Husband Stay (Husband #2) (2 page)

I didn’t want to
watch, but couldn’t help myself glancing in the side mirror as they wheeled him
out of the club on a stretcher. He looked so still, he had to be unconscious,
and without the cowboy hat, I could see he had short cropped, dark hair and
some sort of moustache-beard arrangement.

I shuddered again.
One thing I could be grateful for was Danny’s fastidious grooming routines. I
abhorred facial hair, and men with three-day growths looked scruffy, rather
than sexy to me. Just another reason to dislike this overgrown party-boy and
his drunken behavior. Serve him right if he had alcohol poisoning.

I kept my gaze
stubbornly ahead as the back doors opened. The ambulance wriggled around as
they loaded him in, then the back doors slammed shut and a few seconds later Sally
jumped into the driver’s seat. She snatched up the radio and rattled off some
jargon that I wasn’t really listening to, because I was unable to help myself
looking over my shoulder to the stretcher behind me.

The second
paramedic was cutting the drunk’s tee-shirt open, and while Sally started the
engine and took us out into traffic, I watched the male paramedic stick monitor
tags over the drunk’s chest.

I glanced back at
Sally. “Does he have a heart problem?” For some reason I felt a niggling sense
of responsibility, as if his interaction with me had been two-way. Which was
crazy
.
He’d inflicted everything on me. I needed to remember that before my soft heart
started ambling down sympathy road.

“Maybe,” she said,
not taking her eyes from the road.

But did that mean
they weren’t sure, or that she wasn’t giving an indication either way because
of privacy laws?

And why did I
care?

I glanced over my
shoulder again, noticing for the first time that the expanse of chest his opened
Tee-shirt revealed was huge, and embarrassingly muscular. Was he a footballer?
I’d heard that rugby boys could be uncontrollable, but I’d never seen them in
Bertie’s club before.

The usual patron was
a thirty-something professional—but boring professions like accountants and dentists
who sat around drinking expensive cocktails and listening to the music of their
teenage years, imagining they were just as cool as they’d always been.

I’d suffered more
than my fair share of ham-fisted flirting over the years, and it sometimes took
all of my self-control to smile and be gracious as Bertie expected, when I really
wanted to say
Why on earth would I go out with a pretentious twit like you
when I have a perfectly good husband at home?

I hadn’t known
then that Danny was far from ‘perfectly good’. I’d accepted the fact that he’d always
been a flirt, which had alternately embarrassed and annoyed me. I’d smiled
through most of it, sometimes with gritted teeth, but I hadn’t liked it.

Now that it was
over, however, the worst thing was not-knowing when flirting had tipped over to
infidelity. That really sucked. And every time I thought of how gullible I’d
been, believing all his late-home-lies, I felt sick with disgust. But I had to
stop doing that to myself. Self-recrimination only made life harder to wade
through, and the last thing I wanted was to feel like a victim.

So I sighed and
closed my eyes, wishing I could somehow go back in time to when Jill, Fritha, Louella
and I had been schoolgirls together and Tommy Smout had sent me love letters. I
hadn’t been attracted to Tommy in the slightest, but his adoration had
impressed me.

Of course, I
hadn’t been attracted to Danny either, but the difference between the two men
was that Tommy had grown into a lovely man, a faithful and steadfast husband
and a doting father. At least that’s what my mother told me while recounting
news of Dakaroo, the little country town where we girls had grown up before
we’d all fled the outback for adventures in the city.

If I’d married
Tommy Smout instead of Danny, I’d be a happy mother now—albeit to mixed race
children—instead of a lonely woman with no shoes riding an ambulance to
hospital in a city where nobody cared about you.

I sighed again, and
that’s when Sally interrupted my thoughts. “He’s a looker, that’s for sure.”

I blinked my eyes
open, confused for a second about her ability to read my mind. Then I twigged
that I was still turned toward the drunk. Without realizing what I’d been
doing, I’d twisted sideways in the seat to face Sally, resting my cheek against
the head-rest so I could stare at the man on the stretcher behind her.

“No wedding ring.”
She winked at me and hauled us around a corner, her thin arms like spindles as
they turned the steering wheel.

