Falling for Her Wounded Hero

by Marion Lennox

  Tom checked on her fifteen minutes after he’d shown her to her bedroom. He knocked lightly and then opened the door a sliver. He’d thought if she was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, he could organise music or maybe a talking book.

  She was deeply asleep. Her soft brown curls were splayed out over the pillows and one of her hands was out from under the sheets, stretched as if in supplication.

  She hadn’t closed the curtains. In the moonlight her look of appalling fatigue had faded.

  She looked at peace.

  He stood and looked at her for a long moment, fighting a stupid but almost irresistible urge to stoop over the bed and hold her. Protect her.

  It was because she was family, he told himself, but he knew it wasn’t.

  Impending tragedy? Not that either, he thought. In his years as a country doctor he’d pretty much seen it all. Experience didn’t make him immune. When this community hurt, he hurt, but he could handle it.

  He wasn’t sure he could handle this woman’s hurt.

  And it wasn’t being helpful, staring down at her in the moonlight. It might even be construed as creepy. Like father, like son? He gave himself a fast mental shake, backed out and closed the door.

  He headed to his study. Tasha had handed her medical file to him diffidently back at the surgery. ‘If you’re going to be our advocate you need to know the facts.’

  So he hit the internet, searching firstly for the combination of the problems in Emily’s heart and then on the background of the paediatric cardiologist who had her in his charge.

  The information made him feel ill. He was trawling the internet for hope, and he couldn’t find it.

  He rang a friend of a friend, a cardiologist in the States. He rang another in London.

  There was no joy from either.

  In the end he headed back out to the veranda. This was a great old house, slightly ramshackle, built of ancient timber with a corrugated-iron roof and a veranda that ran all the way around. It was settled back from the dunes, overlooking the sea. The house had belonged to his grandparents and then his mother. It was a place of peace but it wasn’t giving him peace now.

  This child was what...his half-niece? He’d scarcely known Paul and he’d only just met Tasha. Why should this prognosis be so gut-wrenching?

  He couldn’t afford to get emotional, he told himself. Tasha needed him to be clear-headed, an advocate, someone who could stand back and see the situation dispassionately.

  Maybe she should find someone else.

  There wasn’t anyone else—or maybe there was, but suddenly he knew that even if there was he wouldn’t relinquish the role.

  He wanted to be by her side.

  Her image flooded back, the pale face on the pillow, the hand stretched out...

  It was doing his head in.

  It was three in the morning and he had house calls scheduled before morning’s clinic.

  ‘That’s the first thing to organise,’ he said out loud, trying to find peace in practicality. At least that was easy. Mary and Chris were a husband-and-wife team, two elderly doctors who’d moved to Cray Point in semi-retirement. They’d helped out in an emergency before and he knew they would now.

  ‘Because this is family,’ he said out loud, and the thought was strange.

  The woman sleeping in his guest room, the woman who looked past the point of exhaustion, the woman who was twisting his heart in a way he didn’t understand...was family?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eighteen months later...

  THE SURF WAS EXTRAORDINARY. It was also dangerous. The wind had changed ten minutes ago, making the sea choppy and unpredictable.

  The morning’s swells had enticed every surfer in the district to brave the winter’s chill, but a sudden wind change had caught them by surprise. The wind was now catching the waves as the swell rolled out again, with force that had wave smashing against wave.

  Most surfers had opted for safety and headed for shore, but not Tom. There were three teenagers who hadn’t given up yet, three kids he knew well. Alex, James and Rowan were always egging themselves on, pushing past the limits of sensible.

  As the wind had changed he’d headed over to them. ‘Time to get out, boys,’ he’d told them. ‘This surf’s pushing into the reef.’

  ‘This is just getting exciting,’ Alex had jeered. ‘You go home, old man. Leave the good stuff for us.’

  They were idiots, but they were kids and he was worried. He’d backed off, staying behind the breakers while he waited for them to see sense.

  Maybe he was getting old.

  He was thirty-six, which wasn’t so old in the scheme of things. Susie was coming to dinner tonight and Susie was gorgeous. She was thirty-seven, a divorcee with a couple of kids, but she looked and acted a whole lot younger.

  If she was here she’d be pushing him to ride the waves, he thought, instead of sitting out here like a wuss.

  He glanced at the kids, who were still hoping for a clean wave. Idiots.

  Was it safe to leave them? He still had to walk up to the headland before dinner, to take this week’s photograph for Tasha.

  And that set him thinking. He’d promised the photographs but were they still needed? Was anything still needed? She didn’t say. He tried to write emails that would connect as a friend, but her responses were curt to the point of non-existent.

  Maybe he reminded her of a pain that was almost overwhelming.

  Maybe he was doing it for himself.

  For Tom had stayed at Tasha’s side for all of Emily’s short life and it still seemed natural to keep tending her grave. In the few short days he’d helped care for the baby girl, she’d twisted her way around his heart.

  But if Emily’s death still hurt him, how was Tasha doing? She never said.

  Suddenly, lying out behind the breakers, overseeing idiots taking risks, he had a ridiculous urge to take the next plane and find out.

