Knight on the Children's Ward

by Carol Marinelli

  The kitchen was a mixture of beige and brown and a little bit of taupe too!

  There was a party going on upstairs, and an argument to the left and right. Here in the centre was Annika.

  She didn’t belong—so much so he wanted to grab her by the hand and take her back to the farm right now, right this minute.

  ‘I’ll start dinner.’

  She poured some oil in a large wok, turned the gas up on some simmering water, and then glanced over and gave him a nervous smile, which he returned. Then she slipped on an apron.

  And it transformed her.

  He stood and watched as somehow the tiny kitchen changed.

  She pulled open the fridge and put a little meat in the wok. It was rather slow to sizzle, so she pulled out of the fridge some prepared plates, and he watched as she tipped coils of fresh pasta into the water and then threw the rest of the meat into the wok. Her hair was in the way, so she tied it back in a knot. He just carried on watching as this awkward, difficult woman relaxed and transformed garlic, pepper, cream and wine. He had never thought watching someone cook could be so sexy, yet before the water had even returned to the boil Ross was standing on the other side of the bench!

  ‘Okay?’ Annika checked.

  ‘Great,’ Ross said.

  In seven minutes they were at the table—all those dishes, in a matter of moments, blended into a veal scaloppini that was to die for.

  ‘When you said dinner…’

  ‘I love to cook…’

  And she loved to eat too.

  With food between them, and with wine, somehow, gradually, it got easier.

  He told her about his farm—that his sisters didn’t get it, but it must be the gypsy blood in him because there he felt he belonged.

  ‘I’ve never been to a farm.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a city girl?’

  ‘I guess,’ Annika said.

  She intrigued him.

  ‘You used to model?’

  ‘For a couple of years,’ Annika said. ‘Only in-house.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Just for Kolovsky,’ she explained. ‘I always thought that was what I wanted to do—well, it was expected of me, really—but when I got there it was just hours and hours in make-up, hours and hours hanging around, and…’ she rolled her eyes ‘…no dinners like this.’ She registered his frown. ‘Thin wasn’t thin enough, and I like my food too much.’

  ‘So you went to Paris…?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What made you decide to do nursing?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Annika admitted. ‘When my father was ill I watched the nurses caring for him…’ It was hard to explain, so she didn’t. ‘What about you? Are you the same as Iosef? Is medicine your vocation?’

  ‘Being a doctor was the only thing I ever wanted to be.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Though when I go to Russia with your brother, sometimes I wonder if there is more than being a doctor in a well-equipped city hospital.’

  ‘You’re not happy at work?’

  ‘I’m very happy at work,’ Ross corrected. ‘Sometimes, though, I feel hemmed in—often I feel hemmed in. I just broke up with someone because of it.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘I’m supposed to be sworn off women.’

  ‘I’m not good at hemming.’

  Ross laughed. ‘I can’t picture you with a needle.’ And then he was serious. ‘Romanys have this image of being cads—that is certainly my mother’s take. I understand that, but really they are loyal to commitment, and virginity is important to them, which is why they often marry young…’ He gave an embarrassed half-laugh. ‘There is more to them than I understand…’

  ‘And you need to find out?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ross answered. ‘Maybe that is why I get on with the orphans in Russia. I am much luckier, of course, but I can relate to them—to that not knowing, never fully knowing where you came from. I don’t know my father’s history.’

  ‘You could have a touch of Russian in you!’ Annika smiled.

  ‘Who knows?’ Ross smiled. ‘Do you go back to Russia?’

  She shook her head. ‘Levander does, Iosef as you know does work there…’

  ‘Aleksi?’ Ross asked.

  ‘He goes, but not for work…’ She gave a shrug. ‘I don’t really know why. I’ve just never felt the need to.’

  ‘You speak Russian, though?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Only a little—a very little compared to my family.’

  ‘You have an accent.’

