The tall man settled himself on the bed, his knees now only inches from Marni’s, although she could hardly push her chair back to escape the proximity, tantalising though it was.
They’re knees, for heaven’s sake!
Marni forced herself to relax.
‘Of course you are welcome to visit. Safi appreciates it and looks forward to your visits, but I wondered why you come. You are a stranger here, are you not being looked after? Have you not made friends that you spend your spare time with a child?’
The man had obviously painted her as pathetic.
‘Of course I’ve made friends, and everyone has been very welcoming, and I’ve done a lot of exploring, both on my own and with others, but…’
She hesitated.
How to explain that while she loved theatre nursing, the drama of it, the intensity, she missed patient contact?
He was obviously still waiting for an answer, the dark eyes studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side.
‘Like most nurses,’ she began, still hesitant, ‘I took it up because I felt I could offer something in such a career. I enjoyed all the facets of it, but especially nursing children. Early on, I thought I’d specialise in paediatric nursing, but then I did my first stint in Theatre and I knew immediately that’s where I really wanted to work. But in Theatre a patient is wheeled in and then wheeled out and somehow, even with the good surgeons who use the patient’s name, they don’t become real people—there’s no follow-up to find out if the operation was a success, there’s no person to person contact at all—’
Aware she’d been babbling on for far too long, she stopped, but when her companion didn’t break the silence, she stumbled into an apology.
‘Sorry, that sounded like a lecture, sorry.’
He reached out and touched her lightly on the knee, burning her skin through the long, loose trousers she was wearing.
‘Do not apologise for showing humanity. It is all too rare a trait in modern medicine where everyone is under pressure to perform and seek perfection in all they do, so much so we have little time to think about those under our care as people rather than patients. In this hospital we allow the families to stay, so our patients have them to turn to, but children like Safi, who have come from a neighbouring country, often have no one.’
‘Except you,’ Marni pointed out. ‘The nurse told me you’d been in earlier and that you stayed with him that first night.’
‘I was worried he’d be afraid, alone in a strange place, and I’ve learned to sleep anywhere so it was no hardship.’
Not only gorgeous but nice, Marni thought, and she smiled at him and told him so—well, not the gorgeous bit.
‘That was very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but have you done it every night? Surely that would be too much if you’re operating every day?’
Gaz returned her smile, but it was absent-minded, as if it had slipped onto his lips while he was thinking of something else.
‘Not every night, no, but an old friend of mine comes in now and stays with him. It was she who heard the story of a foreign woman visiting.’
‘So you came to check?’ Marni asked, not sure whether to be pleased or put out. Pleased to have seen him again, that was for sure…
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Not because I doubted your good intentions, but to see who it was willing to put herself out for a child she did not know.’
The smile this time was the full effort, its effect so electrifying in Marni’s body she hoped he’d go away—disappear in a puff of smoke if necessary—so she could sort herself out before she tried standing up.
‘And now that I do know,’ he continued, oblivious of the effect he was having on her, ‘I wondered if you’d like to have dinner with me, a kind of welcome to Ablezia and thank you for being kind to Safi combined. There is a very good restaurant on the top floor of the administration building right here in the hospital. We could eat there.’
So it would seem like colleagues eating together if your wife or girlfriend found about it? Marni wondered. Or because you have rooms here and it would be convenient for seduction? Well, the seduction part would be all right—after all, wasn’t that one of the reasons she was here?
Although annoyed by her totally absurd thoughts, Marni realised her first question had been plausible enough—a man this gorgeous was sure to be taken!
Taking a deep breath, she put the whole ridiculous seduction scenario firmly out of her head.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, and was surprised to find her voice sounded remarkably calm. ‘That must be a part of the building I haven’t explored yet. My friend Jawa and I usually go to the staff canteen on the ground floor.’