By the time he reached my bay, I was already on my feet.
‘Ellie Harker?’
‘Yes.’ There were threads of reticence in my voice, as though everything today might be open for debate. I couldn’t remember a single time in my life when I’d felt less certain about absolutely everything.
He smiled, instantly diluting the adrenaline flooding my veins.
‘This is for you.’ He held out a folded square of paper that looked as though it had been hastily torn from a lined pad. I looked up, my eyes full of questions and my fingers trembling as I reached for the note.
Two words, written in bold strokes on one side of the missive, answered one question, but raised a whole lot more.
Shoe Girl
I’d told Rhys my name, but the jokey title hit the exact tone that I imagined he’d intended. My fingers were still a little unsteady, but now for a totally different reason.
I unfolded the note.
Hello Ellie. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it seems we’re kind of minor celebrities after what happened today, and there’s a bunch of people waiting outside to interview us. If that’s your thing, then great. But it’s definitely not mine, and my good mate Olly – who’s standing in frontof you – has offered to sneak me out of a service entrance at the back of the hospital, and I wondered if you wanted to come with us? If you do and fancy sharing a taxi, just let him know. If not, make sure they spell your name right in the papers! R.
I read it twice before looking up at the man Rhys had sent to find me. It wasn’t a big deal, just a small act of kindness, but try telling that to my eyes, which were suddenly full of tears. Was I stuck in Rhys’s head in the same inexplicable way he was lodged in mine? Was this a result of the lightning, because I really didn’t think I’d be acting so weirdly if I’d met him under normal circumstances. But nothing about today had been normal. And opting to escape from the hospital with him certainly wasn’t, but just seconds later that’s exactly what I agreed to do.
It was only a ten-minute walk to where Rhys was waiting, but it was long enough for me to know that I really liked his friend. Olly filled every second with irreverent, humorous chatter, which was entertaining but also a little frustrating as it gave me no chance to shoehorn in a quick question or two about Rhys.
When the lift doors slid open, Olly stuck his head out first, comedically checking the corridor as though we were about to be ambushed.
‘It’s like breaking Bonnie and Clyde out of prison,’ he said with a grin that I had a feeling scarcely ever left his lips.
‘Apart from the bank robbing and shooting people bit,’ I said, still trying to tell myself that my pulse was racing because of what we were doing and not who I was about to see.
We’d gone a different, circuitous route to the place where I’d last seen Rhys, so it threw me for a moment when we rounded a corner and found him leaning up against the wall, waiting for us.
It was hot in the hospital and Rhys looked distinctly uncomfortable, with the sleeves of his jacket rolled down and the collar once again raised. But despite all his efforts, the curious markings were still visible at his wrist and throat. Rightly or wrongly, I found the lightning marks mesmerising and was strangely disappointed they were hidden. I tuned out the voice in my head that annoyingly wanted to ask just how much of his skin they covered, because there was no way to slip that one innocently into a conversation.
‘This is really kind of you,’ I said instead, directing a grateful smile at both men.
‘Aww, no worries,’ said Olly, and it’s a measure of how distracted I must have been that it was the first time I noticed a distinct Aussie twang. ‘Smuggling patients out of the hospital is my favourite part of the job.’
I enjoyed the amused expression on Rhys’s face.
‘And I kind of like being known as the guy who helped the Park People avoid the press.’
‘Park People? Is that what they’re calling us?’ I asked, turning to Rhys and just about managing not to be dazzled by the intense emerald of his gaze. How did anyone ever concentrate when they were talking to him? Or was it just me?
‘Apparently. Until someone digs deeper and uncovers our names.’
We followed Olly through doors he had to swipe with a pass to open and along twisting labyrinth-like corridors. I made the mistake of glancing down one of them and saw a pair of swing double doors with the word Morgue on them. How easily our journey today could have ended up there. A shiver travelled the entire length of my body, just like the lightning had done. Olly was too busy leading the way to notice, but Rhys saw, and his eyes darkened to the colour of a midnight forest in concern.
‘Are you okay?’ Three words and that was all it took for me to feel seen – really seen – in a way I didn’t think I’d ever been before. From the boys I’d dated who’d never understood me, to the men who’d slid in and out of my life and my bed, had anyone so effortlessly managed to scythe through my protective carapace before?
Old me, the person I’d been before thousands of volts of electricity had flowed through me, said I was talking nonsense. Except ‘nonsense’ felt like my life before this morning.
‘The exit is just up ahead.’ Olly’s voice cut into my thoughts as we entered a corridor with sack barrows lined up against both walls.
‘Wait.’ Both men stopped so abruptly they almost collided into each other like dominoes.
I closed the gap between Rhys and me, not knowing why, and my panic immediately subsided. But my heart was still skittering in my chest as all at once the enormity of the day caught up with me.
‘We were so lucky today.’