by Sarah Morgan
“How serious is it?”
“Too soon to say. The wound was pretty deep and it was close to some vital organs.” And he didn’t want to think about the possibilities or he’d drive himself insane. He was about to ask if there was any more coffee in her flask when she took the cup from his hand and topped it up.
He wondered how it was that she always seemed to know exactly what he needed.
She put the flask back in her bag. “When did you last eat?”
“I don’t know. Lunch?” His memory of the day was cloudy. The last hour had eclipsed everything. “In fact I think I missed lunch. I had caffeine at some point.” One hastily drunk cup of disgusting hospital coffee that had scalded his tongue and made him question his choices.
Harriet reached into her bag again and this time put a food container on his lap. “If we’re going to be here all night, you’re going to need to eat. You fainting from hunger won’t help Susan.”
He thought back to the first night she’d cooked for him in his apartment. Before he’d known better, he’d thought it was a romantic gesture. Now he understood that, for Harriet, cooking wasn’t a gesture of romantic interest but of comfort. That first night she’d been stressed and comforting herself by cooking, but she also comforted others. Chicken soup for him. Same for Susan when she’d visited. Cookies to Glenys. The sandwich she’d brought him wasn’t her making a point that he’d ruined dinner. It wasn’t her trying to win his heart. It was her trying to make things better. “I’m not hungry. Will you be offended if I don’t eat it?”
“No, but maybe take one bite.” Her tone was soft and coaxing. “It’s duck. The bread is from a sourdough loaf I made this morning. You couldn’t make it to dinner, so I brought dinner to you although not quite in the format originally planned.”
He took one bite to please her, but after one bite he discovered he was starving. And having eaten, he felt better.
The bread was the best sourdough he’d tasted outside of San Francisco. A perfect crust and chewy center.
He glanced along the corridor, knowing it would be a while until they had news of any sort. “This is a restricted area. I’m surprised they didn’t try and stop you.”
“They did.” Her cheeks turned pink. “I may have told a lie.”
“I thought you were no good at lying?”
“Apparently I’m getting better. I said I was Susan’s cousin and that you’d called me.”
He could imagine her standing there, channeling all her energies into telling a lie. Challenge Harriet. “In that case you’ve definitely earned bad-girl status.”
“I think so.”
“There’s only one problem—Susan doesn’t have any family.”
Harriet folded her hands in her lap and didn’t move from her chair. “She does now.”
Something sprang to life inside him, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“You’re a good person, Harriet Knight.”
“I think what you meant to say was that I’m a badass, kick-ass serious piece of work.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed. Out loud. Here in the stark hospital corridor, where the air seemed to be filled with nothing but tension. “If you’re going to say those words, you need to have an expression that matches it.”
“At least I didn’t stammer. Lucky for me, badass isn’t a word I stammer over. I think it might spoil the effect. Can you imagine? B-b-badass doesn’t sound right, does it?”
He was still smiling when she covered his hand with hers.
“They told me you were hurt too. Are you in a lot of pain?”
He’d barely thought about his arm. At some point someone had checked it and dressed it. “It’s a scratch, that’s all. I was trying to stop him getting to Susan. I still can’t quite work out how he did.”
“And because he did, you’re blaming yourself.”
“It was my fault.” He ran his hand over his face. “I should have anticipated it. Should have stopped it.”
“How? Are you a mind reader? Bad things happen, Ethan. It’s life.”
He knew about life. He saw it every day, just as he dealt with the consequences of the bad things.
He wondered why she was still here, in this soulless place that no one would ever visit through choice.
She was as out of place as a gerbera daisy in a garbage heap.
“You should go home.”
“Do you want me to go? Because of course if you want me to, then I’ll go. But I thought you might like company.”
It was true that he’d barely noticed the thirty minutes that had elapsed since her arrival.
He opened his mouth to tell her she should go, but discovered he really didn’t want her to.
Something about her quiet presence made it not quite so difficult to handle.
“If you could stay,” he said, “that would be good. But it’s going to be a long night.”
She crossed her legs and settled into the chair. “I’m not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ETHAN WAS RIGHT about one thing. It was a long night.
“This is the first time I’ve been in a hospital waiting for news.” He leaned his head back against the wall.
Harriet knew he was exhausted. She also knew there was no point in telling him to leave. The same inner drive that had made him agree to take his sister’s dog, wouldn’t allow him to leave his injured colleague.
The sandwiches she’d made were gone. So was the coffee. She wished now that she’d brought a second flask.
She delved into her bag and handed him a carefully wrapped packet.
“What’s this? Don’t tell me you brought dessert?”
“In a way. They’re my specialty. Chocolate chip cookies. Eat them quickly. Men have been known to fight over them.”
“Yeah? Give me an example.”
