Chapter 7: Discovery
Jim was gone on one of his business trips and had been gone for almost 3 weeks. I decided to dust the mansion from top to bottom, armed myself with my vinegar and water spray bottle and almost a bale of cleaning rags. The first floor was dirty enough but the second floor, being much less adorned with knick knacks, was easy.
I put on my MP3 player and set my songs to play. Flicking a feather duster at the crevices in the painting, I sang out loud to the Rolling Stones as I went down the hall. Wetting a rag with the cleaning solution, I wiped down the dust on top and the sides of every doorframe. The rag turned dark brown then black.
"Oh, how gross!" the used rags could be left at the bottom of the stairs until I was ready to pick them all up and shove them into the washer later on.
In the medical room I swept and dusted the fixtures, the floor, sterilized the gurney, then as I was turning to leave I heard a rattling sound. A bottle had fallen to the floor. Stooping down, I picked it up and turned the label to the light.
The name of the drug I couldn't pronounce for the life of me but I could see one of the warnings quite clearly. "DO NOT USE IF YOU MAY BE PREGNANT." the drug had a category X marking on it and the word abortifacient.
Then it came to me. The extremely painful time of the month as I thought it was suddenly had a more sinister meaning to it. Indeed it was odd that I had such strong pains from what had been a routine event.
Pocketing the bottle, I needed to confront Jim about the medication when he got back. What was so wrong about telling me up front about what he'd found? Then again he'd never been straightforward about a lot of things, preferring me to find out on my own. Possibly the symptoms would have alerted me but I'd never had any.
Finishing off the dusting in that big house, I put my MP3 player on my mantelpiece, sat down in front of the fireplace on the lounger, then leaned forward.
OK, so Jim had slipped me an abortion pill when it became obvious to him that I didn't have any symptoms at all. Clearly he didn't want a hormonal hurricane residing in the same house as him. I could understand that, having once been forced to share a cabin one interminable summer with a whiny 17-year-old who was up the duff and bitched about everything. That had been at a summer camp when I was 16.
I snorted with a grin, remembering how I had freed myself a month early. Hormonal Henny as we called her, didn't make any friends at the camp. I had been very devious, formulating a plan to escape and calling on my pals to help me out. We had sneaked into my cabin where Henny was snoring loudly, tied her up, shoved a wad of socks in her mouth, then made a break for it.
We lived like nomads for the next month, staying within range of the camp so we could steal food, etc. Nobody was the wiser as to what we were really up to so that was the golden summer of my youth.
Back to the task at hand, I didn't think much about Jim and his lies that the drug was mislabeled or put in the wrong shipment. He knew what he was doing was wrong and yet I still couldn't care less. He had done me a favor in the long run, not that I would ever let him know about it.
My reaction to the drug made perfect sense now. My blood was thin and I bruised easily. Taking a drug that forced my monthly on me had caused too much blood loss way too fast. I had gone into shock, prompting Jim to call one of his medical pals to advise him on what to do.
Fortunately I had recovered relatively easily, bottom line. I wasn't inclined to dwell on it, just to tell Jim to inform me truthfully about what he was doping me with. Nothing more than that.
I heard the front door open up downstairs, footsteps muffled by the newly falling snow. It must have been Jim. Leisurely I went downstairs, taking the bale of dirty rags and shoving them down the laundry chute.
"Ruby!" a strained voice called out for me. It was Jim and something was definitely wrong. Hustling over to the front door, I found him kneeling down with the door slightly ajar, his head down as well. He groped for the handle and swung the door shut firmly.
"That's better." he said huskily, trying to stand up so he could walk, but ended up slumping over on his side.
"Jim? The hell?" I rushed over to see his face was all bloody. He gazed up at me through unfocused eyes, his face pale. Jim wasn't wearing a jacket or even proper snow boots. All I could see was blood and white skin.
"Hi, Ruby," he said in a hoarse whisper. "miss me?"
"Of course. Tell me what happened later on. I need to get you upstairs." Jim didn't say anything but allowed me to hoist him up, draping one arm over my shoulders. He closed his eyes multiple times but I forced him to keep his eyes open. Our progress was slow, but I got him into the medical room, cut his bloody t-shirt and sweater off, then told him to strip off his pants.
Jim looked like he was about ready to wisecrack with an innuendo, but thought better of it. He did as I said, putting on the hospital johnny with no protest. The pants, sweater, sneakers, etc, all went into the garbage. I flicked on the lights and drew up two trays of instruments and bandages.
"I forget-you're a dermatologist." he looked like he was going to say more but his strength was overtaxed so he let it alone.