  Which was crazy. He was Tasha’s link to her baby, nothing more, and she probably no longer wanted that.

  But then he needed to stop thinking of Tasha.

  A massive swell was building behind him, and the wind was swirling. He glanced towards the shore and saw the wave that had just broken was surging back from the beach. It was almost at a right angle to the wave coming in.

  But the teenagers weren’t looking at the beach. They were staring over their shoulders, waiting for the incoming wave.

  ‘No!’ He yelled with all the power he could muster. ‘It’ll take you onto the reef. No!’

  The two boys nearest heard. Alex and James. They faltered and let the wave power under them.

  But Rowan either hadn’t heard or hadn’t wanted to hear. He caught the wave with ease and let its power sweep him forward.

  It was too late to yell again, for the outgoing wave was heading inexorably for them all. For Tom and Alex and James it was simply a matter of head down, hold fast, ride through it. For Rowan, though... He was upright on the board when the walls of water smashed together.

  The reef was too close. Rowan was under water, caught by his ankle rope, dragged by the sheer force of the waves.

  He was on the reef.

  Tom put his head down and headed straight for him.

  * * *

  There was no email.

  Every Sunday since she’d returned to England Tom had sent an email, and there wasn’t one now.

  At first she wasn’t bothered. Tom was a lone medical practitioner. Things happened. He’d send it later.

  He didn’t...and so she went to bed feeling empty.

  Which was stupid.

  It had been eighteen months since Emily’s death. She’d left Australia as soon as the formalities were over, desperate to put the pain behind her. She hadn’t h
ad the energy to head back to her work with Médicins Sans Frontières. Instead she’d taken a job in an emergency department in London and tried to drown herself in her job.

  Mostly it was okay. Mostly she got to the end of the day thinking she could face the next.

  And Tom’s emails helped. He sent one every Sunday, short messages with a little local gossip, snippets of his life, his latest love interest, any interesting cases he’d treated. And at the end he always attached a photograph of Emily’s grave.

  Sometimes the grave was rain-washed, sometimes it was bathed in sunshine, but it was always covered in wildflowers and backed by the sea. He’d promised this on the day of the funeral and he’d kept his word. ‘I’ll look after this for you, Tasha. I’ll look after it for Emily and I’ll always make sure you can see it.’

  It hurt but still she wanted it. She usually sent a curt thank you back and felt guilty that she couldn’t do better.

  For Tom had been wonderful, she conceded. He’d been with her every step of the way during that appalling time.

  It had been Tom who’d intervened when various specialists had decreed Emily needed to be in ICU, saying that spending time with her mother would decrease her tiny life span. Tom had simply looked at them and they’d backed off.

  It had been Tom who’d organised discreet, empathic photographers, who’d put together her most treasured possession—an album of a perfect, beautiful baby being held with love.

  It had been Tom who’d taken her back to Cray Point, who’d stood beside her during a heartbreaking burial and then let her be, to sit on the veranda and stare out at the horizon for as long as she’d needed. He’d been there when she’d felt like talking and had left her alone when she’d needed to be alone.

  And when, three weeks after Emily’s death, she’d woken one morning and said she needed to go back to London, she needed to go back to work, he’d driven her to the airport and he’d hugged her goodbye.

  She’d felt as if leaving him had been ripping yet another part of her life away.

  But his emails had come every Sunday, and he was seemingly not bothered that she could hardly respond.

  ‘So what?’ she demanded of herself when there was still no email the next morning. ‘Tom was there when you needed him but it’s been eighteen months. You can’t expect him to photograph a grave for the rest of his life.’

  Could she move on, too?

  And with that came another thought. The idea had seeped into her consciousness a couple of months ago. It was stupid. She surely wasn’t brave enough to do it, but once it had seeded in her brain the longing it brought with it wouldn’t let her alone.

  Could she try for another baby?

  What would Tom think? she wondered, and her instinctive question was enough to make her stop walking and blink.

  ‘Tom’s not in the equation,’ she said out loud, and the people around her cast her curious glances.

  She shook her head and kept going. Of course Tom wasn’t in the equation.

  ‘It’s good that the contact’s finally over,’ she told herself, but then she thought of Emily’s grave at Cray Point and knew that part of her heart would always be there.

  With or without Tom Blake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Six weeks later...

  TODAY HAD BEEN an exhausting shift in the emergency department of her London hospital. The hospital was on the fringe of a poor socio-economic district, where unemployment was rife and where the young didn’t have enough to do. The combination was a recipe for disaster and the disasters often ended up in Tasha’s care.

  She’d had two stabbings this shift. She was emotionally wiped—but, then, she thought as she changed to go home, she wanted to be emotionally wiped. She wanted to go home exhausted enough to sleep.

  She’d hardly slept for weeks. Why?

  Was it because the emails had stopped?

  It was her own fault, she thought. She hadn’t made it clear she was grateful, because a part of her wasn’t. Tom’s emails were a jagged reminder of past pain. She didn’t want to remember—but neither did she want to forget.

  And now Tom had obviously decided it was time to move on. She should be over it.

