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She knew that her toes had had to be amputated. She knew there hadn’t been a choice but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
And now she knew all about phantom limb pain. Thank goodness she wasn’t missing an entire limb; she could only imagine how painful that would be.
She needed to remember to be grateful. Her psychologist had told her to keep a list of all the things she was grateful for and to recall it when she was feeling maudlin. She started to run through the list in her head as she continued to rub her foot.
She was alive. That was a big one. A good one to start the list.
From the outside she looked the same but Rose knew that looks could be deceptive. She was different on the inside and underneath, but she didn’t have to show those parts of her to anyone. She could keep that hidden, which was exactly what she intended to do.
Two—she had finished her degree and was now a qualified teacher. But that was as far as she got running through her ‘grateful’ list before the door into the office she shared with two other teachers opened and her manager walked in. Rose quickly tucked her right foot under her desk, hiding it from view, and slid it into her sneaker.
Jayne was a tall woman, her grey hair closely cropped to her head, her frame athletic, a little masculine. She was hard muscle from all the running she did and there was nothing left to soften the edges. Rose hadn’t known her long but she seemed to be constantly on the go, always training for a running event, a half-marathon or marathon. That was something else Rose wasn’t able to do—run. She’d never imagined that losing three small toes would make such an impact. Her doctors had told her she would be able to run again but she wasn’t sure about that yet.
‘Rose, do you have time to see one more patient before you finish for the weekend?’ Jayne asked.
Rose closed the browser on her laptop as she replied. ‘Sure.’ Despite the fact it was Friday night she had nothing she needed to rush home for. That wasn’t unusual; her social life had taken a battering—spending months in hospital tended to do that—and her confidence had also suffered. She hadn’t dated for two years and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that to change. She had nothing in her life except for work, her mother, her sisters and her niece. But that was okay. That was enough to handle at the moment.
‘The patient’s name is Lila Reynolds, she’s eight years old. Her parents haven’t requested educational support but the social worker is advocating for it. She says Lila is very withdrawn. She’s from Outback Queensland and doesn’t have any family support here in Adelaide.’
Rose remembered being eight years old. That was the year her father had died. The year she had gone from being his little princess and thinking the world was perfect to realising that it wasn’t and that just because you wished something was so didn’t make it real. It was one of life’s lessons that she was relearning again at the age of twenty-three.
‘No one?’ she asked.
Jayne shook her head. ‘The social worker has been leaving messages for her parents but is yet to speak to them. There’s no file yet.’
Rose knew the files were often not much help anyway. The file the education system, and therefore the teaching staff, had access to was different from the case notes that the hospital staff—doctors, nurses, social workers, physios and the like—wrote in. The teachers weren’t privy to all the private and sometimes confidential information about their young pupils but were given just the basic facts. Age, gender, and medical diagnosis were shared but only so that the teachers were aware of any impediments that would affect their learning. They were often given just enough information to put the children into the system but not enough to be useful—Rose could remember one of the other teachers telling her that when she’d first started this job.
‘The social worker thinks it might be helpful to have one of us spend some time with Lila unofficially while she continues trying to speak to the parents,’ Jayne said. ‘She thought that if you had time you might have more luck with getting her to talk.’
In the six months since Rose had started working at the Royal Children’s Hospital she knew she had garnered a reputation as someone who had a good rapport with the more reserved children. She’d always felt a connection with the quieter kids. She could empathise with their emotional scars and now, from more recent experience, with their physical scars as well.
‘And if that doesn’t work,’ Jayne continued, ‘then the consensus is that if you can give her something to occupy her time then she might at least get some benefit from that.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Rose replied. ‘What are her injuries?’
‘She was thrown from a horse and sustained pelvic fractures. She was transferred from Broken Hill to Adelaide and underwent surgery a week ago. Her pelvis was pinned but she is able to get out of bed and can now move around with the aid of a walking frame.’
‘Okay.’
