It was like a constant adrenaline surge. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She just thanked God she was still doing a good job. Because right now it was the only thing that was working in her favour.
* * *
Donovan felt like crap. His head ached, his muscles were sore and he felt as sick as a dog. He glanced at his watch again. Callum was due in a few minutes. Thank goodness. Right now every minute felt like an hour.
Grace was mad at him. And to be honest, he probably deserved it. When she’d snapped at him he just hadn’t had the patience. But she was right. About everything.
He should have been supporting her more. He knew this was her first fieldwork assignment and she’d more than proved her capabilities already. Dealing with sick children was always more difficult for any team member. Dealing with kids who had a virus with a potentially high death rate was another thing entirely.
He should have taken the time to have a private discussion with her about what had happened between them. He could have done this so much better.
He should go after her. But then he might say something inappropriate like he loved her. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t risk her position on the team. And right now he just didn’t think he could get his body to move. His legs felt like lead and he rubbed his eyes as the words on the computer screen seemed to dance around him.
‘Donovan? Donovan?’ The voice grew sharper.
He felt fuzzy. He definitely needed to sleep. Or maybe he needed to eat? When was the last time he’d eaten? But his stomach was churning. He couldn’t face the thought of food right now.
‘Donovan.’
The voice was right in front of him. David thumped into the chair next to him and shook him by the shoulders. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
David leaned forward, then immediately pulled back again. ‘Are you sick?’
‘Just tired. I need to sleep.’
‘No. It’s more than that. What are your symptoms?’ The voice was direct and intense. David might work in the lab but he was a fieldwork member could fill any role on the team. He wouldn’t hesitate to take any actions he needed to.
Donovan stretched out his back, trying to loosen his sore muscles, and went for his natural automatic response. ‘I don’t have symptoms. I’m fine.’
Or maybe he did? His brain started to straighten out. What were his symptoms?
It was as if a thousand little caterpillars started marching over his skin with ice-cold feet.
He couldn’t have contracted the virus—could he?
No. He’d been wearing protective gear since he’d got here. Any patient contact he’d had he’d been fully covered. As for the caves, he’d worn the full hazmat suit. Nothing got through that.
The chills continued. The resus case. He hadn’t been wearing full protective clothing for that. He’d pulled on a pair of gloves but that had been it. A child hadn’t been breathing, and he’d prioritised.
He’d had to maintain Tyler’s airway and the little boy had already been haemorrhaging. Truth was he’d probably been exposed to all kind of body fluids.
‘I want to draw your blood.’ David’s voice had never sounded so firm.
Grace. He needed to talk to Grace. He needed to apologise and give her more support. He didn’t have time for this.
David was walking around now, in and out of treatment rooms, collecting supplies. Before Donovan could argue, a tourniquet had been tightened around his upper arm and David was tapping the skin in his inner elbow.
‘Stop it. What you are doing?’
David ignored him. ‘Do you feel sick, nauseous? Have you had any diarrhoea? Sore head, scratchy throat? Any chills or a rash?’
He slid the needle under Donovan’s skin with the ease of long experience then started slotting on the collection bottles for the various samples of blood.
Donovan didn’t know whether to be mad or grateful. And that told him everything he needed to know.
‘When do you think you could have been exposed? We’ve been here just over five days. You must have been exposed at the beginning.’
His head was pounding. He had to stop thinking like a doctor. For once in his life he had to play the part of a patient. ‘No sickness, no diarrhoea. Yes, I have a headache, a sore throat and some chills. But that could be a hundred other things.’
He opened his eyes to face David’s grey ones and the mask covering his face. It gave him a jolt. His colleague was taking no chances.
‘The resus,’ he finally said. ‘I could have been exposed at the kid’s resus. It was five days ago. Maybe a little bit more.’
David finished collecting the samples and pressed a cotton-wool ball into the crook of Donovan’s elbow. ‘Hold this.’ He glanced up and down the corridor. There were approaching footsteps.
