She walked down to A and E, trembling. In and out. Don’t look right or left, don’t stop to talk. Just do your job. With any luck Jon wouldn’t be on shift this morning.
The doctor who had called beckoned her into an empty cubicle and she sat down next to him at the monitor to look at the X-rays.
‘He’s had a fall, but there doesn’t seem to be a concussion, although we’ll be keeping a close eye on that, particularly if he needs surgery. I’m reckoning he might...’ Dr Marshall had worked in A and E for long enough that nothing much surprised him, and he could usually anticipate what ongoing care his patients would need.
‘I’d say so.’ Chloe looked carefully at the X-rays. ‘That’s a nasty one. I’ll wait and take the paperwork upstairs with me. I can have it on Mr Saunders’s desk for when he comes in.’
‘I’d appreciate it. He’s one of ours, he works here.’
‘Well, he’s not going to be at work for a while...’ Chloe’s eye drifted to the patient’s name in the corner of the screen and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Jon?’
‘Yes. He’s quite new here, you might not know him...’
Never mind that. Chloe didn’t have the time to think up something appropriate to explain that she knew Jon very well. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Apparently he was up in the loft at his house early this morning. Something gave way and his foot went through the ceiling.’
‘He fell through the ceiling...’ Chloe must have been showing all the signs of panic because Dr Marshall snapped into reassurance mode.
‘No, he fell over. There’s the damage to his ankle, and he’s going to have quite a shiner tomorrow. Apparently he managed to get down from the loft and then down the stairs, trying to reach his phone. But the builders came in at six and found him in the hallway. Called an ambulance.’
‘But he’s okay?’ Suddenly that was all that mattered. Jon had been hurt and there had been no one there to help him.
‘Go and take a look for yourself. I’ve got to wait for the results on some routine tests and I’ll be ten minutes with the paperwork...’ Chloe was on her feet already and Dr Marshall called after her. ‘Cubicle Six.’
* * *
His ankle was uncomfortably numb. His left eye was closing fast, and it was more than likely that he’d be staying here for a couple of days. Jon was sick of staring at the ceiling so he closed his eyes for a few moments, drifting in a sea of analgesia.
He heard the door of the cubicle open and ignored it. Probably someone wanting to take his blood pressure or check his pulse. He’d already told them that he was okay and that it was just the ankle they needed to worry about, but the A and E staff, who normally took his word for everything, had been taking it in turns to remind him that they’d be the judge of that.
‘Jon...?’ He felt a touch on his forehead, as light as a whisper. He must be dreaming. Jon struggled to open his eyes, since those kinds of dreams could probably get him in trouble with his work colleagues, and saw a pair of honey-brown eyes looking down at him.
‘How are you?’
All he could think of was that finally someone was asking him how he felt and not telling him. And that he wanted desperately to hold onto Chloe, but that he dared not reach for her.
‘Okay...’ Suddenly his mouth felt as if it was full of cotton wool.
‘I’ve taken a look at your X-rays. I think you’ll need surgery to fix the bone in your ankle, but I’m putting the papers on Mr Saunders’s desk as soon as I get them. He’s the best, you’ll be in good hands.’
She leaned over him, and he caught the scent of her soap. ‘That eye looks nasty. I’ll get someone to bring an ice pack. Your heart rate’s slightly elevated...’
That was hardly a surprise. It had been perfectly normal before Chloe had arrived.
‘Is there anything else? Any pain anywhere?’
Suddenly that didn’t matter any more. ‘Chloe, I’m sorry.’
She stared at him. ‘What for?’
‘The way I left...’
She reddened slightly, and then recovered her composure. ‘We have more important things to think about—’
‘No. No, this is more important.’ He reached forward, trying to touch her arm, but pain shot up his leg, immobilising him.
‘Hey... Hey, it’s all right, Jon.’ She took his hand, squeezing it.
‘Please...it’s not all right...’ He hung on tight to her hand, trying to pull her a little closer. Chloe must have seen his anguish because she moved towards him, her free hand moving to his brow.
‘What’s on your mind, then?’ She said the words quietly. At last he had the opportunity that he’d been waiting for, even if this wasn’t the time or the place.
‘I treated you badly, Chloe. I’m so sorry.’
The pain in her eyes told him exactly how badly he’d treated her. ‘We both said things that we shouldn’t have. That doesn’t matter any more.’
His head was clear now, as if determination to take this opportunity had overwhelmed both the pain in his leg and the effects of the analgesics in his system. ‘What I said...what I did... It was nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me. I told you that I’d made a decision about my future after the divorce, but that wasn’t entirely true. There was no decision, I was just too afraid to do anything else because I’d been too badly hurt. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.’
‘You think I didn’t know that?’ She pursed her lips in a rueful smile. ‘Anyway, I was just as much to blame as you were. I couldn’t just accept it and let things alone.’
‘There’s no reason in the world why you should have, Chloe. I...’
She laid her finger over his lips. ‘We could argue about who was most to blame, if it makes you feel any better. Or we could just say that neither of us wanted to be hurt, and neither of us meant to hurt. Leave it at that, eh? Let it go, because it’s not what we are.’
