by Bowes, K T
Hana leaned back on her heels after placing a piece of straight branch along the outside of the broken leg. It looked like rimu and was straight enough for its purpose. “I’m sorry, love. I bet that was miserable.”
He nodded, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “You know, don’t you? You know what that feels like?” Hope burgeoned in his voice.
Hana shrugged. “My husband does. I discovered last year that my brother wasn’t my brother; he was my cousin. My situation isn’t the same but my husband could sympathise with you. His uncle died and then Logan discovered he was really his father.” Hana blinked. “There’s no putting that right.”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, at least I can find my real dad. I know he’s still alive.”
Hana smiled, hiding the fear in her eyes as she examined the different parts of her hoary looking creation. “Caleb, I’m ready to brace your leg with this branch and then strap your legs together. Sweetheart, it’s gonna hurt. Shout if you need to, but keep still.”
Caleb’s eyes were wide, the whites showing as Hana utilised pieces of Sacha’s dismantled bridle. He shouted as she moved his damaged limb to slip the leather underneath, sometimes whimpers and other times, great bellows of agony.
Once finished, Hana paused for breath, feeling sweat trickle between her shoulder blades. “That’s much better,” Caleb admitted, reaching for Hana’s hand as she sat next to him clutching her knees. “It’s taken the pressure off my muscles.”
“Good,” Hana said, her voice trembling. “It’s tied at your ankles and thighs. I’ve used Sacha’s reins to make a figure of eight around your feet to hold it still.”
“Wait, what?” Caleb’s voice radiated shock. The last rays of sun dropped behind the ridge and with a jolt of shock, Hana recognised the dying throes of daylight.
“I said I’ve strapped...”
“No! Not that! You said Sacha’s reins.” Caleb’s face looked greyer in the dimming light and frustration burned from his blue eyes.
Hana shook her head in confusion and shrugged. “So?”
“You made me believe Sacha was a girl! You sent her to get help and tell your husband where we were.” He laid his head back on the ground and Hana saw a tear roll down the side of his face and disappear into the parched earth. “Sacha’s a bloody horse, isn’t she?”
With nothing useful to say, Hana nodded and crouched on the ground next to the stricken boy. She rubbed his icy fingers and prayed for divine help. The bush grew quieter as night claimed it and Hana worried for her children. It was past their bedtime and she wasn’t there to kiss them good night. “Want more water?” she asked to distract herself from maudlin thoughts.
Caleb nodded. “Yes please. And Hana?”
She stopped moving away and turned to face him. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re here and for everything you’ve done. You’re a nice lady.”
“Thanks.” She lowered her eyes. “Don’t give up hope, Caleb. Logan will come.”
Caleb swallowed. “Last time I lost hope, a guy was kind to me. It took a day to walk from the motorway and he gave me a lift the rest of the way to his French restaurant. He let me eat there even though everyone stared and I hadn’t washed for weeks. That’s the nicest thing anyone did for me until you showed up. I thought I’d die here.”
Hana bit her lip and smiled. “That was Logan’s cousin, Alex. So you see, they’re not bad people. You won’t die here, Caleb, I won’t let you.” Hana smiled. “I’m a Du Rose and we don’t tolerate failure.”
She crawled through the undergrowth in the deepening twilight to the stream. Caleb didn’t talk this time and Hana took numerous wrong turns until she found him, using the last light shining from the west to point her back to where she started. There was little water left in the bottom of the disintegrating bulb and she bit back tears. “Caleb, Caleb!” Hana shook him awake and he groaned. “Drink, sweetheart.” She propped his head up against her shoulder and dribbled the water between his lips. His face looked ethereal in the dim light, a pretty bone structure with high cheekbones and a strong chin. Hana brushed his ash blonde hair back from his forehead and again, felt the stirring of a memory. Caleb gulped and choked on the liquid. Hana patted his face with the flat of her palm. “Don’t sleep, sweetheart. You need to stay awake.”
“They’re not coming,” he mumbled.
“Yes they are. Have faith.” She placed her knee under Caleb’s head to cushion him from the hard ground and help his breathing. He settled and let out a sigh.
“You got kids, Hana?”
