Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  Logan clutched her slender fingers in both of his big hands and Hana felt the moisture on her skin as he sweated in terror. Please let my sparrow be ok, Hana begged her God. We’ve come so far.

  Finally, the technician spun the screen towards Hana and Logan, who both looked sick with anxiety. “Meet your baby,” the woman said smiling kindly, “it all looks perfectly fine. There are no bleeds or anything that shouldn’t be there. All great.”

  Hana heard Logan let out a long, ragged breath, which he must have held for a while.

  “Would you like to know the sex of the baby?” the woman asked.

  The question surprised them. “No thanks,” Hana said. “Gosh, you couldn’t tell such things when I was expecting my older children.

  “Oh. I kinda wanted to know.” Logan looked disappointed. “I’ve never done this before.”

  At the same time, they both changed their answer and the technician laughed. “So which is it?”

  Hana turned to Logan. “What do you want?”

  He squirmed in his chair. “I dunno now. What do you want?”

  “Tell you what, I’ll write it on this piece of paper and put it in an envelope. Then you can decide when things are a bit less frantic. Ok?”

  The pregnancy was dated around fifteen weeks by the measurements of the child and the usual markers they looked for. So Hana was about right in her guess. The baby looked normal and healthy and Logan was sure he could see some thumb-sucking going on. “Is that normal?” he asked, pointing at the screen and Hana smiled to herself.

  “Yes, Izzie still sucks her thumb and so does Jas. They probably started as soon as they got thumbs.”

  They came away from the scan with Logan clutching a DVD in 3D of the baby, which Hana knew he was going to watch over and over again and several photographs. In his pocket was the sex of the child, written on a scrap of paper and pushed into a sealed envelope for them to open in private. Logan changed his mind back to ‘no.’

  Even though she felt like sleeping again, Hana still asked about going home.

  “No bloody way!” Logan laughed and she pouted like a toddler. “Tomorrow looks a possibility, but only if your arm shows no sign of infection and everything’s ok with the baby. I’m not taking any more risks with you, woman! Obviously you can’t be trusted.”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t do this on purpose!” Hana vented but Logan’s narrowed eyes shut her up instantly.

  “No, but you are one disobedient woman!” he said firmly to her. “What did you not understand about the sentence, go home and stay there?”

  Hana bit her lip and changed the subject, seeing Logan’s ready smirk. “How come there’s no plaster cast if my arm’s broken?” Her arm rested on a metal brace which supported the alarming silver rod protruding from the back of her elbow. The nurse described in glorious technicolour, how that would be filed down later on to make way for the cast. Hana didn’t want to think about it much. “I wish I hadn’t asked now,” she grumbled after the woman left the room.

  Pete wandered in during the early evening. He sported a number of impressive bruises across his forehead.

  “Oh,” Hana remarked in surprise. “I thought they hit you twice on the back of the head. I bandaged up two cuts on your crown.”

  “You did these!” he exclaimed venomously and Hana’s face dropped. Logan got to his feet threateningly and Pete dropped the attitude. “You did them…I got them when you rescued me from the garage. I did them on the dashboard when you put me in the car upside down.”

  “She had a broken arm, jerk!” Logan’s voice came out as a low hiss and Hana felt the tension in the room hike up dreadfully. “You’re lucky she bothered to bring you out at all.”

  Pete spun round and pointed at a big padded plaster on his crown where the worst gash was. “You didn’t do this one though,” he capitulated. “But if you’d do as you’re told occasionally, that wouldn’t have happened either.” He seemed subdued and not at all Pete-like. Hana felt wracked with guilt. Logan’s face was dark and forbidding and Hana bit her lip nervously.

  “Pete’s upset because you got to go to the plush private Bramwell and he had to go to casualty and then home after a two-hour short stay,” Logan said, not taking his eyes off Pete’s face. “Jerks don’t get nice hospitals.” Logan stared at Pete with a strange emotion on his face and his old friend looked quickly away.

  “Oh, hello everyone!” Henrietta bustled in after parking the car and straight away saw the baby monitor, knowing immediately what it was for and showering both parents with wet kisses and noises of excitement. At which, Pete got even sulkier and was taken home.

