Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption

One minute she was out-of-control crazy. The next minute she was being hugged.

She was rigid with shock, but maybe rigid was too mild a word for it. She felt like she was frozen.

If she moved…But there was no if. She couldn’t move. She didn’t know who she would be if she moved. She would be some out-of-control creature who screamed and hit…

She had to apologise. She had to pull away and say she was sorry, but her body wouldn’t obey. Tremors were starting, shudders that ran all through her. If she pulled away she’d have nothing to hold her. All she could do was let this man—this stranger—keep her close and stop her crumpling.

She was falling into him and he was holding her as she had to be held. She was moulding to him, feeling the warmth and strength of him, feeling the steadiness of his heartbeat, and it was as if in some way he was giving hers back.

She was delusional. Crazy. She needed to pull herself together, but not yet, not yet. For now she could only stand within his arms while the world somehow righted itself, restored itself to order, until she finally found the strength to pull away and face the consequences of what she’d done.

Sam specialised in paediatric cardiology. He treated children and babies with heart problems. In his working life he faced parents on the edge of control—or who had tipped over into an abyss of grief. He never got used to it. He’d learned techniques to keep control of his emotions. To express quiet sympathy, to offer hope when hope was possible, to listen when listening was all he had to give.

But he’d never felt like he did now.

This made no sense. Yes, his dog was hurt. Yes, it had been an appalling evening but if this woman was a trained nurse…For her to collapse like this…

For him to feel like this…

Why? What was it with this woman that was making his heart twist?

He held her and felt her take strength from him. He felt the rigidity ease, felt her slump against him, and he felt her quietly gather herself.

He should move her away but his rigid protection of personal space wasn’t working right now. She was so vulnerable…and yet what she’d done, how she’d acted, had taken pure strength. There was no way he could let her down now, and when finally she found the strength to tug away he was aware of a sharp stab of loss.

She hadn’t cried. She was still white-faced, but she was dry-eyed and drained.

She shoved her hands through her curls, tucking stray wisps behind her ears, and he felt an almost irresistible urge to help her. To fix a tiny curl that had escaped.

He wasn’t an idiot. He’d been slapped once. It behoved a man to stay still and silent, and wait for her to make the first move.

‘I…I’m sorry,’ she managed at last.

‘It’s okay,’ he told her, striving hard to lighten what was an unbelievably heavy situation. ‘I was feeling guilty about Bonnie. Now I can feel virtuously aggrieved at being assaulted.’

‘And I get the guilt instead?’

‘Exactly,’ he said, and tried a smile.

She didn’t smile back. She looked up at him, and he thought, whatever had gone before, this woman wasn’t one to crumple. There was strength there. Real strength.

‘Hitting’s never okay,’ she said.

‘You were swatting flies,’ he said. ‘And missed.’

She did smile then. It was the merest glimmer but it was still a smile and it made him feel…

Actually, he didn’t know how it made him feel. Holding her, watching her…

Why was this woman touching him? Why did he look at her and want to know more?

It was Bonnie, he told himself. It was the emotions of almost losing his dog. That’s all it was.

‘Let me take you home,’ he said carefully, and took a step back, as if she might swipe him again.

The smile appeared again, rueful but there.

‘I’m safe,’ she told him. ‘Unarmed.’ She tucked her arms carefully behind her back and he grinned.

‘Excellent. Would you accept my very kind offer of a ride home?’

‘I’ll stain the Jeep.’

‘I’m a surfer. I have a ton of towels.’

‘I need milk,’ she said.

And he thought excellent—practicalities, minutiae were the way to get back on an even keel.

‘Because?’

‘Because I’ve run out,’ she said. She took a deep breath, steadying herself as she spoke, and he knew she knew minutiae were important.

She’d been in the abyss, too? There seemed such a core recognition, at a level he didn’t recognise, that it was an almost physical link.

But she seemed oblivious to it. ‘I’m on duty at six tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I have no milk. How can I have coffee with no milk? And how can I start work with no coffee?’

‘I see your need,’ he said gravely. ‘And I’m trained for triage. Priority one, the lady needs milk. Priority two, the lady needs home, wash, sleep. I can cope with milk and home. Can you take it from there?’

It was the right thing to say. Setting limits. Giving her a plan. He’d used this with parents of his patients hovering at the edges of control, and it worked now.

There were no more arguments. She gave him another smile, albeit a weak one, and he led her to his car.

He climbed in beside her, but still he felt strange. Why?

Forget imagined links, he told himself. This was crazy. He didn’t do emotional connection. He would not.

Get this night over with, he told himself. Buy the lady some milk and say goodnight.

He drove a great vehicle for surfing. It was no doctor’s car, she thought as he threw a heap of towels on the front seat. The Jeep was battered, coated with sand and salt, and liberally sprinkled with Labrador hair. Any qualms she had about spoiling the beauty of one of the sleek, expensive sets of wheels she was used to seeing in most doctors’ car parks went right out the window.

Sam wasn’t your normal doctor.

He didn’t look your normal doctor either. He was sand-and salt-stained as well, with his sun-bleached hair and crinkled eyes telling her that surfing was something he did all the time, as much a part of him as his medicine must be.

But he was a doctor, and a good one, she suspected. She’d seen his skill at stitching. She’d also heard the transition from personal to professional as he’d coped with her emotional outburst.

Though there’d been personal in there as well. There’d been raw emotion as he’d seen Bonnie—and there’d been something more than professional care as he’d held her.