Bonnie put her big head on her lap and looked dolefully up at her, as if seeing the problem in all its horror. A life without running...
‘It won’t happen,’ Zoe told her, trying to sound sure. Trying to feel sure. ‘Sam has too much sense to let it happen. He made one mistake and I’ve explained and now he won’t make it again. He’s smart, our Sam. He knows there are invalids and invalids, and we don’t fit the job description. We’re over it and we want to live.’
* * *
He’d overreacted, Sam thought as he held Luke on the board, but so had Zoe. It was okay to worry. It was almost reasonable, especially...the way he was feeling.
If he cared, he’d have to worry. Hell, he’d lost Emily—and he was a cardiologist. He knew bad things happened; he knew how life could turn to death so quickly.
But Zoe wouldn’t want that hanging over her for the rest of her life. He could see that.
So...no overt worry. But to ask him not to worry at all...
Care brought worry. He hadn’t wanted to care, but caring had been thrust upon him, whether he wanted it or not.
He glanced up the beach to where Zoe was chatting to Bonnie. She was tired, he thought, but justifiably. This was still a relatively new job. The kids’ ward was hard and he knew today had been frantic, yet she’d contacted Luke’s grandma and brought Luke to the beach tonight, pushing herself to make one small boy happy.
And now... She could be lying in the shallows but instead she was intent on making a dog happy.
She was totally, absolutely gorgeous. She was everything he wanted in a woman, and how was a man not to care?
He’d try not to do it overtly, but some things Zoe would need to accept.
She must.
* * *
At this time of evening, on a weeknight, this beach was practically deserted, but as Zoe decided maybe she’d best stop watching Sam for a while, stop thinking how drop-dead gorgeous he was and how sexy, she turned her attention to the rest of the beach and realised they weren’t the only ones here. A couple of hundred yards along, two kids were digging a hole in the sandy cliff chewed out by the tide. Winter storms had eroded the cliff to form a perilous overhang. There seemed to be some sort of cave behind, and the kids were digging their way in.
Uh-oh. Soft sand. Digging. Even from where she was sitting they made her feel nervous.
Finally she asked Bonnie whether she thought she could manage a short walk. Bonnie thought she could, and they ambled along to see what the kids were doing. They were two almost-grown boys with a project.
A dangerous project.
She edged a bit closer, growing more and more concerned as she realised the level of risk.
‘Hi,’ she said at last, trying to figure a way to approach this. She’d nursed in paediatrics long enough to known thirteen-or fourteen-year-old kids didn’t take kindly to young women telling them what to do, and what authority did she have anyway?
The boys had dug so far in that they were now inside their sandy cave. One stuck his head out and looked at her defiantly.
‘Woderyawant?’
Uh-oh. His belligerence was a warning sign all by itself.
‘It’s a great cave,’ she said cautiously. ‘But it looks a bit risky. Have you thought about shoring timbers?’
‘Wot?’
‘Timber supports,’ she said. ‘All miners use them. Without shoring timbers, these sorts of tunnels cave in all the time. It’s a horrible way to die, choking slowly on sand. Yours looks a bit scary. I’d hate you to be buried.’
‘This won’t fall in,’ the kid said scornfully, and Zoe looked at the soft sand and thought maybe diplomacy wasn’t the way to go.
‘Yes, it will,’ she said. ‘Soft sand always does.’
‘There’s tree roots holding it up,’ he said belligerently. ‘And it goes right in behind the sand. Piss off.’
‘The lady’s right.’
Zoe had been so intent on the kids and the danger that she hadn’t heard Sam come up behind her, but here he was, holding Luke’s hand. Both of them were dripping wet. Luke looked excited and interested. Sam looked grim. Had Sam seen where she was going and noticed the risk as well?
Obviously he had.
‘Get out,’ he said, in a tone that said it was non-negotiable. ‘Get out now, or I’ll get in there and haul you both out by the scruffs of your dumb necks. This whole thing’s about to collapse. Do you want to be buried alive? Out. Now.’
What was it with this guy? If she’d said it they’d have ignored her—she knew it—but there was no way Sam could be ignored. The boys emerged, but they looked sulky and defiant, and she thought, They’ll be back. As soon as we’re off the beach they’ll dig again.
But Sam hadn’t finished. He waited until they were clear of the entrance then he bent and checked inside, then leaped lightly up the scarp. There was a dead salt bush right above the boy’s cave. That had the roots the boys had been depending on for stability. He grabbed the dead bush by the trunk, hauled and leaned back. The roots came free—and the entire piece of escarpment slid down across the cave entrance.
The whumph from the collapsing sand was enough to send a tremor under their feet—and for Zoe to realise how appalling the risk had been.
‘Sand goes right into your lungs,’ Sam said conversationally. ‘You can’t stop it. If I catch either of you doing anything so stupid again, I’ll get the lifeguards to ban you from the beach all summer.’
‘You can’t,’ one of the boys muttered.
‘Try me.’
‘It was just a bit of fun,’ the other boy said, and Sam relented.
