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Access to the ICU was restricted to family members only, and that reminded Ruby of the lonely motorbike man. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask Candice for information. She might have even been working on the day he had been brought in. She might be the one person Ruby knew who would have the lowdown on him.
‘Speaking of visiting, there’s a guy in the bed next to Rose who hasn’t had any visitors at all. He was brought into ICU yesterday. He looked as though he would have come through Emergency first. Were you working? Do you know anything about him?’
Candice grinned. ‘I wasn’t working but I heard about him. He’s into motorsport apparently, a racing-car driver or something. By all reports, he’d done a fair bit of damage to himself but the girls were still very complimentary about him.’ Her grin widened. ‘It’s not every day they get to see quite such a glorious naked man. Even if they did have to cover him with sterile drapes, they copped quite an eyeful in between times.’
Ruby’s imagination quickly added what Candice was describing to what she’d already seen for herself and created a rather glorious picture. Almost real enough to make her blush. ‘Do you know his name?’ she asked.
‘Neil? No, that’s not right.’ Candice shook her head. ‘Noel maybe? Something starting with an N anyway. The girls weren’t interested in his name.’ She laughed. ‘But I can find out if you like.’
‘No, that’s okay. I was just curious.’ She should have checked his chart while he slept, just to find out his name, but that seemed like invading his privacy just a little too much.
‘That would make you just one in a long line, from what I hear.’
Ruby was curious but she’d hoped Candice would have been able to give her a name or something to enable her to do some research when she got home. She didn’t want to think of it as cyber-stalking but wasn’t that one of the purposes of the internet? But she still didn’t have enough to go on.
It was ridiculous. She was never going to find out anything about him. She rather liked the fantasy of the lonely bachelor that she’d built up around him but she knew it was probably a complete fallacy. She knew the simplest way to get some answers would be to strike up a conversation with him. If she wanted to know more, she was going to have to drum up some courage and ask him herself.
Normally she was up for a bit of fun, some harmless flirtation, as much as the next person. All right, usually a bit more than the next person. A girl had to know how to have fun but even she wasn’t sure that an intensive care unit was the appropriate place to attempt to pick up a man. She was sure it wouldn’t make the list in a women’s magazine when they printed their articles on the top ten places to meet men. Not unless you worked there and then it could technically come under the heading of a workplace.
And although Ruby couldn’t be accused of being mainstream in her approach to dating, or even meeting men, even she wasn’t convinced that having an eye on a man who was lying in an ICU, no matter how hot he looked, was acceptable in the dating jungle.
Tuesday, 16th December
But nothing ventured, nothing gained was her motto, and the next morning was as good a time as any to venture, she decided as she keyed in the code to open the door into the ICU. Now that she knew he wasn’t an axe murderer or serial killer, she could relax. Her judgement had been known to let her down on occasion.
She summoned up her courage and pushed the door open. She’d check on Rose and then strike up a conversation. There’d be no harm in saying a simple ‘Hello’ as she walked past. She didn’t need to crowd him. She could say hello and then the ball would be in his court. If he wanted to engage her in conversation she’d be a willing participant. He’d had no visitors, perhaps she could offer to help. There must be something he needed and, if not, at least she would have broken the ice.
She was all ready to flash him her best smile as she made her way to Rose’s cubicle but his bed was empty, stripped of its sheets, leaving the mattress exposed, the machines all neatly packed away. The bed looked as though it had never been occupied.
The adrenalin that had been coursing through her body clumped together to form a little ball of lead in her chest and plummeted to the pit of her stomach, leaving her feeling flat.
He was gone and she’d missed her chance.
She couldn’t believe it.
It wasn’t really in her nature to be hesitant and she couldn’t explain why she’d held back. But she had and now she would never know anything more about him. Disappointment flooded her, joining the ball of lead in her gut.
She stepped past the empty bed and into Rose’s cubicle. Seeing Rose still lying inert, her condition obviously unchanged, and hearing the mechanical suck and hiss of the ventilator didn’t do anything to lift her spirits.
She leant over and squeezed Rose’s hand in greeting before kissing her cheek. Even if Rose wasn’t responding she had to let her sister know she was there. She kissed her mother next and then sank into a chair beside Lucy.
‘Has there been any change?’ she asked.
Lucy shook her head. ‘No, but we’ve passed the forty-eight-hour mark.’
Ruby knew that was a big milestone but what she didn’t know was how much that meant if Rose still hadn’t shown any signs of improvement.
‘Have the doctors seen her this morning?’
‘Yes, and they seem to think it’s a positive that Rose hasn’t declined any further.’ Ruby could hear the hopeful note in her mum’s voice, as if praying for Rose’s recovery would be enough to make it happen. That might have worked if they’d been a religious family but they weren’t. But, still, none of them were prepared to discuss anything other than the idea that Rose would recover, even though they all knew there were no guarantees. They only had their belief to get them through this. ‘Will you be able to stay until she’s better?’ Lucy added.
