‘Just before the long summer holidays one year he had a nasty tumble. His leg…’ she gestured ‘…his head. But it was nothing too serious.’
Iosef excused himself for some air, and Annika looked at her hands, sometimes at the door, and once or twice at Ross. When he went and sat beside her he gave her hand a little squeeze, and when he started to remove it she held it back. She kept holding it till they moved Aleksi up to ICU.
‘Levander’s flying over from England,’ Iosef said, as he clicked off his phone in yet another waiting room.
‘He moved there when he got married,’ Annika explained. ‘That is when Aleksi took over the company.’
Her face was as white as chalk, Ross noted. When she came out from seeing her brother, he saw her fingers go to her temples.
‘Can you take me home?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will you tell my mother for me?’
‘Of course,’ Ross said, though he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. He turned to Nina. ‘Annika’s not feeling great; I’m going to take her home…’
Nina shot up from her seat. ‘You need to be here—for your brother.’
‘I am here for my brother,’ Annika said. ‘But the doctor said it is going to be at least forty-eight hours.’
‘If he gets worse…’
‘I have said everything I need to to him,’ Annika said, and suddenly her eyes held a challenge. ‘Have you?’
‘You should stay.’
‘I can’t.’
She was so white he thought she might faint, and he put his arm around her.
‘Can you give them the phone number?’ she said.
He frowned.
‘Your phone number at the farm—my phone battery’s flat.’
‘I’ve got Ross’s number,’ Iosef said, and he gave his sister a small hug. ‘Look after her,’ he said to Ross.
‘I will.’
Ah, but Nina hadn’t finished, because Nina hadn’t yet got her way. ‘If you had any respect for my daughter you would not flaunt this in front of her own mother.’
‘I have so much respect for your daughter.’ It was all he could say, the only way he could respond and remain civil, and it was also true. He had so much respect for Annika—and never more so than now.
A few hours in her mother’s company was enough for him.
Annika had had a lifetime.
He took her to his car, held her hair when she threw up in the bin, and then stopped at the all-night chemist for headache tablet and a cold drink too. He promised himself as they drove home in silence that he would never question her, never ask for more than he needed to know, and that if she didn’t trust him, then that was okay.
He trusted himself. For the first time he trusted himself with a woman. Trusted that he would do the right thing by her, always, and that one day, he was sure, she would see it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘WHAT time’s your flight?’
A massive backpack was half filled in the living room, and only then did she remember that he was going to Spain tomorrow. She looked up at the clock and amended that to today.
‘It just got cancelled,’ Ross said. ‘Family crisis.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’ She meant it—she would be okay. She was making decisions for herself, seeing things for herself. She didn’t need Ross to get her through this.
‘I want to,’ Ross said, and though she didn’t need him, she wanted him.
‘You need to find your family.’
‘I think I just did.’ Ross grinned. ‘Heaven help me.’
‘She is difficult.’ Annika had had two headache tablets and a bath, had refused a cup of coffee and asked for a glass of wine. ‘I don’t know if I love her, Ross. I am trying to work it out.’
‘You will.’
‘Can I ask something?’ He nodded. ‘What do you think will happen with Aleksi?’
‘As a doctor, or as a friend?’
‘Can you be both?’
‘I can try,’ Ross said, and he did try. He stood for a full minute, trying to separate the medical from the personal, then trying to put it back together. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘As Seb said, we won’t know for a couple of days yet…’ He hesitated, then made himself continue. ‘If he can hang in there for a couple of days, that is. He’s been unresponsive since they found him. I spoke to him,’ Ross said, ‘before I came and got you, and I don’t know, I can’t prove it, it’s more gut than brain, but I think he heard…’
He almost hated the hope that flared in her eyes, but what he had said was true. ‘I think he was a little bit aware.’
‘I want to go to bed.’
‘Okay—you have my room. I’ll sleep on the couch.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ve got some explaining to do,’ Ross reminded her. ‘I was supposed to be apologising about Imelda, the clothes…’
‘I accept.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘If it’s okay with you, I would like you to make love to me.’
‘Okay…’ he said slowly.
‘I don’t want to think about today,’ Annika explained. ‘And I know I can’t sleep.’ Her very blue eyes met his. ‘And I’m not really in the mood to talk.’ She gave him a very brief smile. ‘And you’re very good at it.’
‘You’re a strange girl.’
‘I am.’
‘Impossible to work out.’
‘Very.’
‘But I do love you.’
‘Then get me through this.’
His love was more than she could fathom right now, its magnitude too much to ponder, yet it was something she accepted—a beautiful revelation that she would bring out and explore later. Right now, she gratefully accepted the gift.
And Ross took loving her very seriously too.
He had never felt more responsible in his life.
He wanted his kiss to right a thousand wrongs, but no kiss was that good, no kiss could. He wanted to show her how much she meant to him.
She couldn’t believe she had asked for sex.
Was it wrong?
Should she be sitting with her mother, being seen to do the right thing?
Did she love her brother less because she was not in a room next door?
