MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO

by Marion Lennox

  She smiled at Ginny, a warm, maternal smile.

  Friends, Ginny thought, and tried to smile back. Friends felt...good.

  So much for isolation, she decided as she tried to join in the cheerful banter around the table, but at least she’d left the white mists and orchestras behind her.

  * * *

  Ben walked her out to the car. He helped her buckle the sleeping Button into her newly acquired child seat, and then stood back and looked at her in the moonlight.

  ‘We tried to blackmail you,’ he said softly. ‘The lawyer and then me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I... You didn’t.’

  ‘I manipulated you into helping this afternoon.’

  ‘I did that all by myself.’

  ‘Sort of,’ he said wryly. ‘I know how conscience works. Mrs Guttering met me in the supermarket last week and started complaining about her toe. Before I knew it she had her boots off and I was inspecting her ingrown toenail between the ice cream and frozen peas. How do you say no? I haven’t learned yet.’

  ‘And yet I have,’ she said, trying to smile, trying to keep it light, as he had, and he put a hand out to cup her chin.

  She flinched and moved back and he frowned.

  ‘Ginny, it’s okay. Saying no is your right.’

  ‘Th-thank you.’

  The lights were on inside. The kids were still around the table. Someone had turned the telly on and laughter sounded out through the window.

  Kids. Home.

  She glanced away from Ben, who was looking at her in concern. She looked into the car at Button and something inside her firmed. Button. Her stepdaughter.

  Out of all of this mess—one true thing. She would focus on Button. Nothing else.

  ‘You want her,’ Ben said on a note of discovery, and she nodded, mutely.

  What had she let herself in for? she thought, but she knew she wanted it. The moment she’d seen that clause in James’s will...

  When she and James had married, a baby had been high on her list of priorities, but James hadn’t been keen. ‘Let’s put it on hold, babe, until our careers are established. The biological clock doesn’t start winding down until thirty-five. We have years.’

  But for Ginny, in a marriage that had been increasingly isolating, a baby had seemed a huge thing, something to love, something to hold, a reason to get up in the morning.

  As medicine wasn’t?

  It should be, she thought. There’d never been a time when she hadn’t thought she’d be a doctor. Her parents had expected it of her. She’d expected it of herself and she’d enjoyed her training.

  She’d loved her first year as an intern, working in Accident and Emergency, helping people in the raw, but it had never been enough.

  ‘Of course you’ll specialise.’ That had been her father, and James, too, of course, plus the increasingly ambitious circle of friends they’d moved in. ‘You’d never just want to be a family doctor. You’re far too good for that, Ginny.’

  She was clever. She’d passed the exams. She’d been well on the way to qualifying in anaesthetics when James had got sick.

  And after that life had been a blur—James’s incredulity and anger that he of all people could be struck down, James searching for more and more interventionist cures, the medical fraternity around them fighting to the end.

  ‘I should have frozen some sperm,’ James had told her once, but she’d known he hadn’t meant it—he’d never considered it. The idea that he was going to die had been inconceivable.

  She’d watched as medical technology had taken her husband over, as he’d fought, fought, fought. She’d watched and experienced his fury. At the end he’d died undergoing yet another procedure, another intervention.

  She remembered standing by his bedside at the end, thinking she would have liked to bring him here to this island, to have him die without tubes and interventions, to lie on the veranda and look out to sea...

  James would have thought that was crazy.

  ‘Can you tell me why you’ve decided to give up medicine?’ Ben asked, and she shrugged.

  ‘It couldn’t save James.’

  ‘Is that what you hoped? That you could save everyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then...’

  ‘There was too much medicine,’ she said flatly. ‘Too much medicine and not enough love. I’m over it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as the silence stretched out and she stared out at the moonlight to the sea beyond—the sea was never far away on this island—and tried to figure where her life could go from here.

  ‘We will find another doctor,’ he said gently. ‘This need is short term.’

  ‘Are you still saying I should help?’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t. You were great today.’

  ‘I need to look after Button.’

  ‘That’s not why you’re refusing. You know it’s not.’

  ‘I don’t need to give you any other reason.’

  She looked into the back seat again, at the little girl curled into the child seat, sucking one thumb and hugging Ben’s disreputable Shuffles with her spare arm. Ailsa and Abby had presented her with a dozen soft toys, from glossy teddies to pretty dolls, and Button had considered with care and gone straight for Ben’s frayed turtle with one eye missing.

  She looked like James, a little, and the thought was strange and unsettling, but even as she thought it Button wriggled further into her car seat and sighed and she thought, no, she looked like Button. She looked like herself and she’d go forward with no shadows at all. Please.

  Ben was smiling a little, watching her watch Button hugging Shuffles. ‘Mum never throws anything out.’

  ‘You’d never have let her throw Shuffles out?’ she asked incredulously, and amazingly he grinned, tension easing.

  ‘Maybe not. Actually not. Over my dead body not.’

  ‘Yet you let Button have him.’

