by Lilian Darcy
Why hadn’t he mentioned this site to her?
Why hadn’t he mentioned the poem that Amber had written?
‘“I am not quite like you”,’ she had called it, and then the lines had gone on to describe feelings and tastes and day-to-day routines that were exactly like those of thousands of other young girls, interspersed with stark descriptions of things that were very different.
‘When I wake in the night, haunted by a scary dream, I scream.
But it is silent. I have my trach. My breathing does not touch my voice.’
Christina read the poem and looked at Joe and Amber until the computer screen switched to sleep mode and went dark. She didn’t know how long she might have gone on sitting there if it had stayed bright.
All night?
She knew what she wanted to do now. She just didn’t know how far Charles Wetherby would be willing to go to make it possible. She’d have to see him in the morning, as early as she could.
CHAPTER TEN
THE morning felt a lot fresher than Joe himself did as he walked across to the hospital just seven hours after he’d left it.
He had a mug of coffee in one hand and a piece of stale Danish pastry in the other, because there were too many people already in the kitchen at the doctors’ house, making breakfast, and he’d had to escape some well-meaning questions from people that he just didn’t have it in him to fob off today.
In the quiet of a Saturday morning he could hear the waves lapping gently in the cove and some parrots squabbling in the trees. There was another sound, too, that took a few seconds to penetrate his consciousness and announce its identity. It was a low throb, getting louder.
It was the rescue chopper.
He saw it rise over the top of the hospital, coming from the helipad, which wasn’t visible from where he stood. It swung out towards the dark turquoise carpet of ocean, hanging at an angle in the sky in a fashion which reminded him of how glad he was that he only ever had to go out in it on the rarest occasions—just twice, during the two years he’d been coming here.
Christina flew in it almost every week.
She was probably flying in it now.
The issue wasn’t courage, it was trust. She had more trust than he did—trust in other people’s competence, their good intentions, their strength. Trust in him, for that matter, more than he had in himself. Would he really get it remotely right with his response to this baby, who didn’t yet seem real? Yes, she had too much trust, he sometimes thought…And he felt much happier when the whirly-bird rotor-blades had levelled off parallel with the horizon and the thing was at least flying straight.
It rose higher, travelling over the water, and headed directly out to sea. The Great Barrier Reef lay in that direction, roughly thirty kilometres offshore. Less than a third of that distance away floated Wallaby Island, home to one of the Reef’s most extensive tourist resorts. This was its peak season, with holidaymakers going there for a break from the much harsher winter down south. The rescue chopper could easily be headed there, or to one of the other tourist islands further to the north or south. It had almost disappeared by the time Joe entered the main hospital building.
He started straight in on a morning round, wanting to fit it in before the inevitable call to the ED, where he would be mainly working again that day. In the paediatric ward, he found Cal Jamieson checking on Shane’s appendicectomy incision, his pain levels and his notes.
‘We’ll get him off the morphine,’ Cal told a nurse. ‘He’s looking good.’
Ben was in the next bed, his breathing further improved and his observations also better than they had been yesterday afternoon. Joe talked to his mother about giving a sedative tomorrow before they even mentioned that he’d be taking a flight home, and she nodded. ‘I think that would help. Nothing too strong, though.’
‘You don’t have to worry, Mrs Cartwell.’
He saw a couple of other people then headed in the direction of the ED. Georgie Turner collared him on the way, striding up behind him and calling his name. Her short black hair looked sleek and shiny and she had way too much energy for a single parent who regularly got called out at odd hours to bring other people’s babies into the world.
Christina’s baby, in about seven and a half months?
Would he be there? Did he want to be? Would she accept him at that point?
‘Listen, Joe, Christina was going to show Megan and her mother the room at her place this morning,’ Georgie said, ‘but she’s been called out on an emergency flight to one of the islands.’
‘Not Wallaby?’
‘No, further than that. There was a question about needing to refuel, I think, and we don’t know how long they’ll be.’
‘I saw the chopper going out,’ Joe confirmed. ‘Not that long ago.’
‘She called in a message for you, in mid-air. Apparently you know where she keeps her spare key?’
‘Yep,’ he answered stoically, while his gut turned sour.
‘Can you grab a break at some point and take Megan and her mother over there? Charles has OK’d a hospital car. He’ll give you the keys for it. There are a couple of boxes of donated gear for them to take as well. It should only take half an hour or so. They just want to look around and see if the place’ll work. But you know the house.’
He nodded, and Georgie made an apologetic face.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she continued. ‘So I’m sure Megan will love it.’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Shall I phone the unit when I’m ready?’
‘Sounds good. Thanks, Joe.’ She walked briskly back the way she’d come.
In the ED he saw a couple of patients, ordered an X-ray on one and an ultrasound on the other. Emily was floating around as well. She glanced into the almost empty waiting room when he mentioned Megan and her mother, and suggested, ‘Tell them you’ll go now. We have no one coming in, other than our chopper case, and they won’t get here for at least another few hours.’
‘So you know where they were going, do you?’
‘York Island. Fair distance.’
‘Know why?’
‘Didn’t hear so, yes, they might be ages, depending on how much they need to stabilise the patient on the ground.’