‘Yeah, I know, but it was still dumb. I work at the hospital and we see too many kids come in dead. It’s not great being dead. I suspect it could be really, really boring. Pack it in, guys.’
They packed it in. The skulked off over the sand hills and Sam and Zoe and Luke were left staring at the collapsed scarp, thinking what could have happened.
Luke bent down to examine the bits of tree trunk in the sand, tugging at a branch that was almost entirely buried.
‘They would have died,’ the little boy said, horrified, and Sam stooped and lifted him and hugged him.
‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘Probably they would have been buried up to their armpits in sand and they’d have had to stand here all night feeling sillier and sillier. So I scared them a bit too much. I’m sorry I scared you, too.’
‘You scared them to stop them being dead.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘It must be awful, being dead,’ Luke said in a small voice, and Sam hugged a bit harder, and Zoe knew this had suddenly switched from boys and sandhills to one big brother with a failing heart. ‘Is it awful?’
‘I don’t think it is,’ Sam said honestly. ‘I know I said it might be boring but that was just to scare them. All I know, Luke, mate, is that I’m a doctor and it’s my job to stop people being dead. I try everything I possibly can. To watch these kids take risks...’
‘They were having fun,’ Luke said.
‘Dumb fun.’
‘Isn’t it okay to have fun?’
‘Not if it involves risks,’ Sam said flatly, and there was something about the way he said it...there was something there that suddenly made Zoe feel uneasy. The qualms of half an hour ago resurfaced.
She didn’t want to take risks, she thought—or not many. Not serious risks. But she did want to have fun.
Twelve months ago, when she’d passed her final nursing exam, she’d sent off for some brochures on climbing in Nepal. She’d shown them to Dean.
‘We can do this now,’ she’d told him excitedly. ‘If we save...there’s nothing stopping us.’
‘Are you kidding? The risks...’
‘There can’t be all that much
risk. I’m not suggesting Everest. An escorted trek below the snow line...’
‘And if you get sick?’
‘Then I’ll die happy,’ she’d retorted, which had been a dumb thing to say because he really did think she was risking all. The conversation had stopped there and she’d known, right from that moment, that she wouldn’t be marrying Dean.
Like she knew, right now, that there could be no future for her with Sam.
He might change, she told herself, but it felt like a forlorn little hope. There was that look on his face that said some things were non-negotiable. A dead fiancée. No risks.
‘Zoe? Are you okay?’ he asked. Maybe she looked paler than usual. Yeah, okay, the cave incident had scared her but for him to ask that question...the question that had been hanging over her for years...
Zoe? Are you okay?
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped, and then fought for and found a recovery. ‘Sorry, yeah, it must have frightened me a bit, too. They were dopes, Luke.’
‘I’ll ring the council,’ Sam told them. ‘The overhang is too large—the storms have really undercut it. They’ll get a bobcat along here and knock the top off. Problem solved.’
‘Great,’ Zoe said, but her ‘great’ came out flat.
‘You didn’t really think I should have let them keep digging?’ he demanded, incredulous as he heard her intonation, and she shook her head.
‘Of course not. Of course you’re right, and thank you for sorting it. I just...I just can’t help it if I hanker for a tiny bit of risk myself.’
‘Not being buried in sand.’
‘No, but there are some risks worth taking,’ she muttered. ‘Not dumb ones, but fabulous ones, and I have my whole life to find out what they are.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAM DIDN’T UNDERSTAND and she let it go. Maybe she was wrong, she decided. Maybe she was overreacting. Sam was gorgeous and maybe she was stupid for having any qualms at all.
She took Luke home, returned to the hospital and Sam was waiting. He cooked her steak and chips, and they made toe-curling love and she slept in his arms.
He held her tight, possessively, and the niggle of doubt refused to go away.
She was being dumb, she thought. She was being over-sensitive. What Sam had done with the sand cave had been entirely rational, and his talk about risk had simply been reaction.
Relax, she told herself. You’re falling for the most gorgeous guy in the universe, so why not let yourself fall?
It was easy to fall when she was in his arms. She could lie here for ever, she thought... And not take risks?
Bonnie whuffled in her basket at the end of the bed and she thought how domestic this was. How wonderful. Life was so good.
Put the doubts aside and soak in wonderful.
Soak in Sam.
* * *
The hospital had no doubts. Sam and Zoe were now an established item. She copped good-natured teasing from all sides, and she was accepted as an even more deeply ingrained member of the Gold Coast team. She worked through the week in a daze of happiness, with Sam popping in and out of her ward—he did have two kids on the ward as patients so there was no reason at all why every kid in the ward seemed primed to make lovey-dovey teasing noises every time he walked in.
Her colleagues sniggered and Zoe blushed—and tried to put away the tiny niggles that had surfaced and were refusing to be suppressed.
Luckily—or maybe unluckily—she was busy. The weather was vacillating from gorgeous to perfect. This was the middle of the northern-hemisphere summer holidays and the Gold Coast was swarming with tourists who did stupid things.
Things like drowning.
