Walk away? No.
He took her hands in his and he tugged her forward. He folded her into his arms and held her, as he’d not held a woman for years.
She’d slapped him.
He didn’t care. He just...held.
* * *
One minute she was out-of-control crazy. The next minute she was being hugged.
She was rigid with shock, but maybe rigid was too mild a word for it. She felt like she was frozen.
If she moved... But there was no if. She couldn’t move. She didn’t know who she would be if she moved. She would be some out-of-control creature who screamed and hit...
She had to apologise. She had to pull away and say she was sorry, but her body wouldn’t obey. Tremors were starting, shudders that ran all through her. If she pulled away she’d have nothing to hold her. All she could do was let this man—this stranger—keep her close and stop her crumpling.
She was falling into him and he was holding her as she had to be held. She was moulding to him, feeling the warmth and strength of him, feeling the steadiness of his heartbeat, and it was as if in some way he was giving hers back.
She was delusional. Crazy. She needed to pull herself together, but not yet, not yet. For now she could only stand within his arms while the world somehow righted itself, restored itself to order, until she finally found the strength to pull away and face the consequences of what she’d done.
* * *
Sam specialised in paediatric cardiology. He treated children and babies with heart problems. In his working life he faced parents on the edge of control—or who had tipped over into an abyss of grief. He never got used to it. He’d learned techniques to keep control of his emotions. To express quiet sympathy, to offer hope when hope was possible, to listen when listening was all he had to give.
But he’d never felt like he did now.
This made no sense. Yes, his dog was hurt. Yes, it had been an appalling evening but if this woman was a trained nurse... For her to collapse like this...
For him to feel like this...
Why? What was it with this woman that was making his heart twist?
He held her and felt her take strength from him. He felt the rigidity ease, felt her slump against him, and he felt her quietly gather herself.
He should move her away but his rigid protection of personal space wasn’t working right now. She was so vulnerable...and yet what she’d done, how she’d acted, had taken pure strength. There was no way he could let her down now, and when finally she found the strength to tug away he was aware of a sharp stab of loss.
She hadn’t cried. She was still white-faced, but she was dry-eyed and drained.
She shoved her hands through her curls, tucking stray wisps behind her ears, and he felt an almost irresistible urge to help her. To fix a tiny curl that had escaped.
He wasn’t an idiot. He’d been slapped once. It behoved a man to stay still and silent, and wait for her to make the first move.
‘I...I’m sorry,’ she managed at last.
‘It’s okay,’ he told her, striving hard to lighten what was an unbelievably heavy situation. ‘I was feeling guilty about Bonnie. Now I can feel virtuously aggrieved at being assaulted.’
‘And I get the guilt instead?’
‘Exactly,’ he said, and tried a smile.
She didn’t smile back. She looked up at him, and he thought, whatever had gone before, this woman wasn’t one to crumple. There was strength there. Real strength.
‘Hitting’s never okay,’ she said.
‘You were swatting flies,’ he said. ‘And missed.’
She did smile then. It was the merest glimmer but it was still a smile and it made him feel...
Actually, he didn’t know how it made him feel. Holding her, watching her...
Why was this woman touching him? Why did he look at her and want to know more?
It was Bonnie, he told himself. It was the emotions of almost losing his dog. That’s all it was.
‘Let me take you home,’ he said carefully, and took a step back, as if she might swipe him again.
The smile appeared again, rueful but there.
‘I’m safe,’ she told him. ‘Unarmed.’ She tucked her arms carefully behind her back and he grinned.
‘Excellent. Would you accept my very kind offer of a ride home?’
‘I’ll stain the Jeep.’
‘I’m a surfer. I have a ton of towels.’
‘I need milk,’ she said.
And he thought excellent—practicalities, minutiae were the way to get back on an even keel.
‘Because?’
‘Because I’ve run out,’ she said. She took a deep breath, steadying herself as she spoke, and he knew she knew minutiae were important.