‘Callum, I’ve just taken a sample from Donovan. He’s having some symptoms. Can you arrange for him to be put in an isolation room until I get some results?’
The air turned blue with Callum’s Scottish expletives. He didn’t hesitate and moved straight over to Donovan. David thrust a gown and gloves towards him and was met with another outburst of words.
Donovan was fine. He was absolutely fine. But any second now he was going to be sick all over his shoes. And this fuzzy headache made him feel as if he was surrounded by a huge cloud of cotton wool. Words and pictures were disorientating him. Like any person, he’d had sickness bugs before in the past, but this didn’t feel like a normal bug.
Callum’s loud voice carried up the corridor as he sorted out a bed. Among all the voices and confusion there was only one clear thought in Donovan’s head. Only one thing he could focus on. Grace.
He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to touch her skin and run his fingers through her hair. He wanted to sit down face to face with her. He wanted to tell her that everything about her confused him. He’d never been so distracted by a woman in his life.
He’d never had that gut-clenching feeling about a woman before. She could make him smile just by walking into the room. She played in his thoughts every day and every night. And no matter how much his gut told him that dating someone in the team was a bad idea, every other part of his body disagreed.
He squeezed his eyes shut and he could see her walking out of the sea in her orange bikini with the water streaming from her body; he could see her striding across the concourse at the airport with her wraparound dress and newly found confidence.
He could see the hurt and fire flash in her eyes when she’d been mad at him earlier. Why hadn’t he spoken to her? Why hadn’t he gone after her?
‘This way, Dr Reid. We have a room ready for you.’ One of the nurses was at his elbow. Totally gowned, gloved and masked. Infection-control procedures were in place.
Oh, no.
He’d kissed Grace. He’d definitely swapped body fluids with her while he’d been incubating the disease. He’d put Grace at risk. He felt a sharp pain in his chest as if someone had just grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed tightly.
No. Not Grace. Anyone but Grace.
‘Callum!’ He had no idea where Callum was but he had to tell him. The nurse at his elbow jumped as she tried to lead him down the corridor. Panic seized him. This was what he’d dreaded. This was what he’d always feared. And he’d been right.
He was finding it difficult to focus, difficult to concentrate. Grace was the one solid picture in his mind. His head was thumping, it felt as though the pulsing blood supply was echoing around his brain. This wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right.
Thumping footsteps and a heavy hand on his arm. ‘Donovan, what is it?’
‘I kissed Grace. I kissed her.’ He couldn’t hide the desperate tone in his voice. Neither could he make out Callum’s reply. The world around him was swimming, hazy lights merging and blackening, the strangest feeling flooding through his body as all energy seemed to leave him, turning his legs to jelly.
Then everything went dark.
* * *
She was eating the greasiest, unhealthiest pizza in the world. She’d been so mad she’d left the hospital without eating and had found out to her peril that Saucer Boys Pizzas was the only option near the motel. The bad punctuation should have told her everything she needed to know.
The grease wasn’t helping the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The horrible feeling that she’d made a terrible mistake.
She pulled open the doors to the beach, drinking in the ocean view and releasing some of the odour of toxic pizza.
The plastic white chair on the tiny balcony was designed to be uncomfortable. What she’d really like to be doing right now was sitting with a glass of wine in hand, watching the sunset on the horizon. But she wasn’t in that Zen-like kind of place.
She was too worried about the kids. She was too worried about doing her absolute best on her twelve-hour shift tomorrow. She was too worried she might miss something important.
She was too worried about Donovan and her actions around him.
There. She’d let that thought into her crowded brain. It almost felt like some of the other thoughts were there deliberately, trying to push him into the background and pretend he wasn’t important, when the truth was he was centre stage in her brain all the time.
Donovan didn’t want to be involved with someone at work. End. Of.
It didn’t matter that he’d told her he was attracted to her. It didn’t matter the way his body reacted when they kissed. It didn’t matter that the man could glance at her from the other side of the room and set her skin on fire.
