‘Does she have a surname?’
‘I…I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Whether you’ll use your name or her father’s name?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you going to tell me your surname?’ Jeff had given him her surname but he wanted it to be the girl herself who gave it to him. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he’d instigated a police investigation.
She hesitated but Joss’s hand came out and caught hers. ‘I’m not sure what you’re running from,’ he said gently. ‘But whatever it is, I’m not about to hand you over.’
‘I’m not running.’ She hesitated. ‘My name…my name’s Charlotte Brooke but… There’s people I don’t want to know…’
‘That you’re here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You need a bit of thinking time?’
‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘I know it’s messy, with medical insurance and things…’
‘We can do all the paperwork when we discharge you,’ he told her. ‘That’ll give you the time you need.’
‘You won’t tell Amy? Who I am?’
Joss frowned. Amy already knew but Charlotte’s name had meant nothing to her. ‘Is Amy one of the people you’re hiding from?’
‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘But you won’t tell her?’
‘No.’ But he was still frowning.
‘I just want to do what’s best.’
‘Don’t we all,’ he managed. He was still holding her hand and now he looked down at the coverlet at her fingers. They were work-worn and there were traces of soil in her fingernails. She was used to hard physical labour. There was no ring on her finger. Nothing.
‘Charlotte, if I can help…’
‘You’ve done enough. You’ve given me my baby.’
‘Amy did that.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ Charlotte sighed and withdrew her hand. ‘Before…it all seemed so easy. So possible. But now…’
‘Now what?’
She turned away, wincing as the stitches caught. ‘Now it just seems impossible,’ she said.
‘Did she tell you who she was?’ Amy asked as he gently closed the door behind her. Joss had given Charlotte something to ease the pain and she should sleep until lunchtime.
‘Yes.’
She caught his look and held. ‘But she still doesn’t want everyone to know?’
‘Now how did you know that?’
‘I’m a mind-reader.’
She was laughing at him. Her eyes were so disconcerting. They danced, he decided. She really did have the most extraordinary eyes.
‘She told me who she was and she asked me to keep it to myself. I agreed. It means we can’t bill her through Medicare until she allows us to, but she’s agreed to let us use her name at the end of her stay.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘No.’
‘But you agreed?’
‘I agreed.’
She looked at him for a long moment. And then the smile returned to her eyes. ‘You really are a very nice man, Joss Braden.’
It threw him. It was all he could do not to blush.
‘I know,’ he managed, and she grinned.
‘And modest, too.’
‘I can’t deny it.’
‘I’ve put you down as a fourth at bridge,’ she told him, and that shut him up entirely.
‘You haven’t.’
‘Someone had to do it,’ she said demurely. ‘My oldies tell me it takes brains to play bridge so who am I, a mere nurse, to take the place of a specialist?’
A mere nurse. She was no such thing.
She was enchanting.
‘I was planning on…’
‘Yes?’ She fixed him with a challenging gaze. ‘You were planning on what?’
‘Doing more of my conference notes.’
‘There’s the whole afternoon to do that,’ she told him. ‘And tonight. And tomorrow morning and-’
‘Whoa!’
‘There’s no urgency about this place,’ she told him. ‘Haven’t you realised that yet?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘There you go, then.’ She smiled her very nicest smile. ‘Bridge, Dr Braden.’ She pointed to the lounge. Looking through the glass door, he saw three old ladies clustered around a bridge table. Waiting.
When they saw him looking they smiled and waved.
‘You’ve set me up.’
‘Yep.’ Her grin broadened. ‘You’ve done your ward rounds and you’re cadging board and lodging from yours truly. You have to pay some way.’
He had to pay.
The thought stayed in his mind while he learned the intricacies of bridge.
It stayed while he took Lionel and Bertram for a walk in the rain and listened to Lionel tell him a long and involved joke-four times. What was that joke about Alzheimer’s? You can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh. You needn’t bother getting fresh whodunits from the library-because you never remember whodunit. And you can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh.
Very funny.
He checked Marigold’s heart and did some adjusting of the Lanoxin, checked on Rhonda’s lungs, and that was it. It wasn’t exactly intense medicine.
Amy was busy during the day but it was mostly administrative stuff. Organising meals on wheels. Sorting out the myriad problems of an aging community. She was wasted in this job, he thought. Her medical skills were far too good.
It wasn’t worth saying that to her.
The whole set-up was a trap, he decide bitterly, and it was Amy who was trapped. He was here for a few days. Amy would marry her Malcolm and be here for life.
With no excitement at all.
Saturday rolled on. Joss found himself making kites with Lionel and wishing the weather would ease so he could try them out. They really were excellent kites.
He thought of what he’d be doing in Sydney now. He was a workaholic. Saturday afternoon he’d be coping with accident victim after accident victim, most of whom he never saw again after he left Theatre. The comparison with what he was doing now-keeping one old man happy by talking about kites and dogs-was almost ludicrous.
It was still medicine. He conceded that and wondered-how happy could he be in such a life?
He couldn’t be happy. He needed acute medicine. He needed more doctors around him.
Iluka needed those things!