  Hana was astounded when Pastor Allen arrived, having been invited by Logan. He brought grapes and his bible and a cheery smile. If he noticed the baby monitor he chose to ignore it, until invited. After making small talk and glossing over what happened, he offered to pray for Hana. “Somebody up there must be paying attention,” he quipped, “even if the authorities down here aren’t.”

  Logan sat in the chair with his head bowed. Hana knew this because she peeped and so did Pastor Allen. He was told in seminary to pray with his eyes open. Because when God decided to move, it would be a terrible thing to miss it.

  At one point, both Hana and the pastor were peeping and not praying and Hana stifled a giggle. To both their amazement Logan picked up the thread, “Thanks God, for listening to me last night. Thanks for saving my wife and baby. I know it’s probably because you already know them and not because you know me, but thanks anyway.” He then added, “Logan Du Rose,” onto the end of the prayer with a flourish like finishing an email or letter and Hana smothered a snort.

  She had no idea why she found it funny. Maybe it was the morphine. The moment was huge but also sadly awkward. Pastor Allen seemed to take it in his stride, but suddenly looking shifty, went over and closed the door to Hana’s room.

  To her amazement he unloaded two giant chocolate bars from his coat pocket and from somewhere else inside, a couple of bags of salt and vinegar crisps and two cans of cola. Hana watched in amazement as the man of the cloth operated rather like Ye Olde English pickpocket, disrobing to reveal two squashed sausage rolls from inside his waistcoat. Logan looked thoroughly in awe of the pastor, uttering only one word, in genuine gratitude, “Choice!”

  “I know aye,” the pastor sniggered. “Praise the Lord!”

  Pastor Allen handed the booty over, a little reluctantly when it came to the squashed sausage rolls, teasing Logan about not eating crap if he was ever going to play soccer for the church team. Hana didn’t usually imbibe fizzy drinks, but the stuffy heat of the hospital made her want it as soon as she saw the bright red logo. Logan opened one of the cans, which sputtered a bit in protest over its inelegant treatment inside the Pastor’s coat and it was a little warmer than the optimum desired temperature. It was refreshing despite the difficulty of drinking it through a straw.

  “Oh, pardon me,” Hana slapped her good hand over her mouth as a giant burp escaped her starved gullet. “Oh, do excuse me, I can’t seem to stop.”

  Logan was on the floor mopping up the excess pastry from the flaky sausage roll when Hana’s nurse pushed through the door with the medicine trolley. She screeched to a halt on the polished floor but was neither cross nor snippy with him when she saw what he was doing. She went outside and came back with a dustpan and brush. Pastor Allen displayed his incredible ability to stay out of trouble by picking that exact moment to leave, looking pointedly at his watch, waving generally to the room and then scarpering. Hana sat up slightly, watching his retreating back moving quickly down the tiled corridor. Even from that distance, the patch of chocolate on the rear of his jacket made her smile. Evidently he purchased more than two chocolate bars on the way in.

  Hana watched her husband intently as his face set in concentration, feeding her the drink. He held the can with a slightly shaking hand, careful not to hurt her, or spill any. The day old beard growth gave him a rugged look and his da
rk hair flopped messily into his eyes. The grey streaks either side of Logan’s chin became more pronounced the longer his stubble grew. It distinguished him somehow rather than aging or lessening his sex appeal. He was lean and athletic, his grey eyes and jet-black lashes striking in his olive face and Hana felt proud he had aligned himself with her, of all people, silly, clumsy, disobedient her. She reached for his wrist as he held the can of drink and laid her fingers around it. Her red hair fanned out like a halo on the pillow and her green eyes were wide and pleading. “I’m sorry for being so naughty,” she whispered and tears filled her eyes again. “I should have gone home or told you about the kitten.” She gulped. “I’ve made everything much worse.”

  “Babe,” Logan put the drink on the table tray and settled his lovely backside on the side of the bed next to her. “You’re an egg but I love you.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead and Hana smelled his comforting scent. His beautiful musky hay and sunshine smell washed over her, unmasked by aftershave or deodorant and Hana breathed it in with relief. Logan glanced across at the nurse fiddling with something on the other side of her and winked at Hana. “But next time you disobey me, I’m gonna spank you for sure.”