Christina could be gone for most of the day. They’d probably see each other when she got back. She would be bringing a patient in. Shark attack, near drowning, heart problem, fishing accident, it could be anything. He might not hear any detail for a while. When she got here, they’d be snapping information and questions and instructions back and forth to each other, a glance and a word or two the only personal interaction.
He’d have to watch her holding everything together when she was tired and tense. They might get separated altogether by the demands of the day. She could get called out again tonight, or he might have to assist in surgery. His flight left next morning at six, which meant getting up in the dark, tiptoeing around the doctors’ house, getting his last-minute gear together…
Hell, they might not see each other at all.
But we can’t leave it like this, he thought. I have to tell her…
What? That she wasn’t on her own? When he still didn’t know how much he could honestly promise? He still felt weighed down. And he didn’t want to lie to her.
He felt Emily’s concerned eyes fixed on him. ‘Everything OK, Joe?’
‘Yep. Fine. You’re right. Let me deal with Megan and her mother now, in case there isn’t a better chance later.’
‘Yes, because Christina is apparently keen to get it settled today. I’ll phone the unit and make sure they’re ready.’
He was told that they were, but when he got there he found that this had been an optimistic assessment. Honey was still going through the boxes of donated gear, which had been brought from Jill’s office. ‘You won’t need this for him here,’ she told her daughter.
‘I might,’ Megan said. ‘For a coming-home outfit.’
She held up the ridiculously tiny garment
and smiled at it. Both mother and daughter looked a lot happier and more relaxed than they had a few days ago.
Jackson lay sleeping nearby in his premmie cot, with its transparent sides. Megan looked at him, frowning. ‘What if he wakes up for a feed?’
‘He had a good one an hour ago.’
‘But he sometimes doesn’t go much longer than that, Mum.’ Like all new mothers, she was already the person who knew more about her baby than anyone else.
‘You have some expressed milk in the fridge,’ a nurse reassured her. ‘We can give him that.’
‘Ready?’ Joe suggested.
But Honey was still going through the last box. ‘Five minutes?’
He knew he’d better call the ED, check that this outing was still OK. He could envisage it getting extended at the other end, too. Waiting for Emily to come to the phone, he saw a slow, careful figure enter the doorway. Gown-clad, wheeling a drip stand, rather frail despite his wiry build…
Crikey, it was Jim Cooper.
No one else in the room had seen him yet.
The phone rattled in Joe’s ear and he heard Emily’s voice. ‘Problem?’
‘Just that we haven’t gone yet.’
‘That’s OK. It’s still quiet down here,’ Emily said.
‘Good. Great. Bye.’
‘Joe—?’
But he put down the phone, cutting her off, wondering if he could or should try and head off the imminent confrontation. Jim had seen his daughter. He was smiling, because he could see how good she looked. She’d been to his room to see him a couple of days ago, Joe knew, but apparently she’d acted cagey and distant, hiding behind the fact that Jim had still been pretty weak and ill at that stage. Honey had supported her daughter’s secrecy.
‘She’ll come again when you’re better,’ she’d told her husband.
‘And you’re not to try and come to see me,’ Megan had told him, but two days later he felt strong enough, and it was clearly a very innocent defiance of his wife and daughter’s prohibition.
Jim found Honey, still hovering over that wretched box of donations, and called out, ‘Love? Couldn’t think where you’d got to. Decided it was time I came to see my girl, under my own—’
He stopped.
He’d seen the baby in the clear-sided little cot.
And hospitals didn’t park a tiny newborn—one who was still attached to various bits of tubing—that close to someone who wasn’t the mother.
Five people froze.
Predictably, Honey was the first to react.
‘Just don’t upset yourself, Jim.’ She hurried forward, wringing another tiny baby garment into sweaty pleats in her hands without even knowing it was there. ‘She didn’t want to tell you. Didn’t tell me for days. She had him at the rodeo, and she thought he was stillborn. It’s a miracle he’s alive, and doing so well. He’s got a blood disorder, but it’s all right now that we know about it. The birth is why she was so ill. She’s keeping him. We’re grandparents. I know you’re going to be thrilled. A boy, Jim!’ Her tone begged him to see the baby’s existence her way. ‘There’s a boy in the family! Just don’t upset yourself!’
She put her arms around him tightly. As if she was afraid he would fall? Or afraid he’d lash out? Joe had heard he had a temper, but not that he might be violent.
He wasn’t violent.
He didn’t have the intent, or the strength.
‘Get me a chair,’ he told his wife hoarsely. ‘How could she be pregnant?’
‘She—’
‘It was the boy. Was it?’
‘Jack? The father? Of course he is!’
‘I sent him away. And his uncle sacked him. Damn that man…damn that man.’
‘Mr Cooper, let’s try to stay quiet, OK?’ Joe came in.
The man was shaking, and his breathing was shallow. He needed a bypass sooner rather than later, and he had just made his hand into a fist and pressed it against his heart—The gesture sent out warning bells.
‘Jim, are you in pain?’ Joe tried again.
‘No. No. Just…can’t get my breath. It’s nothing.’
