Breathe You In (17 page)

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“So why didn’t you?” Irritation snapped at my
heels. “Ruben, you’re sick, we need to get you better.” He had to get better. I
needed him.

“I might look like shit, but you look pretty,”
he said, squeezing my hand and giving me another one of his tired smiles.

Damn, I wanted to shake him. “Don’t change the
subject. Where is the number for your doctor?”

He sighed, as if defeated. “In here.” He pulled
out his wallet and plucked a business card from it. “I’ll call him now.”

“Yes, you do that.” I stood, folded my arms, and
resisted the urge to tap my foot. How could he have let himself get so ill?
Didn’t he know he was all I had? Didn’t he understand Matt’s heart was doing
its best but still, he had to take care of it?

A sudden thought hit me. What if it was my fault
he was ill? Maybe it was that dash back from the cinema in the rain that had
caused him to become sick? We’d gotten so wet, splashing through puddles and
that car soaking us. That couldn’t be good for him, surely.

“Hello, Andrew, it’s Ruben Strong, sorry to
bother you.” Ruben glanced at me, and I wanted to clip his ear for worrying
about bothering his doctor when he looked like the gray day outside and was
probably spiking a fever.

“Not so good actually. I think I’ve picked up a
cold or a virus or something.” There was a pause. “Yes, I increased them this
morning when I first felt ill…temperature, I think so.”

I nibbled on a loose bit of skin by my thumbnail,
watching Ruben doodle figures of eight on a notepad in front of him.

“I can be there in half an hour, yes. Thanks.”

He clicked off the phone.

“Well,” I said, touching his hair, stroking it
back from his face and feeling terrible for being cross with him when he
appeared completely drained of energy.

He glanced up at me, his eyelids so heavy they
were only half open. “He wants me to get to Northampton General, he’s based in
Oxford but he’ll call and tell them to expect me and what drugs I need.” He
shrugged sadly. “It’s happened a couple of times before.”

I stooped and kissed his head. “Then come on,
I’ll drive you. I’m parked just outside.”

He nodded.

“Can you walk that far?”

“Yes, don’t fuss. I’ll be fine.” He set his jaw
determinedly and stood.

“I’ll go and get it then, drive it up to the
front.”

“Okay.”

I grabbed my bag and dashed out of the door. Adrenaline
spurred me on as I galloped past the Saints, the shoes, then down the stairs.

“What’s the rush?” Ethel said, standing as I
reached the bottom.

“He’s ill, I’ve got to get him to hospital.”

She put her hands beneath her chin as if in
prayer. “Oh dear, I thought he seemed tired earlier, and here he’s been…all
morning up there, unwell. Oh dear…”

“It’s all right.” I touched her shoulder. “He’s
spoken to his doctor—”

“The heart one, the specialist?”

“Yes, and he needs some medication, as soon as possible.”

Ethel started to walk left, changed her mind and
walked right. “Oh dear,” she said again.

“Listen, are you going to be able to lock up
here. I don’t want Ruben worrying about it.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll get the keys off him when
he comes down.” She glanced up the stairs. “Oh dear.”

“Yes, you do that and I’ll go and fetch my car.”

*
* * * *

The bleeping of the cardiac monitor made me feel
physically sick. The last time I’d heard that rhythmic sound I’d been holding
Matt’s hand and he’d been lying in Intensive Care. The ventilator had hissed
and whirred at his side, his chest had moved up and down in synchrony with it.

He hadn’t really been there, so they’d told me,
but it had felt like it.

I clutched Ruben’s hand the same way as I’d held
Matt’s, within both of mine, clasping it tight. He was asleep, had been for an
hour, but I couldn’t bear the thought of letting his hand go, of walking away
from another man lying on a hospital bed and never seeing him again.

After the bustle of Ruben’s arrival—an X-ray,
blood tests and hooking him up to monitors and a drip—a young nurse had
fluffed his pillow, taken his temperature again and told him that rest was the
best thing now. He just needed to let the medicine do its job. She’d left the
room then, shutting the door and leaving us alone.

I studied his sleeping face. He had more color
since the oxygen tube had been placed beneath his nose. The grayness had gone,
his lips pink again, their normal shade as opposed to whitish.

He was breathing steadily and his skin, although
still a fraction too warm, had lost the clamminess I’d felt earlier. The bed sheets
were rolled down to his waist, and I set my attention on his scar and thought
of his new heart pounding away, working its hardest to do its job even though
Ruben’s body saw it as an invader.

Weariness suddenly took over me. I couldn’t
imagine going home to sleep, so I rested my head on the bed, next to our joined
hands, and shut my eyes.

I must have slept for a while, because when the
click of the door woke me, the shadows in the room had stretched and the sun
had come out, creating a diamond shape on the wall behind Ruben’s bed.

“Oh, I’m very sorry, I…didn’t realize.”

I turned at the sound of a female voice.
Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged couple. They were both tall, she had
hair in a neat, pale blonde bob, and his was gray and short.

I cleared my throat, sat up straighter, kept
Ruben’s hand in both of mine.

“
Er
, hello,” I said.

The couple continued to stare at me.

I glanced at Ruben; he was snoring softly.

“How is he?” the man said, stepping into the
room. He had the same soft brown eyes as Ruben and moved in a similar
long-limbed way.

“He just needs to wait for the medicines to work
and then he’ll feel fine,” I said. “So the doctor told us.”

“Well, that sounds encouraging.” He smiled. “I’m
Trevor, Ruben’s father.”

“Hello, nice to meet you. I’m Katie.”

“And this is my wife, Veronica, his mother.”

