A Heartbeat Away

“Don’t you be too sure. Anyway, I must find out her name. Do you know where she lived—or worked, maybe?”

He suddenly remembered, “There’s this.” He removed a tiny purse from his pocket. “I picked it up off the road after…when the paramedics were putting her onto the stretcher.”

The nurse smiled and took it from him, already prying it open.

“Thanks,” she said. “Now, why don’t you go and get a coffee. There’s a machine just down the corridor.”

Ben hesitated and she ushered him off.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you informed.”

Strong black coffee hit the bottom of his stomach with a jolt, scalding his throat on the way down. He raced back along the corridor, needlessly spilling coffee in his wake, burning his fingers. Ward B, the nurse had said. His eyes scoured the signs above his head. That was it over there.

The door was closed, but he saw movement behind the glass panel. He peered through a gap. A white-coated doctor blocked his view, and impatiently he moved along. And then all of a sudden, there she was. His heart flipped over. She lay as still as death itself, her face as white as alabaster and her softly closed eyelids a pale translucent blue, but the heart monitor danced and bleeped to prove that she really was alive. He sank onto a chair to wait, sipping the scalding coffee without noticing it burning his lips.

For half an hour he sat motionless, listening to the bleeping machine, hope rising with every minute that passed. When a staccato sound filtered into his head, he glanced up, alarm bells already ringing

A man was approaching, a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties, with a sharply chiseled, handsome face and swarthy suntanned skin. He wore an obviously expensive well-cut navy suit, pale blue shirt, dark blue, unobtrusive silk tie. His shiny black leather shoes clipped along the corridor with purposeful strides.

“I am looking for Lucy McTavish,” he announced in a voice used to commanding attention. “I believe she was admitted this morning after an accident.”

Ben felt his whole world abruptly tilt out of focus. Lucy—the name that haunted his dreams. A familiar surge of guilt stabbed before common sense kicked in, bringing everything back on track again. There must be hundreds of girls named Lucy living in the city. He spoke her name soundlessly, rolling it comfortably around his mouth as he had done so many times before. He liked the fact that this girl was called Lucy, too.

The man stopped beside him, waiting impatiently. His jaw was set, his expression blank and he kept glancing at his cell phone as if expecting it to ring at any moment. Ben stared, mesmerized. If this man really was with the girl in the crimson suit, then how could he remain so impassive? Why wasn’t he running down the corridor, searching for her…screaming out her name?

“Mr. Lyall?” cried the blond nurse, who hurried toward him. “This way, sir. She’s in this ward just here.”

As the man turned to follow her neat, petite figure, Ben saw his dark eyes flicker over her well-proportioned backside. He felt like punching him in his arrogant face. How could he be with the girl from the park? There must be some mistake.

The door into the ward swished shut behind them, and Ben clutched the sides of his chair, fighting off a rush of jealous anger. What was he doing here, anyway, sitting in a hospital corridor in his stupid jogging shorts, watching over a girl who didn’t even know his name—a girl who obviously went for successful businessmen with smart suits and shallow eyes. He stood to leave. It was over. He had done his part, and now it was time to go.

But the glass-paneled wall drew him, making him hesitate. Before he walked out of her life, he needed one more glance at her lovely face just to reassure himself that she really was alive.

The man was half turned from the window, standing quite still, staring at the girl’s motionless figure as a doctor with a worried frown spoke to him in a low, urgent tone. The doctor lifted his stethoscope, making a point, but the man’s expression remained impenetrable and he pivoted to say something to the nurse. She smiled nervously, touching her hair, eyes flickering toward the dials beside the bed.

Ben could see the young woman’s face now…Lucy’s face. He murmured her name, recalling the laughter in her wide-spaced gray eyes, wondering what the hospital staff had done with her silly red shoes. A vivid image of them lying discarded on the cold gray pavement flashed into his mind’s eye, and all of a sudden his stupid jogging shorts didn’t really matter anymore. He would wait just a little while longer, long enough to be sure that she really was going to be okay.

The man walked to the other side of the bed and sat down heavily on a shiny black chair, his face expressionless at the sight of the slight form beneath the cream blanket. The nurse spoke to him, nodding, her eyes bright as she gestured toward the door with her clipboard. Ben stepped back from the window. Ahead of him, the endless, antiseptic corridor stretched toward an exit sign and sweet fresh air. He headed toward it, his heart in his boots.

“I believe I owe you.”

The man’s voice rang out behind him along the quiet of the corridor, deep and faintly mocking. Ben clenched his hands and slowed his steps, but he didn’t look back until the voice came again.

