by Amy Andrews
Lola didn’t have any reply to that. No easy words to soothe the terrible memories no doubt still fresh in his mind. So she did the only thing she knew how to do, what nurses always did—she touched him. She reached across and squeezed his arm.
‘Go.’ She squeezed his arm again. ‘Get coffee. I think there’s still some choc-chip biscuits someone brought in earlier too. You look like you need a sugar hit.’
He gave a half-laugh that sounded so weary she wanted to tuck him into bed herself. ‘You look tired too.’
That was an understatement. It was almost six and Lola hadn’t even had a break yet. Not even to go to the bathroom. She wasn’t tired mentally, but physically she was exhausted. Her feet throbbed, her lower back twinged, her stomach growled and she had a dull ache behind her eyes.
Being a runner usually meant a busy shift but some shifts were crazily busy. Like tonight with their third critical admission as well as several existing patients who’d decided tonight was the night to destabilise.
Emma was one of them.
Her blood pressure had shot up at the start of the shift and it’d taken them several worrying hours to get it down to a much safer reading. She was fine again now but it was just further evidence of the instability of her failing heart. A transplant couldn’t happen soon enough.
Lola shrugged off her weariness. It was just the way it went sometimes. ‘It’s almost knock-off time.’ That was the one consolation. In an hour and a half her shift would be over—so would his—and they could both get some well-earned sleep.
The blood-gas machine spewed out a strip of paper, which Lola tore off and studied. ‘How is it?’ Hamish asked.
‘Not great.’ She handed it to him. ‘His carbon dioxide level’s too high.’ Which would increase his intracranial pressure—not the thing Wesley’s brain needed.
‘I’ve got to get this back to the reg.’ He nodded and handed the slip over, stepping away from the doorway so she could pass. He fell in beside her as she walked briskly to the bed space. ‘I’ll probably be late home,’ she said. ‘This place is a mess and we’re not going to get a chance to play catch-up until the morning staff come on.’
There was a roomful of discarded equipment out back that needed attention and things were in desperate need of a restock.
‘I don’t think I’m going to be home early either. Jenny mentioned something about the boss probably wanting to do a bit of an informal debrief with her before we leave so...’
Lola nodded. ‘Good idea.’ She pulled up beside the registrar and handed over the blood-gas printout. ‘Now go get coffee.’
He smiled. ‘Yes ma’am.’
CHAPTER NINE
LOLA HAD NOT long succumbed to sleep on the couch when the door opened and her eyelids pinged open. Between the hurricane-like roar of the fan overhead and the fact that she’d dropped like a stone into the deepest depths of unconsciousness, she was amazed she’d heard a thing.
She must have really been attuned to the key in the lock!
Squinting at the time on the television display—it was almost ten—she swung her legs to the floor. ‘Hamish?’
‘Sorry,’ he said from somewhere behind her. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I thought you’d be in bed. What are you doing out here?’
Lola’s thoughts floated in a thick soup of disorientation. What was she doing out here? ‘I’m...waiting for you to come home.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise. Debrief went on for ever.’
He appeared in front of her, lowering himself down on the end of the coffee table and setting his backpack on the floor. There were a few feet separating them but, as always, she felt the tug of him.
‘You didn’t have to wait up.’
Lola shrugged. Did he think she’d just go to bed after the things he’d seen last night without checking in with him first? Just because she didn’t think they should get intimately involved, it didn’t mean they still couldn’t care for each other, have empathy for each other.
‘It’s fine,’ she dismissed, suddenly realising that he was in shorts and T-shirt instead of his uniform and that his russet hair was damp and curling at his nape. ‘You had a shower at work?’ He didn’t usually.
‘Yeah. Everything stank of smoke, even my hair.’
He ran his palms down his thighs, drawing her gaze to the gold-blond hairs on his legs and the state of his knees. They were criss-crossed with tiny livid cuts and areas that had been rubbed raw.
‘Do they hurt?’
‘A little.’ He shrugged as if it was just a mild inconvenience. ‘How’s Wesley?’
Lola had been waiting for the question, knowing it would come. She wished she had better news to tell Hamish, even though she knew he knew full well the severity of Wesley’s injuries. ‘He’d not long come back from CT when I left.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Bad?’
‘Diffuse brain injury with severe cerebral swelling. They were prepping him for Theatre.’
‘Right.’ He nodded and rose from the table, heading to the kitchen. She heard the fridge door open and he called, ‘You want a beer?’
‘No.’ Lola didn’t think twice at Hamish consuming a beer at ten in the morning. Quite a few of her colleagues had a drink or two before going to sleep after night duty. They swore it was better than sleeping tablets, which many shift workers resorted to.
He reappeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the jamb as he took a few deep swallows. The hem of his T-shirt lifted slightly, flashing a strip of tanned abs.
‘They’re saying on television that the bomb was set off by some guy who’s a disgruntled ex-employee,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I heard. Death toll’s risen to thirty-four too.’ He wandered closer as if he was going to resume his seat on the table but changed course, heading for the balcony, stopping short to just stare out the door she’d opened earlier.
