Dreaming

On her way home Luisa stopped off at Ward Twelve. The patients had had their breakfast and were lazily reading the morning papers or just sitting in chairs talking to each other, while the day staff got on with their morning routine. As courtesy demanded, Luisa went into the sister’s office to say ‘Good morning!’ before she went on into the ward.

The night sister, Beth Dawlish, with whom she had trained, had hurried off long ago, and it was a woman Luisa knew only by sight who was the day sister on this ward.

‘Yes, Dawlish told me you’d come by,’ Sister Jacobs said, nodding, her brown eyes incurious. ‘Fine by me; take your time, although I expect he’ll be on his way home by this afternoon, judging by the report Dawlish left. A relief for you, anyway! It could have been much worse. How’s the other one, the one you’ve got up on your ward? I hear he was badly injured. Car caught fire? I don’t know how you can work on that ward—I did my time when I was working the wards and I hated it. You must have nerves of steel.’

Luisa managed a faint smile. ‘I’m used to it. Our patient made it through the night and he’s doing as well as can be expected.’

She got a dry look. ‘Hmm. Like that, is it? Well, even if he pulls through he isn’t out of the wood, is he? There’s a long, long road ahead for him.’

‘Yes,’ Luisa said, shivering. ‘Well, I’ll let you get on...’

She walked steadily to the last bed in the ward. The man in it was sitting up against his pillows, staring at nothing, his face shadowed and white. He turned his head to look at her as she sat down on a chair beside the bed.

‘Luisa...’ He put out a hand, gripped her fingers so hard it hurt. ‘Is...is he...?’

‘Alive,’ she said, her voice low and husky. ‘Don’t look like that. He’s going to make it, Dad.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUISA slept for six hours, rather fitfully, because she had never quite got used to sleeping during the day; she finally got out of bed in the mid-afternoon, had an apple and some muesli and a cup of tea, and decided she would feel better if she got out into the fresh air and had some exercise. She was living in a small two-roomed flat within walking distance of both the hospital and Whinbury’s modern shopping streets, a pedestrian precinct with paved walkways, cafés, squares and gardens.

Today was sunny and there were plenty of people about. After doing her shopping in the big supermarket in the heart of the precinct, Luisa was on her way home when she almost collided with a hurrying figure, a blonde girl not much older than herself.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ The other girl was far from friendly; in fact her green eyes glittered with hostility.

‘Hello, Noelle,’ Luisa said coolly, the dislike mutual. ‘Is Dad back home now?’

‘Yes! And I had to go and get him; they wouldn’t send him home in an ambulance!’

‘The ambulance service is very overworked—’ began Luisa, and the other girl interrupted furiously.

‘They took him to hospital in an ambulance; why couldn’t they send him back the same way? I had an important business appointment; I can’t just walk out of the office whenever I like. It was very embarrassing having to cancel it; I only hope we don’t lose a contract because of it. The woman who rang from the hospital was very high-handed. She insisted somebody came to get him. I couldn’t see why he couldn’t have come home in a taxi, or why you couldn’t have brought him home. After all, you work there! It would have been no trouble to you; they said you were at home, but when I rang you all I got was your answerphone!’

‘I’m on night duty; I have to sleep during the day,’ Luisa said, trying not to lose her own temper, although it wasn’t easy to stay calm.

‘And I have to work because your father can’t be bothered to run the firm any more!’ retorted Noelle. ‘If it wasn’t for me we’d be bankrupt within a year! He has let things slide for years—’

‘Never mind the firm, how’s Dad?’ Luisa interrupted tersely. ‘You haven’t left him alone, have you? He really shouldn’t be alone at the moment; he’s very upset.’

Noelle bristled with open resentment. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do! I’m not your father’s secretary any more; I’m his wife, and I won’t put up with you patronising me.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything of the kind! But I don’t think you realise how dangerous shock can be... I wanted to explain the clinical—’

‘Well, don’t! I’m not one of your nurses, scuttling about whenever you snap your fingers!’

