Check out my short story, Hit & Run, below. Want more delicious romantic short fiction? The 2019 edition of ‘Liasons‘ magazine is out now!

---

Nicky was not often wrong. She’d made some epic mistakes, sure, but in her day-to-day life she was on the button. She could tell the difference between appendicitis and gas, heart burn and heart attack, internal bleeding, cracked ribs, collapsed lungs. You name it, she could diagnose it.

She could tell when patients were lying to her. “I only took the recommended dosage. I must be allergic.”

She could tell when her daughter was lying to her. “I didn’t touch the stuff. It was my mates and the smell got on me.”

She could even tell when men lied to her, and her ex was definitely not taking it slow with his new girlfriend. Any day there’d be a ring—the sparkling diamond kind, closely followed by the telephone kind.

Nicky didn’t want him back. She prided herself on never making the same mistake twice. And he was well within his rights; she had ended it, so fair play he could do what he liked with their perky, twenty-something nanny. But she would definitely prefer to have a date lined up in case she was invited to the engagement party.

A siren screamed in the ambulance bay. Nicky et the paramedics at the doors.

“Hit and run. Forty-two year old male. Multiple abrasions, probable fracture—”

“Of the left tibia. Scalp lac, possible concussion.” Nicky snapped on gloves.

“Don’t worry,” the patient said to the paramedic. “She always does that.”

Nicky had looked him over, gathering clues faster than Sherlock Holmes, but only now she properly saw his face. It was Sai.

“How are you, Nic?” He tried to catch her eye.

She scrambled to hide her surprise. “I thought you were in India.”

“I was. Twenty-something hours ago. London had a charming way of welcoming me home.”

The paramedic, facing Nicky on the other side of Sai’s gurney, gave his blood pressure and heart rate: elevated but not alarming. Whereas Nicky’s was probably through the roof.

“What happened to my luggage?” Sai turned to the paramedic, who only shrugged. “I had presents.”

Nicky needed something to do. She snatched the scissors from a nurse and started cutting up his trousers.

“I bought Elise a book on Atul Dodiya. Do you remember—” He gasped in pain.

“Start an I.V.,” Nicky said. The fracture wasn’t compound but it might be comminuted. An x-ray would confirm. She was more concerned by his head wound.

“Dodiya did comic-style paintings, I thought Elise might—”

Nicky shone a light in his eyes. “Any loss of consciousness?”

He shook his head. “Reminded me of Elise’s folio. You sent me photos.”

Nicky touched the cut on his head. His ear was grazed too, gravel embedded in his skin. It had been most of a decade since she’d so much as touched him, but she remembered too well. Her hands in his hair, tongue around that lobe, lips just there on his neck.

They were cutting off his shirt.

“Nicky,” he said.

“You’re going to be fine, Sai.”

The junior doctor who shadowed her was nowhere to be seen. This was a simple case, a good chance to practice sutures; Nicky was desperate to leave, but no such luck.

“How is she?” Sai reached for Nicky.

“She’s sixteen.”

“I know.” He looked chastised. And so he should. He hadn’t seen his daughter in more than three years. Airfare from Mumbai to London could buy a thousand inoculations.

“Set me up with 5-0, blue. I’ll be back.”

The paramedic followed her out into the corridor.

“He didn’t lose consciousness?”

“Not according to witnesses.”

Sai would be sore, and a little slow getting around, but long-term he’d be fine. Short-term, he was drugged-up to his eyes and Nicky was the one feeling the sting. Ridiculous. It had never been easy to see him since they’d broken up—but it had never been like this.

When she went back in, everything was set up. On Nicky’s nod, the nurses left.

“See the number plate?”

He shook his head. “Dark green BMW X6.”

“Way to disprove a stereotype.”

“That’s what I said.”

“When you weren’t busy getting run down.”

He eyed the needle she was tapping.

“Lidocaine.” She gave the injection. He didn’t flinch. His lips turned out, about to speak, but she beat him to it. “What brings you back to London?”

“Holiday. Maybe.”

She began cleaning the grit and dirt from his ear. “Maybe?”

He shrugged.

“Try not to move.” She resumed washing the wound.

“It’s been nine years. I don’t know that I want to make it an even ten.”

“No?”

“Do you ever feel like you’re cleaning up a mess that keeps messing itself up again?”

“Yes,” she answered deadpan, catching his eye. “People keep throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles.”

He didn’t smile.

She surveyed the irrigated wound, swollen and painful-looking, but clean. Next, sutures.

He had a heart rate monitor on his finger but the sound was off. In the quiet room, she could hear his breathing, her own, and the faint tick of a clock. Time. So much time had passed. He didn’t look exactly the same, but he still looked so good. Dark hair and dark eyes, skin like cinnamon, lips a brilliant sunset.

She had to focus—had to thread a needle. “You can’t have honestly expected to fix an entire health system in a decade.”

“Of course not. But maybe, on some level, I thought …” He shifted, in pain, no doubt.

“That you could help.”

“With the benefits of education, experience, money … I had to try.”