Rose stood as Jayne left the office. She reached up and ran her fingers along the spines of her selection of books that she’d stored on the shelves. Since starting this job she’d added to her collection of children’s books and she chose a few now that she thought might be of interest to an eight-year-old. If Lila didn’t want to talk perhaps Rose could read to her. If Lila had been rushed to Adelaide for emergency surgery she probably hadn’t brought much with her. Reading might help to pass the time and also might prompt a conversation. It had worked in the past.
Rose tucked the well-worn volumes under her arm. She loved shopping in markets and second-hand stores, something her sister Ruby had fostered in her, but while Ruby had always bought clothes, Rose had spent her time searching through the old books. Scarlett, her eldest sister, had started reading to her after her dad had died. Escaping into a book had helped her to get over her grief but it had also fed her imagination. She liked drama, tales of princesses, weddings, romance and young love. She wished the real world was more like her literary world. She didn’t choose to read stories about war or crime or misery. She chose books where the characters got to live happily ever after.
She tugged on the back of her right sneaker, pulling it up over her heel to secure the shoe. God, she hated these shoes. If anything, her foot was even more uncomfortable now than before. She had thought these shoes would be okay but by the end of the day her feet ached and in reality these shoes probably didn’t have enough support. She didn’t think she was on her feet a lot but the hospital was big and there was a fair bit of walking just to get from the main entrance to the wards and to the classrooms. Which was good for her fitness but not so good for her feet.
The familiar smell of the hospital ward assailed her as she stepped out of the elevator by the orthopaedic wards. She didn’t spend a lot of time on the wards, most of her time was spent in the classrooms, but the distinctive smell of the hospital was hard to ignore and hard to forget. She thought it was lodged in her subconscious, a lingering and not altogether pleasant after-effect of her time spent in ICU and the transplant ward.
* * *
She checked in with the charge nurse before heading into the four-bed ward to find Lila. Only two beds were occupied. It was mid-afternoon and Rose knew the ward had probably been full this morning but paediatric patients got discharged quickly and regularly, especially in the orthopaedic wards. There was a high turnover when patients could be sent home to be cared for by their parents.
Rose suspected that Lila would be in hospital for some time. It would be difficult to discharge her home to Outback Queensland if she needed rehabilitation for her injuries. Rose had learnt a lot in the past six months about a whole host of medical conditions. In fact, she’d learnt a lot in the eighteen months prior to that too but that had all been to do with her own experience.
A girl of about five years of age was in a bed to Rose’s left and on the opposite side of the room, next to the window lay a girl who looked more likely to be Lila. Rose scanned the patient names above each bed just to be sure before she crossed the room.
‘Lila?’ she asked as she stopped beside the bed. She was a dark-haired, solemn-eyed little girl. Her skin was tanned and appeared healthy and brown against the white hospital sheets. She was thin but apart from that she looked too healthy for a hospital ward.
The little girl nodded.
‘My name is Rose. I’ve brought you some books to pass the time. Do you like to read?’
Lila shook her head.
‘Oh.’ Rose put the books on the bedside cupboard but she refused to be deterred.
‘What do you like to do?’
‘Ride my horse.’ There was no elaboration but at least she was talking.
‘What about when it’s raining?’
‘It never rains.’
‘Never?’
Her question was answered with another silent shake of her head.
‘Oka-a-a-y...’ Rose drew out the word as she thought about what to ask next. ‘What about if it’s too hot to go outside?’
‘Then I like to draw.’
‘What do you draw?’ Rose asked as she looked around, expecting to see some drawings taped to the walls, but the walls were bare. ‘Have you got any drawings?’
Lila nodded.
‘Would you show me?’ Rose asked.
Lila pulled a piece of paper from the bedside drawer and held it up. ‘It’s not very good ’cos I don’t have any pencils.’
The paper was lined, Rose recognised it from the hospital case notes, but on it Lila had drawn a fabulous picture of a horse.
‘Is this your horse?’ Rose asked.
Lila nodded.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Fudge.’
