Dreaming. CHARLOTTE LAMB

the dreams, into the centre of the ring of fire. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t; he was trapped inside his pain. He tried to see through the flames, to look beyond to what lay outside, and suddenly she floated towards him, the girl in white, giving him that gentle smile, and Zachary’s fear fell away. An angel, he thought. That’s what she is—an angel! Why didn’t I realise that before? I am dead, and she is an angel.

      On her way home Luisa stopped off at Ward Twelve. The patients had had their breakfast and were lazily reading the morning papers or just sitting in chairs talking to each other, while the day staff got on with their morning routine. As courtesy demanded, Luisa went into the sister’s office to say ‘Good morning!’ before she went on into the ward.

      The night sister, Beth Dawlish, with whom she had trained, had hurried off long ago, and it was a woman Luisa knew only by sight who was the day sister on this ward.

      ‘Yes, Dawlish told me you’d come by,’ Sister Jacobs said, nodding, her brown eyes incurious. ‘Fine by me; take your time, although I expect he’ll be on his way home by this afternoon, judging by the report Dawlish left. A relief for you, anyway! It could have been much worse. How’s the other one, the one you’ve got up on your ward? I hear he was badly injured. Car caught fire? I don’t know how you can work on that ward—I did my time when I was working the wards and I hated it. You must have nerves of steel.’

      Luisa managed a faint smile. ‘I’m used to it. Our patient made it through the night and he’s doing as well as can be expected.’

      She got a dry look. ‘Hmm. Like that, is it? Well, even if he pulls through he isn’t out of the wood, is he? There’s a long, long road ahead for him.’

      ‘Yes,’ Luisa said, shivering. ‘Well, I’ll let you get on...’

      She walked steadily to the last bed in the ward. The man in it was sitting up against his pillows, staring at nothing, his face shadowed and white. He turned his head to look at her as she sat down on a chair beside the bed.

      ‘Luisa...’ He put out a hand, gripped her fingers so hard it hurt. ‘Is...is he...?’

      ‘Alive,’ she said, her voice low and husky. ‘Don’t look like that. He’s going to make it, Dad.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      LUISA slept for six hours, rather fitfully, because she had never quite got used to sleeping during the day; she finally got out of bed in the mid-afternoon, had an apple and some muesli and a cup of tea, and decided she would feel better if she got out into the fresh air and had some exercise. She was living in a small two-roomed flat within walking distance of both the hospital and Whinbury’s modern shopping streets, a pedestrian precinct with paved walkways, cafés, squares and gardens.

      Today was sunny and there were plenty of people about. After doing her shopping in the big supermarket in the heart of the precinct, Luisa was on her way home when she almost collided with a hurrying figure, a blonde girl not much older than herself.

      ‘Oh, it’s you!’ The other girl was far from friendly; in fact her green eyes glittered with hostility.

      ‘Hello, Noelle,’ Luisa said coolly, the dislike mutual. ‘Is Dad back home now?’

      ‘Yes! And I had to go and get him; they wouldn’t send him home in an ambulance!’

      ‘The ambulance service is very overworked—’ began Luisa, and the other girl interrupted furiously.

      ‘They took him to hospital in an ambulance; why couldn’t they send him back the same way? I had an important business appointment; I can’t just walk out of the office whenever I like. It was very embarrassing having to cancel it; I only hope we don’t lose a contract because of it. The woman who rang from the hospital was very high-handed. She insisted somebody came to get him. I couldn’t see why he couldn’t have come home in a taxi, or why you couldn’t have brought him home. After all, you work there! It would have been no trouble to you; they said you were at home, but when I rang you all I got was your answerphone!’

      ‘I’m on night duty; I have to sleep during the day,’ Luisa said, trying not to lose her own temper, although it wasn’t easy to stay calm.

      ‘And I have to work because your father can’t be bothered to run the firm any more!’ retorted Noelle. ‘If it wasn’t for me we’d be bankrupt within a year! He has let things slide for years—’

      ‘Never mind the firm, how’s Dad?’ Luisa interrupted tersely. ‘You haven’t left him alone, have you? He really shouldn’t be alone at the moment; he’s very upset.’

      Noelle bristled with open resentment. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do! I’m not your father’s secretary any more; I’m his wife, and I won’t put up with you patronising me.’

      ‘I wasn’t doing anything of the kind! But I don’t think you realise how dangerous shock can be... I wanted to explain the clinical—’

      ‘Well, don’t! I’m not one of your nurses, scuttling about whenever you snap your fingers!’

      It wasn’t pleasant to be stared at with such dislike. Luisa felt faintly sick meeting those sharp green eyes. Noelle was beautiful, there was no denying that, but for Luisa that beauty was skin-deep. From the first day they met, when Noelle joined her father’s firm as his secretary, Luisa had felt uneasy. It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect Noelle of being interested in her father—after all, he was a good twenty years older! No, she had simply sensed that, for some reason, Noelle did not like her, and when her father admitted to her that he was dating his secretary Luisa had been taken aback and shocked, and unable to hide it.

      She should have done, of course. She wished now that she had. She bitterly wished she could like Noelle, that they could be friends, for her father’s sake. She had tried hard to make friends, once she had to face the fact that the relationship was serious and was going to end in Noelle’s becoming her stepmother, but it had been useless. Noelle hated her and was not prepared to come to terms.

      Look at the way she was staring now, her eyes as sharp and acid as little green apples. ‘As it happens, he isn’t alone! Mrs North is at the house, cleaning, and I asked her to keep an eye on him. He didn’t go to bed; he’s lying on a couch watching television. There’s nothing much wrong with him that I can see, and if he’s upset he deserves it, driving like a maniac! He could have killed that man!’

      Luisa paled, knowing that was true. ‘But he didn’t, thank God!’

      ‘If he had it would have been your fault!’ her stepmother spat, and Luisa flinched, unable to deny it. Watching her with triumph, Noelle rubbed it in, malice in every spiked syllable. ‘If you hadn’t rung Harry and made all that fuss he wouldn’t have left the party and driven like a bat out of hell to get back home.’

      Luisa’s face was drawn. It was true, however much she wished it wasn’t, and regrets were useless now. If she could, she would go back and change events, but you could never do that. They were strung together like beads on a string, one event leading to another inevitably. She had rung her father in a mood of wounded disappointment, and he had rushed home to placate her. If he hadn’t, the accident would never have happened, and Zachary West would not be lying in a hospital bed close to death, her father would not be facing prosecution for dangerous driving...or even worse, if Zachary West did not pull through. Ice trickled down her spine. What if he didn’t...? No, she couldn’t bear to think about that.

      ‘But then you’ve always been spoilt and selfish!’ Noelle said, and Luisa stared dumbly at her.

      Had she? It was true that she ought to have known better than to lose her temper just because Dad had forgotten it was her birthday and had gone out with his wife, instead, but she had been so hurt, at the time. Dad had always been absent-minded; she usually had to remind him about her birthday. She saw so little of him, though, these days, that that was not so easy. She had rung a week ago to jog his memory and ask if they could have lunch, but he was out and she had had to leave