by Heidi Rice
Art wound the towel round his hand, tying the makeshift bandage off with his teeth. The blood started to seep through the fabric.
‘You are not serious?’ Ellie stepped into his path as he went to leave. ‘You need to get that stitched to stop the bleeding.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said through gritted teeth, the mutinous scowl reminding her of Josh when he’d been a fractious toddler. Josh, though, had never been this stubborn, or this stupid.
‘Plus it could get infected,’ she added. ‘And then you’ll lose it.’
‘Get a grip, Princess Drama.’ The old insult might have had more impact if she couldn’t see the greasy pallor beneath his scowl.
‘No I won’t, Captain Dickhead,’ she replied.
What was the guy trying to prove? That he could saw off his hand and keep on going? This was beyond ridiculous.
‘I’m not kidding,’ she continued. ‘You need to go to A and E.’
His face paled even more.
Whipping another tea towel off the pile, she took his hand and bound it more tightly in a vain attempt to stem the blood flow. His breath gushed out against her forehead. She tied two more towels together to create a makeshift sling.
‘Keep it elevated,’ she said, as she knotted the towels at his nape. ‘Until we get to Gratesbury.’
If she remembered correctly, there was a minor injuries unit there. Hopefully it was still there or they’d have to carry on to Salisbury, which was at least an hour away.
‘I’m not going to a hospital,’ he said.
‘Yes, you are, because I refuse to let you bleed out all over my mum’s kitchen.’ Taking his elbow, she led him towards the door. ‘Getting the stains out of these flagstones would be a total bitch.’
He shrugged out of her hold. ‘If I’ve got to go, I’ll drive myself.’
‘With one hand? I don’t think so.’ She grabbed his elbow again and tugged him towards the door, her temper riding roughshod over the ego slap.
So Art would rather lose a hand then spend twenty minutes in a confined space with her.
‘Wait there.’ She left him standing in the hallway, as she took the stairs two at a time to get her car keys. ‘And stop being a douche canoe.’
‘What the hell’s a douche canoe?’ he shouted after her.
‘A guy with way too much testosterone and not nearly enough common sense,’ she shouted back, taking a wild guess.
CHAPTER SIX
‘For Christ’s sake, slow down. I’m not going to bleed to death in the next ten seconds.’
Ellie slanted a look at her passenger. He clung on to the handle above the car door, sweat glistening on his forehead, the blood having soaked through the towels she’d wrapped round his other hand in scarlet blotches.
‘I don’t care if you bleed to death,’ she replied, trying to remain calm – he was a big guy, hopefully he had a few pints to spare. ‘What I do care about is you bleeding all over my rental car.’ She eased her foot off the accelerator to take the next hairpin bend in the A30. ‘I’ve got to drop it off in Salisbury in a couple of days and I don’t want to pay a fine, or have to spend hours cleaning it.’
‘If you were worried about your stupid hire car why did you insist on driving me to A and E?’
‘Because I stupidly care if you lose your stupid hand.’
‘I’m not going to lose my hand.’
‘Not on my watch you won’t.’ She braked at the roundabout on the outskirts of Gratesbury and heard him curse. She wrestled the unfamiliar stick shift into first gear. ‘Did you seriously think you were going to carry on playing dodgeball with a rotary blade with half a hand?’
She jammed her foot on the accelerator when she spotted a gap ahead of an articulated lorry.
‘Jesus!’ He slapped his uninjured hand down on the dash. ‘Who taught you to drive?’
‘Stop changing the subject.’ She took the second exit signposted Gratesbury.
She had checked on her mobile before they set off that the minor injuries unit was still there and open at weekends in the market town. Art’s breath caught as she zipped past a tractor with at least an inch to spare on the road that took them past the town’s church and secondary school.
‘What subject would you rather talk about?’ he said drily. ‘How much longer we have to live with you at the wheel?’
