Davo ended the call, and Marcus let his hand fall to his side.
“What is it?” Heather asked. She was already up, grabbing his jeans from the floor and tossing them onto the bed.
“It’s my mum, she’s had an accident and she’s at the hospital. I need to go, I need to ...”
Marcus trailed off as panic stole his words. He hated hospitals. Hated the sound and the smell of them, hated the waiting and the way the lights made everything too sharp and too bright. Blood pounded in his ears as he pulled on his jeans with trembling hands. What had happened to her? How bad was it? Had she hit her head? Disastrous scenarios unfolded in his mind’s eye: His mum on her living room floor for hours, alone with a broken hip and unable to call for help. Or worse, unconscious and bleeding and undiscovered for who knew how long.
He ran his hand anxiously through his hair and blinked hard, trying to banish those images and think clearly.
“Shirt, where’s my shirt?” he muttered.
Heather pulled his shirt off the floor, then held it out to him, looking at him closely with her forehead creased in concern. “How far away is the hospital?”
“In Manly,” he said distantly. Then, realizing she probably had no idea where Manly was in relation to Kirribilli, he added, “Over the Spit Bridge, about half an hour if I don’t hit traffic.”
Heather gave a tight nod. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
She shook her head firmly and walked over to the chest of drawers, pulling out underwear and a shirt. “You’re not fine, you’re freaking out. I’m coming with you.”
Marcus buttoned his shirt with shaking fingers. “You don’t have to,” he said again, but he didn’t know why he was resisting. The sight of her putting her clothes on filled him with a gratitude that rivaled his excitement when he pulled them off her. If he had to go back to the hospital, at least he wasn’t going alone.
“And you didn’t have to come over here and save me from a harmless spider, but you did.” She twisted her hair up into a high, messy bun, then walked over and finished buttoning his shirt for him. “I’ll call a car.”
Thirty minutes later, Marcus entered the emergency room and tried not to think about the last time he’d rushed to a hospital. He clenched his hands into fists, pushing down the panic that crawled up his throat at the memory of that night. The nauseating pain, the fear, the lack of answers from the paramedics who had loaded him into the back of the ambulance at the stage door, then rolled him into a room just like this one.
Anxiety crawled in his chest, and he had to will his legs to keep moving, to carry him into the buzzing waiting room. Just as there had been the last time, there were crying children and hacking coughs and a blaring TV, and just as it had last time, the onslaught of sound made his brain feel waterlogged.
His mother’s voice pulled him out of his spiral.
“There you are!” she called, and he whipped around to see her sitting in an otherwise empty row of blue plastic chairs. She wore what looked like a pyjama shirt and a sarong wrapped around her waist. On her feet, she had a pair of untied walking joggers, with no socks. He couldn’t see any obvious injuries from here, not even bruises or scratches.
“Mum, what happened?” He walked to her as fast as he could, trying to see as he did if her arm was broken or if she was bleeding anywhere. Aside from her unusual outfit, he couldn’t spot anything amiss.
“It’s not a big drama, love,” she said evenly. “I just fell and cut myself.”
“Where?” he asked, scanning her again. Now that he looked closer, he could see some reddish brown under her fingernails.
“In the living room.”
“No,” he said, frustrated now, “where did you cut yourself?”
“Oh, my thigh,” she answered matter-of-factly, gesturing at her right leg. “I was getting off the couch, and I fell. Knocked over a vase on my way down, and one of the shards got me, right through my PJ pants. Blood all over the rug, I’m afraid, but I was planning to replace it sooner or later. Now I suppose I’ll have to do it sooner.”
Marcus glanced at her leg, and she pulled the sarong up to reveal a large white gauze pad bandaged to her thigh, just above her knee.
“Are you in pain? How long have you been sitting here?”
“An hour or so. And it hurts a little, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She shrugged. She was so calm in the midst of the beeping and the crying, but of course, she’d spent her professional life being calm around beeping and crying.
“They couldn’t see you sooner? I mean, if the cut was deep, doesn’t it need to be cleaned, or stitched, or ...” Marcus trailed off, the whirlpool of panic in his chest starting to slow and settle.
“The triage nurse already had a look at it.” She shrugged again. She really did seem completely unruffled. “You know as well as I do that if they needed to fix me up sooner, they would have. It’s just a gash, love. My leg’s not going to fall off.”
“Okay,” he sighed, nodding a few times and lowering himself into a chair opposite her. “Okay, so you’re fine.”
“I’m fine.” She smiled, and then her eyes moved from his face, and Marcus glanced over his shoulder. Heather hung back, watching the scene from five feet away.
