The Crystal Warriors Series Bundle

by Maree Anderson

  She had a chart? Crap. This so was not looking good.

  “I’ll have Dr Pillay come and examine Miss Roberts as soon as he’s finished with his rounds,” the nurse said to Mike, ignoring Ruby. Then she exited the room.

  Sheesh. Some bedside manner.

  Why was everything she asked her body to do taking so long to… to… do? Ruby had just opened her mouth again when her mum rushed into the room.

  “Mum.” Her mother’s hair was a mess and her lipstick was crooked. More than anything else, that finally convinced Ruby whatever happened had been no joking matter.

  She hugged Ruby, her body shaking as she sobbed. “Oh, Ruby. Mike said you’d be coming out of your—”

  “Mum,” Mike said, his tone warning.

  “Ah, waking up soon. I’ve fetched your father, darling. He was just grabbing some hot drinks. You gave us such a scare!”

  Her mum called out to someone lurking outside the room. “Oh for goodness sakes, do come inside. We’re family! No one will object to three family members being in the room at once. And if they do, Mike will sort it out with the person in charge. Won’t you, darling? Doctor to doctor?”

  Mike wisely said nothing. So far as their mother was concerned, he was a doctor, and that was that.

  “Mike’s a St John’s medic, Pamela, not a doctor.” Their long-suffering father entered the room, juggling three polystyrene cups. “How many times do I have to explain that to you?”

  Her dad was here, too? Oh God. It had to be really bad to have pried both her parents from their peaceful Nelson home to brave the “evils” of Auckland.

  “Pamela, you’re hurting her arm.” Her dad had noted Ruby’s grimace as her mother’s extended hug tweaked the needle of the drip in her left arm.

  Her mother reared back, her face stricken as she scrambled off the bed. “I’m so sorry, darling.” Her face creased into the scrunched up moue she made when she was trying not to cry.

  “Mum, it’s—ahhh!” The cuff of the automatic blood-pressure monitor had tightened viselike around her upper arm. It’d been placed just above the drip and the increased pressure wiggled the needle in her vein. It hurt—a lot—snatching her breath and leaving her sweaty-browed and panting.

  “Hurts, huh?” Mike said, his tone oozing sympathy. “Sometimes it’s not very comfortable when the cuff is on the same arm as a drip. I’ll move it to your other arm—see if that helps.”

  Her heart skipped a beat and she flinched away from his hand. She hated needles at the best of times.

  “Chill, Rubes. You’ve already got a line set up in the vein of your right arm, but I’m only moving the cuff, not the drip, okay?”

  “O-okay.” Even so, she squeezed her eyes shut while he mucked about with the equipment and swapped the whatever-it-was-called to her right arm.

  Her dad handed her mum a polystyrene cup, and the two of them perched on the end of Ruby’s bed, sneaking concerned glances at her in between sips of their tea.

  “Why haven’t those dreadful marks on her arms gone away?” her mum asked.

  “Medics don’t have time to be gentle when we’re trying to save lives,” Mike said. “We just shove the line in. Often there’s a bit of heavy bruising which can take a while to disappear.”

  Ruby raised her now unencumbered left arm to take a look. Gross. Faded yellowing bruises smudged six-inch-long trails down the inside of her arm. No wonder it’d felt like it’d been mangled.

  “They’ve faded a lot, Ruby. You looked like a druggie for the first week.”

  Her stomach gave a sick-making lurch, and the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood to attention. The first week? “How long—” pause to clear her throat “—have I been—” cough, splutter, hack “—stuck in here?”

  Mike’s gaze slid away. He scratched his chin, and exchanged significant glances with their father.

  “How long?” Another fit of coughing was the only thing that prevented her from throwing a really stellar tantrum.

  Her mum patted her back and proffered the cup of water. “You’ve been in a medically induced coma for the past three weeks, darling,” she said.

  All the fight drained from her, leaving her weak and shaking and scared. Three weeks? “No way.”

  “Yes, way.” Mike stared her through narrowed, intent eyes. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Uh, a giant ape? Wrecking stuff?”

  “Excuse me?” Ruby’s mum looked a little wild about the eyes.

