Holding Out For a Hero

by Caroline Anderson

  She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged again. ‘If you must. I warn you, it’s untidy. Housework’s never top of my to-do list somehow.’

  His smile felt crooked. ‘Nor mine. I promise not to run my finger over the furniture. Now, go and do what you have to do, and then we’ll go and get you checked out.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Ben, I can drive myself.’

  ‘I don’t think so. There’s the small matter of your windscreen, for a start.’

  ‘My…? The monsters!’

  ‘Shoo,’ he said gently, and pushed her towards the open bathroom door. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  She wasn’t long, and while he waited he wandered around her sitting room, picking up photos, books, scanning her CD collection scattered across the floor in front of her sound system—eclectic taste, he thought—and then he found a photo of her, abseiling.

  Oh, hell, he thought, and then realised that after her attack she wouldn’t be able to do it, and he felt a surge of relief. He’d forgotten all about it, but now he didn’t have to worry. Well, not about that, anyway. He put the photo down and looked around, studying the slightly chaotic but nevertheless warm and friendly room that Meg called home.

  His own flat in London was like a hotel room, cold and unwelcoming and sterile. Safe, he thought, and was busy telling himself that he didn’t want to live like Meg when she reappeared, looking pale but determined.

  ‘Right. Let’s go.’

  He frowned at her uniform, but she stared back at him defiantly and he gave up. He had no rights over her—hell, he didn’t want rights over her. This week had dragged his emotions every which way to Sunday, and absolutely the last thing he needed was to get involved with Meg.

  So he ushered her downstairs, dragged her away from her furious cataloguing of the insults heaped on her car, and took her to the hospital, where he handed her over to Angie and gave Pete and the camera a quick rundown of what had taken place.

  Then she appeared looking a little miffed and gave them a crooked grin.

  ‘OK, guys, if you want to shadow me I’m on Triage, so Rae may find she’s got her work cut out. Sorry, Rae, but Angie won’t let me do anything more strenuous. I just have to sit here in this little room and interview people about their injuries and put them into categories.’

  ‘Like grading apples,’ Ben said with a grin.

  ‘Just so. Think you can bear the tedium?’

  He nodded. ‘Absolutely. I think a nice quiet morning is just what the doctor ordered. I’m with Angie on that one.’

  And so they were sitting there, Ben on the edge of the desk beside her chair, Steve in the corner, Rae outside with Pete interviewing the patients as they arrived and getting the OK, when a gang of youths straggled in.

  Beside him, Meg stiffened, and Ben picked up on it instantly. ‘Know them?’ he murmured, and she nodded.

  ‘I should do,’ she said softly. ‘They’re the scallies who worked me over this morning. Let them come in. Steve, can you film them, please?’

  And reaching for the phone, she called Security.

  Her heart was pounding, but Ben was amazing. He strolled out into Reception, grinned at the boys and introduced himself, told them what the film crew were doing and stationed himself firmly between them and the door. And when Security turned up in the form of two burly young men in uniform, coinciding with the arrival of the police who’d arrived to interview her, the youths were trapped.

  They tried to get away, arms swinging wildly, but the cocktail of drink and drugs they’d taken had left them utterly uncoordinated, and between the boys in blue and the film crew, they were squashed in seconds.

  ‘I gather you know these lads,’ the policeman said to Meg, busily trussing them up with nylon ties and lining them up on the seats in a mutinous row.

  ‘We’ve met. Hello again, boys. Trashed any cars lately?’

  ‘Are they definitely the ones?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Without doubt.’

  ‘Could you identify the one who hit you?’

  She scanned them again and nodded at the ringleader.

  ‘He’s the one,’ she said. ‘He’s probably got a bruise on his hand.’ As he made a run for it Ben grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘I don’t think so, sunshine,’ he said, and was rewarded by him vomiting on the floor at his feet.

  Meg leapt backwards out of range and tutted. ‘I should make you clear that up,’ she said, distaste in her voice. ‘I don’t like it when people do that—most particularly not when they’ve just trashed my car and beaten me up.’