“Two years ago at the bake sale near my grandmother’s. William Duggart and Barney Townsend almost came to blows over the last one on sale. Tensions were high. William said he’d marry me if I cooked them for him for the rest of his life.”
“And how old is he?”
“Eighty-six. Which, now I think about it, wasn’t so different from the last man I dated.”
“Unless there’s something you need to tell me about how you spent your day, I’m the last man you dated.” He took a bite of cookie. “Okay, this is good. Seriously good. I can see why William was prepared to marry you. These are enough to make any man contemplate giving up his single status.”
Except him.
She pushed the thought away. “Anything to cheer up this horrible place. I don’t know how you work here every day.”
“Normally I’m on the other end of the stress. It’s different.”
Maybe. But did that make it easier? She wasn’t convinced. “I’ve only been in a hospital a few times in my life.”
He glanced at her. “I presume one of those times was when you injured your ankle. What happened those other times?”
“My father had a heart attack. The first one was about five years ago, and then he had another one the year after that. Fliss and I were at home when we got the call that first time. He refused to see Daniel because he blamed him for the fact that Mom eventually divorced him. He refused to see Fliss too.”
“But you went to see him.”
“Crazy, I know. I kept thinking maybe he’d have an epiphany and suddenly realize he loved me. He didn’t.” She paused, surprised at herself. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“It’s the ambience.” He gestured toward the stark corridor. “There’s something about a drafty hospital corridor that encourages confidences.”
“That must be it.” That, and the fact that he was so easy to talk to.
“Sounds like you spent most of your childhood trying to please him.”
“I did. I couldn’t quite ‘get’ that nothing I did was ever going to please him. I annoyed him. Irritated him. And he wasn’t afraid to show it. The
worst time was when I had to recite a poem at school. I’d rehearsed and rehearsed. Fliss and Daniel helped me. I did it over and over again with not a single stammer. I was so proud of myself. And excited. At school I was always—” She hesitated. “I was teased for my stammer.”
“You mean you were bullied.” His tone was flat.
“Yes. I didn’t have much confidence, so the fact that I could recite this poem—I saw it as an opportunity to show everyone I could do it without stammering. I imagined the applause. The smiles. My life changing overnight. No more accidentally bumping into me in the lunch line and knocking the contents of my tray everywhere. No more frogs in my locker.”
Two nurses appeared, talking as they walked.
Ethan waited until they’d passed and the sound of footsteps had receded.
“Frogs in your locker?”
“They didn’t worry me. I like animals. But I was worried about the frogs.”
“Teasing—bullying—can make dysfluency worse so I’m guessing none of that helped. Tell me about the poem. I’m guessing things didn’t go the way they were supposed to.”
“I walked onstage, all fired up and ready to impress—”
“And?”
“And my father was right there in the front row. Fliss and Daniel were next to him looking furious and my mother had obviously been crying. We were one big happy family.”
“I’m assuming he didn’t turn up to support you.”
“No. He never came to school events. He turned up that night because he was the biggest bully of them all.” She breathed out slowly. “What he did confirmed it, although it took me years to admit that to myself. Years to admit that he didn’t love me at all. It just didn’t seem right or natural.” She felt Ethan’s fingers close over hers.
“This is one story where I’m not sure I even want to hear the ending.”
“The ending is very predictable. I saw him, turned to stone, couldn’t move a muscle and certainly not my vocal cords. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Daniel trying to catch my attention, trying to encourage me to look at him and not our father, but I couldn’t look away. And then I decided this was the perfect time to finally make him proud. If I could recite this poem, then he’d finally love me.”
“But by then you were too stressed to get a word out.”
“Too stressed to say a whole word, that’s true. I managed to repeat the first letter a few times and I was so mortified by all the giggling from the audience all the fight went out of me. Pathetic, I know.” She hated thinking about it. Even now, years later, she wished she could turn back the clock. She would have stayed on the stage and stammered her way through the whole damn thing.
“Not pathetic at all. You were—how old?”
“Can’t remember exactly. Eleven or twelve? And I made it about me. All of it. His behavior. The fact he didn’t love me. All about me. And the truth is that none of it was about me. It was never about me.” She drew in a little breath. “Took me years to realize that.”
There was a long pause.
“Eleven.” Ethan stretched out his legs. “I don’t remember much about being eleven, but I remember being thirteen and I guess it’s not much different. It was all about not making a fool of yourself. You think the whole world is looking at you and thinking about you and you’re scared they’re going to know what a mess you are inside.”
“You felt that way?” She found it hard to imagine.
“All kids feel that way. Some hide it better than others, that’s all. And it takes maturity to realize most people are so busy thinking about themselves that they don’t give a damn about what you’re doing.”
“Well, people did look at me. When having a conversation takes an extra five minutes, people tend to notice. And they’re not kind.”
“So what happened?”