Lola didn’t say anything, waiting for him to say more. If he wanted to. When he didn’t, she filled the silence. ‘You want to talk about it?’
He shook his head. ‘Nope.’ But within a few seconds he was turning around, his eyes seeking hers, searching hers. ‘I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how that guy justified this to himself.’ He took a swig of his beer. ‘I mean, you got sacked, dude. I get it. That sucks.’ He shrugged. ‘Rant at your boss or your wife, go home and kick the wall. But why would anyone think it’s okay to seek revenge like this? To kill so many innocent people?’
Lola shook her head. ‘I...don’t know.’ She wished she did. She wished she had the answers he sought.
He was obviously still in the thick of the action inside his head. Probably second-guessing his every move, wishing he’d done something differently. That stuff took time to fully tease out. Took a lot of reflection before a person came to the conclusion that they’d done the best they could.
‘I don’t know why some people do terrible things, Hamish, but thank goodness for people like you.’ She smiled at him because he looked so lonely all the way over there by himself. ‘For those who charge in to help when everyone else is running away. There’d be a lot more fatalities from last night without people like you around.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’ Tipping his head back, he drained his beer, staring at the bottle in his hands for a moment or two before he glanced at her and said, ‘Think I’ll hit the sack now.’
‘You should. You look dead on your feet.’ He was swaying and his eyes were bloodshot. She’d bet her last cent they were as gritty as hers. There were tiny lines around his eyes that she’d never noticed before and his impossibly square jaw was as tight as a steel trap.
‘Says the woman with a cushion mark on her face and scary hair.’
Lola gaped for a moment before his lips spread into a smile and a low chuckle slipped from his mouth. She pushed her hands through her fuzzy mane to tame the knotty, b
londe ringlets but there was no nope for them. She probably looked like she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards, while he looked good enough to eat.
Even exhausted, the man wore sexy better than any man had a right to.
‘Your sense of humour’s pretty tired too, I see.’
‘Yep.’ He grinned. ‘We’re both kinda beat.’
‘At least you only have one more night. I have three.’ Lola didn’t mind night shift but when the unit was busy for a sustained period of time like it had been, a run of night shifts could really take it out of her.
‘Some days off would be good,’ Hamish said, cutting into her thoughts.
Yeah. He could no doubt use some mental time-out after last night. But, more than anything, right now he needed to sleep.
They both did.
‘Okay, well, I’m taking my scary hair to bed.’ It didn’t seem like he was going to make the first move towards the bedrooms so she did it for him. ‘Night-night.’
She didn’t look at him as she turned away in case she did something crazy like offer to rock him to sleep. She just kept walking until she pulled her door shut, placing temptation firmly on the other side.
* * *
Hamish woke at two in the afternoon for about the tenth time. His room was on the side of the apartment that copped full sunlight for most of the day, and the curtains at the big window wouldn’t block out candlelight, let alone the December sun in Sydney. It hadn’t ever bothered him before and he could usually sleep like the dead after night shift.
But he hadn’t just been through a normal night shift.
He was coming off an adrenaline high that had left him wrung out and edgy, his brain grappling with the images of the kids he’d helped and all those bodies under sheets. When he did manage to drift off, his dreams were haunted by a woman in a purple dress.
Just like he’d known they would be.
And now he was awake again. Exhausted, but too chicken to close his eyes, plus it was too hot to fall asleep, anyway. There was sweat on his chest and in the small of his back. The fan going at full speed did nothing but push the stifling air around.
He had to sleep. He needed to sleep. He had to operate a vehicle in six hours and be thinking clearly. He wouldn’t be any help to anyone if he went to work even more exhausted than he’d left it.
Hamish rolled on his side, forced himself to shut his eyes, to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. To do it again and again until he started to drift. And then a flutter of purple fabric splattered in blood billowed through his mind and his eyes flicked open.
Grabbing his pillows, he plonked them on top of his head, shoved his face into them and let out a giant yawp!
‘Hamish?’
Startled, he ripped the pillows off his head to find Lola striding into his room, her short gown covering her from neck to knee but hugging everything in between. He was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing much of anything underneath.
Great.
‘Lola?’
‘Are you okay?’ She stood at the end of the bed, her forehead creased, her arms folded tight against her chest.
‘Yes.’ Hamish flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. It was that or ogle her. ‘Just...can’t sleep. Have you been skulking outside my door?’
‘No.’ He smiled at the affront in her voice. ‘I was just passing to get a drink of water and I heard a noise. I thought you were...upset or something.’
He gave a harsh laugh, air huffing from his lungs. Great. Lola thought he was lying in bed, crying. It’d be emasculating if he wasn’t currently sporting an erection the size of the Opera House.
He thanked God for his decision to keep his underwear on today and for the sheet that was bunched over his crotch.
‘I’m frustrated,’ he told the ceiling. In more ways than one. ‘I need to sleep but my brain is ticking over and the fan is totally useless in this heat.’ He raised his head again. ‘We even have air-con in the country, Lola, what gives?’
