Читать книгу New Doc in Town - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 8

A BREEZEWAY divided the house from the little building perched beside it on the steep hillside.

‘A double carport so you can keep your van under cover,’ his guide said, waving her left hand to indicate the covered parking spaces. She reached above the door for a key, saying, ‘I know I shouldn’t keep it there,’ before inserting it in the lock and opening the door.

The flat was as different from the minimalist-style house as it was possible to be. Roses, not giant cockroaches! The roses dominated the small space. They bloomed from trellises on the wallpaper, glowed on the fabric covering the small lounge suite, while silk ones stood in vases on small tables here and there.

‘Ha!’ Cam said, unable to stop himself. ‘You wanted a fortyish woman to fit in with the furnishings, although … ‘

He turned towards his new boss and caught a look of such sadness on her face he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth. Though now he had, he had to finish what he’d been about to say or look even more foolish than he felt.

‘Well, one of my sisters is forty and roses definitely aren’t her thing.’

The words came out strained, mumbled almost under his breath, but he doubted Joanna Harris heard them. She’d moved across the small room and opened the sliding glass windows, walking out through them onto the deck.

The way she stood, hugging herself at the railing, told him she wanted—perhaps needed—to be alone, so he explored the neatly organised domain, finding two small bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen had been fitted somehow into the tiny flat. The configuration of the bathroom made him wonder. There was a shower above a tiled floor, no cubicle, just a floor waste where most of the water would go. The basin was set low, no cupboard beneath it.

This and a silver bar screwed onto the wall at waist height suggested the room had been built for someone with a disability and now he looked around he realised the doorways were wider than normal—to accommodate a wheelchair?—and hand-grips had been installed in other places.

Jo had spoken of a sister …

A disabled sister?

He looked out at the figure standing on the deck, a hundred questions flashing through his mind, but the way she stood—the way she’d handled his arrival and their conversation since—told him he might never have those questions answered.

A very private person, Jo Harris, or so he suspected, although on an hour’s acquaintance how could he be judging her?

She should have redecorated the flat, Jo chided herself. She should have done it as soon as she’d moved into it after Jilly died—yet she’d always felt that changing the roses her sister had loved would have been letting go of her twin for ever.

A betrayal of some kind.

And surely ‘should’ was the unkindest word in the English language, so filled with regrets of what might have been, or not been. Should have done this, should not have done that. Her own list of shoulds could go on for ever, should have come home from Sydney sooner being right at the top of it!

Jo hugged her body and looked out to sea, waiting for the view to calm her, for her mind to shut away the memories and consign the shoulds to the trash bin she kept tucked away in her head. Coming into the flat usually upset her—not a lot—just brought back memories, but today, seeing the stranger—Cam—there, he’d looked so out of place among the roses Jill had loved, it had hurt more than usual.

‘I’ll bring my car up.’

He called to her from the doorway and before she could turn he was gone. Good! It would give her time to collect herself. Actually, it would give her time to scurry back to her place and hide from the man for the rest of the day, though that was hardly fair.

She found a little notebook on the kitchen bench and scribbled a note. ‘Will meet you in the carport in half an hour, we can get a bite to eat in town and I’ll show you around.’

A bite to eat in town.

It sounded so innocuous but within an hour of being seen down the street with him the word would be all over town that Jo Harris had finally found a man!

As if a man who looked like him—like the picture of him anyway—would be interested in a scrawny redhead.

Of course once the locals realised he’d come to work for her, the talk would settle down, then when he left …

She shook her head, unable to believe she’d been thinking that maybe it would be nice to have a man around.

A man or this man?

She had a sneaky suspicion the second option was the answer but she wouldn’t consider it now. Instant attraction was something for books, not real people—not real people like her, anyway.

The man would be her colleague—temporary colleague—and right now she had to show him around the town. She’d reclip her hair and smear on a little lightly coloured sunscreen, the only make-up she ever used, but she wouldn’t change—no need to really startle the town by appearing in anything other than her usual garb.

Unfortunately as she passed through the kitchen she saw his résumé, still open on the bench—open at the photo …

She added lipstick to the preparations. After all, it, too, had sun protection.

Leaving the house, she drove down to the clinic first, showing him around the consulting and treatment rooms, proud of the set-up and pleased when he praised it. Then back in the car, she took Cam to the top of the rise so he could see the town spread out below them.

‘It’s fairly easy to get around,’ she explained to him. ‘As you can see from here, the cove beach faces north and the southern beach—the long one—faces east.’

