AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rafaello’s hand clamped down on him with all its weight, restraining him.
‘No!It’s a head injury—and maybe her neck, too. You are not to move her—not even a centimetre!’
Dante still wanted to punch Rafaello, but he lifted his arm away. Other people were there now. Connie’s lawyer, the woman who had shown him in. All were expressing their concern. Connie herself was not stirring.
Numbly, Dante kept his fingers at her throat, on the thin, frail pulse still beating there.
And as her blood trickled slowly over her chalk-white cheek onto his hand, as he knelt on the pavement beside her, words formed in his head, carving into him, one by one.
Her blood is on my hands...
The ambulance came. Scooped Connie up and drove off with her, blue lighting through the traffic.
Rafaello hailed a taxi, piling Dante into it, but by the time they reached the hospital Connie had been rushed away.
Dante strode up to the reception desk in A&E, numb with dread.
‘My wife,’ he said curtly. ‘She’s just been brought in. Unconscious. Head wound. Where is she?
His questions were staccato, demanding. His face looked like stone.
The receptionist checked, conferred with a colleague, then looked at him.
‘She’s in X-Ray,’ she said. ‘She needs a CT scan. They’ll know more soon. Could you please fill out this form with her personal details?’
Dante ignored the form and headed for the seating area closest to the door that saidX-Ray and Imaging.
It opened, and a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck walked through.
Dante stepped in front of him.
‘My wife,’ he said urgently. ‘She fell. Unconscious. Head injury. Bleeding—’
The doctor glanced at him for a moment, then nodded, gave a tired smile. He didn’t always get to give good news, but this was one time he could.
‘She’ll be OK,’ he said.
Dante’s eyes closed, and emotion drenched through every fibre of his being.
CHAPTER TEN
THEREWASAmist in the room. Connie could see it. Feel it. It was all around her. Inside her. Blurring her vision. Blurring everything.
She tried to blink, to clear it, but it would not go. The mist was covering up her thoughts, her feelings, and she could not get through it to find them, even though she had a feeling it was very important that she do so. The effort was hideous, and with a low moan in her throat she gave in...giving herself up to the mist.
When she next surfaced the mist had gone—not completely, but it was only around the edges of the room now, blurring the walls and the edges of her brain, blurring the edges of her thoughts, her feelings.
Those thoughts and feelings had come into sharp, agonising focus. Each one edged with a knife blade like a razor.
Dante. Dante in front of her like an avenging god of old, denouncing her.
Misery filled her, piercing the edges of the mist. Misery and so much more.
The door was opening and a nurse came in. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked brightly.
‘Groggy,’ said Connie.
The nurse nodded. ‘That’s to be expected. But you’ll be glad to know you’re doing very well. We’ll keep you in for observation, but all the signs are looking good, so you should be OK to go home before too long.’
