Then she’d have to find her place in the world. He admired her more than he could hope to put into words. He wasn’t good at finding the right words, especially when he didn’t want her to take what he said the wrong way.
Admiring her was easy; she was a strong woman who had given up a lot to become true to the person she was inside. But if he told her something like that, he sounded an awful lot like a person who was proud of her—who had feelings for her that went way beyond those of someone who was supposedly using her to cure his lonely nights and solve the itch in his pants.
“You can take Hazel’s stitches out, Frankie. She’s waiting for you.”
She walked away to get the equipment she needed, and Lucas avoided meeting her eye. Even when she deliberately stopped, turned, and looked directly at him, he pretended not to notice and refused to look into her eyes.
One more night, that’s all they had left together.
And that was all he had to offer.
He needed to remind himself of that.
As he spoke to Pete, she again looked at him. This time, their gaze clashed and he watched, transfixed, as the tray she’d prepared started shaking as she wheeled it towards Hazel. Horrified, she stared at him as the floor began moving under her feet.
“Get down!” he knew the shriek came from his own mouth, but it sounded feral. He couldn’t get to Frankie, couldn’t protect her as he had during the previous aftershock.
Terror made his palms clammy, sweat beaded on his forehead, and his legs shook even as he threw himself to the ground and underneath the desk he and Pete had been using to spread out patient notes.
He watched in open mouthed awe as the walls of the hospital shuddered before falling in on themselves. The ceiling heaved and cracked. Supplies from the Paediatric department above began raining down on top of them.
Lucas realised what was going to happen next, but there wasn’t time for him to move. With fatal fascination, he watched as part of the ceiling above fell onto the table. The wooden furniture splintered and collapsed under the weight of rubble, pinning him to the floor. The cacophony of noise stopped and a silence, more awful because of the pandemonium that had come before, fell over the hospital.
Warm, sticky liquid ran down his temple. His head felt as though it had been struck with a hammer. He lifted a hand to stop the blood from trickling into his eyes as he searched the room for the spot where Frankie had stood. He couldn’t see her.
The room pitched and heaved before his eyes fluttered closed.
#
Frankie lay under Hazel’s bed for what seemed like forever. She allowed the silence after the thunderous sound of the hospital falling apart around them to lull her into a false sense of security. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.
She inched her way out as noise started returning to the hospital. What met her was reminiscent of a war zone. Not that Frankie had ever been to a war zone, but this was exactly how she imagined one would look. Moans of pain and screams of agony were the background for people laying everywhere. Some clearly were already dead, others had blood streaming from various wounds, whilst several simply looked shell-shocked. Around them, a cloud of dust hovered giving the scene an eerie quality.
“Lucas!” She picked her way over rubble to the place she’d last seen him. She could do this with his help, with him by her side she was capable of anything, but she couldn’t begin to sort out the mess of casualties without him.
A ragged sob broke free from her lips. Without him. She couldn’t be without him. Not now, not when she really needed him, but especially because she’d accepted how she felt about him.
She found Pete first. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but unseeing. Frankie clapped a hand over her mouth smothering a sound of distress. She couldn’t fall apart. To Pete’s left, she saw Lucas. He lay on his back, a nasty wound oozing blood on his temple. She paused before reaching out a shaky hand and feeling for a pulse in his neck.
He was alive! She assessed the situation. He was alive, but unconscious and pinned to the floor by fallen masonry. She needed to do a circle of the room and determine who her major casualties were and prioritise them. She could do this. She’d done it when they’d built the bridge, but that had been with Lucas right there. He’d encouraged her and she’d been able to check her decisions with him if she needed to.
Half stumbling, half crawling, she made her way around the room. She found the other day shift doctor who had been knocked unconscious but was now getting groggily to his feet. Quickly, he divided the most serious casualties and they began searching for supplies under fallen bricks, ceiling, and the items from the floor above.
Because Lucas had a head injury and possible internal injuries from being trapped, he was prioritised as a ‘red’ patient, meaning his needs were urgent. Treating the head wound and stopping the blood was her first job.