Healing Her Brooding Island Hero

by Marion Lennox

  * * *

  She was getting cold. She was also growing more and more nervous. There wasn’t a light to be seen, and the dark was making her shiver. The ocean breeze, balmy during the day in this gorgeous, subtropical climate, was starting to bite through her cotton jacket. The trees were rustling around her, dark and looming.

  The wombat was still on its back, its little eyes staring up at her. If she couldn’t see its eyes following her, if she couldn’t see it breathing, she might have thought it was dead.

  ‘Which would have been easier,’ she muttered and then winced. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m very glad you’re not.’

  The wombat didn’t appear to be worried either way. Its eyes were unblinking, looking up at her, judge and jury rolled into one.

  ‘Babs said someone’s coming,’ she told him, and finally she saw headlights, coming up from the opposite side of the bay to where her aunt lived.

  ‘Mr Jefferson’s place,’ she told the wombat, as if he might be interested. She remembered Jefferson from the two years she’d lived here after her parents died. He’d lived in a ramshackle log cabin set back from the beach, collecting stuff, wheeling and dealing in whatever he could get his hands on. He’d declared the southern end of Windswept Bay his half, and if she dared walk even one metre inside his perceived territory, he’d threaten to turn his dogs on her.

  Babs had told her the National Park officials had moved in a couple of years ago and demanded he shifted his stores of suspect stuff. So this guy... Hugh...had taken his place?

  A doctor.

  Another hermit?

  She stood and waited, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop a tremor or two. She was all grown up now, not the scared fifteen-year-old who Henry Jefferson had terrified, she told herself. But still, as the car drew to a halt, leaving her in the full beam of its headlights, she found herself bracing, drawing herself up to her full five feet three inches.

  Wishing she were back with her team, somewhere safe, somewhere like the wilds of Antarctica.

  The vehicle was an SUV, solid, heavy, built for hard work. The driver’s door swung open and the driver stepped out.

  All she could see was his silhouette. Big. Broad-shouldered. A dark shadow behind the headlights.

  It was all she could do not to whimper.

  Which was ridiculous. She’d spent the last few years working as a medic with a research team that travelled to some of the most remote places in the world. She was a nurse, and a good one, her extra training as a nurse practitioner having led to her career in emergency medicine. This guy was a doctor. Her professional credentials must surely put her as this guy’s equal—or almost.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, and almost kicked herself as it came out as a quaver. ’You’re Dr. Duncan?’

  ‘For my pains. And you’re Gina. Who’s hit a wombat?’

  There was such censure in the harsh, gravelly voice that she winced all over again.

  ‘It was in the middle of the road.’ She sounded small and defensive. For heaven’s sake, she had to pull herself together. ‘And I didn’t hit it very hard.’

  ‘You’re in the middle of a national park.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Why was she apologising to this guy? She’d already apologised to the wombat. ‘It’s hurt its leg.’

  ‘You hurt its leg.’ He came forward, limping a little, and she got a clear sight of him in the beam of his headlights.

  He was indeed big, tall, with broad shoulders tapering down to narrow hips and long legs. He was wearing a stretched, faded T-shirt, old jeans and heavy boots. What looked like a scar was etched deep, running from the side of his mouth to the base of his left ear. He had short-cropped dark hair, a strongly boned face, shadowed eyes and a mouth set in grim lines.

  He was pulling on leather gloves as he walked. He ignored her, just bent over the wombat and flicked on his torch.

  The wombat turned its gaze to him. Like...she’s hurt me, mate. Get me out of her clutches.

  ‘I think I might have broken its leg,’ she said. Damn, why was her voice so small?

  ‘Let’s see.’ Amazingly his voice had gentled. He was running his gloved hands over the creature, carefully, taking his time. ‘It’s okay, mate,’ he said in the gentlest of tones. ‘We’ll get you somewhere safe as soon as we can, but let’s see what the damage is first.’

  And then she was ignored. She stood back, feeling guilty and helpless and, okay, like a superfluous idiot. She had the feeling that if she got into her car and drove away, he wouldn’t even notice.

