by Becky Wicks
‘Who says so?’
She was silent, then she rolled her eyes. ‘Me, I suppose. And Renee. She knows something’s up between us and she doesn’t need any more encouragement.’
‘Something’s definitely up,’ he said, casting his eyes for the briefest of moments down to the red shorts he was still wearing.
She laughed, and groaned again, but didn’t exactly object when he put both hands beneath her ass and pulled her swiftly onto his lap. In fact her legs wrapped around him instantly, as did her arms. For a second he forgot the stinging pain still shooting around his stitches.
Her palms came up against his cheeks before moving to his hair. She gripped it in bunches and let out a deep sigh as she pressed her head to his. ‘What am I doing?’
‘Anything you want to.’
He ran his hand through her damp hair as her knees sank into the bed either side of him. He wanted her so badly. He’d seen genuine fear in her eyes when she’d faced him in the water after his accident. She’d been trying not to show it, taking control and switching to nurse mode almost instantly, but he could read her changing moods like chapters. They’d never stop caring for each other, no matter what happened or didn’t. The love they’d felt clearly hadn’t gone away—it had simply been locked up for a while.
Her knees gripped his middle, straddling him on the bed, and it was she who kissed him first.
They’d used to kiss like this for hours, but they didn’t have hours right now. In minutes their clothes were on the floor. They were still kissing wildly, running their hands all over each other on the bed, when a flash of pain made him wince and crumble.
Sara scrambled off him quickly. ‘Oh, God, your stitches—are you OK?’ She looked traumatised. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m good,’ he managed, even as he throbbed all over...and not just from the stitches.
She was laughing now a little—embarrassed, maybe—standing on the floor in just her blue bikini bottoms. ‘You need to start the antibiotics,’ she told him, leaning over him again on the bed and putting a hand to his chest.
Her cheeks were red and flushed. They’d been about to make love; he’d been about to get a condom. He brought his hand to her face, urging her back down on the bed, but pain flashed through his leg again and he grimaced.
‘Fraser, I’m telling you—at least take an ibuprofen.’ Sara stood back, started pulling on her clothes. ‘I’m going to get more bandages—I have to re-dress that.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He breathed through the pain as it stabbed like knives.
‘You’re so stubborn.’ She buttoned up her dress, shooting him a wary look. ‘Anyway, I know we do this to each other, but it’s not a good idea, Fraser—you know that.’
‘No, I don’t know that.’
‘God, I don’t even know what I’m doing after all this time. I keep making this mistake...’
‘This is not a mistake, Cohen,’ he told her resolutely. His leg was throbbing. If only she would stop with this nonsense. ‘Don’t tell yourself these things are mistakes. You’re allowed to have some fun, aren’t you?’
She froze.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he added quickly. ‘I mean, yes, we have fun, but...’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She wriggled her flip-flops onto her feet and swept her hair up onto the top of her head in a messy bun. She looked and sounded tired, more than angry.
‘Call this fun, if you want, Fraser. Call it whatever you want. It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? Once we leave this ship we’re never going to see each other again.’
Fraser stood. He was naked now, right in front of her, and he didn’t miss her eyes sweeping his entire body before she closed them and appeared to restrain herself.
‘Start the antibiotics,’ she ordered, turning for the door. ‘Or that’s going to get worse.’
He strode ahead of her quickly, through a surge of pain, and put a hand to the door, keeping it shut. ‘You really think I’d be doing this with you if I never wanted to see you again?’
She looked away, gnawing on her lip now, at his shoulder height.
‘Sara, please talk to me.’
‘I don’t see how we even could, Fraser. Our lives are completely different now. You’re going back to your surgery in Edinburgh; I’m taking Esme back to London...’
‘Why do you always have to make excuses?’
‘What do you mean, always?’ She blinked at him. ‘It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth. I have a sick daughter who needs me every hour of every day that I’m not working, and sometimes even when I am. I can’t just gallivant around the world when I get home, doing what I like, where I like, with you. I need a plan.’
Guilt raged through him as she moved his hand from the door. He opened his mouth to tell her about the plan—the plan he’d set in motion. The plan that might not make it to fruition, which would then make her feel even worse. He shut his mouth again.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, kissing his cheek, then flinging open the door and leaving him standing there, naked.
He hopped back behind it, wary of unsuspecting eyes. She was driving him crazy.
He crossed to the coffee table, where his laptop was open, pulling on his shirt and boxers as he went, being careful not to aggravate his stitches. Dropping to the couch, he dialled into the ship’s private Internet connection. Only a few people had access and he was one of them. Maybe it would be here now—the good news he’d been praying for.
He pressed ‘inbox’, and when the messages had downloaded—surely slower than when the Internet had first been invented—there it was, finally.
It was not good news.
The transfer centre needed something else from him. Luckily he could sort it out once they reached Antigua, but it meant he couldn’t take antibiotics. He couldn’t have them in his system if he had to do more tests.
Frowning to himself, he pulled on clean shorts, wincing at the pain. This was the toughest job he’d ever had to do.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘SO, I’M GOING to tell you about my robo-kidney,’ Esme explained.
