Nobody But Him

by Victoria Purman

  Julia tried to shake him off, scared she wouldn’t be able to think straight if he touched her again, but he pulled her closer, his naked chest pressing into her breasts, his heartbeat bouncing off her nipples. He cradled her face in his hands, tilting her head up so she couldn’t help but look him in the eyes. And what she saw there was so achingly familiar and scary she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘JJ, you did it once before and it almost killed me. Isn’t it different this time? Aren’t we older and wiser now? I don’t understand why you want to run.’

  ‘I’m not running anywhere, Ry. I’m just going back to the real world. To my job, my life, my little … house.’ She’d tried to say home but it had wedged in her throat. Closing her eyes to stop the hammering in her head didn’t work.

  I’m just going back to the real world. Even if I don’t want to.

  ‘The real world, huh? What’s waiting for you across the border? You got a best friend over there?’ He’d let go of her, but couldn’t stop touching her, a hand travelling slowly from her cheeks to her hair, and he entwined his fingers in her curls, cupping the back of her head.

  ‘I have friends,’ she told him, quietly, her voice unsure.

  ‘A best friend like Lizzie?’ She waited a beat and then shook her head. And that thought speared through her heart.

  ‘What about a pet? A cat? A goldfish maybe?’

  Julia didn’t answer. Her arms seemed to have a mind of their own and they were around him before she could even think about it, her fingers finding the strong muscles at his hips and gripping on tight. She wanted to feel him just one more time before she left, to savour what it felt like to be in his arms. To be held. To be wanted the way he wanted her. Her heartbeat betrayed her, pounding in her chest and her throat and she held on tight to him.

  ‘So what’s holding you there?’

  ‘Ry, you don’t understand–’

  A phone rang. It wasn’t Julia’s. Ry pulled away from her.

  ‘Fuck.’ He scrambled around on the floor for his jeans, plunging his fingers into a pocket.

  ‘Damn it, I’ve got to get this. It could be the pub … what the hell time is this?’ Julia was close enough to see the time on his phone: twelve thirty-two a.m. A shimmer of concern crossed his face.

  ‘Ry Blackburn.’ She felt an ache at the loss of his touch, and watched as he walked across to the front windows, naked and magnificent, looking out over the pitch black of the ocean. She knew she would feel on safer ground to continue this discussion if she was dressed, so she began throwing on her clothes and tugging on her boots.

  ‘Yes. This is Ryan Blackburn.’

  There was something about the tone of his voice that made her look up and she knew, in that instant, that something was wrong. Very wrong. Ry had stiffened and, in the moonlight, she could see the muscles in his neck flare into tense cords, his free hand clenched into a fist, every muscle in his back rigid.

  Her own heart thudded with fright, squeezing the air from her lungs and panicking her pulse into a sprint.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ Ry seemed frozen to the spot. ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. The phone slid from his hands. It crashed to the floor with an echoing clatter. Julia ran to him, pushing herself in the space between Ry and the window.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ She peered into his eyes, gripping his forearms. All the blood had drained from his face and his lips had fallen open in shock. He didn’t meet her eyes, just stared straight ahead, as if he didn’t even know she was there.

  ‘That was the police.’ The voice she adored was gravelly and pained.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There’s been an accident.’

  Julia’s hands flew to her mouth and she felt a wave of dread crash into her. The pounding tremors started in her chest and radiated in a millisecond like shockwaves out to her arms and legs, her head, her toes. Her heart felt too big for her chest, pounding outside of her, in her ears, in her mouth. She swallowed the urge to run, clutching her stomach to stop it churning.

  There’s been an accident, sweetie. It’s your father. He’s gone, Julia, gone. Sobs. Her mother’s. Wet pillows. A new black dress. Dark rooms. Wailing. Escape.

  Julia squeezed her eyes shut at the still-vivid memory, pressing her palms into her eyes to stop the tears. She tried to breathe to stop the hammering of her heart and the tremors terrifying her. She gulped in big breaths, in and out, in and out.

  ‘The police found my card in his wallet. That’s where they got my number.’