Relief rushed through him, prompting another agonising jab of pain from his leg. Chloe had found it in that gorgeous, loving heart of hers to forgive him. And if putting the past behind them didn’t change the future, it was at least a start. Jon nodded, and Chloe took her finger from his lips.
‘All right. Now we’ve got that dealt with, you can lie still.’ That schoolmistress tone that he so loved reasserted itself. ‘And tell me where it hurts.’
Nothing hurt any more. Not in the light of her smile. ‘They’ve already examined me. And there’s no pain if I keep still. The ambulance paramedic gave me a shot of the good stuff.’
‘What did he give you?’ She snatched the notes up from the end of the bed and leafed through them. ‘Okay. That looks okay.’
‘Yeah. It was actually better than okay at the time.’ He tried for a grin to reassure her, and must have succeeded in part because she rewarded him with a dazzling smile. All he really wanted her to do right now was to take his hand again.
‘I want to take a look at your leg.’ She glanced at his right ankle, which was covered over with a dressing pad, laid loosely over the top of it.
‘Yes. Please do.’ Jon had tried to look at the leg himself, after the paramedic had taken off his boot and cut the leg of his jeans, but gentle hands had pushed him back down, and firm voices had told him to relax. Chloe’s judgement was the next best thing to his own.
She removed the dressing, tutting when she saw that it had blood on it and throwing it into surgical waste. Her touch was like the whisper of a butterfly’s wing, and she bent over, looking at the ankle from one side and then the other, before tearing open a new dressing and laying it over the wound.
‘Can you see the bone?’
‘Yes, it’s a nasty fracture, but from the X-rays, and seeing it now, it looks like a straightforward piece of surgery. It’ll take a while to heal, but I don’t see any
reason why you can’t make a full recovery.’
It was exactly what he wanted—no, needed—to hear. The unvarnished truth from someone who he trusted. We’ll get you back on your feet in no time didn’t ring true when he knew that it was beyond the wit of anyone to mend a displaced fracture that fast.
‘Thanks. Chloe...’
The door of the cubicle opened and Ben Marshall leaned in. ‘I’ve got the paperwork.’
Chloe practically tore it out of his hand and then directed a dazzling smile at him. ‘Thanks. I’ll take it up now.’
The thought that she was going now made Jon want to weep. Before she’d arrived he’d been coping. But now that he’d seen her face he couldn’t bear to be left alone again. She walked to his bedside and he steeled himself to say one more goodbye and thank her.
‘I’m just going to take these upstairs. I need to get them on Mr Saunders’s desk right away. But I’ll be back.’
‘Thank you.’ He wouldn’t ask when, because maybe she’d think twice about it and not come back. And in any case, he’d be counting the hours in the hope that she did return.
‘Ten minutes. I’ll be ten minutes.’ She took his hand, giving it a squeeze, and in that moment Jon felt completely happy.
‘Don’t you have patients to see?’
‘My first patient’s at half past nine. It’s only half eight now. I’ll see you in ten.’ Jon nodded, and closed his eyes again. If Chloe being here was just a dream, he wanted to hold onto it for as long as he possibly could.
* * *
He didn’t know how long she’d been, but from the way she was slightly out of breath it seemed that she’d been hurrying. Chloe brought an ice pack, wrapping it carefully before she laid it over his eye, and a bottle of spring water from the machine.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
She nodded, opening the bottle and putting a red and white striped drinking straw into it. ‘You know the drill. Small sips, okay?’
He nodded, and she held the bottle so that he could drink through the straw. Suddenly he realised he was very thirsty, but he tried to drink slowly.
‘That’s good. You can have a little more in a minute.’ She put the bottle down beside the bed and sat down. ‘I can stay for three quarters of an hour and then I have to go. But I’ll come and find you again at lunchtime.’
‘You don’t need...’ He saw the reproach in her eyes, and realised that he wanted her to come back more than anything. ‘Thanks.’
She nodded. ‘Whatever were you doing in the loft at six in the morning?’
Ben had told her, then. ‘I heard dripping up there after last night’s rain. I reckoned it was another leak and went up there just to see what was going on. One of the boards was rotten.’
She knew. Chloe knew what it was like to be alone and helpless. Far better than he did, and this morning had frightened the hell out of him. She reached forward, taking his hand, and suddenly everything was all right.
‘It must have been horrible, having to try and get back downstairs.’
All he’d been able to think of had been getting downstairs to his phone before he passed out from the pain. He’d seen the blood soaking the leg of his jeans and had known he had to get help. But Chloe was here now and he could shrug it off.
‘My phone was in the kitchen. I wasn’t expecting the builder to come, he’d just popped in with some samples for me to look at. When he knocked, I yelled and he let himself in with his key.’
‘It was a bit of luck he decided to come round. Don’t you go clambering around when you’re on your own in the house again.’ Her voice took on the timbre of a very sexy schoolmistress.
‘I’ve learned my lesson. May I have some more water, please?’
She reached for the water bottle and let him drink a little more. Then she sat down again, reaching for his hand. It seemed that everything that had happened between them, and the way they’d both been studiously avoiding each other for the last few months, was temporarily forgotten.
