There was nothing more Serenity could do. She had a pile of paperwork on a clipboard under her arm that the woman at reception had given her to fill in. She hoped that her medical insurance was still valid and that her work hadn’t yet notified them that she had been fired. Hopefully it would slip through the net, but if it didn’t she was going to be in even more trouble.
She sighed heavily and stood up. She was sure there was a restaurant where she might still be able to get a cup of coffee, despite the late hour.
Strips of long fluorescent lights lit up the restaurant in a harsh, unnatural light. Blocks of long tables and benches reminded Serenity of her school canteen, soulless and unloved. Behind the aluminium heated display cabinet a tired looking woman in an apron gave her a half-hearted smile as she walked in. The far wall was made up of floor to ceiling windows, looking out on a small patch of garden for the hospital residents. A lone figure sat in the corner of the restaurant, looking out of the window. Above the person’s head the fluorescent strip light had blown, so the figure was sitting in partial darkness.
She didn’t need light to know who it was. Even though she had only spent moments with him, she knew she would recognise the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw and the curve of his forearms, anywhere.
She stopped dead in the middle of the room. Her heart leapt up into her throat, her blood rushing through her ears. Adrenaline flowed through her like water, speeding up her heart, making her hands trembled.
“Can I help you, love?” the woman behind the counter called to her.
Serenity couldn’t even respond. She stood there, frozen. Part of her wanted to turn and run, the other part of her wanted to fall to her knees and weep, but she was frozen into inertia.
Then he turned and looked at her and she found she could walk again.
“Are you okay?” the woman called to her, obviously worried, and this time Serenity managed to give her a smile and nod of reassurance, but her eyes never left the man sitting by the window.
She walked towards him as though she was gliding on water and as she approached he got to his feet.
“What are you doing here?” she tried to say, but her voice was little more than a whisper.
“I’m visiting someone.”
“Oh? A family member? A friend?”
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, not answering her question.
“It’s strange seeing you again. Small world, I guess.”
He gestured to the seat opposite him. “Will you sit with me a while? At least allow me to buy you a coffee?”
It was an act that seemed so normal in such surreal circumstances and she grasped onto it like a lifeline.
“Coffee,” she repeated. “Yes, coffee would be good.”
He brushed past her as he walked up to the counter, sending a thrill of goose bumps up her arm. She stood watching his broad back as he walked away from her, then she sat heavily, her legs weak and rubbery.
He was here. God, he was here!
She watched him go to the counter, not daring to take her eyes off of him in case he was just a figment of her over-stressed mind and vanished on her. As he paid the woman behind the counter, he saw her watching him and gave her a smile that she wished she could package up and take home with her.
He returned with two cups of thick, dark coffee. In her nervousness she took a sip too quickly and burnt her mouth.
“Careful,” he said with a smile, his green eyes lighting up. “I think it’s hot.”
She couldn’t help but smile back. “Thanks, I think I’ve got that.”
“Your husband is here.”
Serenity knew it wasn’t a question but she answered it anyway by nodding.
“What happened?” he asked.
“There was a... accident.” She looked up at him. For a reason she couldn’t understand, she felt like they had already had this conversation; as though there was an underlying current that held the truth, yet neither of them was free to tap into it.
She had had such a strange evening. She couldn’t explain what had happened in her bedroom, but she remembered her initial reaction – this man’s face flashing in her mind. Now here he was again. Of course it could just be a complete coincidence, but it was unlikely.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”
His words made her heart race and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. He was here for her.
“What happened to my husband?” she said, barely believing that the words had left her mouth.
“What happened to you?”
She looked up, her eyes fierce. Was he playing with her?
“I thought you might be able to tell me that!”
His eyes grew dark under his heavy eyebrows, his brow furrowed. He pressed his lips together as though he had to control himself before answering. “It was nothing he wasn’t asking for. If anything he got off lightly.”
“So it was you!” She grew angry. “Then why ask me? Are you just another controlling man who likes to screw around with a woman’s head?”
He sat back, first astonished at her anger, then he leant forward and took her hand across the table. She caught her breath at the touch of his skin on hers and the anger within her melted away like a night’s snowfall under the day’s first rays of sun. There was worry in his eyes, in the creases at the corners of his eyes, the line between in his eyebrows.
“No, never,” he said. “I just didn’t know how much of it you had figured out for yourself. I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Scare me? It’s a bit late for that!” she sat back, shaking her head. “But how? How did you do it? And in the ambulance, that was you too, wasn’t it? You were on the roof?”
He nodded.
“What are you? An acrobat, or a magician, or...” she was at a loss for ideas. “Something?” she finished weakly.
“Yeah,” he lowered his head and a lock of thick black hair fell across his forehead. “Something like that.”
“But how did you get in and out of the room without us seeing you?”
“I can’t explain it to you exactly. Try to think of it as a trick of the light, like an optical illusion.”
She wanted to press him further, but she didn’t want to scare him off. It was a miracle to her that he was here at all, and however he had managed to perform his ‘tricks’, it had stopped her being raped by her own husband.
He must have read her thoughts.
“You could leave him now. You can just pack your bags and go.”
The thought struck fear into her heart and she hated herself for it. She knew he was right, she should have left Jackson years ago, she just didn’t know how to find the courage. There was more to it than that. There were things that had happened in their marriage, things that weren’t Jackson’s fault and she blamed herself for them. There was part of her that didn’t blame Jackson for beating her, because part of her felt like she deserved it.
“I don’t know how to,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks hot up with shame. “I don’t know how to be alone.”
“Alone is all I know how to be.”
They looked up at each other and time stopped. Even though they were sat in the shadows, his features seemed more real to her than anything she had ever seen before. The gloom cast shadows across his face, making his pale skin jump out from the darkness and his eyes almost seemed to glow. She wanted to reach out and touch the thick lashes that framed his eyes, to trace her finger along his jawbone, to touch the fullness of his lower lip. She couldn’t believe it was possible to want someone so much when you knew absolutely nothing about them.
“I will leave him,” she said quietly. “As soon as he is well again, I’ll leave.”
He dropped her hand.
Panic rose within her, a panic that she was going to be forced into something, or at least finally be forced to make the decision she should have made years ago. “I do
n’t even know your name,” she said, “and you’re asking me to leave my husband.”
“I’m not asking you to leave your husband for me. I want you to do it for yourself.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up. For a moment she thought he was going to touch her again, that he was going to place his palm against her cheek and she felt a heat spread from the centre of her chest, down into her belly and slowly melt between her legs. He seemed to change his mind and took a step away from her.
“I just want you to see that you don’t just have to take action because of another man. What would you have done if I hadn’t stopped your husband tonight? Would you have just let him do what he wanted and then rolled over and pretended the next day that nothing had happened?”
She felt a lump in her throat and her eyes burnt with hot tears. She would never have said it out loud, but that was exactly what she would have done and she hated herself for it.
“I can’t save you. You’re the only one who can do that.”
He started to walk away.
“Wait,” she called out to him. “Please, wait.”
He ignored her and kept walking, disappearing out of the doorway and into the corridor.
The moment he left the room the light they had been sitting beneath, the one that had blown, flickered back to life. Serenity finally felt the tears that had been welling in her eyes trickle down her cheeks and plop onto the back of her hand.
His coffee sat growing cold and untouched.
~*~
Rescued I Page 7