She was dreading the days that would follow—the pain, the vigil, the hope, the fear—and she knew she had to prepare, to rest, and to get strong for whatever lay ahead.
His kiss made her tremble. It shocked her that even in misery she could be held, kissed, made to feel a bit better, that she could be herself—whoever that was.
He kissed her so deep, slow and even, and when she stopped kissing him back he kissed her some more. He kissed her face, her neck, and then her breasts, and then he kissed her mouth again.
His bed was a tumble.
There was music, books by the bedside, and a dog scraping on the door down the hall.
But there were coffee beans in the fridge and there would be warm eggs in the morning.
There was a soft welcome any time she wanted it.
And she wanted it now.
He took her away, but he let her come back, and then he took her away again.
She had a fleeting image of being old, of a nurse wheeling her into the shower as she ranted about Ross.
Let me rant.
She coiled her legs around him.
Let me rant about the night when I couldn’t survive and I came to his home.
She lost herself in a way she had never envisaged.
She lost herself, and this time she didn’t hold back—she dived into oblivion. She swore she could smell the bonfire as she felt the magic and the gypsy in him.
He brought her back to a world that was scary, but there was music still playing, and Ross was beside her, and she knew she’d get through. Then she did something she hadn’t been able to do at the hospital, that she so rarely did—she cried, and he held her, and it didn’t make things better or worse, it just released her.
‘I�
�m sorry about my family.’
She poured it all out, and it probably didn’t make much sense, but she said sorry for the past, and the stuff that was surely to come, because Zakahr Belenki knew the truth and so must others. Between gulps she told him that it was only a matter of time, warned him what he was taking on if he was mad enough to get involved with her.
‘You don’t have the monopoly on crazy families.’ Ross grinned. ‘Do you remember meeting mine?’
This made her laugh. Then she stared out of the window and thought about Aleksi. She couldn’t be more scared for him if she tried.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘That you need curtains.’
‘He’ll be okay.’
‘You don’t know that.’
But he did.
And so he told her—stuff he had never told anyone.
He told her about intuition, and that some of the stories about gypsies were real, and that, like it or not, she was saddled with someone who was a little bit different too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE WOKE her at six, saw her eyes open with a smile to his, and then the pain cloud them as she remembered.
‘No change,’ Ross said quickly. ‘I just called Iosef.’
‘We should go.’
All she had was her uniform, or a suitcase of clothes that belonged to Imelda.
So she settled for his rolled-up black jeans, and a lovely black jumper, and a belt that needed Ross to poke another hole in it—but she did, to her shame, borrow Imelda’s boots.
They drove to the hospital. Annika was talking about Annie, how good she had been with her father. It was this that had first made Annika think about nursing. It was a little dot, but it went next to another dot, and then she told him about Elsie. One day he would join up the complicated dots that were Annika.
Or not.
It didn’t change how he felt.
‘It’s going to be difficult these next weeks,’ Annika said as they neared the city. ‘Mum will want me to move home. I can just see it…’
‘You do what you have to.’
‘She’s so determined that I give up nursing.’
‘What do you want, Annika?’
‘To finish my training.’
‘Then you will.’
They were at the hospital car park now.
‘She’ll want me there, back in the family business, away from nursing.’ They were walking up to ICU. ‘I’m so much stronger, but I’m worried that once I’m back there…’
‘You’ve got me now,’ Ross said. ‘Whatever you need, whatever might help, just say.’
And that helped.
It helped an awful lot.
It helped when they got to the hospital and Nina was so tired that she was the one who had to go home, with a few of the aunties too. Annie was ringing around for a hotel nearby.
‘Use my flat,’ Ross said, and handed them the keys.
It helped when she kissed him goodbye and went and took her position next to Aleksi and held his hand. She told him he’d better get better. It helped to know that Ross was in the building—that he wasn’t at all far away.
Every minute of every day was made better knowing that Ross Wyatt loved her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BEING a doctor brought strange privileges.
It brought insight and knowledge gleaned when a person was at their most vulnerable, and it weighed heavily on Ross. He loved Annika, which meant he cared about Aleksi.
And, he didn’t want to keep secrets from Annika, but, like it or not, he knew something that she didn’t.
He had spoken with his colleague, Seb, who had revealed that Aleksi had refused any attempt to discuss his past. Ross considered, long into the lonely nights while Annika was at her mother’s, if perhaps he should take the easy option and just leave it.
Then one day, checking in on a patient in the private wing of the hospital, Ross saw the Kolovsky clan leaving. The door to Aleksi’s room was slightly open. A nurse was checking his obs, but apart from that Aleksi was alone.
Ross walked away, and then turned around and walked back again just as the nurse was going out.
‘How are you doing?’ He wasn’t offended by Aleksi’s frown as he attempted to place him—after all, they’d met only once, and Aleksi was recovering from a head injury. ‘I was in Emergency when you came in.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t remember, then,’ Aleksi said
‘I’m also a friend of Annika’s; I was at the charity function. Ross Wyatt…’
He shook his hand.