  She turned away, her stomach churning. ‘I’ll get them checked over and then you can take them away,’ she said, and left Ben standing holding the ringleader at arm’s length and looking as if he’d like nothing more than to punch his lights out.

  Half an hour later the lads had been checked over and taken into police custody—the ringleader with a broken knuckle, courtesy of her car keys against her ribs—and her statement had been taken and the department restored to normal.

  ‘Right. Back to Triage,’ she said, and smiled at the waiting masses. ‘Sorry about that, everybody. OK, who’s next?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘YOU must be out of your mind!’

  ‘Why? I’ve got a bruised rib and a graze on my knee. I’ll be fine by Saturday, Ben.’

  His heart sank. There’d been a glimmer of hope…

  ‘What if you find you’re not, halfway down that building? I think you’re being silly.’

  ‘No, I’m not. It’s important. We need a 3-D ultrasound for the hospital. It would be mainly for Maternity, but if we could have access to it for use in trauma cases and for diagnostic purposes it would be wonderful. And there are a whole lot of other charities if you don’t like that one. Anyway, I don’t see why you’re so bothered about whether I do it or not. You can’t bottle out anyway.’

  ‘Oh, watch me,’ he growled.

  ‘Ben, you can’t,’ she said, her voice determined. ‘There are so many people sponsoring you—and Pete will have a fit. It’s just the sort of photo opportunity he loves.’

  He sighed. Oh, well, determined or not, she couldn’t make him do it. He’d just cough up a couple of hundred quid and that would be that, and Pete could go to hell. He wouldn’t let a mere slip of a woman shame him into doing something so stupid.

  Would he?

  ‘I still don’t think you’ll be up to it,’ he said, hanging on to the thread of hope like grim death, but she just laughed.

  ‘You’re so transparent,’ she teased. ‘Just because you don’t want to do it.’

  He didn’t, but he was beginning to realise there was no choice. Like it or not, and he certainly didn’t, this persistent little woman had got him committed. Still, there might be a trade-off.

  ‘What are you doing on Saturday night?’ he asked.

  She blinked. ‘Saturday night? What I usually do—watching telly.’

  ‘No hot date?’

  She laughed. ‘Who with? No man in my life, and I’ve grown out of clubbing with the girls. The only hot date I’m likely to have is with a bubble bath.’

  Just the thought was enough to send him into hyper-drive. ‘I’ll do you a deal,’ he said, concentrating on the core business and summoning up his rapidly dwindling courage. ‘I abseil down that blasted building with you, and you come to a function with me in the evening.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘A function?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What kind of a function?’

  He sighed and scrubbed a hand round the back of his neck. ‘The programme’s been nominated for some stupid award. There’s not a prayer of us winning it, but we have to dress up like penguins and go along and look suitably impressed.’

  ‘You make it sound so appealing.’ She chuckled, and then tipped her head on one side and looked searchingly at him as the penny dropped. ‘Are we talking TV-style Oscars here?’

  He nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said wr
yly. ‘And I really, really don’t want to do it, but Pete’s threatened me with death so I don’t have a choice, and they’ll all be there with their other halves.’

  ‘So you need a partner for the evening—some decorative little bit of fluff to smile in all the right places and keep her mouth shut. Why me? There must be hundreds of beautiful women lining up to be seen in public with you—take one of them.’

  ‘Hardly hundreds—well, not that I know about, anyway, and nobody I’d choose to spend the evening with. My notoriety seems to go to their heads. I want someone with me who can talk to me, not just use me as an excuse to pose for the cameras. I can’t stand fluffy women with more looks than brains. I want someone ordinary—’

  ‘So you thought of me,’ she said wryly. ‘Well, wow, cheers. At least I won’t get the wrong idea—not after you’ve explained it so carefully.’

  He sighed and dragged his hands over his face. Hell, this was going so horribly wrong. He tried again. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. You aren’t going to be fazed by the media attention, the last thing you’ll do is drool over me, and we could do it as part of the programme.’

