Falling for Her Wounded Hero

by Marion Lennox

  ‘So...Rhonda and Hilda...’ he said at last. It was almost the first question he’d been able to ask. She’d been all brisk efficiency, checking his medical supplies, watching him—as if she wasn’t sure could manage—climb into the car, then turning towards Bill’s like a homing pigeon. It was as if she’d been a doctor here for years.

  ‘They came to see me in London,’ she was saying. ‘They told me you were in trouble.’

  ‘They had no right.’

  ‘They had every right.’ Her voice softened. ‘Eighteen months ago Cray Point was here when I needed it. So were you, but if we’re taking the personal out of it then I’m paying back Cray Point.’

  ‘So you just dropped everything...’

  ‘As you dropped everything for me. I didn’t leave anyone in the lurch, as you didn’t. Next question?’

  He sat back and tried to think of questions. He had a thousand.

  He couldn’t think of any.

  And she had the temerity to grin. ‘Very good, Dr Blake.’

  ‘You want to say “Good boy” and pat my head?’

  Her smile widened. ‘Not yet. You have two months of behaving yourself before you get any elephant stamps.’

  ‘Behaving myself?’

  ‘Doing what the doctor says. Lots of rest. Lots of rehabilitation. Rhonda says you should be going to physio daily, but you won’t leave Cray Point with no doctor. She also says you hurt more than you let on, and that you’re not sleeping.’

  ‘How does she know?’

  She chuckled. ‘Their intelligence system is awesome. I’m to report back.’

  ‘Maybe you should stay somewhere else,’ he said, but her smile didn’t slip.

  ‘Maybe I should, and I can, if you want privacy. All I care about is that you can get to rehab. What you do is your business as long as you’re tucked up in bed when your doctor says you should be.’ She considered for a moment and then added. ‘Probably by yourself? I’m willing to bet that nights of endless passion aren’t what your doctors are ordering.’

  They weren’t. He stared down at his weak leg with loathing.

  ‘Nights of passion aren’t exactly on the agenda,’ he said through gritted teeth, and she chuckled again.

  ‘I’ll give you your elephant stamp for that one. It’s this street, isn’t it?’

  Cray Point was an historic fishing village perched on a high headland. A few of the older houses were built at the foot of the cliffs, with narrow flights of steps twisting down to their entrances. They were a nightmare to access, increasingly owned and maintained by holidaymakers who didn’t mind a few weeks of carting groceries down a hundred steps. Bill was one of the last fishermen living in one.

  ‘History?’ she demanded as they pulled to a halt, and somehow Tom pulled himself together and told her that Bill was an unstable diabetic.

  ‘He’s put on a power of weight since he stopped fishing, though heaven knows how he manages it when he has to come up and down these steps. He’s had diabetes for years but he lives on fish and chips and beer, and takes his insulin when he feels like it. He’s had more than one hypo. I suspect one might have contributed to this fall. He has peripheral nerve damage to his feet.’

  ‘Yikes,’ Tasha said. ‘Okay, you stay up here and direct the ambulance.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  She grinned again, an endearing grin that if he wasn’t so frustrated he might even enjoy. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘But you may be useful. I’ll ring for advice if I need it.’

  ‘Why does that sound so patronising?’

  ‘Because Rhonda and Hilda say you need patronising,’ she told him, and before he could begin to realise what she intended she leaned across and kissed him. It was a feather kiss, the merest brush of lips against his nose. Why it had the power to pack a jolt as fierce as an electric charge...

  But she was out of the car and in the back seat, fetching his doctor’s bag, before he had a chance to analyse it.

  ‘See you later,’ she told him. ‘Be good.’

  He was left in the car to glower.

  * * *

  Bill had fractured his ankle. She suspected he also had fractured ribs. His blood sugar was so low it was a wonder he wasn’t unconscious and it took skill to get him stabilised.

  If she hadn’t been here the outcome might have been fatal, she thought as she worked, and as Brenda, the district nurse, came bustling down the steps and immediately starting to berate Bill for living in such a dumb place, she was sure of it.

  ‘Leave him be,’ she said gently. She’d packed him with insulating sheets to keep him warm. She had a drip up and drugs on board and she’d given him enough glucose to get his sugars up but he was drifting in and out of consciousness regardless.

  ‘And Doc shouldn’t be out,’ Brenda scolded. ‘There he is, sitting at the top of the steps, and it’s cold. You should make him stay home.’

  That warranted an inward smile. She’d been in Cray Point for an hour and already she was being treated as part of the furniture. That’s what it was like to be needed, she thought. There’d been a gap here and she’d slipped seamlessly into it.

  ‘Tasha?’ It was Tom.

  She’d conceded his need to know and had left her phone on speaker. Tom might be up the top of the cliff, but in spirit—and in voice—he was right there.

  ‘Yep?’ She was adjusting the drip, wondering whether it was worth trying to move him inside.

  ‘The ambulance is five minutes away,’ Tom told her, and she relaxed a little. Bill’s breathing was starting to get shallow. Shock, or something more sinister?

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘You’re worried.’ He’d got it, she thought. Her one word must have contained a thread of concern.