‘That’s an interesting name.’
‘She’s the same colour as caramel fudge,’ Lila explained, ‘but it’s hard to tell ’cos the nurses could only find a lead pencil.’
‘Well, I think she’s beautiful.’
Rose noticed that Lila’s voice became a little more animated when she was talking about her horse. Maybe that was the secret to getting her to engage. But wasn’t that the same with all children? You just needed to find something that they were interested in. Rose knew that if you did that it was often hard to stop them from sharing.
‘Does she smell like caramel?’
‘That’s silly.’ Lila couldn’t hide her smile. ‘Horses don’t smell like caramel.’
‘Well, what does she smell like?’
‘She smells like a horse.’ Lila giggled and her dark eyes sparkled, losing their serious intensity. She looked like an eight-year-old girl now and Rose had a moment of self-satisfaction that she’d been able to make this little girl laugh. That she had been able to make a connection, however small, gave her a sense of achievement. This was what she loved about teaching, establishing a connection with the children.
Lila’s giggles continued and Rose knew she was intrigued, but before she could say anything further she became aware of someone on the periphery of her vision. Someone else waiting and watching as she listened to Lila’s laughter. She looked up to find a man standing in the doorway of the ward.
Possibly the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.
Tall, dark and handsome.
Her heart skipped a beat as she wondered who he was. A doctor she hadn’t met yet? An orthopaedic surgeon? She was certain she’d never seen him before—his was not a face she would forget.
Rose ran her eyes over him. He would be a shade over six feet tall with a slim build but his shoulders and chest were broad, his arms were strong and muscular and his legs were long. He was casually dressed in jeans and a navy T-shirt, not the normal doctor-on-staff outfit—no white surgical coat, no tell-tale stethoscope—but Rose noted these things almost subconsciously as her gaze remained locked on his face. His very handsome face. It was tanned and he had a full head of thick, brown hair, cut short, with dark brown eyes to match. His jaw was triangular, darkened by a shadow of stubble, and he had a slight smile on his lips.
She bent her knees and her thighs tensed, ready to push her out of her chair, ready to cross the room and introduce herself to a handsome stranger. It was a reflex response, a reaction completely outside her conscious control, but before she could actually complete the movement the rest of her brain woke up and she realised what she was doing. She relaxed back into her seat, barely managing to rescue herself from complete embarrassment, and took some comfort in the thought that he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to stand as his attention was focussed on Lila.
The drive to go to him had been strong and the attraction she felt was primal, carnal and, while the result might have been pure embarrassment, it pleased her that she could still experience these feelings. That she still had the desire. The want and the need.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such an immediate attraction to a man. She hadn’t been remotely interested in men or relationships for the past two years yet somehow, with just one look, she knew she would change her mind for this man.
Who was he?
She checked for a hospital ID lanyard hanging around his neck but there was nothing. If he wasn’t a doctor, who was he? Should he even be in the hospital?
He stepped into the room and crossed the floor, and Rose held her breath.
She was vaguely aware that Lila’s giggles had stopped and out of the corner of her eye she saw Lila turn her head as she noticed the man’s movements.
‘Daddy!’
This was Lila’s father?
He reached his daughter’s bed and bent over, kissing her on the forehead. ‘Hello, princess.’
Princess. Rose’s father used to call her that. But she forgot all about her father as this man straightened up and looked at her.
Her breath caught in her throat, stuck behind a lump that had lodged there.
Now that father and daughter were side by side Rose noticed that they had the same eyes. Dark and serious. His chocolate eyes were intense, probing and forceful and she felt as if he could see right into her soul.
* * *
Mitch straightened up and looked again at the woman who sat by his daughter’s bed. He’d noticed her as soon as he’d stepped into the room. He’d heard his daughter giggling, a sound he didn’t hear enough of, but he’d been distracted by the woman sitting beside Lila’s bed. She was not the type to go unnoticed.
