wouldn’t have, surely?
She looked across at him and Helen was right, his blue scrubs set off the blue of his eyes to absolute perfection. The temptation to get lost in them was startlingly strong but she needed him to realise they weren’t on the roadside any more. This was her job and she could do it.
She’d been dealing with her delicate constitution, as her father had so disparagingly called it, for a lot of years. Yes, it presented its challenges in this environment but she didn’t need him to hold her hand.
‘Do you think we could talk?’ she asked him, before turning and patting her patient’s hand. ‘I’ll be right back, Mrs Gordon. I just need to get some equipment.’
Gareth figured he’d overstepped the mark as he followed the business like swing of her ponytail. But he had seen her visibly pale at the sight of the blood running down the taxi driver’s face on Saturday night. Had held her hair back while she’d vomited then listened to her squeamishness confession.
Was it wrong to feel protective of her? To want to alleviate the potential for more incidents when he was free and more than capable of doing the procedure himself?
Her back was ramrod straight and her stride brisk as she yanked open the staffroom door. He followed her inside and Billie turned on him as soon as the door shut behind them.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
Gareth quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Trying to help? I wasn’t sure if putting in IVs made you feel faint or nauseated and …’ he shrugged ‘… I was free.’
She shoved her hands on her hips and Gareth noticed for the first time how short she was in her sensible work flats. He seemed to have a good foot on her. Just how high had those heels been the other night?
‘Would you have offered to do anyone else’s?’ she demanded.
Gareth folded his arms. ‘If I knew it made them squeamish, of course,’ he said.
‘Putting in an IV does not make me squeamish,’ she snapped.
‘Well, excuse me for trying to be nice,’ he snapped back. ‘You looked like you had a major issue with blood on Saturday night.’
Billie blinked at his testy comeback. She looked down at her hands. They were clenched hard at her sides and the unreasonable urge to pummel them against his chest beat like insects wings inside her head.
She shook her head. What was she doing? She was acting like a shrew. She took a deep breath and slowly unclenched her hands.
‘I can put in an IV,’ she sighed. ‘I can draw blood, watch it flow into a tube, no problems. It’s not blood that makes me squeamish, it’s blood pouring out where it shouldn’t be. It’s the gore. The messy rawness. The missing bits and the … jagged edges. The … gaping wounds. That’s what I find hard to handle. That’s when it gets to me.’
Gareth nodded, pleased for the clarification. The ER was going to be a rough rotation for her. He took a couple of paces towards her, stopping an arm’s length away.
‘There’s a lot of messy rawness here,’ he said gently.
‘I know,’ Billie said. Boy, did she know. ‘But that’s the way it is and I don’t want you protecting me from all of it, Gareth. I’m training to be an emergency physician. I’m just going to have to get used to it.’
She watched as his brow crinkled and the lines around his eyes followed suit. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Surely this isn’t the right speciality for you?’
Billie gave a half snort, half laugh. That was the milliondollar question. But despite feeling remarkably at ease with him, there were some things she wasn’t prepared to admit to anybody.
‘Well, yes … and there’s a very long, very complicated answer to that question, which I do not have time to tell you right now.’ Or ever. ‘Not with Mrs Gordon waiting.’
Gareth nodded. He knew when he was being fobbed off but, given that she barely knew him, she certainly didn’t owe him any explanations. And probably the less involved he was in her stuff the better.
He was a forty-year-old man who didn’t need any more complicated in his life.
No matter what package it came wrapped in.
He’d had enough of it to last a lifetime.
‘Okay, then,’ he said, turning to go. ‘Just yell if I can help you with anything.’
He had his hand on the doorknob when her tentative enquiry stopped him dead in his tracks.
‘You didn’t … you haven’t told anyone about the other night, about what I…?’ He caught her nervous swallow as he faced her. ‘About how I reacted? Please … don’t …’
Gareth regarded her seriously. If she’d known him better he would have given her a what-do-you-think? look. But she didn’t, he reminded himself. It just felt like they’d known each other longer because of the connection they’d made less than a week ago.
It was hard to think of her as a stranger even though the reality was they barely knew each other.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t tell tales out of school, Billie,’ he said.
He didn’t kiss and tell either.
The sudden unwarranted thought slapped him in the face, resulting in temporary brain malfunction.
What the hell?
Pull it together, man. Totally inappropriate. Totally not cool.
But the truth was, as he busied himself with opening the door and getting as far away from her as possible, he’d thought about kissing Billie a lot these last few days.
And it had been a very long time since he’d wanted to kiss anyone.
FIVE HOURS LATER, Gareth knew he was going to have to put Billie’s I-don’t-want-you-protecting-me convictions to the test. He had a head laceration that needed suturing and everyone else was busy. He could leave it until Barry was free but, with the Royal Brisbane going on diversion, a lot of their cases were coming to St Luke’s and things had suddenly gone a little crazy.
They needed the bed asap.
If he’d still been in the army he would have just done the stupid thing himself. But civilian nursing placed certain restrictions on his practice.
Earlier Billie had demanded to know if he’d have given another doctor the kid-glove treatment he’d afforded her over the IV and had insisted that he not do the same to her.
Would he given any other doctor a pass on the head lac?
No. He would not.
Gareth