  ‘You mean it’s work, so none of your regular girlfriends will get jealous?’

  He sighed again. ‘You really are determined to take this the wrong way, aren’t you? There are no regular girlfriends—no any sort of girlfriends. There’s no one in my life.’ Not since…

  She grinned, and he realised she was teasing. ‘Ben, I’d love to come. I don’t care why you’re asking me, I can’t think of anything more fun to do. The bubble bath just doesn’t measure up. So, thank you for your gracious invitation. I accept. Especially as it means I have to dress up. And that means shopping. I wonder what Fliss is doing tonight?’

  ‘He said what?’

  ‘He wants someone ordinary.’

  ‘And he thought of you?’ Fliss hooted with laughter. ‘Oh, poor, deluded man!’

  Meg pulled a face and prodded the froth on the top of her coffee. ‘He meant it. He really thinks I’m ordinary. He certainly doesn’t fancy me. If he did he would have—’ She broke off, but it was enough. Fliss was on it like a terrier on a rat.

  ‘He would have what?’ she asked, leaning forward, her eyes sharp with curiosity.

  Meg sighed. ‘Kissed me. On the beach. He was just that close…’ She held her finger and thumb up, a fraction apart, and sighed again. ‘I really thought…’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Fliss said slowly. ‘Oh, Meg. You really are in love with him.’

  There was no point in denying it, so she nodded. ‘I know. Stupid, isn’t it? So you see, even though he thinks I’m ordinary, I still have to go, because it’s all I’ll get of him, and I can set the video recorder and stash the memory and live on it for the rest of my life…’

  She broke off and fiddled with the froth, giving it much too much attention, until Fliss took the spoon firmly from her hand and set it down.

  ‘Meg? Does he know how you feel?’

  She shook her head. ‘Of course not. And I still have no idea why he gave up medicine. Has Tom got any further with that?’

  It was Fliss’s turn to shake her head. ‘No. You know men. They don’t talk about stuff that matters. Apparently Ben moved away because Tom’s first wife was coming on to him, but that’s all they’ve talked about. To be honest, they’ve both been too busy, and Ben tends to keep himself to himself.’

  ‘I think he does rather too much of that,’ Meg said pensively, then shook off her reflective mood. ‘Come on, this won’t get my dress bought, and I’m going to be on national television. It needs to be good.’

  She pushed her coffee away and stood up. ‘Where to first?’

  ‘I got my dress.’

  Ben frowned in puzzlement. ‘Dress?’

  ‘For the award ceremony? We are still going, aren’t we?’

  ‘Oh—that dress. Good. Yes, of course we’re going.’

  She tipped her head on one side and studied his face, but it was its usual unrevealing self. ‘Having second thoughts?’

  ‘About the abseiling? Try third and fourth. About the awards do? Absolutely not. Believe it or not, I want you to come. And I’m really sorry I put it so badly. When I said ordinary, what I meant was normal—and I’d be privileged to have you at my side.’

  He sounded sincere enough, to her relief, because if he’d bottled out she’d have to take the dress back, and that would be a shame. Not nearly as much of a shame as not getting to spend the evening with him, though. She couldn’t think about anything else, and the anticipation was killing her.

  ‘Privileged, eh? You don’t have to go that far!’ He opened his mouth but she held up her hand to stop him. ‘No. Don’t say anything to spoil it. Privileged is fine, and I can even cope with normal. What time are we leaving?’

  ‘Four?’ he suggested. ‘Kick-off is at seven, and we’ll need to change at the hotel when we get there—-it’s more convenient than my flat, and I haven’t been there for ages, so goodness knows what it’s like, and the company’s booked rooms at the hotel anyway.’

  Her heart hiccuped. Rooms, as in a room for each of the team to share with their partners, or a room each for her and Ben? It wasn’t clear, and it wasn’t a problem anyway, if they were only using them to dress in. Or were they? Perhaps she ought to know. ‘Are we staying overnight?’

  ‘I’d thought so. Is that a problem? I’ll drive you back the following morning. You start late, don’t you?’

