CHAPTER FIVE
SARA felt as if she’d been tricked into staying in hospital for the last few hours.
It had taken her some time to recognise the way Dan had played on her concern for the two tiny beings residing inside her to persuade her to agree, and she’d even had to smile at his astuteness, but she had no intention of staying any longer. Now was the perfect time to make good her escape, while the staff were all too busy elsewhere to notice her going. What did it matter that she would now be leaving in daylight in a pair of oversized scrubs that looked like a clown’s baggy pyjamas and a coat that looked as if someone had rolled in the gutter in it—which she had.
‘Maybe the dry-cleaners will be able to do something with it,’ she muttered as she awkwardly balanced her borrowed crutches across the arms of the wheelchair to reach for the button to call for the lift. If the coat wasn’t salvageable … well, it was easy come, easy go. It had been one of the items Zara had been throwing out because she’d needed to make room for more up-to-the-minute items, irrespective of the fact that it was made of some horrendously expensive fabric like cashmere or vicuna. All Sara knew was that it was the most deliciously warm coat she’d ever worn and she’d be loath to lose it. She certainly wouldn’t be able to replace it with anything as good.
‘Making your escape?’ said a deep voice behind her, and she jumped so high she had to scrabble to hold onto the crutches.
‘Dan! Don’t do that!’ she snapped as her heart gave its familiar leap in response to his closeness.
‘I had a feeling you wouldn’t be waiting about this morning,’ he said wryly. ‘It’s nice to be proved right.’
‘Actually, I was just going to call in to ICU to see what Zara’s latest results are. Have you already been? Do you know?’
The lift gave a quiet ding and the doors slid open to disgorge half a dozen assorted staff and visitors. ‘Let’s find out together,’ he suggested as he took charge and wheeled her into the lift. Then the doors slid closed and the two of them were trapped in the enclosed space, isolated and alone in a way she’d been careful to avoid ever since the day Zara had turned up to be introduced to her tall, dark and handsome doctor friend.
‘Sara, are you really well enough to be leaving so soon?’ he asked quietly, and her heart gave a stupid extra beat when she saw the caring expression in his eyes.
He’s a doctor. Caring’s what he does, she reminded herself firmly, just in case she got the idea that it was her as a person that he cared about.
‘I’ll cope,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m a fit, healthy person, so I’ll soon be on the mend. You don’t have to worry about me.’
Her timing was perfect as the doors slid open just as she finished speaking, and the people waiting to board the lift prevented Dan from saying anything more.
‘Ah, Daniel. Good. I’m glad you’re here,’ Mr Shah said, almost as soon as they’d set foot in the unit.
‘Problems?’ Sara heard the edge in his voice that told her he’d been expecting this conversation.
‘More problems than I’d like,’ the consultant admitted as he showed them into his office. ‘Your wife’s liver enzymes are raised and rising but time is critical. If only we knew exactly how long it was since she took the overdose. We’d have some idea how much further they might go.’
Sara felt sick as she took in the information. She knew that the raised enzyme levels were evidence of liver damage but she also knew that the number of hours between overdose and the start of treatment was very important. If a patient received the antidote within eight hours there was a far better chance of saving the liver from permanent, if not fatal, damage.
In her mind’s eye she replayed the split second before she’d been struck by that car, the instant when she’d been looking straight towards whoever was driving it and had seen her own face looking back at her.
Had it been her own face, reflected back at her from the windscreen, or had the person behind the wheel been the only other person in the world with a face exactly like hers?
She didn’t want to know, couldn’t bear to know if it had been Zara, because whoever it had been, there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that they had aimed the car at her deliberately, that they had intended to kill her and the babies inside her.
But … logic told her that knowing might be essential for Zara’s health. If she had been the driver, that would mean that she probably hadn’t taken the paracetamol until she’d returned home. That would give Mr Shah the timeline he needed to gauge how much more aggressive his treatment needed to be if he was to be able to rescue Zara’s liver.
She was still conducting her silent debate when one of the nurses ushered her parents into the office to join them.
‘I’m afraid Zara won’t be going home today,’ the consultant stated firmly as soon as the pleasantries were over.
‘But I’ve got everything ready for—’ Audrey protested.
‘She’s not well enough to leave today,’ he said. ‘Her latest results are showing us a problem with her liver and she needs to stay here until we know she’s stable.’
‘Her liver? What’s wrong with her liver?’ Frank demanded with a look of disbelief. ‘She’s never been a big drinker, not like some of these girls who go out and get drunk all the time.’
‘Partly she’s having the problem because she’s underweight,’ Mr Shah explained patiently. ‘Her liver didn’t have enough reserves, so when her body started to break down the paracetamol, it began damaging the tissues of the liver.’
‘So, how bad is it?’ Frank was suddenly very subdued, as though the severity of the situation was only now coming home to him. ‘And is it going to get any worse?’
‘The damage means that her liver will develop areas of necrosis—that means the tissue dies,’ he explained hastily when he saw their puzzled expressions. ‘We don’t know yet whether it’s going to get any worse. It’s just a case of wait and see.’
