when she stopped breathing.
‘Zeke, get her on the bed and get me a defib. Billy—’ Tia turned to the lifeguard as he was dropping the woman’s rucksack and coat from his shoulder ‘—call treble nine.’
‘Heart attack?’ Zeke asked, yanking the cupboard open and producing the defibrillator that Tia hadn’t yet had a chance to locate.
‘Could be.’ Tia ripped open a mechanical ventilating kit and began to administer oxygen to help the woman start breathing again. ‘But it may be drug related. Her skin is clammy and I don’t like that purple colour.’
‘Look there, it’s like a rash,’ Zeke noted, peering at the woman’s arm.
Tia nodded, but her attention turned straight back to her casualty as she saw the woman begin to blink.
‘Marie? Marie, are you with me? Good girl. Okay, my name is Tia, I’m a doctor. Have you got any medical conditions?’
‘Where’s Badge?’
‘Is Badge your dog?’ Tia guessed, as the woman nodded. ‘Badge is fine, he’s with our lifeguards now, probably being spoiled rotten.’
As she’d hoped, Marie began to relax.
‘So, do you have any medical conditions?’
‘None.’ She shook her head as best she could with the ventilating mask still over her mouth and nose.
‘Has anything like this ever happened to you before?’
Again, Marie shook her head.
‘What about this rash?’ Tia asked, as Zeke gently lifted the woman’s arm to show her.
‘Yeah, I get that on my arms or feet sometimes when I’ve been walking the dog here. It feels itchy and swollen.’
‘When you go in the water?’ Tia asked, her mind racing.
‘I guess. But it goes pretty quickly usually.’
‘Okay, I think we might need to run a few tests. An ambulance should be arriving fairly quickly to get you checked out at hospital.’
‘Badge...?’
‘Is there anyone we can call to get him picked up? He can stay here with us until they get here.’
‘My dad. But you really think I need to go to hospital?’
‘I suspect you might be suffering from cold urticaria, where your skin has a reaction either to the cold, or to cold water. Given that this is your first serious reaction, I’m guessing it was triggered by plunging into the sea after your dog. Technically, it was most likely the warming phase when you got here and changed clothes. But you do need to get checked out.’
The sound of the ambulance siren reached Tia’s ears.
‘Zeke...’
‘I’ll go and bring them,’ he pre-empted, already heading out of the door and leaving her alone with her thoughts, which would no doubt be banging down the proverbial door once her patient was safely handed over to the ambulance crew.
Such as the fact that they had fallen into working together with such ease, despite their earlier confrontation.
And the fact that—aside from the reality that he had sought her out first—she had actually returned to the area with the intention of finding Zeke and finally being able to tell him that he had a son.
So far, she had done neither.
‘Don’t think our earlier conversation is over, Tia,’ he warned softly as they turned away from the ambulance. ‘You aren’t running away from me this time.’
‘I thought I heard Albert mention that you’re due on call tonight, at Westlake. That’s a ninety-minute drive from here.’
‘Don’t test me, Tia.’ Her skin goosebumped at his grim tone. ‘You might have thought Delburn Bay was far enough away from Westlake that I wouldn’t know you were here, but you should have known better. And I still want to talk to you.’
She forced herself to meet his eye. She could do this. For Seth.
‘And I need to talk to you, too,’ she echoed. ‘Properly. Like the adults we now are, instead of somehow regressing to those naïve, idealistic, opinionated kids we once were.’
‘Is that so?’
If her heart hadn’t been lodged somewhere in her throat, the threads of her thoughts threatening to unravel at any moment, she might have laughed at the surprise on his face.
She knew what was coming, and yet somehow she was still here. Still breathing. In and out. In and out.
Not running away this time.
‘It is so,’ she confirmed at length. ‘Zeke, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’
If she’d kicked him in the guts she didn’t think he could look more shocked.
‘You have nothing, nothing, to be sorry about,’ he ground out.
God, if only that were true.
Where did she even start? Her mind spun as she hurried through the lifeboat station and back to her soon-to-be office, needing just a moment alone to compose herself.
As if she hadn’t had five years.
As if meeting Zeke, and telling the truth, hadn’t been one of the main reasons she’d come so close to home. To finally tell him about her son—their son—because it was the right thing to do.
However terrified she might be.
And then they were back in her office, the door closed, and the rest of the world shut out. Tia crossed to the desk, not turning around until she was on the other side of it, using it like some kind of defensive barrier, not that Zeke appeared to have any intention of coming any nearer to her anyway.
They met each other’s gaze for a few moments—maybe an eternity—neither of them wanting to be the first to break the silence.
But one of them was going to have to, and, after everything, Tia knew it had to be her. She owed him that much.
‘You’ve changed,’ she managed.
‘You already said that.’ He scowled. ‘I believe your words were that I look better than well.’
‘Right,’ she muttered, shaking her head lightly, almost imperceptibly. But he did look well. And changed. Beyond all recognition.
Oh, not in the physical way, of course. Now that the initial shock of their first encounter was behind her, that much was evident. But in terms of the broken man he’d been when she’d last seen and spoken to him. The bleak, black pit he had been in back then. The pit into which—a part of her had never been able to shake the feeling—she’d helped to push him.