‘With the shopping centre running along the esplanade behind the cove, is that right?’

He pointed to the wide drive along the bay side, Christmas decorations already flapping in the wind.

‘There’s actually a larger, modern shopping mall down behind this hill,’ Jo told him. ‘You just drive up here and turn right instead of left. We’re going the other way because the best cafés are on the front and the hospital is also down there. Until the surfing craze started, the cove beach was the one everyone used. It’s only been in relatively recent years that the open beach has become popular and land along it has been developed for housing.’

Explaining too much?

Telling him stuff he didn’t need to know?

Yes to both but Jo felt so uncomfortable with the stranger in her car, she knew the silence would prickle her skin if she didn’t fill it with talk.

‘Can we eat before we visit the hospital?’ her passenger asked, and although there was nothing in his voice to give him away, memories of her own surfing days came rushing back to Jo. When the surf was running, food had been the last thing on her mind, so she’d return home close to lunchtime, starving.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t had breakfast?’ she wailed. ‘I realised you’d come straight from the beach but … ‘

She turned so she could see his face.

‘You should have said,’ she told him, mortified that she’d been proudly pointing out up-to-date equipment while all he wanted was something to eat. ‘I could have offered you food at the house—cereal or toast or something. It was just so late in the morning I didn’t think of it. Or we could have gone straight to the café instead of doing the clinic tour first.’

She’d turned her attention back to the road but heard the smile in his voice when he replied.

‘Hey, don’t go beating yourself up about it. I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.’

‘Hardly a boy!’ Jo snapped, contrarily angry now, although it wasn’t her fault the man was starving.

She pulled up opposite her favourite café, a place she and Jill had hung out in during their early high-school days.

‘They do an all-day big breakfast I can recommend,’ she told Cam, before dropping down out of the car and crossing the road, assuming he would follow. As she heard his door shut, she used the remote lock and heard the ping as the car was secured.

‘A big breakfast will hit the spot,’ Cam declared as he studied the blackboard menu and realised that the combination of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomato, beans and toast was just what he needed to fill the aching void in his stomach.

If only other voids in other parts of him could be filled as easily …

‘I’ll have a toasted cheese and—’

‘Tomato sandwich and a latte,’ the young girl who’d come to take their orders finished.

‘One day I’ll order something different,’ Jo warned her, and the girl laughed as she turned to Cam.

‘The sky will turn green the day Jo changes her order,’ she said. ‘And for you?’

He ordered the big breakfast, absolutely famished now he’d started thinking about food and how long it had been since he’d eaten. He looked out across the road at the people gathered on the beach, and beyond them to where maybe a dozen surfers sat on their boards, waiting for a wave that might never come.

He understood their patience. It wasn’t for the waves that he surfed, or not entirely. He surfed to clear his head—to help to banish the sights and sounds of war that disturbed his nights and haunted his days.

He surfed to heal himself, or so he hoped.

‘The surf was far better this morning,’ he said, turning his mind from things he couldn’t control and his attention back to his companion.

‘Higher tide and an offshore breeze. Now the wind’s stronger from the west and flattening the surf but those kids will sit out there anyway. They don’t mind if there are no waves, and now they’re all pretty good about wearing sun protection it’s a healthy lifestyle for them.’

She spoke in a detached manner, as if her mind was on something else. Intriguing, that’s what his new boss was, especially as she’d been frowning as she’d explained surf conditions in Crystal Bay—surely not bothersome information.

‘So why the frown?’ Yes, he was intrigued.

‘What frown?’

‘You’ve been frowning since the girl took our order,’ he pointed out.

A half-embarrassed smile slid across his new boss’s lips, which she twisted slightly before answering.

‘If you must know, I was thinking how predictable I’ve become, or maybe how boring I am that I don’t bother thinking of something different to have for lunch. This place does great salads, but do I order a roast pumpkin, feta and pine-nut concoction? No, just boring old toasted cheese and tomato. I’ve got to get a life!’

Cam chuckled at the despair in her voice.

‘I wouldn’t think ordering the same thing for lunch every day prohibits you from having a life.’

Fire flashed in her eyes again and he found himself enjoying the fact that he could stir her, not necessarily stir her to anger, but at least fire some spark in the woman who was … different in some way?

No, intriguing was the only word.

‘Of course it doesn’t, and if my life wasn’t so full I wouldn’t need to employ another doctor, but the cheese and tomato is a symbol, that’s all.’

Small-scale glare—about a four.