They headed up the town’s main street, which was furnished with a collection of charity shops, pound shops and chintzy tourist-friendly tearooms. The narrow pavements that headed up a steep hill were mostly deserted. Apparently Sunday opening hours still hadn’t made it to Gratesbury.
‘Now who’s being Princess Drama?’ she said, taking the side street at the top of the hill past the Somerfield supermarket.
They drove past a collection of old detached stone houses, their high garden walls lovingly decorated with trailing lobelia.
She’d once moaned incessantly about the lack of any fashion options for women under sixty in Gratesbury or the chances of getting a soy vanilla Frappuccino because they didn’t even have a Seattle Coffee Company café, which were all the rage in London, when her mother had brought her here during that summer. But in retrospect, weekend trips to the town had been a quaint and pleasant way to spend the afternoon – and the Women’s Institute market had done a phenomenal lemon drizzle cake.
The road narrowed ahead and seemed to be coming to a dead end. ‘Where is this place?’ she asked, wondering why she hadn’t spotted the sign.
Art stilled beside her. A brief glance confirmed his face had gone deathly white. Sweat dripped down his temple to furrow through the stubble on his jaw. It was a sunny day, and pleasantly warm, but not that warm.
She wondered how many more pints he could afford to lose, because the metallic smell had begun to permeate the whole car.
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been to it before.’
He closed his eyes and pressed his head into the headrest, the tight grimace signalling how much pain he must be in.
She almost felt bad about the Princess Drama crack. The man was nothing if not stoic.
She slowed the car, and finally spotted a blue sign emblazoned with the NHS insignia. ‘At last, found it.’
He shifted beside her as she drove into an almost empty car park. The one-story utilitarian building had a glass front and an ambulance bay with a paramedics van parked in it.
‘I hope it’s actually open,’ she said.
Still no comment.
‘Do you want to wait here while I investigate?’ she asked, concerned he might be about to pass out for real.
‘Sure.’
The bloody towel covering his injured hand had started to seep onto his T-shirt.
She got out of the car and sprinted across the lot, propelled by panic.
Art Dalton might be a pain in the arse, but she really would prefer it if he didn’t die in her rental car. Not only would that be a difficult one to explain to the car hire company, but she had a sneaking feeling her mum would be devastated.
*
‘Art, wake up, it’s open and the receptionist says the doctor can see you straight away.’
‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Art dragged his eyes open, because some bugger had attached ten-ton weighs to his lids. Ellie’s intent green gaze roamed over his face.
He must really look like shit for her to actually be anxious about him, although maybe her anxiety was more to do with the threat to her upholstery than the threat to his health.
He certainly felt like shit. His hand was throbbing as if someone had tried to hack it off with a chainsaw – not completely untrue. But worse was the sick sensation in his belly, and the anxiety that had his chest in a death grip as he stared at the plate glass panel twenty feet away.
He hated hospitals. Really hated them.
He’d been trying to convince himself all the way here, this wasn’t strictly speaking a hospital, more like a glorified GP’s surgery. And it looked deserted. He wouldn’t walk in and be a
ccosted with the sound of hurrying feet slapping against linoleum, the smell of blood and urine and bleach, or the beep of monitors, phones ringing, hushed conversations or shouted demands, or worse, the groans and mumbles of other people’s pain – everything that had haunted him in nightmares for years.
Even so, he’d rather risk losing his hand than have to walk through those sliding glass doors in the next few minutes…
Worst of all was the knowledge that if he hadn’t been thinking about Ellie, while he was supposed to be concentrating on sharpening the blade to start the cut-out on his latest commission, he wouldn’t have got into this fix in the first place.
‘Haul arse, Art, let’s get this over with.’ Ellie sounded exasperated and anxious.
‘Give me a moment,’ he said.
He needed to hide the fact he was not only terrified of going inside that building, but also terrified of losing it in front of her.
‘What for? Do you want to wait until you need a blood transfusion or something?’ The high note of panic gave lie to the snark.
And spurred him into action.
‘Fine, let’s do this thing.’ He tried to sound sure.