Liam Brennan was eleven years old, here with his family from Ireland. His parents had seen the vast, wide expanse of open beach and had elected to swim not in the patrolled part of the main beach but in a secluded area half a mile from the lifesavers’ flags.
His parents couldn’t swim. Liam could, a little, but not enough to fight the rip that grabbed him and took him out to sea. A local surfer had come to his aid but not fast enough. He was brought into hospital unconscious, and even though Zoe wasn’t one of the medics involved in his treatment, she felt the hush through the department and she knew what the outcome would be.
Resuscitating drowning kids was a miracle but more miracles were needed to stop brain damage caused by interrupted blood supply.
Liam hadn’t had that second miracle.
He was on life support, and grief and anger at such needless loss washed through the hospital.
The day after he was brought in, Sam came to find her on the wards.
‘I need to speak to you,’ he said, and his face was grim. Uh-oh. One look at him and she knew something serious had happened.
‘Bonnie?’ she said, feeling ill.
‘Bonnie’s fine,’ he said. ‘Zoe, I’ve organised a fill-in for you for a while. Please, we need to talk.’
Bemused, she followed him. She’d thought they’d go into the nurses’ station, deserted at the moment, but instead he led her into the lift, down and out to the small garden where he walked Bonnie.
By which time she was starting to feel seriously freaked. What? Images of her parents and siblings flooded into her mind. They’d have contacted her directly if anything dire had happened. Surely?
Or maybe they’d rung the hospital and asked someone close to tell her...
Sam stopped and turned and faced her—and saw her face and swore and grabbed her hands.
‘Zoe, no, I didn’t mean to scare you. Hell. I didn’t think... It’s just... I’ve just come from Liam’s bedside—the kid brought in from the near drowning.’
She might have known. He looked sick. Relief on her own account was replaced by sadness for others. Any man’s death diminishes me... She thought of John Donne’s words and she thought how much worse they were when that death was that of a child.
This man spent his life fighting for children’s lives. To lose one because of ignorance was particularly gut wrenching. There were signs up all over the Gold Coast, including in the airport itself. Swim Between the Flags. Nearly every drowning here was that of a tourist who thought the gorgeous surf looked harmless. The locals knew the safe places. Tourists had no idea.
‘We’re about to turn off life support,’ Sam said, and he gripped her hands harder.
She held him just as hard and then tugged him close so she was pressed against him.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ He held her for a long moment, his chin resting on her hair. ‘But, Zoe, this isn’t about that. I mean...I’m not here for comfort. I’ve faced kids’ deaths before.’
‘But not got used to them,’ she said, still holding him.
‘No.’
She held him for a long, long moment. This was a man who walked alone, she thought, but alone wasn’t working. He tried to be dispassionate but it didn’t work. A child’s death defeated him.
‘What?’ she said at last. ‘Sam, what made you come and organise me to be taken off the ward?’
‘I need you.’
‘Yeah, of course you do.’ She pulled away a little and tried a smile. ‘I’m a very useful person. I can see that. But why now?’
‘I need you to talk to Liam’s parents about organ donation.’
She stilled.
‘It’s a huge thing to ask,’ he said softly into her hair. ‘And it’s your choice. No one knows I’m asking you to do it. You’re free to say no, and there’ll be no mention of it ever again. No thought of it. It’s just...’
‘Just what?’ she said in a scared little voice she couldn’t control, a voice that had him pulling away, holding her at arm’s length.
‘Hell, Zoe, I can’t... I’m sorry. Forget I said—�
�
‘Say it,’ she said, and she had herself under control again. Sort of.
‘Liam’s parents are facing withdrawal of life support. I’ve been with them. They’ve been approached by the donor organ team. Our counsellor, Sarah, is good. She’s incredibly sensitive, no pressure, and she’ll back right off if they don’t want to go ahead. But Liam’s dad wants to donate, very badly. He keeps saying something good has to come out of this mess, and I know, from past experience, that it’ll help long term if it does. Only Liam’s mum is wavering. Mary keeps saying it’ll only drag out other parents’ misery. She says transplants fail eventually. She’s been watching her son die for two days and all she sees is that transplants make that waiting longer.’
‘So you want me...’
‘If you could bear it, you could give them a gift,’ he said gently. ‘The gift of hope, that their son’s death could mean the gift of life for someone like you.’
And he said someone like you in such a way...
He loved her. She found herself blinking back tears in a sudden rush of emotion that had nothing to do with the death of one little boy but everything to do with the vulnerability of this man before her, and the knowledge that he’d lost and closed himself to the world but now was opening up again.
He was needing her?
It was a heady emotion, and she shouldn’t be crying, but there was Liam’s death as well, and Emily’s death, and suddenly she found herself thinking of the twenty-year-old kid who’d crashed his car the night before her transplant. She shouldn’t know the identity of her donor but it was pretty hard not to know.
He’d given her the gift of life. Could she share back?
Life was so precious. Life was standing in the morning sun, with the sea in the background, with this man asking her to share her story.
He was asking her to share more.
There were still doubts—she knew there were—but at this moment there were no doubts at all.
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 12