She’d been in the abyss, too? There seemed such a core recognition, at a level he didn’t recognise, that it was an almost physical link.
But she seemed oblivious to it. ‘I’m on duty at six tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I have no milk. How can I have coffee with no milk? And how can I start work with no coffee?’
‘I see your need,’ he said gravely. ‘And I’m trained for triage. Priority one, the lady needs milk. Priority two, the lady needs home, wash, sleep. I can cope with milk and home. Can you take it from there?’
It was the right thing to say. Setting limits. Giving her a plan. He’d used this with parents of his patients hovering at the edges of control, and it worked now.
There were no more arguments. She gave him another smile, albeit a weak one, and he led her to his car.
He climbed in beside her, but still he felt strange. Why?
Forget imagined links, he told himself. This was crazy. He didn’t do emotional connection. He would not.
Get this night over with, he told himself. Buy the lady some milk and say goodnight.
* * *
He drove a great vehicle for surfing. It was no doctor’s car, she thought as he threw a heap of towels on the front seat. The Jeep was battered, coated with sand and salt, and liberally sprinkled with Labrador hair. Any qualms she had about spoiling the beauty of one of the sleek, expensive sets of wheels she was used to seeing in most doctors’ car parks went right out the window.
Sam wasn’t your normal doctor.
He didn’t look your normal doctor either. He was sand-and salt-stained as well, with his sun-bleached hair and crinkled eyes telling her that surfing was something he did all the time, as much a part of him as his medicine must be.
But he was a doctor, and a good one, she suspected. She’d seen his skill at stitching. She’d also heard the transition from personal to professional as he’d coped with her emotional outburst.
Though there’d been personal in there as well. There’d been raw emotion as he’d seen Bonnie—and there’d been something more than professional care as he’d held her.
Well, she’d saved his dog.
She was trying to get a handle on it. She was trying to fit the evening’s events into the impersonal. Nurse saves doctor’s dog, nurse angry at doctor for leaving dog on beach, nurse hits doctor, doctor hugs nurse.
It didn’t quite fit.
‘I’m normally quite sane,’ she ventured as he pulled up outside a convenience store.
‘Me, too.’ He grinned. ‘Mostly. What sort of milk?’
‘White.’
His grin widened. ‘What, no unpasteurised, low-fat, high-calcium, no permeate added...’
‘Oi,’ she said. ‘White.’
He chuckled and went to buy it. She watched him go, lean, lithe, tanned, muscled legs, board shorts, T-shirt, salt-stiff hair—everything about him screaming surfer.
He was pin-up material, she thought suddenly. He was the type of guy whose picture she’d h
ave pinned on her wall when she’d been fifteen.
She’d pinned these sorts of pictures all over her wall when she’d been a kid. Her parents had had a board they’d brought in to her various hospital wards to make her feel at home. She’d had pictures of surfing all over it. She would lie and watch the images of lean bodies catching perfect waves and dream...
But then Sam was back with her milk and she had to haul herself back to the here and now.
‘My purse is in my car,’ she said, suddenly horrified.
‘I’ll fix it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it back tonight.’
She knew he would. I’ll fix it.
She actually didn’t like it all that much. Other people fixing stuff for her...
She had to get a grip here. Getting her purse and paying for her milk were not enough to start a war over.
She subsided while he drove the short distance to the hospital apartment car park. The parking space he drove into indicated it belonged to ‘Mr Sam Webster. Paediatric Cardiology’.
Mr. That meant he was a surgeon.
Paediatric cardiology. Clever.
She glanced across at him and tried to meld the two images together—the specialist surgeons she’d worked with before and the surfer guy beside her.
‘I clean up okay,’ he said, and it felt weird that he’d guessed her thoughts. ‘I make it a rule never to wear board shorts when consulting. Hey, Callie!’