“He’s a creep,” I
said categorically, but when I glanced back at him, I couldn’t help feeling as
if the description didn’t fit anymore. With monitors all over his chest, and
his face gentle with sleep—or unconsciousness—he looked like a big kid. A big
stupid kid, granted. But not a creep.

Annoying
.

But not scary.

I twisted around
to face the front again, protecting my wrist with my good hand. “I’m married,”
I said. My standard defense. May as well use it until the divorce was official.

She shrugged.
“Fair enough, but there’s no law against looking.”

The other
paramedic’s voice cut over us from the back. “ASAP, Sal.”

She flipped on the
siren and that was the end of our conversation as she focused on the road,
swerving between cars, running red lights, worse than a Sydney taxi driver.

I could see
movement behind me in my peripheral vision, and I desperately wanted to turn
back and stare, but some ingrained decency forced me to avert my head. Every
bad thing I’d thought about the man on the stretcher slowly drained out of my
mind. He wasn’t even
the drunk
anymore. He was someone’s son, clearly
fighting for his life.

In a straight
stretch with a clear freeway in front of us, Sally grabbed the radio and
rattled off codes. I had no idea what they meant. But I heard
cardiac
among it. Then she slapped the microphone back down and said over her shoulder,
“Do you need me in the back?”

“No.”

I stopped cradling
my wrist and let it rest on my lap, feeling like a complete baby. Why on earth
had I made such a fuss? Especially now that the pill had done its work and the
pain was a muted rumble, like distant thunder.

I turned to Sally
and said, “Is there anything I can do?”

Her frown
deepened, but she didn’t take her attention off the road. “Pray?”

She’d probably
said it as a joke, but I closed my eyes and immediately started into the prayer
my parents had taught me when my grandmother had been desperately ill.
I
worship the lotus feet of Ganesha, and call on the son of Uma, the destroyer of
all sorrows...

Whoever this man
was, it wasn’t fair for him to die in this way, with no loved ones nearby. So
when the ambulance pulled into the emergency section of the hospital, I kept
right on praying, staying where I was as Sally jumped out and helped her
partner get the stretcher out of the ambulance.

Orderlies rushed
out of the hospital to meet them and I watched as the man I’d thought so badly
of, jiggled on the stretcher as it rattled across the asphalt and was swallowed
up into the hospital.

I kept on praying,
feeling ever more hopeless, terrified that his last human interaction might
have been my curse about a stupid pair of shoes. The shock of it all must have
gotten to me, because I was on the verge of tears when Sally came back ten
minutes later and opened the passenger door to let me out. Somehow I held my
emotions in check.

“Let’s get you
inside so they can look at that wrist.”

I wished I could
tell her it was unimportant, so I could retreat to the tiny apartment I was
sharing with my cousin and have a cathartic sob, but there
was
something
wrong with the wrist. It needed an X-ray. I may as well get it done now.

“Thanks.” I picked
up my handbag with my good hand and followed her in, trying to ignore how
uncomfortable my bare feet were on the uneven asphalt. “Is he going to be
okay?” It was none of my business, but I still felt a completely unwarranted
sense of responsibility for him. “Are his people coming?”

She shook her
head. “No idea. We just pass on the information. Hospital staff will work that
out. Unless you know something about him that you can tell them?”

I shook my head. “I’ve
never seen him before.”

“You’d remember
him if you did.” She led me in through the sliding glass doors and a wash of
cold, disinfectant-tainted air coursed over me. It was a relief to be on
smooth, cool tiles. “He’s one big unit,” she added with another wink, then she
led me to triage. “Well, this is where I leave you. Sorry I missed your set.
I’ll try to get to the club some time to hear you.”

“Really?” I was surprised
by her interest. It was sweet. “Thank you. Please let me know if you do come.
I’d like to buy you a drink to say thanks.”

She glanced
around, and then back at me. “You’re not...hitting on me, are you?”

It took my brain
two seconds to process that, then my breath fell out on a gust of shock.
“Not... No! Goodness
no
. I’m completely straight. Completely! Married,
well, separated, but—”

She laughed at my
reaction. “Okay. It’s okay.” She patted my shoulder. “You just didn’t seem
interested in the hot guy, so I thought...you know.”

