‘Driving to the hospital,’ he said, his eyes already going to the door.
‘Your car isn’t here,’ I reminded him gently. ‘You left it at yours because it couldn’t be parked on my road while we were away.’
Frustration flashed across his face, quickly followed by the solution he’d found.
‘Can I take yours?’
‘No. You’re not driving in the state you’re in, and besides you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine.’
I hated the desperation that was clearly consuming him. I took a deep steadying breath and reached for my own keys.
‘I’ll drive you there.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He ran so fast down my stairs I couldn’t keep up with him. It wasn’t that he was ignoring me, it was just the overwhelming need to be with his child. I understood that more than I thought I would. We jumped into the car like it was a getaway vehicle, and I rapidly keyed the hospital’s name into Google Maps. As I drove, Rhys recounted everything Annalise had managed to convey between sobs.
‘Tasha couldn’t get any air. Annalise said her lips and fingernails were turning blue.’ He shook his head as though trying to dispel a mental image that I had a feeling was going to haunt him for a long time. ‘That’s never happened before. It’s never been that bad and none of her medication was getting close to easing it. I think Annalise thought she was going to lose her before the ambulance got there.’
I’d already chewed my lower lip hard enough to make it bleed, but that last sentence chilled me to the bone.
‘Did she say what triggered it?’
‘I’m not sure. The weather has changed, and Tasha is always more prone to flare-ups when it’s colder. And she’s had a streaming cold this week.’
I felt as though my heart had literally come loose in my chest to plummet within my diaphragm. ‘The cold she caught from me?’ I asked, my voice small and riddled with guilt.
Something in my tone made him take his eyes from the road for the first time and look my way.
‘She could have got it from anywhere: school, Brownies, or just in the air. It’s that time of year.’
I shook my head while my right foot unconsciously pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. Whatever Rhys might say, it was impossible not to trace this back to me. Two weeks earlier, I’d been suffering from a lingering streaming cold when Rhys had swung by the agency with Tasha to drop off a client sketch.
His daughter had run across the room to throw her arms around my waist in greeting, something that still delighted me each time she did it. I’d been at the sneezy and coughing stage, still contagious, and even though I’d tried to distance myself, I clearly hadn’t been successful.
‘She caught it from me,’ I repeated, dully. ‘I’m the one who made her ill. This is my fault.’
‘It’s no one’s fault,’ Rhys said.
But it was.
We drove on in a silence that felt palpable. Every red light, every traffic queue, made his hands tighten into fists on his thighs. When the first hospital signpost appeared, he sat up straighter. We swung onto the hospital property exactly when Google Maps had said we would, but the journey felt like it had taken forever.
‘Can you drop me at A and E?’ he asked, already unbuckling his seat belt as though even the second it would take to do so once we’d stopped was time he couldn’t afford to waste.
‘Of course. I’ll find the car park and be with you as soon as I can.’
He took his eyes from the approaching hospital entrance to look at me.
‘You don’t have to come in, Ellie.’
I couldn’t tell from those seven words whether he meant I didn’t have to, or he didn’t want me to. I chose to believe the former.
‘I do,’ I said in a voice that made it clear this wasn’t up for debate.
Rhys replied with a brief nod, and then his hand was on the handle and the passenger door was swinging open even before I came to a stop.
‘I hope she’s okay,’ I called out, but he was already out of the car and running towards the person his world revolved around. My sigh sounded shaky as I pulled away from the kerb to look for the multi-storey.