He gave his head a quick shake, to clear the fog enveloping him, and grabbed a hold of the car door while ignoring the rabbiting heartbeat punching his ribs. And the nausea sitting like a roaring lion under his sternum.
Do not puke.
He placed his feet on the tarmac, levered himself out of the car and staggered, his balance shot.
Ellie caught him round the waist. ‘Don’t you dare fall on top of me, Dalton.’ Banding a supporting arm around his back, she propped his good arm over her shoulder. ‘If you go, I’m going to go with you, because you’re too much of a big lummox for me to catch. And I’m telling you now, I will be severely pissed off if that happens.’ The snippy motormouth monologue was weirdly comforting.
‘I’m OK.’ He tried to take some of his weight off her, even though his equilibrium was iffy at best, the scent of her – summer flowers and sultry spice – as disturbing as the prospect of flattening her in an NHS car park.
‘Shut up, and lean on me,’ she said, holding him upright.
He gave up objecting – he didn’t have the strength to walk and argue at the same time.
The shaking hit his knees as the glass doors slid open, the electric hiss bringing with it the sucker punch of memory.
‘Don’t make a fuss, Arty. Everything will be OK. As long as you don’t tell, baby.’
His mummy’s voice whispered in his ear while the scary man with a white mask over his face kept prodding at his tummy, making the screaming agony a thousand times worse.
‘Art, you’re not really going to pass out are you? I can go and get a wheelchair?’ Ellie’s frantic questions beckoned him back to the present.
He breathed, ignoring the lion now roaring in his ears. And realised he’d yet to cross the threshold.
‘I’m fine, Princess Drama.’ But he didn’t feel fine, he felt terrible.
She didn’t comment, so he knew he must look terrible too.
He forced his feet to carry him through the door and back into purgatory, grateful for the feel of her flush against his side, her fingers digging into his hip. He clung on to her, reminding himself every step of the way that the throbbing pain was coming from his hand now and not his stomach. And wasn’t anywhere near as diabolical as it had been when he was a boy.
*
‘Ouch, nasty.’ The female doctor snapped on a pair of surgical gloves then unwrapped the layers of blood-soaked tea towels and dropped them in a surgical waste disposal unit. ‘How did you do this, Mr Dalton?’
‘Rotary blade slipped,’ Art supplied, in his usual talkative fashion from his perch on the gurney. The room was sunny and smelled of orange blossoms, not bleach or blood like most hospitals. Ellie was surprised Art hadn’t kicked up a fuss when she’d followed him into the treatment room. But then, from the pasty face, she wasn’t sure he would notice if she started tap-dancing naked in front of him.
‘At least it’s a reasonably clean incision.’ The physician, who was called Susan Grant according to the nametag pinned to her white coat, wiped away the sluggish seep of blood with a succession of antiseptic wipes. ‘And you don’t appear to have severed any tendons. But it’s deep, so it’s going to need quite a few stitches.’
Ellie cringed as the woman, who had a pleasantly upbeat and efficient manner, began to probe at the cut.
If Art could feel it, he wasn’t letting on, his eyelids sinking to half-mast, as if he were struggling to remain awake.
He looked dreadful, but not as dreadful as he’d looked when they’d been entering the building. The electrical hum of the doors had triggered and, for a split second, he’d looked completely terrified, the whites of his eyes showing. She’d said something to him, worried he was about to keel over and take her down with him, and she’d had the strangest feeling she’d called him back from somewhere far away.
What was that about?
Because Art definitely wasn’t the swooning type, even after managing to hack off half a hand. Something else had been going on, something other than his injury, because he looked as if he’d rather do anything in that moment than take a single step into the medical centre.
‘When was your last tetanus shot?’ the doctor asked.
Art shook his head, his eyelids drooping.
The doctor turned to Ellie. ‘Do you know if he’s had any recent boosters? I think he may be a bit shocky.’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ This would probably be a good time to say she was just the taxi service. But after the episode as they entered the centre, she wasn’t going anywhere.