‘A symbol? Cheese and tomato—toasted—a symbol?’

Now the eyes darkened, narrowed.

‘You know very well what I mean. It’s not the cheese and tomato, it’s the repetition thing. We get stuck in a groove—well, not you obviously or you wouldn’t be wandering along the coast in a psychedelic van, but me, I’m stuck in a groove.’

‘With a cheese and tomato sandwich, most uncomfortable,’ he teased, and saw the anger flare before she cooled it with a reluctant grimace and a head shake.

‘It’s all very well for you to mock,’ she told him sternly. ‘You’ve been off seeing the world with the army. You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck in a small town.’

She hesitated, frowning again, before adding, ‘That came out sounding as if I resented being here, which I don’t. I love the Cove, love living here, love working here—so stuck is the wrong word. It’s just that I think maybe people in small towns are more likely to slip into grooves than people in big cities.’

He had to laugh.

‘Lady, you don’t know nothin’ about grooves until you’ve been in the army. Everyone in the army has a groove. It’s the only way a thing that big can work. Hence the psychedelic van you mentioned—that’s my way of getting out of my particular groove.’

And away from the memories …

Jo studied the man who’d made the joking remark and saw the truth behind it in the bruised shadows under his eyes and the lines that strain, not age, had drawn on his cheeks. She had an uncomfortable urge to touch him, to rest her hand on his arm where it lay on the table, just for a moment, a touch to say she understood his need to escape so much reality.

He’s not staying!

The reminder echoed around inside her head and she kept her hands to herself, smiling as their meals arrived and she saw Cam’s eyes widening when he realised how big a big breakfast was in Crystal Cove.

‘Take your time,’ she told him, ‘I could sit here and look out at the people on the beach all day.’

Which was true enough, but although she watched the people on the beach, her mind was churning with other things.

Common sense dictated that if she was employing another doctor for the practice it should be a man. A lot of her male patients would prefer to see a man, especially about personal problems they might be having. Elderly men in particular were reluctant to discuss some aspects of their health, not so much with a woman but with a woman they’d known since she was a child.

She’d ignored common sense and asked for a woman for a variety of reasons, most to do with the refuge. Not that her practice and the refuge were inextricably entwined, although as the only private practice in town she was called in whenever a woman or child at the refuge needed a doctor.

Mind you, with a man—she cast a sidelong glance at the man in question, wolfing down his bacon, sausages and eggs—she could run more effective anti-abuse programmes at the high school. The two of them could do interactive role plays about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour—something she was sure the kids would enjoy, and if they enjoyed it, they would maybe consider the message.

The man wasn’t staying.

And toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches were really, really boring.

‘Tell me about the refuge while I eat.’

It had been on her mind, well, sort of, so it was easy to talk—easier than thinking right now …

‘It began with a death—a young woman who had come to live in the Cove with her boyfriend who was a keen surfer. They hired an on-site van in the caravan park and had been here about three months when the man disappeared and a few days later the woman was found dead inside the van.’

Her voice was so bleak Cam immediately understood that the woman’s death had had a devastating effect on Jo Harris.

But doctors were used to death to a certain extent, so this must have been more traumatic than usual?

Why?

‘Did you know her?’ he asked. ‘Had she been a patient?’

Jo nodded.

‘No and yes. I’d seen her once—turned out she’d been to the hospital once as well. Perhaps if she’d come twice to me, or gone to the hospital both times … ‘

He watched as she took a deep breath then lifted her head and met his eyes across the table, her face tight with bad memories.

‘She came to me with a strained wrist, broken collarbone and bruises—a fall, she said, and I believed her. As you know, if you’re falling, you tend to put out a hand to break the fall, and the collarbone is the weak link so it snaps. Looking back, the story of the fall was probably true but if I’d examined her more closely I’d probably have seen bruising on her back where he’d pushed her before she fell.’

Cam stopped eating. Somehow he’d lost his enjoyment of the huge breakfast. He studied the woman opposite him and knew that in some way she was still beating herself up over the woman’s death—blaming herself for not noticing.

‘And when she was found in the van? She’d been battered to death?’

Jo nodded.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt such … ‘ She paused and he saw anguish in her face so wasn’t entirely surprised when she used the word.

‘Anguish—that’s the only way to describe it. Guilt, too, that I hadn’t helped her, but just total despair that such things happen.’

He watched as she gathered herself together—literally straightening her shoulders and tilting her chin—moving onward, explaining.

