Wes cupped his hands around his mouth and called to Jason, ‘Wait, mate. I’ll come up and we’ll jump off together.’ Already he was moving downstream to where the water was only calf-deep. ‘Wait for me, Jason.’
‘Oh, hurry, Wes, please.’
As Wes tramped through the stream, his eyes glued on his friend, he saw Jason shake his head and run forward. Holding on to the rope with only one hand, he launched himself off the rock and into the air. As his body reached the peak of the arc, he let the rope go and fell feet first towards the water.
Brooke heard Jason’s cry. It wasn’t of exultation but of pain, and it came seconds before he hit the water. A huge splash ruptured the smooth surface, sending small waves to the bank of the stream as Jason went under. Bubbles rose and rose, but Jason didn’t.
‘Wes!’ she screamed and looked at him.
He was already in the water, stroking towards the spot where Jason had disappeared. She saw him take a deep breath and dive under. Oh, God, this is déjà vu. It was a repeat of when Wes had rescued Adam from this same stream years ago. Wes surfaced without Jason, gulped in another breath and dived under again.
Brooke stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. How long did it take someone to drown? Seconds, minutes? Almost paralysed with fear, she somehow galvanised herself into action. Wes’s mobile peeped out of the saddlebags. Her medical training took over. She raced for the phone and dialled the number of the surgery, her eyes never leaving the spot in the pool where Jason had disappeared.
‘Jean, bring my medical bag to the swimming hole, quick as you can. Jason’s dived in and hasn’t come up.’ As she stared at the water, she willed both men to surface. ‘And call an ambulance.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Every sound became accentuated as Brooke watched, her eyes wide, for two heads to break the surface of the gently rippling water. Her heart was thudding madly in her chest with an anxiety that knew no bounds. The calm rustling of eucalypts high above her head and the carefree chirping of the birds in a nearby clump of tea-trees were at odds with the terror she felt inside.
It was taking too long. Her anxiety level rose another notch. Much too long. She paced backwards and forwards along the edge of the creek, waiting, hardly daring to breathe, and praying as she had never prayed before. Please, God, let them be safe. Apart from the twins, they were the two most important men in her life. She needed both of them.
Suddenly a wave of water erupted and two heads surfaced.
Wes gasped and greedily breathed in a lungful of sweet, life-giving air before he began to move Jason’s unconscious body towards the bank. A dead weight in the water wasn’t so heavy but, as he reached the shallows and tried to drag him up onto the bank, he needed Brooke’s help to get him clear of the water and onto the grass.
Exhausted, Wes lay on his side and let Brooke take over. He watched her put two fingers to the side of Jason’s neck then shake her head.
‘I can’t get a pulse.’
Then she began mouth-to-mouth and CPR. Every twenty seconds or so she would check the carotid artery. Still only capable of watching, Wes saw that Brooke was a woman possessed as she worked on her husband, trying to coax him back to life as she had done with Adam years ago. After a while his own breathing normalised and he rose to his knees on the other side of Jason. He looked straight at her, and then down at his friend, who clearly wasn’t responding to Brooke’s ministrations. Jesus, no. He couldn’t be…
Then, through the bush, a motorbike’s noisy exhaust interrupted his thoughts and he saw Craig weaving his way down the track at full pelt. Behind him, on the pillion seat, was Jean, holding on and looking as if she wasn’t going to survive Craig’s feverish pace. As soon as the bike stopped, Jean jumped off and, nodding her thanks to Craig, headed towards Brooke with her medical bag.
‘There’s no…pulse,’ Brooke told Jean. She was breathing heavily from her exertions. ‘And…he’s not…breathing.’
‘I brought the manual oxygen pump,’ Jean said. ‘Let me take over the CPR, Brooke. You’re exhausted.’
‘No.’ Brooke’s tone was shrill and she shook her head to doubly emphasise her decision. Then, in a sudden flurry of energy, she continued with the CPR, now with the aid of the oxygen mask that Jean had fitted over Jason’s mouth.