Joe didn’t wait. There was oxygen equipment already in the room. ‘Wheelchair,’ he said to the nurse, while he found a mask and prepared the flow. ‘We’ll put him on the portable supply and get him back to his own room, where we can look after him properly.’ A minute later, they had Jim in the chair and Joe stood behind him, ready to push the wheelchair himself.
‘I’m coming, Jim,’ Honey said. She lowered her voice. ‘Megan, the house visit will have to wait.’
‘I know that. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Dr Farrelly wanted to get it settled today.’
‘Don’t fret, Mum.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk!’
Jim breathed noisily through the mask.
‘Does he realise?’ Megan continued, her distressed whisper louder than she knew. ‘Does he understand? Is that why he’s—? Does he understand that I won’t be coming home?’
‘Didn’t even get to see the little bloke properly,’ Jim complained a few minutes later, back in his own hospital bed.
‘Jim…’ Honey said.
‘I know. All right? I heard, back there with Megan, and I know this is the end. I know we can’t manage, just the two of us, and I know she won’t want to come back. Can’t come back. Not until the little fella’s stronger anyway, and by then it’ll be too late.’
‘She thinks she’s broken your heart, love. She was so scared to tell you. She wouldn’t let me talk about it, prepare you, say anything at all, and then when we saw you looking at him…She’s called him Jackson…I think she really loves the Ransome boy, Jim.’
‘Lot of good that’s going to do her, since he hasn’t shown his face in six months.’
Honey fell silent and her head drooped. ‘Yes, that’s a disappointment.’
‘We’ll put the place on the market as soon as we can. We won’t get enough for it, not nearly enough, with the state it’s in, but we can set ourselves up in town. I can get work. There’ll be something. It’s not the end of the world. Doesn’t Megan know that?’
‘Jim, she thinks she’s broken your heart.’
‘No, Honey, love,’ Jim said, his voice creaking with bone-deep fatigue. ‘That happened a long time ago.’
Joe was still finishing up an addition to Jim’s notes when Charles Wetherby arrived to see his childhood friend.
‘I heard you gave us another scare just now,’ he said.
‘Someone has to keep you on the ball, Charlie,’ Jim answered.
‘Trust me, there’s plenty happens around here to do that!’
Jim managed a half-hearted grin at Charles, but then Joe saw the expression drain from his face as he looked at the doorway. ‘You!’
Charles turned, but before he could speak, Philip Wetherby—because this had to be Philip Wetherby, even though Joe hadn’t encountered Charles’s brother before—told him, ‘I’ve been trying to catch up to you the whole way along the corridor. You move way too fast in that thing, and I’ve been driving half the night from the property. I called out, but you didn’t hear.’
‘Did Lynley send you, Philip?’
‘No. Hell, no! I thought we needed to talk about this face to face.’
‘Right. In other words, not in front of your wife?’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed with a hunted look.
‘Do you want to see me in my office?’
The younger Wetherby hesitated, giving Charles the opportunity to pounce.
‘On second thoughts, whatever you’ve got to say, say it here. It’s appropriate, with the three of us.’
‘I’ll catch you later, Charles,’ Joe said quickly, but Charles clamped a hand on his arm as he started past the wheelchair.
‘Hang about, if you don’t mind, Joe,’ the medical administrator said mildly. ‘Think it might be handy for us to have a witness to this.’
‘Sure,’ he agreed carefully.
&nb
sp; ‘Thanks.’ Charles looked up at his brother, in no way diminished by his lesser height in the chair. ‘Speak, Philip.’
Philip tightened his already narrow lips. ‘It’s pretty simple. I’m here to tell you that you win, Charles.’
Charles merely raised his eyebrows.
‘You know what I’m saying. There’s no need to force the sale. I’ll do what has to be done.’
‘Are you listening to this, Jim?’ Charles said.
‘Yeah, but I want it spelled out, if it’s what I think.’
‘I’ll grant the access to Gunya Creek. But I won’t tell Lynley the truth. That Jim didn’t pull the trigger. And no one else is to be told either. You and Jim have always agreed you were just as much to blame, horsing around, not paying any attention, calling me the gun-bearer and sticking me with the guns and all the work. I was thirteen! And I think you’re wrong that it should have been dealt with after Dad died. By then it was water under the bridge.’
‘Not for the Coopers.’
‘Do we have to?’
Charles cut his brother off. ‘You continued to exact a punishment that our father put in place at a point where it made sense for Jim and me to protect you. And, yes, I’ll admit we were protecting our own backsides, too, because we knew Dad’s retaliation might have been even more extreme if he’d known how careless we all were. He was a violent man. But when Dad died, your “standing in the community” wasn’t an excuse, Philip.’
‘Do we need to cover this ground? I’ve said I’ll do what you want, as long as my wife doesn’t have to know.’
‘Because of her “standing in the community”?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘The creek access isn’t enough. It would have been ten years ago, but it’s not any more. Wetherby Downs is going to give Jim and Honey everything they need to get back on their feet, little brother, or the sale goes ahead. Restocking, equipment, labour to ride their fences and deliver their feed, until they’re back in profit.’
‘I’ll have to work out a budget.’