Veronica Strong crossed the room. She was
elegant in neat trousers, a pale blue blouse and a string of pearls that had
been wrapped twice around her neck.

“Hello,” I said.

She smiled but only briefly, because then she
took Ruben’s other hand in hers, being careful of the drip, and studied him.
Her whole posture projected worry and fear. She nibbled on her bottom lip and
frowned.

“When did he get ill?” she asked.

“I saw him at lunchtime. He said he’d been
feeling under the weather since this morning.”

“Well, at least he caught it quickly this time.
He can be so stubborn.”

“I made him call the doctor.”

“Good, thank you.”

I nodded.

She let her gaze roam over me, frowned slightly.
“I didn’t know he was seeing anyone,” she said. “I thought he would have
mentioned it—”

“Veronica,” Trevor said.

She turned her mouth down and shook her head. “I’m
sorry, that was rude of me.” She looked at Ruben again.

“It’s okay, us, Ruben and I, it’s all been a bit
of a whirlwind, we’ve got close fast.” I paused, thought how deeply he’d gotten
under my skin. “Happens like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” She glanced at me again,
slightly suspiciously.

“Hey, Mum, Dad,” Ruben said in a croaky voice.
“You got the message I left you then.”

“Yes, we came straight here,” Veronica said.
“How are you feeling?”

“Not so bad, been worse.”

“Well, we know that, son,” Trevor said, putting
a pile of magazines on the table at the end of the bed, all motor related. “The
thing is, how long are you planning on being in here instead of out courting
this beautiful lady?”

Ruben smiled at his father and then at me. “This
is Katie,” he said. “Sorry, I should have introduced you.”

“We’ve done that already,” Veronica said. “But
you didn’t mention Katie when I spoke to you yesterday.”

“No, well, we’re still getting used to there
being an us, aren’t we?” He turned his hand over and took hold of mine, instead
of me holding his.

“Yes,” I said with a smile. “You look better now
than you did earlier.”

“I feel it. Thanks for driving me here.”

“As if you need to say thanks.”

Veronica picked up a glass of water. “You should
drink,” she said to Ruben.

He let go of my hand, drank as instructed.

“Have you eaten?” he said to me then turned to
his mother. “We we’re going for lunch. We never made it.”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat, Katie.” He frowned at me.

“I will, later.”

“I could murder a cup of tea after the drive
here,” Veronica said. “Come on, Katie, let’s go to the canteen together.”

She and Ruben both held the same determined
expression, the same set to their jaws, the same sure look in their eyes. I
could refuse, stamp my feet and demand that I not be told what to do. But I
couldn’t be bothered, my emotional energy was running on low today, and a cup
of tea was tempting.

“Yes, you ladies go and chatter, I need the
inside gossip about the race on Saturday,” Trevor said, tapping the side of his
nose. “And no doubt it’ll be juicy if Dean
Cudditch
has
anything to do with it.”

Ruben laughed, and the sound settled in my chest
like a tonic.

“Of course it is,” he said. “Dean is always
flying by the seat of his pants.”

Ten minutes later, I was nursing a cup of tea
and an egg and cress sandwich bought for me, with much insistence, by Veronica.

She plucked a tub of sweeteners from her
handbag, added one to her tea and stirred. I looked at the enormous rock on her
left ring finger alongside a thick gold band then glanced at my bare one.

“So how did you two meet?” she asked, smiling
stiffly.

“I was wandering around the museum and we got
chatting.”

She nodded, took a sip of tea.

“He saved me, from a peacock. It was trying to
attack me.”

She smiled. “Really, that’s quite a way to
meet.”

“I suppose.”

“Why don’t you eat, Katie? You don’t look like
you can afford to lose weight.”

I resisted responding with a sharp comment and
tore the cellophane off the wrapped sandwich.

“And are you from around here?”

I held back a sigh. This was going to be a
serious grilling. But what the hell, Ruben, like Matt had been to his mother,
was clearly the light of her life. Heck, he was the light in mine now, so we
shared a common interest. I’d give her what she wanted. Well, most of it.

“No, I’m born and raised in Yorkshire. I moved
here from Leicester, where I’d been working for several years. I needed a
change.”

“Oh, had something gone wrong in Leicester?”

“No, I just wanted to transfer jobs. I work at
Skin Deep, in town.”

“Oh, yes, very nice.”

I picked up a sandwich, nibbled the corner. “It
is nice, the staff are friendly and I like the products, plus it’s very
convenient.”

“For what?”

“I mean, it’s low stress, that suits me.”

She raised her eyebrows.

I took a proper bite of sandwich, studied the iridescent
sheen on her pearls, and then when I’d swallowed said, “I’ve never been a
career girl, no wild ambitions to climb the dizzy heights of the corporate
ladder and change the world.”

“Oh, that’s unusual these days. I thought all you
young ladies were ready to take on anything.”

“Not me.”

She tipped her head, urging me to go on.

I braced, steadying myself on the wire, an
invisible balancing pole in my hands keeping me on the straight and narrow and
leaving the hurricane of emotions down below. “I fell in love, Mrs. Strong,
when I was young. We got married, Matt and I, we settled down, planned a
family, a boy and a girl. I wanted to be a mother, a wife, a friend, a lover. I
was so close to having all of those things, but then one day everything
changed.”

I had her attention now. Her mask had slipped. She
wasn’t being the suspicious, protective parent anymore. She was curious. She
wanted to know what had happened to me. Did she imagine I’d run away and left
my family? Maybe she thought I’d become a druggie or an alcoholic and they’d
all left me. Maybe I’d committed some horrible crime and been locked up at Her
Majesties pleasure for the last few years.

“What changed?” she asked quietly.