It wasn’t pleasant to be stared at with such dislike. Luisa felt faintly sick meeting those sharp green eyes. Noelle was beautiful, there was no denying that, but for Luisa that beauty was skin-deep. From the first day they met, when Noelle joined her father’s firm as his secretary, Luisa had felt uneasy. It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect Noelle of being interested in her father—after all, he was a good twenty years older! No, she had simply sensed that, for some reason, Noelle did not like her, and when her father admitted to her that he was dating his secretary Luisa had been taken aback and shocked, and unable to hide it.

She should have done, of course. She wished now that she had. She bitterly wished she could like Noelle, that they could be friends, for her father’s sake. She had tried hard to make friends, once she had to face the fact that the relationship was serious and was going to end in Noelle’s becoming her stepmother, but it had been useless. Noelle hated her and was not prepared to come to terms.

Look at the way she was staring now, her eyes as sharp and acid as little green apples. ‘As it happens, he isn’t alone! Mrs North is at the house, cleaning, and I asked her to keep an eye on him. He didn’t go to bed; he’s lying on a couch watching television. There’s nothing much wrong with him that I can see, and if he’s upset he deserves it, driving like a maniac! He could have killed that man!’

Luisa paled, knowing that was true. ‘But he didn’t, thank God!’

‘If he had it would have been your fault!’ her stepmother spat, and Luisa flinched, unable to deny it. Watching her with triumph, Noelle rubbed it in, malice in every spiked syllable. ‘If you hadn’t rung Harry and made all that fuss he wouldn’t have left the party and driven like a bat out of hell to get back home.’

Luisa’s face was drawn. It was true, however much she wished it wasn’t, and regrets were useless now. If she could, she would go back and change events, but you could never do that. They were strung together like beads on a string, one event leading to another inevitably. She had rung her father in a mood of wounded disappointment, and he had rushed home to placate her. If he hadn’t, the accident would never have happened, and Zachary West would not be lying in a hospital bed close to death, her father would not be facing prosecution for dangerous driving...or even worse, if Zachary West did not pull through. Ice trickled down her spine. What if he didn’t...? No, she couldn’t bear to think about that.

‘But then you’ve always been spoilt and selfish!’ Noelle said, and Luisa stared dumbly at her.

Had she? It was true that she ought to have known better than to lose her temper just because Dad had forgotten it was her birthday and had gone out with his wife, instead, but she had been so hurt, at the time. Dad had always been absent-minded; she usually had to remind him about her birthday. She saw so little of him, though, these days, that that was not so easy. She had rung a week ago to jog his memory and ask if they could have lunch, but he was out and she had had to leave a message with Noelle, which had never reached him. Instead, Noelle had lured him out to one of those long business lunches she seemed to enjoy so much. She was grimly determined to push Luisa out of her father’s life, and Dad seemed blind to the battle going on over him.

Oddly enough, Luisa could see it from Noelle’s point of view. It must be embarrassing to have a stepdaughter who was almost the same age as yourself; it must underline the difference in ages between man and wife, and Noelle was probably jealous, too, of the old affection Harry Gilbey had for his daughter, an affection which reminded his new wife of his dead one.

Luisa was very like her mother, as all the photographs which filled the house when she first entered it must have told Noelle. Anna Gilbey had been a graciously lovely woman of forty when she died of a heart attack, leaving her only child as a living reminder to Harry of the woman he had married when he was only twenty years old. The years since then had been lonely ones for her father. Luisa could understand why he wanted to marry again, even if his choice had astonished and disturbed her, just as she understood some of Noelle’s feelings, but to understand did not make it any easier, she was to find. Luisa had always been very close to her father, especially since the death of her much-loved mother. Suddenly being cut off from him was hard to take.

Nevertheless, she had tried to accept the new situation, for Dad’s sake, as much as anything. It must be difficult for him, too, to be a buffer between two warring women, and she wanted to see him happy again, uneasily though she viewed his marriage to a girl of her own age.

If only she hadn’t got so upset when she realised that her father had forgotten her birthday and was not going to be back in time to see her! But her birthdays had always been special days: Dad had always made them magical in the past. They had gone out to lunch somewhere special, spent the afternoons together, made each birthday memorable. This was the first one since his marriage, and realising that her birthday treats too were over had hurt more than anything else so far. She had reacted childishly when she realised where he had gone and had rung him at the party, overwhelming him with guilt.

No, she should never have done that—but how could she have imagined that such disastrous consequences would flow from her outburst?

