Checking her rear-view mirror again, her first thought as she saw Ciro striding down the steps at the front of the apartments was that he had come to help, that somehow he’d seen the absolute hash she was making of things.
Her second thought was devastation.
Numb now to the hooting vehicles, the mini traffic jam she had created, Harriet turned her head and looked properly at him, and her third thought hurt even more.
Utterly, utterly beautiful.
Dressed to impress in a stunning grey suit, sunglasses over his eyes, freshly shaven, briefcase in hand, he was jumping into a taxi, impatiently gesturing to the driver and heading in the opposite direction.
‘Come on, love, you could get a bus in there.’
She could hear the shouts, the hooting, but she felt numb. Completely on autopilot, she rotated the wheel clockwise, slid the car into the tiny gap and sat there. She willed herself to be calm, convincing herself that there was surely some sort of explanation, that someone must have called him urgently. He was meeting a friend perhaps and when she came home tonight, her mind would be put at rest, she’d laugh at her own insecurity. Just because she’d come home unannounced…
Burying her face in her hands, Harriet let out a low moan, tiny buried thoughts pinging into her consciousness—a hidden letter, middle-of-the-night phone calls, every nurse in the department just a little bit in love with him…
Surely it wasn’t happening all over again?
It was possibly the worst double shift of her entire life, the hours dragging on endlessly, the department horribly quiet the one time Harriet wanted it to be furiously busy, just to keep her mind off the endless questions that popped into her head. Time and again she reached for the telephone, wanting to ring to see if Ciro was back, to find out where he’d been. But time and again she pulled back, determined not to go down that road, determined to keep her faith. Just because Drew had cheated, it didn’t mean that Ciro was doing the same thing.
‘You’ve got a surprise visitor.’ Charlotte knocked on the office door where Harriet was vainly attempting to make use of the quiet evening to fill out some appraisal forms. The grad nurses were coming towards the end of their allocation and now the senior staff had the difficult task of grading them. For a stupid moment Harriet’s heart soared, vainly hoping that it was Ciro, that finally her mind would be put at ease. ‘Alyssa Harrison, she’s a patient on the adolescent unit. The young anorexic—’
‘I remember Alyssa,’ Harriet broke in. ‘Is she here now?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘She was looking for Ciro, but when I told her that he was off today she asked if she could talk to you.’
‘That’s fine,’ Harriet agreed, clicking off her pen and smiling as Alyssa walked in. ‘Hi, Alyssa,’ Harriet said brightly. ‘Come in and have a seat. AU knows that you’re down here, I hope?’
‘I’m allowed to go for a half-hour walk now.’ Alyssa tentatively took a seat. ‘So long as I stay in the hospital grounds.’
‘You must have been behaving, then! You’re certainly looking better than the last time I saw you!’
She was! Even though Alyssa was still painfully thin, that cachectic, gaunt look was mercifully gone, once-sunken eyes sparkling a bit now, and even though there was still an NG tube in place the fact she was being allowed out of the unit for short walks showed that she must be co-operating with her treatment.
‘I’m feeling better,’ Alyssa admitted. ‘It’s been hard, though. I’m forty-two kilos now. Three more kilos till I reach my discharge weight and I can finally go home!’
Three kilos maybe didn’t sound very much, but Harriet knew that the last couple of kilos were often the hardest to gain and that, despite Alyssa’s desire to go home, there would be anxiety about that, too, the outside world a scary place away from the control and counselling in the adolescent unit. The problems Alyssa had faced would still be out there, but hopefully now she’d be armed with strategies to deal with them.
‘Well, it’s good to see you so well and really nice that you popped down here to see us. Most patients forget about Emergency once they get to the ward.’
‘Actually…’ Alyssa fiddled with a small paperweight on Harriet’s desk ‘…I was hoping to see Dr Delgato. He’s been coming in to see me on Wednesdays to check how I’m doing. That’s my weigh-in day,’ Alyssa explained with a note of urgency. ‘I really wanted to tell him that I’d finally got to forty-two kilos.’
