MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO

by Marion Lennox

  Abby scrubbed tears from her face, making huge streaks amid the dust and grime already covering her skin. She gulped in air, trying to get herself under control, but she was nodding. ‘He started a few weeks ago. He’s on his first school outing today and I still don’t know if...’

  As if a switch had been thrown, Abby suddenly stopped crying. She went very, very still.

  It was happening for her as well, Tom realised.

  The world had stopped spinning because it needed to adjust the tilt of its axis. That ‘something huge’ still splintering inside Tom meant that his world would never turn in quite the same way again.

  Slowly, Abby raised her gaze from Millie to Tom. Her eyes looked enormous and her face, beneath the grime, was as white as a sheet.

  ‘Oh...God...’ she whispered.

  * * *

  She had no one to blame for this but herself.

  Abby had just walked off the edge of the precipice without even looking. She’d told Tom exactly how old Jack was. Five years and a few weeks. Given this man’s intelligence, it would probably only take him two seconds to do the maths. To work out that nine months before Jack was born had been when they had been utterly in love. Unable to keep their hands off each other. Not always as careful as they could have been about protection because they had been blinded by how strongly they had felt about each other.

  As blind as she had just been, stepping—no, throwing—herself off anything remotely resembling safe ground. But finding Millie dead had been the last straw, hadn’t it, on top of the terror of the earthquake and the dreadful anxiety about Jack’s whereabouts and safety.

  The shock of seeing Tom again and the relentless punches of seeing the worst of the damage as their search progressed. Knowing with more and more clarity just how big a disaster her community and home had suffered.

  She’d snapped. Somehow it had all coalesced into grief for a pillar of her small community and her own connection with this sweet old lady. Her son’s connection.

  Tom was rising from where he’d been crouched beside her. In slow motion, as if he was trying to counter the effects of being shot with a stun gun. And when he was on his feet, he stood as still as a stone. His lips barely moved as he spoke.

  ‘Who’s Jack’s father, Abby?’

  She couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.

  He knew. Of course he knew. He just needed to hear her say the words. The way people did when someone they loved had just died. It wasn’t real until you heard the words.

  ‘It’s me, isn’t it?’

  She still couldn’t make her lips move. Or take enough of a breath to push it out and make words.

  A glance up showed a muscle twitching on Tom’s jaw. He was processing this. He was shocked, of course, but he was also...furious?

  Yes. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously controlled. Almost too quiet to hear.

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  Now Abby could move. She pushed herself to her feet.

  ‘I tried to.’

  A snort escaped Tom. ‘Funny...I don’t remember that.’

  ‘You weren’t there. You...were off on a mission.’

  It had been the final straw on that occasion. Confirmation of why their relationship could never have worked. Why it could have ruined more than one life if Abby had gone through with her intention to tell Tom he was going to be a father.

  ‘Oh...so you couldn’t have waited an hour or so?’

  ‘I... You... It was after we’d broken up, Tom.’

  He turned a glare on Abby that made her flinch. ‘And that makes it okay? To pretend that you were going to tell me? Or maybe you did turn up at the base. After you saw the chopper take off, perhaps? When you knew I wouldn’t be there?’

  That wasn’t fair. Abby opened her mouth to snap that he could go back and check the visitors’ sign-in log if he thought she was lying but she didn’t get a chance to speak. There was an ominous rumble and the ground began to shake with the biggest aftershock yet.

  Abby started to turn her head to look for something to shelter under but felt herself being grabbed before she had time to think, let alone spot something. Her feet left the floor and, even as things rattled and more bricks came in through the damaged roof, Tom was moving at speed.

  The aftershock had stopped by the time he reached the street but he didn’t let go of Abby. He let her put her feet on the ground but kept her pinned with one arm, looking around and up as he assessed their safety, pulling her out of range of anything that could come loose and fall from roof level.

  A four-wheel-drive vehicle was coming up the street. Mike Henley was driving.

  ‘You guys all right?’

  A burst of something like hysterical laughter almost escaped Abby. All right? Millie was lying dead in the shop they’d just escaped from. She could have just been killed herself. She was terrified. She didn’t know where her son was or if he was all right. Tom had just learned that he was a father. Jack was their son.

  No. It was inconceivable that either of them were ‘all right’ at this moment.

  ‘I’m on my way to check the airstrip after that aftershock. There’s an Iroquois on the way in. They’ve got army troops on board and a couple of structural engineers who can assess buildings properly. Oh, and, Abby?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The crew of a fishing boat spotted the school bus. It’s trapped on the cliff road between a couple of big slips. They’ve seen a bunch of kids and adults waving at them so we can assume everyone’s okay. Including your Jack.’

  ‘Oh...oh...’ Abby’s legs were threatening to give way. She was shaking all over and suddenly Tom’s arm holding her up was very, very welcome. ‘Oh, thank God...’

  ‘Doesn’t look like there’s any way to clear the slips and get them out tonight but they’re talking about using a chopper to drop some food and blankets to get them through the night. Right... Gotta go.’ Mike gunned the engine. ‘You two should stop for a break soon. There’s a lot of teams ready to take over.’