  ‘Nothing we can’t handle,’ she said brightly. Bill was looking up at her, dazed. The last thing she wanted was to frighten him.

  ‘He looks like death, Dr Blake,’ Brenda breathed. ‘He looks awful.’

  And Tasha gave her a glare that would have curdled milk.

  ‘He does.’ How to turn this around? ‘He looks like he hasn’t washed for days and he smells like dead fish,’ she told Tom. ‘Bill, I don’t know what you’ve been doing but I suspect the first thing the nurses do in their nice clean hospital is give you a wash. Nurses are fussy about who they put between their sheets.’

  Amazingly Bill managed a faint chuckle and Tasha chuckled, too, and then they settled back to wait for the ambulance.

  * * *

  She was stunning.

  He sat in the car and directed the paramedics down the steps when they arrived and he felt the weight of the world lift from his shoulders.

  She’d come from half a world away to help him.

  He wanted to be down those steps instead of her, he thought, and then he thought, no, he wanted to be down there with her.

  Tasha.

  He’d thought of her almost every day since she’d left. He’d thought of tapering off the dumb, newsy emails he’d sent her but sending a photograph of a grave without a note seemed wrong, and somehow the contact seemed important. He was family and he had to show he cared.

  And here she was. Family. Caring.

  The thought did his head in. He was the carer and yet she’d abandoned her life and come to help him.

  The paramedics brought Bill up the steps strapped onto a stretcher and Tom eased himself out of the car to greet him. To his amazement, Bill was recovering his good humour.

  ‘Practically don’t hurt at all now, Doc,’ he told him. ‘Tasha fixed me right up. She’s a good ’un and she says she’s staying till you’re better. Cray Point’s lucky. You’re lucky.’

  Behind him, Brenda was talking to Tasha, and he realised his nurse was outlining home-care visits for the next day.
r />   ‘Hey,’ he said, interrupting Brenda’s riveting account of Doris Mayberry’s leg abscess. ‘I haven’t employed Tasha yet.’

  And Brenda looked astonished. ‘What do you mean, you haven’t employed her? She’s here to work and we need her. What possible quibble could you have?’

  Quibble? He tried to think of any.

  ‘Do you have registration to work in Australia?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Tasha told him.

  He couldn’t think of anything more to say. It was starting to rain. He stood in the drizzle and watched as the paramedics loaded Bill into the ambulance and Brenda listed all the urgent things she had for Tasha to do.

  He’d never felt more helpless in his life.

  At last the ambulance drove away. Brenda gave a cheery wave—‘See you tomorrow, Tasha!’—and he was left with Tasha.

  She returned to his car—to the driving side—climbed in and looked out at him.

  ‘Aren’t you getting in?’

  He did. He had to use his hands to heave his weak leg into the car and that made him more frustrated still.

  ‘You will go surfing,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rhonda and Hilda told me you hit your head on the rocks, surfing. Why don’t the Blake boys choose nice safe hobbies?’

  ‘Like macramé.’

  ‘Macramé’s good,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Though needles can be sharp.’

  ‘Tasha...’

  ‘Yes?’ She’d started the car and was heading for home. For his place.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come.’ It came out as a snap and he winced, but she was smiling, amused rather than offended.

  ‘Of course I should. You need me, but, then, you’re a Blake boy so you think you don’t need anyone.’

  He wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘I can’t sit back and watch you work.’

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ she said equitably. ‘And you’re not going to. Rhonda and Hilda gave me a list of the rehab routine you should be following. The most important thing to do after a head injury is to get your body back to what it was, fast, before the damage can’t be reversed. So medical emergencies are for me to deal with, not you.’

  He stared. ‘You’re not bossy!’

  ‘What do you mean, I’m not bossy?’

  ‘When you were here before. You were...’

  ‘Traumatised?’ she suggested for him when he didn’t come up with a word. ‘Of course. That’s what I was when you knew me.’ Once again her voice gentled. ‘But I’m not traumatised now, Tom, and you are. That’s what I’m here for. You were my support person. Now I’m yours.’

  There seemed nothing left to say. He stared out at the rain-swept road and felt things shift inside him that he’d had no idea could shift.

  This was Tasha, a widow, the mother of a baby who’d died. She was battered by life and she’d needed him in the most desperate of circumstances.

  Now she was here to help him, but that wasn’t what was throwing him. Or not so much. What was throwing him was that she looked...like Susie?

  No. She looked nothing like Susie but there was a common thread. The women he dated were beautiful but, more important, they were self-reliant.

  Tom Blake didn’t need women. He’d trained himself not to need them. He’d seen the heartache his father had caused when he couldn’t commit himself to a long-term relationship and Tom didn’t trust himself not to do the same. He’d never understood how people committed themselves to a monogamous relationship. He liked people—he liked women—too much.

  The women he dated knew it. He was always honest. Cray Point had a limited pool of single women but there were enough. Divorcees. Older women who loved the idea of dating but who’d been burned before. Of course there were women who thought they could change his mind but he was honest from the start.