Ruby nodded. She wouldn’t leave while Rose was critically ill. She’d stay as long as she could and hopefully that would be long enough.
‘What about work? Can you get extra time off?’
Ruby hadn’t thought about work since she’d jumped on a plane before sunrise on Sunday and her mother’s question made her realise she hadn’t actually told work she was away. She’d been working as an agency nurse in Byron Bay. She’d been working as an agency nurse for years actually as the flexibility suited her. There was no commitment. She could almost come and go as she pleased, which she did on a fairly frequent basis. When she’d decided she’d had enough of one place she could up and leave without feeling like she was leaving an employer in the lurch.
Had she missed a shift? She couldn’t remember. She certainly hadn’t had a phone call telling her she’d forgotten to turn up. She did a quick calculation. Today was Monday, wasn’t it? No, Tuesday. That was okay, her next shift wasn’t until tomorrow. She had time to sort that out.
‘Time off isn’t a problem,’ she told Lucy. ‘I’ll just tell the agency I’m unavailable.’
Getting days off wasn’t difficult but losing the pay cheque would hurt. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that. She wasn’t leaving until Rose was out of the woods.
‘Are you still working agency? You don’t want something more permanent?’
Lucy had been working for the same aged care facility for ever. Ruby knew she was very attached to the residents but they didn’t live forever. In normal nursing patients came and went and Ruby couldn’t see what difference having a permanent job would make to her life when there was so much change anyway. Ruby didn’t want to form attachments, it would make leaving difficult.
‘It’s just as well I’m doing agency work as it meant I could jump on a plane and come to Adelaide without letting anyone down,’ she said, but she knew better than to expect that to be the end of the conversation. She waited for the inevitable question.
‘You don’t want to settle down?’
There it was. Their conversations always seemed to come back to that. No matter what they were discussing, her mother always seemed to be able to raise the topic of settling down.
By the age of twenty-six Lucy had been a mother of three but Ruby knew it hadn’t all been by choice and she had no intention of making the same mistakes her mother had made. She chose to ignore the fact that not only had she made some of the same mistakes, she had also made other, different, ones and now she was trying just to get through life. She wanted company but she didn’t want commitment. She didn’t want to share her private thoughts or her history with anyone else.
She could feel her hackles rising.
She knew she should be mature enough not to fight with her mother, especially not at the moment next to her sister’s ICU bed. Rose always tried to avoid confrontation and Ruby didn’t want to get into a fight here in case Rose could hear them. She knew she wouldn’t have given work a second thought if Lucy hadn’t asked about it and that realisation put a match to her already short fuse. She needed to remove herself from the situation before Lucy could ask any more questions.
‘Have you eaten today?’ she asked. She needed some breathing space and a quick trip to the hospital kiosk would give her a chance to get it. ‘I’m starving. I skipped breakfast so I might go and grab something to eat. Would you like something?’ She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her mother eat and, as she expected, Lucy declined her offer.
As she left the ICU she couldn’t help but look at the empty space in the cubicle beside Rose. She hoped the vacant bed meant he’d been moved because he was recovering well. She didn’t want to think that things might have gone from bad to worse.
She kept her eyes peeled for him as she made her way along the hospital corridors but he was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t as though she’d really expected to bump into him but she still felt a frisson of disappointment as she stepped up to the counter of the hospital kiosk and placed her order.
She just wanted to see him once more. She needed to know he was okay.
She picked up her green tea and vegetarian wrap and turned from the counter and found the person she’d been searching for. He was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watching her with his bright blue eyes.
It had been twenty-four hours since she’d seen him and she couldn’t help but think what a difference a day made. One day ago he’d been in an intensive care bed and now he was dressed and sitting in the hospital kiosk. Watching her.
Although he was on the far side of a crowded room Ruby would have sworn they had the place to themselves. She certainly wasn’t aware of anyone else. Not while he was watching her. Even from a distance the colour of his eyes was a vivid blue and somehow he had become familiar to her despite the fact she still had no idea who he was.
He smiled and her heart skipped a beat.
He didn’t look surprised to see her. Neither did he seem embarrassed to be caught watching her. If she didn’t know better she would think he’d been waiting for her.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she walked towards him. She told herself she had to walk past him to get out of the kiosk but there were actually several different exits, she could have easily chosen a different route, but her feet were already moving in his direction. It was no use pretending she didn’t want to see him; for the past two days she’d thought of nothing else except her sister and the stranger in the bed next to her.
She was three steps away when she discovered that the path she’d taken was blocked by his wheelchair. She hesitated and looked up, meeting his eyes, before continuing on another step.
‘Hello.’ His voice rumbled through her. It was deep and strong but quiet. It sounded as though he was far away but it was loud enough to bring her to a stop beside him. It was only one little word, two syllables, but to Ruby’s ears it was so much more than a simple greeting. To Ruby it was the start of something more.
