What made you want to do nursing?’
‘My elder sister had a baby when I was eighteen. He was very premature and my sister was ill afterwards. I used to sit with him and I watched the nurses. They were so skilled, so much more hands on than the doctors, and I knew it was what I wanted to do. Fernando was very sick—I was there night and day for ten days. My sister had a hysterectomy and was very sick too...’ There was a long silence. ‘She was at another hospital so she didn’t get over to see him—she was too ill.’ Diego suddenly grimaced. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this...’
‘I’m not that precious.’ Izzy squeezed his hand.
‘He died at ten days old. It was tough. In those ten days I really did love him and even now sometimes my sister asks for details about him and I am glad that I can give them to her.’
‘What sort of details?’
‘He loved to have his feet stroked and he loved to be sing to.’ He gave a slight frown and Izzy just sat silent rather than correct his grammar. ‘My sister had always sung to him while she was pregnant and I taped her singing and played the songs.’
‘It must be hard,’ Izzy said. ‘Your work must bring it all back...’
‘No.’ His response surprised her. ‘It has certainly made me a better nurse. I know, as much as I can know, how helpless and scared the parents feel. How you constantly watch the monitors and become an armchair expert, but never, not even once, have I come close to the feelings I had for Fernando with a patient. I suppose I detach, of course there are stories and babies that touch you more than others, but you could not do this job and care so deeply at that level.’
And she looked at him and couldn’t see how his parents could be anything but proud. She had seen his work at first hand, the way his colleagues and all the parents respected him. There had been an almost audible sigh of relief that Diego had been around when Toby had been born and she told him that.
‘There is a managerial position at my father’s hospital—I am thinking of applying for it. Of course, it has not gone down well. He says it would be an embarrassment to the Ramirez name if I take it.’
They were only just getting to know each other, but still her breath caught at the impossibility of it all, of anything happening between them, and she tried to keep the needy note from her voice when she asked a question.
‘Why would you go back?’ Izzy asked, ‘After all that, if they don’t respect what you do...’
‘I respect what I do now,’ Diego said. ‘That is the difference. I would like to go back and be proud.’
He would go back.
They were sitting in the sand at the water’s edge. Izzy’s shorts were soaking, the water rushing in then dragging back out, as if taking all the debris of the past away. But the tide returned and bought with it fresh problems and Izzy told herself to slow down, to not even think about it, that his decisions didn’t affect her. They were friends, that was all—they hadn’t so much as kissed.
Except Diego discounted that theory before it had even properly formed.
She could feel his face near her cheek and knew if she turned her head their lips would meet.
It was six a.m. and the clearest her head would be all day, but she turned to him, to the sweet, confusing relief of his mouth. He tasted like a blast of morning, with the promise of night. It was a kiss that was tender on the outside—a mesh of lips, a slow, measured greeting, but there was raw promise beneath the surface, his tongue sliding in, offering a heady taste of more, and Izzy wanted more. She liked the press of him, the weight of him that pressed her body back to the sand. There was the tranquillity of escape she found as his kiss deepened and his hand moved naturally, sliding around her waist to caress her, and then even before Diego paused, Izzy’s lips were still.
She rested her head on his shoulder a moment to steady herself, the weight of her baby between them.
‘I think...’ Izzy pulled her head up and made herself look at him ‘...we should pretend that just didn’t happen.’
‘It did, though,’ Diego pointed out.
‘Well, it can’t again,’ Izzy said, and she hoisted herself to standing. ‘Let’s just keep it as friends,’ Izzy insisted, because that was surely all they could be for now, except her lips were tender from the claim of his kiss as she tried to talk about other things, and as they walked back her hand bunched in a fist so she didn’t reach out and take his.
* * *
They were back at her car, his apartment just a short walk away, and how he wanted to take her up there, to peel off her wet clothes and call in sick, spend the day getting to know her in the way he so badly wanted to.
And friends could kiss goodbye on the cheek, except they had passed that now and any contact between them was dangerous.
He faced her, but that only made him want to kiss her again so Diego looked down and saw the swell of her stomach, her belly button just starting to protrude, and his hand ached to capture it, only his mind wasn’t so sure.
‘We have a lot to think about,’ Diego said, ‘or maybe it’s better not to think about it, just...’ He looked up at her and his face was honest and it scared her, but somehow it made her smile as he offered her a very grown-up slant on words said in playgrounds the world over. ‘I don’t want to be your friend any more.’
‘YOU’RE expected to go, Diego!’ Rita was adamant. ‘You can’t not go to the Penhally Ball.’
They’d been having this conversation all morning. Rita had found out that he wasn’t going and it seemed every time he passed her work station, she thought of another reason why he must go.
He’d just come from a family meeting with the parents of Toby Geller, which had been difficult at best, and, really, the last thing Diego cared about was if he was expected to attend some charity ball that was being held on Saturday.
‘You’re going, aren’t you, Megan?’ Rita looked up and Diego rolled his eyes as Megan gave a thin smile.
‘It is expected,’ Megan agreed, but from her resigned voice it was clear she wasn’t looking forward to it.
‘All the units send their senior staff,’ Rita said, still talking as she answered the phone.
‘Spare me,’ Diego said. ‘Is it awful?’
‘No.’ Megan shook her head. ‘It’s actually a great night...’
‘So why the long face?’ He was friends with Megan. Well, not ‘ring each other up every night and why don’t we go for coffee type friends’, but certainly they were friendly and Diego couldn’t help but notice she was unusually low.
‘Just one of those days!’ Megan said, which given they had just been in with Toby’s parents, could have explained it, except Megan hadn’t been her usual self lately. Diego suddenly wondered if it had anything to do with the rumours that were flying around the hospital about Izzy and himself.