‘All right.’ The doctor turned back to Art. ‘I think we’ll err on the side of caution and give you one just in case. I’m going to call the nurse so she can help me stitch you up.’ She applied a dressing to the wound as she spoke, the thick wadding absorbing the worst of the blood, which seemed to have finally stopped flowing so copiously. ‘In the meantime, Ms…?’
‘Preston,’ Ellie said, then realised she’d given her maiden name.
‘Ms Preston. Could you help him get his T-shirt off.’ She lifted a gown off a neat stack in the corner of the room. ‘And get him into one of these.’
Ellie took the gown, before the doctor disappeared out of the door.
She stared at the neat blue and red geometric pattern on the starched cotton then back at Art. She was going to have to undress him?
Suck it up. You’ve seen a lot more of him than just his chest.
So what if the memory of seeing his chest hair peeking out of his overalls had made her react like a nun yesterday evening.
‘Art?’ She nudged his shoulder. His lids snapped open, but his eyes were blank for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure where he was.
‘We’ve got to get your T-shirt off.’ She held the gown aloft. ‘And put this on.’
‘I can do it,’ he said, or rather croaked, still channelling he who shall never need any help.
He yanked up the hem of his T-shirt with his good hand. Then swore as the wad of cotton got stuck. With his sore hand dangling in space, his face covered by the blood-soaked shirt and some phenomenal abdominal muscles trembling with the effort he was making to try to yank the garment the rest of the way off, he looked stuck fast.
‘Ready for some help yet?’ Ellie quipped.
The reply was an annoyed grunt.
‘I’m going to take that as a yes.’ After dumping the gown on the bed, Ellie circled his wrist with gentle fingers, and eased his injured hand through the armhole, ignoring the sight of the dark hair fanning out across the defined slabs of his pectoral muscles.
There was not an ounce of extra belly fat on the man, the black elastic of his boxer briefs peeking over the low-slung waistband of his jeans. The black hair around his nipples tapered into a thin line to bisect the ridges of his six-pack.
The hot flush struck somewhere around her
backbone and raced up her spine as she dragged the T-shirt over his head.
He groaned, cradling his hand as he positioned it in his lap. She spotted the ridged white scar that had shocked her all those summers ago. She’d only seen it from a distance then.
She could see it more clearly now, illuminated by the treatment room’s harsh fluorescent light. It still looked nasty, but for the first time she noticed the tiny white dots that travelled up either side of the line trailing out of his groin all the way to the bottom of his ribcage.
When had the injury happened? Was this where his fear of hospitals came from? Because it looked like he had once had at least fifty stitches in a wound that must surely have been life-threatening.
She dragged her gaze away not wanting to get caught staring, but Art seemed unconcerned, or uninterested, busy trying to unfold the gown and put it on with one hand.
‘Here, let me.’ She took the gown and held it for him to thread his arms through. For once he didn’t protest, or insist he could do it himself.
She edged it up over his shoulders, standing on tiptoe – because even hunched over, his shoulders were impressive. Clearly spending hours on end rotary-blading things and doing whatever else was needed to keep a seventy-acre farm going was better for the male physique than pumping iron in a gym.
‘What?’
Her gaze snapped to his. And she realised she’d been caught staring.
What a shame those impressive shoulders came with his not-nearly-as-impressive personality.
‘Nothing.’ She sat on the moulded plastic chair in the corner of the room, grateful his distracting chest was now covered in the blue and red geometric cotton of the gown. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like shit.’ He adjusted his hand on his lap. ‘I’m guessing I look pretty terrific in this outfit too?’
‘Not at all, the red triangles blend with the bloodstains beautifully.’
He gave a gruff cough, which might almost have been mistaken for a laugh.
A small amount of colour had returned to his face. Whatever had spooked him seemed to be passing. While he could hardly be described as comfortable, he didn’t look as if he wanted to bolt for the door.