“Yeah. Four,” she replied. “My eldest son is twenty-nine, my daughter is twenty-eight and I have two littlies, two and ten months.”
“Ah, I’ve seen them,” he sighed, exhaustion leaking through his voice. “They look happy.”
“I hope so.” Hana ran her right hand across her collar bone, trying to banish the cool air chilling her body temperature. Thoughts of her children induced sadness and a sense of loss. “Actually,” she said, injecting false joviality into her tone, “I’ve got another son who’s twenty. He’s not really mine - he’s Logan’s nephew, but he calls me Ma and there’s another boy who’s seventeen. He’s half-brothers with the twenty-year-old, but his mother died last year. I’ve kinda adopted him too. So I probably have six children altogether.” She sighed.
“You’re nice.” Caleb’s words slurred and Hana’s concern grew.
“Caleb, don’t sleep. You can’t sleep. I’m lonely, so talk to me.” Panic laced her voice and Hana shook him, causing a deep groan to emit from his chest. “Caleb!” She shook him again and there was nothing. “What have I missed?” Hana doubted herself. “Did you bang your head? I must have missed something!”
Caleb didn’t reply, laying with his head balanced on a stranger’s knee and his legs encased in the rough contraption made by a city girl. Hana felt the panic, fluttering at first but increasing in strength and volume as she realised how utterly alone she was. “Logan,” she whispered into the darkness. “Logan, help us.” Hopelessness magnified itself in her chest as a spirit of death hovered over the broken man and his saviour turned victim. Hana’s shoulders heaved at the thought of her children being told she was lost forever and her courage snapped. “LOGAN!” she screamed.
It was the biggest sound the slender woman ever made and it took everything. It emerged with disappointment, anger and fear into a shout which echoed off every ridge and rock face, rebounding around her head for more than a second. Shuddering sobs followed it as the last of Hana’s hope died and the man cradled in her lap slipped deeper into unconsciousness.
At first Hana doubted her hearing, believing the shouts were born of desperation and a feral craving for her husband. His voice sounded faint at first, calling her name over and over. She felt it ignite in her soul and the connection between them fired. Life became worth living again. “Logan!” she screamed, putting the last of her effort into his name. “Logan!”
“Hana!” His voice sounded above her head and light shone on the pitiful scene at the foot of the cliff.
“Logan!” she cried, sobs of relief punctuating incoherent words. She shook Caleb’s shoulders with cold hands, trying to rouse him and fill him with the same sense of reprieve which gripped her. “Caleb, they’re here,” she sobbed. “Caleb, please wake up.”
Male voices shouted questions as lights and confusion added to the thwack, thwack of a helicopter overhead. Hana cradled the silent stranger in her lap and wished for her bed, the feel of her husband’s strong arms and one more chance to tell her six children how much she loved them.
Chapter 3
Another Stray
Hana had time for one embrace with her husband before being loaded into the helicopter. Logan’s grey eyes looked dark in the flashlights, his body rigid with tension. “I’m sorry about Sacha’s tack,” Hana sobbed as a medic took her arm and pushed her into the helicopter, thrusting earphones over her head.
Logan clutched the remna
nts of an expensive bridle and said nothing, his face ashen as Hana’s green eyes searched for comfort. She cried all the way to the roof of the Waikato Hospital, still blubbering as medical staff wheeled her to the emergency rooms below. A nurse inserted a cannula into her arm, administering painkillers while she cleaned Hana’s many scrapes and cuts. The gum tree was unkind to her, sending wicked shards of bark into her flesh as she slipped down it, one on the inside of her upper arm and another through her jeans into her calf. “They were nasty,” the cheerful male nurse intoned, holding up the biggest length of wood. “Do you wanna see?”
Hana grimaced at the size of the shard which had embedded itself in her arm and leaned sideways, vomiting onto the hospital floor.
“Guess not then,” he said, sounding disappointed.
Caleb was triaged and taken straight to surgery. Doped up on morphine and other licensed goodies, Hana lay back against the rustling hospital pillows and tried not to think. The registrar sounded American, softly spoken with a southern drawl which was comforting and soporific. His stethoscope dangled from his neck adorned with childish stickers and his white coat sported a dodgy stain near the collar. He pressed a bruise on her forehead and Hana hissed. “What’s the date today?” he asked.