  One of those teams was just down the street, in fact. In front of the hardware store where Tom had left the painted message about someone being trapped. They weren’t trapped any longer. A man’s body, strapped to a back board, was being carefully lifted over the mangled iron and other debris.

  Tom and Abby hadn’t even scratched the surface of the conversation they needed to have but they weren’t going to get a chance to continue it right now, either. Tom’s radio crackled into life.

  ‘Medic needed. Outside the hardware store on main street. Man having trouble breathing.’

  Another voice came on that sounded like Frank. ‘I’m five minutes away.’

  Tom keyed the button on the radio. ‘We’re on to it.’ He’d let Abby go to reach for his radio but it wasn’t a problem. Her legs were steady now.

  Jack was safe. He wouldn’t even see anything terrible because, by the time the slips were cleared and the children rescued, any bodies or badly injured people would be out of public view. There was nothing Abby could do to speed up his rescue so she could direct all her energy to helping Tom. And with the fear about Jack vanquished, she was aware of a new burst of energy, which was just as well seeing as she had to trot to keep up with him.

  He wasn’t looking at her and seemed to be occupied in getting his backpack off without slowing down the pace. Was he still furious with her? Of course he was, but having a medical emergency to deal with meant that they wouldn’t be having any personal conversations any time soon.

  The longer it took the better, as far as Abby was concerned. It was a conversation to be dreaded, that was for sure. Except, curiously, she was aware of a trickle of relief that the truth was out. The burden of guilt had been there from the moment she’d left the rescue base that da
y without having spoken to Tom, and it had grown, bit by bit, over the years. Grown faster in the last few weeks since Jack had started school because most of the other children had dads and he was starting to ask some pointed questions about why he didn’t.

  Awareness of any personal sense of relief evaporated as they reached the USAR crew, who had rescued the trapped victim from the hardware store.

  ‘You know him?’ Tom asked Abby.

  ‘Of course. It’s Harley. Owner of the shop.’ Abby crouched beside the man and touched his shoulder. ‘Harley? Can you hear me?’

  Harley’s eyes opened. So did his mouth and he tried to speak but he was struggling to breathe. Beside her, Tom was fitting the earpieces of his stethoscope but still looking up.

  ‘What the story?’ he asked.

  ‘Chest and leg injuries, from what we could see. He was under the counter but a steel beam had come down on top of that. Took a bit of digging out and his breathing seemed to get worse pretty fast after we pulled him out.’

  Tom used the shears he carried clipped to his belt to cut clear what remained of Harley’s thick shirt. He listened to his chest for only moments. ‘Find the chest drain kit, would you, Abby? He’s got a tension pneumothorax.’

  The chest injuries were allowing air to get into the wrong places, compressing Harley’s lungs. It could stop his heart functioning if they couldn’t relieve the pressure. Abby opened what she recognised as the airway roll in Tom’s pack and found the wide-bore needle she knew he would need. By the time he had a pair of gloves on, she had an alcohol wipe opened and ready for him to grab, as well as the three-way stopcock and tape that would be needed to complete the procedure.

  ‘Thanks.’ Counting down the rib spaces, Tom cleaned the area the needle would penetrate. ‘Can you check his leg injury and get a blood pressure while I do this?’

  Abby used the shears to cut Harley’s trousers. ‘Femoral fracture,’ she reported.

  ‘I don’t carry a traction splint.’

  ‘It’s not mid-shaft.’

  ‘Okay. How ’bout starting an IV so we can get some pain relief on board?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They were working in far from ideal circumstances with their patient on a plastic board in the rubble of his collapsed shop. Their resources were also limited and people around them were in a hurry to move on, so there was unspoken pressure, yet to Abby it felt as if she and Tom were working together as a smooth team. She reached around him to get what she needed from the pack and paused in what she was doing to comfort Harley when he groaned loudly.

  Tom had punctured the space between Harley’s ribs and advanced the cannula far enough to release the pressure of the air filling his chest cavity. Almost immediately his breathing improved. Abby had the tourniquet on his arm and slid a cannula into place as Tom attached the three-way stopcock to the chest cannula and taped it into position. He might be busy with his own task but he wasn’t missing anything Abby was doing.

  ‘Nice work,’ he murmured, as Abby flushed the IV access now established in Harley’s arm. ‘Could you draw up some morphine?’

  Of course she could. The praise was remarkably sweet and with Harley now in no immediate danger thanks to their intervention, she could feel proud of what she and Tom had just achieved by working together. She’d only ever done this kind of work in the safe environment of an emergency department. Was this what his job was like every day? Stressful procedures under trying conditions to save lives?

  As soon as Harley was stable, arrangements were made to move him up to the hospital.

  ‘He should probably get a proper chest drain inserted before they fly him out,’ Tom said. ‘Either that or keep to a low altitude.’

  The light was starting to fade noticeably by the time Harley was being taken away.

  ‘Take a break,’ one of the USAR team advised. ‘You’re not needed urgently right now and none of us know how long the night’s going to be.’

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Tom asked Abby.