  ‘Because I refused to speak Russian…’ She smiled at his bemusement. ‘I was a very wilful child. I spoke Russian and a little English till I was five, and then I realised that we lived in Australia. I started to say I didn’t understand Russian—that I only understood English, wanted to speak English.’ He smiled at the image of her as a stubborn five-year-old. ‘It infuriated my mother, and my teacher… I learnt English from Russians, which is why I have an accent. Do you speak Spanish?’

  ‘Not as much as I’d like to.’

  ‘You’re going in a couple of weeks?’

  ‘Yeah.’ And he told her—well, bits… ‘Mum’s upset about it. I think she’s worried I’m going to find my real father and set up camp with him. Run away and leave it all behind…’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’ Ross shook his head. ‘I’d like to meet him, get to know him if I can find him. I only have his first name.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Reyes,’ Ross said, and then he gave her a little part of him that he didn’t usually share. ‘That’s actually my real name.’

  ‘I lived with my father. Every day I saw him,’ Annika said, giving back a little part of herself, ‘but I don’t think I knew him at all.’

  ‘I know about Levander.’ He watched her swallow. ‘I know that Levander was raised in the Detsky Dom.’

  ‘Iosef shouldn’t talk.’

  ‘Iosef and I have spent weeks—no, months, working in Russian orphanages. It’s tough going there—sometimes you need to talk. He hates that Levander was raised there.’

  ‘My parents were devastated when they found out…’ She was glad she’d read that press release now. ‘On his deathbed my father begged that we set up the foundation…’ Her voice cracked. She was caught between the truth and a lie, and she didn’t know what was real any more. ‘We are holding a big fundraiser soon. If nursing doesn’t work out then I am thinking of working fulltime on the board…’

  ‘Organising fundraisers?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll get dessert…’

  ‘You made these?’ He couldn’t believe it. He took a bite and couldn’t believe it again—and then he said the completely wrong thing. ‘You’re wasted as a nurse.’

  And he saw her eyes shutter.

  ‘I’m sorry, Annika; I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘Not wasted…’

  ‘Just leave it.’

  ‘I can’t leave it,’ Ross said, and her eyes jerked up to his. ‘But I ought to.’

  ‘At least till I have finished on the ward,’ Annika said, and her throat was so tight she didn’t know how to swallow, and her chocolate box sat unopened.

  ‘I’ll be in Spain,’ Ross said.

  ‘Slow is good.’ Annika nodded. ‘I don’t want to rush.’

  ‘So we just put it on hold?’ Ross checked, and she nodded. ‘Just have dinner?’ He winced. ‘When I say just…’

  ‘Maybe one kiss goodnight,’ Annika relented, because Elsie would be so disappointed otherwise.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Ross said. ‘Now or later?’

  ‘You choose.’

  Four hours of preparation: tempering the chocolate, slicing the boxes, choosing the best raspberries. And the mousse recipe was a complicated one. All that work, all those hours, slipped deliciously away as he pulled h
er across the table and her breast sank into her own creation.

  His tongue tasted better than anything she could conjure. They both had to stretch, but it was worth it. He tasted of chocolate, and then of him. His hair was in her fingers and she was pressing her face into him, the scratch of his jaw, the press of his lips. She wanted more, so badly she almost climbed onto the table just to be closer, but it was easier to stand. Lips locked, they kissed over the table, and then did a sort of crab walk till they could properly touch—and touch they did.

  The most touching it was possible to do with clothes on and standing. She felt his lovely bum, and his jeans, and she pressed him into her. It was still just a kiss, one kiss, but it went on for ever.

  ‘Oh, Annika,’ he said, when she pulled back for a gulp of air, and then he saw the mess on her top and set to work.

  ‘That’s not kissing…’ He was kissing her breast through the fabric, sucking off the mousse and the cream, and her fingers were back in his hair.

  ‘It is,’ he said.

  And the raspberries had made the most terrible stain, so he concentrated on getting it out, and then she had to stop him. She stepped back and did something she never did.

  She started to laugh.

