Page 11 of Catch a Kiwi
What? I was so confused. Also—Delilah. I said to Roman—seriously? Roman?—“Please go check on Delilah. I need to know how she’s doing, and she might be worried about me, too. When can we get out of here?” I asked the nurse.
“As soon as doctor says you can,” she answered. Not exactly helpful.
“Also, I think I have to … do things,” I said. “Tell the police, I guess. Uh … I think I’d better call the British consulate. Is there a consulate? There must be. My passport. My bank cards. I don’t have … I don’t have anything. You’ll need things from us, too. The hospital will, I mean. Passports. Money. I don’t have—I don’t even have my phone.” I was getting overwhelmed again. Breathless. Faint, sweating, and prickly all over, like I was going to throw up.
Oh, no. That would be the worst thing, if I threw up in front of Roman d’Angelo. The guy clearly hated weakness. I wouldn’t have cared what he hated, but … those trees.
“I’ll ring the cops after I check on Delilah,” Roman said. “Your passport and wallet and all will be on the hillside somewhere, or still in the van. I’ll look for them in the morning. And it was an accident. You’ll have ACC cover.”
I had no idea what that meant. “But I can’t … I don’t have …” I trailed off, the full realization of my situation hitting me. I wanted the numb place back again, please. The prickly feeling came back instead, and I told the nurse, “I think I might be sick.”
She grabbed a bag and handed it to me. Roman stood up and said, “Stop worrying. No disasters here, beyond the campervan. I’ll go find Delilah,” and left the room. Thank goodness, because I was, yes, being sick. I didn’t have much in my stomach, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but still. It was bad enough.
Men would always do things for you if you were pretty enough. Charming enough. Appreciative enough. The problem was—I wasn’t pretty or charming right now, and I didn’t want a man to do things for me. I wished there were another option. And what did he mean, “beyond the campervan?” Wasn’t that enough of a disaster?
“Is there somebody you can ring up?” the nurse asked, possibly because she could tell.
“No.” The word hung there, but what else was there to say? People in New Zealand had been more than kind to Delilah and me since we’d been working here, but they’d been friendly acquaintances. Coworkers. Bosses. Nobody Icould call and ask for a free room or, God forbid, a loan. I could call some of my former friends, I guessed, in the UK, but were they even friends anymore? My phone hadn’t exactly been ringing off the hook before I’d left, and everything in me shrank from confessing to this kind of need. To how far I’d fallen.
“When you speak to the police,” the nurse said, “you can ask them for help. Could take a while with everything happening out there tonight, but they’ll get to you.” Well,thatwas comforting. “Don’t accept help from mysterious strangers,” she went on. “Not when they haven’t proven themselves. A man can say anything to a desperate woman, and he generally will.”
“Thanks,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And I’d thoughtIwas a cynic. “He did help me rescue my cousin, though, and he drove us here.”
“Maybe, then,” she said. “But ask for that ID. Would you like another warm blanket?”
“I would kill,” I said, “for another warm blanket.”
That got a smile from her. “I’ll be back,” she said, disposing of my disgusting bag on her way out the door and leaving me alone, trapped by my IV, every inch of me except the ones she’d cleaned off sticky, damp, and filthy. I was pretty sure she was wrong, and Roman was going to wash his hands of Delilah and me as fast as he possibly could. I wasn’t exactly tempting.
The consulate, that was the ticket. They did something for stranded travelers, right? Well, I was as stranded as it was possible to get. The British consulate for me, and the American one for Delilah. It was night now, though. Worse, Friday night, with the weekend ahead. Surely they helped you in emergencies, though. Surely. If I had a phone.
Borrow a phone, like the nurse said,I thought, when I was under my warm blanket and thinking a little better. You canwait in the … in the hospital lobby until you get help.Or ask the cops to put Delilah and me in jail, possibly. Vagrancy, that would be it. We’d get a bed and meals, anyway. I wanted to laugh, suppressed it, then thought,Why not?and laughed out loud at the thought of us happily snuggled into bunk beds in our cell after a dinner of fast-food hamburgers. They had showers in jail, right? And orange jumpsuits! We’d be clean! For free! I laughed some more.
All right. Now I just sounded crazy. Which was, of course, when Roman came back through the door. He looked pretty startled. No wonder.
“Never mind,” I said, still wanting to giggle. Either I was hysterical, or I already had blood poisoning. “Just contemplating my dire situation.”
“And it makes you laugh.” He sat down in his chair again. “Interesting sense of humor.”
“Ha,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “How’s Delilah? What did she say? How did she seem? Is she?—”
He didn’t answer right away. He reached into the back pocket of his pants—they’d been dress pants once, the close-fitting Kiwi kind, tailored to his muscular shape and made of charcoal-gray fabric, at least I thought so. Right now, they were mostly made of dried mud. He pulled out a slim black leather wallet, extracted something from it, and handed it to me. “Driving license.”
“Oh … kay.” I looked at it. It said Roman d’Angelo, all right, with an address in Dunedin. I handed it back. “Does this mean something to me? And—Delilah?”
“The nurse seemed to think it should. It’s possible she rates me higher than I do myself, though some people would tell you that’s not possible. Delilah’s doing well. Worried about you, but I said you were OK. Her head hurts, and she’s got some bruises on her shoulder and upper arm from wherethe van hit the tree that won’t feel too flash. Kids heal fast, though. A day or two in bed, a week or two taking it easy, and she’ll be apples.”
Wait. What? “She’s not exactly a kid,” I said. “And we both need to work. How can we?—”
“You’re putting her to work? After that? She can’t be more than fifteen.” He was frowning now. See? All he’d done was give us a ride—well, and rescue Delilah—and he already thought he had a say in our lives!
“Eighteen,” I said. “You’re a terrible judge of age. How old am I, in your dream world? Isthatwhy you picked me up out there, because you think I’m a teenager?” Again, antagonizing the only person who’d shown any desire to help me. I couldn’t help it, though. He rubbed me the wrong way. So bossy. So sure he knew the answer. I might only know that Ididn’tknow the answer, but at least I knew that!
“No,” he said with exaggerated patience that set my teeth on edge again. Maybe irritability went along with whatever I’d had. Hypothermia or whatever. “Twenty-one, I’d say. Twenty-two. You’re cousins, eh. Explains why you don’t look alike. At least I think you don’t. Can’t really tell how you look at the moment, other than drowned.”
“I’m thirty. Seriously? Twenty-one? No wonder you think I’m incompetent.” I couldn’tstop.“And I need to borrow your phone.” He raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh. Whoops. May I please borrow your phone? I need to call the consulate, like I said. I hope somebody answers.” Another flash of panic. If theydidn’tanswer, it was going to be the jail idea. Did you have to actually commit a crime? I wasn’t going to rob anybody, but maybe shoplifting would be enough. Maybe if I stole a whole lot of stuff. Hospitals had gift shops, right? If I went in and just started grabbing everything off the shelves …
Roman sighed again, and I said, “If I’m annoying you, you can leave.”
