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Robin sat on a hard plastic chair, her back to the hospital wall, her handbag and Strike’s box of chocolates - stuff the diet, he needed to regain his strength after his surgery - on her lap, and stared at the posters on the wall opposite. She wasn’t much of a fan of hospitals, but then, who was? The smell of disinfectant, of imperfectly washed bodies, of illness and decay. The lack of true fresh air - she was always glad to take a lungful or two as she stepped out even into London air, which never felt particularly clean compared to that of Yorkshire.
Strike would hopefully be home by the weekend. It had been a minor operation to release some old scar tissue in his damaged knee that was hampering his full range of movement. He had submitted to the procedure with great reluctance, but there was the promise of a new, perhaps more comfortable prosthesis on the horizon now that he had lost weight and his mobility was improving. He had resisted all efforts to persuade him to move in with either his sister or the Herberts for his recuperation, though, insisting he could manage in his small flat with deliveries and his crutches.
She smiled fondly to herself at his fierce independence, and glanced again at her watch. She’d arrived a little early and wasn’t allowed onto the ward yet. Mr Strike was having a shower, the nurse had told her, and Robin was glad of this. A proper shower meant that his bandages were off and he was back up and about on his crutches. He would definitely be released soon.
She wished she’d brought a book. Today’s tube and bus had been perfectly aligned and free of delays, and so she had ten minutes to go until she could see Strike, sit and chat and catch him up on their cases.
Strike might have hated his sojourn in hospital, but Robin had experienced a rather guilty enjoyment of the time he’d been here. The look of delight on his face as she had turned up each day, bearing gifts of a Thermos - “Finally, some decent tea,” Strike had said with feeling - plenty of healthy and not-so-healthy snacks and all the gossip and news from the office, had stirred feelings within her that she would once have determinedly buried. But with Ryan Murphy out of the picture, finally (and Robin did not wish to dwell on how badly that breakup had gone; was it possible for breakups to be anything other than awful, she had wondered), and with Strike’s announcement of the previous autumn still large in her consciousness, she had stopped trying to suppress her feelings for her big partner, and they bubbled up with regularity these days.
Sitting with him in the cocoon of his hospital bay, chatting inconsequentially for hours while the time flew by, had been some of the happiest times Robin had known of late. She had felt almost resentful when Lucy or Ilsa joined them and interrupted their quiet intimacy.
Before Strike’s admission for his procedure, Robin had been on the point of suggesting cooking him dinner with a view to discussing a possible future together. When he’d announced that his consultant had suggested the minor operation, she'd reluctantly decided to wait until after he was recovered to make such a move. Maybe once he was released she could bring dinner to his flat on the pretext of helping, of being a good friend, and they could dine together and she might pluck up the courage to finally push open the door that Strike had carefully left ajar all those months ago.
Her reverie was distracted by a flurry of activity; Robin couldn’t see the beds, because the little waiting area was situated around a corner out of view of the ward entrance, but she heard the unmistakeable sound of crutches, of curtains being drawn, of Strike’s deep voice insisting he could manage. Presently a tall, blonde nurse in a navy uniform with her hair scraped back into a ponytail joined her colleague at the nurses’ station opposite Robin.
“That’s bed five had a shower, Jackie,” she told the older brunette nurse, who was filling in paperwork. “Says he’s fine to sort out his own clothes.”
The older woman grunted. “File’s there,” she said. “Doctor Marsden says he’s to have a final ultrasound in the morning and then he can go, if physio have seen him.”
“They came today,” said the blonde. “So I guess he’ll be escaping.” Then she grinned. “Shame.”
Robin gazed at a poster asking visitors to stay away from the wards if they had suffered vomiting or diarrhoea in the previous forty-eight hours, and tried not to look as though she was listening to the nurses’ gossip.
The older nurse, Jackie, who Robin guessed would be about Strike’s age, smiled in answer to her colleague’s grin. “He’s pretty easy on the eye, isn’t he?” she admitted. “And no trouble at all. I don’t think he’s pressed his bell once the whole time he’s been here. Not that one, Jo, this one,” she added, passing a file across.
“It’s a shame they’re not all as well-behaved,” remarked Jo, taking the file and beginning to make notes. “Or as attractive. And it’s an even bigger shame I’m not allowed to slip him my number.”
