Revealing the Real Dr. Robinson by Dianne Drake

of emptiness ahead of him. Mind-sucks was what he called them. A litany of stresses meant to keep him awake.
    Right now, though, it wasn’t a mind-suck that wouldn’t let him close his eyes. It was Shanna. And the instant she popped into his mind, that ache in his groin wasn’t far behind. “Damn,” he muttered, turning over and staring up at the ceiling, starting to count the revolutions of the overhead fan.
    He was somewhere near a thousand revolutions when the ache subsided.
    He was closer to two thousand when he finally dozed off.
    * * *
    Yerba maté tea. Herbal, grassy taste. Chock full of caffeine. And to her tongue peculiarly bitter. But Ben liked it. Lived on it, as she hardly ever saw him without a mug of it in his hand. It did smell lovely steeping, but sometimes the senses were deceptive. Her senses about Ben? Not deceptive as much as confused.
    What she wanted to see in him was definitely there, but the whole picture was different. What she’d thought was a healthy wall of dispassion wasn’t dispassion at all. He drove himself harder to take care of his patients than anyone she’d ever known. Like spending an entire night knocking on doors to look for people who needed vaccinations. Or pacing the hospital’s halls hour upon hour, simply looking in on patients, attending to the little things like drinks of water and cool compresses.
    Last night, or more precisely the small hours of the morning, she’d peeked into the children’s ward only to find him sitting in a rocking chair, rocking a toddler to sleep, needing sleep himself as much as the restless toddler did. There was no dispassion in that. Yet the message he flashed clearly when anybody looked was, Keep away.
    “So, who are you, Ben?” she asked as she placed the teapot on a tray and headed out the kitchen door with it.
    A minute later, standing outside Ben’s door, she was trying to figure out the answer to her question and waiting for him to respond to her first knock. Neither thing happened, so she shoved the question aside and knocked again, only to be met with no response. “Ben,” she finally called through the door. “Your yerba maté tea awaits. Open up.”
    Again, nothing. Her third attempt came with a twist of the knob, and she found the door unlocked. Shoving it open a crack, she didn’t enter, but called, “Ben, it’s time to wake up and smell the tea. You in there?”
    Only silence greeted her. A good hip shove to the door opened it, and she stepped inside. Saw him stretched out in bed. Long, muscular. The sight of him nearly took her breath away, he was so gorgeous, just lying there in sleeping innocence. She couldn’t help staring for a moment. Admiring the physical aspect of him. Definitely a man who brought some kind of response to the surface, and it was a whole lot more than tingles and goose bumps. Clearing her throat, trying to avert her thoughts as well as her eyes, she began, “I brought you some—”
    But Ben finished her sentence and ended her mood when he lurched up in the bed, and bellowed, “What the hell are you doing in here? Get out, Shanna!”
    His voice and demeanor startled her so badly she stepped backward, tripped and dropped her tea on the floor, breaking the teapot and cup and splashing the yerba maté all over the wall and floor in the entryway. In her scurry to sidestep the mess, she didn’t see Ben jump from the bed and practically sprint across the room. But she heard the bathroom door slam, and the only thing she could think was that he must have been sleeping so soundly she’d startled him out of a dream.
    “I’m sorry,” she called to him. A frantic look for rags or a towel to clean up the mess netted nothing. “I thought you’d like some tea before you went back on duty...”
    “I’ll clean it up,” he shouted, his voice flat, inhospitable. “Just leave me alone and shut the door on your way out. And in the future, when I want tea, I’ll take care of that on my own.”
    She’d