  And then she did something really stupid—something she’d cringe at when she told Elsie—well, the edited version—but knew Elsie would clap her approval.

  She told him to dance—ordered him, in fact!

  She lay on the sofa and watched, and there was rather more noise than usual from Annika’s flat—not that the neighbours noticed.

  She lay there and watched as his great big black boots stamped across the floor, and it was mad, really, but fantastic. She could smell the gypsy bonfire, and she knew he could too—it was their own fantasy, crazy and sort of private, but she would tell Elsie just a little.

  And she did only kiss him—maybe once or twice, or three times more.

  But who knew the places you could go to with a kiss?

  Who knew you could be standing pressed against the door fully dressed, but naked in your mind?

  ‘Bad girl,’ Ross said as, still standing, she landed back on earth.

  ‘Oh, I will be!’ Annika said.

  ‘Come back to the farm…’

  ‘We said slowly.’

  So they had—and there was Spain, and according to form he knew he’d hurt her, but he was suddenly sure that he wouldn’t. She could take a sledgehammer to his bedroom wall if she chose, and he’d just lie on the bed and let her.

  ‘Come to the farm.’ God, what was he doing?

  ‘I’ve got stuff too, Ross.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Don’t rush me.’

  ‘I know.’ He was coming back to earth as well. He’d never been accused of rushing things before. It was always Ross pulling back, always Ross reluctant to share—it felt strange to be on the other side.

  ‘And I’ve never been bad.’

  He started to laugh, and then he realised she wasn’t joking.

  ‘The rules are different if you’re a Kolovsky girl, and till recently I’ve never been game enough to break them.’

  Oh!

  Looking into her troubled eyes, knowing what he knew about her family, suddenly he was scared of his own reputation and knew it was time to back off.

  Annika Kolovsky he couldn’t risk hurting.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AT HER request, things slowed down.

  Stopped, really.

  The occasional text, a lot of smiles, and a couple of coffees in the canteen.

  It was just as well, really. There was no time for a relationship as her world rapidly unravelled.

  Aleksi had hit a journalist and was on the front pages again.

  Her mother was in full charity ball mode, and nothing Annika could say or do at work was right.

  ‘He’s that sick from chicken pox?’ Annika couldn’t help but speak up during handover. Normally she kept her head down and just wrote, but it was so appalling she couldn’t help it. An eight-year-old had been admitted from Emergency with encephalitis and was semi-conscious—all from a simple virus. ‘You can get that ill from chicken pox?’

  ‘It’s unusual,’ Caroline said, ‘but, yes. If he doesn’t improve then he’ll be transferred to the children’s hospital. For now he’s on antiviral medication and hourly obs. His mother is, of course, beside herself. She’s got two others at home who have the virus too. Ross is just checking with Infectious Diseases and then he’ll be contacting their GP to prescribe antivirals for them too.’ Caroline was so matter-of-fact, and Annika knew she had to be too, but she found it so hard!

  Gowning up, wearing a mask, dealing with the mum.

  She checked the IV solutions with a nurse and punched in the numbers on the IVAC that would deliver the correct dosage of the vital medication. She tried to wash the child as gently as she could when the Div 1 nurse left. The room was impossibly hot, especially when she was all gowned up, but any further infection for him would be disastrous.

  ‘Thank you so much.’ The poor, petrified mum took time to thank Annika as she gently rolled the boy and changed the sheets. ‘How do you think he’s doing?’

  Annika felt like a fraud.

  She stood caught in the headlamps of the mother’s anxious gaze. How could she tell her that she had no idea, that till an hour ago she hadn’t realised chicken pox could make anyone so ill and that she was petrified for the child too?

  ‘His observations are stable,’ Annika said carefully.

  ‘But how do you think he’s doing?’ the mother pushed, and Annika didn’t know what to say. ‘Is there something that you’re not telling me?’

  The mother was getting more and more upset, and so Annika said what she had been told to in situations such as this.