“They tell me you saved Lucy’s life.”

Ben took a breath, composing his face, self-consciously aware of his bare suntanned legs and tousled hair.

“I just happened to be there,” he said, meeting the hooded eyes and recognizing the ferocity that lurked beneath their outward calm.

“Well…thanks.”

The man, Lucy’s man, held out a broad tanned hand with perfectly manicured nails, and for one brief moment Ben gripped it, smiling awkwardly.

“Let’s just pray that she pulls through,” he whispered.

The man’s thin lips twisted into the semblance of a smile. “I don’t do praying,” he said. “Anyway, don’t feel you have to hang around. I’ll manage things from here.”

A prickle lifted the hairs on the back of Ben’s neck as he watched the man walk away, shoulders squared, head raised, shiny black shoes clipping on the gleaming utility floor.

“I’ll wait awhile longer,” Ben said loudly. “Just to see how she goes.”

There was a moment’s hesitation in the tapping of the man’s shoes and he glanced back. Ben ignored him, concentrating on his now-empty polystyrene coffee cup. The door to Lucy’s ward swished shut and he sank onto the hard plastic chair again, listening to the regular bleeping of the monitor…the sound of Lucy’s heart. Perhaps if he waited just a little while longer she would open her eyes.

Half an hour crept by. Nurses hurried past him, giggling, following doctors with white coats and important faces. Orderlies in green pushed gurneys with elderly people, their expressions strained, their eyes frightened, oblivious to Ben in his jogging shorts, squeezing his cup into a hundred pieces.

He stood and dropped the remains of the cup it into the trash bin. Easing his cramped muscles, he moved across to peer through the glass panel once more. The man was sitting quite still, seeming to read a newspaper yet studying the blond nurse, who was adjusting tubes and making notes on a clipboard. Oblivious to his attention, she hung the board over the end of the bed, walked across toward the swing doors and out into the corridor, a preoccupied expression in her pale blue eyes.

Ben tried to get her attention, but she just shot him a half smile before hurrying by. On sudden instinct he stepped forward to take hold of her arm. When she looked around in surprise, he gave her what he hoped was an apologetic smile.

“How is she?”

A shadow passed over her attractive English-rose features. “She has a long way to go,” she told him quietly. “Apart from being badly battered and bruised, she has some cracked ribs and a broken leg. Our real worry, though, is her head injury. If she doesn’t stabilize soon, we may have to operate.”

Ben felt as though someone had hit him hard in the pit of his stomach, and his arm dropped to his side.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, edging away from him. “Now, I have to go and get the doctor.”

Just behind them, the door swished open again and the man appeared. He dismissed her with a glance, and as she scurried away, he turned to Ben, jaw clenched, eyes half closed.

“There really is no reason for you to hang around here,” he remarked in a cold, flat voice. “They say that she’ll…”

Behind him, the bleep of the monitor faltered. He hesitated, glancing back. When its regular bleeping became a single high-pitched tone, Ben pushed past him and burst through the swinging doors.

Her face was deathly pale against the pillow, blue-lidded eyes closed against her cheeks, thick dark lashes lying upon her translucent skin like two small, perfect fans. And beside the bed, a single green line across the monitor and that awful, final, single tone as her life ebbed.

Ben stood frozen for a moment as the whole ward came alive with the urgent buzz of controlled panic. Firm hands bustled him out into the corridor. He heard the thumping sounds as the doctors struggled to shock her failing heart back to life again, then a desperate voice.

“It’s no good. She’s gone.”

And he started to run, down the endless, faceless corridors, anywhere away from this place that already haunted his dreams.

CHAPTER 3

They say that your life flashes in front of your eyes in the moments before you die. Mine didn’t. And as the hard gray pavement rose up to meet me, I clung to that one stupid thought, knowing that I didn’t want to die like this, here among strangers on the cold, wet street.

I was beyond feeling, beyond anything but an acute and horrified awareness of the violent events that had overtaken my body, hurling it onto the road like a helpless doll. I knew I was broken before I felt the crack—the pressure was just too strong for flesh and blood to bear. And in the instant that I felt my bones give way, there even came a kind of relief that the terrible pressure was released, that my life wasn’t flashing in front of my eyes. So I couldn’t be dead…could I?

Far, far away I could hear the squeal of brakes. Someone was calling, but I knew I had to go. I wasn’t dead, was I? I just needed some time out, needed to let myself slip away from the violent events that had overtaken me…needed to find Daniel. Was he out there somewhere, searching for me?