‘In fact, I think your heart might have stopped.’ I gasped at my indiscreet, runaway tongue as I realised too late it wasn’t my place to reveal such devastating news. What the hell was wrong with me? Had the lightning burnt all good sense away?
I must have looked every bit as mortified as I felt, for Rhys lifted one hand and laid it lightly on my forearm, which – even though it had no business being there – had somehow found a place to rest on his mattress. He patted my arm reassuringly, and it was strangely comforting to know that we were both guilty of crossing personal boundaries. We were behaving like old friends, rather than two people whose sum total acquaintance amounted to less than ten minutes in each other’s company.
‘It’s okay. I already knew.’
I gazed down at his hand, which was still resting on me. The strange tattoo markings even extended to his fingers, and I had to squash a totally inappropriate urge to trace the curious vine-like trail across his knuckles.
Someone drew in a sharp breath, and I truly don’t know if it was him or me.
‘But you’re okay now, though?’ My question sounded more anxious than I’d expected.
‘I’m fine.’ Rhys gave a small rueful laugh that took me by surprise. ‘It’s been a good day... apart from the unexpected cardiac arrest and the full-body tattoo markings that certainly weren’t there when I woke up this morning.’
‘The lightning did that?’
Rhys nodded.
‘My mates all got tattoos when we were eighteen, but I was too chicken to go through with it. I’ve got this thing about needles. Getting struck by lightning I can cope with, but I almost passed out when they put this drip in. And having these marks now... this is a lot.’
My gaze followed the pattern that began at the base of his throat, covered the skin of both shoulders, his entire chest, and travelled the length of one arm, right down to his fingertips. The other arm was tanned and, bizarrely, totally unmarked.
It was a visual and sobering wake-up call of what we’d experienced.
‘We could have died,’ I said, my voice scarcely more than a whisper.
‘But we didn’t,’ Rhys said, and I suspected that even before the lightning struck, he was a glass-half-full kind of person. ‘Someone up there must have been looking out for us.’ He flicked a quick glance towards the ceiling, but I doubted he was referring to the medics on the next floor up.
His words made me shiver. I’d always been fiercely pragmatic and level-headed, never believing in anything remotely woo-woo or spiritual. In fact, with years of friendship between us, it had been the only red-flag topic between Mel and me. Our views on the subject were polar opposites. She’d filled our shared university house with healing crystals and incense to cleanse our auras, while I’d maintained the only thing that legitimately needed cleansing was the drains. In the end we’d agreed to differ, but even now, any conversation that steered towards things other-worldly made me distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Are you okay?’ Rhys asked, leaning in close enough for me to smell a warm, woodsy aftershave above the pervading hospital antiseptic. ‘You kind of drifted away there for a moment.’
‘I’m good,’ I said, not entirely sure if that was true.
There was a sound of a chair scraping across the floor from beyond the cubicle, and I shot an anxious look over my shoulder. ‘I think I’m about to be taken back.’ The regret in my voice was embarrassing.
‘We should have said we were a couple. Maybe then they’d have let you stay.’ It was a totally inappropriate suggestion that felt completely right.
‘What? Lie, you mean?’
He nodded.
‘I’m an estate agent. I never lie,’ I said with a grin, pleased to see a matching one break out across his face.
‘Are you a good one?’
‘Excellent,’ I said, but the usual pride in my voice sounded strangely forced.
‘I’m sorry,’ said a disembodied head as it popped through the gap in the curtains, ‘but I really do need to take you back now.’
‘Okay.’ I tried to ignore the immediate feeling of disappointment sweeping through me.
‘I’m glad you’re going to be alright,’ I said to Rhys, feeling oddly shy in front of the nurse, which was daft because she’d probably heard every word of our conversation from her sentry position outside the cubicle. She was looking decidedly twitchy now, and I wondered how many hospital rules she’d broken in bringing me to my fellow victim’s bedside. But her instincts had been good. I didn’t understand why, but seeing Rhys and knowing we’d both survived this incredible one-in-a-million experience really had helped.
‘Ditto. It was nice meeting you, Shoe Girl, even if it was in the weirdest possible circumstances.’
I was being wheeled slowly backwards, away from his bed, away from him, and that was just as it should be. So why did it seem so wrong? I’d felt so much better when this total stranger hadbeen next to me, and there really was no explanation for that. Nor was there for the way I impulsively asked the nurse to stop.
She halted the wheelchair in a squeak of rubber wheels on lino. Rhys was still staring at me from his hospital bed.