  Hana smiled. He wasn’t mad at her. Or if he was, he hid it well. Despite the pain in her arm, which complained more every second as the medication wore off, Hana felt a sudden sense of reassurance. An inner knowledge everything was going to be fine. The small baby aimed a fluttery kick at her stomach as the drink fizzed its way down and Hana’s brow knitted slightly, causing Logan’s eyes to widen in question. She let the straw fall and leaned back against the pillows, instantly tired. The fizzy liquid gurgled down into her empty stomach and Hana wondered if it sounded like an avalanche to the baby.

  The nurse used the cannula in her good arm to administer the painkiller and Hana, smiling across at her gorgeous husband with a beatific smile, felt the vice-like grip of pain recede and slipped happily into an easy doze.

  Hana Du Rose

  Chapter 32

  The sleep lasted a few hours until Hana, disoriented and physically unbalanced tried to sit up in her hospital bed unaided. She wasn’t properly awake, which was possibly why she pulled the cannula from her arm causing a spurt of blood to leak across the white sheets. Logan was ordered home for some sleep and a much needed shave, otherwise he may have been able to prevent his wife’s uncomfortable meeting with the ward sister, who was not at all pleased to find a patient wandering aimlessly towards the exit doors in a hospital shirt open at the back.

  Hana’s blood pressure inexplicably hiked too high, accounting for her pounding heart and irrational need to escape. She was put back to bed and reattached to the monitors and drips, into which a hastily summoned doctor added some powerful sedative. A nurse gingerly replaced her delicate arm in the brace and they pondered the strange behaviour of her blood pressure. “It’s probably the drugs,” the exhausted medic concluded and the nurse agreed.

  The clattering of trolleys and medicine cabinets along the shiny lino in the ward, jolted Hana awake at seven with a bad headache and the bone in her arm hurting unbelievably. She could hardly wait for the arrival of the wheeled medicine cabinet, whose tablet delights could possibly take away the stabbing pain in her elbow. She felt grumpy and rottenly out of sorts, hardly surprising considering the last few days. “I hate hospitals,” she grumbled to the good natured nurse, who smiled benevolently at her.

  “Yes but look at the man you get to go home with.”

  “That’s true,” Hana conceded. “I guess he makes it all worth it.”

  Hana quickly skulled the two round white tablets and a small amount of water, hoping for an instant fix. It wasn’t to be. Instead, her arm was bandaged tightly to the metal brace and she was permitted to get out of bed and wheel her drip to the bathroom. If Hana was hoping for privacy, she was sadly disappointed. A uniformed nurse accompanied her, helping to push the drip across the room and only leaving Hana when she was safely seated on the toilet. “This is very undignified!” Hana complained to her reflection in the mirror opposite her. “What are you looking at?” she asked the tousle headed banshee with the huge green eyes who glared back at her.

  When the nurse failed to return, Hana decided to push her luck and have a well-needed wash. She felt disgusting and finding packs of flannels and new soaps in a line on a shelf above some fresh towels, she grabbed two. Hana scrubbed her face left-handed, mortified as the formerly white facecloth absorbed her left-over makeup. She looked around for somewhere to hide the now, peach coloured cloth and settled on a linen basket in the corner.

  The whole process proved difficult one-handed, but Hana gratefully scrubbed wherever she could reach and used another three face cloths. Logan had at some point, brought fresh clothes for her and Hana felt an overwhelming desire once she was clean, to get out of the hideous gown and into something of her own. “That bag has your clothes and crap in it,” Logan helpfully pointed out the previous night, jabbing his finger at a bag by the bed. Hana was desperate for the clothes and very interested in the crap.

