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“Her ex.”
Of course, she has an ex. Kate hasn’t shared with me either? Oh, the fucking irony.
And what he’s said, about not liking someone else being with Kate … the sting is sharp and brutal. Why am I helping Nadine? Why am I doing any of this?
I turn around and slam my head into the concrete front of the building next to us.
23
Kate
Acouple of loud shouts echo down the corridor, and I hear running feet, so I smile at the patient with the bad leg wound I’ve spent half an hour stitching up.
“Just another day in the ER,” I say as I get up from my chair. “Drunk people are the worst. Let me check that I don’t need to do anything.” And I stick my head out the curtains. My eyes move to the reception area, and someone in scrubs steps aside, and then I see him.Oh God.
“Sorry, I …” I flap my hand at the man on the bed and step out of the cubicle.
Fabian’s reeling around with something in his hand, and my feet take me toward the main desk, toward him. As soon as his eyes lock on mine, it’s like being plugged into a thousand-volt socket. A hundred emotions wash across his face in one look: pleading, anger, desperation.
“Why won’t you fuckingtalkto me?” he shouts.
Several eyes turn to look at me, wide with horror. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a doctor skid to a halt beyond reception, and Chris, an ER resident, comes up behind me. Erica, the nurse who’s trying to calm Fabian down, glances over her shoulder at me and shifts to one side. Another staff member whose name I don’t know is crouched down below the front desk on the phone like she’s calling the cops. I wouldn’t blame her: He’s dirty and disheveled and has a large scrape on his forehead. Drugs? Weapons? I peer at his hand again.What is he holding?
I shake my head at him, and he steps toward me. At my back, Chris shifts closer.
“Please, Kate, I need to talk to you. I want to explain,” he says, and my eyes track down his body and my heart constricts in my chest. My God, this man, this damaged, amazing man. But I don’t want the excuses and everything I know that goes with that.
“It’s better this way, Fabian.” My voice shakes. I can’t look at him.
The doctor by the desk steps forward and raises a placating hand.
“Sir …” he starts, and Fabian swings his arm and then I realize what’s in his hand: a long shard of glass. It misses the doctor by inches. Oh Christ.
“Keep away from me,” he shouts. “I just want to speak to her.”
“Jesus, Fabian,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not going to give me a chance here, Kate? After everything?” And the pain in his voice pierces right through me. “I’m not even worth a conversation? Five minutes of your time?”
Oh God.
“You’ll listen to me if I do this,” he says, and I stare at him in horror as he runs the piece of glass down the artery in his arm.
“Oh shit!” Chris says behind me as blood spurts out of Fabian’s vein and starts bubbling out from beneath his skin. He didn’t just do that, did he?
“You going to talk to me or watch me bleed to death? How long have I got, Kate?” he taunts as red streams pour down over his wrist and onto the floor. The whole place has come to a standstill, frozen in time.
And then he sways, and three of us lunge forward, grabbing his arm, hands frantic. Before I know what’s happening, we have him on the ground, pinned. Someone thrusts a tourniquet in my hand. My hands slip with the blood, a fumbling, shaking blur in front of my face. It’s everywhere, and I’m used to bleeding, but Jesus, it soaks into the knees of my scrubs and seeps onto the tiles, sliding under our feet.
But somewhere at the back of my mind is a drumbeat: arm, Velcro, tighten, distal pulse. A switch has flipped. The man on the floor is a patient to save, not the man I am angry with, the man I could strangle with my own bare hands, the man who has left me wrecked. His face is right there, dark stubble and circles under his eyes as I concentrate on his arm, tightening and tightening the windlass, stains collecting in the dry skin of my fingers and the edges of my nails. Red smears everywhere. His eyes drift across my face as his eyelids flutter down. A tight band wraps around my chest.
“Come on, come on.” I’m not sure whether I’m asking Fabian to hang on or the other doctors to hurry up or the bleeding to stop. Chris is trying to get a line in his other arm, shouting for someone to call the blood bank.
“What’s your blood type,” Chris says.
“He’s been admitted before, it’ll be on the system,” I say.
“I love you, Kate,” Fabian slurs, and in the blink of an eye I’m pulled out of medical mode and back into reality. My heart is like horses’ hooves thundering closer and closer. After all the agony of the last fourteen hours, helovesme?
