Free The Untouchable by Gina Rossi

filling his lungs with that fresh, greenness again, gulping air like a drowning man until his chest burned with pain.
    “Zavi, why’s he so agitated?” she asked.
    “He’s Italian, and he’s on drugs. What do you expect?” That smile again in Zavi’s voice.
    Oh, very funny. Very.
    “Do you want some water, Marco?” she asked.
    Ah, she’d remembered he was here, and God, water! He opened his mouth and she guided the plastic straw between his teeth, trickling sweet, cold liquid over his parched tongue. He swallowed with difficulty and she waited, patient, giving him more, drop by drop, when he was ready, while he listened to her breathe and smelled her.
    “Okay?” she asked, when he’d had a few sips.
    “Mmm.” No! Not okay. The annoying woman who’d broken into his property, knocked him off his bike—
    “More?”
    Yes, he wanted more, but turned his head away, white-hot pain shimmering up his shoulders into his neck.
    A nurse’s voice from the door. “Everything all right?”
    “Sure,” Zavi said.
    “Two minutes,” she said.
    Rosemary spoke again, her face close to his, her fragrance everywhere. “Ouch, Marco, your lips.”
    He pressed his lips together, cracked, sore, and dry.
    “Here,” she said. “I’ve got something for them. Keep still.”
    He didn’t. He jerked as her finger dabbed his mouth, shooting agony to every point of his body. “Jesus,” he groaned, tears of pain stinging his eyes.
    “Sorry. I said keep still.” She stroked his lips, soothing them with something soft and creamy.
    Zavi laughed. “It’s a great colour, bello . Sure brings out the colour of your eyes. Red.”
    “That’s not funny,” she said, but Marco could hear by the smile in her voice that she thought it was. “It’s no colour. Zavi’s being silly.”
    How much worse could this day get? He’d been stuck full of needles and tubes, cut open, sewn up, jabbed, prodded, strapped in plaster, and drugged. Then there’d been the visitors. First his father, none too pleased that he’d had to charter an executive jet to get back to Nice, abandoning a sulky girlfriend in Bermuda. Then Terry, unable to hide his anxiety, followed by effing Lily and her divorce lawyer, and now this damn Rosemary woman.
    He opened his eyes then, and looked at her. She was fuzzy. Fuzzy and smiling.
    “Hi,” she said.
    “What do you want?”
    “I came to say sorry.”
    “Say it then.”
    “I’ll leave you to it,” Zavi said. “ Ciao , Marco, see you later.” He left the room, closing the door.
    “I said stupid, awful things to you,” Rosy said, “and I wish I hadn’t. I apologize. I take them back. I’m sorry. And I’m really sad you’re hurt. That’s horrible.”
    Well, he had a whole raft of stuff to say to her! He opened his mouth, but couldn’t make sentences. They tangled his brain in a string of vague, derailed ideas. “You can go now,” he said.
    “Did you hear what I said?”
    He nodded. It hurt like hell.
    “Did you, Marco? Do you accept my apology?”
    “Go away.”
    That fixed her. She gasped, like she’d had a fright, followed by a brisk rustle as she stood up, then a blur and a void. Good, she’d gone. He closed his eyes, more exhausted and empty than he’d ever been in his life, powerless to stop the tears that leaked from his eyes and ran down his temples into his hair.
    ***
    Outside the ward, Rosy, shocked, sank into the first chair she came across in the wide corridor and put her shaking hands to her face.
    God, Marco looked terrible.
    When she’d walked into the ward she hadn’t recognized him. All she had identified was an unrecognizable, bruised, swollen face and a fallen, frail figure she’d understood was him — breathing, existing, but with all the life knocked out of him, all the energy and vitality gone. The passion that made him Marco had been ripped out, leaving a discarded husk on the hospital bed. If it hadn’t been for Zavi, sitting at his bedside, she would have gone back