‘How’s Hannah? I’ve been thinking about her.’
‘She’s good. She and Amy are living with me and...well, Amy’s a joy. So’s Hannah. She’s having counselling and starting to build up her confidence. And she’s doing an Art A-Level by correspondence course. It’s something she’s always been interested in, and she’s been producing some lovely drawings.
Even in his befuddled state, Jon could see that Chloe had changed. Or rather she’d continued on the road that he’d seen her take those first, uncertain steps on in France. She seemed so much more confident that she was doing the right thing and ready to make a success of it, for herself as well as Hannah and Amy.
‘I’m glad everything turned out well, Chloe.’
‘Thanks. I think you can take more than some of the credit...’ She flushed red and picked up the water bottle. ‘You want something more to drink?’
It seemed that she’d talked enough about the thing that had brought them together and then torn them apart. That was okay. Jon was just glad that Chloe had come and that she’d stayed for a while. He reached for the water bottle, gasping as he moved too far and pain shot up his leg.
‘Steady on. Just stay down, will you, and let me do the heavy lifting.’ She gave him a smile that reached right to his heart and Jon realised that the idea that had been forming in his head for the last month wasn’t just a dream. It was something that he was going to make happen.
* * *
She came back again at lunchtime, bringing a large carrier bag full of supplies. Toothpaste and a toothbrush, moist tissues for his hands and face, a few pieces of fruit and some dog-eared paperbacks from the hospital book exchange. Jon was taken down to the operating theatre late that afternoon, and when he woke up from the anaesthetic, his leg throbbing and his mouth feeling as if someone had stuffed it with cotton wool, Chloe was holding his hand.
‘You should...go...’ He didn’t know what time it was or how long he’d been out for, but the curtains on the ward were closed and it was dark outside.
‘I can stay until visiting time is over.’
She leaned forward, her fingers brushing his hair back from his brow. All he could feel was her tenderness. ‘I spoke to Mr Saunders. He says that everything went well, and your leg’s going to be fine. Now close your eyes and rest.’
He wanted to stay awake but the drugs in his system were dragging him back into a state of drowsy half-consciousness. The last thing he remembered was holding her hand in his, pressing it possessively against his chest.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JON WOKE THE next morning to find that his eye was throbbing, his leg was in a cast, and pretty much every bone in his body ached. And there was a note from Chloe on his locker.
Today is Saturday.
Jon smiled. He’d been wondering what day it was, and Chloe had clearly anticipated that.
I’ll be coming to see you this afternoon. Hannah picked some clothes up from your house yesterday and they’re in your locker. If I find you’ve not been doing as you’re told, I’ll fill out the forms to have you restrained.
Jon wondered whether Hannah had broken in when she’d gone to collect his things, and decided he didn’t care. Chloe was coming, and she could threaten him with whatever she liked. He needed to get out of bed.
He leaned over, reaching for the controller for the bed, just managing to grasp it between the tips of his fingers. Once he was sitting up he felt a little better, and a cup of tea from the breakfast trolley consolidated the improvement. If he lowered the height of the bed a little, he could reach the locker door, and he found a couple of T-shirts, a hooded top and some sweatpants stacked neatly inside.
‘Hey...’ One of the nurses, whom he knew by sight, was marching across the ward towards him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Mobilising.’ He gave her a smile and she ignored it.
‘Ah. Not playing with the controls on the bed, then.’ She picked up the remote, and hooked it on the end of the bed, out of reach.
‘Nah. I wouldn’t dare.’ He tried the smile again, and this time the nurse grinned back. ‘But I would like to get out of bed. Have a wash and get dressed.’
‘I don’t know. You’re not supposed to...’
But he was going to. Jon knew exactly what he wanted to say to Chloe, and he couldn’t say it like this. He needed to get back on his feet, and the sooner he started, the sooner he’d get there.
‘Please.’ He flashed the nurse his most winning smile. ‘I promise I won’t overdo things.’
‘All right. Stay there, I’ll go and get a wheelchair.’
* * *
Jon couldn’t help watching the doors of the ward and as the hands of the clock closed on the number twelve he operated the controls of his bed to put him as close to a sitting position as possible. It was crazy. Chloe wouldn’t be here this early. She might not be here at all, in which case he’d go and find her, as soon as he was able. But when the first group of visitors came onto the ward she was one of them, a large bag slung over her shoulder and Amy in her arms.
‘You’re dressed. And sitting up.’ She grinned in approval.
Amy was looking at him intently, and Jon wondered whether his swollen and bruised eye was frightening her. He covered it with his hand and smiled at her, his eye throbbing with pain.
‘Hurt... Kiss it better.’ She looked enquiringly up at Chloe.
‘Yes, sweetie. You want to kiss it better?’
Amy nodded, and Jon held out his hands towards her. Chloe delivered her into his arms, and he hugged her tight.
‘Careful, now, sweetie.’ Chloe caught Amy’s reaching hand just before it connected with his face. ‘We have to be very gentle with him.’
Amy seemed to understand. Stretching up in his arms, she planted a kiss on his cheek, and Jon struggled to keep his composure.
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