  ‘Button will love him as Shuffles needs to be loved,’ he said, and then he looked at her—he really looked at her. ‘Will you love her?’ he said, and she stared at Button for a long, long moment and then gave a sharp, decisive nod.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if her parents reclaim her?’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘If they do?’

  ‘Then I’ll cope,’ she said. ‘Everyone copes. You know that. Like us thinking we were in love when we were seventeen. You move on.’

  ‘Button needs a greater commitment than we were prepared to give,’ he said, and she flushed.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’

  He gazed at her gravely, reading her face, seeing...what? How vulnerable she felt? How alone? How terrified to be landed with a little girl she knew nothing about?

  Kids with Down’s had medical problems to contend with, as well as learning difficulties. Heart problems, breathing problems, infections that turned nasty fast...

  She’d cope. Out of all the mess that had been her relationship with James—his betrayal, his fury that she be the one to survive, his death—this little one was what was left.

  James’s death hadn’t left her desolate but it had left her...empty. Medicine was no longer a passion. Nothing was a passion.

  If she could love this child...

  But nothing else, she told herself fiercely. Nothing and no one else. She’d seen how fickle love was. Her parents’ relationship had been a farce. James’s professed love had been a lie, leading to bleakness and heartbreak. And even Ben... He’d said he loved her at seventeen but he’d found someone else that same summer.

  ‘You moved on, too,’ he said mildly, which brought her up with a jolt.

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t know how not to,’ he said o
btusely, but she knew what he meant. That was the problem. She’d always guessed what he was going to say before he said it and it worked both ways.

  ‘Then don’t look at me,’ she snapped, and then caught herself. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean...’

  ‘I know what you mean.

  ‘Ben...’

  He smiled wryly and held up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay, I’m mentally closing my eyes here. Tomorrow afternoon, then? One o’clock?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ginny...’

  ‘No!’ She hesitated, feeling bad. Feeling trapped. ‘In an emergency...’

  ‘Isn’t a host of panicked islanders an emergency?’

  ‘Tell the islanders Squid has something obtuse like delusional encephalitis. Lock him in your quarantine ward until he starts prophesying untold riches instead of earthquakes.’

  He grinned at that. ‘It’d need back-up medical opinion to confine him. You’ll sign the certificate?’

  She smiled as well, but only faintly.

  ‘I can’t sign,’ she said gently. ‘I don’t have New Zealand registration and I don’t intend to get it.’

  ‘Not if...?’

  ‘No.’

  He gazed at her for a long, long moment, reading her face, and she shifted from foot to foot under his gaze. He knew her too well, this man, and she didn’t like it.

  ‘Ginny, if I’d known you were having such an appalling time...’ he said at last.

  ‘I wasn’t. Don’t.’

  ‘I should have written.’

  ‘I told you not to.’

  ‘And I listened,’ he said obtusely. ‘How dumb was that?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you’re home now. There’s no need for letters, but I won’t pressure you. I’ll cope. Meanwhile, just see if you can open up a little. Let the island cure you.’

  ‘I’m not broken. I’ve just...grown up, that’s all.’

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly deathly serious. ‘Even Button. Cuddle her lots, Guinevere Koestrel, because growing up is hard to do.’

  * * *

  It was a night to think about but Ginny didn’t think. She didn’t think because she was so tired that by the time she hit the pillow her eyes closed all by themselves, and when she woke up a little hand was brushing through her hair, gently examining her.

  It was morning and she was a mother.

  She’d taken Button with her into her parents’ big bed, fearful that the little girl would wake up and be afraid, but she didn’t seem afraid.

  She was playing with Ginny’s hair and Ginny lay and let the sensations run through her, a tiny girl, unafraid, sleeping beside her, totally dependent on her, bemused by her mass of red curls.

  She hadn’t had a haircut since James had died—she hadn’t been bothered—but now she thought she wouldn’t. James had liked it cropped, but Ben...

  She’d had long hair when Ben had known her. Ben had liked it long.

  Ben...

  It was strange, she thought. She’d been such good friends with Ben, but she’d barely thought of him for years.

  She didn’t want to think of him now. The sensations he engendered scared her. She’d fought so hard to be self-contained, and in one day...

  It wasn’t his fault she’d been landed with Button, she told herself, but she knew the sensations that scared her most had nothing to do with Button.

  Button...Button was here and now. Button was her one true thing.

  She found a brush and they took turns brushing each other’s hair, a simple enough task but one Button found entrancing. Ginny enjoyed it, too, but she didn’t enjoy it enough to stop thinking about Ben. To stop feeling guilty that she’d refused to help.

  If she’d agreed... She wasn’t sure about Australian doctors working in New Zealand but she suspected there’d be no problem. She might even be able to do more than write scripts.

  She’d thought she wasn’t missing medicine but yesterday, watching the diverse group of islanders come through her door, she’d thought...

  She’d thought...

  Maybe she shouldn’t think, she told herself. The thing to do now was just whatever came next. It was her turn to brush Button’s hair.

