d grown up, and she realized now that it was somehow missing in her life. She’d become too serious and that was something she’d never wanted to be. “I’ll see what he has. You might have to do an extra lap around the camp to work it off though.” The man had a sweet tooth. She’d have to remember that. He was too thin by far, so if she could grab him a doughnut now and then, she’d do it. He’d been nothing but nice to her, so she could do something nice back. Perhaps her payback to him could come in the form of confiscated pastries now and then.
The lodge, a great lumbering building made of rough-hewn timber, was the hub of the compound, and she reached the front porch in minutes. The screen door squeaked as she opened and closed it, and she entered the cool interior to find the place empty. Last night, they had stuffed nearly three hundred people in here, and the din had been overwhelming. Now, every foot-step echoed off the log walls. Just as she entered the lodge, a crashing clatter of pans and shattering of glass made her jump. Loud cursing and yelling followed, and she hurried over to the galley.
“Hello? Is everything okay?” She gasped as the biggest, brawniest bearded man she’d ever seen turned to face her, anger blazing in his deep-set brown eyes.
“No, dammit! I’m burned half to death.” He held his right hand under the water in the sink and continued to grumble. A thin man covered by a white apron hovered a few feet away, his hands nearly choking the handle of a broom.
“I’m Ellie, the nurse. We haven’t met yet.”
“I’m Bear, the chief fried cook.” He shook his head and continued to mutter under his breath.
“Why don’t I look at your injury? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”
Now, she remembered something Vicki had said, that Bear took a while to warm up to people. “Vicki Walker said you make a great clam chowder,” she said, hoping to distract him a little.
“She did, did she?” Bear cast her another glance. “We’ll be missing her around here this year.”
“She and Sam and their little girl will be up for a visit or two during the summer, so you’ll get to see her.”
Nodding at that, Bear turned to face her more fully, though he kept his hand and forearm under the running water. “Think you got anything in the infirmary to help a grease burn as big as this?” he asked.
“Sure. Getting it under the cold water is the first thing, for sure. Let me call Dr.…Mark to come over and see you, too. I also have some aromatherapy oils that will take the sting right out of the burn and probably minimize scar tissue.”
“I don’t care about scars. Got enough of them already, so a few more won’t make much difference.” He sniffed. “Aroma-what? What’s that?” Bear asked, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Plant extracts that have healing properties.” She’d studied aromatherapy and used it on her father when he’d been ill, and she was now thinking of becoming a practitioner in addition to her nursing career. Complementary therapies were helpful to standard treatments, and she was a believer in them.
“Like folk medicine?” he asked and his fierce expression eased a little.
“Something like that.” That was probably the simplest way to describe the therapy that didn’t sound too out-there for most people.
“Okay. Phone’s on the wall there.” Bear nodded to the wall beside the mess of a desk scattered with magazines and paperwork.
“Thanks.” Ellie looked at the numbers scrawled on a piece of paper beside the phone. Dialing the number, she waited for Mark to answer. She quickly explained the situation and hung up. “He’ll be here in a minute. Only one camper left for the morning clinic.”
A single nod was the only response from Bear. She noticed that he had reverted back to his tight-lipped expression again and suspected the burn hurt a lot more than he was letting on. “Can I ask you a few questions, Bear?”
“As long as they’re not about my clam chowder recipe,” he said.
“No,” Ellie said and hid a grin, knowing that Vicki had worked long and hard to get that recipe out of him. “They’re medical questions. Are you on any medications or do you have any medication allergies?”
Bear answered her questions and a few minutes later Mark charged through the door of the lodge, carrying two medical supply packs. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to need. I brought a few things, then we’ll get you to the infirmary to do a full exam.”
“I don’t need no full exam. I just need my burn looked at.” He held his hand and forearm out to them.
Ellie winced inwardly at the sight of the red, inflamed skin and took a pair of exam gloves from Mark. “Do you think it will blister?”
“Not sure. Might,” Mark said and applied exam gloves before touching the wound that ran from Bear’s thick fingers all the way to midforearm. “You said he put the injury in cold water right away, correct?”
“Yes. And to my knowledge, the sooner a heat injury is cooled, the better.” Burns weren’t her specialty, but that much she remembered and the advice made complete sense. Sometimes common sense was the best medicine in the world.
“Should I put ice on it?” Bear asked and winced as Mark touched a particularly tender spot that could have been the initial contact site.
“No. You don’t want to apply ice to skin that’s already delicate.”
“Delicate? There’s nothing delicate about Bear,” the thin assistant cook said with a snort. “He’s as tough as they come.”
“You’re right about that, Skinny,” Mark said. “The injured skin is the only thing delicate here, and we don’t want to add anything too cold to it, because skin damaged by heat could then be damaged by cold.”
“Makes sense,” Bear said and gave a nod.
“If you have no objection, Mark, I’d like to try some aromatherapy oils on the injury, too.” She chewed her lip, not sure how he would react to that request. Many doctors didn’t understand, or agree with, the benefit of treatments that weren’t created in a chemistry lab.
“Aromatherapy?” Mark asked with a quick glance at her, brows raised, silently asking for more information.
Clenching
