Tempted by Her Hot-Shot Doc

by Becky Wicks

  She reached behind him and motioned to the guys to keep him as still as possible while she pulled at the zippers on the pockets. Opening the one on the side, she pulled out the chain with the apple on it that Jason had given her. She’d forgotten to put it back on weeks ago. Then she found the vial she’d shoved in there that night and held it up to him, putting a hand to his clammy face.

  ‘This one? Ryan, please tell me it’s this one?’

  ‘Yes,’ he managed, wincing again. ‘Do it.’

  ‘Me? No, Ryan, you’ll have to do it yourself.’

  Madeline fumbled to unwrap a syringe. Her mind was screaming at her not to do this. What if it didn’t work? What if she didn’t do it properly and... God forbid...he died? He was semi-conscious, but he could do it. He knew how.

  She pulled the top off the vial with trembling fingers and loaded the syringe. The guys were watching her with fear in their eyes.

  Ryan reached for her hand. ‘You have to do this, Maddy, Stick it right here.’

  His breathing was laboured. His eyes kept closing as he held his arm out to her and pointed to a spot in the crease of his elbow. One of the guys held it in place.

  ‘I trust you.’

  She had no choice. He was growing greyer by the second.

  Madeline took his arm, studied the place he was pointing at for the blue of a vein. ‘OK, here goes.’

  And before she could think any more about it she stuck the syringe into him and emptied the entire vial.

  The next few minutes were a blur. The volunteer, Raul, appeared behind her, hot and flustered. He’d heard her calling, he said, but he’d had his hands full, shifting equipment around, and when he’d tried to find her she had disappeared. He radioed for help, explaining that they now had to get Ryan to the Cessna, which would be waiting for them on the runway when they got up river.

  Along with the two local guys, Raul helped to carry Ryan to the boat. He’d passed out.

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Madeline asked, barely bothering to hide the devastation from her voice as she climbed in alongside them with her bag.

  What if she’d got the anti-venom into him too late? What if he didn’t make it? What if she lost him?

  She couldn’t bear it. This jungle was a nightmare—a total nightmare.

  ‘He’s just exhausted from trying to stay conscious,’ Raul explained. ‘We need to get him to the hospital. You probably saved his life, though.’

  Tears of relief sprang to her eyes—but he wasn’t out of the woods yet, she could tell.

  Madeline clung to Ryan’s hand as they laid him on the bottom of the boat. He looked like a shadow of his handsome self...so weak and vulnerable. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to him as her heart broke, and she crouched beside him, leaning over him, stroking his face.

  Raul was frowning, looking at them as he spoke into his radio, and in the back of her mind Madeline knew she was raising suspicion—not that none had been raised concerning the two of them up to this point, she was sure.

  She put a hand to his heart now, leant down and kissed him. Who cares? So what? This was her fault. If anything worse happened to this man she knew without a doubt that she would never, ever forgive herself.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PAIN. THAT WAS all he could feel. Pain and a tightness in his chest that felt a lot as if someone had stomped on him. A nurse was filling in some papers beside him when he opened his eyes, but a millisecond later he noticed someone else in the room, sitting on a plastic chair in the corner beneath the harsh, artificial light.

  ‘Maddy,’ he croaked.

  He was weak. His leg and foot were bandaged, and he was wearing an ugly white gown, but he was alive. He had her to thank for that.

  He saw her eyes flutter open, watched her rub them sleepily.

  ‘She never left your side, Dr Ryan,’ the elderly nurse said in a thick Portuguese accent, touching a hand to his shoulder as Madeline approached them. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Yes, how do you feel?’ Madeline echoed, concern etched all over her features.

  She was extraordinarily tanned, he realised now, in this brand-new setting away from the jungle. She was thinner, too, but so, so beautiful. He didn’t deserve her.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he replied, looking into her sea-green eyes, feeling far from it.

  Madeline reached for his hand and they both watched the nurse walk out of the room and shut the door.

