sucked in a sharp breath at the contact.
“That’s it.”
“Oh, geez.”
His reddened skin somehow felt cool beneath her hand but hot beneath her fingers. Bone protruded against her palm. Honed muscles knotted around it. Feeling them twitch and tighten as his body’s nerves objected violently to the damage, she jerked her glance to his face once more.
With his eyes closed, his lashes formed sooty crescents beneath the dark slashes of his eyebrows. The skin stretched taut over his cheekbones looked as pale as his beautifully carved mouth. His lips parted as he blew a slow breath.
Exhaling with him, she watched him open his eyes.
For the first time she noticed his eyes were gray, the silver gray of old pewter. Mostly she noticed the sheer stoicism that kept him from caving in to the pain and hitting the floor.
“Now what?” she asked, mentally bracing herself for whatever came next.
“The muscles have started to spasm, so you’re going to have to use some muscle yourself. Take my arm and when I let go, pull while you push the head over and down. I’ll brace myself against you.”
Glancing from the rigid muscles of his jaw and chest, she uneasily curled her fingers above his elbow. His big body stiffened the instant he removed the support of his own hand, but she was more aware of how her own body went still as that hand anchored at her waist.
With his strong fingers curved at her side and digging into her back, her voice sounded pitifully thin. “Like this?”
Teeth clinched, he muttered a terse, “Go.”
Shaking inside, feeling his muscles quivering, Jenny pulled on his arm. Its heaviness caught her totally off guard. Tightening her grip, she pushed on bone.
He grunted a breath. “Harder.”
There was no doubt in her mind that she was hurting him. His damp skin became even slicker, his breathing more harsh. Fighting the frantic urge to stop, she felt the bone slip.
He bit off another, “Harder.”
“I’m pushing as hard as I can.”
With the muscles constricted around it, the bone wouldn’t move far enough.
He grabbed for his arm again, told her to stop. As he did, Jenny jerked back to see his features twist while he cradled his elbow.
“I was afraid that wouldn’t work.”
Disbelief shot through her distress. “Then why did we do it?”
“Because it’s the easiest method of reduction. When it works,” he qualified, frightfully pale beneath his five-o’clock shadow. He took a few deep breaths, rocked a little.
They’d only made it worse.
“Oh, man,” he groaned.
“Oh, geez,” she repeated and put her hand on his shoulder to calm his motion.
Jenny had never regarded herself as particularly squeamish. She had never fainted at the sight of blood, and she could handle everything but eating gross insects or animal parts on survivor shows. She was learning in a hurry, though, that she apparently didn’t have a terribly high tolerance for other people’s distress. Either that or her basic sense of empathy was working overtime now that her reservations about him had taken a hike. Doing her best to shake off the uneasiness she felt herself at the misaligned body part, she wiped away a drip running from the hair at his temple to his jaw.
“Do you have anything for pain?” Another drip ran down the other side. She caught that, too. “In your little black bag or something? Is it in your car?”
“I don’t have mine with me.”
“Country doctors always carry little black bags.”
“Only when they’re making house calls. That’s not what I was doing. Come on. Let’s just do this.”
He shifted, the intensity of his discomfort making his voice tight enough to snap rubber bands. “We need more leverage. You’re going to have to take my arm and pull it down and out to the side.” He glanced at the sink beside him. “I’ll pull one way while you pull the other. The head of the bone should slip back into the socket.” He swallowed. Hard. “Take my elbow in one hand and my wrist in the other. Once you start to pull, don’t stop until I tell you to. Okay?”
It was most definitely not okay. “I’ll only hurt you again.”
“No,” he insisted, grabbing her arm as she started to back away.
This time, it was she who winced.
Apparently thinking he’d grabbed her too hard, he immediately let go.
“You’re helping,” he insisted. “We’ll try again. The longer this goes, the worse the spasms are going to get.”
The plea in his voice underscored the need to hurry. But it was the way he’d said “we” that kept her right where she was. He couldn’t do this alone. And without her, he would only get worse.
“Okay,” she conceded, rubbing where he’d grasped. “But try something you know will work this time.”
“This will.”
At his assurance she opened her mouth, closed it again. Since he had far more at stake than she did, she decided not to push for a promise—and worriedly waited for him let go of his arm again.
Letting go was clearly something he didn’t want to do. Grimacing along with him when he finally did, Jenny curled her fingers around the top of his corded forearm and grasped the hard bones of his wrist with the other. His breathing sounded more rapid to her in the moments before he hooked his free arm over the edge of the sink.
Breathing rapidly herself, she asked, “On three?” and watched him give a sharp nod.
Desperately hoping he knew what he had her doing, she counted to their mark. When she hit it and pulled, the sound he made was half growl, half groan and had her heart slamming against her breast bone. A sick sensation gripped her stomach. But she could feel the bone in his arm moving, and even though that made her a little sick, too, that movement was exactly what they were after.
Sweat gleamed on his face.
Jenny could feel perspiration dampening her skin, too.
His breathing became more labored. With his jaw clenched, air hissed between his teeth. “Rotate it down.”
Thunder cracked overhead. The drip of rain into the pot picked up its cadence. Jenny barely noticed the crunch of ceramic beneath her shoe as she shifted her stance to carefully increase her leverage. She was too busying praying he wouldn’t crumple when, hearing a sickening pop, she felt the bone lock into place.
For an instant she didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she even breathed. She wasn’t sure Greg was breathing, either.
“Can
