Tamed By The Renegade

Ruby had chatted to Scarlett, Jake and her mother when they’d all been at Rose’s bedside and when she and Rose had been alone she’d read to her and kept one ear peeled for the sound of the voice of the motorbike man next door, the man with the devilish grin and the voice like distant thunder, but it seemed he wasn’t in a talkative mood today.

There was a lot more activity in the ICU and Ruby knew that there wasn’t a moment when they were alone but she was disappointed he hadn’t even tried to strike up a conversation with her. By the end of the day she had learned nothing further about him. She still didn’t know who he was and he’d had no visitors, not a single one. He’d had no one to talk to other than the doctors and nurses and Ruby hadn’t learnt anything interesting from them.

Where was his family? Where were the people who cared about him?

She supposed she could have asked him, should have asked him, but whenever she had gone in or out of Rose’s cubicle there had been one of the medical staff with him and she hadn’t been able to do more than smile at him.

She should have tried harder. She should have worked on her timing but she was nervous, which was something quite out of character for her. Holding back was not in her nature. Normally, if she wanted something, whether it was information or an introduction, she would make it happen. But the butterflies that took flight in her stomach whenever they made eye contact were enough to make her hesitate.

If they’d been in a social setting she would have walked straight up to him so perhaps it was the fact that he was at a disadvantage physically that made her hesitant. He didn’t know that she’d stood at his bedside the night before and watched him sleep. She thought that might freak him out so she was keeping her distance. He had no way of getting away from her if she encroached on his personal space. He wouldn’t be able to avoid her and she hated to think that she wouldn’t know if he was pleased with her attention or not. She didn’t want him to feel obligated to be nice to her just because he was confined to a bed.

She didn’t consider that he could easily be blunt and tell her to leave him alone—something about the way he smiled at her made her think he wouldn’t be rude, but she didn’t want to put him in an awkward position. So she said nothing.

* * *

By late afternoon she was tired of staring at the same four walls. Tired of pretending everything would be fine. Rose had made it through another twenty-four hours but that was all that had happened. She supposed that was better than the alternative but she had reached her limit of being cooped up. She knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of being supportive but she couldn’t stay inside the hospital for a minute longer.

Lucy was coming to take over the bedside vigil from her so Ruby arranged to meet her friend Candice for dinner. The last time she’d been back to Adelaide several months earlier had been for Candice’s wedding. It was strange to think that had been when Jake had been persistently pursuing Scarlett and she’d been trying to fend off his advances but not doing so very successfully. Now, months later, it was hard to imagine them not together.

Ruby and Candice had nursed together in Melbourne but had both grown up in Adelaide. In typical Adelaide fashion there were only ever three degrees of separation. Ruby and Candice had worked together, now Candice worked as a theatre nurse for emergency surgery in this hospital, where Scarlett was an anaesthetist and Jake was about to be an intern, and Candice and Jake had grown up together as family friends. If anyone understood what Ruby and her family were going through at the moment, it was Candice.

As they selected their dishes from the Thai menu Ruby filled her friend in on Rose’s status before Candice moved the conversation on to ‘other business’, as she called it.

‘So, are you bringing a plus one to Scarlett’s wedding?’

Ruby shook her head.

‘Why not? I know you have one, you always have one. I used to wonder how you found so many.’

‘You don’t wonder any more?’

‘Not now that I’m married.’ Candice laughed. ‘It doesn’t bother me any longer that you seem to have more than your fair share of men. Now that I’ve taken myself out of the marketplace you can have as many as you want, but I do like to meet one of them every now and again. Who’s the latest?’

Ruby paused. She didn’t think there was actually that much to say but it would be nice to talk about the things they always used to discuss. It would be nice to get her mind off Rose’s medical predicament for just a while.

‘I’m not sure that there is a latest,’ she admitted.

‘You’re between boyfriends?’

‘I’m not sure exactly.’

‘How can you not be sure? What’s going on?’

‘Mitch was asleep when Scarlett rang me about Rose in the middle of the night. The phone call didn’t wake him. I left him a note.’ Mitch was a musician, a drummer, and his band had been playing at one of the local pubs that night. He’d got home late and hadn’t been asleep long when Scarlett’s phone call had woken Ruby. But Mitch had slept through all of that and Ruby hadn’t thought it necessary to wake him. It wasn’t any of his business. She hadn’t thought about Mitch since she’d walked out.

‘You left him a note?’ Candice’s tone let Ruby know exactly what she thought about that. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

Ruby shook her head. ‘He hasn’t called me either,’ she said defensively. ‘We don’t, didn’t, have that sort of relationship.’ They hadn’t been like Scarlett and Jake. Or Candice and her husband, Ewan. They had both found the person they wanted to spend the rest of their life with. They had found the person who came first. Ruby had no idea what that was like.

‘Well, if neither of you are prepared to pick up the phone, you’re probably perfectly matched,’ Candice decided, ‘but it’s kind of ironic ‘cos now you’ll never know.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ruby said with a shrug. ‘I’d never planned to bring him home to meet my family and certainly not for Scarlett’s wedding. We wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. I’d been seeing him for almost two months.’