‘How long will we have to wait? Weeks? Months?’ Audrey asked tearfully, clutching her husband’s hand like a lifeline.
‘Not as long as that. Usually, it’s no more than a few days before we can tell whether the liver is damaged beyond repair.’
‘What happens then?’ Audrey was pale and shaky but clearly intent on fighting for her precious daughter. ‘What are you going to do to make her well again? Will she need medication or dialysis or what?’
‘Dialysis isn’t an option—it can only be used for kidney failure—but some patients with quite severe liver damage can recover with the right diet and support. For the rest, there are surgical options, but we won’t go into that unless it becomes necessary.’
The meeting broke up then, with her parents hurrying off to spend time with Zara while Sara was left trying to manoeuvre wheelchair and crutches out of the office without taking a chunk out of the door.
‘Let me,’ Dan said, and took over the propulsion again. And even though being this close to him caused every nerve in her body to tense up, she wasn’t about to refuse the loan of some muscle power to get her to the lift.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, careful not to look in his direction while they waited for the lift to arrive. She was grateful they weren’t the only ones in it this time—the more people sharing the space the better if she wasn’t to risk making a complete fool of herself. How long would it take before he realised that she’d never got over him, even though he’d abandoned her in favour of marrying her sister?
She could have groaned when he insisted on pushing her across the expanse of the main reception hall and out of the electronically controlled doors.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, absent-mindedly flicking the keys in his hand against his leg.
‘I can get a taxi,’ she pointed out with a glance towards the couple already waiting outside the front of the hospital, their drivers chatting to each other with the ease of long acquaintance.
‘Ah, but will it be driven by someone willing to stay long enough to make
sure you get up your stairs safely? Are you willing to risk falling down and breaking something else—or injuring the babies?’
He didn’t play fair, Sara grumbled silently as she tried to make herself comfortable on the plush grey upholstery. If he hadn’t mentioned the babies, she would have stuck to her guns, she told herself as she tried to get her cast into the footwell, grateful that he’d thought to slide the passenger seat back as far as possible to accommodate her lack of mobility.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally able to click the seat belt into position then regretted it when she drew in that tantalising mixture of soap and man that would forever signify Dan.
Think of something to talk about, she told herself sternly as he pulled out of the car park, but the only topic that came to mind was Zara. Still, it did prompt an idea.
‘Nice car,’ she commented blandly. ‘What sort is Zara driving these days?’
‘I didn’t think you were into cars.’ There was a hint of laughter in his voice, the laughter that she’d loved to share with him when she’d believed they’d had a future together. ‘You don’t even own one, do you?’
‘I didn’t see the point of buying one for the sake of it,’ she said stiffly, fighting off the memories. ‘I live within walking distance of the hospital and the shops, and if I need to go further afield, there’s always a taxi or the train.’
‘So, why the interest in Zara’s vehicle?’
‘Just wondering if you ever let her drive yours.’ That was bound to get her the information she wanted. She knew how much he loved his bad-boy black BMW with its pale grey interior, had been with him the day he’d taken delivery of it, the first new car he’d ever owned.
‘No way!’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘But she insisted that she needed to be able to get about and wanted something equally sporty, so …’
‘His and hers? Matching cars?’ she teased and held her breath.
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted uncomfortably, then added, ‘Except hers is metallic silver with black upholstery.’
‘Big difference!’ she teased again, although how she found the words she didn’t know. A silver car with dark upholstery. That was an image that would be imprinted in her memory for the rest of her life.
But there must be thousands of silver BMWs. It could have been any one of them, said the corner of her brain that didn’t want to believe that her sister could have done that to her. Except, she argued with herself as her fingers crept up to trace the scar on her forehead, you know what she was capable of when she was just a little girl. She’s grown up now, but has she grown out of such tendencies or has the scale of them grown with her?
‘I hope you won’t mind if I stop off at my flat first,’ he said, and she was so relieved that he was interrupting the darkening spiral of her thoughts that she would have agreed to almost anything. ‘It shouldn’t take me long, but you can come up and wait for me if you like.’
‘And have to go through all that effort of posting myself back into the car? No, thank you,’ she said. ‘If you park in the underground car park, I’ll be quite safe while I wait for you.’
He tried to change her mind but she was adamant, a new plan already fully formed in her head.
As soon as he disappeared from view she opened the passenger door and began the time-consuming struggle to extricate herself from the car. All the while her pulse was racing, afraid that she wouldn’t have time to achieve what she wanted to before he came back.
‘A silver BMW with a black interior,’ she muttered aloud, having had to admit defeat with the crutches when her recently dislocated shoulder refused to take the pressure. Anyway the pain was too great and she didn’t dare to do it any more damage or it could be a problem for the rest of her life.
So it was her eyes rather than her feet that set off along the row of cars while she leant against Dan’s, her eyebrows lifting a little more with each expensive model she recognised, but in spite of the fact that there were two other BMWs, neither was silver with a black interior.