  ‘I skipped lunch,’ she admitted. ‘I was a bit nervous about the big clinic I had on for this afternoon. And I didn’t eat much breakfast because I was a bit on edge about...about...’

  ‘Jack’s first school outing?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Tom said nothing more. Instead, he steered Abby away from the hardware shop. Away from the street, even, towards a small grassed area near the Fat Duck that had a child’s play area and a bench seat for supervising adults. He sat down and Abby had no choice other than to sit down beside him and eat the muesli bar he produced from a pocket.

  ‘Hardly ideal,’ Tom said wryly. ‘And I probably shouldn’t be taking the time for personal issues but if we’re on a break, I can’t see the harm. And I really do want to know. I think you owe me that much, Abby.’

  Abby’s heart thumped. Was he going to suggest she was lying again? About Jack’s paternity, perhaps? That would hurt. Badly.

  ‘Know what, exactly?’

  ‘Why you didn’t tell me.’

  They were sitting side by side. Close enough to touch but there was a gap between them. Abby stared straight ahead of her, her gaze fixed, unseeing, on the child’s slide. Where they were, and the emergency situation they were in the middle of, seemed to fade into the background. Abby mentally stepped back in time. To another situation that had been just as tense in its own way.

  ‘I did intend to,’ she said quietly. ‘I went to the hospital but they said you’d discharged yourself. Against doctor’s orders. They said you’d be at home, that it would be a couple of weeks before you were signed off as fit to fly, so I went to your apartment. When I found nobody was home, I decided you’d be hanging out at the base. Not the ideal place to break news like that but you hadn’t returned any of my calls.’

  She heard Tom’s breath escape in an angry kind of hiss. ‘You never left any messages.’

  ‘Well...now you know why.’

  ‘No.’ The word was clipped. ‘I can’t say I do.’

  Abby had to turn and look at him, then, because she didn’t understand. She encountered a dark and determined gaze. Tom was still angry. He wanted answers. And he deserved the truth, didn’t he? He was right. She owed him that much. A lot more, probably, because...he’d given her Jack, hadn’t he?

  ‘I don’t know why you didn’t wait. Why you didn’t make any more of an effort to tell me.’

  ‘It was because you were off on a mission,’ Abby said. ‘When your doctors must have told you it wasn’t a good idea after you’d had a punctured lung. It was then I knew I...I just couldn’t tell you.’

  Abby had to bite her bottom lip hard to stop tears coming. Good grief, she seemed to be crying at the drop of a hat today. Emotional overload. How unfair was it to have so many huge things in her life crashing around her at the same time? She had no idea whether her little house was still standing or when she would get to cuddle Jack again. Seeing Tom after all these years would have been quite enough of a shock all by itself.

  Cuddling Jack... Oh, Lord... The relief of hearing that he was safe was wearing off now. Abby was desperate to take her son into her arms and hold him tightly. So tightly he could never wriggle free and get into danger ever again.

  Yet again she had to fight back tears. The physical activity on top of the totally shocking emotional roller-coaster she was on was taking its toll. Abby felt too exhausted to take any notice of the alarms ringing in her head as she crossed barriers that had been there for a very, very long time.

  ‘I never told you much about my childhood, did I?’

  ‘I know you lost your parents early and that you were brought up by your grandparents in a little country town.’ Tom turned his head to survey what had been Kaimotu village. Was he thinking that she’d come to a place like this because it had reminded her of where she’d been rais
ed?

  He was closer to the truth than he realised.

  ‘My parents were both mountaineers,’ she told him. ‘Famous for their achievements. They once did seven of the world’s hardest climbs in a seven-month period. They wrote a book about it.... Lucky Number Seven.’

  ‘And that’s how they died? In a mountaineering accident?’

  ‘Yep. They both got swept away by an avalanche. Their bodies were never recovered.’

  ‘God, that’s awful. How old were you?’

  ‘Nine.’

  Tom was looking at her. She could see the sympathy but she could also see a question mark. What did this have to do with her not telling him he was going to be a father?

  ‘I was really proud of Mum and Dad,’ Abby went on. ‘I absolutely adored them but as I got older I began to understand how dangerous their passion was. I’d beg them not to go. And when they did, which was at least once a year, I’d stay with Gran and worry myself sick that something bad was going to happen.’ Her voice wobbled and began to fade. ‘That they’d never come back...’

  It seemed perfectly natural that Tom take hold of her hand and hold it. Squeeze it, even.

  ‘But...’ He stopped himself after the single word, but it was enough for Abby to realise he still didn’t get it.

  ‘You were off on a mission, Tom. You lived for the danger of your job—just like my parents lived for the danger of the mountains. You obviously still do. When I found out you’d gone out on a job that day, I suddenly realised what it would be like if I told you that I was pregnant. If you decided that you wanted to try and make things work, maybe. That you might want to be a father.’

  She could feel the shock wave through her hand just before Tom released it abruptly.

  ‘Might want to be a father? What the hell is that supposed to mean? That I wouldn’t be prepared to take the responsibility? That I wasn’t capable of stepping up to the mark?’