CHAPTER THREE
‘HELLO,’ SHE MANAGED in reply, before her words disappeared and she stood in front of him completely speechless. She wasn’t normally tongue-tied and she knew she’d had a whole conversation planned for when she next saw him but that had been based on the expectation that he would still be in the ICU. Not sitting in the middle of a busy kiosk looking a picture of health.
Someone had washed his hair and Ruby could see now that it was more blond than brown. It swept back from his forehead in a widow’s peak, exposing his strong brow and allowing his blue eyes to shine, and hung to his jaw line, framing and accentuating the oval shape of his face. Despite the length of his hair and the fullness of his lips his was a masculine face, and as if to reinforce the fact his jaw was darkened by the growth of a new beard. In contrast to his hair his three-day designer stubble was more brown than blond. His face was pleasant and friendly and his smile was brilliant.
Ruby’s eyes dropped from his lips to his body. His right arm was tucked inside his T-shirt and she could see the tell-tale bumps and lumps from the sling, but his left arm was tanned and muscly, really muscly, and lightly dusted with fair hair.
He was wearing shorts and a hinged knee brace was fitted over his right leg. She remembered the list of injuries the nurse had rattled off. A fractured clavicle, ribs, elbow and femur. He’d certainly done a good job on himself. From the neck down he didn’t really look in a fit state to be out of the ward, let alone left abandoned in the kiosk.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ he asked, as Ruby finished her inspection and lifted her eyes back up to his face. She blushed slightly. She’d been caught blatantly checking him out.
Anything, she thought, but she just nodded in reply, still unable to find her voice.
At least he seemed willing and able to carry on a conversation. ‘Would you mind pushing me outside? I’d really love to get into the sunshine but I can’t move this damn thing without help,’ he said, as he used his head to gesture towards his chest and his arm where it lay trapped in the sling. ‘Actually, that’s not quite true,’ he clarified. ‘I can move but only if I’m happy to go round in circles.’
He smiled at her and Ruby’s heart skipped another beat. His smile was full of cheek and made his blue eyes sparkle. She could feel herself being taken in by his charm. He was handsome and charismatic and in her experience that was a dangerous combination. And she’d always been a sucker for danger.
She tilted her head to one side as she studied him. ‘How did you get down here?’ she asked. Her voice was husky. That wasn’t unusual but even to her ears it sounded huskier than normal, as if it had been days, not minutes, since she’d used it.
‘I bribed a nurse,’ he said with a wink.
Ruby felt the heat from his gaze course through her and she could just imagine the nurses falling over themselves to help him. She knew they’d normally be too busy to lend a hand—if a patient wanted to get outside they’d have to do so under their own steam—but seeing his smile and his automatic wink she knew just how that scene would have played out.
She raised one eyebrow. ‘I bet it was a young nurse.’
He laughed, or rather he began to laugh before he stopped short and winced, and Ruby realised his broken ribs must have been protesting, but even so the brief sound of his laugh reverberated through her and made her smile along with him.
‘It was,’ he admitted. ‘So, will you help me? I’ve had enough of being cooped up inside.’
She couldn’t blame the nurse who’d fallen for his charms, she could see he’d be difficult to resist and she could well imagine how restless he was feeling. Despite the fact he was wheelchair-bound with a rather cumber-some-looking brace on his leg, he still looked too vital, too energetic to tolerate being stuck inside.
‘Sure, but you’ll have to hold this for me,’ she said, as she handed him her lunch.
He took her food, balancing it in his lap along with his own cup and stabilising it all with his left hand and forearm.
Ruby bent down to release the wheelchair brakes, a co-conspirator to his escape. She could smell the coffee in his cup as she flicked off the right brake. As she leaned behind him and flicked off the left one her hair brushed over his shoulder—she was close enough now to smell him too. His hair smelt faintly of limes. He smelt fresh and far better than he should considering he’d spent the past couple of days in a hospital bed. Ruby knew from looking at his leg that he wouldn’t have been able to shower himself and she wondered which nurse had volunteered to wash his hair and give him a sponge bath.
She felt her temperature rise as the thought of sponging him down took hold. She ran her eyes over the muscles in his left leg as her mind wandered. She forced herself to straighten up before she was tempted to reach out and run a hand down his thigh, only to find herself, once again, under the scrutiny of his blue-eyed gaze. She wondered if he could guess what she was thinking. She hoped not.
She stood behind him and gripped the handles of the wheelchair, glad of a reason to break eye contact. She gathered her errant thoughts together and pushed him out through the kiosk doors.
Outside several picnic tables and benches were scattered around a paved courtyard and shaded by a couple of large elm trees. It was late in the morning, well before a regular lunchtime, and the courtyard was virtually deserted. Ruby pushed the wheelchair towards a picnic bench.
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