‘So much for my idea of seeing whether there was any damage on her car,’ she grumbled as she made her halting way back to Dan’s vehicle. But if it wasn’t here, where could it be? Zara certainly hadn’t driven herself to the hospital in it.
‘Sara, what’s the matter? Why did you get out of the car?’ She hadn’t even heard the lift coming down but there was Dan hurrying towards her across the oil-stained concrete.
‘Um … I had a touch of cramp and needed to get out to move about a bit,’ she invented clumsily, hating not to tell the truth, but how could she make such an accusation without a single shred of proof?
‘Are you ready to get back in or would you rather change your mind?’ he offered. ‘It wouldn’t take me five minutes to put clean sheets on the bed.’
Dan and bed in the same sentence weren’t the ideal combination to ensure she had a good sleep. ‘I’d rather go where I’m surrounded by my own things,’ she said, while her brain was trying to find a way to get the answers she needed.
Finally, there was only one way.
‘I couldn’t see Zara’s car in the garage,’ she said, hoping it sounded like idle conversation while he steered them out of the garage and back onto the street.
‘You wouldn’t. It’s usually parked in the slot next to mine, but apparently she had an argument with a bollard the other day and dropped it off at the garage to have some scratches repaired … not for the first time, I might tell you,’ he added with a chuckle.
‘So, when did she take it to the garage?’ Sara asked, and the frowning glance he threw her way told her that she’d pushed too far.
‘Sara, what’s all this about?’ he asked as he drew up in front of the converted Victorian house she lived in. He turned to face her. ‘Why so many questions about Zara’s car? What do you really want to know?’
Sara swallowed hard when she met his gaze, knowing the frightening level of intelligence contained behind those green eyes. There would be no point insulting that intelligence with a half-baked invention.
‘I wanted to know because …’ She swallowed again, afraid that this was going to be the moment when she lost all semblance of friendship with the man she’d never stopped loving. ‘Because the car that ran me down was a silver BMW with dark-coloured upholstery and I’m almost certain that it was driven by a woman with long blonde hair.’
To say he looked shocked by the implied accusation was an understatement, and the longer she looked at those eyes and the way they widened and darkened endlessly with the repercussions had her hurrying into speech again.
‘I can’t believe that anyone would want to do such a thing deliberately, least of all Zara, but … but I needed to know … about her car, and about the damage she did to it. Then I’ll have the proof that it wasn’t my sister who tried to … to …’ She choked on the press of tears and couldn’t say another word but, then, she’d already said more than enough if his expression was anything to go by.
There was an agonisingly long silence in the car while she tried to concentrate on keeping the tears back. Crying was one of Zara’s favourite weapons and all her life Sara had consciously fought against them for just that reason.
‘Well, then, there’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?’ Dan said suddenly as he released his seat belt. His voice was so frighteningly devoid of any emotion that Sara felt sick.
‘W-what?’ she stammered as he threw his door open and prepared to slide out. ‘What are you going to do, Dan?’
He didn’t answer until he reached her side of the car and pulled the passenger door wide. ‘Find some answers, of course,’ he said briskly. ‘Now, leave your crutches in the car because they’re no use to you till your shoulder’s a good deal less painful, and let me give you a hand out of there. You need to get some proper clothes on if you want to travel in my car again.’
Her startled grin must have been the reason he’d added that last proviso, and it had worked. In fact, it had worked so w
ell that she didn’t even think of objecting when he virtually carried her up the four flights of stairs that led to her little flat up under the eaves.
‘Hop to it,’ he joked as she did just that with one hand against the wall on her way to her minuscule bedroom. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’
‘As if,’ she growled as she unwrapped herself from the grubby coat and shed the hospital scrubs in short order.
Clothing for her upper half wasn’t a problem, barring the twinges from multiple bruises and pulling scabs while she put them on. All she had to remember was to put her injured arm in first because the strapping didn’t allow for very much mobility.
Unfortunately, her underwear didn’t come with a tie waist and the cast wouldn’t fit through the appropriate hole when she did manage to get her foot through it and pull it up with her other toes, even though it was a pair designed for halfway-through-pregnancy mums.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered as she pushed the stretchy fabric off with the other foot and heaved herself up off the end of the bed for another trawl through her underwear drawer.
‘Sara, I’m not being funny but … You must be very stiff and sore this morning and I can imagine that it’s almost impossible to manoeuvre things over that cast,’ Dan said at the very moment that she unearthed the black lacy thong that she’d bought to cheer herself up shortly after Zara had made that fateful visit to A and E. It was testament to how well it had worked that it still sported a dangling price tag.
Well, she thought with a fatalistic shrug as she tugged the tag off and flicked it towards the bin in the corner, it was probably the only underwear she possessed that would work. As for outer clothes, the only ones to hand that were wide enough to encompass the cast without having to resort to splitting a seam was a pair of heavy silk loose-fitting palazzo pants with a drawstring waist, not unlike the scrubs she’d just taken off, now that she came to think about it.
Twins for a Christmas Bride Page 7