This wasn’t going to happen.
The long and short of it? Donovan was right.
She was too busy thinking about him to focus on her job. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment and her eyes felt wet instantly.
She had a horrible sinking realisation. She was in that first flush of love. The kind that made you dizzy and lose focus.
Shouldn’t love make you shout from the rooftops and sing to the world? Wasn’t love supposed to make you happy and view the world through rose-tinted glasses?
Not when the person who held your heart in their hands had just told you there was no chance for you.
She buried her face in the pillow on the bed. It didn’t offer any comfort as it was hard and impossibly lumpy. She had a horrible feeling of dread. As if there was something else—something more—and she just didn’t know what.
The sooner she got out of there the better.
* * *
The door knock sounded sharply. She jumped and glanced at her watch. Then her heart started to flutter. Donovan. It had to be Donovan.
She stood and crossed the room quicker than she’d thought possible. Her hand hesitated at the doorhandle. This was it. This was where she had to admit to exactly how she felt about him. This was where she had to put her hand on her heart and tell him that he was right.
Dating the boss was never going to work. She was beyond distracted. She wanted to love everything about this fieldwork post, but all she could think about was Donovan.
Until she’d been in this position she could never have imagined how it felt.
Maybe there would be a chance to join another team. Maybe if she could wait it out a little longer, she would have opportunity to decide where she wanted to specialise and move to another department.
That could work. It would be time limited. They could have a no-touch policy for a few weeks—or, at worst, a few months. Surely they could last that out?
Her heart gave a little surge. It wasn’t hopeless. It wasn’t. This could work.
She pulled open the door. ‘Donovan, I was just thinking that—’
Except it wasn’t Donovan. It was Callum Ferguson. His large frame filled the doorway. Thank goodness she was appropriately dressed.
He leaned against the doorjamb, folded his arms and gave her a crooked, knowing smile. ‘So, Dr Barclay. You kissed Donovan Reid.’
‘What...? Who told you that?’ She wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Her first reaction was to deny it. But Callum was already looking at her as if he could read her mind.
She couldn’t quite get over the fact that Callum was standing on her doorstep. He was the last person she’d expected to see.
But there was something else. The usual twinkle in his eyes wasn’t there. Was he mad? She felt a little shiver go down her spine. Callum didn’t look mad. This was something else entirely.
‘What is it?’
He sighed and ran his fingers through his grey hair.
What wasn’t he telling her?
‘Donovan had to tell me he kissed you, Grace.’
‘Donovan told you? But why?’ Her mouth started working before her brain. Why on earth would he try and get them both into trouble? That made no sense. No sense at all. Unless...
‘Oh, no.’ Her hand flew up to her mouth. Unless Callum needed to contact trace. Her public-health head could put the pieces together a whole lot quicker than her Donovan-filled brain.
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong with Donovan?’
Callum’s firm hand rested on her upper arm. ‘Grace, calm down. I know you only finished work a few hours ago but I think it would be best if you come back to the hospital.’
There was serious edge to his voice and she was ominously aware that he hadn’t yet told her what was wrong with Donovan.
‘Of course.’ She crossed the room quickly, slipping her feet into her shoes and picking up her jacket and bag. ‘Let’s go.’
It was only a five-minute drive back to the hospital. Her brain was in overload. She was trying not to acknowledge the fact that Callum had obviously left the hospital to come and get her. They’d been getting one of the hospital maintenance staff to pick them up and drop them off before this.
She was trying too hard to keep control. The fact that Callum knew she’d been kissing Donovan seemed irrelevant. The initial embarrassment had only taken a few seconds to disintegrate into the wind with the thought that something was really wrong.
She’d been feeling a little melancholy before. Realising the strength of her feelings for Donovan, and his attitude, which had seemed unreasonable before, was probably for the best.
The car pulled up next to the ambulance bay of the hospital, a little cloud of dust rising around them as it screeched to a halt.