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‘Go home, Sienna. Take time out for yourself.’ Dale appeared in front of her, refocusing her errant brain.
‘It’s just gone two. I’ve got hours to go. Anyway, I told Andrew’s parents I’d be here while they take a much needed break.’
‘I’ve got it covered.’ The head of Paediatrics was studying her as if he’d never seen her before. ‘You’ve put in ridiculously long hours this week, as always.’
‘That’s how the job goes.’
‘Most of us have a life outside these four walls that we actively try to participate in with family and friends, not spend our energy avoiding.’
But she didn’t have family close by.
You do have friends in town.
Who were equally tied up with work as she was.
‘Spread those wings, Si. Lighten up a bit.’
Yes, Dad.
‘Take the whole weekend off. I’ve got your patients covered,’ Dale remonstrated like a harassed parent. ‘You’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favours working all these ridiculous hours.’
I need to make sure I’m busy all the time.
But he was right. She had put in uncountable hours throughout the week, and even for her she was overtired. It was time to relax. And honestly, not to have to think about medications and results and children in pain sounded like bliss. It’d be a rare treat—if only she knew what to do with it. ‘I’m out of here.’
Walking off the ward in the middle of the afternoon should’ve been exciting. Instead it was...worrying. Hours stretched ahead. Her father was right: she was far too ensconced in her life of all work and no play. But how to change? Where to start?
At home, standing on her narrow deck, Sienna couldn’t come up with anything to do with this precious time out. It felt alien. The sun was still in the sky. The birds still tweeting. Had she really become so rigid in how she lived that she couldn’t think outside the square?
Too serious, my girl. You need to relax sometimes.
Staring across her front lawn, Sienna noted the grass needed cutting. While the area was pocket-sized, the thought of hauling out the electric mower didn’t excite her. Not that it ever did, but keeping the grass under control was one of those things she did to feel on top of her world. Pathetic.
Deliberately turning away, Sienna glanced across at the adjoining apartment. If Harry was at home she might be tempted to take a bottle of wine over and apologise for being such a grump last week. Her fingers tingled and she flexed them to relax the tension taking hold in her muscles. She did want more excitement outside of doctoring in her life, right? But with an attractive man who managed to get under her skin even when she was mad at him? Why not? Go for broke. Or go put her head under the pillow and not come out for a month. That should work.
Spinning around, she headed inside, away from that lawn, those shut windows, the car that needed a wash. In the lounge she automatically flicked a straight curtain straighter.
Stretch your wings.
Yeah, right. Like how? Picking up her phone, she checked for messages, pressed speed dial for her friend Anna. ‘Hey, sorry I’m so late returning your call but it’s been one of those days.’
Anna laughed. ‘When isn’t it with you?’
‘Says the lawyer who never goes home before midnight. So what’s up? Want to have a meal downtown tomorrow night?’ Girlfriends united. Boring if fun. Why did she glance across to Harry’s place? Nothing would ever happen between them.
‘We can celebrate. As of this morning you legally own every last nail and tile in your swanky apartment.’
‘I’d forgotten you were filing my petition today. So Bernie’s finally paying up? After three years arguing? Unbelievable.’ Sienna’s heart stuttered. ‘This is great news. I’ll never have to think of him again.’ The lying, cheating fiancé who’d decided he preferred to live with the woman he’d reconnected with at his school reunion than marry her when for years he’d sworn he loved her more than his high-end car and multi-million-dollar home.
‘It’s all wrapped up, plus there’s a bonus. He’s paying your legal costs and money for half that rental property you bought jointly.’
‘My shout for tomorrow night. Cortado’s.’ Their favourite place for major celebrations. Putting the phone down, Sienna again checked the time, but only minutes had passed. ‘Now what?’
Go for routine.
In Titirangi over an hour later she pinged the locks on her car, swung a leg over her cycle and headed up the winding road leading to Piha Beach. Almost immediately the high humidity had her in a sweat. Good for the muscles, not so great for her breathing, but she kept pedalling hard. This would get whatever was eating her out of the system. She was not thinking about Harry, right? Not picturing that good-looking face or the smile that increased the speed with which her blood moved through her veins. Not at all.
A car swerved around her, the passenger jeering about her butt as it passed.
‘Get a life, will you?’ she snarled between breaths. Why couldn’t people leave others to get on with what they enjoyed? What was so much fun about being rude to strangers?
Cycling was her time to relax, because she concentrated entirely on riding and often forgot what had got her on the bike in the first place. Except today it wasn’t working.
What did Harry do for relaxation? Apart from hold noisy parties for upset colleagues, or stay out overnight maybe? Did she really care? Unfortunately she might. Though she shouldn’t. He was on a temporary contract and would soon be gone again. It had taken months for her to trust Bernie enough to get close to him, not weeks, so she could forget all about getting to know this man. Hard to do, that. He just seemed to pop up in her mind whenever there was a free moment.