  She brushed and it felt good. Making Button smile felt good. Sharing her home with this little girl felt....right.

  She thought of last night, of Ailsa’s table, and she thought homes were meant to hold more than one.

  Button was winding her curls around her fingers. ‘Red,’ she said in satisfaction.

  ‘Carrots,’ she said, and Button considered—and then giggled.

  ‘Carrots.’

  Family, Ginny thought, and then suddenly found herself thinking of Abby, Ben’s clinical nurse.

  She seemed lovely. She was a single mum and a competent nurse. She worked beside Ben, and his parents obviously cared for her.

  Good. Great, she told herself. It was lovely that he had a lady who was so obviously right for him.

  Wasn’t it?

  Of course it was, she told herself harshly, and then it was her turn to brush so she needed to focus on something that wasn’t Ben and Abby.

  For there was no need to think of anything past Button and the vineyard.

  No need at all.

  * * *

  Ben woke early and thought about Ginny. He should think about Abby, he told himself. His family had been matchmaking with every ounce of coercion they could manage. Abby was lovely. She was haunted a bit by her past but she was a gorgeous woman and a true friend.

  As Ginny had been a friend?

  See, there was the problem. One hot day in his eighteenth year Ben had stopped thinking of Ginny as a friend. They’d been surfing. It had been a sweltering day so there’d been no need for wetsuits. They’d waited, lying at the back of the swell for the perfect wave, and when it had come they’d caught it together.

  They’d surfed in side by side, the perfect curve, power, beauty, translucent blue all around them.

  The wave had sunk to nothing in the shallows and they’d sunk as well, rolling off their boards to lie in the shallows.

  Her long, lithe body had touched his. Skin against skin...

  He’d kissed her and he’d known he would never forget that kiss. It had him still wanting to touch her after all these years. Still unable to keep his hands away from her.

  What he felt for Abby was friendship, pure and simple. But Ginny... Seeing her today, spending time with her, watching her care for Button...

  Yeah, the hormones were still there.

  Hormones, however, could be controlled. Must be controlled.

  ‘There should be pills,’ he told himself, and then thought there probably were.

  Anti-love potions?

  Except he didn’t need them. It was true he’d got over his adolescent lust. He’d had other girlfriends, moved on.

  Out of sight, out of mind? Definitely. He’d had a few very nice girlfriends. Nothing serious, but fun.

  The problem was that Ginny wasn’t out of sight now and the physical attraction had slammed straight back...

  But the class thing still held true. He remembered that final night, in his shabby suit, Ginny dressed as if she’d just come off the Paris catwalks, and he remembered her gentle smile.

  Impossible.

  Yeah, so class, social standing had been important then, he told himself. Not so much now.

  But then there were her ghosts. Big ones, he thought. A guy who’d betrayed her? A past that made her want to give up medicine? He didn’t know it all. He could only guess.

  If he wanted her...

  What was he about, still wanting her?

  He didn’t, he told himself. This was nostalgia speaking, surely.

  ‘
Get over it,’ he told himself harshly. ‘She’s rich, independent and wants nothing to do with you. She doesn’t want to be a doctor any more and she can surely afford to do what she likes. It’s her call. Leave her alone. One haunted society doctor who doesn’t want to be a doctor at all—no and no and no.’

  * * *

  The week wore on.

  Down on the docks, Squid’s doomsday forebodings were increasing rather than fading.

  ‘She’ll be a big one. I’m telling you, she’ll be a big one.’

  Ben thought longingly of Ginny’s suggestion of quarantine and locks and keys and thought he could almost justify it.

  But despite Squid’s doom-mongering, the islanders were calming down. They were growing accustomed to his prophecy; starting to laugh about it. The urgent medical need faded.

  He received a couple of applications for doctors to take Catherine’s place, but neither of them was prepared to come to the island for an interview. What sort of commitment was that? he thought, trying to figure out how he could find time to take the ferry to Auckland and interview them.

  Maybe Ginny could help.

  Maybe he couldn’t ask her.

  A couple of days after their dinner, she booked Button into the clinic, brought her in and together he and Ginny gave the little girl a complete medical assessment. That was weird, a mixture of personal and medical. It made him feel...

  Like he didn’t want to feel.

  ‘You haven’t changed your mind?’ he asked, labelling blood samples to send to the mainland for path. testing. He was...they both were...a bit concerned about Button’s heart. Heart conditions were common in Down’s kids. He thought he could hear a murmur. There was nothing about a murmur in her medical records but Ginny thought she could hear one, too.

  ‘Button needs me,’ she said simply, and it was true, but it worked both ways, he thought. He could see how much she cared for the little girl already.

  He looked at them both, Button playing happily with Shuffles, calmly accepting his ministrations, seemingly unperturbed that her life had been turned upside down—and he looked at Ginny’s pale, strained face.

  ‘Maybe you need Button more than she needs you,’ he said gently.