‘Annika’s spoken about you,’ Aleksi said, then closed his eyes and lay back on the pillows. Just as Ross thought he was being dismissed, as he realised the impossibility of broaching the subject of Aleksi’s old injuries, Aleksi spoke, though his eyes stayed closed. ‘How is Annika doing?’
‘Okay.’
‘She’s moved back home?’ Aleksi asked.
‘Your mum was upset, with the accident and everything. She wanted Annika close.’
‘She should be back at her own flat.’ Grey eyes opened. ‘Try and persuade her…’
‘Annika will be fine,’ Ross said, because that much he knew. ‘You don’t need to worry.’
‘For her, I do.’
‘Let me do the worrying on that score,’ Ross said, and Aleksi gave a small grimace of pain as he tried to shift in the bed. Ross saw his opening. ‘That’s got to hurt. I saw the X-rays…’
‘I’m going to bleep for ever going through security at airports,’ Aleksi said. ‘I’m full of wires and pins.’
‘It was a bit of a mess.’
‘So, are you an emergency doctor?’
‘No.’ Ross shook his head. ‘I’m a paediatrician. I was just in Emergency when you came in—and I broke the news to Annika. She asked me to find out more.’ He held his breath in his lungs for just a second. ‘I was trying to get more information for her. I was speaking to Seb when he was looking over your X-rays.’
‘The emergency consultant?’ Aleksi checked, and Ross nodded. ‘He was up a couple of days ago to see how I was doing.’
And then Aleksi looked at Ross, and Ross looked back, and the conversation carried on for a full two minutes but not a single word was uttered. Finally Aleksi cleared his throat.
‘What happens to patient confidentiality if I’m not your patient?’
‘You still have it.’
‘Even if you’re screwing my sister?’ Aleksi was savage for a moment, but Ross was expecting it—even if Annika’s brother was a generation older than Ross’s usual patients, his reaction was not dissimilar.
‘I’m a doctor,’ Ross said. ‘It’s my title at home, at work, in bed; it’s not a badge I can ever take off. Some conversations with your sister might be more difficult for me—I will have to think hard before I speak, and I will have to remember that I know only what she chooses to tell me—but I’m up to it.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Aleksi closed his eyes and Ross knew he had been dismissed. Inwardly cursing, he turned to go, wondering if he’d made things worse, if he could have handled it better, if he should have just left well alone. And then Aleksi’s voice halted him.
‘It was only me.’
Ross turned around.
‘You don’t have to worry that Annika was beaten.’ He gave a low mirthless laugh. ‘She had it tougher in many ways. My father was the sun, my mother the moon, and they revolved around her. She had the full beam of their twisted love, but they never laid a finger on her. It was just me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ross said, because he was.
‘It was my own stupid fault for knowing too much…’ He looked up at Ross. ‘Every family has their secrets, Ross,’ Aleksi said, ‘and Levander thinks he knows, and Iosef is sure he knows, but they don’t….’ He gave a thin smile at Ross’s frown.
‘Annika told me…’ He faltered for a moment. ‘Some…’
‘About Levander being raise
d in an orphanage—and my parents conveniently not knowing he was there?’
Ross nodded.
‘That isn’t the half of it. And I’ll save you from future awkward conversations with my sister by not telling you. Suffice to say I know more than any of them. That’s why my father beat me to within an inch of my life, and that’s why my mother, instead of taking me to hospital, kept me at home.’
‘Any time,’ Ross said. ‘Any time you can talk to me. And I promise I’ll keep it confidential.’
He’d had enough. Ross saw the anger and the energy leave him, knew Aleksi had revealed all that he was going to—for now.
It was almost a relief when Annika walked in, for a quick visit at the end of her shift. She smiled and frowned when she saw Ross with her brother.
‘I thought I’d see for myself how he was doing,’ Ross said by way of explanation. ‘I was just saying to Aleksi that he looks a hell of a lot better than he did last time I saw him.’
‘I was wondering why they’d sent a paediatrician to see me.’ Aleksi gave a rare smile to his sister. ‘I didn’t realise at first it was your boyfriend.’
‘Boyfriend?’ Annika wrinkled her nose. ‘He’s thirty-two.’
And Ross laughed and left them to it.
He nodded to a colleague in the corridor, chatted to Caroline when he got back to the ward, and then he went into his office and closed the door and sat there.
The cleaner got the fright of her life when she came in to empty the bin and he was still there, in the dark.
‘Sorry, Doctor. I didn’t realise you were here. Do you want me to turn on the light?’
‘No, thanks.’
And he was alone again, in the dark.
With Annika he might always be in the dark.
Might never know the full truth—what she knew, what Aleksi knew… It was like a never-ending dot-to-dot picture he might never be able to join up.
Buena onda. He felt what it meant this time—that vibe, that feeling, that connection. Finally he had it with Annika, and it belonged with Annika.
An ambulance light flashed past and Ross looked around his office. The blue and red lights from the ambulance danced on the walls. He realised he wasn’t completely in the dark—there were shades and colour, the glow of the computer, a chink of light under the door, the streetlight outside, the reflective lights of the hospital foyer.
Knight on the Children's Ward Page 13