Silence. They’d had this conversation before. So many times. He’d had his reasons to go, she’d had her reasons to stay. “How are your parents?”

“Disappointed.”

“That you didn’t save the world?”

“That I left.”

He was moving back to England then.

“Can I see her?” He glanced sideways at Nicky.

She kept stitching. “Almost finished here.”

He closed his eyes. “I know I’m not owed anything.”

“Which strangely makes me the bad guy if I say no.” Nicky tied off the last stitch. “There you go.”

He turned his head to look at her properly. “You look good.”

“Sure. It’s the double shifts and scrubs.”

“Brings out the blue in your eyes.”

“Brings out the bullshit. Where’s that x-ray got to?” She fled to the hallway. He shouldn’t have this much effect on her.

Peterson, the junior doctor shadowing her, finally showed up. “You alright, Doctor?”

“Where you been?”

“Emergency appendectomy. Sorry, message didn’t get through.”

“I’m waiting on an x-ray. Chase that up for me?”

“Sure.” Peterson marched off.

Nicky took a deep breath. She looked down the corridor, almost hoping for another patient, a challenge demanding all of her faculties. Nothing appeared.

Sai had his eyes shut when she went back in.

“How’s the leg?” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“Sai?” She touched his shoulder. His cheek. Her heart raced, blood roaring in her ears. “Sai.” She thumbed open his eyes. “Sai?”

“Gotcha.” He grinned.

She wanted to thump him. “Fucker.”

“Wouldn’t say no.”

Damn those dimpling cheeks and laughing eyes. She turned away to get more saline.

“Nic.” He sounded apologetic, but he wouldn’t apologise; she knew him—too well.

She pressed a syringe into a vial.

“I emailed Elise.”

“What?”

He hissed, the needle still in his arm.

She finished administering the anaesthetic. “Since when?”

“To tell her I was visiting.”

“And?”

“She’s worried about your reaction.”

Unbelievable. Was he seriously trying to claim he knew anything about Elise’s feelings?

“She wants to spend some time together, but she wasn’t sure what you’d say.”

“Or maybe she didn’t feel she could turn you down?” Nicky started cleaning the cuts on his arm, not as carefully as she might have otherwise.

“I considered that. I asked her. She said she’d have no problem telling me to piss off—her words.”

Nicky couldn’t help feeling some pride in the kid.

“You’re also allowed to tell me to piss off.”

She paused in her work. “You’re staying?”

“Hope so.”

Nicky didn’t want to hope—couldn’t let herself, and yet she couldn’t not hope. She turned his hand to see the rest of the lacerations. “This is deep.”

He stretched out his hand. She watched his fingers curl open, remembered his hands on her. Remembered so clearly.

Open, weeping cuts dragged her back to the present. It’d be a while before he’d enjoy touching anyone with this hand.

He held up his other hand. “This one’s unscathed.” The heart rate monitor, perched like a hat on his index finger, touched her cheek first. “Weird, isn’t it?”

“This hand took all the …” She couldn’t ignore his touch. “Sai.”

“You feel that?”

“It’s the Demerol.”

“Is it?” He let his hand drop to his stomach.

The dark hair low on his abs led her eye to his belt, then his trousers, shredded from thigh to ankle. He might as well be wearing nothing but boxer briefs.

He caught her looking. “You on opioids too?”

What was she doing? “You might need sutures here. But at least a scar won’t be obvious.”

He didn’t answer.

“Although, you could pull off a scar. It’d make you look mysterious. Dangerous.”

“A fair warning?”

He was dangerous. He’d broken her heart.

“I was an idiot. Took both of you for granted.”

She nodded.

“I don’t expect you to trust me. Not any time soon.”

“Good.” She met his dark eyes, deep and pleading, and steeled her gaze. His lips shifted, as if he was trying out the words he was about to say. But she couldn’t bear promises. She wanted to kiss him, wanted to know if he could make her feel like he used to, with just a kiss—like he had with a touch, a look.

“Nic.” He started to sit up.

She shook her head. Firm and familiar, he kissed her, mouth closed, one desperate, restrained kiss. She pressed her forehead to his.

“Tell me this isn’t the drugs,” he begged.

“It’s not the drugs.” She looked him in the eye. “I need to look at your hand.”

“I have another.” He took hold of her face, the heart-rate monitor on his finger glancing across her ear as he kissed her again. He tasted like sweet coffee and spicy ginger biscuits, wonderfully warm.

“Found an x-ray,” Peterson rushed in. “I’ll, ah, just leave it.”

Nicky pulled back.

“She’s gone already.” Sai’s thumb kept hold of her chin and one finger scooped under her ear. “Damage done.”

“I’m not worried about gossip. Your tibia could be comminuted.”

“Yeah, well.”

“That’s the Demerol talking.”

He lay back, smiling. “I’ll lie still. Do what you want with me.”

Nicky could not deny the appeal of that.

---

If you enjoyed this, the good news is that it’s just a taster, and the main course is on its way in 2020! Make sure to sign up for my newsletter to catch What’s French for Oops? as soon as it lands!