Illusion of love

Chapter Fourteen

Voices speaking in the hospital room is what woke Emma up the next morning. She opened her eyes to see that it was two nurses speaking, but they were not alone. No, Nathan was sitting on a chair next to her. The nurses were sitting on a bench at the bottom of the bed filling in her report.

Emma tried to get up, but she was sore. Nathan jumped to his feet to aid her, but she pushed his hands away and sat up on her own.

The two female nurses greeted her and left, while Nathan was ,literally, standing with his hands in his hair.

"Are you here to operate on me?"
"No, it's too early for that."

Emma took in Nathan's disheveled hair, red eyes and crumpled hair, and assumed that he had had a busy night in ICU.

"You should get more sleep, it might be a long day."
"I don't want sleep, I want to go home."
"You will only leave, when you're out of danger."
"I feel fine, so there's no point in keeping me here against my will," Emma took in her surroundings. "What kind of hospital is this? It looks like a fancy hotel room."
"This is the Platinum Care Private Hospital."
"What!"
"It's the best hospital group on the continent, and one of the best in the whole world."
"I don't care. I definitely can't stay here much longer."
"Emma don't think ab-"
She interrupted him, "I told you not to call me that!"

Nathan turned beetroot red under Emma's angry glare. Emma felt bad about her attitude, but he was the one who had been treating her like a stranger.

"I will heal myself at home, okay? You can tell that to your doctor friends. Why did the ambulance team bring me here? Just this one night here will probably cost me an arm and a leg. Argh! My savings is in it's glory ( ruined )."

Nathan watched as Emma worked herself up. Was life that hard for her? He had assumed that she was paid well at the cake place. He figured that the job at the bar had been for added financial security, not a necessity.

"We will work something out, don't worry about it."
Emma folded her arms across her chest continuing her glaring. "It must be nice being you, not having any worries, but you know what Nathan, sorry, Doctor Nathan, some of us live in the real world."

One of the nurses returned saying that she needed to do a check up on Emma. Nathan took that as his cue to leave.

"Nurse, I don't have my phone here, may I know what time it is."
"It's almost half past four."
"In the morning?"
The nurse laughed. "It's not in the afternoon."
"He must be doing his rounds then."
"Who? Doctor Nathan? He does not work here."
Emma's eyes widened. "But..."
"He was visiting a colleague of his yesterday when you arrived, but the resident brain surgeon was not on duty, so he stood in for him."
"Huh?"
"Not huh, but duh. The man is clearly here for you. He's been sitting in this room for the past two hours, praying for you to be okay. Are you saying that you don't know him?"
"Er...he...he is someone that I used to know."
"Strange. I got the impression that he was inlove, no, madly inlove with you."
"Well...er, you got the wrong impression."

The nurse looked pointedly in Emma's eyes for a couple of seconds, before checking her out. She was much better than the previous night, but the nurse was sure that she had brain damage, how else did she not see that Doctor Adams cared deeply for her.

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A few hours later Nathan was sitting in his friend's office when he heard a knock on the door.

"Come in."
"Doctor Adams, we have a problem."
"Doctor Grobbelaar is not in to-"
"It's about the patient that you were with last night, she's left the hospital, sir. She left a note stating that she'll pay us the money owed, but that she was fine."
Nathan walked out of the door, the nurse close behind. "When did she leave?"
"She was already gone by the time the day shift staff arrived, at seven."
"And you're only telling me now?"
"We didn't realize that she was missing, we thought that she was in the bathroom."
"For a whole hour?"
"I'm sorry, doctor."