‘Grace and I moved into the apartment in the middle of winter. And there were fans...they’re usually enough.’
‘How do you sleep after nights on days like this?’
‘Well, my room is quite a bit cooler than yours. Grace said I should take it because she didn’t work nights on her job. But I have been known to get up and walk through a cold shower then flop on the bed wringing wet and let the fan air-dry me. That’s almost as good as air-con.’
Hamish shut his eyes and suppressed a rising groan as his head fell back against the pillow. That image was not helping the situation in his underwear. Not one little bit.
‘Are you dreaming about it?’
About her being wet and naked on her bed? He sure as hell would be now. But he knew that wasn’t what she was talking about. He sighed. ‘Yes.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
‘No.’ What he wanted was to drag her down on the bed, rip that gown off her, roll her under him and sink inside her, and just forget about it all for a while. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it. What I want right now is to just forget it so I can get to sleep. I need to sleep. I want it to not be forty degrees in this room so I can just go to sleep.’
She didn’t say anything for a long time and a weird kind of tension built in his abdomen. Hamish lifted his head and immediately wished he hadn’t. The way she was looking at him shot sparks right up his spine.
‘What?’ His voice was annoyingly raspy and he cleared it as her gaze roved over his body.
She nodded then, as if to herself, before saying, ‘I can help you with that.’
Hamish swore he could feel his heart skip a beat. Where the hell was she going with this? Was she going to fix him a long cool drink or was she offering something else? ‘What do you suggest?’
‘My room is cooler and sex is not only the best sleeping pill around but I’ve generally found that if it’s good enough it can also induce a temporary kind of amnesia. I can only surmise from the kind of sex we’ve already had together that the amnesia will be significant. What do you think?’
Hamish blinked. What didn’t he think? There was no hope for his erection now.
He should decline. It was all kinds of screwed up and he knew how it’d mess with the boundaries they’d put in place. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t crave the solace—the oblivion—she was offering.
Didn’t crave the white noise of pleasure, her breathy pants, the way she called his name as she came. Didn’t crave the company of another human being, someone to hold onto in a world that seemed a little less shiny than it had yesterday.
Someone he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anyone. His heart rattled in his chest just thinking about being with Lola again.
‘Please, Hamish.’ She took a step forward, her features earnest. She’d obviously taken his silence as a pending no instead of a considered hell, yes. ‘I know we said we shouldn’t do this and we’ve both been trying to respect that. But...our jobs are... There’s a lot of emotional pressure and sometimes we need an outlet. Let me do this for you. Let me be there for you the way you were there for me that night when I needed comfort and distraction. Unless you’re too tired?’
Hamish gave a half laugh, half snort. ‘Too tired for sex?’
She shrugged. ‘I heard that’s a thing.’
He grabbed the sheet bunched at his hips and threw it back to reveal how not tired he was. ‘It’s not a thing for me.’
Her eyes zeroed in on his underwear, following the ridge of his erection, and Hamish felt it as potently as if it had been her tongue. Her gaze drifted down a little then back up again, finally settling between his legs.
‘So I see.’ She dragged her attention back to his face and held out her hand. ‘What are we waiting for?’
Hamish didn’t have a clue.
He vaulted upright, swung his legs out of the bed and rose to his feet, reaching for her hand. His pulse raced now as they headed across the hallway. The last time they’d done this it’d been the middle of the night. It’d been unexpected, spontaneous. There’d been haste, urgency. They’d groped blindly, they’d fumbled.
This was broad daylight, and premeditated.
She opened her door and led him inside where the heavy blinds at the window blocked out the light and the sparseness of the furniture and walls made it feel cave-like. And with the fan on high speed the temperature was several degrees lower. It wasn’t cool exactly but the edge had been taken off the heat.
‘Bloody hell,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve been sweltering out there in the desert while you’ve been hibernating in a cave.’
She laughed and her hand slipped from his as she moved towards the bed. ‘I thought you country boys could handle the heat.’
‘What can I say? You’ve already made a pampered city slicker out of me.’
‘That I find hard to believe.’
Hamish smiled as he watched her open a bedside drawer and bend over it slightly as she fished around inside. The gown rose nicely up the backs of her thighs and he didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t checking out her ass.
She found what she wanted and turned to face him, brandishing a square foil packet in the air for a second before tossing it on the bed. Then, as he watched, she tugged on the tie at her waist holding her gown in place. It fell open, revealing a swathe of skin right down her middle. The two inner swells of her breasts, her stomach, some lacy underwear and upper thighs. His mouth turned as dry as the dust in the cattle yards back home.
She smiled. ‘You want to come a little closer?’
Hamish did, he really did. He strode over, his heart in his mouth as he stopped close enough to slip a hand inside her gown if he wanted. And he wanted. But he wanted to kiss her more. He wanted to kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe.
He placed his hands on her face, cradling her cheeks, his eyes searching hers, looking for pity and finding only the softness of empathy. And a glitter of lust. He brushed a thumb over her lips and she made a noise at the back of her throat as she parted her lips. The breeze from the fan blew a curl from her temple across her face and he hooked it back with his index finger.