by Emily Forbes
‘Why don’t we make plans to meet up in Canada?’
‘I’ve only just started work, I couldn’t ask for time off.’
‘What about stress leave? Surely with everything you’ve been through, that would be a reasonable request? You could come back to Australia. There’s going to be a memorial service at Wombat Gully for the victims of the landslide. You could come for that.’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t go back.
‘Are you sure? It would give you a chance to see Pat.’
‘Will he be there?’
‘I’m not sure but I’d imagine he’d try.’
No, she wouldn’t go back. She’d made her position totally clear to Pat. Maybe fate had brought them together but it hadn’t been for the reasons she wanted. Their timing had sucked but the ball had been in Pat’s court. He hadn’t been ready to move on and there was no reason to think he’d changed his mind.
* * *
Pat and Connor strapped themselves into their harnesses and double-and triple-checked the carabiners, lines and anchor points before abseiling down the side of the mountain. It was the first time they’d been back to Wombat Gully since the landslide and the memories were threatening to overwhelm him.
Work had been his saving grace over the past two months. Keeping busy kept his mind occupied, but he hadn’t counted on being back in Wombat Gully, back where it had all begun.
He focussed hard to block out thoughts of Charli. The two teenaged snowboarders who’d got disoriented during a blizzard and had fallen into a crevice deserved his full attention.
His feet hit the side of the mountain and he bent his knees, absorbing the impact, before he pushed off again, swinging out and releasing the line, repeating the process until finally he was at the bottom of the gully.
They found the boys in good spirits considering their ordeal and, incredibly, with relatively minor injuries. The assessments were simple enough—one dislocated shoulder with an accompanying concussion and one fractured ankle.
The dislocated shoulder had been out of place for too long to be safely reduced in the field but Pat and Connor stabilised the broken ankle before calling for the stretchers.
They carefully lifted the boys onto the stretchers, securing them firmly before attaching the ropes and pulleys and calling for them to be winched up. Pat accompanied one boy, Connor the other, and once they reached the top a second team of Special Ops paramedics took over to transfer the boys down the mountain before they would be airlifted to Melbourne.
Pat jumped into an over-snow vehicle that would drop him and Connor off at the resort medical centre. He looked out the window as they drove past the site of the landslide. It was almost unrecognisable as the same place. The debris had been cleared and the slope was covered with snow. It was pristine and white. All traces of the disaster had been wiped clean but Pat could close his eyes and recall what it had been like. Just like he could close his eyes and remember Charli.
He opened his eyes as the over-snow transport vehicle came to a stop. As he climbed out he almost collided with Amy.
‘Pat!’
The siblings were so similar that for a moment he’d thought she was Charli. He bit back his disappointment as she hugged him. He was surprised. He hadn’t been sure of his reception given the way things had ended between him and her sister. ‘Were you part of the rescue team?’
He nodded.
‘I hear it went well.’
He nodded again. News travelled quickly around the resort.
‘And how are you?’ Amy asked him.
‘Good,’ he replied, even though it was a complete lie. He was barely coping. Charli had been gone for almost two months and he still wasn’t used to her absence. He couldn’t work out how a woman who had been in his life for a few weeks was managing to leave such a hole in his world.
He hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d let her go. That he’d thought it was the best thing for both of them. That he’d thought he’d get over her quickly—after all, they hadn’t had long together—but he hadn’t been able to get her of his mind and he wondered how long it would take before he would stop thinking about her at all.
‘How is Charli?’
The words were spoken before he’d had time to think and now they were out he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the answer. What if Amy told him that Charli had met someone else? He wanted her to be happy but he didn’t want her to have forgotten him. He didn’t want her to have moved on already. She might have accused him of not moving on fast enough after Margie’s death, and he knew that he couldn’t compare what he and Charli had had to his wife’s death, but, in many ways, he felt the loss just as keenly and part of him, selfishly, he knew, hoped that Charli was missing him just as much.
‘She’s sad. She misses you.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t she tell me?’
‘I don’t know. I think she was afraid.’
‘Of what?’
‘Afraid you wouldn’t want her. She doesn’t handle rejection well, she’s been like that since our mother died, and it makes it hard for her to open up, to give her heart.’
Amy’s words made sense. He had rejected her. He’d been afraid to let her in. Now all he wanted to do was to be able to take her in his arms. He wanted to protect her, to look after her. She’d gotten into his mind, his body and his heart, and his heart ached with longing.
No, it was more than that. His heart ached with love.
He closed his eyes as the realisation sank in. He loved her.
He opened his eyes as the pain sat heavily in his chest. ‘I should never have let her go.’
‘Maybe you should tell her that.’
He nodded. Amy was right.
He knew what he had to do. He just hoped he hadn’t left it too late.