  ‘I owe you my life,’ he said as soon as she was gone.

  ‘Then I guess we’re even.’ She smiled, pulling his hand up to her mouth and kissing the back of it. ‘I’m so glad you’re OK.’ Her eyes were tired and watery. Her hair was piled on the top of her head. ‘You scared me, Ryan. I’m so sorry...if I hadn’t been acting so crazy—’

  ‘You had every right to act like that,’ he interrupted, patting the bed at his side. ‘I pushed you to it.’

  She sat down. In the harsh light everything seemed clearer, somehow. His thoughts, her actions, the words he knew he had to say... She’d been right before. It had been going on long enough.

  ‘Josephine was in love with me,’ he said, before he could think any further.

  Madeline’s eyes widened, but she didn’t let go of his hand. ‘I had a feeling she might have been,’ she whispered.

  Ryan kept his voice steady and low, reliving the memories as he spoke and ploughing onwards anyway. ‘But I didn’t love her, Maddy, not in the same way.’

  He moved his eyes to the spotless white ceiling as shame washed through him, as usual.

  ‘We’d been dating in secret for a while—it was all kind of spontaneous and fun, you know? We argued about it...the fact that I could never admit we were a couple. We were arguing when she ran off...that’s why she ran off.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Madeline’s eyes were watery, he could see, but she wasn’t clearing away her tears. Her fingers were gripping his like a vice.

  ‘She ran into the damn jungle...got herself lost. We couldn’t find her.’

  ‘Oh, my God, Ryan...’

  ‘It took four days. She didn’t mean for it to happen...she was emotional and she got lost, ended up injuring herself, probably stumbling around in the maze of the jungle. By the time we found her there had been too much blood loss and no one could save her.’

  He closed his eyes, feeling his hand grow hotter in hers. He couldn’t even expand on the blood loss—it was still too raw.

  ‘Mark and Even knew about us. They warned me to keep things quiet—they didn’t want any extra attention from the media affecting the team—and of course I agreed with that. I didn’t want the attention either. And then, when it happened...’

  ‘I can imagine!’

  ‘There were so many interviews, Maddy. Josephine didn’t have any close family, or much of a life outside the crew, but obviously the world wanted to know what had happened to her. It was too late to tell the whole truth—that we’d been sleeping together and the reason she’d run away was because we’d been arguing about our relationship status, of all things... How could I admit that being with her in the first place had been a mistake on my part? I loved the fun we were having, but not enough to tell the world we were a couple. She thought we’d get married. But I was twenty-seven...she was twenty-eight.’

  ‘Ryan, it’s OK. I won’t write any of this down, I swear.’

  ‘I’m an asshole.’

  ‘You’re not—you were young. You just got carried away. You would have done the right thing in the end if you didn’t want to marry her. You would have broken it off and gone your separate ways. Neither of you knew she was going to get lost, or what was going to happen in the jungle. People make mistakes. You have to forgive yourself. You have to let this go.’

  ‘How can I?’

  Madeline put a hand to his face, forced him to
look at her. ‘Just choose to, Ryan. Please. Just choose to forgive yourself. You get to start again. You get to be in love for real, if you want. You get to say I love you and mean it, and you get to hear it back. You don’t have to deny yourself anything out of guilt or shame. I know that’s what you’ve been doing.’

  His heart lurched as she leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips, stroking his cheek and stubble. He leaned into her hand.

  ‘I can imagine how awful that must have been for you,’ she said. She touched her nose to his. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that I love you.’

  He froze.

  Madeline pulled back to meet his eyes as the silence stretched on and on and on. He watched her face change as the words played over and over in his head. Why couldn’t he reply? Why couldn’t he say anything?

  He cleared his throat, searching her eyes. His head was spinning. ‘Maddy, I...’ He trailed off, letting the words hover in the space between them like heavy weights, waiting for someone to catch them.