Robin stiffened in her chair, her cheeks pinkening, and pulled her phone out of her pocket to pretend to look at that instead.
“You’re not planning on it?” Jackie said sternly, eyeing the younger nurse.
“No,” said Jo with a fake pout. “I know I can’t. But, you know. Wouldn’t mind getting to know him a bit better. Especially after helping him shower.”
The breath caught in Robin’s chest. How many times had she tried to stop herself recently from picturing her burly partner naked, from picturing his hirsute body, from wondering if he was…in proportion, from imagining his lips on hers and his hands on her skin? And now this nurse knew— Robin preferred not to think about how much she knew. Blushing hard, she tried to force herself to concentrate on a BBC news article about the fallout of Brexit.
At the nurses’ station, Jackie chuckled. “Behave,” she told her colleague mildly, closing the file she’d been annotating and reaching for another. “You can help Mrs Hughes shower next, that’ll calm you down.”
Jo laughed. “Yeah, that won’t make for such decent scenery,” she said. She lowered her voice. “You’ve helped him have a wash, yeah? After his op? Pretty impressive, am I right?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Jackie said firmly, her eyes twinkling. “Honestly, Jo, guard your tongue. You’re at work, this isn’t the pub.”
“I’d rather guard his,” Jo sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop now,” she added, catching Jackie’s mock glare.
Silence fell, and Robin hardly dared breathe lest they notice her. Anxiety gnawed at her stomach suddenly. What if this Jo did decide to break the rules and give Strike her number? She was just his type; tall, slim, pretty, confident.
He said he was in love with you, she told herself.
That was months ago, though, and what did you do about it? Pushed it aside, struggled on through another awful few weeks with Ryan, split up, then did absolutely nothing about Strike while you licked your wounds and tried to get your head straight.
She was going to miss the boat, Robin suddenly thought with a stab of panic. She would wait too long, and someone like this Jo would come along, blonde and gorgeous and a perfect dalliance for a man who perhaps had long ago given up on having his feelings ever even mentioned again, let alone returned—
A bell sounded the start of visiting hours. Robin stood. Another nurse, passing, pulled the curtains away from Strike’s bed, and he was sat in the chair next to it, his truncated leg propped on a stool, damp-haired and gorgeous, his beard clipped short and tidy and his T-shirt and jogging bottoms clean.
At the nurses’ desk, Jo gave a small sigh. Robin gritted her teeth. She was not going to lose her chance to some upstart nurse who thought she could just waltz in and—
You’re jealous, she realised. That’s what this is.
The pretty young nurse was watching Strike unashamedly, and Robin couldn’t tell if he was aware of her eyes on him or not. Knowing him, he probably was, but he was doing a creditable job of ignoring the fact.
Well. Robin had not been able to do anything about Charlotte, or Lorelei, or Madeline. But she could do something about this Jo.
Impulse seized her as she approached Strike through the large doorway and he noticed her, and grinned like he always did, his features softening into a smile that was just for her. Impulse, driven by a tangled confusion of feelings too long denied, by jealousy and a tiny streak of possessiveness she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling. Robin placed her offerings of chocolate and tea down on Strike’s table.
“Hi,” he said, as delighted to see her as always.
“Hi,” Robin replied, and leaned down, her hand finding his shoulder, and kissed him.
She briefly saw the shock in his eyes as he realised she was not aiming for his cheek like she normally did, and then her lips were on his. She actually felt him startle a little beneath her, but there was no hesitation. He kissed her back at once, as though he had been longing to do so for ages. He smelled right, at last - of his own shower gel and shampoo, no longer chemical-hospital, and his stubble against her lip sparked an unexpected lurch of heat deep in her body. His large hand came up to gently cup her face, so tenderly that tears prickled behind Robin’s closed eyelids, and he drew her closer, his mouth opening to hers.
They kissed for a long minute, Strike sat in his chair and Robin leaning awkwardly over him, her hand gripping his shoulder, fingers curling into the material of his T-shirt, until eventually she drew back and smiled mistily at him.
Jo had vanished.
Strike gazed up at Robin, dazed and amazed, and grinned. “What brought that on?”
Pink cheeked, Robin shrugged, meeting his bemused look shyly. “I decided it was time. Past time,” she added, and smiled back.
“Worth the wait,” Strike told her, his hand reaching for hers. “Definitely worth the wait.”