‘He’ll lose his licence, you know,’ Noelle vindictively said. ‘For at least two years, the lawyer says. And that’s not the worst thing that could happen to him. Well, I won’t be able to drive him around all the time; he’ll have to get a chauffeur. He can afford it, although he keeps saying money is tight. He wasn’t so mean when I married him. If he’d had a chauffeur, that accident would never have happened. At his age his judgement isn’t too good any more.’

Luisa stiffened. ‘What do you mean, “at his age”? Dad’s barely fifty, for heaven’s sake!’

Noelle had not apparently thought him very old when she married him! She had always been saying how young he was, how full of energy and life—and Harry Gilbey had lived up to that description over the past year, working and playing hard to keep up with his young wife. When he wasn’t at cocktail parties, dinner parties, business lunches, he was out on the golf course playing with clients or people Noelle wanted him to impress.

‘His reflexes aren’t what they were,’ shrugged Noelle.

‘Maybe he goes out to parties too often! It must use up a lot of energy!’ Luisa accused, and her stepmother’s green eyes blazed back at her.

‘That’s right, shift the blame on to me! You’d love to say it was all my fault! Well, it isn’t—Harry enjoys a busy social life; he always did, before he ever met me!’

Luisa couldn’t deny that, either. Her father had always been a social animal; he was gregarious, lively and loved company, especially that of young people, which was no doubt why he had fallen for the ravishing blonde who had become his secretary. Noelle had encouraged him and Harry Gilbey hadn’t been able to resist her and the chance to be young again.

Luisa sighed. ‘Yes, I know he does.’ Poor Dad. She bit her lip and looked at her stepmother with appeal in her dark blue eyes. ‘Noelle, why do we always have to quarrel like this? Especially now, when Dad is in trouble...he’ll need both of us over the next few months. Can’t we be friends?’

Noelle’s beautiful mask didn’t soften. Her green eyes flashed. ‘You’ve done enough harm, just leave us alone. Harry is my business now, not yours.’ She turned to walk away, stopped, and pulled a crumpled newspaper out of the black leather briefcase she was carrying. ‘Have you seen this?’

She didn’t wait for an answer; she was gone a second later, leaving Luisa staring blankly at the paper, folded back to show a grey photograph of Zachary West above half a column of print headlined ‘Crash Wrecks West Exhibition’.

Even more worried and depressed now, Luisa looked around for somewhere to sit down. There was a café across the square; she made for it shakily and fell into a seat near the door.

‘What can I get you?’ asked a waitress, coming over at once.

‘Coffee, please,’ Luisa said.

‘Anything to eat?’

Luisa knew her blood sugar must be low; she was feeling light-headed. ‘A...sandwich?’ she muttered, glancing at the menu which stood in the centre of the red and white checked tablecloth. ‘Cheese and salad sandwich, please.’

The waitress vanished and Luisa spread the newspaper out in front of her. By the time she had absorbed what it said the waitress was back with her sandwich and coffee. Luisa folded the newspaper up again with fingers that trembled, and tried to enjoy her meal, but it tasted like sawdust and ashes. All she could think about was what she had just read.

The consequences of the crash were even worse than she had imagined. Zachary West was an artist, it seemed—and famous, according to the newspaper, which had talked about large sums of money paid for his work in the past.

When the crash happened Zachary West had been taking a number of paintings up to London, in his van, to be shown in a big exhibition of his work in the gallery of a well-known art dealer. The exhibition would have been a major event in the art world, the dealer was quoted as saying. It had been awaited eagerly since Zachary West’s work was much sought after and fetched increasingly large amounts and he had not exhibited his work for some years. The art world had been curious to see how he had developed his style and technique since his last exhibition. Now, said the dealer, tragically, the world would never know. All the paintings Zachary West had spent the last four years working on had been destroyed in the fire which had left the artist himself so badly burned.

Chilled and appalled, Luisa paid for her meal and left the café. She walked home and put away her shopping, then rang her father.

‘How are you this afternoon, Dad?’ she gently asked.

‘Have you seen the newspapers?’ was all he said, his voice dry and shaky.

Luisa bit her lip. ‘Dad. Dad, don’t—’

‘Don’t what?’ Harry Gilbey bitterly asked her. ‘Face up to what I’ve done? God, when I think—’

‘Don’t think about it, Dad, not yet. You’re still shocked,’ Luisa hurriedly pleaded, her blue eyes anxious.