  And then he left those words to drop and burn themselves out as Evan and Mark entered the room with pretty much the entire crew of Medical Extremes and another cameraman.

  They had balloons.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Three weeks later

  MADELINE STARED OUT at the cold London rain. So different from the rain in the Amazon, she thought. The rain there had been harsh, but warm, and when it ended its assault it would trade places willingly with the sun, sending apologies down in hot white beams. Here it was just endless and mean, and the grey skies held no promise of swooping blue butterflies or lovemaking trysts with Ryan Tobias in waterfalls.

  ‘Coffee?’ the waitress asked, stopping at her table with a pot of sloshing brown liquid.

  ‘Sure—thanks.’ Madeline held out her cup.

  Maybe coffee would cure her writer’s block. She was stuck on how to end the memoir. She had over ninety thousand words already, and had thrown herself into writing pretty much the moment the plane had touched down in London. She’d had to—not least because Samantha was already on her back for the manuscript.

  Typing about him every day, putting his history together like puzzle pieces on the page, was sheer torture. She missed him as she’d miss a vital organ—felt as if someone had amputated a limb. She couldn’t get his face out of her head, nor his words when he’d finally opened up to her in that hospital room.

  She remembered what he’d told her, word for haunting word, but knew she could never write it down. Of course she couldn’t. Instead her mind played over the words she’d had to swallow when the team had walked in with their balloons.

  Balloons. Ryan needed more than balloons to take his pain away. But he didn’t want anyone to take his pain away—that was the problem. He thought he was destined to live out his days alone, racked with guilt about Josephine. He hadn’t loved Josephine. And he’d refused to let anyone love him ever since.

  Maybe he would never love anyone. Maybe he’d forgotten what love was.

  She picked up her coffee, stared out at the honking traffic, thinking back over the flight she’d taken back home from Rio, knowing he was still there in that hospital the whole time. Knowing it was probably over between them. Knowing she was speeding further and further away from him in every sense.

  Even so, she needed a better ending for him—something to inspire joy in other people the way he had in her.

  Madeline had been accepted back at St David’s and was already picking up where she’d left off. The same faces with the same smiles had been so understanding, so welcoming and helpful. She almost felt as though she’d never left.

  Almost.

  She put her cup down, sank back against the booth and let her eyes fall on the blank page on her screen. Her writing skills were all she had to give Ryan now, and she couldn’t let them all be for nothing. She had no clue how she was going to finish the memoir, but she knew she had to find a way. She could write, and she could help others, and with more book deals at her fingertips—if she ever had time outside her nursing duties—she had the power to combine both.

  She knew in her heart that she wasn’t the same nurse who’d left St David’s after Toby had died. An indelible line had been drawn between the old her and the new one. The new Madeline had taken risks and chances, had put herself in the line of fire and witnessed incredible things. The new Madeline had survived seemingly endless days on rice and fruit, learned how to trust in her own abilities and instincts, gained the respect of a tribe of children who sang from their hearts about the simplest of life’s precious gifts, like butterflies and bananas and toothbrushes.

  The new Madeline had felt love of the highest, most soul-splintering kind, spilling into her heart and filling the spaces there. She’d been lifted and bolstered by it—so much so that its absence hadn’t killed her. She was still kind of floating. Perhaps a little bruised and unsure, but definitely grateful for a taste of what she now knew was out there.

  Maybe she could find it again with someone else.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  RYAN PUSHED THROUGH the door, feeling sweat break out on his forehead as soon as he stopped short under the bright, unforgiving lights. A woman in a tracksuit and neon pink sneakers seemed to recognise him instantly. Her eyes widened and she stopped in her tracks, looking as though she was about to race over to him in excitement.

  Ryan held up his hand and hurried on past, pulling his baseball hat down further over his forehead.

  He’d tossed and turned last night in his hotel room, debating whether or not to come, but Mark and Evan had finally sat him down at breakfast, shoved a black coffee under his nose and then given him another, perhaps even more effective wake-up call.