  Finally, he rose and headed to his car. ‘Wh...what...?’ she stammered, because for an awful moment she thought he might be about to drive away. But he snagged a heavy blanket from the car and returned.

  ‘I don’t think the leg’s broken,’ he told her, the harshness returning to his voice again. ‘Lacerations, but not too deep. Gravel rash. He’s lost a bit of fur. I reckon he’s concussed, though. Hopefully nothing he won’t get over with a bit of peace.’

  ‘But...he’s conscious.’

  ‘You can be concussed and still conscious,’ he told her, in the tone of one addressing someone a bit thick. Or maybe very thick.

  She knew that. Why was she sounding so dumb? Dammit, she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  ‘I... What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll take him home, clean the leg and keep him warm and quiet for a day or so,’ he said. ‘We’re lucky you’re looking at a male. A female with young in her pouch could have been much more complicated. Hopefully I can bring him back here as soon as he’s healed, with a warning to look out for idiot drivers who don’t look out for wombats in a nature reserve.’

  Ouch. She deserved it, she thought, but still ouch.

  ‘I was driving slowly.’

  ‘If you hadn’t been driving Babs’s car, you’d have killed him.’

  ‘Then wasn’t it lucky I was?’ she said, a flare of anger coming to her aid. ‘I didn’t mean to. Babs’s headlights are crap, and the thing was just...here.’

  ‘It’s a national park. It’s allowed to be here. You aren’t.’ He stooped and laid the rug beside the wombat, then moved it effortlessly into its midst. Then he wrapped it and lifted it, as if it weighed nothing at all.

  Once upon a time Gina had found an orphaned wombat, during a storm when she’d lived here. She’d had to care for it until the weather settled enough to take it over to the refuge on Gannet Island. It had been little more than a baby, yet it had felt as if it weighed a ton.

  This one was maybe four times as big, and Hugh lifted it as if it were a bag of feathers.

  ‘Is your car still drivable?’ he snapped, and she blinked and then turned her attention to the front of the car. The fender was a bit bent, but it wasn’t touching the wheel. A hammer tomorrow, a spot of amateur panel beating, and it’d be fine.

  ‘It’s drivable.’

  ‘Then go slow. Being here after dark is stupid.’

  Like she didn’t know?

  ‘I had to drive along the track,’ she said defensively, and was annoyed that she sounded sulky. ‘There’s no other way to get here. And Babs needs me.’

  ‘She needed you months ago.’

  Wow, talk about judgemental. She fought for something she could say to defend herself, but the reasons were all too complicated. Besides, he already had his back to her, moving the wombat to the back of his vehicle. He closed the door on it, and then turned back to her.

  ‘Go, then. I’ll stay and watch until I see your lights reach Babs’s place.’

  ‘In case I hit more wombats?’

  ‘In case you’ve done some damage to the car you don’t know about. I don’t want to be called out again.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ But she was grateful. Sort of.

  ‘Are you okay yourself?’ he asked suddenly. ‘No sore neck? You we
re wearing your seat belt?’

  And that disconcerted her. He’d changed, as he’d changed when he’d spoken to the wombat. Suddenly she was the patient, and he...he had a duty of care?

  He was a doctor, she reminded herself. He’d be doing what he had to do.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, a little stiffly, but was suddenly absurdly conscious of a desire to weep. It’d be shock setting in, she thought, and fatigue. It had been a huge journey, an endless road to get here.

  ‘You’re sure?’ And he was striding back to her, torch in hand, shining its light into her face.

  Seeing the fatigue? Seeing the trace of stupid tears? She blinked and blinked again.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she managed. ‘Just...tired. And a bit sad about hitting the wombat.’

  ‘Your aunt says you’re scared of the dark.’ His voice gentled even further, and she thought weirdly, He’s seeing me now as he’s seeing the wombat. As a creature to be cared for?

  Haul yourself together, woman, she told herself, and she did. She managed a nod and stepped out of the glare of his torch.

  ‘I’m not scared,’ she told him. Which was, actually, a lie. ‘My aunt still thinks of me as a kid. Thank you very much, Dr Duncan. And can I...can I pay you for the...house call?’