‘After she was dead some of the permanent residents at the park told the police they’d heard raised voices from the van but, like most domestic situations, no one likes to interfere. Her parents came up to the Cove and we found out they’d known he was abusive. In fact, he’d moved up here because she had often sought refuge with her parents and he’d wanted to isolate her even more. They offered a donation—a very generous donation—for someone to set up a refuge here. I … ‘

She looked out to sea, regret written clearly on her face.

‘It was as if I’d been given a reprieve. I might not have been able to help one woman, but surely I could help others. My friend Lauren, a psychologist, had just returned home to work at the Cove and together we got stuck into it, finding out all we could, bringing in people who could help, getting funding for staff.’

She offered him a rueful smile before adding, ‘Getting the house turned out to be the easy part.’ Then she sighed and the green eyes met his, studying him as if checking him out before telling him any more.

Had he passed some test that she continued, her voice low and slightly husky, as she admitted, ‘My sister had just died so, in a way, setting up the refuge helped me, too.’

She smiled but the smile could certainly not be classified as perky, as she admitted, ‘It became a passion.’

‘And?’ he prompted, for he was sure there was more.

One word but it won a real smile—one that lit her eyes with what could only be pride in what she and her friend had achieved, although there were still shadows in them as well. Of course there would be shadows—the memory of the woman who died, then the connection with her sister’s death.

A sister who’d loved roses?

He brought his mind back from the roses and shadows in eyes as Jo was talking again.

‘Isn’t there a saying—build it and they will come? Well, that’s what happened with the refuge. It’s sad it happened—that places like it are needed—but on the up side, at least now women at risk anywhere within a couple of hundred miles’ radius have somewhere to go. I’m connected to it in that I’m on the committee that runs it, and also we, by which I mean the practice, are the medical clinic the women staying there use. Problem is, to keep the refuge open we need ongoing funding from the government to pay the residential workers and that’s a bit up in the air at the moment. The powers that be keep changing the rules, requiring more and more measurable ‘objectives’ in order to attract funding, but … ‘

She nodded towards his plate. ‘This is spoiling your breakfast. Some time soon we’ll visit the house and you can talk to Lauren, who runs it, and you can see for yourself.’

Cam returned to his breakfast but his mind was considering all he’d heard. He could understand how personal the refuge must be to Jo, connected to the woman who’d died, as well as to her sister. In a way it was a memorial—almost sacred—so she’d be willing to do anything to keep it going. Even before she’d admitted that the refuge had become a passion he’d heard her passion for it in her voice and seen it in her gleaming eyes as she’d talked about it.

Passion! Hadn’t it once been his driving force? Where, along the way, had he lost his?

In the battlefields, of course, treating young men so badly damaged many of them wished to die. Dealing with their minds as well as their bodies. No wonder he’d lost his passion.

Except for surfing. That passion still burned …

He brought his mind back to the conversation, rerunning it in his head. He found the thing that puzzled him, intrigued in spite of his determination not to get too involved.

‘How would employing a middle-aged female doctor in the practice help save the refuge?’

He won another smile. He liked her smiles and was beginning to classify them. This one was slightly shamefaced.

‘It wouldn’t do much in measurable objectives,’ she admitted, ‘but it does bother me, personally, that some of the older women who use the house—women in their forties and fifties—might look at Lauren and me and wonder what on earth we could know about their lives or their problems, or even about life in general. I’m twenty-nine so it’s not as if I’m fresh out of uni, but I look younger and sometimes I get the impression that the older women might think that though I’ve got all the theory—’

‘Theory isn’t reality?’

He couldn’t help it. He reached out and touched her hand where it rested on the table.

‘Look, I don’t know you at all, but having spent just a couple of hours in your company I’m sure you’re empathetic enough to be able to see those women’s situations through their eyes. The army’s the same—a fifty-year-old colonel having to come and talk to some young whippersnapper straight out of med school about his erection problems.’

He paused, then asked, ‘I take it you have staff at the refuge?’

The tantalising green eyes studied him for a moment, puzzling over the question.

‘We have a number of trained residential support staff, who work with the women all the time.’

‘Then surely at least one of them could be an older woman, maybe more than one. These are the people spending most time there.’

Jo nodded.

‘You’re right, of course. And a couple of them are older women, it’s just that … ‘

‘Just that you want to be all things to all people? No matter how much you do, you always want to do more, give more?’

His new boss stared at him across the table. He could almost see the denial forming on her lips then getting lost on the way out.

‘Are you analysing me?’ she demanded instead. ‘Showing off your psychology skills? Anyway, I don’t think that’s the case at all.’