‘Dr Delgato’s on a day off, today, Alyssa,’ Harriet responded in a matter-of-fact voice, but Alyssa was starting to get teary.
‘You see, I lost 200 grams last week. I really wanted to tell him that I’ve gained…’
‘You can tell him when he gets back.’
‘Which is when?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Harriet lied, certainly not about to divulge Ciro’s off-duty roster, ‘but I’m sure he’ll come up and see you when he gets a chance. I know that Dr Delgato likes to keep an eye on patients, and if he said he’d be coming back to see you then he will.’ Glancing at her watch, Harriet gave a small grimace. ‘I really do need to get on, Alyssa, and I would think your half-hour’s probably almost up.’
If she sounded a little bit harsh, it wasn’t accidental. As much as she liked Alyssa, as much as she wanted to help, she simply didn’t have the skills or time to help adequately, and getting involved, only to pull back, could do more damage than good.
‘Damn you, Ciro!’ The words whistled out of her mouth as the office door closed, furious with him for letting Alyssa down.
‘You didn’t come up?’ Ciro gave her a quizzical smile as he came into her apartment. ‘I thought we could ring for Chinese—’
‘I ate at work.’ Flustered, Harriet busied herself wiping down her kitchen bench, which was a pretty futile exercise given that she’d only been in for half an hour and the apartment had been serviced that day. ‘It was pretty quiet this evening so we rang for a pizza. You get some, though.’
‘I’m fine.’ He was frowning slightly, clearly bemused that she hadn’t come up to his apartment or at least buzzed to say that she was back. ‘Do you want a drink or anything?’
‘No, thanks.’ Harriet shook her head and, turning her back to him, ran a cloth over the spotless sink as she struggled desperately to keep her voice light. ‘How was your day?’
‘Nice.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘You didn’t go out?’
‘No.’
‘It’s just…’ Turning, she forced herself to face him, but with a sinking feeling she already knew that he was lying. She registered the tiny nervous dart of his eyes and could hear the defensive note in his voice as he turned it all on her.
‘Harriet, what is this? I told you this morning I was just going to write a few letters, walk on the beach. Did you ring or something and I wasn’t home?’
‘No!’
‘Because I had a sleep. I was tired…’
Harriet nodded, blinking back tears, absolutely refusing to cry, scarcely able to believe that he could look at her and lie, that the man she trusted, the man she adored, the one person who really knew how bad it had been for her, could put her through it all over again.
‘I saw Alyssa today,’ Harriet said with a definite edge to her voice. ‘She was a bit upset that you hadn’t been up to the adolescent unit.’
‘Ah, Alyssa!’ Ciro closed his eyes briefly and nodded.
‘Apparently for the last few weeks you’ve been coming to see her on Wednesdays—the day she gets weighed,’ she added. When Ciro didn’t respond, Harriet carried on talking. ‘She wanted to tell you herself that she’d gained some weight.’
‘That’s good.’ Ciro’s eyes narrowed at the brittle edge to Harriet’s voice.
‘She was quite upset actually.’
‘It was my day off,’ Ciro pointed out. ‘My first day off in a fortnight. Did you explain that to her?’
‘I did, but shouldn’t you have d
one that, Ciro?’ Her eyes were accusing. ‘If you always go in on a Wednesday, then you’d surely know that Alyssa would have been waiting for you, would have spent the entire day worrying when you didn’t show up.’ She heard him suck in his breath in irritation, but ignored it. The anger that had simmered unchecked all day finally had an out, and she used it.
‘You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. You shouldn’t tell someone that you’re going to be there for them if you’re not prepared to see it through. I know that you probably meant well and that at the start your intentions would have been good. I can even understand how tempting it would have been to get her to agree to admission and treatment by telling her that you’d follow her progress. But if you weren’t prepared to see it through, you shouldn’t have started it. How hard would it have been to tell her that you were off on Wednesday this week? You, better than anyone, know how dependent these types of patients can get.’
‘I also know—better than anyone,’ he added with a distinct edge to his voice, ‘how manipulative these types of patients can get. I haven’t been to see Alyssa every Wednesday, actually. I drop by once a week, and as it turns out the last time was on a Wednesday.’
