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Through the miasma of pain in her head Rose clutched at some bitterness. Did he think she needed telling this?
‘Be fine in a minute now that I’ve thrown up.’ Too much sharing, said her inner voice. Verbal shorthand was useful and quicker than full sentences when it took so much effort to get the words out. ‘Saw a light under the door.’ She was seeing lights now, ones that were not there in several colours zigzagging with dizzying intensity across her vision. It didn’t distract her from the knives in her head. ‘I’m s-sorry, but if you have any painkillers I forgot...’ Her voice trailed away as she closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Got a migraine.’
‘You’ve got aheadache?’
‘No, I’ve got a bloody migraine!’ She stopped and clutched her head, paying heavily for the yell as she swayed before adding in a whisper, ‘Have to get back to the baby. He will need a feed.’ She couldn’t tell if the noise was part of the pain pounding in her skull or the baby crying. ‘Can you turn the light off?’ she pleaded, holding up a shaking hand to shade her eyes as she squinted up at him.
Swearing, he did just that and she sagged with relief.
‘I’ll call a doctor.’
‘No...no... I just need a...’
He watched her sway like a sapling in the wind and then very gently crumple in slow motion. He caught her just before she reached the floor.
‘Can you hear me? What do you need?’
Her head was against his chest. She squeezed her eyes closed. ‘Not ambulance, painkiller and dark. I just need to close my eyes for a minute, then I can ch-check the baby.’
‘I’ll check the baby,’ he said, sounding a lot more positive about his ability to do this than he felt. ‘Piece of cake.’
‘Shh!’ she begged as agonising fire lit behind her eyes. ‘No shouting!’ she pleaded and pushed her face hard into his chest.
Startled by her action, Zac looked down at the fiery hot curls spilling down his front. She made a whimpering noise. The sound froze him to the spot as for a split second pure panic bolted through him, and something close to tenderness followed by a surge of protectiveness he refused to own.
She wanted to say, ‘I’ll be all right in a minute if I can just stay here.’ She managed a slurred, ‘Just...’ Then without warning her knees sagged and gave, and she began to slide.
‘Hey there, I’m up here.’
She let the hands on her waist take the strain, relieved to have the task of standing upright taken out of her hands. Her entire focus was on the hammers inside her head and the ever-tightening band across her forehead and behind her eyes. She told herself that this wouldn’t last for ever, that it would go away, but it was little comfort.
She seemed oblivious when he scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom, pulling the quilt back before he laid her down. Her knees immediately came up to her chest. As he looked down at her lying there shaking, he felt something move in him...something that he refused to recognise as tenderness. He tried hard to push the feeling with no name away, but it held on tight, digging deeper until it felt like a fist in his chest, tightening... She looked so damnedfragile. He swore.
He was not her protector, he was Marco’s friend. As he wondered if he could feel any more conflicted than he did she whispered,‘Sorry,’and he had his answer.
With a forearm pressed over her eyes she made noise that he correctly translated as a request to draw the blinds.
The darkness was bliss punctuated by pain. Rose hated feeling vulnerable, she hated asking for help with anything, but as the tears of weakness and pain began to seep through her closed eyelids she swallowed her pride and whispered, ‘Shoes...’ A part of her frazzled brain knew she ought not to be giving him orders, but the knowledge slipped away as she was hit by a fresh wave of agony.
She barely registered him unlace her trainers or remove the zip-up cardigan she wore over a lace-edged vest. It might have been a minute later or an hour when he urged her to swallow some water to wash down the generic painkillers he’d emptied every drawer in his own bedroom to find.
‘The baby?’ she fretted. The idea of abandoning Declan made her half rise before she sank back... Rose knew what it felt like to be abandoned. It gave them a connection. She had felt it the moment she saw him.
The response came, soothingly competent and calm-sounding, which hehadn’tbeen when he had forced himself to walk into the nursery. Next time it would be easier—he hoped.
‘I looked in on him, he was asleep.’ It had come as a relief to Zac, who had built up a picture in his head of accusing baby eyes looking up at him and seeing through his pretence, seeing he was not a fit guardian.
Holding his breath, he had searched the sleeping baby’s soft features, trying to see a resemblance to the parents he had lost and failing, when something had broken free inside him. Suddenly he had understood how parents gave their lives for their children.
‘You go to sleep too.’ Declan wasn’t her child, but Rose had been willing to crawl to get to the baby. He pulled the cover up over her narrow shoulders and felt the same thing with no name move in his chest—it hurt.
If his last physical hadn’t put him in the red zone of supreme fitness he might have been typing in his symptoms alongside his current Internet enquiry on migraine.
The volume of information when he had typed in his migraine query hadn’t made him feel any less helpless. It was hard to pick the relevant facts out of the vast amount of information available. Helpless was something that Zac, a man of action and positivity, was not used to feeling.
There were some magic-sounding pills but as he didn’t have access to them that wasn’t much use. He’d rung his personal physician but had got the answer machine and an alternative number if this was an emergency. Zac had got frustrated and hung up in disgust. Should medics be allowed to have down time? At that moment he didn’t think so!
‘Can I do anything?’ She looked so desperately ill that he struggled to believe that this was a migraine. He’d give it another thirty minutes and if she was no better he was calling an ambulance no matter what she said—not that she seemed capable of saying much.