Marcus was enthralled. He’d been waiting patiently for the chance to see what made Esme so special since the start of the cruise. It had been tough finding the time and space to entertain him in the dialysis unit, but Sara had promised Esme.
‘First I weigh myself. Today’s weight is sixteen point five. Then I take my temperature. Ninety-eight point four, which is good.’
Sara smiled to herself. Esme was enlightening Marcus as best as she could about all the wires and tubes and beeps. Her daughter knew the procedure by heart, of course—something that impressed Sara and pained her all at once. Would there ever be a day when they wouldn’t have to go through this?
‘Then they take my blood pressure, and a little bit of blood from my lines. They hook me up to the dialysis machine.’ Esme patted it with one little hand. ‘Which is what they call my robo-kidney. See these two tubes?’ She pointed at them, one by one. ‘The red one takes the blood and the machine cleans it, and the blue tube puts the blood back in.’
‘So why can’t you eat ice-cream?’ Marcus asked. His brow was furrowed as he stood there studying the dialysis machine with interest, looking at all its buttons and tubes.
Sara masked a small laugh, putting a hand to his soft brown hair. After all this technology and machinery; and after seeing Esme’s catheter and lines every day, still all the kid really cared about was why she couldn’t eat ice-cream.
‘No one should eat ice-cream in the middle of the night—especially when they’re supposed to be in their beds.’
‘Dr Fraser!’ Esme trilled in delight as he appeared in the doorway.
Sara had her back to him, but at the sound of his voice, all the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
‘Hey,’
she said, turning around. He stepped into the dialysis room, holding up a hand. The sight of his tall, broad frame made her heart start to beat a little faster under the harsh lights.
‘What’s going on in here, Spielberg? Where’s your camera?’
‘Mummy says I can’t bring it into the dialysis room any more.’
Fraser’s blue eyes fell on Sara as he stepped towards them. ‘Mummy is probably right—a lot of private things occur in rooms like these.’
Sara swallowed involuntarily. She couldn’t help remembering what was underneath his clothes...the way she’d left him standing naked as she’d flung open the door.
She hadn’t really seen him much since she’d left his cabin the other day. The medical centre had been ridiculously busy and she’d been roped into attending a parent/child picnic and sleepover in her time off. But of course Fraser had been on her mind constantly.
She’d been ready to make love to him. She’d been caught in the moment, relieved that Trevor’s damn jet-ski hadn’t sliced off his beautiful head. But him being in pain had made it not the right time and she was glad now, because she was already getting too close to him. So was Esme.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked him, busying herself with tidying away some equipment.
‘How is your leg?’ Esme asked him before she could.
‘I had to pull three fish out of it this morning,’ Fraser told her, pulling a face.
Both she and Marcus giggled. The sound made Sara smile.
Esme motioned for Fraser to move to a chair and made a thing of examining his chest with a broken stethoscope Sara had given her earlier.
Fraser looked as handsome as ever in his white coat—a look completed by his trademark sneakers, ideal, like her own, for gripping a swaying deck. His hair was less dishevelled than she’d seen it last, when she’d rammed her hands through it while kissing him passionately. There was no other word for it than passion. They’d always had that in spades.
The thought made her hot again. Damn him.
‘Your heartbeat is strong,’ Esme was telling him now.
‘Good to hear it.’ Fraser put his hand to his heart. ‘Can you hear any more fish swimming around in there?’
Esme pressed the stethoscope to his belly button. ‘I can hear a jellyfish!’
Fraser pretended to look horrified. ‘Oh, no! What about sharks?’
Marcus clapped his hands. ‘He’s full of sharks!’
Sara leaned on an empty bed, watching them. ‘How are the stitches really?’ she asked now, stepping towards him on the chair.
‘Totally fine,’ Fraser said, too quickly. ‘Healing nicely already. I was actually wondering if we could just...’
‘Let’s have a look?’ Sara noted how Esme shuffled up closer to get a better look.
‘I’ve looked plenty of times myself, Nurse,’ Fraser said, clearing his throat somewhat anxiously. ‘How about we check for more sharks inside me, huh?’
He went to take the stethoscope from Esme, but Sara took it herself and put it behind him on the counter. He sounded as if he really didn’t want her looking at his leg. His tone had put her on guard immediately.
‘Esme, go and play with Marcus—his mum is waiting outside.’
‘Do I have to?’
Sara raised her eyebrows. She was surprised that Esme even wanted to see anything like this without her camera to record it. She’d told her not to film so much. She was only going to go home and make her watch all this footage of her and Fraser over and over, torturing both of them.
‘Show me,’ she commanded him now, getting down on her haunches in front of Fraser as the kids ran from the room.
‘If you insist.’
He started rolling up his jeans. Her fingers brushed lightly through the hair on his lower calf, his warmth making her heart increase its pounding. She looked into his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her now.
Something was definitely up. She knew him too well. But she knew not to push him, too. She re-dressed the wound in silence, before the Tannoy summoned them both back to work.
* * *
‘How long have you been having these headaches?’