  She nodded her head. ‘Yes. I’m working today, and tomorrow morning, then I’ve got tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning off. I don’t start till twelve.’

  ‘And this fiasco you’ve dragged me into?’

  She grinned. ‘We’re abseiling at one. We’ll be finished by two, so that will be fine. We can leave after that.’

  He pulled a face, so she smiled at him and patted his cheek. Mistake. The slight roughness of stubble went straight to her nerve endings—all of them—and left her tingling and aware. Stupid, stupid girl, she thought, and took a step back out of range of his aftershave.

  Suddenly the prospect of spending not only the evening in Ben’s company but possibly the night as well was doing crazy things to her heart. She ought to ask about the room, but for some reason she didn’t want to. If he didn’t mean them to be together and had got her a separate room, then so be it. And if by the end of the evening they did want to be together, she’d let fate take its course.

  Dangerous, she warned herself. So, so dangerous. Sunday was the last day of filming, the last time they’d spend together. She’d be crazy to get any closer to him just before he disappeared out of her life for ever.

  Insane.

  Desperate.

  ‘RTA coming in—two casualties, both male drivers. No other vehicles involved. Can we have you in Resus, Meg?’

  She turned to Tom and nodded. ‘Sure. Coming, boys?’

  It was good and dramatic, Ben thought, watching Steve zero in on the gore and Pete go pale. A nice open fracture, with protruding bone and lots of groaning from the patient, and Meg doing her soothing hand on the fevered brow thing while she checked the drips, inserted another IV line and explained to the camera what was going on.

  Tom worked in silence, apart from requests for tests, issuing instructions to the team and explaining things to the heavily sedated patient, and Ben had to admit it was a seamless exercise.

  Behind them Nick Baker and Angie were working with another team on the other casualty, and the hum of activity punctuated by the beeps and hisses of the machines was exactly what the programme required.

  Ben hated it, but because Meg seemed to realise how hard he found it, she was explaining everything without a prompt, and he didn’t have to say a word until it was all over.

  Then, because Pete would expect a debriefing and it was easier to give him what he wanted, Ben went through the injuries with Meg.

  ‘He’s got a fractured tibia—his shin-bone,’ she explained. ‘That was what
you could see sticking through the skin, but the fibula, the little bone beside it, is also broken.’

  ‘And when the orthopaedic registrar pulled it out straight—what was that for?’ he asked, knowing the answer full well but going through the motions for the viewers.

  ‘To restore the circulation to the foot as a matter of urgency, but it’ll need surgery to realign the fragments and correct the deformity caused by the fracture. He’s gone to Theatre now, but because the skin was broken they’ll put on an external fixator, a sort of frame to hold it in place from the outside, a bit like scaffolding. It’s better done that way from an infection point of view and it’s the best way to locate all the fragments and pull them into line.’

  ‘And how long will he be in hospital?’

  She shrugged. ‘A few days, maybe a week or two at the most. Probably less. You can mobilise fairly quickly with an external fixator, depending on the degree of trauma and the number of fragments and any other injuries.’

  ‘Could we go up to the ward and meet him later?’ Ben suggested, and she shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly. Could be interesting to see it—and also Andy Johnson with his reattached hand. I’ll find out for you. Maybe when I go off shift.’

  She turned to Steve. ‘Right, lose the camera. I’m on my break and I don’t need watching while I eat breakfast! Ben? Are you coming?’

  He fell in beside her, switching off both their mikes and following her down the corridor.

  ‘Neatly done,’ he said with a wry laugh. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘One of the coffee-shops. There’s a little one at the back of the hospital which the staff seem to have taken over.’ She shot him a thoughtful look. ‘Are you OK?’

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘I’m fine. It’s the machinery—the teamwork, the noises, the smells—all of it.’

  ‘And it brings it back.’

  He stopped in his tracks. ‘Meg, back off,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘If you’d only tell me—’

  ‘Well, I won’t. Leave it—please, just leave it, or I’ll…’

  ‘What? Run away again?’