“I stammered, died inside and fled from the stage. We all went home and Fliss was so furious she flew at him with a skillet. I swear she would have killed him if Daniel hadn’t dragged her away. It was hideous.”
“Sounds like it. I’m glad you had your twin and your brother.”
“Yes. It made us closer. In a way we formed a little family of our own. And we’ve stayed close.”
“I’m starting to understand what a big deal it must have been for you when your sister moved away.”
“It’s been a life change, that’s for sure. I guess I got lazy. I stopped doing some things—tough things—for myself because Fliss and Daniel would always do it for me, and they probably did it better. If we had an awkward client it was better for Fliss to deal with it than me. I was always scared that if someone was aggressive, it would bring back my stammer.”
“And then you met me, and your worst nightmares came true.”
He was more dream than nightmare but she didn’t say that. “It was good for me. My worst scenario happened. I survived. I got through it. And I got through it without calling my twin.” She was proud of that. “Not calling Fliss was almost as big a challenge.”
“Because you’re used to talking to her about everything.”
“Yes, and then she worries and tries to protect me. Which is great, except that I would rather protect myself. And maybe I’m not going to do it in the same way she does—”
“Beaning someone with a skillet, you mean?”
She smiled. “Her methods do tend to be physical, that’s true.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “We see it here too. Abuse. Not always easy to spot. Even harder to do something about, but we try. That night you came in—”
“You thought I’d been abused.”
He turned his head to look at her, his gaze direct and unsettling. “It crossed my mind. You had a vulnerable quality—I don’t know how to describe it.”
“That’s how I look when I try and wear stilettos.” She turned it into a joke. “When you can’t balance, you’re vulnerable.”
A smile touched the edges of his mouth. “You’re an impressive person, Harriet Knight.”
Her heart beat a little harder. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me trying to climb out of that window.”
He was about to say something when a woman strode toward them wearing scrubs.
Ethan was on his feet instantly. “How is she?”
Harriet stood up too, but stayed back a little, not wanting to intrude. She overheard some of it—lower grade rupture of the spleen, hematologic parameters, splenic preservation, arterial intervention—none of it made sense to her, and all of it sounded horrendous but Ethan seemed relieved, so perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
He ran his hand over his face. “Can I see her?”
“Sure. But keep it brief.”
Harriet was about to sit back down on the chair to wait when he grabbed her hand.
“You should come too. She’d like that. You can promise her a bowl of your chicken soup.”
Susan was in recovery and although she seemed groggy, her eyes were open. She saw Ethan and managed something close to a smile.
“Jeez, you still here? What time is it?”
“Middle of the night. I thought I’d hang around.”
Susan’s gaze slid to Harriet. “But you got yourself some company.” Her eyes closed. “Did you tell her, Black?”
“Did I tell her what?”
“About your promise.”
“I don’t remember a promise. The anesthetic must have affected your memory.”
“You break your promise, I’m going to come back and haunt you.”
“You have to die first, and there is no way you’re dying. I need you back here.”
“I’m not sure that’s an incentive to recover. A bowl of Harriet’s soup might.”
Harriet stepped forward. “As soon as you’re on the ward and eating, I’ll bring you some.”
“You’re an angel.” Her eyes opened. “Do you hear that, Black? She’s an angel.”
“You need to rest.”
“And you need to go
home.” She stretched her hand out to him and he took it. “Thanks, Ethan.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by name.”
“It’s the first time you’ve ever saved my life.”
“Given that you’re lying there, I didn’t do such a great job.”
“We both know that without you, I’d be dead.” Her eyes closed again. “Go home. Get some sleep. But come back tomorrow. With Harriet. And soup. And don’t forget your promise.”
“What is this promise she keeps talking about?” Harriet asked as they walked out of the hospital into the freezing night.
“She wants to be godmother to my children.”
“But you don’t have—ah.” Understanding dawned. “She wants you to have children. Is she in league with your sister?”
“They’ve never met, but they seem to be on the same wavelength. Susan seems to want me to have it all. No idea why. Ironic, coming from a loner like her.”
“Not married then?”
He hesitated. “She was married. Eight years ago her husband was killed by a drunk driver while he was walking their son home from kindergarten. The car mounted the sidewalk. Their little boy was killed too.”
The emotion was like a punch to her chest. “Oh, that’s terrible.”
“Yes. And so is drinking and then getting behind the wheel of a car.”
“How do you ever get over something like that?”
“You don’t. If you’re lucky you learn to live alongside it. You find ways to keep going. Susan’s way was to throw herself into work. I guess she feels that although she couldn’t save her own family, she might be able to save someone else’s.”
“But she’s never married again. She lives alone?”
“She has an apartment near mine.”
“What is she doing for Christmas?”
He frowned. “I have no idea. Why?”
“I just wondered, that’s all.” Harriet paused as they reached a set of lights. “Do you want to come home with me?”