‘How can I stop thinking about it? A man like that—a genius, they say in the papers—all that talent, so much to give the world...and I’ve destroyed him...’

‘You don’t know that, Dad! He’ll pull through, and he’ll do other work when he’s better. He’s still a young man...’ But her reassurances were only half-hearted and she knew it, because she felt just as guilty as her father, and with more reason. ‘And, anyway, it’s my fault, not yours,’ she huskily added.

‘Your fault? How can it be your fault? I was driving that car, not you!’

‘But if I hadn’t rung you and made so much fuss you wouldn’t have been hurrying!’

‘That still doesn’t make it your fault, Luisa. I was the one doing the driving, and I’d been drinking—oh, I wasn’t over the limit, I’m not that stupid, and I never have been a drinking man. As you know, I’m not that keen on spirits—I just had some white wine. Anyway, they breathalysed me and they said I was in the clear. But I know my reflexes were affected by the couple of drinks I’d had, my mind worked slower than it usually does, and I know in my heart that I was driving recklessly. I took the corner too fast; I was right over his side of the road... But that was nothing to do with you. I was in a temper—I’d had a row with Noelle—and... Oh, well, never mind. But it was my fault, Luisa! You mustn’t blame yourself at all.’

But she did, of course, and she was still edgy and tense as she walked into the ward that evening. It was difficult to force a smile for her colleague, Mary Baker, who was Day Sister.

‘Anything wrong? You don’t look well,’ Mary said, frowning in concern. She was a married woman with two grown-up children and had been working at the hospital for fifteen years. Easy-going and cheerful, she had been very kind during Luisa’s probationary period when she worked on this ward as a very raw, anxious newcomer who had difficulty coping with what she had to do each day.

‘I’m fine,’ Luisa hurriedly said now, and tried to look as if it was true. Pleasant though Mary always was, Luisa still felt like a nervous probationer at times when they were talking, and she couldn’t bring herself to confide in Mary. ‘Just a little headache...’

‘Are you sleeping properly?’ Mary promptly asked, frowning. ‘I don’t have to remind you how vital it is to get enough sleep when you’re on nights, do I?’

‘No,’ Luisa grimaced. ‘I usually do, don’t worry. So what sort of day have you had? Any new arrivals? Anyone depart?’

Mary gave her a wry look, but obligingly began to go through the ward list, putting Luisa in the picture with each patient until they came to Zachary West’s name. ‘He’ll be going soon,’ she then said, and Luisa’s dark blue eyes opened wide.

‘Going? What do you mean?’

‘He’s being whisked up to London to have specialist private nursing. It seems we’ve a celebrity on the ward!’ Mary grinned, looking amused. ‘I’ve been getting phone calls from Fleet Street all day, asking how he is! Would you believe some of them wanted to come up and take photos of him? He’s unconscious, I said, and he doesn’t look very pretty at the moment, either, so if he was conscious he wouldn’t want you taking pictures of him looking like that, I told them. One or two of them turned up in person and I had to get George from the front hall to come and turf them out! Nice behaviour on a ward like this!’

‘But...why is he leaving us?’ pressed Luisa, not very interested in Fleet Street.

Mary bridled, sniffing crossly. ‘Well, apparently his agent...or his manager, or whatever...doesn’t think this hospital is good enough to treat such a famous man, so he wants him transferred to this London place where they specialise in skin grafts and plastic surgery. They would have taken him today, but our Mr Hallows put his foot down, told them he was in no condition to make that journey yet. It will be decided tomorrow when he’ll be ready to travel, when Mr Hallows makes his round.’

Luisa was appalled. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for him to bear that trip to London! It would be so painful for him.’

He was being fed intravenously and kept on continuous medication in order to get him over these first few days with as little pain as possible. Luisa stood beside him, staring at the grim mask he would show the world for many months to come, until he was fit enough for plastic surgery. From the photo she had seen of him, in the newspaper, he must have been an attractive man. It was terrible to see him the way he was now.

As Mary had said earlier, thank heavens he was physically strong. Otherwise he could never have survived that crash, or already begun to show the first faint signs of a recovery.