The front wheel wobbled in thick gravel. So much for concentrating on riding. Shoving the neighbour and the world out of her mind, she focused on getting to the top of the busy road without taking a break.
Harry had muscles in all the right places and made whatever he wore look superb. Of course she’d noticed. It would be rude not to. Some sights weren’t made to be ignored. Bet he did some form of sport or worked out. Was she so desperate for changes in her life she was hallucinating about the neighbour? Except Harry wasn’t a fantasy and her reactions to his physique were all too real. Oh, yes, real and solid and tempting. Damn it. Next stop, the library for a pile of books to keep her entertained until this feeling passed. Probably about when Harry left town.
Wheel-wobble. Again. Her cycling had taken a turn for the worse.
Deep breath, focus, right pedal down, left up. Left down, right up. That’s it. Careful, sharp bend and steep decline. Squeeze the brake, change gear. Concentrate.
It worked. Until the road straightened and the incline lessened, giving her nothing to concentrate on so hard. Nothing except the man persisting in getting in her head space. What would he be like in bed? He exuded confidence in everything else that she’d seen so it followed that—
Toot-toot.
Sienna swerved abruptly, away from the centre of the road, and towards—over—the edge. Her front wheel dropped abruptly, alarmingly. Her body flipped forward, her hands gripping the now useless handlebars, her legs still pumping, even though she was in freefall; down, down, down. Bushes tore at her, twisted the cycle left then right, and on downward. The momentum compounded the speed. More bushes, bigger now, snagging at her, tearing across her face, her arms. Then she was upside down, slamming the ground with her shoulder, tossed sideways, with the cycle she still held on to with a fierceness she couldn’t explain now twisted between her legs. Pain tore through her, then a thud.
Bounce. Bounce.
Slowing.
A tree blocked her path.
Thump.
Blackness engulfed her.
CHAPTER THREE (#u097dfc34-06d5-5fea-80f0-e933de4426dd)
SIENNA BLINKED HER eyes open, gasped at the pain filling her body from every direction. ‘What happened? Where am I?’ There were dark clouds in her head, along with pulsing, banging symbols of pain. Dragging her eyelids up, she stared at the scene in front of her. Trees, bushes...
Darkness took over again.
‘Hello?’
She was having a nightmare. Any second now she’d wake up and find herself on her bike heading down the hill towards the beach. Bike. Hill. Rolling over and over.
‘Can you hear me?’
A groan escaped her constricted throat. She’d gone off the edge of the embankment, a sheer drop down to these bushes. The pain was really making itself known, as if her body had a grudge with her. In her legs and back, her arms, the left shoulder—sucking in a breath, she tried not to think about what that might mean. She needed to toughen up, check herself out instead of panicking. Work out what the damage was and make a plan for getting out of here.
Moving could be detrimental. Spinal damage is a real possibility.
‘Are you all right down there?’
That persistent voice was annoying. ‘Go away. I’m trying to think here.’
‘I don’t know if you can hear me but I’ve phoned for help.’
So the voice wasn’t in her head. There really was someone up on the road. She wasn’t alone. As she opened her mouth to holler a reply her lungs filled with air and her upper body moved. Pain splintered her and the blackness rolled in again.
Thwup, thwup, thwup.
The bushes flattened and the trees swayed. A helicopter filled the little view Sienna had of the sky when she next pulled her eyes open. A bright red-and-yellow rescue chopper. Gratitude swamped her. Whoever that man was who’d called for help, she owed him big time.
A figure attached to a thick rope was lowering in her direction. Help had arrived. In a pair of red overalls. She’d be out of here in no time. Then she’d be able to get patched up and back on her feet.
If my injuries aren’t serious.
A shudder tripped through her, her tightening muscles sending warning signals of pain to her brain. It was tempting to move, to try to sit up, to prove she was all right. The doctor in her kicked in. Stay still. Let the rescue crew do their job. But waiting had become difficult. What if she’d broken her spine? She was a paediatrician. She didn’t have time for learning to walk again, or never walking...
‘Hello, this is becoming a habit.’ A familiar, husky voice broke through her fear. ‘Harrison Frost, your neighbour.’
Harrison. ‘Not Harry, then.’ Harrison was way sexier than Harry. Ah? Hello? Head injury talking? Sex while smashed up on the side of a hill? Why not? That’d certainly be creating a new norm for her. Don’t forget, she told herself, that if she hadn’t been thinking about him she wouldn’t be lying here afraid to move.
‘Good, you’re cognitive. And yes, I go by Harry most of the time.’ The guy was snapping open the hooks that held him to the rope and giving the thumbs-up to someone above in the chopper, at the same time speaking into a radio. ‘Take it away.’