He thought he’d imagined her at first. She didn’t look real. Her face was round and serene, perfectly symmetrical. Her green eyes were enormous and iridescent. Her mouth was wide and her nose small. She looked like a woman from a Renaissance painting. Maybe that Botticelli one, the one of the young Madonna with the baby Jesus and the two angels. The light from the window bounced off her golden hair, making it shine like spun silk and making him forget that he hated hospitals, making him forget that he wished he and Lila were a thousand miles away. She was absolutely beautiful, but he had no idea who she was or why she was by his daughter’s bedside.
She was watching him now, staring, silent, frozen like a deer in a spotlight. There was something fawn-like about her. Innocent. Young. Maybe it was her huge, luminous eyes.
Who was she?
She wasn’t a nurse. She had a hospital ID badge hanging around her neck but she wasn’t wearing a uniform and unless things had changed considerably since his last foray into a hospital he was pretty certain nurses didn’t have time to sit idly at patients’ bedsides. Unless the patient was critically ill, which he knew Lila wasn’t.
A feeling akin to dread flooded through him as it occurred to him who she might be. ‘Are you from social work?’ he asked. The social worker had left several messages for him on the station answering machine but by the time he got in at the end of the day it was well past office hours and too late to call back. He knew he could have returned to the house during the day to make a call but he’d been nervous. Worried about what the social worker might want. Worried she might want to talk about what had happened two years ago. That she might want to talk about Cara. He had refused counselling before and had no qualms about doing it again. They didn’t need it. They were all fine.
‘I meant to call you back,’ he fibbed.
She was frowning. A little crease had appeared between her green eyes, marring the perfect smoothness of her brow.
‘I’m not a social worker,’ she replied.
Mitch relaxed; expelling the breath of air he hadn’t even been aware of holding.
‘I’m Rose,’ she continued. ‘I’m just here to keep Lila company.’ She stood up. Her hair fell past her shoulders and she lifted her hands and gathered it all, twisting it into a long rope and bringing it forward to fall over one shoulder.
Now it was his turn to stare. Her movements were fluid and effortless. She’d obviously done this a thousand times before but to Mitch it was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen and he was transfixed.
‘But now that you’re here, I’ll get going,’ she said, and before he could find another word to say she had stepped past Lila’s bed and was on her way out of the ward.
He couldn’t stop himself from watching her go and his eyes followed her out of the room.
She was slim but under her dark trousers he could see the two, full, round globes of her buttocks. They bewitched him as she stepped out of the room. She wore a soft white top that floated around her torso and reinforced his first impression of her as a golden angel.
Or maybe a golden rose.
Rose who? he wondered. She had left without a decent explanation of who she was and why she was there.
She was young and pretty and her name was Rose. That didn’t seem like enough information. He wanted more. But just thinking about her made him feel old. He couldn’t remember ever feeling young. He felt like he’d always been old. He knew he’d only felt that way since he’d lost his wife but he struggled to remember how he’d felt before. So now it felt as if he’d been born old.
His life was defined by before Cara died and after Cara died. But the more time that passed the harder it was to remember the before. He was so busy running the station and trying to figure out how to be a single father that he never seemed to have time to stop and sit and remember her. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow at night and up at dawn and he didn’t stop all day.
If he had time to stop he might realise he was lonely but this was not something he noticed on a day-to-day basis. He had got used to life on the station and the absence of his regular weekly trips into Broken Hill and he only noticed his loneliness when he visited the city. At the cattle station, despite its isolation, he was surrounded by people who knew him; some of the staff had worked for him for close to ten years. But in the city no one knew him and he knew no one. He could go all day without talking to a soul. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of people around him in the city he was alone with too much time on his hands.
He didn’t enjoy the city but he was going to have to keep returning until he could take Lila home. Maybe he should make an effort to make some connections with people. Talk to people, to complete strangers. In the country he wouldn’t hesitate but city people were different. He’d been one of them once but now he just felt disconnected. They seemed busier, more caught up in their own lives, existing close together but without any meaningful interaction. He was so used to sharing his day, his life, with his workforce. At least until dinner was finished but after that he put his children to bed and was now in the habit of spending his nights doing the bookwork before going to bed alone. It was becoming a sad existence. A self-perpetuating cycle.
