Maid for Advertising - Susie Tate Page 0,24
on her beautiful face, the shaking, the feeling of helplessness as I watched her slipping away into unconsciousness …
“Don’t . . . don’t shout at me,” she said, her voice breaking a little and her eyes filling. I ran both hands through my hair in frustration. The last thing I wanted was to upset her more. I was making a right pig’s ear out of this. I took a step towards her but she flinched back into the sofa. I guess I deserved that too.
So instead I focused on Tim Blight. At least I could take my anger at myself out on that weasel.
“She needs a meal right fucking now. Get her . . .” I trailed off and nearly growled in frustration at not knowing what was best for her to eat. I felt helpless, again.
“There’s some pasta I made at breakfast. It’s in the fridge. I didn’t have a chance to . . .” She trailed off and I felt a heavy weight settle on my chest. She didn’t have a chance to eat the goddamn meal she’d had to make herself before starting work that morning because she knew she wouldn’t have the time to make it during the day.
“Microwave it, now,” I snapped and Tim scuttled out of the room.
“Oh no,” Urvi groaned. I turned back to see she’d lifted her hand off the sofa and left behind a red stain, which looked shocking against the pale material. “Shit, I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined the –”
“Please . . . please don’t say you’re sorry again,” I pleaded in a pained voice as I sank down on my knees in front of her and lifted her hand up to look at the palm. There was a gash about an inch long across it dripping blood down her arm.
“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. “I have got 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 what l’hôpital and assurance mean. I’m not going 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 were dying, 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.
“.