‘Oh.’ Suddenly the high moral ground Harriet had been standing on wasn’t quite so steady any more, and it slipped even further as Ciro tersely continued.
‘I spoke to her case worker on Monday and we decided that I should start stretching out my visits, that this week it would be on Thursday, next week it would be on Friday and the following week I was to miss visiting Alyssa altogether.’ He stared at her for the longest time. ‘You’re right, Harriet. That first night, when Alyssa was scared and confused and had no one, not even her mother, on her side, it was very easy to make promises, but not one of them did I make lightly. My own sister probably owes her life to a nurse in an emergency unit in America who somehow connected with her, who somehow managed to reach out to her and persuade her to take the help that was on offer. Maybe I am helping Alyssa for the wrong reasons, maybe I am somehow attempting to repay some imaginary debt, but do not stand there and accuse me of forgetting about my patients or being—’
‘I’m sorry.’ She halted him with her apology. ‘I should have known you wouldn’t have let her down without good reason.’
‘What’s wrong, Harriet?’ As direct as ever, Ciro got straight to the point. Harriet knew he probably didn’t understand what had happened, couldn’t fathom why she just wasn’t falling into his arms as she usually did. ‘This isn’t just about Alyssa, is it?’
And he was right. The problem wasn’t, and never had been, Alyssa. The problem was right here in the room and, like it or not, she had to face it. Running a tongue over her dry lips, she forced herself to face him, to answer the question in his eyes with one of her own.
‘What is it you’ve been trying to tell me these last few weeks, Ciro?’
‘Harriet.’ Ciro shook his head. ‘It’s late, you’re tired and upset. Now really isn’t the time—’
‘Oh, but it is.’ Bravely she looked at him, gave a tiny nod to tell him that whatever he had to say she was now ready to hear it. ‘You said something about us being in different places right now?’
‘Yes.’ It was Ciro raking his hand through his hair now, Ciro the nervous one, Ciro looking anywhere other than at her. ‘I never expected things to happen so quickly between us. When we kissed, I said at the time we should take things slowly. There were so many things we should have sorted out before…’ His voice trailed off and Harriet spoke for him.
‘And we probably would have…’ Harriet gave a very faint smile ‘…if some teenager hadn’t decided to go skinny-dipping. Tell me, Ciro,’ she urged softly, even though she didn’t want him to, even though she didn’t want to hear what she was sure was about to be said, hoping against faint hope that she’d got things wrong, that somehow she’d misread the huge writing that had been scrawled on the wall long before they’d even started. But as soon as he started talking Harriet’s worst fears were realised and, however expected, however gently spoken, each word was like a brutal slap to her paling cheeks.
She could see the flash of tears in his dark eyes yet, unlike Drew’s farewell speech, Harriet knew that Ciro wasn’t acting, knew that this was hurting him, too. ‘When I came to Australia I never expected anything like this to happen…’
‘But it did.’ Tears were falling now, thick, salty tears that stung as they rolled down her cheeks, and Harriet didn’t even bother to wipe them away.
‘I’m just not sure that I’m ready to settle down, Harriet. There are too many…’ He didn’t finish. His future dreams the very last thing she wanted or needed to hear right now.
‘Ciro.’ Clearing her throat, Harriet stared at him for an age before talking, somehow trying to capture that last moment in the dying stages of a relationship when it was all still just about them, tracing every delicious feature on the pages of her memory, staring deep into those dark mocha pools one final time while she still had the right to, enough intimacy still there to allow for that tiny indulgence. ‘It’s OK.’ Somehow she managed a wobbly smile, somehow she managed to smile through her tears, but Ciro knew her too well to be fooled.
‘Don’t try and pretend you’re OK, Harriet…’
She couldn’t take his sympathy.
‘Ciro.’ She said his name more clearly now, wiped the back of her cheeks with her hands and, as she’d so recently predicted, failed now to look him in the eye. ‘I’ve just come out of a long and difficult relationship. I’ve just had the demise of my marriage reported in the newspaper, passed around the hospital grapevine like a sordid game of Chinese whispers.’