Amy didn’t go home. Well, why should she? For once the nursing home was buzzing and vibrant and happy. Even with her new furniture, White-Breakers seemed dismal in comparison.
Bertram took himself for a run along the beach and came back soaked. Kitty stoked up the fire to a roaring blaze, and Bertram lay before the flames and steamed happily. Cook made marshmallows for afternoon tea and Amy helped the residents toast them in the flames. Thelma and Marie coaxed Joss into learning the basics of mah-jong.
If anyone had said a week ago that Joss could enjoy a day like this he’d have said they were nuts. Now… He put down his tiles, ate his marshmallows, watched Amy’s flushed face as she held the toasting fork to the flames and thought…
His world was tilting, and he didn’t know how to right it again.
He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to try.
David and Daisy came by at dinnertime and firmly took Joss home with them for the evening.
‘You can’t impose on Amy for every meal,’ his father told him and Joss waited for Amy to demur-to say she really liked having him.
But she didn’t.
She’d started to grow quieter as the afternoon had progressed. He’d look up to find her watching him, and her face seemed to be strained.
‘Amy…’
‘I can’t keep you from your parents,’ she told him. ‘You have a house key to White-Breakers. I’m a bit tired after last night so I’ll probably be asleep when you get home.’
Damn.
And when Joss woke the next morning she was already back at the nursing home.<
br />
‘Have a good day writing your conference paper,’ the note on the kitchen table told him. ‘I’ll ring if we need you but barring accidents you should have the day to yourself.’
Humph. He didn’t want the day to himself.
He couldn’t stay here. He was going nuts.
He drove to the nursing home-to see his patients, Joss told himself, but it was more than that and he knew it was.
He wanted to see Amy.
Sunday. The day stretched on, interminably, and wherever Joss went, Amy wasn’t. Hell, how big was this home anyway?
The rain was easing, but the wind was still high. The talk was that as soon as the wind dropped they could get a ferry running. He could be out of here by tomorrow.
He might not see Amy again.
Why was she avoiding him?
Amy was going nuts.
Everywhere she tried to go there was Joss. He was larger than life, she decided, with his gorgeous smile and infectious laughter. He had the residents in a ripple of amusement, and she’d never seen them look so happy. Every single one of them seemed to have found a reason why they should be in the big living room.
She had a few residents who kept to themselves-who hated being in a nursing home and who showed it by keeping to their rooms.
Not now. Not when Joss and his big dog and his air of sheer excitement were around. With Joss here you had to think anything was possible. Something exciting might happen.
Exciting things didn’t happen to Iluka, Amy thought drearily, and tried to imagine how she could sustain this air of contentment after Joss left.
She couldn’t.
Exciting things didn’t happen in Iluka.
But something exciting did.
‘There’s a boat hit the harbour wall.’
‘What?’ Amy had lifted the phone on the first ring and Sergeant Packer was snapping down the line at her.
‘Of all the damned fool things, Amy. A speedboat tried to come in the harbour mouth-in this wind! It’s come through the heads and nearly got in but it smashed into the middle island. Tom Conner was down there, trying to fish. There’s someone in the water. Can you come?’
‘Joss?’
‘Yeah?’ He was admiring Myrtle Rutherford’s knitting and quietly going stir crazy. ‘Trouble?’ Amy’s face said there must be-and it was serious.
‘Possible drowning. Can you come?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS as bad a situation as Joss could imagine.
The harbour entrance was formed by two lines of rock stretching out from the river mouth. In calm water boats could slip through with ease, but this wasn’t a fishing port. It was a fair-weather harbour, maintained by the millionaires to house their magnificent yachts in the summer season. In winter the yachts were taken up to the calmer waters of Queensland where the élite could use them at their pleasure.
Now the harbour was empty, and with good reason. The rain had stopped but the wind was wild. Surf was breaking over the entrance. There were occasional clear gaps as waves receded but they were erratic. The rocks were jagged teeth waiting for the unwary, and what had come through…
It was certainly the unwary.
Jeff was there, and Tom Conner. The old fisherman and the policeman were identically distressed-and identically helpless.
‘I’ve rung the Bowra coastguard,’ Jeff told them. ‘But it looks hopeless. We can’t get a boat out there and it’ll take a couple of hours to get a chopper here. If a chopper can operate in this wind…’
‘Where…?’ Amy was trying to see through the spray being blasted up by the wind. When she did she gasped in horror.
Right in the neck of the harbour was a tiny rocky outcrop. It formed a natural island, forcing boats to fork either right or left. Normally it was a darned nuisance but nothing more. If the harbour had been used for commercial fishing it might have been dynamited away but because this was a fair-weather harbour built for pleasure craft only, it wasn’t worth the expense to remove it.
‘It almost got through.’ Tom Conner was literally wringing his hands. ‘I saw him come and I was yelling, “Damned fool, go back” but he didn’t hear. Then a wave picked him up and threw the boat like it was a bath toy. I still thought he was going to make it but the wave surged into the island and it hit hard and the guy was thrown out. He’s still there.’
He was. Horribly, he was.
