Look Back at Me (Fleckney Fields Series, Book 1)

In Rhys' Kitchen

They let her ride in the ambulance with him, and she only stopped touching him and rubbing his hands and his upper arms, when the paramedics shooed her away. One of them asked whether she was Viola Holyoake, and she started insisting that she was family and had the right to be with him. The paramedic laughed and said he meant he knew of her from a couple of doctors in the Abernathy General. Viola gave him a confused look. She simply couldn't focus on anything except Rhys on the stretcher.

Four years prior, on her way from work to a dentist's appointment, she'd witnessed a massive car crash. She'd resuscitated a person in a ditch, put three shoulders back into their sockets, and had to bandage an open fractured tibia, all at once. She had remained calm through three hours of the ordeal, had cancelled her appointment, and had returned to her A&E with one of the ambulances, after which she'd proceeded to tend to the patients for another six hours. Right now, her hands shook so much she couldn't zip up her jacket, and her head was spinning, making her sharply nauseous. She wouldn't be able to put an Elastoplast if needed.

There was no serious damage to Rhys' tissues, and once he had been pumped full of painkillers for his shoulder and plenty of warm liquids had been poured into him, he was released. John had arrived at the hospital twenty minutes after they'd taken Rhys in. They'd loaded groggy Rhys in John's Land Rover, and Viola sat with him. He kept keeling into her, and eventually he rested his heavy head on her shoulder, and she held his hand, listening to his pulse under her fingers she was pressing into his wrist.

"You smell nice," he muttered sleepily.

John parked in front of the Periwinkle Grove, and helped Rhys out. Apparently Rhys' keys had taken a bath in the river, and Viola had to dig in the pockets of his wet jeans in a plastic bag they'd given her in the hospital. She unlocked the door, and John led Rhys straight upstairs to his bedroom. Viola froze in the middle of the drawing room, suddenly baffled by what it was exactly that she was supposed to do now.

She put down the bag with Rhys' wet clothes and went to wash her hands in his luxurious bathroom. When she was out, John was washing his hands in the kitchen sink.

"He said to drive you to the surgery," he said without turning. Viola wondered how he knew she was behind him. "If you aren't staying," John added pointedly and looked at her over his shoulder.

"I– I don't know," she muttered.

She lifted her hands to rub her eyes, and remembered she'd put make-up on when she'd gone to the bake. It felt as if it had been a week since then.

"I think I'll stay for a bit," she said and heavily sat on Rhys' velvet sofa. "I'll call myself a cab if– when I go home."

He studied her and nodded.

"I'm sure he won't mind if you stay," John said with a soft chuckle. "He was mumbling something about sheets, but I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Viola nodded and sighed. John walked to the hall and then turned to Viola.

"He saved a man's life today," he said, and Viola's face flew up. Their eyes met, and she saw John shake his head, a small proud smile on his lips. "He's a bloody hero," he muttered, as if reproaching.

"He is, isn't he?" Viola said. Her voice was scratchy.

"Pulling people out of icy water, teaching children to swim, taking care of his unprivileged tenants," John listed, curling his fingers. "If he wasn't such a wanker, he'd give us all an inferiority complex."

They laughed together, and Viola realised she was feeling almost drunk from exhaustion.

"It's like all those years ago," she said and yawned.