But then there was the sound of footsteps and he knew that someone was coming down the corridor. Maybe for Tia.
He’d waited five years for a conversation he’d never been sure would ever take place—and now it was about to be interrupted. Exactly as he’d feared.
Frustration swamped him, making his words harsher, his voice edgier, than he’d intended them to be.
‘I don’t know, Tia. Maybe I thought you’d returned because you’d read about me in the papers and finally remembered that you were still my wife.’
TIA HURRIED DOWN the hallway, the emergency somehow grounding her.
She’d never been so happy for an interruption as she had been when one of the lifeguards had knocked on the door to tell her that they were dragging a struggling dog walker out of the surf and she might be needed.
Technically, she hadn’t started yet but, until they knew what it was or whether the emergency services would need to be called, she could certainly take a look.
The confrontation with Zeke had been harder, so much harder, than she’d imagined it would be. He’d brought her to her knees with just a few curt words. So any further, awkward conversations with Zeke could—mercifully—wait.
Turning the corner, Tia spotted one of the lifeguards guiding a disorientated-looking woman up the steps, a dog leaping around behind them. The woman was moving under her own steam but looked weak.
‘This is Marie,’ the lifeguard was saying as they approached. ‘About forty minutes ago she was walking her dog when it ran into the water a bit too far and got into difficulties. She went into the water to rescue it but got a bit stuck herself so we ran in. We brought her back here for a warm drink and change of clothes and then she seemed okay. Then about five minutes ago, she started to take a turn.’
‘So she wasn’t this disorientated when you pulled her out?’
‘No,’ the lifeguard replied. ‘She complained of feeling faint about ten minutes later but nothing more. This has got progressively worse since she’s been here.’
Tia watched as Zeke moved quickly to the fainting woman’s other side, putting her arm around his shoulders.
‘She’s going to go, Billy,’ he warned. ‘Put your hand under her thigh and we’ll carry her through. Quickly.’
The two men had barely got her to the consulting bed when she stopped breathing.
‘Zeke, get her on the bed and get me a defib. Billy—’ Tia turned to the lifeguard as he was dropping the woman’s rucksack and coat from his shoulder ‘—call treble nine.’
‘Heart attack?’ Zeke asked, yanking the cupboard open and producing the defibrillator that Tia hadn’t yet had a chance to locate.
‘Could be.’ Tia ripped open a mechanical ventilating kit and began to administer oxygen to help the woman start breathing again. ‘But it may be drug related. Her skin is clammy and I don’t like that purple colour.’
‘Look there, it’s like a rash,’ Zeke noted, peering at the woman’s arm.
Tia nodded, but her attention turned straight back to her casualty as she saw the woman begin to blink.
‘Marie? Marie, are you with me? Good girl. Okay, my name is Tia, I’m a doctor. Have you got any medical conditions?’
‘Where’s Badge?’
‘Is Badge your dog?’ Tia guessed, as the woman nodded. ‘Badge is fine, he’s with our lifeguards now, probably being spoiled rotten.’
As she’d hoped, Marie began to relax.
‘So, do you have any medical conditions?’
‘None.’ She shook her head as best she could with the ventilating mask still over her mouth and nose.
‘Has anything like this ever happened to you before?’
Again, Marie shook her head.
‘What about this rash?’ Tia asked, as Zeke gently lifted the woman’s arm to show her.
‘Yeah, I get that on my arms or feet sometimes when I’ve been walking the dog here. It feels itchy and swollen.’
‘When you go in the water?’ Tia asked, her mind racing.
‘I guess. But it goes pretty quickly usually.’
‘Okay, I think we might need to run a few tests. An ambulance should be arriving fairly quickly to get you checked out at hospital.’
‘Badge...?’
‘Is there anyone we can call to get him picked up? He can stay here with us until they get here.’
‘My dad. But you really think I need to go to hospital?’
‘I suspect you might be suffering from cold urticaria, where your skin has a reaction either to the cold, or to cold water. Given that this is your first serious reaction, I’m guessing it was triggered by plunging into the sea after your dog. Technically, it was most likely the warming phase when you got here and changed clothes. But you do need to get checked out.’
The sound of the ambulance siren reached Tia’s ears.
‘Zeke...’
‘I’ll go and bring them,’ he pre-empted, already heading out of the door and leaving her alone with her thoughts, which would no doubt be banging down the proverbial door once her patient was safely handed over to the ambulance crew.
Such as the fact that they had fallen into working together with such ease, despite their earlier confrontation.
And the fact that—aside from the reality that he had sought her out first—she had actually returned to the area with the intention of finding Zeke and finally being able to tell him that he had a son.
So far, she had done neither.
‘Don’t think our earlier conversation is over, Tia,’ he warned softly as they turned away from the ambulance. ‘You aren’t running away from me this time.’
‘I thought I heard Albert mention that you’re due on call tonight, at Westlake. That’s a ninety-minute drive from here.’
‘Don’t test me, Tia.’ Her skin goosebumped at his grim tone. ‘You might have thought Delburn Bay was far enough away from Westlake that I wouldn’t know you were here, but you should have known better. And I still want to talk to you.’
She forced herself to meet his eye. She could do this. For Seth.
‘And I need to talk to you, too,’ she echoed. ‘Properly. Like the adults we now are, instead of somehow regressing to those naïve, idealistic, opinionated kids we once were.’
‘Is that so?’
If her heart hadn’t been lodged somewhere in her throat, the threads of her thoughts threatening to unravel at any moment, she might have laughed at the surprise on his face.
She knew what was coming, and yet somehow she was still here. Still breathing. In and out. In and out.
Not running away this time.
‘It is so,’ she confirmed at length. ‘Zeke, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’
If she’d kicked him in the guts she didn’t think he could look more shocked.
‘You have nothing, nothing, to be sorry about,’ he ground out.
God, if only that were true.
Where did she even start? Her