St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,56

clumsily at the side of her head. He imagined he could feel every strand of hair beneath his palm, every contour of her skull.

Her face loomed closer, lowering itself towards his.

‘Fin,’ she whispered again. ‘You haven’t left me.’

He ran his tongue over his lips, dry as dust, and tried to speak. The words wouldn’t show themselves. He brought his head up but found he couldn’t; pain forced it back. Realising what he was trying to do, Melissa lowered her head so that her ear was brushing his lips.

Fin whispered, ‘I won’t leave you. Ever.’

Before she could lift her head he pressed it down, needing to say more, however laborious it was to do so.

‘All that... before. The uncertainty. The... tension. That’s over. No more.’

And, when he’d been silent for a few seconds and she again tried to pull away and look at him, he held her head and whispered: ‘Melissa. I... love you.’

Fin became aware of people beginning to crowd around the bed, and heard their gentle murmurs to Melissa that she needed to give them some space; but she showed no inclination of separating from him, and he pressed her ever close against him. The people around them, the environment of the ward, all faded away, and it was just the two of them, clasped together properly for the first time.

Chapter Twelve

‘Melissa! Doctor Havers!’

Melissa turned instinctively and blinked as the camera, an elaborate high-end model with a lens that looked about a foot long, whirred and clicked in her face. She tried a smile – it wouldn’t do to look surly – but her face ached by now.

The photographer, an amiable-looking young man dressed in jeans and a tatty sweater, grinned and tipped her a salute, then hurried off down the hospital corridor before the security guards could be alerted.

Melissa sighed, continued on her way to the wards. How many more of these ambushes were there going to be? Would she ever be able to come to work in the morning and leave at night without having to run the gauntlet of reporters, paparazzi and amateur celebrity spotters? And when could she start heading directly home again instead of taking a convoluted route in order to make sure she wasn’t being followed? She felt like a secret agent in some old film, watching out for tags in a menacing and unfamiliar city.

She’d been confined to the hospital for the first two days after the episode on the river, feeling no inclination to head home, working her way through the supplies of surplus clothes she kept in a locker for emergencies. Her meals were taken in the canteen or one of the offices, and she spent the rest of her waking day at Fin’s bedside, even while he slept. When tiredness threatened to smother her where she sat, Melissa caught a few hours’ sleep in one or other of the on-call rooms.

After the ICU staff had prised her away from Fin that first time, after jokingly threatening to call security if she didn’t allow them access, Melissa had hovered in the background until one of the nurses had pointedly drawn the curtain all the way around his bed. Melissa got the message and wandered unsteadily through the corridors towards the entrance of St Matthew’s, barely registering people’s greetings as she passed them. The bright cold air of the early morning hit her as she stepped on to the pavement, and for a moment her disorientation was total.

She sat on the great stone steps that led up to the front façade of the hospital, buried her face in her hands, and wept more uninhibitedly than ever before in her life.

Never before had she been assailed by such a powerful blend of intense and competing emotion. There was awe and incredulity, great relief at the release of the pent-up terror she’d felt, indescribable joy and profound sorrow at the burden Fin had been carrying for these past years.

Even if Fin didn’t want her, even if he clung to his conviction that he couldn’t allow anyone new into his life, anyone who might take his mind off his work, Melissa was grateful beyond belief that he was alive. That was what mattered most. But, as well as demonstrating that he’d returned to full consciousness, he’d told her, not once but over and over again, so that there could be no mistake, that he loved her. The words she’d scarcely dared hope to hear from his lips, even back in the days when they’d