Ben watched the tears spill from her eyes. His entire body felt as a frozen extremity did when the circulation returned...feeling had burned away the protective layer that had enabled him to function, stripping his emotions bare. With a painful stab of self-awareness he knew there would be no going back. A man could walk around with a void inside him once he recognised it for what it was—fear.
Lily was laughing and crying, squeezing his hand again. He struggled to respond, to match her bubbling happiness.
‘I thought—’
‘Sorry, I know.’ She took a deep steadying breath. ‘I have to say thank you. If it wasn’t for you Emmy might not be here. You’ve been kind even when I... I will never forget what you did.’
Ben pulled his hand away, suddenly annoyed. ‘I didn’t do it for that. I don’t want your gratitude.’
If she asked him what he did want, what would he say?
She didn’t ask him, she just looked at him, clearly puzzled by his reaction, so he asked himself. What did he want?
His eyes widened as the answer surprised him.
Lily tentatively touched his arm. ‘Are you all right?’ Well, that was what she’d intended to say, but she wasn’t sure whether it all came out because quite suddenly her knees went, there was a loud buzzing in her head and the floor came up to meet her.
Ben stepped forward and caught her before she hit the ground. Grunting softly, he hefted her higher into his arms. ‘Could we have a doctor here?’ Looking down at the pale face of the woman in his arms, he felt emotions he had spent weeks struggling not to acknowledge break free. ‘The place is full of bloody doctors, so where are they when you need one?’
‘Is she breathing?’ They all had their breaking point and this was obviously Elizabeth’s. ‘She’s not breathing.’
‘She is,’ he assured her. ‘She’s just fainted. Exhausted probably.’
‘Thank God, thank God, I knew this would happen!’ Maternal concern found release in a shrill string of loving criticism as Elizabeth patted her unconscious daughter’s head. ‘I knew it! You have no idea how stubborn she can be! She just can’t accept help, it’s always I don’t want to be a bother... Bother? She’s my little girl. I want to help. I need to help.’
Her words resonated. I need to help. He totally understood the sentiment. It remained one that he was unable to articulate. After he had done his part, he could have walked away. He knew that Lily had expected him to. She probably would have preferred him to walk away.
His jaw muscles locked tight as he looked down at this fiercely independent woman, half her face hidden in his shoulder. He struggled to poke his anger into life but instead experienced an overwhelming surge of protectiveness. It was primal and illogical, a throwback to hunter-gatherer days.
It was love.
They were right. Love did set you free. In his case the prison bars had been of his own making.
‘She’ll be fine, Elizabeth, just let...’ Blocked in a corner, he tried to ease past the woman, calling out, ‘In here, she fainted!’ Relieved to finally see assistance in the form of a nurse and a doctor, he reluctantly passed Lily onto the trolley that arrived.
* * *
As a child she had always been cynically sceptical of those scenes in films when the swooning heroine lifted a hand to her head and said in a faltering voice, ‘Where am I?’
As she opened her eyes and mumbled, ‘Did I faint?’ she felt some sympathy for those heroines.
‘Yes.’
Her eyes flew wide at the sound of his voice. Ben, she discovered, was standing beside the bed she lay on looking stern and—she gave her head a tiny shake—he was wearing what she thought of as his closed look.
‘Well, I suppose I did it in the right place,’ she said, struggling to pull herself upright, only to find her progress hindered by a large hand in the middle of her chest. ‘Will you stop that? I have to—’
‘You have to stay there and sit up gradually. Then you will drink this vile cup of tea the kind nurse made you, while I will go and reassure your mother that you are all right. Then I am taking you back home, where you will sleep.’
Out of the list Lily could see herself doing one: the cup of tea sounded good.
‘I’m—’
‘Let me guess, fine?’ he drawled, sounding bored.
‘Well, I am.’ She directed a pointed look at his hand planted on the middle of her chest. ‘But I won’t be if I can’t breathe.’