He grinned at her.

‘You just want the best for everyone,’ he offered helpfully, finding pleasure in this gentle teasing—finding an unexpected warmth from it inside his body.

‘And what’s wrong with that?’ she asked, but the words lacked heat and Cam smiled because he knew he’d hit home. She did want the best for everyone, she would give more and more, but would that be at the expense of her own life? Her own pleasure?

And if so, why?

Intriguing …

Not that he’d ever find out—or needed to. He wasn’t looking to stay in Crystal Cove, unexpected warmth or no.

Although …

‘Hospital next,’ Jo announced, mainly to break the silence that had followed their conversation, though the man mountain had been demolishing the rest of his breakfast so he probably hadn’t found the silence as awkward as she had. She replayed the conversation in her head, realising how much of herself she’d revealed to a virtual stranger.

She’d forced herself to sound bright and cheery as she’d made the ‘hospital next’ suggestion, but the conversation about the refuge had unsettled her so badly that what she really needed was to get away from Fraser Cameron and do some serious thinking.

Did she really think she could be all things to all people?

Surely she knew that wasn’t possible.

So why … ?

She concentrated on sounding positive.

‘Tom Fletcher, the doctor in charge, lives in a house beside the hospital so if he’s not on the wards, I can show you through then take you across to his place to introduce you.’

‘Tom Fletcher? Tall, thin guy, dark hair, has women falling over themselves to go out with him?’

Jo frowned at the man who was pushing his plate away with a sigh of satisfaction. No need to keep worrying about sounding positive when she had a challenge like this to respond to.

‘Women falling over themselves to go out with him? What is it with you men that you consider something like that as part of a physical description?’

Her crankiness—and she’d shown plenty—had absolutely no effect on the man who was grinning at her as he replied.

‘I knew a bloke of that name at uni—went through medicine with him—and to answer your question, when you’re a young, insecure, very single male student you remember the guys who seem able to attract women with effortless ease. I bet you ask another ten fellows out of our year and you’d get the same description.’

Jo shook her head.

‘The male mind always was and still remains a total mystery to me,’ she said, ‘but, yes, Tom is tall and thin—well, he’d probably prefer lean—and has dark hair.’

‘Great!’

Cam’s enthusiasm was so wholehearted Jo found herself asking if they’d been good friends. Although if they had, surely Cam would have known his mate was living at the Cove.

‘Not close friends, but he was someone I knew well enough. It will be good to catch up with him.’

Would it? Even as he’d spoken, Cam had wondered about ‘catching up’ with anyone he’d known from his past. Could he play the person he’d been before his war experiences? Could he pretend well enough for people not to see the cracks beneath the surface?

PTSD they called it—post-traumatic stress disorder. He had seen enough of it in patients to be reasonably sure he didn’t have it, not the full-blown version of it anyway. All he had was the baggage from his time in the war zone, baggage he was reasonably certain he could rid himself of in time.

Perhaps.

His family had seen the difference in him and understood enough to treat him not like an invalid but with gentleness, letting him know without words that they were all there for him if ever he wanted to talk about the baggage in his head.

Not that he could—not yet—maybe not ever …

Fortunately, before he could let too many of the doors in his head slide open, his boss was talking to him.

‘Come on, then,’ she said, standing up and heading across the footpath towards the road. ‘It’s time to do some catching up.’

‘We haven’t paid,’ he reminded her, and she threw him a look over her shoulder. He considered running the look through his mental data base of women’s looks then decided it didn’t really matter what her look had said. Best he just followed along, took orders like a good soldier, and hoped he’d prove indispensable so he could stay on in Crystal Cove for longer than a couple of months.

The thought startled him so much he found the word why forming in his head.

He tried to answer it.

The surf was good, but there was good surf to be had along thousands of miles of coastline.

Surely not because of the feisty boss—a woman he’d barely met and certainly didn’t know, and quite possibly wouldn’t like if he did know, although those eyes, the creamy skin …

He reached her as she was about to step out to cross the esplanade, just in time to grab her arm and haul her back as a teenager on a moped swerved towards her.

‘Idiot!’ Jo stormed, glaring full tilt at the departing rider’s back. ‘They rent those things out to people with no more brains than a—’

‘An aardvark?’ Cam offered helpfully, trying not to smile at the woman who was so cross she hadn’t realised he was still holding her arm.

He wasn’t going to think about why he was still holding her arm—he’d just enjoy the sensation.

