Page 17 of Maid for Advertising
“Can someone clean up the broken glass!” I shouted as I stared at the blood seeping from the wound. I looked around and then on instinct tore my shirt over my head and pressed it to her palm.
“Er . . . alright, Poldark,” pink-haired girl said from my side. “Ihavegot some gauze here in your fancy schmancy medical kit, but if you’d rather go down the old romantic gesture route then go for it. Not quite as sterile, mind.”
I was saved from replying as the paramedic team swept into the room and looked Urvi over. By the time they’d established that her blood sugar was back up to the low side of normal and that her hand probably needed a couple of stitches, Tim had returned with the pasta.
“Let her eat that and then we’ll take her to hospital,” one of them said to me in French.
“I want her hand seen by a plastic surgeon and I want a diabetes consultant to attend her,” I told them, also in French. “I doubt she has insurance. I’ll pay any bills.” They were about to reply when Urvi cut in.
“I don’t speak French,” she said, her fork lowering and her head tilting to the side, “but I can guess whatl’hôpitalandassurancemean. I’mnotgoing to any hospital. Sorry, but no.”
“Urvi,” I said, trying to soften my tone but my concern wasn’t going to let that happen. “You need to go and get checked out, okay?”
“It was just a hypo. No big de– ”
“You didn’t see your face,” I snapped, the weight back on my chest as it all came flooding back. “You looked like you weredying, Urvi. I can’t . . . I . . . You’ve got to go to the hospital.”
She sat back and fixed me with her solemn, dark brown eyes. “I’m sorry I scared you,” she told me, her tone less defiant and a little softer now, probably in response to the terror she could see reflected in my own eyes. “But I don’t need to go to a hospital. This is part of having diabetes. I can manage it myself. I don’t need to see a French doctor. They won’t be able to do anything anyway.”
“Urvi,” pink-haired girl put in, coming round the sofa to sit next to her as the paramedics moved away to write up their notes. “This is not part of having well-controlled diabetes. Is it?” She sighed. “Hun, I know I’m not a qualified doctor yet . . .”
This was a surprise. I thought pink-haired girl had been joking when she said she was a med student before. But nothing would shock me after the last hour.
“. . . but even I know that diabetes shouldn’t be about life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks, not if it’s well controlled.”
“Life threatening,” I whispered, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“If her blood sugar had stayed that low,” said Ben in my ear in a low voice, “she would have lost consciousness, started fitting. Eventually she would have died or suffered severe brain damage.”
“How – how do you know all this?” I asked. “How did you know she was diabetic in the first place?”
“I sat next to her on the flight remember? The air stewardess confronted her coming out of the toilet and took her kit. I knew then.”
I closed my eyes slowly and rubbed between them for a moment. Ofcoursethat’s what Urvi was doing in the toilet. I’d jumped right to the conclusion everyone else did – that she was a druggie shooting up or snorting something in there. That was despite me never seeing her even slightly drunk or high in all the weeks I’d talked to her at the bar. In fact, when I thought back on it, she’d never even accepted a drink from me or anyone else when she was working. Plenty of the other bar staff and waitresses did. A thought occurred to me.
“You’re teetotal, aren’t you?”
“Er . . .” Urvi frowned in confusion at my question, which was flung at her out of the blue. “Well, yeah, if you must know.”
“Ofcourseyou are,” I muttered through a sigh and then turned back to Ben. “Well how doyouknow so much about diabetes th . . . ?” I broke off and closed my eyes in realisation. “Ah, Sienna.”
Ben’s sister was diagnosed with diabetes when we were teenagers. It had been a big shock to the whole family. I remembered how fastidious Ben’s mum used to be about Sienna’s diet and about the fact she needed to eat regular meals absolutely on time every day or there was hell to pay. Sienna hadn’t adjusted well at first, but she’d had a lot of support and things had slowly improved. Who did Urvi have backing her? Desperation to know what Urvi’s support system was like, and how well controlled her diabetes was back home clawed at me to an almost unnatural degree. Urvi wasn’t mine to take care of. At the moment she didn’t even like me very much, and I didn’t blame her.
The paramedics came back over and asked if Urvi was ready. When I tried to coax her to go with them she point-blank refused. I was used to people agreeing with me, doing what I said when I said it. I was not used to stubborn women refusing to listen to reason, even when it was for their own damn good. I was about to physically lift her off that bloody sofa and force her into the ambulance, but then I saw her lower lip tremble just once before she controlled it.
“Please,” she whispered. “Ihatehospitals. And really there’s no point. Please don’t make me go. I’m tired and I just want a cup of tea and to go to my bunk.”
She did look tired. So, so tired, and scared, and more than a little lost.
“But your hand,” I said in a soft voice, and her pleading eyes went to pink-haired girl.
“Kira, can’t you stitch it? You learnt suturing the other day didn’t you? Surely you could give it a go.”
“Nobody’s going to begiving anything a goon your goddamn hand,” I snapped then regretted my harsh tone when she flinched again on the sofa.
“I … I can glue it … I think,” pink-haired girl, aka Kira said. “There’s some glue and dressing packs in your posh medical kit. But it’s not ideal and will scar more.”
Urvi closed her eyes in a long blink, and the overwhelming relief in them when she opened them again was enough to change my mind. I pushed up from the floor next to her.