As it was, you could see that he was a powerfully built, lean man with slim hips and long legs and the muscles of someone used to exercise—or, perhaps, to constant work. His lower body had escaped the worst of the fire; his legs were almost unscathed, their skin tanned and dusted with dark hairs.

Suddenly his lids flicked up and she found herself looking into his eyes, pale eyes like polished silver, his enlarged black pupils dominating his gaze, a sure sign to her of the drugs they were having to give him to damp down his pain.

Luisa’s professionalism took over and she bent hurriedly towards him, smiling reassurance.

‘Hello, how are you feeling now?’

Zachary West didn’t even try to answer. He vaguely remembered her and his scorched brows drew together painfully. This was the pale, cold woman he had seen standing beside his bed before, although he couldn’t quite be sure how long ago that was.

But then time had become a labyrinth through which he endlessly searched for a way out. He didn’t know how long he had been like this; he only knew that he kept waking up and going back to sleep and the moments in between were brief and painful, almost surreal. Each time he couldn’t think where he was or what had happened to him, and each time the pain was lurking to spring out at him. He always escaped from consciousness with a sense of relief because when he was awake everything hurt, although he couldn’t quite recall why. All he knew was that his life had simply stopped suddenly one day when he was driving along a road, and ever since he had been in pain.

‘I’m Sister Gilbey,’ the woman said. ‘I’m looking after you, Mr West. How do you feel?’

She had a soft, low voice that should have soothed. Instead, he was irritated by it. Did she think he was a child?

Zachary swallowed and became aware of a raging thirst. ‘Drink...’ he tried to say through his dry lips, and she must have understood because she gently inserted a straw between his teeth. He sucked weakly, and cool water came into his mouth. He stopped sucking when he had quenched his thirst, and his eyes closed in weariness.

‘Are you in much pain?’ the woman asked stupidly.

Zachary opened his eyes to look at her with contempt. What did she think? his gaze asked her.

He closed his eyes again and very soon he was slipping back into his dream. The girl was waiting with her windblown black hair and glimmering oval face, the smile that made his blood sing. Zachary floated towards her, smiling, his heart beating faster.

When his surgeon saw him again the following day Zachary was awake for the first time and David Hallows was able to talk to him.

‘Your agent, Mr Curtney, wants you to be moved up to London to another hospital which specialises in skin conditions, but I’m afraid...although you are already much improved and I have every faith that you will go on improving very fast...for the moment I’m afraid I cannot really permit you to make such a long journey.’

Zachary West gazed incuriously at him, his body slack. ‘I see.’

He did not seem too disturbed by the news and David Hallows gave him a friendly, encouraging smile.

‘We’ll take the best possible care of you, Mr West. We’re trying to make you comfortable.’

‘I’ve been too drugged to notice,’ Zachary said suddenly, his voice clearer than it had been since his accident.

David Hallows laughed. ‘Well, yes, that was necessary for the first few days, to protect you against too much movement, and to counter the effects of shock. From now on we will be cutting back on the dosage; we don’t want you getting hooked, do we?’

He laughed again. Zachary didn’t. Bleakly he said, ‘There’s no chance of that. I hate being out of my mind.’

‘Quite,’ David Hallows said. ‘Well, I’m happy to see you recovering so rapidly. I’ll be in to see you again tomorrow, a little earlier as it’s Saturday. Keep your fingers crossed that I get a quiet weekend for once!’

Again he laughed, and this time Zachary showed a spark of amusement in his grey eyes.

‘That might be a little difficult for me at present.’

David did a double take, then grinned in some surprise. ‘Yes, I’m afraid you’re right.’ Zachary’s hands had been very badly burned and must be intensely painful.

Talking to Luisa that evening, David said, ‘I have a lot of respect for the man; he’s got guts. I’ve known men with burns that weren’t half as bad as his who made ten times the fuss. To be making jokes this early shows a very strong character. I don’t think I’d be that brave if I were in his place.’ He grimaced. ‘In fact, I know I wouldn’t be! I’m petrified of having his sort of injuries. That’s probably why I specialised in skin surgery. My father was badly burnt in an explosion in a chemical works when I was ten, and I’ve never forgotten seeing him a week or so later. I had nightmares for years afterwards, kept dreaming it was me under the bandages.’