* * *
Charli signed out of her emails, closing Amy’s latest message before she was tempted to make a rash decision. Amy had sent her the details of the memorial service to be held in Wombat Gully, asking her again if she thought she might return for it, but there was no way she could go. She couldn’t go back.
She closed her laptop and went to check on the twins. The nanny had the night off and Charli had offered to babysit as her father and Victoria had a function to attend. It was a rare night off for Charli too but she’d had no other plans. She was too tired to go out and she wasn’t really in the right frame of mind anyway. She wasn’t feeling at all sociable. Wondering vaguely if she was depressed, perhaps suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she knew that really all she needed was time to get over Pat. What she didn’t know was how much time she needed.
Babysitting wasn’t affecting her plans at all. She climbed the stairs to the twins’ bedroom. She’d check the boys and then put the kettle on, but her plans were abandoned when she opened the door and saw Milo’s bassinette shaking violently.
‘Oh, my God.’ She sprinted across the room and peered into the cot.
Milo was convulsing. His little face was red and she could hear him gasping for air.
She had swaddled him in a light muslin wrap to settle him but it had come loose. She unwrapped him and stripped off his leggings.
He stopped twitching as she undressed him but then his limbs went stiff and his eyes rolled back in his head. His chest was still.
He’d stopped breathing.
Charli picked him up and he lay limply in her arms as she felt for a pulse. It was there, just.
She carried him to an armchair and laid him on her lap before she bent her head and puffed a couple of breaths into his mouth.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled 999. Tears ran down her cheeks as she waited for the operator to connect her to the ambulance service. She tapped the speaker option and breathed for M
ilo again.
She heard the call connect.
‘I have an infant who is having a seizure. Prem baby, four months old, adjusted age, eleven weeks. He is febrile, unresponsive and not breathing.’ She listened to the ambulance operator’s questions and then continued, ‘I’m performing CPR. Please send help.’
She knew the ambulance would come quickly, infants were a top priority, but she stayed on the phone until she heard the siren. It was still faint in the distance when she managed to get Milo breathing again. She hung up the phone as she quickly checked on the still-sleeping Louis, then, on shaky legs, she carried Milo carefully downstairs to open the front door.
She handed him over to the paramedics as she gave them his neonatal history and then she stood and listened and watched as they assessed Milo.
‘Heart sounds normal. Left lung a little crackly. Oxygen sats ninety-eight. Pulse one hundred and forty-four. Resps thirty. Blood sugar sixty-six.’ The paramedics rattled off Milo’s stats.
She tasted salt on her lips and wiped her face, surprised to find the tears were still rolling down her cheeks. ‘Is he going to be okay?’
‘I think so.’ One of the paramedics glanced up at her, a flicker of concern on his face, and Charli panicked. ‘Why don’t you take a seat for a moment?’ he suggested, and she realised his concern was for her. She must look a complete fright.
‘We’ll need to take him to hospital for assessment,’ the second paramedic said. ‘You can come with us.’
Charli took a moment to process the information. As a doctor, she knew that would be the protocol but it seemed that when the patient was family her brain was having even more trouble than normal focussing. ‘There’s another baby.’
‘Another one?’
‘Another boy. They’re twins.’ She realised she wasn’t being very clear.
‘Is he okay?’
‘He was sleeping when I checked him so I think so.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Upstairs. I’ll need to get him. There’s no one else here.’
She ran back up to the nursery and picked up Louis. She was numb as she climbed into the ambulance holding Louis, but she managed to call her father and had got herself together by the time the ambulance pulled into the hospital emergency bay.
According to the attending paramedic, Milo hadn’t had any further seizures and to look at him now he seemed perfectly healthy. The medical staff took over, taking both babies as a precaution. Charli paced the waiting-room floor, hoping it was nothing sinister, as she waited for her father.
* * *
‘Where is he? Is he all right?’ Victoria burst into the emergency department, her eyes wild.
‘He’s with one of the doctors,’ Charli managed to say before of the nurses intervened.
Charli listened as the nurse calmly explained to Jack and Victoria what was happening. ‘Your little boy is just being assessed. The doctors will try to determine the cause of the seizure and of his temperature. Hopefully it was just a febrile seizure, caused by his high temperature. That type of seizure is common in infants.’
‘What about Louis? Is he going to have a fit as well?’ Victoria turned to Charli. ‘Where is he?’ she asked, only just realising that he was missing.
‘He’s here. They’re both with the doctors. Louis is fine, they’re just being cautious,’ she said.
‘I’ll take you through to them now,’ the nurse said to Jack and Victoria.
Charli knew there would be a raft of tests. Now that her initial panic had subsided she could recall the protocols. While the chances of Milo’s seizure being related to his temperature were high, the doctors would want to rule out other causes. They would order EEGs, EKGs, blood tests and possibly an echocardiogram. She knew they would also test for meningococcal disease.