Two months was her self-imposed time limit on relationships. Any longer than that and there was the chance that one of them could start to think the relationship was serious and that was something Ruby had always taken pains to avoid. A serious relationship meant sharing bits of your soul with another person. Letting them see deep inside you. It meant taking things a step further than sharing a bed and your body. Sharing your mind was a far scarier proposition and not one that Ruby was particularly keen on.

In her experience people started to expect more from a relationship as it started to edge towards three months. Boyfriends wanted to know more about her. They would expect to be invited to an event as her plus one. Three months meant it was serious. It meant it would hurt if she was abandoned.

‘Besides,’ she added, ‘worrying about a plus one to the wedding is irrelevant as I assume Scarlett and Jake will postpone it. I can’t imagine Scarlett will want to get married while Rose is in hospital. She’ll want to wait until Rose has recovered.’ Ruby couldn’t voice the alternative. That Rose might not get better.

‘They haven’t said what they’re planning on doing?’

Ruby shook her head. ‘No. It seems kind of an odd conversation to have in the ICU. We tend to talk about what the doctor’s latest update means and what treatment Rose should have. I think everyone is just avoiding the topic of anything to do with the future. I don’t think any of us can think more than a day ahead at this stage. So it means we sit there not really talking about much at all. It’s no wonder the days seem interminably long in Intensive Care, but it’s all we can do. Just be there for Rose.’

‘Let’s hope she’s out of there soon and then a few more of us can split the shifts and visit her.’

Access to the ICU was restricted to family members only, and that reminded Ruby of the lonely motorbike man. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask Candice for information. She might have even been working on the day he had been brought in. She might be the one person Ruby knew who would have the lowdown on him.

‘Speaking of visiting, there’s a guy in the bed next to Rose who hasn’t had any visitors at all. He was brought into ICU yesterday. He looked as though he would have come through Emergency first. Were you working? Do you know anything about him?’

Candice grinned. ‘I wasn’t working but I heard about him. He’s into motorsport apparently, a racing-car driver or something. By all reports, he’d done a fair bit of damage to himself but the girls were still very complimentary about him.’ Her grin widened. ‘It’s not every day they get to see quite such a glorious naked man. Even if they did have to cover him with sterile drapes, they copped quite an eyeful in between times.’

Ruby’s imagination quickly added what Candice was describing to what she’d already seen for herself and created a rather glorious picture. Almost real enough to make her blush. ‘Do you know his name?’ she asked.

‘Neil? No, that’s not right.’ Candice shook her head. ‘Noel maybe? Something starting with an N anyway. The girls weren’t interested in his name.’ She laughed. ‘But I can find out if you like.’

‘No, that’s okay. I was just curious.’ She should have checked his chart while he slept, just to find out his name, but that seemed like invading his privacy just a little too much.

‘That would make you just one in a long line, from what I hear.’

Ruby was curious but she’d hoped Candice would have been able to give her a name or something to enable her to do some research when she got home. She didn’t want to think of it as cyber-stalking but wasn’t that one of the purposes of the internet? But she still didn’t have enough to go on.

It was ridiculous. She was never going to find out anything about him. She rather liked the fantasy of the lonely bachelor that she’d built up around him but she knew it was probably a complete fallacy. She knew the simplest way to get some answers would be to strike up a conversation with him. If she wanted to know more, she was going to have to drum up some courage and ask him herself.

Normally she was up for a bit of fun, some harmless flirtation, as much as the next person. All right, usually a bit more than the next person. A girl had to know how to have fun but even she wasn’t sure that an intensive care unit was the appropriate place to attempt to pick up a man. She was sure it wouldn’t make the list in a women’s magazine when they printed their articles on the top ten places to meet men. Not unless you worked there and then it could technically come under the heading of a workplace.

And although Ruby couldn’t be accused of being mainstream in her approach to dating, or even meeting men, even she wasn’t convinced that having an eye on a man who was lying in an ICU, no matter how hot he looked, was acceptable in the dating jungle.

Tuesday, 16th December

But nothing ventured, nothing gained was her motto, and the next morning was as good a time as any to venture, she decided as she keyed in the code to open the door into the ICU. Now that she knew he wasn’t an axe murderer or serial killer, she could relax. Her judgement had been known to let her down on occasion.

She summoned up her courage and pushed the door open. She’d check on Rose and then strike up a conversation. There’d be no harm in saying a simple ‘Hello’ as she walked past. She didn’t need to crowd him. She could say hello and then the ball would be in his court. If he wanted to engage her in conversation she’d be a willing participant. He’d had no visitors, perhaps she could offer to help. There must be something he needed and, if not, at least she would have broken the ice.

She was all ready to flash him her best smile as she made her way to Rose’s cubicle but his bed was empty, stripped of its sheets, leaving the mattress exposed, the machines all neatly packed away. The bed looked as though it had never been occupied.

The adrenalin that had been coursing through her body clumped together to form a little ball of lead in her chest and plummeted to the pit of her stomach, leaving her feeling flat.

He was gone and she’d missed her chance.