  ‘She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you!’

  ‘With all due respect, Ryan, don’t screw this up!’

  ‘You know?’ he’d said, feigning surprise.

  You couldn’t live that closely with people and not understand that they’d know when you were hiding something.

  ‘It’s been written all over your face ever since you first set eyes on each other. You’re the smartest guy in the field, Ryan, but really you’re an idiot.’

  This room smelled of astringent fluids and the shiny floor squeaked under his sneakers. Anxiety crept tighter around him like a rope. Seeing a reception desk, he made his way over. A girl of about twenty-one with a name badge reading ‘Trudy’ looked up, then did a double-take.

  ‘Oh,’ she said when he met her eyes. ‘You.’

  ‘I’m looking for Nurse Madeline Savoia. I was told she’s here today?’

  ‘Um...yeah...um...lemme just look that up...’ Trudy trailed off, dropping a pen to the floor as she scrambled nervously for some papers.

  Ryan tried not to smile and rested an arm on the counter. He was still getting used to people acting this way around him again. No one in the Amazon gave a toss who he was as long as he could help when someone needed him. If only the whole world cared more about those things...

  He looked around him as a flummoxed Trudy scanned her computer screen. People in scrubs were walking alongside kids of all ages in gowns with dressings and gauzes. Parents and other relatives were milling about, lost in their phones and magazines. An elderly man was wiping up a coffee spillage by a vending machine. A young couple each holding a pile of kids’ books looked at him with vague recollection, presumably trying to figure out where they’d seen him.

  In his Red Sox shirt and jeans, Ryan looked like any other regular guy. Well, maybe an American. He wondered what people would do when they found out what he was planning—just as soon as he could locate Madeline.

  ‘She’s on Peter Pan Ward... No, sorry...they moved her group to Elephant and Giraffe today.’ Trudy was beetroot-red now, fiddling with the braid that she’d pulled across her shoulder.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘Elephant and Giraffe?’

  Was this some kind of zoo?

  ‘It’s the haematology/oncology department.’ She stood up, pointing a manicured finger down the hallway. ‘She should still be there somewhere, if you go through those doors and take a right.’

  ‘Right. Thank you.’

  ‘Wait—Ryan, can you please sign this? I really love Medical Extremes...it’s, like, my favourite show. And my mum’s, too.’ She pushed a piece of paper and a blue pen onto the desk, blushing even more.

  ‘What’s your mum’s name?’ he asked, taking the pen. He figured he needed all the good karma he could get.

  ‘Sandy.’

  He signed the paper—To Sandy, love Ryan—and added a heart, throwing Trudy a wink he knew would make her day.

  Then, before anyone else could approach him, he walked quickly down the corridor and hurried through the double doors.

  His thoughts were a washing machine on spin cycle as he walked the length of the ward, narrowly missing being struck by a toddler on a tiny tricycle. He’d never been this nervous in his life.

  It had been the longest few weeks ever since she’d left him in that hospital in Rio. Her face had haunted him...that look in her eyes as he’d choked on his reply to her confession.

  Fear had started rolling over him like waves from a tsunami the second she’d said what she had.

  Did she really love him? Did he love her?

  He’d watched her leave that hospital room, felt the ball of knots twist tighter in his stomach. Mark and Evan and everyone else had crowded around him with the balloons and he’d said nothing—just watched the back of her head and her hand sweep across her hidden face as she’d turned towards the door.

  He’d needed to get his head around it. When they’d all gone, however, Ryan had felt as alone in that busy hospital as he had in the middle of the jungle at night. But in spite of the silence he had ached with the noises in his head.

  He’d kept the truth locked inside some damn pointless Pandora’s Box for so long that saying them hadn’t felt real. Yet the words about Josephine had come out, no matter what Madeline chose to do with them. It hadn’t been the thought of what she’d do with them that had plagued him, though. It had been the thought of losing her again.