Tempted By Dr Off-Limits. Charlotte Hawkes

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       Chapter Two

      ONE MOMENT ELLE was sitting on the barstool next to him, the next she was thrusting people out of her way as she made a beeline for some hubbub behind him. Call it intuition after fifteen years as an army officer, call it something about Elle’s understated purposefulness, but Fitz was compelled to follow even as he strained to see past the throng.

      It was only when he saw the young man on the floor, with Elle gently forcing a sobbing girl to release her grip on him, that Fitz realised what was happening. Icy fingers slid the length of his spine, the length of his body, rooting him to the spot. He fought to shut his mind to the memories that threatened to overtake him, but not fast enough. They slammed into him with brutal force, knocking his breath out like a bullet striking body armour.

      The last time he’d seen someone having a seizure like this had been over twenty years ago. His baby sister had had seizures from about the age of one. Not often, but still. How had he forgotten about that?

      Memories crowded his head. Images he’d buried along with her body. Her tiny, five-year-old’s coffin next to the adult-size one of their mother. He struggled to shove the unwanted images away and try instead to focus on helping the woman he’d just met who was managing the situation with the same cool efficiency with which she’d dispatched Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber earlier.

      ‘Let him go,’ Elle was telling the girl, kindly but firmly.

      ‘No. No. I can’t.’ She shook her head manically and tried to shrug Elle off. ‘He’s my brother, he’s going to hurt himself.’

      ‘How long has your brother suffered from epilepsy?’

      ‘What? No.’ The girl shook her head violently. ‘He’s seventeen, he doesn’t have epilepsy. He’s never had epilepsy. What’s wrong with him?’

      ‘Your brother’s never had a seizure before?’ Elle asked calmly.

      The same calmness with which Fitz remembered his mother teaching his eleven-year-old self what to do if his sister ever had a seizure if he was alone with her. Not that he’d ever needed to in the end.

      ‘Of course he’s never had one,’ the girl was wailing. ‘I told you, there’s nothing wrong with him.’

      ‘What about anyone else in your family?’

      ‘What? No. I’m his sister, I’d know if he had epilepsy.’ The girl was practically apoplectic. ‘I have to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Oh, God, what’s wrong with him?’

      ‘It’s okay.’ Taking the girl’s head in her hands, Elle forced the kid to look at her. ‘I’m a doctor, do you understand me? It’s going to be okay but you have to trust me. Let go of your brother. If you try to hold him in place you could end up causing more damage.’

      Her soothing tone not only seemed to help the girl but him too, and he began to be able to move past his memories just as she glanced up at the room, her stern, clear voice carrying over the now music-free club.

      ‘Everyone else, can you just back up, please, and give him some room?’ She turned back to the girl. ‘Okay, now this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to move that table away for me so your brother doesn’t hurt himself by banging it.’

      All of a sudden Fitz’s legs sprang back into life and, propelling himself forward, he distracted the girl.

      ‘Come on, I’ll help СКАЧАТЬ