Sara fixed the bed around the young Irishman. His fiancée had sent him in a panic after he’d blacked out on a sun lounger, and she was more than concerned for his well-being already.
‘On and off for about a year. I thought they were just stress headaches, because of my wedding.’
The guy was in his late twenties. His name was Conor, and he looked guilty the second he said it.
Sara put a hand to his forehead. ‘What do these headaches usually feel like?’
‘Like someone’s stabbing me in the frickin’ eyeballs.’ Conor grimaced in pain. His voice was breathy, faint. ‘I haven’t had one in a while, so I thought the cruise would be OK. But the casino just now...all the lights and the noise. I had to lie down. Can you give me some painkillers? I’m sure it’s nothing worth wasting your time over.’
‘The lights and noise made it worse?’ Fraser was listening to their conversation in obvious concern and Sara met his eyes. They both knew this wasn’t good.
‘Sometimes I see flashes behind my eyes too.’ Conor was still holding his head.
‘How long have you had these flashes?’ Sara asked him.
‘They started a few months after the headaches did, I think.’
‘Have you been to your doctor at home about this?’
‘No. Like I said, with the wedding plans, and then this cruise to celebrate my mam’s sixtieth, there’s been a lot going on.’
‘Your health should come first,’ Sara told him. ‘Do you drink?’
‘No. I used to.’
‘Why did you stop?’ Fraser asked, stopping his notes. ‘Did it make your headaches worse? And the flashes?’
Conor looked at him in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘Lucky guess.’
Sara watched as Fraser reached for the ophthalmoscope, stood beside the bed and shone the light into Conor’s eyes one by one. When he examined his left eye, Conor cried out in pain.
‘Oh, Jeez, that’s worse. Can you please just give me something.’
‘Worse when you look to the left?’
‘Yes. Much worse.’
Fraser put the ophthalmoscope down while Sara attached the blood pressure cuff around Conor’s arm. ‘Have you had any other problems lately? Any pains? Any blood in your urine? Anything like that?’
The colour had drained from Conor’s face now. ‘Yes, a little... I thought it was because I ate too much steak.’
‘Blood pressure is normal. Is it just your head that hurts right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long ago did you last see blood in your urine?’ Fraser asked.
Sara instructed Conor to turn and applied pressure slowly down his left side. When she pressed lightly on his kidneys, Conor winced.
‘Yeeow, that hurts! The last time I saw blood? I don’t know—a couple of days ago, I think. I forgot about it.’
‘I don’t want to panic you,’ Fraser said, keeping his voice low. He glanced at Sara again. ‘But we need to run some tests. You’re showing signs of polycystic kidney disease, and with your headaches combined you’ll need to be checked for brain aneurysms.’
‘What?’ Conor looked distraught.
Sara felt her mouth turn dry. A cruise ship was no place for this poor man. Over fifty per cent of people with aneurysms died when they ruptured, and even without the test Conor, with his wedding on the cards, was showing all the signs of having one.
‘What’s an aneurysm?’ he was asking Fraser now. ‘I mean, you can treat that, can’t you?’
Fraser shook his head. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, pal, we can’t. It’s deadly serious.’
‘Deadly?’
‘It’s a weakness in the wall of one of your brain’s blood vessels,’ Sara explained, putting a steady hand on his arm. ‘When the blood runs through your brain, the weak spot pushes that thin wall outwards, which forms a bulge—a bit like a balloon with too much air inside it.’
Conor’s eyes were round as she continued.
‘If it ruptures, the blood can leak out into your brain tissue—which is not good at all. We need to get you to the hospital as soon as possible; we can’t help you here.’
‘Oh, Jeez, my mam will have a fit,’ he moaned, seeming to forget his own pain for a moment.
It never failed to upset Sara that so many people experienced disturbing symptoms like blood in their urine and blinding headaches and still couldn’t find the time to seek medical advice.
They were almost at Antigua now, and thankfully another storm had passed them by with nothing but a bit of heavy rain, enabling smooth sailing. Still, there was the rest of the day to go, and the open water wasn’t an ideal location to be dealing with a suspected advanced aneurysm.
‘We’ll need to monitor you here until we get to Antigua,’ Fraser explained as Sara went for an IV. ‘You’ll need to see a neurologist there for an MRI scan. You have insurance?’
‘Of course.’
Sara breathed a sigh of relief. That was one good thing, at least. They’d managed to save poor Enid and her husband a health insurance nightmare by not calling for medevac, but if a situation was a matter of life or death, as this one was, they’d have no choice.
‘We’ll give you something for the pain, for now, but you should probably think about cancelling any flights you have booked for the meantime...’
‘I can’t do that. I’ve so much to do back home. Are you saying I might get stuck on the next island? Ouch.’ Conor clutched at his skull again.
‘That depends on what the neurologist there has to say,’ Fraser told him, moving the IV closer for Sara. ‘But you can’t fly like this. You’re lucky nothing happened on your flight out to the US—it might have exacerbated the situation.’
‘This is a nightmare.’ Conor gripped both sides of the bed as Sara hooked him up to the IV.