The boat was a splintered mess, half in and half out of the water. Its glossy red fibreglass hull was smashed into three or four pieces and as they watched it was being sucked down into the water.
There was a body on the rocks.
‘He’s been thrown further up,’ Tom told them, and the old man was close to weeping. ‘He hasn’t moved.’
The man-whoever he was-looked like a limp rag doll. He was wearing yellow waterproofs and he was sprawled like a piece of debris across the rocks. While they watched, a wave smashed across the tiny island. The water surged almost up to his neck, shifting him, and they thought he’d slip.
He didn’t. He must be wedged.
‘Hell.’ Joss said what they were all thinking. The island was about two hundred yards out. Impossible to reach him.
‘He’ll drown before the chopper reaches him,’ Jeff said, and he sounded as sick as they all felt. ‘That is, if he’s not dead already.’
‘Was he the only one on board?’ Joss asked, his eyes not leaving the limp figure.
‘Yeah,’ Tom told him. ‘The boat didn’t have a cabin, and it was him doing the steering. I would have seen if there was someone else.’
Another wave crashed into the rocks and Amy’s hand went to her mouth as the body shifted slightly in the wash. She felt sick. ‘I can’t bear this.’
‘We need rope,’ Joss said, and they all stared.
Jeff was the first to recover. He shook his head. ‘Rope? No way. You go in that water and you’re a dead man. You can’t swim against that current.’
‘I’m not going in that water,’ Joss snapped. ‘How much rope can we find? I want a rubber dinghy and I want five hundred yards of rope-or more-and as many able-bodied people as we can find. Are there any families living within calling distance on the other side?’
‘There’s a few farms,’ Jeff told him.
‘Contact them and tell them I want as many people as possible on the opposite shore. Then I want Lionel and his biggest kite.’
‘Lionel’s kite…’ Amy stared at him, seeing where his thoughts were headed. ‘But…’
‘But what?’ His eyes met hers, challenging her to find objections.
She was starting to see what he was thinking. ‘The wind’s a south-easterly,’ she said slowly. ‘It’d take a kite straight across the river.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Maybe it could carry a rope. Maybe.’ Despite the drama of the situation Amy felt a twinge of pleasure. Using Lionel’s kites for such a plan… The old man would be delighted.
If it worked.
‘Will a kite hold that weight?’ Jeff sounded as if he thought the idea was crazy, but Amy was nodding.
‘I bet it will. Lionel reckons a big box kite would hold a man, and in this wind…well, maybe the wind can work for us rather than against us.’
And at least it was a plan. It was something! Better than sitting waiting helplessly for the body to slip.
Jeff needed no more telling. Like them, he was desperate for action. Any action! He was already reaching for his phone.
‘Great. Let’s move.’
One thing Iluka was good at was mobilising. It was a small community. Most people were indoors because of the filthy weather. Jeff made one call to Chris and in ten minutes the telephonist had organised half the population of Iluka at the river mouth with enough rope to fence a small European country. Plus there were three rubber dinghies, one enormous box kite-Lionel attached-and ten or so men and women standing on the other side of the river.
‘How much weight can that kite hold?’ Joss demanded, and Lionel scratched his chin and looked upward
. There wasn’t a trace of his dementia.
‘In this wind? As much rope as you like. I reckon it could lift me.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Joss told him, and he managed a grin. ‘No, Lionel, I’m not planning to sky-ride on your kite. But I’m depending on it just the same.’
There was a delay of a few minutes while ropes were securely knotted together-a delay where all eyes were on the prone figure sprawled on the island rocks. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe this wasn’t worthwhile.
But… ‘I think I saw him move.’ Someone had brought binoculars and Amy was focussing on the yellow waterproofs. ‘I think his hand moved.’ She couldn’t see his face. She could see very little but a mass of yellow.
It was enough. ‘Then we try,’ Joss told her. He’d been deep in discussion with Lionel. Lionel had shed his years like magic and was talking to him as an equal.
Amy was still confused. ‘I don’t know how…’
‘Just watch. Lionel and I have it under control.’ He hesitated and then conceded a doubt. ‘I think.’
The kite was launched. In this weather it was dead easy. Lionel and a couple of his mates simply held it to the wind and it lifted like magic, its huge trail of rope acting as if it were a piece of string. It soared skyward, a dozen men feeding the rope out. Lionel held a lighter string, as if he needed to anchor it to himself.
They needed a stronger anchor than Lionel. They’d fastened the end of the heavy rope to rocks-just in case the men couldn’t hold it. In weather like this they could end up with the kite sailing on to Sydney.
‘How do we get it down?’ Amy asked.
But Joss and Lionel had the operation under control. The kite was over the river now, sailing past the heads of the crowd gathered on the other side. Lionel motioned to the lighter cord he was holding-a cord that on closer inspection turned out to be a loop. ‘We tug hard on this and she collapses,’ he said diffidently. ‘Watch.’
They watched. He pulled the cord and the fastening on the kite came unclipped. The box kite soared upward-next stop Queensland-and the snake of rope and the looping cord crumpled across the river, the ends coiling downward to be seized by the people on the opposite bank.
Stormbound Surgeon Page 12
