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Danielle faltered, and Isobella tuned back into the conversation.
‘It was awful.’ Danielle shuddered. She looked down at her hands, that were plucking at the sheet. ‘The pain is…indescribable. It was like…like someone had taken a blowtorch to my leg, but it…it…’
Isobella took a step closer to the bed as the young woman struggled to adequately describe the unimaginable pain she’d experienced. Danielle’s eyes had filled with tears, and she had a look of such abject terror on her face Isobella felt her stomach flop. She didn’t have to ask to know that Danielle was back in the water again, reliving the dreadful moment.
‘It was everywhere. It was in my head and my heart and my lungs. I couldn’t breathe…I couldn’t move…’
Danielle choked on a sob, and Isobella took another step closer and reached for the girl’s fidgeting hand. Danielle looked startled at the intimacy as a tear trekked down her face. But she gripped Isobella’s hand hard and gave her a tight, watery smile.
‘And now I have this.’ She peeled back the sheet to reveal the three livid purple lashes seared into the flesh of her left lower thigh. ‘Look at it,’ she gasped. ‘It’s horrible—hideous. I’m never going to be able to wear shorts again!’
Isobella leaned hard into the side of the bed as theFleckeri damage leapt out at her. Danielle’s emotions were so raw, evoking a hundred memories of a time she only wanted to forget. Isobella knew that plenty of people would tell Danielle how lucky she was—and, yes, she was—but Isobella also knew that living with a permanent unwanted tattoo was hard on the self-esteem and worse on the psyche. You felt branded. Unattractive. Unfemale. Unworthy.
The girl wouldn’t getsuch banal platitudes from her.
Isobella squeezed Danielle’s hand. ‘It’s hard now. But it gets easier.’
Alex frowned at the sight before him.What the…? He could see the white of Isobella’s knuckles as she held Danielle’s hand, and the now familiar molasses gaze was coating the young woman in compassion. He’d never seen Isobella looking so intense—not even in the few days he’d spent with her at the lab. He wouldn’t have thought that possible.
‘Isobella’s right, Danielle,’ Alex said quietly, dragging his gaze from Isobella’s face. ‘The scars lessen over time.’
That hadn’t been what Isobella meant, but who wouldn’t believe Alex when he was looking so self-assured, with his husky voice ringing with truth?
Danielle gulped and nodded her head, removing her hand from Isobella’s and scrubbing at her face.
‘Let me tell you about our project,’ Alex said gently. ‘I think you’ll find it interesting.’
Danielle listened intently. The timbre and the flow of his voice were hypnotic, and his passion about his subject was not remotely blunted by the burred resonance.
‘We’d like to enrol you in the study. We’d need to take some pictures of the wound and arrange for regular follow-ups after you go back to England. Isobella will look into that. We brought some information for you to read through.’
Alex glanced at her, and it took a second or two for Isobella to realise that he was waiting for her to hand over the literature. She blinked, and then delved around in her bag for the booklet.
‘Here,’ she said, smiling at Danielle. The young woman took the booklet from her and leafed through it. Isobella could see the information was going to be too much to take in right now. ‘I’ll be in touch, and we can go over any questions you might have. But do you mind if I take a few pictures of the lesions now for my database?’ Isobella asked.
Danielle nodded. ‘Okay.’
Isobella smiled her thanks and quickly snapped a dozen shots with the lab’s high-resolution digital camera. The severe linear erythematous weals had a white ischaemic centre in what was known as a frosted ladder pattern. An acute inflammatory response had developed, causing some surrounding tissue oedema.
Isobella made sure she had some detailed angles. The researcher in her wanted to pore over the wound, discuss it with Alex in depth, but she didn’t want to make Danielle too self-conscious. She knew she could inspect the photos in depth at a later date.
Danielle thanked them for coming and promised to read the literature. Alex stopped to write on the chart, but Isobella didn’t want to stick around, and offered to go and buy them some coffee, arranging to meet Alex in the café in fifteen minutes.
It wasn’t till she left the unit that Isobella felt as if she could breathe properly again, and her hand trembled as she thought about the anguish in Danielle Cartwright’s voice. And this was just the beginning. Today would be fraught with hard-to-listen-to stories. Stories that would take her back to her own horrid experience. She yearned for the safety of her white coat and her microscope, nearly two thousand kilometres away in Brisbane.
