‘I just need to see what this damn machine is saying and then I can get out of here.’ He craned his neck. ‘What’s it saying?’ He tried to focus his eyes on the graph shapes appearing on the screen.
‘It’s saying if you don’t lie still, your personal assistant is goingto get the meanest nurse she can find,’ Clara retorted. ‘Try to stay calm.’
‘In this place?! Are you kidding?’ He flopped back down.
He didn’t need to read the graph to know what it was saying. Those humps and bumps, the lines rising and falling, they only meant one thing.Heart attack. He knew without any shadow of a doubt. It was his destiny. It wasn’t a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’. It was genetic, written in family history. This was what the male Drummonds had in their future. Heart problems and eventually… death.
That realisation weighed on his shoulders like an unmoveable snow drift. Maybe this year was it for him. Time out, nothing else, not even making thirty. Like his brother.
‘It’s not a heart attack.’
Now his PA was apparently a mind reader, although clearly no physician. Oliver stared up at the ceiling, looking into the pattern of the off-white tiles, a string of cheap, silver tinsel hanging lamely from one crack. It looked like someone hated Christmas just as much as he did.
He wasn’t going to meet Clara’s eyes. The woman was just trying to keep his spirits up. That’s all people knew how to do in situations like this. She knew his family story. She knew the inevitable ending.
His tightened chest had definitely slackened slightly, but it wouldn’t stay that way. It would take him over again when he wasn’t ready, another time, another place.
‘When my first husband had his first heart attack, he turned the colour of a well-ripened plum. Then, when he hit the floor, he was paler than a hockey mask.’
Oliver swallowed away a sick feeling burning his stomach. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
‘His second heart attack was different. Sweating, confusion… he said it was like having a wrecking ball on his chest.’
‘Was there a third?’
Clara nodded. ‘Oh yes, the third one killed him.’
He’d heard all he needed to. There was no escape from this death sentence and now he just wanted out of here. He began ripping the monitors off his chest and flailing up to a sitting position. ‘Don’t tell me any more.’
‘Oliver, put those back on.’
‘I can’t be here.’
He was just pulling the very last round sucker from his chest when the door opened and a dark-haired woman wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard entered the room. She was beautiful. Asian colouring, cat-like eyes, full lips. Oliver toyed with the sticker in his hand like a kid being caught with his hand in the candy jar.
‘Mr Drummond, sorry I was called away.’ She looked at his fingers holding the sensor that was supposed to be flat on his chest. ‘I see you got impatient.’ The corners of her mouth lifted in a wry smile.
He watched her walk confidently to the machine. She pressed some buttons and began making notes on her chart.
‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I told him to keep still but he isn’t the best at following instructions,’ Clara spoke up.
The doctor finished writing before looking up, smiling at Clara and clicking off her pen. ‘I have a lot of patients like that.’ She looked to Oliver. ‘Nearly all of them male.’
He swallowed. This was a woman in control. It was intoxicating and, for a second, he felt completely disarmed. He needed to find his rhythm here. He gripped the buttons of his shirt and began to fasten them together. He was still here, alive. His heart hadn’t beaten him in this round and he wasn’t going to be throwing in the towel that easily. It was just like NFL. He’d never stopped giving his all for that. He needed to remember that feeling.
He set his hazel eyes on her. ‘So, what’s the verdict, Doctor? Am I going to be well enough to take you out to dinner tonight?’
And there he was. Back in the game. There was amusement in her expression as a smile reached her lips, a glint of acknowledgement in her eyes.
‘For God’s sake, Oliver.’ Clara exhaled a breath of annoyance.
The doctor’s eyes looked him up and down, from his leather shoes, up through his designer trousers, to the tailored shirt he was just finishing doing up. ‘You had a panic attack.’
Her words crushed his libido like a snowplough clearing the streets. He was shaking his head without even knowing it. A panic attack? Panic. Weak. Desperate.Small penis.
But just what was he thinking here? This was a good thing. Itwasn’ta heart attack. This wasgreat. He blew out a breath.
‘Your symptoms are a classic case of hyperventilation,’ the doctor continued.
