Page 4 of Prognosis Irreconcilable Differences

And wishing things were different didn’t make it so.

––––––––

It was five a.m. whenJacqui next awoke, her neck stiff from falling asleep in a semi-upright position. The rain still pelted against the roof like a platoon of tap-dancing soldiers as a grey watery dawn broke outside the window.

And Nathan Trent still slept on her couch.

Except the duvet no longer covered him. At some stage he had moved onto his back, pushed the blanket down to his hips, exposing his smooth, bare chest and only just covering what lay a little further south. The long leg closest to the edge of the couch jutted out too, escaping its covering, its foot flat on the floor. The opposite arm was thrown up over his head, his face turned away from her, pressing into the bulk of his bicep.

Dear God, he was gorgeous.

She’d tried not to look before, as she’d been undressing him, but now she couldn’t stop. Maturity had given his body an edge, a hardness that youth hadn’t. He’d always had a good body, but now he looked...fit. More honed. As if he worked at it now instead of relying on a God-given gift.

He murmured and turned his head, and she held her breath as his eyes fluttered open. The clocks stopped. The rain faded. Her breath stuttered to a halt. It took a second or two for those incredible jade eyes to focus on her.

‘Thirsty,’ he croaked.

It took another beat or two for her functions to return. She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Right. Okay. Be right back.’

Nathan watched her leave, trying to figure out where he was and why Jacqui was here. But his head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, and it hurt too much to think anyway. He sat up and the room shifted. He vaguely felt Shep lick his calf as he buried his forehead in his hands and waited for everything to stop moving.

Jacqueline entered the room and paused momentarily. He looked even more imposing sitting upright, his back and chest and both legs exposed, the duvet bunched around his hips.

‘Take these,’ she said, injecting a businesslike note into her voice, forcing herself closer. She nudged his hand with the glass, two pills on the flat of her palm.

‘What are they?’ he asked, looking at them.

‘Cold and flu tablets.’

Nathan reached for them as they swam out of focus. He located them through sheer force of will. He felt as if someone had been lighting spot fires in his joints, and would have taken any pill she’d given him to extinguish the flames. He pushed them past his lips, into a mouth that tasted sour and furry, and gulped the whole glass down.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured, collapsing back against his makeshift bed as a coughing spasm took hold. The aches intensified, pulsing in protest as each cough tore through his spine, his chest, his head.

Jacqueline frowned. The cough sounded nasty. Maybe it was more than the flu? Maybe he’d managed to give himself bilateral pneumonia in the pouring rain last night? She left him for a moment and retrieved her medical bag from the clinic downstairs.

His eyes were shut when she returned. She opened her bag, pulled out her stethoscope, and perched herself on the edge of his couch. She rubbed the stethoscope in her hands to warm it, and then placed it on his still exposed chest.

Nathan opened his eyes. Jacqui. Jacqui was still here. ‘What are you doing?’ he murmured.

‘That cough sounds nasty. Just checking your lung fields,’ she said briskly. ‘Sit up.’ She grabbed his arm and pulled.

Nathan couldn’t muster the energy to resist. ‘It’s just the flu,’ he protested. He was a doctor, damn it. He knew flu when it had the audacity to invade his usually impenetrable immune system.

Her long fingers felt heavenly against his skin, the wide bands of her rings like icicles. He studied the chunky jewellery adorning her fingers. The intertwined strands of metal set with earthy stones took him way back, to days when they’d eaten spaghetti straight from the tin before crashing together in a tangle of limbs after night duty.

When they’d stayed up late eating honey toast and watching old black and white horror films in bed.

‘I could have given you diamonds,’ he muttered.

But even his feverish brain recalled she hadn’t given a damn about diamonds. It had been her funky eclectic style, sourced from garage sales and op shops, that had attracted him all those years ago. And cheap and cheerful still looked better on her than any diamond on any woman he’d ever seen.

Jacqui heard his voice rumble through her earpieces as she moved the stethoscope around his back, but his eyes were shut and she dismissed the odd statement as his temperature talking. His skin was warm under her touch, and the urge to rub her cheek against his oh-so-close shoulder was surprisingly powerful.

‘It sounds clear,’ she murmured, pushing him gently back and out of reach.

Nathan shut his eyes, the effort to sit up rendering him completely exhausted. He was drifting off when something was pushed into his ear canal. ‘Hey,’ he protested, opening his eyes.

‘Shh. It’s just a thermometer,’ Jacqueline said, pulling the tympanic device out of his ear and looking at the digital display. ‘Thirty-eight point nine degrees.’

---