  ‘Who is it, Ry?’ Her voice a murmur, fearing that if she asked the question she would know, and that knowing would change the world forever.

  Ry’s eyes dropped to hers. ‘Dan. It’s Dan.’

  ‘He’s not …’ Her mouth cottonwool, she could hardly bring herself to say the word.

  There was the slightest shake of his head. ‘He’s in hospital.’

  Julia threw her arms around Ry, pressing her cheek to his bare chest, clinging on to him with every bit of strength she had left. His strong arms enveloped her, pulled her close, and he buried his face in her neck. Julia lost herself, started to cry, as much for Ry as for herself. She let it out in great heaving sobs, her body shaking with it, and Ry just held her, stiff, stroking her hair.

  It was all getting mixed up in her head, her father, her mother, Barbra’s pain, Dan, Ry’s agony. It was too much to bear. They’d both had so much loss. And now what would happen to Dan? Dan was his brother in every way that counted. Not just his brother. His family. Julia knew what it was like to lose a family.

  And then something shifted in her.

  It was as if a clock had just ticked over at midnight into a new day. The faces swimming in her head seemed to melt away and she became suddenly hyper-aware of where she was. Stop. Breathe. Her tears stopped and she let the rhythm of Ry’s heartbeat settle her breathing.

  You can do this. You can help this man you love. Stop and breathe. He needs you.

  With one more deep breath, a renewed strength and calm pulsed through her, straightened her back and stiffened her resolve. Julia pulled herself out of his grip, reached up to take his face in her hands and searched his eyes. They were dazed, his face ashen and haunted. Her heart broke for him.

  ‘Ry … listen to me. I need you to remember the phone call. Think back to what the police said about Dan. Did they mention the hospital?’

  He nodded, his words mechanical. ‘Flinders Medical Centre.’

  ‘Okay. Go get dressed.’

  He looked at her stricken, confused, his mind clearly a blank.

  ‘Ry, find your clothes and your car keys. We’re going to the hospital.’

  CHAPTER

  24

  A nurse with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a blue uniform pushed open the door of the Intensive Care Unit waiting room and flipped white papers on her clipboard.

  ‘Is there a Ryan Blackburn here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said quickly, and she and Ry got up from the hard plastic chairs and pulled themselves to standing on shaky legs. It was three o’clock in the morning and the after-effects of the adrenalin surge were starting to hit them both. Exhaustion warred with sheer terror in their heads, but they kept each other awake in shifts, not daring to fall asleep until they’d heard something, anything about Dan.

  ‘I’m Ry Blackburn,’ he said quietly. He tried to smile politely and put out a hand to shake the nurse’s. Julia was right by his side squeezing the other.

  ‘I’m Louise. I’m looking after Mr McSwaine tonight.’ Her voice was kind and efficient.

  ‘Are you a relative, Mr Blackburn?’

  Ry stared at Louise. ‘Related? The police called me … I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’re not officially related,’ Julia explained. ‘But Dan is his oldest friend and works for him. Can’t you tell us how he is?’

  The nurse smiled in understanding. ‘In that case I’ll need to ask you a few questions. I’m wondering if you know his next of
kin, and have any contact details, so we can let them know what’s happened. Does he have a wife or a girlfriend or a partner we can call?’

  Julia didn’t know all that much about Dan but she did know he was single. ‘No, he’s not married, doesn’t have a girlfriend.’ Louise wrote notes on her clipboard.

  Ry stiffened, gripped her fingers hard and Julia could hear him suck in a gasp of shock.

  ‘Hell, Bob and Joan.’ He turned to Julia, his face white as a sheet. ‘His parents. They’re somewhere up in Queensland in their caravan. They have to know.’

  ‘Okay Ry. We’ll call them.’

  Louise guided them back to the plastic seats and sat down alongside Ry.

  ‘Does Mr McSwaine have any other family here in Adelaide?’

  ‘No.’ Ry managed to reach into his jeans pocket for his phone.

  ‘You won’t get any reception in here, I’m afraid. I can organise a landline for you to call Mr McSwaine’s parents.’