"I went to med school, I am a doctor, and I was focusing on dermatology, yes." I said shortly, donning gloves and cleaning up the blood from the wound on the left side of his temple. He watched me as I put a bandage on that injury, bandaged the other superficial ones, then found a rather deep laceration that went diagonally from his collarbone up to his neck. It wasn't more than two inches long but it would need stitching.
Lidocaine always worked best for a local anesthetic. I gave him a good dose, took out a suture kit, then began to weave stitches.
"You're fast," Jim commented.
"Fastest in my class." I cut off the last suture thread. A wet to dry dressing would be optimal in his case so that was what I did. Skin wounds always healed better when the skin was slightly damp.
"What is that little papilloma under your eye?"
"I don't know. They beat me a lot and I lost track of how many injuries I had."
Smart ass. I injected more lidocaine, snipped off the papilloma very carefully, then put one little suture in. The skin under and around the eyes were not very forgiving so I had to be extremely accurate.
Inspecting his midsection and legs, I came upon a baseball sized lump on his outer left thigh. "How long have you had this?" it was loose and only encapsulated to the skin.
"Weeks. What is it?"
"Feels like a cyst. I can take that out now, no problem."
"If I wait?"
"It'll get infected and cause you lots of pain."
"Right then. Have a go." I was going to take it off no matter what but figured it was easier to at least try to get permission first. I arranged what I would need on a tray, gave him another local anesthetic, used a marker to mark off the boundaries of the cyst, then with my scalpel in hand, went in.
The cyst I had to dig for for a few minutes, then when I exteriorized it, I snipped it free. Thankfully it had come out in one piece so I didn't have to pop it. There wasn't anything really nasty in there-just sebaceous oil and dead skin. A few sutures in there and he was good to go.
"All set!" I announced.
"Already?"
"Yes indeed," I took out a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff to check his vitals. "It's a bit low for you. Are you hungry? I can whip something up."
"No thanks," Jim's hand found mine and he began to rub my fingers, making me glance at him questioningly. "I just want to get to my own bed."
"What time is it?" almost 9 at night! I'd been working on Jim for over two hours now. He watched me as I cleaned up the area, the pill bottle rattling a little bit in my pocket as I moved around. Mentally I dismissed the idea of confronting Jim as he'd been through enough that day. He did not offer any explanation of what he had been doing through his absence but I did not pry. Jim liked that about me, I thought.
"Be right back." I fetched his bathrobe and slippers from his room, then went back into the medical room. "All right, Jim. Up you go."
He was wobbly like a colt taking its first steps. I grasped his hands, steered him in the right direction, got his slippers on him, then draped his robe over his shoulders. Jim gripped my hand firmly, shuffling at first, but perking up as he reached the door.
Once he was settled in his bedroom, I went over to the blinds and shut them tightly as Jim called me to his side.
"I don't know what would have happened without you there." it seemed he had rehearsed those words.
I laughed. "You would have thought of something I'm sure, Jim." his hand again found mine, stroking it, tracing over the veins that didn't even stand out against my skin. I watched him at this odd task, a bit confused but writing it off anyway.
"Your skin is so perfect," he eyed my nails which had been painted a deep blue. "blue as in the dead of winter."
Here Jim did something that startled me. He ran his thumb over the back of my hand, brought it to his face, then kissed my knuckles like a gentleman at the Georgian court.
Saying nothing, I thought it was for shock value that he did that. Jim did so like to tease the bejabbers out of me! He watched me with a teasing smirk in his eyes that didn't reach his face. I was suspicious of that but then again Jim wasn't prone to open displays of emotion so I just went along with it.
Well, I may be a housemate of Jim's but I wasn't his captive or subordinate in any way, shape or form. Those dark brown eyes were beguiling when he was in a good mood. Jim raised his eyebrows slightly as if to ask me what I was going to do next. Now the smirk appeared, wrinkling the lines under his eyes and making the stitch go up and down.
I would show him! I was a woman and we had powers that men did not. Smirking, I leaned forward on his bed and met his lips with mine. When I drew back, Jim gave me a surprised look. He still had a hold of my hand which tightened up a little bit.
"What else can you do?"
"Erm-" I didn't want to ask him whether he wanted a full relationship or what was on his mind whatsoever. Not at that time anyway. It wasn't fair of me to put him on the spot.
Well shit! I flung my lips back onto his again and gave him the most passionate kiss that I didn't know I'd been capable of. Jim responded with just as much passion as I did, breaking his hold on my hand, framing my face with his hands.
"No," I spoke to his nonverbal question. "we'll talk tomorrow when you're well." Jim nodded and closed his eyes.