“He was drunk and
unconscious.” I shook my head. “How was I supposed to notice he was hot?”

And why would I
care? It was way too soon for that.

Sally grinned. “Must
be just me with the lecherous thoughts.”

The triage nurse butted
in with questions, so Sally excused herself and I was left to suffer the next
few hours of waiting and consultation and x-rays and more waiting all by
myself. I’d expected to grow sadder, but instead, as time passed I became more
curious about
the guy
and what was happening to him.

In the end, I
embarrassed myself by cornering a nurse. “A man came in the ambulance with me.
Tall. Big build. Dark hair. Some sort of heart issue.”

She nodded.
“Killer smile, sexy chest.”

I did a
double-take. The nurse had to be fifty. Probably a grandma. “I didn’t see his
smile...” I faltered. Did that mean he was awake now? I
had
seen his
chest. “He was a patron in the club where I work. So I feel...a sense of
responsibility for him. Have his family been notified that he’s here?”

If I was in
hospital with a dodgy heart, I’d want my parents at my bedside, stat!

She shook her
head. “He’s all alone. You want to check in on him?”

“Oh, no.” It was
my turn to shake my head. “I don’t know him.” I looked around for an excuse.
“I’m waiting for the results of X-rays. If I don’t hear my name called—”

“I’ll find you.”
She looked as if she was calling me on a dare. But the last thing I wanted was
to talk to the man. I was tired. It was nearly 4am. I wanted my wrist fixed and
I wanted to go home. Damn my stupid marshmallow heart for getting me into
trouble—yet again. But she just raised an eyebrow. “Five minutes,” she said.
“Might cheer him up.”

I frowned at her,
but it was like frowning at a rock wall. She absolutely wasn’t moved. And my
conscience was saying,
You prayed for the man
.
Would it hurt you to
look in on him?

I was over my
angst about the shoes. Perhaps I could consider it an act of goodwill and tell
Bertie I’d done it on his behalf. It might make me look more reliable, more
like a staff member he could count on to perform her duties.

“Alright.” I
hadn’t meant to sound so begrudging, but both her eyebrows rose and I felt
obliged to add, “I’m sorry. I’ll be nice to him.”

“He nearly died.”
She pinned me with a glare, then she nodded at the corridor and set off ahead
of me.

I padded after her
in my bare feet and black sheath dress, feeling stupid all over again when
people gave me puzzled glances. Did they think I was some party girl who’d lost
her footwear while roaming around drunk? At least my hand was now in a tidy sling
against my chest, so I added straight shoulders and a raised chin, hoping I
could get this ordeal over with quickly and get home.

I’d worry about
how to get my car back from the club tomorrow. I clearly couldn’t drive with
one arm out of action. Which meant I’d need to beg my cousin for a lift to the
train station on Monday. The last thing I needed was to lose my new part-time job
at the deli...

Oh.

How could I
prepare food when I had only one working arm?

I hadn’t thought of
that, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach at the same moment as the nurse
stopped and turned to me.

“In there,” she
said and nodded at a door.

I struggled to put
my own concerns aside for the moment, but my smile only lasted until I realized
she clearly wasn’t coming in with me. I shook my head. “You want me to just...go
in?”

What if he was
asleep or—

“Yep.” She turned
on her heel and marched back the way we’d come, leaving me staring at the door,
wondering what might be happening on the other side. What if he was using the
bedpan, or a doctor was in there examining him. Any number of embarrassing
things could be happening—things I didn’t want to intrude on.

But surely the
nurse would have thought of that. And, really, could I walk away when she’d
made him sound so lonely? In the end it was my marshmallow heart that did the
deciding, and I knocked tentatively.

Unfortunately, there
was no answer, so I tensed my shoulders in anticipation, turned the doorknob
and eased the door open, sliding my head inside to scope out the room, ready
for a quick exit if necessary.

But nothing was
happening. He was alone in the room, lying on the bed with his eyes closed, his
big tanned chest dotted with tiny white monitors and their cords. Was he asleep?