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“Ow. Ow!” I pressed my lips together and tried to retain some dignity.
I was little better than a child with a scraped knee when Christos, with his large, yet surprisingly gentle hands, swabbed my cut with sterile alcohol wipes.
“Shhh, you’ll be okay.” He grumbled low under his breath, as he reached for a butterfly bandage. The first-aid kit was open on the bed beside me.
Yes, bed.
Christos and I were sitting close together on a bed, but this wasn’t quite how I’d imagined things. He was fully clothed, for one thing. Me too, but it wasn’t my main preoccupation at the moment. The quiet first-aid room was small, stuffy and claustrophobic. The room reeked of antiseptic and all the vaguely threatening aromas I associated with hospitals. And blood. Not my favourites. Nope.
He applied the butterfly bandage to my poor sore thumb, and fresh scarlet oozed from the wound. Oozed. The cut was deep.
My airway closed up. I reached for my throat and undid the top two blouse buttons, taking long, slow breaths. A paper bag was thrust in front of my face and I snatched it greedily, breathing into it. Concentrating on my breath.
In, out. In, out.
Better.
My mind wandered to happier things. Puppies. Sunflowers. White chocolate and macadamia-nut cookies. Then my eyes caught Christos’s steady gaze.
He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “You nearly passed out. Are you back in the land of the living?”
I winced. “Yes. It was just the...”
“Blood?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I breathed deeply. Christos didn’t ask any more questions or tease me. He was just there, solid and silent, holding my hand. Wait, holding my hand? Yes, he was. To be precise, he stroked his thumb over the back of my injured hand, careful not to touch the area of the cut, now covered by the expertly applied dressing.
Christos met my gaze again and dropped my hand. He stood and glanced around the room as if searching for something. “If you’re all right, I need to fill-in some paperwork. Incident report, first-aid notes.”
I nodded and he crossed to the filing cabinets against the wall. I watched him and couldn’t help but notice the tightness pulling at the corners of his eyes. The soft expression from a moment ago was now completely missing.
Oh well. I couldn’t expect him to sit around all day playing paramedic. I shuffled forward on the bed, then lifted myself halfway to standing. My head was so woozy I plopped right back down. My vision went fuzzy, grey at the edges, so I went ahead and lay down flat on my back.
The next thing I knew Christos was at my side again. He tucked a blanket over me and passed me a glass of water. I managed to sit up enough to take a sip, then closed my eyes again. “I feel like a complete idiot.”
“Why? Because you hurt yourself? You’re in shock. Give yourself a break.”
I opened my eyes. “Yes, boss.”
He sighed and shook his head so a lock of coal black hair fell over his brows. “What am I going to do with you?”
The question raised so many possibilities in my imagination, I didn’t dare speak. Luckily he did the talking.
“I’ll let you rest a few more minutes, then we’ll call a taxi to take you home.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I need to work...” I nearly told him. I only had forty dollars to my name for the rest of the week and no sick leave yet. They’d dock my pay for the hours I was on leave, reducing my income for the next week. I couldn’t afford it.
Christos let out a noise of frustration from low in his throat. “Stop arguing. I’ll call Hyacinth and see what she says.” He unclipped his phone from his belt, punched in a number and then pressed the phone to his ear.
I groaned. Hyacinth was the floor manager, my superior in the ranking order of management at the store. In terms of actual scariness, she ranked right above Lynda. They were great mates of course, going out for drinks together after work. Probably planning new and inventive ways of torturing the staff.
Before I could panic about an imminent Hyacinth crisis, I tried to sit, leaning on my elbows. The resulting head spin wasn’t a good sign.
Christos had opened the door of the small room, which suddenly seemed much smaller, like the walls were closing in on me. I didn’t like the spots at the corners of my vision either.
Hyacinth poked her head through the door, scrunched up her nose at the sight of me and bustled her way inside. “She looks fine to me.” She said these words with a dismissive tip of her head towards me, and directed her attention straight back to Christos.
“Lily needs to rest. She’s in shock. She needs a ride home too.” Christos stared her down, crossing his arms.
I was proud of him, although maybe it wasn’t appropriate to be proud of a grown man I hardly knew for standing his ground. It’s just, Hyacinth was a bully and I’d never had time for bullies. Not since high school. Those days were behind me. Now I was even content with my weight. Mostly. No grown-up version of a Mean Girl was going to treat me like nothing. Even if she was technically my boss.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, willing myself to sink through the floor or become invisible. No such luck.
Hyacinth piped up before I could change the laws of physics. “Christos, you’re due to finish your shift. Why don’t you escort Lily home?” This was said with a snide smile, which spelt trouble.
Why was my snarky wench of a manager trying to get Christos to ‘escort’ me? What was she playing at? She was probably only trying to make me uncomfortable.
With a gracious nod and hardly a complaint, in fact I detected a faint smile playing over Christos’s tempting mouth, he gestured for me to take his outstretched hand.
Willing and eager, I forgot myself and got up too quickly, the rush of blood from my top half to my bottom half making my knees shake, not in a good way. Except Christos rushed to catch me (again) before I fell at his feet (again-again).
Only this time my cheek was smooshed up to his chest, not to mention other areas pressing against the long hard length of him. The side of his body, not other regions. His arms wrapped around my waist, literally holding me up.
While he was built like a tree trunk, I was not. Curvy bits aside, I was more breakable than people imagined. But he was gentle. Even the arm gripping my waist, the hand clutching my hip. Not too hard, not too soft. Just right. Goldilocks, I was not. No way was I afraid of this big bear of a man.
I may have swooned more than necessary. I never claimed to be an uber-feminist. There was nothing wrong with a bit of flirting, in my humble opinion.
He squeezed my waist, my heart skittered, and he mumbled under his breath, “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
Did he ever!