Carol Grace – Falling For The Sheik (страница 6)

Amanda should have been flattered the doctor had so much faith in her that he’d consider discharging Rahman so soon. Of course, Dr. Flanders may have had other motives for getting rid of the patient who was consistently asking the nurses for something. She also should have been flattered that Rahman’s family had placed their confidence in her. But they had been desperate and had little choice. Even if Amanda should have been flattered, she wasn’t.

All she felt was cold on the outside and hollow on the inside. She was worried. Worried about this kind of heavy-duty nursing. Worried about their nurse-patient relationship. One-on-one contact with a man who’d had such a strange effect on her. She told herself she was being overly sensitive. He was just another patient. To be treated like all her other patients. Amanda repeated it to herself until it had sunk in.

She looked at herself in the mirror in the hospital restroom. She didn’t look nervous. She’d had years of practice of not showing emotion in front of her patients. Sometimes she had kept this mask on in her private life as well. Today, she needed it more than ever. Nobody wanted a nurse who had doubts about her job. She practiced a bright smile. Not bad for someone who wanted to run out the front door and take the first plane back to Chicago. From the frying pan into the fire was the phrase that kept running through her mind.

Amanda kept the smile pasted on her face when she headed to Rahman’s room. She thought he’d be delighted to be getting out so soon. He was far from it. She stood outside the room and listened to him rant and rave at his family.

“You’re leaving? Everyone is leaving and going about their lives while I waste away here by myself? Transfer me to a hospital in San Francisco,” he shouted. Only his shout came out like a wheeze. “I’m not staying here.”

A woman spoke in a soft lightly accented voice. “Rahman,” she said. “Calm down. You’re in no condition to travel. You know that. As soon as you are, you can come home. Everything is arranged. The house is being set up and we have hired you a wonderful nurse. We met her yesterday and we were very impressed. She’s been highly recommended.”

“Highly recommended by who? The doctors at this hospital? They’ll do anything to get rid of me. That’s fine with me. I want to leave. I don’t need some special nurse. How do they know what I need? Get me out of this place. I’m going home. And I don’t mean the ski cabin.”

A gruff-voiced older man spoke next. “You can’t go back to the city. Not yet. You’re much too sick. You’ve had a serious accident. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky? You think I’m lucky? Have you ever been confined to a bed all hours of the day except to hobble to the bathroom? Had to take a stack of pills just to keep the pain from taking over? To feel like hell all the time anyway? To think you’re losing your mind as well as the use of your legs. Not to be able to get enough air to breathe? You call that lucky?”

“Rahman!” the woman said in a voice full of indignation.

“Sorry, Father,” Rahman said, in a subdued tone.

Amanda stood outside the door wishing she hadn’t heard all that. She had thought everything was in order. She had thought he was reconciled to staying at the ski cabin. She had thought he’d be grateful to his family. What had caused this outburst? He sounded like a spoiled brat. Should she sneak away and pretend she’d never heard anything at all? As she was pondering her choices, Rahman’s twin brother came out and greeted her.

“I assume you heard all that,” he said with a grim look.

“I’m afraid so.”

“He doesn’t mean it. He’s upset because we’re leaving.”

She gave him her best hospital smile, totally insincere and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “It’s understandable,” she said. But it certainly wasn’t a good way to start this job. As if she hadn’t been worried enough. Now she knew how desperately Rahman didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be left behind, and didn’t want to have her for his nurse. It hurt more than it should, even though she knew enough not to take it personally. She was being ridiculous and far too sensitive. She knew perfectly well how he was feeling—helpless, insecure, and in real pain.

“Good. I’m glad you understand,” his brother said.

“I’ll come back later,” Amanda said. “When things have calmed down.”

His room was empty. His family had finally left to go to dinner at some lakeside restaurant. Rahman wanted them to stay, but he was also glad to see them leave. He loved them but he couldn’t stand to be around them. They were driving him crazy with their lectures and their orders. But without them he was unbearably lonely. He sometimes felt he was losing his mind just when he needed it the most. It must be the medicine that made him so ambivalent. In the past, he had been able to pretty much do whatever he wanted. Now he had to rely on others for everything and it was not a good feeling. He’d always had an strong independent streak. He’d never minded being alone because he knew Rafik was around and Lisa and the rest of his family.

But now…he had no one. Even his twin brother, his closest friend in the world, didn’t seem to understand what he was going through. Ever since Rafik’s marriage there had been a gap between them. Now more than ever. He saw the way Rafik looked at him, the one person who ought to sympathize was baffled and annoyed by his behavior.

Rahman watched the sun set behind the mountains with heavy-lidded eyes. It was hard to believe he’d been on top of those mountains only days ago. How many days? He didn’t know. The days and nights blended together. Whenever he fell asleep, someone came in and woke him up to take his temperature or give him some medicine. The lights in the hall were on all day and all night. He didn’t know which was which. Nurses came and went. He couldn’t keep them straight.

Except for the one called Amanda. The one who was going to go home with him, no matter how much he objected. She was different. He could never mistake her for the others. She radiated calm and serenity and excited him at the same time.

Why didn’t she wear white like the other nurses? She wore those stretch pants over a pair of incredible legs. What would she wear when she was taking care of him? His mind conjured up all kinds of pictures. Amanda in a starchy white dress, Amanda in a blue turtleneck sweater that matched her eyes and showed off her curves. He felt his pulse speed up. What would happen to his vital signs when she was around 24/7?

He didn’t want her.

He hated the idea of a young attractive nurse taking care of him as if he were a baby. It was going to be humiliating to have her giving him his food and his medicine and telling him what to do and him being in no condition to resist. If he had to have a woman take care of him, she should at least be old and ugly. How hard could it be to find an old and ugly nurse? How hard could it be to hire a helicopter to airlift him out of here and back to the city? His family obviously hadn’t tried very hard. They didn’t know it, and he wasn’t going to tell them, but if he spent much time with Amanda he was going to want things he couldn’t have.

He was going to avoid all future entanglements with women. No more thrill-seekers like Lisa and especially no women like Amanda, a woman whose life was devoted to taking care of people. He didn’t want to be taken care of. Not by anyone. He was through with women of any kind. He’d had his chance, then fate had intervened and taken away the most vibrant, exciting woman he’d ever met. There wouldn’t be another like her. Destiny had decreed a life of loneliness for him and he’d damned well better get used to it.

He closed his eyes and his mind drifted. What was wrong with him? He kept seeing Amanda even though she wasn’t there. Hallucinations, that’s what it was. He remembered how she looked standing there in his doorway the first time he saw her. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven for one brief moment. He remembered falling asleep with her at his bedside and waking up without that groggy, drugged feeling. That was a good thing. But it would never happen again. He couldn’t ask her to hold his hand every night at bedtime. Yes, he was sick, but that’s not what nurses did. He kicked the metal bed frame with his good foot and winced. Damn this accident. Damn this little town and its hospital.

When he looked up she was standing in the doorway again. But was she really there? Or was it just another illusion? If she was real, he wished he’d had time to sit up and try to look alert, at least run his fingers through his hair. He hated it when he saw pity in the nurses’ eyes. That was one good thing about her, there was no pity in her eyes. There was something else, but he didn’t know what to call it.

“Don’t you ever knock?” he growled.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.

“I wasn’t asleep,” he said.

“How are you feeling?”

“You’re the nurse. You know everything. You tell me.”

“You have a healthy attitude,” she said.

“Is that what you call it?”