  ‘I don’t charge wombats,’ he told her, and she thought she saw the trace of a smile. But it was only a trace. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Take it slow, and I’ll watch your lights.’

  ‘Th...thank you,’ she said again, and there was nothing else to say.

  ‘Go,’ he said, and she went.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘I’VE MADE DR DUNCAN a pie.’

  ‘What?’

  Gina stood in the doorway of her aunt’s kitchen and tried to fight the sensation she’d been transported to another planet. Shock from last night’s wombat encounter? The after-effects of months of struggle to reach her aunt? The faint remembrance of waking up here when she was fifteen, when the world as she’d known it had ended?

  She’d arrived late last night and been hugged, fed and scolded pretty much in that order, then sent to bed as if she were nine instead of twenty-nine. Now she emerged to find her aunt surrounded by cooking chaos, surveying two pies sitting on the flour-strewn bench. The smell was amazing.

  How long since she’d tasted home-cooked food?

  ‘I got extra ingredients because you were coming, but he deserves a pie more than you do. Now sit down and get some breakfast into you. It is almost lunchtime, but I let you sleep. Nasty thing, travel, it does all sorts of things to your insides. I remember when I came here from Sydney, I couldn’t sleep for weeks.’

  That would have been when her marriage had fallen through, Gina thought. Babs had coped with it by fleeing everyone she knew, to live a life of an almost-hermit. But if Babs wanted to put the effects of that forty-or-more-years-past journey down to jet lag from a one-hour flight from Sydney, why argue?

  Why argue with anything? she thought as she pulled up a chair and sat.

  Babs put the kettle on the stove, then opened the little fire door at the front, popped a piece of bread on a toasting fork and handed it to Gina to hold it to the flames. Which did something fuzzy to Gina’s head. She was suddenly hit by the memory of doing this fourteen years ago, on that first awful morning...

  ‘So you’re to eat your breakfast and take the pie straight over,’ Babs said, in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘I have a basket that’ll hold it steady.’

  ‘Me?’ Gina said cautiously. ‘Take a pie?’

  ‘I rang this morning. The doctor thinks the wombat will live. He’s cleaned its leg and he’ll keep it until it’s healed enough to release. It’s very good of him.’

  ‘Very good,’ Gina agreed faintly. ‘Let me think about it when I’ve had coffee.’

  ‘I only have herbal tea,’ Babs said tartly. ‘The idea of maudling your insides...’

  ‘I like my insides maudled.’ No coffee? Aagh.

  ‘The doctors say I should take it easy on stimulants,’ her aunt added virtuously. ‘Though Hugh did say he didn’t see how a nip of whisky or two would hurt. Mind, he’s not my doctor—he’s no one’s doctor, really—but he did help when I was in trouble. Maybe I didn’t tell you,’ she said diffidently. ‘But it seems he watches for my light to go on every night and that night it didn’t. Not that he had any right—I hate the thought of anyone spying—but the doctors on Gannet said he saved my life. I was unconscious when he found me and I would have died, so I have to be grateful. And now he’s helped you last night. So...finish your breakfast and go.’

  ‘Fine,’ Gina said meekly, and then the toast was toasted, and there was home-made butter and a jar of marmalade to die for. Babs sank into her crossword puzzle, as she’d done every morning for the two years Gina had lived with her, and the world settled.

  And she had time to look at her aunt.

  Babs was eighty-four years old and looked even older. After her heart attack she’d reluctantly given permission to Gina to talk to the doctors on Gannet Island.

  ‘There’s little we can do,’ the cardiac specialist had told her. Gina had briefly outlined her medical background and the cardiologist had pulled no punches. ‘The angiogram shows ischaemic heart disease, with blockages widely distributed in small arteries. She’s been having angina for a while, though not admitting it, and with the amount of damage it’s a miracle she hasn’t had a major event before this. But with widespread disease, stenting or bypass can do little to help. We’re putting her on maximum medication but there’s no use giving false hope, and she understands. We’ve offered to send her to Sydney for a second opinion but she’s refusing to go. And we concur—there’s little they could do. She wants to go home. It worries us that she’ll be so isolated, but we can’t stop her. If you can come, we advise you to do it soon.’