A woman was pulling in beside them—Dr Callie Richards, neonatal specialist. Zoe had met this woman during the week and was already seriously impressed. Callie was maybe five years older than Zoe but a world apart in medical experience. In life experience, too, Zoe had thought. She’d seemed smart, confident, kind—the sort of colleague you didn’t want to meet when you were looking...like she was looking now. She’d also seemed aloof.
But Sam was greeting her warmly, calling her over.
‘Callie, could you spare us a few minutes?’ he called. ‘We’ve had a bit of a traumatic time. Bonnie was hit by a car.’
‘Bonnie!’ Callie’s face stilled in shock and Zoe realised she knew the dog. Maybe the whole hospital knew Bonnie, she decided, thinking back to those trusting Labrador eyes. Bonnie was the sort of dog who made friends.
‘We think she’ll be okay,’ Sam said hurriedly, responding to the shock on Callie’s face, ‘but I need to get back to the vet’s. This is Zoe...’ He looked a query at Zoe. ‘Zoe...’
‘Payne,’ Zoe said. She was on the opposite side of the Jeep from Sam and Callie, and knowing how she looked she was reluctant to move.
‘I know Zoe,’ Callie said, smiling at her. ‘New this week? From Adelaide?’
That was impressive. One brief meeting in the wards, doctor and nurse, and Callie had it.
‘Yeah, well, she’s had a baptism by fire,’ Sam said grimly. ‘I was out in the surf when Bonnie was hit, and she saved her life. We’ve just spent two hours operating and Zoe rocks. But now she’s covered in gore and she’s got a bit of delayed shock. I don’t want to leave her but I need—’
‘To get back to Bonnie—of course you do.’ And Callie moved into caretaker mode, just like that. ‘Go, Sam, I’ll take care of Zoe.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘Let Sam go and then we’ll discuss it,’ Callie said, and Zoe hauled herself together—again—and gave a rueful smile. Sam handed Callie Zoe’s milk, as Zoe climbed out of the Jeep. Then, he was gone.
* * *
Callie was brisk, efficient and not about to listen to quibbles. She ushered Zoe into the lift and when it stopped on the first floor to admit a couple of nurses she held up her hand to stop them coming in.
‘Closed for cleaning,’ she said, and grinned and motioned to Zoe. ‘Or it should be. Catch the next lift, ladies.’
The lift closed smoothly and they were alone again.
When they reached the apartment Zoe realised her keys were in her purse. No problem—one phone call and Callie had the caretaker there, and he didn’t ask questions either. There was something about Callie that precluded questions.
Or argument. Zoe gave up, let herself be steered into the bathroom, stood for ten minutes under a steaming shower and emerged in her bathrobe, gloriously clean. Two plates of toast and eggs were on her kitchen counter with two steaming mugs of tea, and Callie was sitting over them looking as if this was completely normal, like they were flatmates and it was Callie’s turn to cook.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But I’m starving, and there’s nothing in my apartment. I was going to ring for pizza but you have enough to share.’
Zoe smiled and slid into a chair and thought she should protest but she was all protested out.
And the toast smelled great. She hadn’t realised she was hungry. They ate in what seemed companionable silence. Zoe cradled her tea, her world righted itself somehow and when finally Callie asked questions she was ready to answer.
‘How’s Bonnie?’ she asked first, and Zoe thought she was right in her surmise that Bonnie was a beloved presence in this hospital.
‘She has a fractured leg, now plated. Lots of lacerations and two broken ribs, but Doug—the vet—seems confident that she’ll be okay.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Callie said. ‘Half the hospital would break its collective heart if she died—not to mention our Sam. Those two are inseparable.’
‘He left her on the beach,’ Zoe said carefully, trying not to sound judgemental, ‘while he surfed. She was hit by a dune buggy.’
Callie closed her eyes. ‘Damn. But that beach is closed to anything but foot traffic.’
‘You know where we were?’
‘Sam always surfs at the Spit at the Seaway. The surf’s great, dogs are permitted off leash and it’s the safest place for Bonnie.’
