Then Tony moved away, and he turned his attention to his food, and for a while they were both silent. Then she lifted her head and said, ‘You know you made that remark about David having a death wish because he wanted to go to Africa? What did you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘It was just a joke.’
‘No. You meant something, and you said you’d told him not to go, and when you were talking to Fred just now about the accident—what happened, Sam?’ she asked softly. ‘Did you really just fall off your bike?’
He sighed and set down his fork. ‘Really? In a manner of speaking,’ he said, and then bluntly, because he still wanted to lash out, he went on, ‘I hit a landmine.’
Her face bleached of colour, and he caught her glass just as it slipped through her fingers. ‘Careful, anybody would think you still cared, and we all know that’s not true,’ he said with bitter irony.
She sat back, her eyes filling, and closed them quickly, but not quickly enough because a single tear slipped down her cheek and that old guilt thing kicked in again. ‘Actually I was thinking of your mother—how she would have coped if…’
‘If I’d died?’ he prompted, trying not to look at the tear, and she sucked in a tiny breath.
‘Don’t.’ She swallowed and opened her eyes, reaching for her glass. He still had it in his hand, and as he passed it to her, their fingers met and he felt the shock race through him again.
Damn. Still, after all these years…
She took a sip and put it down, then met his eyes again. ‘So what really happened, Sam? With the landmine?’
He made himself concentrate on something other than the little trail the tear had made on her cheek. ‘There was a booby trap—a car in the road. I swerved round it, not paying attention, and the back wheel caught the anti-personnel mine and it hurled the back of the bike up into the air. Luckily the panniers were rammed with equipment, which protected me from the blast, but the force of the explosion threw me forwards onto the ground.’
‘And?’
‘And I broke my collar bone and my ankle,’ he told her, grossly oversimplifying it. ‘Oh, and tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I’ve noticed you don’t use your left hand very much.’
‘Got out of the habit,’ he lied, and turned his attention back to his food, leaving her sitting there in silence, struggling with the image of him being hurled through the air and smashed into the ground.
She felt sick. It could have been so much worse, she thought, and set down her knife and fork, unable to eat while her emotions churned round inside her and the man she loved was just a foot away, his eyes fixed on his plate, obviously in a hurry now to finish his meal and leave. He’d only wanted to thank her for finding his mother, and he’d done that, and now he just wanted to go.
Fair enough. So did she, and she was about to get up and leave when Tony stopped by their table.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked, and she nodded and smiled at him and picked up her knife and fork again, forcing herself to finish her food before it was not only the flavour of sawdust, but stone cold with it.
‘So how long will she be in?’ he asked the registrar the next day.
‘Just a few days. We want to get her anticoagulation sorted and then she can be discharged.’
He felt a flicker of fear, the tightening of the noose of responsibility, and consciously slowed his breathing down.
‘Surely she can’t come home until she’s able to look after herself?’
‘But I gather you’re at home now, so that’s not a problem, is it?’
He arched a brow. ‘You want me to look after my mother? Attend to her personal care?’
‘Why not? You’re a doctor.’
But she’s my mother! he wanted to scream, but it was pointless. She would have done the same for him, and it was only because it made him feel trapped that he was so desperate to get away. And last night, with Gemma—well, it had been an emotional minefield every bit as dangerous to his health as the one he’d encountered on the bike, and he hadn’t been able to get away from the pub quick enough.
He’d used Digger as an excuse, and he’d gone back to the house, collected the dog and taken him for a long walk along the beach in the moonlight, right down to the far end and back while he thought about Gemma and how he still wanted her so badly it was tearing holes in him.
He couldn’t do it—couldn’t stay here. He just wanted to get away, to go back to Africa and lick his wounds in peace. Well, not peace, exactly, but anonymity, at least, without the benefit of the residents of Penhally telling him he’d deserted his mother and let his brother run wild and failed them both, with Gemma in the background reminding him that he’d failed her, too, or why the hell else would she have left him when everything between them had seemed so incredibly perfect?
But he couldn’t go back to Africa, because he couldn’t operate, because his collar bone hadn’t just broken, it had shredded his left brachial plexus and damaged the sensory nerves to his left hand, and his shoulder was still weak from the tear to his rotator cuff when he’d landed on it, and his leg—well, his ankle would heal slowly and improve with time, unlike his hand, but in the meantime he’d struggle to stand for hours operating, even if he could feel what he was doing with his hand, which he couldn’t, and he couldn’t ride a bike, not with his left arm so compromised and his ankle inflexible, so it was pointless thinking about it and tormenting himself.
And his mother aside, there was the problem of Jamie, who had come in last night at seventeen minutes past ten. Late, but not so late that he was going to say anything, and so they’d established an uneasy truce.
But the need to get away was overwhelming, and after he left the hospital he drove up onto Bodmin Moor and walked for hours with Digger over the rough grass and heather until his ankle was screaming and he wasn’t sure how he’d get back, his mind tortured with memories of Gemma, lying there with him in the heather and kissing him back for hour after hour until he thought he’d die of frustration.
Huh. No way. He’d discovered through painful and bitter experience that you didn’t die of frustration, you just wished you could, because that would bring an end to it at last.
He sat down on a granite outcrop with the panting Jack Russell at his feet and stared out over the barren, wild landscape while he waited for the pain in his ankle to subside. He could see a few sturdy little ponies grazing and, in the distance, a small herd of Devon Red bullocks turned out for fattening on the spring grass. But apart from that and the inevitable sheep dotted about like cotton-wool balls in the heather, there was nothing there but the wide-open skies and the magical, liquid sound of the curlews.
And gradually, as the warmth of the spring sun seeped into his bones and the bleak, familiar landscape welcomed him home, he accepted what he had to do—what he’d known, ever since he’d had the phone call about her stroke, that he would have to do.
He didn’t like it—he didn’t like it one bit—but he had no choice, and he would do it, because that was who he was. He would stay at home and look after his mother until she was better, he’d get his brother back on the rails, and then he’d look at his future.
Always assuming he could get off this damned moorland without calling out the Air Ambulance!
‘Lauren?’
The physiotherapist looked up and smiled at him a little warily. ‘Oh, hi, Sam. How are you?’
He pulled a wry face. ‘Sore—that was what I wanted to see you about. I don’t suppose I can book myself in for some physio with you, can I? I overdid it up on Bodmin this afternoon and I could do with a good workout. Maybe after you finish one evening?’