Carrie’s brain quickly sorted through the possibilities as she watched Charlie draw nearer. By the time she got home and they went to either the GP or the hospital it would be another hour. Susie would have to take her and she could meet them there. But it was getting close to rush-hour.
‘What’s wrong?’ Charlie asked quietly.
Carrie put her hand over the mouthpiece, her hand trembling slightly. ‘Dana needs stitches in her chin.’
‘Bring her here. I’ll do it.’
Carrie looked at him blankly for a few moments.
‘At this hour of the day your nanny will probably be able to make it here quicker. Unless you’d rather someone else did it?’
Carrie continued to look at him blankly.
‘Trust me, I do a lot of stitching. I stitch like a pro. My father’s right, I should definitely be a surgeon.’
He gave her one of his slow sexy smiles and she saw that confidence in his eyes. The one from the accident scene and the overdosed drug addict. And she knew she could trust him with this. ‘Bring her here, Susie. Dr Wentworth has offered to do the suturing.’
‘How brave is she?’ Charlie asked when Carrie had hung up the phone.
‘She’s pretty good. She’s not one of those hysterical little girls. If we explain how important it is that she stays still, I reckon she’ll be OK.’
‘All right, then.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll go and get set up.’
Carrie paced the front lounge area, the thump of music from the jukebox grating on stretched nerves. Where were they? It had been nearly half an hour.
‘Mummy!’
Carrie felt her heart contract as she saw Susie, clutching a bloodied and bandaged Dana in her arms. Her daughter’s T-shirt was spotted with dried blood and there was a smear of blood on her forehead. She met them on the pavement and squeezed her daughter close.
‘I hurted my chin, Mummy.’
Carrie laughed. ‘Well, you obviously didn’t knock your noggin.’ She pulled out of the embrace to inspect her daughter’s injury. It was covered with a sticking plaster so the damage was hard to assess. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside to Charlie.’
‘Charlie?’ Dana’s eyes lit up like light bulbs. ‘From the crash?’
‘Yes.’ Carrie laughed. ‘Charlie from the crash.’
Carrie cherished the happy hug Dana bestowed on her as she made for the treatment room.
‘Ah, here she is, my little Sleeping Beauty.’
Dana giggled at Charlie and Carrie felt warm all over at how naturally her daughter responded to him. She only hoped Dana felt the same way after Charlie had injected local anaesthetic into her wound site!
‘Hello, Charlie,’ Dana chirped.
‘Hello, Sleeping Beauty. What have you been doing to yourself?’
‘I felled over. Susie says I never look where I’m going.’
Carrie’s laugh was joined by Charlie’s warm chuckle. ‘Grown-ups are such spoilsports. Not looking where you’re going is so much more fun.’
Dana giggled again and Carrie was pleased Susie had already departed. Her daughter looked so small sitting on the big bench, her legs dangling over the edge, her white sandals with red butterflies swinging back and forth. Her blonde hair was pulled up into two bunches sitting high on her head, a yellow ribbon around each one.
She looked at Charlie, at the world, with such trust in those big blue eyes and Carrie felt irrational mother’s guilt rear its ugly head. If she’d had been there maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
‘OK, now, I need to have a look at your chin. Do you want Mummy or me to pull the plaster off?’
Dana looked solemnly from one to the other. ‘Mummy,’ she announced.
Carrie smiled and kissed Dana on the head. ‘Fast or slow, baby?’
‘Fast,’ Dana replied.
Carrie peeled up a corner of the plaster. ‘OK, ready…steady…’
‘Go!’ Dana pronounced.
Carrie ripped it off quickly without a peep from Dana. ‘Ugh,’ she said, looking at the gaping hole beneath. ‘That definitely needs fixing.’
Dana nodded. ‘Naughty pot plant.’
Charlie chuckled and sat on a mobile stool in front of Carrie’s daughter and snapped some gloves on. ‘Can I have a look, Sleeping Beauty?’
Dana giggled. ‘You can fix it, can’t you, Charlie?’
Charlie felt his heart melt at Dana’s four-year-old innocence. Her big blue eyes were irresistibly gorgeous. So this was how it would be to have your own child, your own flesh and blood, looking at you like you were Superman. Could he fix it? At the moment he could have slain a dragon for her.
He tilted her chin up and examined the damage. The cut wasn’t very deep and only about a centimetre long, but gaped in the middle. It had stopped bleeding. ‘I reckon I can fix that as good as new.’ The wound edges were straight, which would make for a neat scar.