  Ry’s shoulders slumped and he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his head low. Julia could see by the rise and fall of his shoulders that he was trying desperately to hold himself together. Julia’s fingers itched to rub his back, comfort him, connect with him and share the pain he was feeling.

  But there was something equally important she had to do. She found a notebook and a pen in her handbag.

  ‘Louise?’ she asked softly. ‘Do you think you could tell us his condition first? I think it’ll help when Ry calls them if he’s able to describe exactly what’s going on. And I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to write some things down to help him with that.’

  Louise gave Julia a consoling smile, patted her knee.

  ‘That’s a really good idea, Mrs Blackburn. When something like this happens it can be hard to take it all in. It’ll help.’

  Julia’s eyes darted to Ry. He hadn’t shifted. Which meant he probably hadn’t heard the nurse’s mistake.

  ‘It’s just Julia.’

  ‘Why don’t we go into the ICU?’ Louise stood and motioned them to follow her. ‘You can see your friend and I can explain what’s going on.’

  Julia linked her arm through Ry’s, hoping all her strength would help support him too, and they stood together. Louise swiped her pass card at the door and held it open while they followed, slowly and cautiously, down the corridor through to the Intensive Care Unit.

  It was bigger than Julia expected and so much noisier. She tried to shut out the clamour of voices, phones, and machines that dinged and beeped and concentrated instead on each footstep on the shiny linoleum, on holding on to Ry, and following Louise’s blue shirt. They finally stopped by a soft white curtain strung between two partial walls. Julia held Ry’s hand tightly in hers and he squeezed it back.

  The nurse turned to them and spoke matter-of-factly. ‘Before we go in, I just want to describe what you’ll see. Mr McSwaine is connected to monitors and lines because he suffered severe internal injuries in the accident. He is heavily sedated and has a tube in his mouth to help him breath.’

  Julia felt Ry shake. They’d not been told anything downstairs in the Emergency Department except that Dan was critical. And now the curtain was literally about to be pulled back to reveal the full picture of his injuries.

  Stop. Breathe.

  Louise whisked the curtain aside and when she nodded, another nurse rose from a chair by the monitors and exited the cubicle. Ry inhaled deeply, his blue eyes pale and wide, his face grey. They took slow steps to Dan’s bedside.

  Is that really Dan?

  The man in bed was laying flat on his back, his chin tilted up and a white tube was taped to his mouth. There was another thin plastic tube taped to his neck and round white patches were stuck all over his chest, connected to thin wires. A beige-coloured blanket and a crisp white sheet covered the lower half of his body. Ry noticed computer monitors at the other side of the bed that looked like seismographs, their green glow illuminating the semi-darkness.

  This can’t be him. Ry looked twice at his friend, lying still and pale in the bed. This guy had Dan’s jet-black hair and long, rangy frame, but this was a bag of bones and machines and tubes, not a man who grabbed life by the balls. This was not the Dan he knew.

  A pain radiated through Ry’s jaw and he felt a sudden pounding heartbeat shaking him from the inside. Julia had let go of him and was now staring at the nurse, open notepad in hand, poised to begin writing. Why the hell was she taking notes? It didn’t make sense. Nothing about where he was standing and what he was looking at made any sense. The last time he’d been in a hospital was five years before when his father had died. That realisation added a cold shiver to the confusion.

  ‘I understand this is all a little overwhelming, so please take your time,’ Louise said. ‘You can ask me any questions you need to and I can always find his doctor to talk to you as well.’

  Louise looked down at her clipboard and began explaining what she was reading.

  ‘Mr McSwaine was admitted to Emergency late last night. He was immediately taken in for a head CT to investigate if he’d suffered any head injuries. We know he has severe internal trauma. His liver is lacerated, there is damage to his spleen and he has injuries consistent with seatbelt injuries from the accident. He’s fractured his clavicle and has a flail chest, which means he’s broken some ribs. That’s why he’s on the ventilator, to help him breathe while they heal. He also has a broken left leg and, as you can see by the bruising around his eyes, a broken nose.’