  “King Kong. Good. That’s really good.” Mike smiled a relieved kind of smile.

  “It’s a movie, Pamela,” her dad said, to prevent her mother from rushing off in search of a neurologist.

  “Anything else?” Mike asked.

  “I remember—” She searched through her befuddled mind. “I remember being pissed off with Caroline.”

  “Language!” her mum said.

  “Sorry, Mum.”

  “And?” Mike prompted.

  “Lights. I remember bright lights and—” Images careened through her brain. Car headlights. Struggling to her feet. The tortured screech of tires. The vehicle’s bumper smashing into her. Her body flying up over the bonnet, weightless for a split second before she hit the car’s windshield. The sickening shattering of glass. A glimpse of the shocked white face of the driver, before she slid off the car’s bonnet and onto the road. Numbness and then a burst of agonizing pain. And then—thankfully—oblivion.

  “I remember the crash,” she said. “It was quite… bad.”

  “Yep.” Mike had never been one to mince words.

  “Tell me.”

  Her dad reached over to squeeze her hand. She clutched it while Mike listed her injuries.

  “Ruptured spleen. They removed it. Fractured ribs. Two broken legs. Concussion—hardly surprising. Cuts and grazes all over you. And that’s only the minor injuries. You’re lucky to be alive, Rubes.” He exchanged another one of those looks with their dad, but Ruby was too shell-shocked to call him on it.

  She sucked in a shaky breath and peeked beneath the sheet. Sure enough, both legs were in plaster—the left to mid thigh, and the right to just below her knee… which was covered in still-healing scabs. Ick. And of course, as soon as she understood both legs were broken, they began to ache and throb with a vengeance. Worse, now she knew she couldn’t get to the little girls’ room under her own steam, she wanted to pee. Desperately.

  Ruby slumped against the hard, unyielding hospital pillows. She tried to cover her face with her hands, but the movement tweaked the drip in her right arm. It wasn’t until her mother handed her a tissue that Ruby realized she was crying.

  “Are you in pain, darling? Shall I buzz the nurse?”

  “N-no. I’m just tired.” She blew her nose and squirmed, trying to suppress the urge to pee. No way was she doing that with an audience.

  Mike murmured something to their dad, who stood and said, “Pamela, let’s go grab some lunch before the rush.”

  “I’m not hungry, dear.”

  “You can sit and watch me eat, then. We’ll be back in half an hour, Ruby. Can we bring you a sandwich, Mike?”

  “That’d be great. Thanks, Dad.”

  “Ruby?”

  Her mother’s too-bright smile cued Ruby that another embarrassing mother-daughter moment was imminent. “Yes?”

  “Look on the bright side, dear.”

  Bright side? Shit-oh-dear. Who was she trying to kid? “Okay.”

  “You’ve lost heaps of weight. A liquid diet obviously agrees with you.”

  Her dad threw Ruby a sympathetic glance as he dragged his wife from the room.

  Mike stared after them, his jaw sagging.

  Ruby started to giggle, then had to stop and clutch her ribs. “Ow! God, she’s unbelievable.”

  “She is that.” Mike heaved a sigh and shook his head in mock-despair. “It’s been… interesting. I’ll get you the bedpan.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “Only to me
.” He grinned. “You know, practically being a real doctor and all.”

  Ruby gauged the distance to the bathroom at the far end of her room. “Don’t suppose I could try crutches?”

  “With two broken legs? In your dreams.” He maneuvered the bedpan beneath her bottom, and turned his back while she tinkled into the pan. In the end she felt far too relieved to have an empty bladder to feel embarrassed when he removed the offending object and put it out of sight. “Nurse’ll sort that out later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Ruby, there’s something I didn’t mention.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Dad suspects, but won’t come right out and ask because then he doesn’t have to lie to Mum. She’ll have kittens. And I wanted to spare you that until you’re recovered. But—”

  “Spit it out, Mike. The tension’s killing me.” Weak joke but the best she could do right now.

  “Har bloody har.” Mike summoned the barest hint of a smile. He puffed out a long breath. Ruby’s foreboding intensified, pressing down on her like a physical weight.

