And had thought about little else since.
She had her stethoscope in her ears and was listening to the chest of an elderly woman in cubicle three when he peeled the curtain back. She didn’t hear him and he stood by the curtain opening, waiting for her to finish, more than content to observe and wait patiently.
She looked very different tonight from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was swept back in a no-nonsense ponytail. The long curling spirals were not falling artfully around her face as they had on Saturday night but were ruthlessly hauled back into the ponytail, giving her hair a sleek, smooth finish. Her earlobes were unadorned, her face free of make-up.
And … yup. He’d known it. Even from a side view she rocked a pair of scrubs.
‘Well, you’ve certainly got a rattle on there, Mrs Gordon,’ Billie said, as she pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and slung it around her neck.
‘Oh, yes, dear,’ the elderly patient agreed. Billie was concerned about her flushed face and poor skin turgor. ‘I do feel quite poorly.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Billie clucked. ‘Your X-ray is quite impressive. I think we need to get you admitted and pop in a drip. We can get you rehydrated and give you some antibiotics for that lung infection.’
‘Oh, I don’t want you to trouble yourself,’ Mrs Gordon said.
Billie smiled at her patient. The seventy-three-year-old, whose granddaughter had insisted was usually the life of the party, looked quite frail. She slipped her hand on top of the older, wrinkled one and gave it a squeeze. It felt hot and dry too.
‘It’s no trouble Mrs Gordon. That’s what I’m here for.’
Mrs Gordon smiled back, patting Billie’s hand. ‘Well, that’s lovely of you,’ she murmured. ‘But I think that young man wants to talk to you, my dear.’
Billie looked over her shoulder to find Gareth standing in a break in the curtain. He did that smile-shrug combo again and her belly flip-flopped once more. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hey,’ Gareth murmured, noticing absently the cute sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the clear gloss on her lips. Her mouth wasn’t the lush scarlet temptation it had been on the weekend but its honeyed glaze drew his eyes anyway.
‘Thought I’d pop in and see how you were getting on.’
‘Oh … I’m fine … good … thank you.’ She sounded breathy and disjointed and mentally pulled herself together. ‘Just going to place an IV here and get Mrs Gordon …’ she looked down at her patient and smiled ‘… admitted.’
Gareth nodded. She looked cool and confident in her scrubs, a far cry from the woman who’d admitted to being squeamish after losing her dinner in front of him on Saturday night. He had to give her marks for bravado.
‘Do you want me to insert it?’
Billie frowned, perplexed for a moment before realising what he meant. He thought she’d baulk at inserting a cannula? Resident bread and butter?
God, just how flaky had she come across at the accident?
Another thought crossed her mind. He hadn’t told anyone in the department about what had happened the other night, had he? About how she’d reacted afterwards?
He wouldn’t have, surely?
She looked across at him and Helen was right, his blue scrubs set off the blue of his eyes to absolute perfection. The temptation to get lost in them was startlingly strong but she needed him to realise they weren’t on the roadside any more. This was her job and she could do it.
She’d been dealing with her delicate constitution, as her father had so disparagingly called it, for a lot of years. Yes, it presented its challenges in this environment but she didn’t need him to hold her hand.
‘Do you think we could talk?’ she asked him, before turning and patting her patient’s hand. ‘I’ll be right back, Mrs Gordon. I just need to get some equipment.’
Gareth figured he’d overstepped the mark as he followed the business like swing of her ponytail. But he had seen her visibly pale at the sight of the blood running down the taxi driver’s face on Saturday night. Had held her hair back while she’d vomited then listened to her squeamishness confession.
Was it wrong to feel protective of her? To want to alleviate the potential for more incidents when he was free and more than capable of doing the procedure himself?
Her back was ramrod straight and her stride brisk as she yanked open the staffroom door. He followed her inside and Billie turned on him as soon as the door shut behind them.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
Gareth quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Trying to help? I wasn’t sure if putting in IVs made you feel faint or nauseated and …’ he shrugged ‘… I was free.’
She shoved her hands on her hips and Gareth noticed for the first time how short she was in her sensible work flats. He seemed to have a good foot on her. Just how high had those heels been the other night?
‘Would you have offered to do anyone else’s?’ she demanded.
Gareth folded his arms. ‘If I knew it made them squeamish, of course,’ he said.
‘Putting in an IV does not make me squeamish,’ she snapped.
‘Well, excuse me for trying to be nice,’ he snapped back. ‘You looked like you had a major issue with blood on Saturday night.’
Billie blinked at his testy comeback. She looked down at her hands. They were clenched hard at her sides and the unreasonable urge to pummel them against his chest beat like insects wings inside her head.
She shook her head. What was she doing? She was acting like a shrew. She took a deep breath and slowly unclenched her hands.
‘I can put in an IV,’ she sighed. ‘I can draw blood, watch it flow into a tube, no problems. It’s not blood that makes me squeamish, it’s blood pouring out where it shouldn’t be. It’s the gore. The messy rawness. The missing bits and the … jagged edges. The … gaping wounds. That’s what I find hard to handle. That’s when it gets to me.’
Gareth nodded, pleased for the clarification. The ER was going to be a rough rotation for her. He took a couple of paces towards her, stopping an arm’s length away.
‘There’s a lot of messy rawness here,’ he said gently.
‘I know,’ Billie said. Boy, did she know. ‘But that’s the way it is and I don’t want you protecting me from all of it, Gareth. I’m training to be an emergency physician. I’m just going to have to get used to it.’
She watched as his brow crinkled and the lines around his eyes followed suit. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Surely this isn’t the right speciality for you?’
Billie gave a half snort, half laugh. That was the milliondollar question. But despite feeling remarkably at ease with him, there were some things she wasn’t prepared to admit to anybody.
‘Well, yes … and there’s a very long, very complicated answer to that question, which I do not have time to tell you right now.’ Or ever. ‘Not with Mrs Gordon waiting.’
Gareth nodded. He knew when he was being fobbed off but, given that she barely knew him, she certainly didn’t owe him any explanations. And probably the less involved he was in her stuff the better.
He was a forty-year-old man who didn’t need any more complicated in his life.
No matter what package it came wrapped in.
He’d had enough of it to last a lifetime.
‘Okay,