What were the odds he’d be the one coming to her rescue? But then, nothing seemed to be going right for her lately, so those were as short as the two-year-old with pneumonia she’d treated this week. She could only hope Harry was more forthcoming in his attitude as a doctor than as a neighbour. ‘You didn’t bring the music.’ Anything to keep from the pain getting stronger with every breath.
‘I would’ve if I’d known it was you who’d taken to flying off the side of roads.’ Harrison shucked out of his backpack. ‘Right, let’s check you out. You haven’t moved since coming to a stop against the tree?’ He began disentangling the cycle from her legs.
‘Of course not.’ Unless she’d moved while out cold. ‘I need a neck brace first. My left shoulder is possibly broken. My right ankle is giving me grief, but as for internal injuries I’m certain I’m in the clear.’ The pain throbbed up and down both legs. Bruising from the bike when she’d landed?
‘Leave those decisions to me. Obviously nothing wrong with your head. You’re stringing sentences together and enunciating clearly.’
‘I am a doctor.’ And it was his fault she’d ended up in this mess, tramping through her mind the way he had.
A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. ‘Right now I’m the doctor, you’re the patient, and I get to make the diagnoses, starting with doing the ABCs.’
Her airway was fine, the proof in her relatively easy breathing when pain wasn’t interfering. ‘Might have known you’d be bossy.’
His smile hit her hard. ‘It goes with the territory and stroppy patients.’
Putting as much indignation into her voice as she could muster, she growled, ‘I’m stroppy?’
‘Yep.’ Harrison’s eyes were focused on her chest, purely to check she was breathing normally.
A twinge of regret came and went. She didn’t want him thinking of her as anything other than a patient. Not really. But it was nice to be noticed by a good-looking guy occasionally. ‘Have you always worked on the helicopters?’
‘No, I’m an emergency specialist so I’ve spent most of my time in emergency departments. Working on rescue choppers is different. It takes some getting used to not having a whole department filled with every bit of equipment I require.’ He might be talking trivia but there was nothing trivial about the way he was checking her over.
She could get to like this man. If she didn’t already.
‘I can imagine.’ He was right. She had to let go and trust him to look after her, but it was hard. She never gave control to anybody over even the most insignificant thing. And this wasn’t insignificant. Thump, thump, went her head. Her mouth opened but she couldn’t give him the go-ahead. She just couldn’t.
As he carefully removed her helmet, Harry asked, ‘Have you lost consciousness at any time?’ Seemed he had no difficulty taking charge, regardless of what she thought.
As he’s meant to.
‘Twice. I think. Maybe three times.’ And about to again if the clouds gathering in her skull were any indication. She’d been trying too hard to say what was needed without slurring or forgetting what she had to tell him and it was taking its toll.
‘Pulse is rapid. I’d say you’re in shock.’ Firm yet gentle fingers touched her neck, her skull, her jawline. If only they could stop the pain.
She guessed she couldn’t have everything.
Please let me be able to walk away from this.
Fog expanded in her head, pressing at her skull.
‘Sienna, can you hear me?’ Was that Harry? Harrison. ‘Yes.’ But there were drums in the background. The humming in her ears also added to the noise.
Firm fingers slid over her skull, pressing lightly, feeling for trauma. ‘From the state of that helmet you hit something with your head. At least the helmet did what it was meant to. There doesn’t appear to be any damage to your skull, though you probably have mild concussion.’ Then he was listening to his radio, and confirmed what she heard loud and clear. ‘The weather’s closing in. The guys above say we have to hurry or we’ll be stuck here until the storm passes.’
‘What storm?’ Come to think of it, she was feeling chilly. But that would be shock. Wouldn’t it?
Come in, Dr Burch. You know your stuff.
‘Am I cold or is the reaction to my crash setting in?’
‘Both,’ answered Harry, slipping a neck brace into position. ‘This’ll keep your head still.’
A male voice came through the radio in his shirt pocket. ‘Sorry, have to back off now, Harry. Hang in there. I’ll return as soon as viable.’
The tree she’d come to a halt against rustled and leaves dropped onto her. ‘Don’t let them go.’ She had to get to hospital and sort out her injuries.
‘Not a lot of choice,’ Harry told her before easing her cycling shoes off. ‘Can you feel me touching your toes?’
‘Yes.’ Relief swarmed through her.
‘Wriggle them.’ There was a reciprocating relief in his dark eyes. ‘Good.’
Neck immobilised, tick. Feeling in feet, double tick. ‘My shoulder?’
But Dr Harry was working his way up her legs, as in how a doctor would, not a lover. As she’d said earlier, this just wasn’t her day. ‘Your ankle’s okay. Lots of bruising would be about as bad as it gets.’
Those fingers... Sienna sighed. Gentle, and warm, and enticing. As if she could succumb to their hidden promise.