  Poking her head out of the door, Hana found the room still void of nursing staff. Dragging the drip behind her and supporting her arm carefully, she lurched for a carrier bag nestling against the bedside cabinet. She hauled it into the bathroom and pulled the door closed. Then she uttered an annoyed groan. Wrong bag. Packets of potato chips and some chocolate bar wrappers piled out onto the frighteningly clean bathroom floor. Back she went again to the room, grabbing like a sneak thief at a sports bag pushed under the bed. The drip snagged on the bed leg making a clanging sound which was bound to raise interest and not content with just that, the plug popped out of the wall socket and thwacked against the metal bed frame. “For pities’ sake!” Hana exclaimed. The monitor hanging underneath it flashed its lights and then went off.

  Hana moved as quickly as she dared back into the bathroom, noticing with horror the line of thick scum collected on the side of the sink, in the grey cooling water she washed in. She felt embarrassed and swished the water round and pulled the plug with her good hand. Poor Hana managed with considerable difficulty, to undo the fasteners of the robe by putting her arm behind her head and tugging at the ties. It came off easily, but then there was the problem of how to get the armhole of it over the drip stand. She got it down as far as the feet, but it stuck over the castors and wouldn’t open wide enough to go over all four at the same time. “Oh mother!” she moaned, clasping her hand over her mouth to dull the frustrated cry. So now Hana was stuck, crouched on the floor pinned by the robe, stark naked. And pregnant. “Why me?” she wailed, still muffling herself with her only partially working hand.

  The other problem was that the drip was in the uninjured arm leaving only the broken one to work with. It wasn’t going well. Hana rived the sleeve back up the stem of the drip stand until it was at shoulder height, deciding to cut her losses and at least get her underwear on in case the nurse came back suddenly. Reaching down again with difficulty, she retrieved some clean underwear from the bag, noticing gratefully Logan thoughtfully included her toothbrush and some new toothpaste in a clear wash-bag. That was obviously the crap.

  Somehow Hana managed to get her undies on the lower half, but had considerable struggles with her bra. She gallantly fitted one strap over her cast, but couldn’t compete with the drip stand on the other side any better than the robe did. Hana dove back into the kit bag for a tee shirt pair of track pants. Feeling clean and fresh as she pulled the pants on and got a whiff of washing powder, Hana felt more confident about tackling the drip again. She went around the bottom of it as she hopped on alternate feet to put her socks on, not an easy feat one-handed.

  A stupid idea formed in her head and she took no time at all putting it into action. She pulled the robe sleeve back up over the top of the drip stand and down to the drip bag. It was a genius plan. She unhooked the bag of fluid and brought it down towards her. The sleeve slipped easily over it and the robe fluttered down to t
he ground. Hana supported the fluid with the hand of her broken arm as she wrestled the other into her bra strap. So far so good. Hana eyed the tee shirt longingly. She was so close. There was just one small problem.

  The drip bag dangling precariously from Hana’s sore-arm side became lower than the tube feeding liquid into her arm. Hana noticed too late, the liquid was no longer trickling into her arm, but blood flowed down the tube and almost into the bag. She tried to jerk it quickly up again, but the action caused such a wave of agony Hana ended up bent double clutching her arm, having dropped the bag onto the floor. “Ohhh,” she groaned in genuine pain.

  The nurse re-entered the room to find her in that position, partially clad with the drip bag turning an interesting shade of pink on the floor. Hana was rapidly put back into bed. The drip bag was replaced, but not until the tee shirt was properly put onto the patient, who at least had the decency to look shamefaced.

  The nurse left the room, threatening Hana with all manner of medical mayhem if she left her bed again. “I mean it!” she said, going so far as to shake her finger at Hana. Once she left, the patient contemplated her threats seriously, as she bitterly regretted not wetting her wayward hair or cleaning her teeth. But the nurse was only gone for a few minutes and Hana didn’t fancy pushing her luck any further.

  The remote for the TV was also too far away to reach and Hana didn’t want to risk getting up again, in case she got caught and blacklisted. She could see a little bit of the view out of the window but only the tops of trees and roof gables as she was a few floors up.

  As Hana sat reviewing the last few days, her mood grew sombre. The exercise in the bathroom exhausted her more than she expected and somehow she had missed breakfast and a cup of tea. She felt thoroughly miserable. She started as a male voice disturbed her. “Mum.”