‘He still shouldn’t have left her,’ Zoe said stubbornly, and Callie shrugged and started making more tea.
‘Okay, I’ll give you some back story,’ she said. ‘You need to get used to this hospital, by the way. Everyone knows everything about everybody. If you want things kept private, forget it. I don’t normally add to it, but tonight you’ve earned it. Bonnie was Sam’s fiancée’s dog. According to reports, Emily was wild, passionate and more than a little foolhardy. She surfed every night—they both did. With Bonnie. When Emily bought her as a pup Sam tried to talk her into exercising her and then leaving her in the car while they surfed, but Bonnie was Emily’s dog and Emily simply refused.
‘So now Bonnie’s in her declining years but what she loves most in the world is lying on the beach at dusk, waiting for Sam to come in. If Sam leaves her at home, or in the Jeep, she’ll howl until the world thinks she’s being massacred. For months she howled because she missed Emily and Sam decided he couldn’t take her beach away from her as well.’
‘So...what happened to Emily?’ Zoe asked.
‘Killed by carelessness,’ Callie retorted. ‘Not that Sam will admit it, but there it is. They went down to the beach to surf but the waves were dumpers, crashing too close to shore. Sam knew it, they both knew it, but Emily went out anyway. Word is that she simply did what she wanted. She was clever and bright and she twisted the world round her finger.
‘That night she and Sam had words. Sam took Bonnie for a walk along the beach to let off steam and Emily took her board out, got dumped and broke her neck. To this day Sam thinks he should have picked her up and carted her off the beach by force, but I guess it’s like telling Bonnie she can’t stay on the beach on her own. Immoveable object means unimaginable force. One of them has to give.’
‘Oh,’ Zoe said in a small voice, and Callie gave her a swift, appraising glance.
‘Let me guess—you gave Sam a lecture?’
‘I...might have.’
‘And that red mark on his face? The mark that looks
suspiciously like finger marks?’
‘Oh...’ She felt herself blush from the toes up.
‘It’ll settle,’ Callie said, grinning widely. ‘They don’t usually bruise with the fingermarks still showing. And I promise I won’t tell.’
‘How do you know...about the fingermarks?’ Zoe managed, and Callie’s smile died. There was a moment’s awkward pause and then Callie seemed to relent. She shrugged.
‘I worked in a women’s refuge for a while,’ she said curtly in a voice that told Zoe not to go there. ‘I was getting over a mistake myself. But I wouldn’t worry. You saved Sam’s dog, and I suspect even if the world knew you’d hit him he’d consider it a small price. Do you want to sleep in tomorrow? I can alter your shifts.’
She was changing the subject, Zoe thought, steering away from the personal, and she thought there were things behind this woman’s competent facade...
As there were things behind Sam’s surfer image.
She should think about sleeping in. She tried for a whole two seconds, but the warmth, the food, the effects of the evening’s fright suddenly coalesced into one vast fog of weariness. It was like the blinds were coming down whether she willed them or not.
‘I’ll be fine for tomorrow,’ she managed. ‘But I do need to sleep.’
‘I’ll tuck you in,’ Callie said cheerfully. ‘Bedroom. Come.’
‘I don’t need tucking in,’ she said, affronted.
‘Remind me to ask when I want to know what you need,’ Callie retorted. ‘I’m thinking Sam Webster is going to ring me from the vet’s to find out how you are and I’m telling him I’ve tucked you into bed, whether you wanted it or not.’
* * *
By midnight Doug was sufficiently happy with Bonnie to order Sam home.
‘I’ll be checking on her hourly. I’ll sleep when I’m relieved in the morning but I suspect you have work tomorrow. Right? So, home. Bed.’
Bonnie was sleeping soundly, heavily sedated. Sam fondled her soft ears but she didn’t respond, too busy sleeping.
Doug was right.
He headed out to the car park. Doug had locked Zoe’s car but it still blocked the entrance.
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 3