  ‘I’ll ask the nurse in charge to speak with you.’

  It was her first proper telling-off on the children’s Ward.

  Well, it wasn’t a telling-off but a pep talk—and rather a long one—because it wasn’t an isolated incident, apparently.

  Heather Jameson came down, and she sat as Caroline tried to explain the error of Annika’s ways.

  ‘Ross is in there now.’ Caroline let out a breath. ‘The mother thought from Annika’s reaction that there was bad news on the way.’

  ‘She asked me how I thought he was doing,’ Annika said. ‘I hadn’t seen him before. I had nothing to compare it with. So I said I would get the nurse in charge to speak with her.’

  She hadn’t done anything wrong—but it was just another example of how she couldn’t get it right.

  It was the small talk, the chats, the comfort she was so bad at.

  ‘Mum’s fine.’ Ross knocked and walked in. ‘She’s exhausted. Her son’s ill. She’s just searching for clues, Annika.’ He looked over to her. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact he is improving—but you couldn’t have known that.’

  So it was good news—only for Annika it didn’t feel like it.

  ‘It’s not a big deal,’ Ross said later, catching her in the milk room, where she was trying to sort out bottles for the late shift.

  ‘It is to me,’ Annika said, hating her own awkwardness. She should be pleased that her shift was over, and tonight she didn’t have to work at the nursing home, but tonight she was going to her mother’s for dinner.

  ‘Why don’t we—?’

  ‘You’re not helping, Ross,’ Annika said. ‘Can you just be a doctor at work, please?’

  ‘Sure.’

  And she wanted to call him back—to say sorry for biting his head off—but it was dinner at her mother’s, and no one could ever understand what a nightmare that was.

  ‘How’s the children’s ward?’

  Iosef and Annie were there too, which would normally have made things easier—but not tonight. They had avoided the subject of Aleksi’s latest scandal. They had spoken a little about the ball, and then they’d begun to eat in silence.

  ‘It’
s okay,’ Annika said, pushing her food around her plate.

  ‘But not great?’ Iosef checked.

  ‘No.’

  They’d been having the same conversation for months now.

  She’d started off in nursing so enthusiastically, raving about her placements, about the different patients, but gradually, just as Iosef had predicted, the gloss had worn off.

  As it had in modelling.

  And cooking

  And in jewellery design.

  ‘How’s Ross?’ Iosef asked, and luckily he missed her blush because Nina made a snorting sound.

  ‘Filthy gypsy.’

  ‘You’ve always been so welcoming to my friends!’ Iosef retorted. ‘He does a lot of good work for your chosen charity.’ There was a muscle pounding in Iosef’s cheek and they still hadn’t got through the main course.

  ‘Romany!’ Annika said, gesturing to one of the staff to fill up her wine. ‘He prefers the word Romany to gypsy.’

  ‘And I prefer not to speak of it while I eat my dinner,’ Nina said, then fixed Annika with a stare. ‘No more wine.’

  ‘It’s my second glass.’

  ‘And you have the ball soon—you’ll be lucky to get into your dress as it is.’

  There was that feeling again. For months now out of nowhere it would bubble up, and she would suddenly feel like crying—but she never, ever did.

  What she did do instead, and her hand was shaking as she did it, was take another sip of wine, and for the first time in memory in front of her mother she finished everything on her plate.

  ‘How are you finding the work?’ Iosef attempted again as Nina glared at her daughter.

  ‘It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.’

  ‘I was the same in my training,’ Annie said happily, sitting back a touch as seconds were ladled onto her plate.

  Annika wanted seconds too, but she knew better than to push it. The air was so toxic she felt as if she were choking on it, and then she stared at her brother, and for the first time ever she thought she saw a glimmer of sympathy there.

  Annie chatted on. ‘I thought about leaving—nursing wasn’t at all what I’d imagined—then I did my Emergency placement and I realised I’d found my niche.’

  ‘I just don’t know if it’s for me,’ Annika said.