  “When the results of the first lot of tests came back, they showed you were pregnant. Only barely, but the tests were positive.”

  She took a moment to digest his words. “Pregnant? How? I mean, I know how, but— That’s impossible. I haven’t slept with anyone in two years. How could I be pregnant?”

  Hang on. Her skin prickled with heat. But the heat didn’t last. It drained away, leaving her cold and shivering. So very cold, right down to the depths of her soul. “You said I was pregnant. So I guess…. I’m not any more.”

  “You started spotting a couple of days ago and then you miscarried. I’m so sorry, Rubes.”

  A lump of despair settled just beneath her heart. “’S okay, Mike. I mean it wasn’t like it had time to grow into a… a….” She squeezed her eyes shut against the overwhelming pain. But that only made it worse. All she could see was a baby with blond curls and blue-blue eyes—which was crazy because she had neither. And then her senses really started playing tricks on her because she could even smell that milky baby-smell so typically reminiscent of newborn babies.

  “It wasn’t a real baby yet,” she whispered. “It was just a tadpole, right?” Don’t tell me the truth. I don’t want to hear the truth right now. Just give me platitudes and lies. Please.

  “Not even a tadpole, really.” Mike was doing his best to come across all staunch but this had hit him hard, too. After all, he’d lost a potential niece or a nephew.

  She managed a watery smile for his benefit. “I’ll be okay. It’s not like I knew what was happening.” Lies. She wouldn’t be okay. She wanted to curl up into a ball and howl for what she’d lost. But she couldn’t put Mike through that. She wouldn’t. She’d fall apart when he was gone, and there was no chance of her parents walking in on her.

  “Ruby, do you remember who the father was?”

  She tried to remember but it was all a blank. “Must’ve been an immaculate conception,” she joked. “Obviously a totally forgettable experience.”

  Mike wasn’t smiling at her sad attempt at humor. “I need to give you something.”

  “A present?” She tried to push herself up on the pillows. “For me? You shouldn’t have. But hey, I’m glad you did.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and grabbed something—two large shards of bluish-grey stone. He pressed them into her outstretched hand.

  “What’re these?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  She stared up at Mike, noting how tired he seemed. No, it was more than fatigue. It was a deep sadness that made her want to hug him and tell him everything would be all right. Her vision blurred. And superimposed upon her brother’s face she saw another face.

  He was so beautiful he stole her breath. She glimpsed piercing aquamarine eyes—haunting eyes that were tantalizingly familiar—before the face dissolved into her brother’s familiar features.

  Ruby frowned. She’d recognized that face, dredged it up from her subconscious. The memory hovered just out of reach.

  She turned her attention to the stones in her hand. She ran her fingers over the jagged edges where they’d broken. Not two stones. One.

  She fitted them together. And the memories smacked into her.

  “K-Kyan.” The sense of loss overwhelmed her. She gasped, choked, couldn’t catch her breath.

  Mike buzzed for the nurse, and then grabbed the oxygen mask dangling from the panel at the rear of her bed. He fitted it over her face and began to talk her down. “Breathe, Ruby. Just listen to me and breathe, okay? Now breathe in… and out… in… out… That’s it. Good girl.”

  She’d just gotten her breathing under control when the door burst open and a compact little doctor of Indian descent strode to her bedside. He checked her vitals and, apparently satisfied, raised his eyebrows at Mike.

  “She was hyperventilating, Dr Pillay. She insisted on knowing what happened to her and I think was a bit much for her to cope with all at once.”

  “Not surprising given the circumstances,” the doctor said. “Miss Roberts, you need to rest. You’ve suffered a major trauma and you need to take things slowly. I’m giving you a sedative.”

  “No!” Her protest was muffled by the mask so she ripped it off. “No. I need to find Kyan.” She sounded shrill. She wouldn’t get anywhere with the doctor if he thought she was hysterical. She sucked in a deep, steadying breath and spoke slowly and clearly. “Mike, where’s Kyan?”