“Don’t you know?” Hana felt concerned for him.
“How many children do you have, Mrs Du Rose?” he persisted, leaning on his clipboard as he balanced on the bed next to her.
Hana’s mind cast back to her conversation in the bush with Caleb and it sounded ridiculous to begin at four and end up with six. She bit her lip and turned to the blonde man, the morphine making her vision blur as she remembered Wiremu. “Seven,” she replied. “I forgot one.”
The registrar jumped to his feet as the curtain whizzed past his face and Hana’s husband stood in the gap. “Can I help you?” the medic asked, intimidated by the visitor’s size. His dark wavy hair was peppered with grey at the sides and a covering of stubble graced the lower half of his face. Logan’s imposing physique towered over the registrar, bush debris staining his jeans and shirt.
“Na, I’m good.” Logan jerked his head towards Hana and the man widened his eyes.
“Mr Du Rose?” he said.
Logan nodded and stole a glance at Hana. “Yeah.”
“Your wife had several large pieces of gum tree removed from her limbs; the wounds on her arm and thigh are butterfly stitched. She’s had painkillers but seems muddled. I’m inclined to admit her for the night.” He stared at Logan with expectation and seemed wrong-footed by the silence.
Grey eyes bored into him, eyes filled with the mana of a Māori elder and rimmed by long black eyelashes. “What?” Logan Du Rose said, a hint of aggression in his voice. “She’s always muddled. I’m taking her home.”
“Always muddled?” Suspicion flashed in the medic’s eyes.
“Yep,” Logan replied. “My wife rarely knows her ass from her elbow but she looks fine. She’s had worse.”
“Had worse?” the registrar parroted, “what do you mean worse?”
“Check her medical records, bro’,” Logan said, losing patience. “It’s late, I’m tired and we’re real grateful for all you’ve done. Thanks for patching her up, but we’re leaving now.”
The doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” Logan replied. His tired eyes gleamed with challenge in the dim night lights on the ward.
The registrar swallowed and exited the cubicle, glancing over his shoulder and suspecting he had little say in the matter.
“Logan?” Hana said, her vision reducing her gorgeous husband to a dark, swirling shape. “I can’t remember how many children I have. This is terrible!”
“Hey, babe. Shhhhh.” In two strides Logan Du Rose clutched his wife, crushing her face into his muscular chest and kissing her hair. He smelled of horses and sweat, his white tee shirt stained and ripped and his hair dusty. “I was so worried about you,” he breathed into her hair. “When you’re feeling better, I’m gonna kill you, bloody wahine!”
Logan kissed Hana’s dry lips, holding the sides of her scabbed cheeks and pressing his forehead into hers. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” he rebuked, his voice a husky growl. “Or I swear, I’ll lock you up in the house for good.”
“He was hurt real bad,” Hana wept, the tears running through the antiseptic and the cuts on her face and chin. “I couldn’t stop him going to sleep.”
“The doctors are asking about him, Hana. Who the hell is he?”
Hana gulped. “I know this will sound stupid, but he needs us. He needs a family as much as Tama and Ryan did. He’ll come good, I promise. When he’s fixed, can he live at the hotel for a while, just until he’s recovered?”
Logan pulled back and shook his head, studying his wife with the familiar Du Rose grey glare. He ran his thumb under her red rimmed eyes and kissed the end of her nose. “Babe, we’ve got more strays than a bloody dogs’ home.”
“Not really,” Hana sniffed, wiping her nose on Logan’s ruined tee shirt. “You already had Tama before we met and Ryan just turned up. But you gave David a home and...Bobby.” She gulped, thinking of the blonde stockman who saved her baby son’s life. He proved his loyalty to the Du Roses that day.