His mind drifted back to Rose. Thinking about her was a pleasant distraction from the dozens of other things that had been occupying his mind of late. It had been a long time since a pretty woman had caught his eye. It wasn’t as if he met a lot of new women in Outback Australia and he’d just about given up noticing. He was tired and jaded, so it was a pleasant change to notice a pretty woman and he almost felt human again. But he knew he didn’t have time for anything more than an appreciative glance. His days were busy, too busy for romance.
And despite the pleasure that seeing a beautiful woman had given him, he couldn’t imagine ever falling in love again. It wasn’t worth the risk. He would have to recover as best he could and move on. Alone.
Next time he came to the city he would bring the boys with him, he decided. They wanted to see Lila, they were missing her, and now that she was on the road to recovery he knew she would like to see her little brothers too. He’d bring the boys and they would provide him with company. Then he wouldn’t need to think about young, blonde, Botticelli angels called Rose. He wouldn’t have time to wonder if he’d see her again.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IS SHE ASLEEP?’ Rose asked as her sister walked into the kitchen.
Scarlett had been settling her daughter, Holly, for her afternoon nap while Rose had chopped what felt like a mountain of cabbage and carrot to make coleslaw. But she’d been glad to have a job to do. She was hoping it would keep her mind busy so she would have no time to think about gorgeous men with kind faces and daughters in hospital. Lila’s father had unsettled her. Her reaction to him had her on edge but she found if she kept herself occupied she could almost manage to push him to the back of her mind. Wielding a sharp knife was making sure she stayed focussed on the task at hand. She scraped the vegetables into a bowl and started tossing them together to make the salad.
‘Yes,’ Scarlett replied, ‘but she was fighting sleep every step of the way. I think she has too much of her father in her—she knows there’s a party going on and she doesn’t want to miss out!’
Rose smiled. Her brother-in-law did like a party. He’d grown up in a big family; he was the youngest of six siblings so there had always been plenty of people in the house and even now he liked to surround himself with family and friends. There was no special reason for today’s gathering but Jake never needed a reason. He loved a crowd and didn’t mind being the centre of attention. He’d worked as a stripper to put himself through medical school and Rose had heard he’d been very good at it. She had no doubt he’d loved every minute of it. Scarlett, by comparison, was happy behind the scenes. She only needed the attention of one person, her husband.
Like Jake, the old Rose had loved a party too. She’d enjoyed attention and she knew she got more than her fair share, but now that attention made her uncomfortable. Now it only made her more aware of everything that had happened to her. Aware of the contrast between the pretty Rose of her youth and the new Rose. She felt much, much older than her twenty-three years. She’d been through a lot in the past two years and had come out the other side a lot less positive about the future. She knew now that some things were out of her control and just because she had a plan it didn’t mean that life had the same one for her.
Things were different now.
Rose had been avoiding parties but Scarlett had refused to listen to any of her excuses. The only reason Rose had agreed to come to this barbecue was because Scarlett had threatened to withhold time spent with Holly if she didn’t attend. It was emotional blackmail—Scarlett knew Rose couldn’t bear to think of being separated from her niece. Holly was one of the few highlights in her life. One of the things that Rose had fought so hard for. She adored Holly and Holly adored her.
Having a family of her own was all Rose wanted. It had been all she’d wanted since she was eight years old. Her dreams had been so different from those of her two elder sisters yet now they were both married and Scarlett had a daughter. Scarlett and Ruby were living Rose’s dream and Rose couldn’t help feeling a pang of jealousy when she thought about it. Scarlett had professed that she was never going to have kids, she’d always intended to focus on her career, yet look at her now, Rose thought: a qualified anaesthetist and mother to the most adorable little girl.