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‘We can sit on the ground wedged in against the seat. That puts us lower than the height of the wall.’ She moved his hand and he felt wooden slats before he lowered himself down and sat cross-legged on the wet and icy concrete.
Another crack of thunder seemed almost overhead and Hayley’s arms wrapped around his head so tightly he risked neck damage. He reached out and wet strands of her hair plastered themselves against his palm. ‘I gather you don’t like thunder.’
She shivered against him. ‘I think I must have been a dog in a previous life.’
‘Get the picnic rug out and we’ll use it as extra protection.’
‘Okay.’ She sounded uncertain but she pulled away from him.
He heard her cold fingers fumbling to untie the toggles, followed by the emphatic use of a swear word he’d never heard her say. In fact, he’d never heard her swear, not even in the OR when she’d been operating on Gretel. She really was scared. The next minute she scrambled into his lap and her whole body trembled against his as she wrapped the rug around their shoulders. ‘I hate this.’
‘I’m getting that impression, but usually storms like this are over quickly.’ He stroked her wet back as an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness filled him and then he pulled the rug over their heads to protect their faces.
Her fingernails instantly dug into his scalp as sharp and as tenacious as a cat’s claws. ‘Hell, Hayley, what are you doing?’
But she didn’t speak. Instead, her chest heaved hard and fast against his and the next moment she’d torn back the rug and was panting hard.
He reached out his hand, trying to feel the rug. ‘We need the protection.’
‘You have it.’ She threw the rug over his head and he immediately blew it away from his mouth. The instinctive action made him think. ‘Are you claustrophobic as well as scared of the dark?’
There was a moment’s silence before she said, ‘It’s easing. The hail’s turned into rain.’ She grabbed his hand. ‘Let’s go to my place. Please.’
The pleading in her voice both surprised him and propelled him to his feet. ‘Lead the way.’
As they reached the bottom of the bandstand’s steps, Hayley said, ‘I can’t believe some hailstones are the size of cricket balls.’
‘I’ll trudge, then.’
After navigating flooded gutters and hail-covered footpaths for five minutes, Hayley said, ‘We turn left and then we’re home. It’s a tiny cottage and nothing like your penthouse.’
The rain was now trickling down Tom’s collar and the cold seeped into his bones. So much for mild Sydney winters. Still, perhaps the storm wasn’t all bad. He now had the perfect excuse to entice Hayley into bed—he needed to keep warm while his clothes dried in front of her heater. Then he’d go home and leave her to her study.
With a loud gasp Hayley suddenly stopped and he crashed into her as water flowed over his feet. ‘Is your house flooded?’
‘I don’t think so. The water hasn’t quite reached the front door.’
‘You might want to make a bit of a levee between the front door and the road, then.’ He kept his hand on her shoulder, following her, all the while trying to tamp down his rising frustration that he had no idea what she was seeing and that the only help he could give was advice. He heard her slide a key into a lock and then the grating squeak of a door swinging open.
‘Oh, God.’ She pulled away from him and the sound of her running feet against bare boards echoed around him, leaving him with the impression he was standing in a long corridor. Her wail of despair carried back to him.
‘Hayley?’ Using his cane, he tapped his way along the corridor. ‘What’s happened?’
‘My roof’s collapsed, my windows are almost all broken and I have a house full of hail.’ She sounded utterly defeated.
Tom instantly recalled the billion-dollar damage that the huge storm of 1999 had inflicted on the city. He pulled out his phone. ‘Show me where I can sit down and I’ll call the State Emergency Services to come and tarpaulin your roof, and then I’ll wait in the phone queue of your insurance company. They’re going to be inundated so it might take a while and you can sweep up the hail.’
‘I don’t even know where to start.’ Her voice rose with every word. ‘There’s more plaster on the floor than on the ceiling and I can see sky!’
Seeing sky wasn’t good. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘You can’t stay here, then, even with a tarpaulin.’
He heard a chair being pulled out and a thud. ‘What a mess. I really don’t need this with my exams looming. My parents live too far out for me to get to the hospital when I’m on call so I guess I’m going to have to find a motel.’
Tom didn’t like her chances. ‘You’ll be lucky to find a place if every house is as badly affected as yours.’
‘Are you trying to cheer me up?’
He could imagine the mess she was sitting amidst and his heart went out to her. Before he’d thought it through he heard himself saying, ‘Go pack up your textbooks and computer, throw some clothes in a bag and come back to my place.’
What the hell have you just done? You live alone. You’ve always lived alone. More than ever you need to live alone.
I can’t just leave her here and it will only be a few days. I can handle a few days.
Her hand touched his cheek and then her lips pressed hard against his mouth. ‘Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here bossing me around because I’m not sure I would have known where to start.’
‘Bossing people around is what I do best.’ He dug deep and managed to muster up a smile to cover how useless he felt and how he hated it that he couldn’t do more. Once he would have been on the roof, lashing down the tarpaulins, or wielding a broom and sweeping out the mud and muck left by flood waters or removing sodden plaster. Now all he could offer in the way of help was phone calls and letting her stay for a bit. It was a poor man’s offer and it didn’t feel like he was contributing at all.
Finn Kennedy gripped the silver arm of the pool ladder with his left hand as every muscle in his body frantically tried to absorb the lactic acid his obsessively long swim had just generated. He’d started swimming soon after the hail storm, ploughing up and down the Olympic pool, willing his neck pain away. Or at least giving the muscles in his neck some rest by supporting them in warm water. He’d rather swim for an hour than wear the damn cervical collar Rupert Davidson forced on him. It was bad enough that the staff at The Harbour were whispering about him and giving him furtive glances. He sure as hell wasn’t giving them an obvious target like a soft collar so they felt they could ask him questions.
Pressing his foot into the foothold, he swung up and stepped onto the pool deck, the air feeling chilly after the heat of the water. He scooped up his towel and hurried to the locker room. He reached the door just ahead of Sam Bailey, The Harbour’s cardiac surgeon, who raised his hand with a smile. Avoiding eye contact, Finn gave a brisk nod of acknowledgment before heading straight to the showers. He cranked up the hot tap until the temperature was just shy of burning and let the heat sink into his skin and the constantly stressed muscles below. After doing his neck exercises under the heat of the shower, the skill lay in getting dry and dressed fast so his clothes could trap the heat for as long as possible. It was almost as good as the anti-inflammatories and he used it once a day to stretch out one time period between the pills.
With his towel looped low on his hips, he quickly grabbed hold of the combination lock, spun the black dial three times and then pulled down hard to open the lock so he could retrieve his clothes. The silver U stayed locked. ‘Blast.’ His fingers felt thick and uncoordinated. He tried again, but still the lock stayed firm. He slammed his hand hard against the