The doctors and nurses would explain all of that to Jack and Victoria. There was nothing more she could do here except wait. Her father and Victoria had each other. They didn’t need her.
But she couldn’t go. Not just yet. She needed to know what was happening. She sat down to wait and eventually her father reappeared.
He seemed to have aged ten years in just a few moments. He collapsed into the chair beside her.
Charli put her hand on his. She wished they had the sort of relationship where she could hug him spontaneously, he looked like he could use a hug, but since her mother had died they had never been demonstrative. ‘How is he?’
‘The doctors have put him on precautionary antibiotics and they’re waiting for test results but they seem hopeful that it’s not meningococcal. Hopefully it’s nothing more than a fever. I really hope so. I don’t think I could handle anything more. Not on top of losing your mother and then almost losing you.’
Charli was momentarily taken aback. It was the first time her father had given any indication that past events had upset him.
‘These boys are my second chance,’ he continued.
‘At what?’
‘At being a decent father.’
‘I didn’t realise you had any regrets.’
‘I have plenty of regrets, Charlotte, my girl. I was devastated when your mother died. I completely fell apart, I had depression for a long time. I was barely coping when I met Victoria. She insists I wasn’t coping. I was drinking heavily, it wasn’t a healthy environment for the two of you. It wasn’t a happy home. I needed time to heal and to recover. To learn how to cope. We thought boarding school would give you a safer, more stable environment. I thought I’d have time to make it up to you, to explain why I’d made that decision, but the years went past and I missed my chance. I thought I’d be able to be a father to you again but you’d grown up and didn’t need me.’
‘We always needed you, Dad.’
‘I have lost a wife and lost touch with my daughters. I wish I could have my time again. I would do things differently. I love Victoria and I love the boys but I have never stopped loving you. I was distraught when your mother died, there went all my hopes and dreams for our future, but I appreciate how lucky I am to have had the love of two women in my life. Sometimes it still feels like your mother died yesterday. It’s strange to think I’ve been married to Victoria for longer than your mother and I were married.’
Charli had never thought about her father’s two marriages in terms of years of commitment. In her mind her mother was his first wife, which mentally elevated her status in Charli’s opinion, but her father was right. His second marriage had lasted much longer. She should be glad that he’d found happiness a second time. She was glad.
Maybe it was possible to love more than one person.
She turned to her father. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ When he nodded, she continued, ‘Did you love them the same or do you love Victoria differently?’
‘The love is different in a way because your mother and Victoria are different and because my life was different when I met Victoria. I didn’t think I would fall in love again, I wasn’t in the right place mentally for a long time, but when I met Victoria I knew she was my second chance and that I couldn’t let her go. I was older, wiser, and I’d learnt the hard way to make the most of my opportunities. I hadn’t expected to love again and I think I appreciate it more because of what I had already lost. But it’s not a case of loving one more than the other. I love them both, but only one of them is here.’
‘I’m glad you found love again, Dad.’
‘And what about you, my girl? Are you happy?’
‘No, not really.’ Charli shook her head as she fought back the tears that seemed perpetually too close to the surface of late. ‘I miss Patrick.’
‘Why didn’t you stay with him?’
‘I had a job to come back to.’
‘Surely you could have delayed your start date?’
‘I suppose so but I couldn’t stay. I didn’t think he could love me
the way he loved his wife.’ But listening to her father talk, maybe she’d been wrong about that. Maybe she should have given him time.
‘Do you love him?’
She nodded.
‘Have you told him that?’
‘No. I was afraid to.’
‘It’s not too late to tell him how you feel. You only get one shot at life but if you are lucky you get a second shot at love. If he’s lucky, he’ll get you.’
‘You think I should tell him how I feel?’
‘What have you got to lose?’
Her father was right. She’d already lost everything. She had nothing more to lose and everything to gain.
* * *
Wombat Gully was serene and still. The ski runs had closed for the day, the lifts were quiet, the season almost over. Most people would probably be glad for this season to end. The site of the landslide had been cleared and a pathway laid up the side of the hill, leading to the newly erected monument that marked the tragedy.
Charli negotiated the path, stopping at each bend to take in the views over the valley. The path had been built to encourage people to pause and look out, to look away from the mountain and out to the horizon. For Charli the view was a window to the future.
The memorial service was scheduled for tomorrow morning at eleven but Charli wanted to visit the memorial alone. At sunset. It seemed like the most appropriate time.
She needed some time to compose herself. Not for the memorial service but for the possibility that she might see Pat tomorrow. She had no idea if he planned to attend the service but if he wasn’t there she would go to Melbourne next. She wasn’t leaving Australia again without seeing him.