  Could she ever be over it? She stared at her reflection in the change-room mirror and let her thoughts take her where they willed. How to move on?

  Part of her ached for another baby, but did she have the courage?

  ‘Tasha? You have visitors.’ Ellen, the nurse administrator, put her nose around the door. ‘Two ladies are here to see you. They arrived two hours ago. They wouldn’t let me disturb you but said as soon as you finished your shift could I let you know. I’ve popped them into the counselling room with tea and biccies. They seem nice.’

  ‘Nice?’

  Emergency departments saw many tragedies. Often family members came in, days, weeks, sometimes months after the event to talk through what had happened. Ellen usually pre-empted contact by finding the patient file and giving her time to read it. It helped. For doctors like Tasha, after weeks or months individual deaths could become blurred.

  But Ellen wasn’t carrying a file and she’d described them as nice, nothing more.

  ‘It’s personal,’ Ellen said, seeing her confusion. ‘They say it’s nothing to do with a patient. They’re Australian. Hilda and Rhonda. Middle-aged. One’s knitting, the other’s doing crochet.’

  Hilda and Rhonda.

  She stilled, thinking of the only two Australians she knew who were called Hilda and Rhonda.

  ‘Shall I tell them you can’t see them?’ Ellen asked, watching her face. ‘I’m sure they’ll understand. They seem almost nervous about disturbing you. One word from me and I suspect they’ll scuttle.’

  Did she want them to...scuttle?

  No. Of course she didn’t.

  For some reason her heart was doing some sort of stupid lurch. Surely something wasn’t wrong? With Tom?

  It couldn’t be, she thought. He’d be safe home in Cray Point with his latest lady. Who? He’d mentioned his women in his emails. Alice? No, Alice had been a good twelve months ago. There’d been Kylie and Samantha and Susie since then.

  The Blake brothers were incorrigible, she thought, and she even managed a sort of smile as she headed off to see what Rhonda and Hilda had in store for her.

  But they weren’t here to tell her about Tom’s latest lady.

  * * *

  ‘A subarachnoid haemorrhage?’ She stared at the two women in front of her and she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Tom’s had a subarachnoid haemorrhage?’

  The women had greeted her with disbelief at first—‘You look so different!’

  ‘I’m wearing scrubs,’ she’d told them, but they’d shaken their heads in unison.

  ‘You look prettier. Younger. Though that time would have made anyone look old.’ They’d hugged her, but then they’d moved onto Tom.

  These two women had formed a caring background during her time in Cray Point but now they seemed almost apologetic. Apologising for what they were telling her.

  ‘It was the surf,’ Rhonda said. ‘A minor accident, he said, just a cut needing a few stitches, but then his neck was stiff and he got a blinding headache. He collapsed, scaring the life out of us. We had to get the air ambulance and the doctors say he only just made it.’

  ‘But they say he’s going to be okay,’ Hilda broke in, speaking fast. Maybe she’d seen the colour drain from Tasha’s face. ‘Eventually. But it did some damage—the same as a minor stroke. Now he’s trying to pretend it’s business as normal but of course it’s not.’

  ‘What happened?’ Tasha asked, stunned.

  ‘It was the first of the winter storms,’ Hilda told her, sniffing at the idiocy of surfers in general and one surfer in particular. ‘The surf
was huge and of course people were doing stupid things. They were surfing too close to the rocks for the conditions and he hit his head—a nasty, deep gash. Mary and Chris...did you meet them? They’re the medical couple who help out sometimes. They stitched his head and tried to persuade him he needed a scan but would he listen? And that night... Well, it was lucky I decided to stay on, though cleaning the pantry was an excuse. He’d put off having his latest woman for dinner so I thought he must be feeling really ill. And he was toying with his meal when all of a sudden he said “Hilda, my neck... My head...” And then he sort of slumped.’

  ‘There was no loss of consciousness but by the time the ambulance arrived he couldn’t move his left arm or leg,’ Rhonda told her. She took a deep breath and recited something she must have learned off by heart. ‘His scans showed a skull fracture and infarct in the right lentiform nucleus corona radiata.’

  ‘That’s in the brain,’ Hilda said helpfully, and Rhonda rolled her eyes. But then she got serious again.

  ‘Anyway, the air ambulance was there fast and got him to Melbourne. They operated within the hour and they’re saying long-term he should be fine. He spent two weeks in hospital, protesting every minute. Then they wanted him to go to rehab but he wouldn’t. He says he can do the exercises himself. So now he’s back in Cray Point, pretending it’s business as usual.’

  ‘But it’s not,’ Hilda told her. ‘He has left-sided weakness. He’s not allowed to drive. The doctors only let him come home on the condition he has physio every day but of course he says he’s too busy to do it. He should concentrate on rehab for at least two months but will he?’

  ‘He doesn’t have time,’ Hilda told her. ‘And I was dusting in his study and he’d requested a copy of the specialist’s letters and I just...happened to read them. Anyway the specialist’s saying there’s a risk of permanent residual damage if he doesn’t follow orders. But Mary and Chris have a new grandbaby in Queensland, their daughter’s ill and they had to go. There’s no other doctor to help.’