‘Chinese whispers?’
She didn’t even try to explain that one! Instead, Harriet scraped together every last bit of dignity she could muster, stood five feet three proud inches tall and even managed a smile. ‘If I can deal with that, I’m sure I can cope with the end of an extended holiday romance. It’s been nice.’
‘Nice?’
‘It’s been wonderful.’ Harriet swallowed hard. ‘It was everything I needed at the time, Ciro. But now it’s over.’
‘And you’re OK with that?’ Clearly a man as divine as Ciro wasn’t quite used to a woman taking things so well. Bemusement etched his face, his voice aghast when he spoke. ‘Just like that, you want to finish!’ He stared at her as if he didn’t even recognise her.
‘As you said before, when it’s over it’s over.’ She dusted her hands together just as he had done, wincing inside as he walked towards her because if he touched her she knew she would dissolve, that the bravado would disappear like a puff of smoke. ‘You’d better go.’
‘Surely we should talk.’
‘There’s nothing left to say.’ Her eyes, her stance thankfully stopped his progress, gave her enough room to see it through. ‘It’s been a long day, Ciro. I’m tired, and I just want to go to bed. Alone,’ she added. ‘This is one book you won’t be taking down and reading again.’
‘Harriet, please!’ Ciro’s voice was hoarse. ‘Can we at least—?’
‘Be friends?’ Harriet finished the question for him with a shake of her head. ‘Let’s just settle for civil for now, shall we?’
And as Ciro walked out of her door, Harriet raised an imaginary glass, managed one final act of bravado before the world seemed to crash down around her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘YOU’D never relax, would you?’
Checking the resus equipment was a boring but necessary job, but Charlotte’s incessant chatter was already seriously getting on Harriet’s nerves and the massive clock on the wall hadn’t even got to eight a.m. yet!
‘I mean, with someone so divine you’d always know there was fierce competition. Every time you had a row, you’d know there were a zillion women waiting to step in and sympathise.’
‘Charlotte,’ Harriet said through gritted teeth, ‘a relationship isn’t supposed to be a competition. It’s not about looking fabulo
us all the time just to keep a man happy, or not daring speaking your mind just so you don’t upset him and he rushes off to someone else! It’s supposed to be a partnership, an equal, loving partnership. Now, can we please stop talking about Drew and get on with checking the equipment?’
‘But I wasn’t talking about Drew!’ Charlotte responded, apparently horrified at the mere suggestion. ‘I’m not that insensitive, Harriet. Goodness, what do you take me for? I was talking about Dr Drop-Dead-Gorgeous Delgato.’
‘Oh.’
‘Flirting with all the nurses.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet swallowed hard, suddenly wishing that they were talking about Drew.
It had been a full week since she and Ciro had broken up.
The longest, most painful week of her life.
Even in her spite, even in her desolation, the brave words she’d said to Ciro had made sense at the time. Harriet had even faintly believed them. She’d survived the break-up with Drew—surely she could deal with this!
Only in practice it hadn’t been so easy.
Working alongside him, seeing him each day, talking with him, discussing patients, even hearing the latest Ciro Delgato gossip, was proving a slow painful torture and yet, in a perverse, maudlin way, she was growing to depend on it. But for how much longer?
The question that everyone in the department was asking right now filled Harriet with dread as the answer became clearer.
Ciro was preparing to move on, the whispers about him leaving growing louder by the day. The three-month assignment might apparently be too much of a commitment for a guy like Ciro. Her fears were further confirmed as Charlotte chatted on.
‘But not for much longer, though,’ Charlotte whispered theatrically, restocking the ET tubes in the wrong order and not even attempting to put things right as Harriet pointedly pulled them all down and proceeded to replace them correctly. Harriet felt her heart plummet further, if that were possible. ‘According to my friend Becky in Admin, he isn’t even going to see out this month—he’s already handed in his notice and he’s only going to give them a week. He’s going back to Spain.’
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