Page 163 of The Moon Sister
‘Oh God.’ I blushed to the roots of my hair. ‘So Charlie knows all about me too?’
‘Yes, but you shouldn’t be embarrassed, Tiggy. What you can do is absolutely amazing.’
‘Sí.’ Angelina patted her chest proudly. ‘She is of my blood.’
‘Right, we’d better go,’ said Charlie, reappearing on the terrace.
Marcella sped us down the narrow streets towards the city, and if anything was going to give me a heart attack, her driving certainly could, I thought. Without a care for her tiny Punto, she careered around corners and almost lost one of the wing mirrors squeezing through the tiny alleyways. Charlie, Ally and I all breathed more easily when she drove through the city gates at the bottom of the hill, and we merged into the relative safety of the heavy Granada traffic.
I glanced at my watch and saw it was already nearing one. ‘It’s going to take us ages to be seen, I’m sure.’
‘We won’t have to wait,’ said Charlie. ‘I phoned a friend who knew a friend who works in the cardiac department here. I’m just going to call her to let her know that we’re here.’
Five minutes later we climbed out of Marcella’s car, giving Ally a hand to extract her from the front seat. As we made our way into the hospital reception I saw a very attractive woman with glossy dark curls approach Charlie. The two of them chatted for a while as Ally and I hung back out of politeness.
‘This is Tiggy.’ Charlie eventually introduced us in English. ‘Meet Rosa, who has very kindly offered to help us jump the queue.’
‘Hola, Tiggy.’ Rosa held out her hand and shook mine. ‘Now, we go.’
Rosa and Charlie led the way, still chatting as I walked behind them with Ally, feeling like a child being dragged to a dentist. We went up in a lift and emerged into a small reception area, where Rosa spoke to the woman behind the desk.
‘Please, sit,’ she said to us. We did so, then I turned to Charlie.
‘So, exactly what am I having?’
‘You’ll have another ECG first, then an echocardiogram, as well as some blood tests. Apart from my professional judgement, Angelina agreed that other tests were a good idea.’
‘Is she worried about me?’
‘I think the opposite actually. Angelina thinks you’re well on the way to being cured, and she wants to prove that to me. Anyway, it certainly won’t do any harm.’
A nurse with a clipboard came over and asked me to follow her. I could almost feel the animosity of the other patients who had probably been sitting there for hours and were almost certainly far sicker than I was . . .
Three hours later, having had all the tests and scans, I dressed and went back to sit in the waiting room with Ally.
‘Has Charlie left?’
‘No. He disappeared with the gorgeous Rosa and hasn’t been seen since.’ Ally giggled. ‘Maybe she’s seduced him in the scanner; she certainly looked as though she wanted to eat him.’
‘Really?’
‘Didn’t you notice? It’s not surprising, is it? He’s a very attractive man.’
‘He’s quite old, Ally,’ I rubbed my nose, just in case I was blushing.
‘Old?! Honestly, Tiggy, he’s only thirty-eight, and people in their thirties – like me – still have a pulse, you know . . .’
‘Sorry, I often forget that there’s an age gap of seven years between us. Anyway, there he is, so he’s obviously survived the seduction.’
Charlie was holding a large envelope. ‘You okay, Tiggy?’ he asked me as he sat down.
‘Yup, never better.’
‘And yes,’ Charlie tapped the envelope, ‘it seems you are. Better, that is. I’ll need to do some more analysis of the scans, but the heart muscle does appear to have recovered somewhat. Your ECG was normal as well, although when you arrive back in Scotland, I’d like to put you on a black box for a couple of days or so, just to make sure it’s stabilised.’
‘What’s a black box?’
‘It monitors your heart and gives us an overall picture of how it’s functioning.’