  When he didn’t answer, she struggled to sit up but was restrained by Dr Pillay. She felt the sharp prick of a needle in her arm. “No! I can’t go to sleep yet, dammit! I need to find him. Where’s Kyan, Mike? Is it too late? Where. Is. He?”

  “He visited you every day and stayed with you for as long as he could, Ruby. But his time was up. He had to… go.”

  The faces of the two men—Mike’s anguished, the doctor’s coldly assessing—wavered, lengthening and distorting like some desert mirage. Coldness seeped into her bones. “It’s not fair,” she whispered. And then it was difficult to get the words out because her teeth had begun to chatter. “We d-didn’t even h-have a ch-chance to b-bond… to be t-tested. It’s n-not fair!”

  The frost crept over her. It froze her soul and she drifted away.

  ~~~

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ruby breathed in the chilly early morning air and winced. It was so cold her sinuses ached. Despite her thermal socks, her feet felt like ice blocks. Auckland was gleefully inflicting its residents with an unexpected cold snap that had everyone unearthing their heaters and warm clothes.

  Ruby was one of the few not moaning about the weather. The cold didn’t really change anything for her—she hadn’t felt warm since she’d woken up in hospital.

  She trudged along the footpath, relieved beyond measure that her injuries had finally healed enough to allow her to get out of the house on her own. Not to mention convince her mum to return home to Nelson. She loved her mum… but in small doses.

  During those months of rehabilitation, her mother’s fussing—well-meaning though it had been—had almost driven her to drink. Thank God for Jules, who’d visited her every Saturday morning and pushed Ruby’s mother out the door to “go shopping, catch a movie, take time out for yourself”.

  Jules didn’t believe in fussing. She let Ruby blob out, and feel however she wanted to feel. No judgments or trying to hold it all in around Jules. Ruby didn’t have to watch her language or pretend that she was okay. They talked whenever Ruby felt up to talking, and when she didn’t, when it all got too much and she felt like she would lose her hard-won control and burst into tears that might never stop, they watched chick-flicks and guzzled ice cream.

  It took a month of those precious Saturdays before Ruby plucked up the courage to reveal Kyan’s background to Jules. She’d half-expected Jules to suggest she needed therapy, but Jules took it all in her stride.

  Perhaps she’d already wangled the truth fr
om Mike. Ruby didn’t ask. She was just grateful to have someone to confide in. And facing up to how she’d truly felt about the Crystal Warrior who’d stolen her heart, and fathered the baby she’d lost, was better than any therapy. So was knowing that Jules believed her, and believed in her. Jules understood why she’d acted as she had. And Jules understood why sometimes, when the memories of what she’d lost, and the heartbreak of what could have been, crashed down on her, Ruby just needed someone to hold her while she cried.

  Slowly, the heavy guilt she lived with became almost bearable. And slowly Ruby’s soul began to heal along with her body.

  As the months passed, she didn’t cringe any longer when her mum chided her yet again for letting “that handsome young man who came to visit you in hospital” get away. Her mum thought Kyan was a friend who’d been staying with Ruby until his work permit ran out and he had to fly back home. The instant her mum had set eyes on him, sitting by Ruby’s hospital bed, holding her hand and talking to her, she’d been smitten. She thought he was gorgeous—eminently suitable to marry her daughter and present her with a horde of equally gorgeous grandchildren.

  Funny how her mother, for all her harping on about Ruby’s weight, couldn’t see how ludicrous that scenario would have been.

  Ruby’s mum now had far more important things to think about than the potential husband her daughter had let slip through her fingers. Mike and his fiancée, Annie, had set a date for their wedding. The prospect of her son’s wedding, and the opportunity to angst about Annie’s age, and how they’d better have children before Annie turned thirty and her eggs started to dry up, sent Ruby’s mum into paroxysms of delight.

  Ruby kicked a stone and watched it skitter across the grass verge of the footpath, and then onto the road. She was thrilled for Mike and Annie. They were so happy together—a true match made in heaven. At least these days, wondering whether she could ever have been as happy with Kyan—if only they’d been given a chance—didn’t hurt so much anymore.

  At least, that’s what she told herself.

  As she rounded the last corner before home, a flash of gold caught her attention.