If that were the case, he might have to pull over into another traffic lane. The rear-vision mirror didn’t show any vehicle with flashing lights yet the siren was definitely louder now, probably coming from a nearby street. He thought of Zoe, seriously ill with meningitis. Had she been rushed to hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night? He should have been at her side. At Nicole’s side, as well.
It didn’t occur to him to stop at the next intersection. The lights were green. There were cars in front of him, cars behind him. He was thinking of the daughter he hadn’t known about, the years he’d lost, the years ahead of him and how he wanted to spend them.
He didn’t see the car that hurtled straight past the red lights, speeding straight across the intersection towards him until it was too late to take evasive action. There was a split second when he knew it was going to crash into the Audi. Then the impact came and he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PAIN.
Nicole struggled against sickening waves of it, a sense of urgency driving her to keep on fighting them, make it through. There was something she had to remember but her head was swimming in a whirlpool and it couldn’t reach the important thing that hovered on the edge. She felt wetness on her face. Panic clutched her heart. Was she drowning?
Her eyes flew open and were hit by a swarm of dots.
Not water.
“Ah! You’re awake,” someone said.
The dots gradually grouped themselves into an image—a woman, dipping a cloth into a bowl on a tray.
“I’m just cleaning up your scalp wound which bled a lot,” the woman said, gently applying a damp cloth to Nicole’s head. “Going to need quite a few stitches. We’ll have to shave the hair around it, I’m afraid. But it will just be a strip. You’ve got so much hair, you’ll have no problem covering it over.”
Scalp wound…
She tried to speak, to ask what had happened, but all she could produce was a croak. Her throat was horribly dry.
“Want a piece of ice to suck?” the woman asked. Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a paper cup from the tray and popped a small piece of ice into Nicole’s mouth. “Better not drink a lot of water right now. You’ll be going up for X-rays soon.”
She must be in a hospital. And apparently there was uncertainty about the extent of her injuries if she had to have X-rays. The pain in her head made her wonder if she had a skull fracture.
Having worked some moisture off the piece of ice, Nicole managed to ask, “How…why…?”
“You’ve been in a car accident, dear,” she was calmly informed.
A car accident meant she’d been in a car. Travelling where? For what reason?
She tried to concentrate her mind, clear the thick fog. Gradually memories seeped through—the argument in the hotel, Quin insisting on driving her home, the anguish of wanting to believe they could have a good future together, the conflict of how he had made her feel in the past still churning through her. She remembered sitting in the car, silently fighting the tears welling from the torment in her heart, but she could find no memory at all of the car crashing—where it happened, why it happened, what had happened to Quin.
Alarm crashed around her head, making it feel like a bomb about to explode. Quin would be here with her if he could be. He’d feel responsible. No way would he leave her side until he was assured she was all right.
Her hand automatically lifted and clutched the arm of the nurse who was lifting the wet cloth to her head again. She needed her attention. Her full attention. The action startled the woman into looking directly at her.
“Quin…was he hurt, too?”
“Who, dear?”
“Quin Sola. He was with me. The driver of the car.”
The nurse shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s not in this ward.”
“What ward? Where am I?”
“The emergency ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital. It’s in Darlinghurst near the inner city.”
“What time is it?”
The nurse checked her watch. “Almost two-thirty in the morning.”
They’d left the hotel at about midnight. Not so very long ago. Nicole’s chest felt so tight, she had difficulty finding enough breath to speak. “Quin would have stayed with me if he wasn’t hurt. They would have brought him here, too, wouldn’t they?” she demanded, her mind instinctively shying away from the dreadful possibility he might be dead.
“I’m sorry. I know nothing about him.”
“Can’t you find out for me?”
“A doctor will see you shortly,” the nurse answered evasively. “You can ask him about your friend.” And having resolved the matter to her satisfaction, she calmly removed Nicole’s clasp on her arm, laid her hand back on the bed, patted it reassuringly, and went back to dabbing away at the scalp wound.
Full-blown panic swirled through Nicole, making her headache much worse. Her whole body ached. Finally she burst out, “He’s not my friend. He’s the father of my daughter. And…and we’re getting married.”
That made her almost next of kin. She had a right to know what had happened to him. What was happening. He couldn’t have been killed. Not Quin. He was the ultimate fighter. A winner, not a loser.
She clutched the nurse’s arm again, her fingers digging in with the ferocity of feeling racing through her. “Stop that right now!”
Frowning, the nurse started to chide, “You mustn’t…”
“I need to know about Quin. Go and call the admissions desk. Ask about him.”
“I’m not supposed to…”
“I’ll fight you until you do,” Nicole threatened, totally uncaring of hospital protocol. “His name is Joaquin Sola. Have you got that?”
“Yes.”
Nicole released her arm. The nurse set down the cloth on the mobile tray and hurried away. The effort of fighting for action had exhausted Nicole. Her head spun sickeningly. She closed her eyes and grimly held back a wave of nausea. How long she lay there, waiting for news, determined to remain conscious, she didn’t know.
She kept willing Quin to be alive. For all she had railed against his intrusion on the life she’d made without him, and the terrible turmoil he’d given her over how good a father he’d be to Zoe, she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again, never being with him again. In her heart, she desperately wanted the chance for a different relationship to grow between them. He’d promised it would. A new beginning…