and she turned to face him. She looked white faced. A bit unsteady on her feet. Wobbling?
He crossed the room in four long strides to reach her. Gripped her shoulders. Steadied her.
‘Hey …’
‘It’s … it’s okay,’ she said, and hauled away to plonk herself down on the wooden bench. ‘I’m just having a queasy moment.’
‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
She gave him a look that would have withered lesser men. It was the look he deserved.
What had made him say that? Of all the ridiculous …
‘We didn’t make it that far, Superman,’ she retorted. ‘You don’t get pregnant by kissing, no matter how hot you think you are.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with feeling. ‘That was dumb. Plus offensive. But you’re ill.’
‘I suspect,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘that I’m coming down with this blasted gastroenteritis that half this hospital seems to have suffered. You should have a huge skull and crossbones on the entrance with a sign saying “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”.’
‘Or abandon the contents of your stomach.’
‘Don’t,’ she begged. ‘Go away.’
‘Let me take you home.’
She glared. ‘Tell me you don’t have a car with leather upholstery and I might be interested.’
‘I do,’ he admitted. ‘But we can go via Emergency and get a supply of sick bags. I had it last week so I won’t get infected.’
‘You might have infected me.’
‘Then that’d be yet another thing I need to apologise for,’ he said grimly, and took her elbows, propelling her up. ‘We’ll organise you a shot of metoclopramide for the nausea. Then we’ll take some paper bags and take you home and to bed.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I mean, yes, please,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘Only I need to spend ten minutes in the bathroom first.’
They didn’t speak on the way to the address she’d given him. She didn’t lose her dignity, but he could see she was holding onto it with every shred of effort she could muster. One shot of metoclopramide was barely holding it.
She wasn’t what she’d seemed. Questions were crowding in, but his medical training told him that breaking her concentration would be unwise. So he focused on driving, found the address, pulled up in front of a boarding house that looked as if it had seen better days and watched in astonishment as she struggled out of the car.
‘You don’t live here?’
‘No,’ she said, closing the car door with care, as if it was a really tricky task. ‘I’m staying here. Thank you for bringing me home.’ And she headed for the gate.
He was out of the car, through the gate, stopping her.
‘Don’t stop me,’ she pleaded. ‘I need …’
‘I know this place,’ he said. ‘When I was an intern we averaged one drug overdose a week from this dump.’
She was trying to shove past him, looking increasingly desperate. ‘It’s only until payday. It has a bathroom. Please …’
She was nothing to do with him, he told himself. This was none of his business. He’d brought her home. He’d done what he had to do.
But … she’d held him. She’d stopped his grief from stripping him raw.
She’d lightened his life.
That had to be an overstatement, he told himself. One crazy impulse did not mean emotional change. She’d simply been there when he’d needed her, had responded to his need, had maybe used him to assuage her own needs.
Her own needs were pretty apparent now. She’d broken from him and was doubled over behind a scrubby hedge. The garden was filthy.
Questions.
She was a skilled theatre nurse from a town he remembered as being quiet and beautiful.
His colleagues had her labelled as wanton.
She’d held him.
Whatever she was, he couldn’t leave her here.
She was crouched, trembling, in the filthy garden, sweaty and sick, and he knew he had no choice.
He waited for the spasms to cease. Then, giving her no chance to argue, he stooped and lifted her into his arms and carried her back to his car. He deposited her back into the passenger seat before she knew what he was doing.
‘What’s your room number?’ he demanded.
‘T-twelve.’ She could barely speak. ‘But—’
‘Give me your key.’
‘I don’t …’
He took her purse from her limp grasp and retrieved the key.
‘Don’t argue and don’t move,’ he said, and headed for the house.
She didn’t go anywhere. How could she? That last episode had left her wanting to do nothing so much as to lie down and die. Her bed in the boarding house was lumpy and none too clean, but it was a bed and right now she wanted it more than anything else in the world. Only her legs didn’t feel like they’d take her anywhere.
After the week she’d had, it needed only this. Of all the stupid hospitals she had to temp in, it had to be Sydney Harbour Hospital during a gastro epidemic.
She wanted to die.
Why was she sitting in Luke’s car?
It was too hard to do anything else.
She closed her eyes and he was back again, carrying her suitcase. That got through … sort of. ‘What …?’ She was trying to get her thoughts in order. She wasn’t succeeding.
‘You’re not staying here,’ Luke said grimly. ‘This place is drug bust central.’ Then his face sort of … changed. He slid into the driver’s seat and pushed up her uniform sleeves.
She got that. No matter that she was dying … he thought she was a crackhead?
Enough. There were some things up with which a girl did not put. Or something. She wasn’t making sense even to herself, but as he tried to check her pupils she found the strength to haul back her hand and slap him. Straight across his cheek with all the strength she could muster. Which wasn’t actually very much. He recoiled but not far, then caught her hands in his before she could do it again.
‘Just
