From Christmas To Forever?. Marion Lennox
venom would hardly be taking effect yet, he thought. She’d still be in the window period where victims ran for help, tried to pretend they hadn’t been bitten, tried to search and identify the snake that had bitten them—and in the process spread the venom through their system and courted death.
Polly had been sensible, though. She’d stayed still. She’d told him straight away. She’d allowed the paramedics to bring her up on the rigid stretcher.
Okay, clambering down cliffs in bare feet in the Australian summer was hardly sensible but he couldn’t argue with her reasons.
‘Then let’s keep it like that,’ he told her. ‘I want you to stay still while we get this antivenin on board.’
‘I’ve been practically rigid since I got bit,’ she said virtuously. ‘Textbook patient. By the way, it’s a textbook immobilisation bandage too. Excellent work, Dr Denver.’
He grinned at that, and she smiled back at him, and then he sort of paused.
That smile …
It was a magic smile. As sick and battered as she was, her smile twinkled. Her face was pallid and wan, but it was still alight with laughter.
This was a woman who would have played in the orchestra as the Titanic sank, he thought, and then he thought: Nope, she’d be too busy fashioning lifelines out of spare trombones.
But her smile was fading. Their gazes still held but all of a sudden she looked … doubtful?
Maybe unsure.
Maybe his smile was having the same effect on her as hers was on his?
That would be wishful thinking. Plus it would be unprofessional.
Move on.
Joe had already set up the drip. Hugo prepared the serum, double-checked everything with Joe, then carefully injected it. It’d start working almost immediately, he thought; hopefully, before Polly started feeling the full effects of the bite.
‘How are you feeling everywhere else?’ he asked, and she gave a wry smile that told him more than anything else that the humour was an act. Her freckles stood out from her pallid face, and her red hair seemed overbright.
‘I’m … sore,’ she admitted.
‘I’ve started cleaning the worst of the grazes,’ Joe told him. ‘She could do with a full bed bath but you said immobile so immobile it is. There’s a cut on her palm, though, that might need a stitch or two.’
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