“Is that why you told the doctor you had seven kids?” Logan lifted Hana’s sore chin with his index finger. A tiny smirk lifted the left side of his lips into a lopsided smile. “I wondered if you banged your head, or had stuff you needed to confess.” His fingers worked their way around to her back, feeling the softness of her skin through the gaps in the hospital gown. His pupils dilated. He kissed the side of Hana’s neck. “Who is this guy, Hana? What do you know about him? He’s been living at the hut in Reuben’s Gully. Toby says he told him to move on weeks ago. We don’t owe him anything.”
“Please let him stay, Logan?” Hana implored with her wide green eyes and felt her husband relent. He traced the line of her bare spine with his index finger, chasing away the demons of dread which assailed him earlier. Grounding himself in her strong English resolve, his heart celebrated her survival with a partial capitulation.
“We’ll talk about it later!” he conceded. “But right now you need to get it together so I can break you out of here.”
The doctor returned with his clipboard and found Hana far more communicative. “His name’s Caleb,” Hana said. “Caleb Du Rose.” She saw Logan shake his head in a slight movement and bit her lip. “He lives at my husband’s hotel in the mountains with us. He went out pig hunting and I heard the gunshots. He was at the bottom of a ridge and I climbed down.”
“Did you make the splint and strap his leg?” the doctor asked, raising his eyebrows in approval. Hana nodded, her face and neck blushing in embarrassment. She waited for the medical critique and dismissal of her work. “That was a pretty awesome job, ma’am,” he acceded and Hana blushed more.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes widening. “Please can we have the leather straps back?”
The doctor eyed her in confusion. “Er, I don’t know. I think we got them off without cutting them. What are they from?”
Hana gulped. “I dismantled the horse’s bridle,” she said. “There’s also a girth, an expensive girth.” She couldn’t look at her husband’s face. “We’d like it all back, if possible.”
The doctor left the cubicle and Logan leaned forward in the visitor’s chair, sighing and pressing his fingers to his temples. Hana felt contrite. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry for not waiting and for ruining Sacha’s bridle. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Hey, it’s fine.” Logan shifted to the bed, wedging his hip into the small space next to Hana and slipping his arm around her shoulders. She winced as it constricted the wound under her arm. “Nothing matters, apart from getting you back safely.”
“Did you find Sacha’s saddle?” Hana exhaled, thinking of the combined cost of the handmade tack and the personalised saddle with its ornate stitching.
“Yep. Toby
took it back for me. The chopper left and I ran up to the house and jumped in the ute. I think I broke a land speed record or two on the expressway here.”
“Why didn’t they take us to Auckland?” Hana asked, her fate already inexorably linked to Caleb’s.
“Some road accident on the North Shore. They were busy so routed you here.”
“Sorry,” Hana said again. “You must feel shattered.”
“Stop apologising, babe. Leslie and my dad are looking after Phoe and Mac. Leslie was worried sick. Dad helped us search and found those ribbon things you hung on the trees. Very clever.” Logan kissed her temple. “Sacha arrived in the stable yard in a right mess, sweating and rearing. She terrified that lad, Rawhiti.” Logan sniggered. “He nearly crapped himself. David raised the alarm on the radio so I was already on my way up to him on the quad bike and must have missed Sacha by minutes. David didn’t see where you went so we started in the wrong direction. If Rawhiti hadn’t radioed for help, we might not have found you until much later. David heard the call and remembered you rode off on Sacha and I went to the stables to get her.”
“How did she make you understand?” Hana asked, her voice sounding sleepy. “Was it like Lassie? Did she do hoof movements and neighs which sounded like words?”
“No! She heard the quad coming, jumped the gate into the paddock and charged like a wounded bull. Then she ran off up the mountain. I trusted her and followed. Dad rode up on Methuselah and chased her into the bush on horseback. Some of us had to walk!” Logan chastised his wife with another kiss to the temple.
“There doesn’t seem to be a hospital number for a Caleb Du Rose.” The doctor whisked the curtain back and stood in the gap, tapping his clipboard with the pen.
Logan gave a little sniff of annoyance and Hana knew he directed it at her. He could have foretold the sequence of events like a fortune teller with a crystal ball. She floundered and he spoke for her. “Yeah, it’s not his birth name. He’s been with us a while though. It’s all legit and he’ll sort it when he wakes up.” Logan gave one of his winning smiles and the doctor relaxed.