  One of the machines beeped and Louise reached around to press a button to turn off the alarm.

  ‘We’re closely monitoring his pulse, blood pressure, temperature and his respiratory rate, which is why he’s connected up to so many monitors.’

  Julia took more notes, pages of them and Ry just stared at his friend. ‘Can he hear us?’ Ry’s deep voice was uncertain, shaky.

  ‘No, he can’t. He’s in an induced coma to help him cope with the pain of his injuries.’

  Ry took two tentative steps closer to the bed and placed his hand gently on Dan’s arm. He didn’t care if Dan couldn’t hear him. There were things he had to say out loud, to help convince himself that Dan would be okay. To try to make sense of this in his own head.

  ‘I’m here, mate. I’ll ring your parents, let them know what’s happened.’ And then he could feel Julia behind him, her arms around his waist, the warmth of her face on his back. A heave in her shoulders. He looked down to see her hands clasped at his belly, a blue notebook in her hand. He covered them with his and steadied himself.

  He found the strength to ask what he’d been thinking, going over and over in his head since he’d taken the call from the police.

  ‘Please don’t bullshit me, Louise. I need to know when I ring his parents. Will he make it?’

  Louise gave them a hopeful smile. ‘It might be hard to imagine, given the way he looks now and all that I’ve told you, but people do pull through from injuries like this. We’ll know more in three or four days when we reduce the sedation. The good news is that his CT was clear. There’ll be a long period of recovery, but he’s young and strong so his chances are good.’

  Ry closed his eyes and exhaled deeply, almost overwhelmed. ‘You mentioned a phone? I need to make some calls.’

  Julia watched Ry as he sat with a phone receiver in his hand, pressing numbers to get an outside line. They were in a private, windowless room just off the Intensive Care Unit, sparsely ­furnished with a desk, the phone, four chairs and posters on the walls variously reminding people to wash their hands or get a flu shot. She hadn’t left Ry’s side since he’d taken the call from the police. She’d made sure he had everything he needed before they got in the car and drove through the pitch-blackness of the night to the hospital. With white knuckles on the steering wheel and a calm head, Julia had let him sit in complete silence in the passenger seat.

  She’d struggled with the ferocious urge to break down and sob with the awfulness of it, the waste o
f having a man like Dan lying in a hospital, broken and motionless. But she’d found the strength to hold it back. The last thing Ry needed was for her to lose control when he was also trying so desperately to keep it together himself. She didn’t want to be a sobbing wreck around him, she wanted to be his strength. That’s what he needed from her and she was determined not to let him down.

  ‘Hello Joan? It’s Ryan. I’m well. Look, I’m sorry to be ringing so early …’

  She sat silently while Ry spoke to Dan’s parents, her heart aching at the sound of his mother’s extended silence down the line from far north Queensland, more than three thousand kilometres away. Ry’s eyes didn’t shift from her notebook, reading to them every thing Julia had written down about Dan’s condition and, importantly, everything they’d been told about his chances for recovery. Julia felt a surge of pride in the way Ry had pulled himself together to comfort them. She knew what it was like to be on the other end of the phone, to receive such devastating news. There would be no words for what Dan’s parents were going through, what it felt like to be so far away at such a time.

  After a promise to do everything he could for Dan, Ry made his second call, to his executive assistant Fiona. Despite the hour she began to move heaven and earth to get the McSwaines on the first flight that morning out of Cairns to Adelaide.

  His third call was to Barbra. After the shock and tears, from both mother and son, assurances that he would recover, they determined that Barbra would stay in the city so she could pick up the McSwaines from the airport in the morning and then bring them straight to the hospital to see Dan.

  Finally, when the calls were done, Ry put the receiver back in the cradle with a soft click. He crossed his arms out on the table in front of him and dropped his head, utterly exhausted. Julia rubbed his back in comforting circles, then nestled her palm on his neck in the spot where his hair met the collar of his shirt. He turned to her, his eyes hooded and red with dark circles settling under them again.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and for a long while they just sat.

  ‘You want a coffee, Ry? Something to eat?’