  His mind couldn’t be changed and he knew it. He had no intention of hurting anyone as his mother had been hurt. So he stepped back and he never dated anyone he thought was the least bit vulnerable.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t attracted, though, and the woman beside him now...

  Was his stepbrother’s widow. Was out of bounds.

  Why? She was beautiful. She was competent. She seemed like she was taking over his life as he knew it.

  She seemed almost...fun.

  That was a weird concept but it was the one that sprang into his mind and stayed. Since the accident his life had been grey, filled with pain and boredom. He hadn’t had the energy to keep up with past relationships or start another. But now there was Tasha...

  ‘The first thing we need to decide is where I live,’ she told him.

  ‘Where you live... You really intend staying?’

  ‘I told Rhonda and Hilda I’ll stay as long as you need me, and one look at you tells me you’ll need me for a while.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Tom, you do need to admit you need help. Your left leg’s dragging. There’s a faint slur in your voice, and did you know your smile’s lopsided?’

  He wasn’t smiling now. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not, and without rehab you risk not being fine permanently. You know that. Surely it’s just commitment to the medical needs of this town that’s stopped you focusing, so I’m not leaving. Rhonda and Hilda say I can use their cottage. They have cats, which their next-door neighbour is currently feeding, and cats make me sneeze, but I’d rather sneeze than interfere with your love life.’

  ‘I don’t have a love life.’

  ‘And that was inappropriate. Sorry.’ She was serious now. ‘Tom, when I stayed with you last year I was shocked and numb and I was very, very grateful, which is why I’m here now. But I’m no longer shocked and numb and if Susie or anyone else is on the scene, or if you simply want privacy... Be honest, Tom. If you’d like me to stay at Rhonda and Hilda’s I’ll make a deal with the cats. There are two bedrooms. They can have one, I can have the other.’

  ‘Stay with me.’ To say he was disconcerted was an understatement and his voice came out a growl, but she smiled.

  ‘So you’re happy for me to stay until that limp disappears?’

  ‘I seem to be stuck with you.’

  ‘That’s gracious.’

  It wasn’t but she was looking amused, and that disconcerted him even more.

  But he was behaving like a bore. She’d come a long way to help him. He needed to get his act together and be grateful.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Tell me you haven’t messed with your career path or given up your holidays for the next ten years to come here.’

  ‘I haven’t.’ Her voice softened. ‘Tom, I’ve just reached the end of my contract and to be honest I was thinking of changing workplaces anyway. This gives me time to consider where I’ll go next.’

  ‘Back to your work with Médicins Sans Frontières?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I need to think and Cray Point is as good a place to think as any. Your house, or Rhonda and Hilda’s place with cats? It’s up to you, Tom, but be honest, if you’d rather I’m out of your hair then Rhonda and Hilda’s it is.’

  ‘If you stay at my place you’ll boss me,’ he said, and that grin flashed out again, the grin he hadn’t known she’d possessed until today.

  ‘Of course I will. Exercise, exercise, exercise. I’ve made a commitment. I’m staying until you’re recovered and I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life in Cray Point.’

  ‘There are worse places to stay.’

  ‘There are,’ she agreed. ‘But the problem is that Cray Point comes with a Blake boy and this is messing with another vow. And that’s to never have anything to do with anyone resembling a Blake boy ever again.’

  ‘You’re labelling me with my brother an
d father?’

  ‘I surely am,’ she said cordially. ‘And I intend to keep doing so. Believe me, it’s the only safe thing to do. So you can do what you like. Our lives shouldn’t mesh—just as long as you do your rehab.’

  * * *

  He lay in bed that night and thought of the gift she’d given him. The freedom to get himself back to normal.

  What was normal?

  Nothing felt normal any more.

  His body had once been what he was. When he’d wanted to move, his body had moved. When he’d wanted to surf, run, put himself in peril hauling people out of crashed cars, make love, his body had come along with him. It had done what he’d demanded of it, no questions asked.

  But now it was like his body belonged to one of his patients—not him. Since that night when a blinding headache had suddenly seen him crash, limp, helpless, his body had seemed separate from what he was. The sensation had been terrifying.

  What he should have done—and he knew this—was stay away from Cray Point and put his all into rehab. He should be working with his body until it felt like it belonged to him again. Only in some weird way that’d be acknowledging that his damaged body had control, not him. His body would be dictating that he leave Cray Point without a doctor. His body would be dictating what he could and couldn’t do.

  So he’d hunkered back down in Cray Point. Dating had stopped. Everything had stopped but work while he fought for control again.

  And now here was Tasha, proposing a course of action it was sensible to accept but which meant he was out of control again.

  He was being dumb. Paranoid. Hers was a magnificent gesture and he should accept it with gratitude. But to calmly sit back and let her take over his life...

  That was an overstatement.

  He closed his eyes and fought for sleep but it wouldn’t come. He felt like he was flailing, almost as helpless as that first day in Intensive Care, when he’d realised his arm and leg wouldn’t respond to his commands.

  How could Tasha make him feel like that?

  Control...

  It had been his mantra all his life. He’d seen the emotional mess his father had caused. He’d seen his mother’s pain and he’d sworn he’d never cause it and never have it happen to him.