‘I was going to say flea,’ she muttered as she turned towards him, ‘then I thought maybe I’d said that earlier.’ She frowned up at him. ‘Why would you think I’d say aardvark?’

He had to laugh.

‘Don’t you remember telling me I probably had the counselling skills of an aardvark earlier today?’

Her frown disappeared and her cheeks turned a delicate pink.

‘How rude of me! Did I really?’

She was so obviously flustered—again—he had to let her off the hook.

‘I didn’t mind,’ he told her. ‘In fact, I was too astonished to take offence. I mean, it’s not ever day one’s compared to such an unlikely animal.’

Jo knew she had to move.

For a start, she should shake the man’s hand off her arm, but she was mesmerised, not so much by the quirky smile and sparkling blue eyes and the tanned skin and the massive chest but by the fact that she was having such a—What kind of conversation was it?

Light-hearted chit-chat?

It seemed so long since she’d done light-hearted chit-chat, if that’s what it was, with a man she didn’t know, but whatever it was, she’d been enjoying it …

‘Are we going to cross the road or will we stay on this side, discussing aardvarks and fleas?’

Far too late, Jo moved her arm so the man’s hand fell off it, then she checked both ways—she didn’t want him saving her again—and hurried across, beeping open the car as she approached it, so she could escape inside it as quickly as possible.

Except he’d be getting in as well—no escape.

Until they heard the loud crash, and the sounds of splintering glass.

Cam reacted first, pushing her behind him, looking around, apparently finding the scene of the accident before she’d fully comprehended what had happened.

‘It’s the moped driver,’ he said, as he hurried back across the street to where people were already gathering on the footpath.

Jo followed, seeing the splintered glass of the shopfront and the fallen moped, its wheels still turning, the young driver lying motionless beside it.

‘Let’s all step back,’ Cam said, his voice so full of authority the onlookers obeyed automatically, and when he added, ‘And anyone without shoes on, walk away carefully. The glass could have spread in all directions.’

That got rid of a few more onlookers and made Jo aware she had to tread carefully. Sandals were fine in summer, but as protection against broken glass not sensible at all.

Cam was kneeling by the young man, who wasn’t moving or responding to Cam’s questions.

‘Unconscious?’ she asked, as she squatted on the other side of him, their hands touching as they both felt for injuries.

‘Yes, but he’s wearing a helmet and the bike barely hit the window before he came off.’

Jo lifted the youth’s wrist automatically and though she was looking for a pulse she had to push aside a metal bracelet. Remembering the rider’s swerve earlier, she checked it.

‘He’s a diabetic,’ she said to Cam. ‘Maybe he was feeling light-headed when he nearly ran into me. He might have been pulling over to take in some carbs when he passed out.’

‘His pulse is racing, and he’s pale and very sweaty—I’d say you’ve got it in one, Dr Harris,’ Cam agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you have a syringe of glucogen on you?’

‘I’d have tablets in my bag in the car, but he should have something on him.’ She began to search the patient’s pockets, pulling out a sleeve of glucose tablets.

Perhaps because she’d been poking at him, their patient stirred.

‘That’s a bit of luck! I’ve seen before how blood glucose can rise back to pre-unconsciousness levels,’ Cam said, as he helped the young man into a sitting position and asked him if he was able to take the tablets, but Jo had already sent one of the audience to the closest café for some orange juice.

Their patient nodded, muttering to himself about stupidity and not stopping earlier.

The juice arrived and Cam supported him, holding the bottle for the shaky young patient.

‘This will be easier to get into you than the tablets,’ he said, ‘but even though you’re conscious you should take a trip up to the hospital and get checked out.’ He nodded towards the ambulance that had just pulled up. ‘Here’s your lift.’

‘But the moped?’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Jo told him. ‘I can put it in the back of my vehicle and take it back to the hire people and explain.’

Cam stood back to let the ambulance attendants ready their patient for transport, and looked at Jo, eyebrows raised.

‘You’ll put it in the car?’

He was smiling as he said it, and all kinds of physical symptoms started up again—ripples, flickers, flutters, her skin feeling as if a million tiny sparks were going off inside it.

‘Someone would help!’ she retorted, trying really hard not to sound defensive but losing the battle.

His smile broadened and now her reactions were all internal—a squeezing in her chest, accelerated heartbeat while her lungs suddenly needed all of her attention to make them work.

How could this be happening to her?

And why?

Wasn’t she perfectly happy with her life?

Well, she was worried about the refuge, but apart from that …