  Soon had turned into those four long months. At every phone call Babs had told her: “Don’t worry. I’m fine. I don’t know what the fuss is about.” But now...the pallor of her face, the slight tinge of blue...

  She wasn’t fine.

  ‘I want to stay here this morning,’ Gina told her. ‘Babs, I’ve come to be with you.’

  ‘Well, there won’t be a lot of joy doing that this morning,’ Babs said with asperity. ‘I’ve been up since five cooking, and now I intend to have a nap. And this pie needs to go round to Hugh now. If I’ve gone to all the trouble to make it, the least you can do is deliver it.’

  Which was pretty much what Gina should have expected. Babs lived her own life. When Gina had lived with her, she’d fitted in at the edges, isolated, knowing Babs resented her presence. But maybe that was part of the healing, she’d decided later on. When she’d first arrived, shocked, bereaved, all she’d wanted was to hide. Babs had been there for her when she’d needed her, but there’d seemed little regret on either side when she’d left.

  Babs was a loner. As, it seemed, was this Hugh.

  ‘He won’t set the dogs on me?’ she asked nervously, and Babs snorted.

  ‘He’s not like Henry Jefferson. Those dogs of Henry’s were appalling. Hugh does have a dog, but it’s small. Three legs. Hugh limps himself. There’s a story there but he doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t talk about anything.’

  ‘Do you ask him?’ Gina found herself intrigued, but she already knew the answer. Babs’s solitary existence didn’t include gossip. She kept to herself and paid the same respect to everyone else on the island. Gina had found it frustrating in the past, and even more so now.’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Babs snapped. ‘What do you think I am? But he came here three years ago and rebuilt that cabin and he just stays there. He has a job he needs the Internet for, I do know that. He’s had some sort of satellite dish put in—he offered to share it with me, as if I’d know what to do with it. He and that dog... I see them on the beach. Fishing sometimes. Watching t
he sandpipers. Mostly just sitting. He doesn’t chat.’

  Hoist in your own petard, Gina thought wryly.

  ‘But he’s the island doctor now?’ she ventured.

  ‘Not by choice,’ Babs told her. ‘Only because Wendy Henderson fell off the ladder while he was in the general store. She cut her arm and bled like a stuck pig. Hugh did all the right things. Then of course everyone knew he was a doctor, so they started using him. Only in emergencies, mind, we wouldn’t dare ask anything else.’

  ‘So last night...’

  ‘Yes, you were an emergency,’ Babs told her. ‘And he never takes payment.’ She hesitated. ‘I did hear that his family is wealthy,’ she conceded, as if admitting that she’d listened to such rumours was a crime. ‘But rich or not, I intend to pay. So get yourself dressed and take this pie, and tell him thank you very much from me.’

  ‘It was me he helped. I should have made it.’

  Babs snorted at that. ‘You? Cook? You think Hugh would think one of your pies was a thank you?’

  She had a point. The life Gina had led was hardly conducive to learning to cook, and for the two years she’d lived on Sandpiper Island, Babs had hardly borne her being in the kitchen.

  ‘Has your cooking improved?’ Babs snapped.

  ‘I...no.’ Not much chance of that where she’d been living.

  ‘There you are, then,’ Babs said. ‘So no more arguments. Go.’

  * * *

  Henry Jefferson’s cabin had been built in one of the most beautiful places on the island, but Henry had done his best to destroy any vestige of beauty. The cabin had been a mess of faded timber and rusted iron. There’d been old car bodies, rubbish of all sorts strewn everywhere, and, guarding it all, three huge, snarling dogs.

  At fifteen Gina had been far too terrified to go near the place. Now she walked tentatively up the path from the beach—and stopped in amazement.

  The cabin was gone. In its place was a house built of soft cream local stone. It was long and low, almost disappearing into the natural landscape. Its French windows and wide verandas opened out to give a slivered glimpse of the beach below. A huge wicker chair sat beside the front door, a dog bed beside it. Native bougainvillea, crimson, brilliant, twined up the supports at either end.