With her free hand, Jean put the stethoscope to her ears and tried to pick up a beat at the carotid artery. She glanced across to where Wes knelt and shook her head. ‘Brooke, love,’ she said, taking a deep breath, ‘I think he’s gone. There’s no heartbeat.’ She said the words as gently as she could as she placed her hands over her friend’s to still them in their task.
‘No.’ Brooke shook her head vigorously, unmindful of the tears that began to gather at the corners of her eyes. ‘He can’t be. I won’t let him.’ She pushed Jean’s hands away and continued to work on Jason, pumping his chest and alternatively pushing the bladder of the manual oxygen cylinder until Wes moved to grab her hands.
‘Stop,’ he said quietly but firmly. ‘It’s no use, Brooke. Let him go.’ A muscle throbbed in his jaw as he tried to contain his emotions.
He looked at his best mate, lying so still, and his throat muscles contracted with emotion. At that moment he didn’t see him with his features bloated, hair plastered to his forehead, and the skin on his chest pink from where Brooke had been applying pressure. He saw Jason as he had once been—strong, fit and vital. It was the way he wanted to remember him. ‘He…he’s at peace now.’
Brooke stared across at Wes, oblivious to the tears that had begun to trickle down her cheeks. She shook her head slowly, unwilling to accept the truth, while deep inside a terrible trembling was beginning and her stomach was knotting into a ball. It couldn’t be. He can’t be gone. For several minutes she had worked feverishly to save him, and now she could hardly breathe herself. Her arm muscles were so depleted of energy that she could barely lift them to free herself from Wes’s grasp.
‘If…if I could have done an ECG, I’d have known the best treatment for him. I could have saved him. If…’
‘It’s too late, dear,’ said Jean. ‘Even if you had those things and could bring him back, his brain may have been without oxygen for too long. He would probably have been a vegetable, and you wouldn’t have wanted that for him, would you?’ She moved around Wes to Brooke and tried to pull her up and away from Jason. ‘Come on, come away, Brooke. You did everything you could. We all know that.’
Brooke refused to move. She held on to Jason’s lifeless arm, unable to let go, to break that last contact. Her other hand, trembling slightly, moved to push strands of hair off his forehead, then her fingers trailed along his cheek. His features were calm, as if he were asleep. She had seen him that way almost every day of their married life. What had gone wrong? Why had he left her?
Then, still on her knees, she rocked back on her haunches and stared up at the three of them—Wes, Jean and Craig. Somehow she was able to register that, like her, they were shocked by Jason’s death. As a doctor who’d faced the futility of death several times, medically she knew that she had to accept that he was gone, but as his wife, the reality loomed as something unexpected, something she wasn’t sure she could deal with. It was too sudden, too unbelievable.
Searching for answers, her mind became incredibly alert as little flashback scenes of him on bald rock came to her. How he’d held his chest as he’d stood there, as if something was hurting him. That his left arm had remained at his side, as if he couldn’t lift it. And his voice—it had sounded strained, not like him. As well, he had grabbed the rope with just his right hand as he’d swung into the water, when normally he would have used both hands. Oh, yes, and that cry before he’d hit the water! It had been a cry of sheer agony. She touched his cheek again in a final farewell. It was still warm, and wet from the water.
Trying to make sense of it, thinking about the signs, instinct and experience told her there was a good chance that he’d suffered a minor cardiac arrest while stu
mbling through the bush. Then he’d had a more massive attack as he’d gone into the water and, most likely, he’d died instantly. Knowing how his general health had declined, and the stressful conditions he’d been under—in the bush without food or water, lost—the heart attack wasn’t such a surprise. The police would insist on a post-mortem, of course, but she was fairly sure that’s what would be revealed. And then, through the pain of having to deal with the loss of the man she had once loved dearly, she remembered what Wes had said: he’s at peace now. Jason was. But right now those words gave her little comfort.
‘Please, give me some time with him.’ She wanted to say her goodbyes.
The community of Bindi Creek was rocked by Jason d’Winters’s death. The family had become a solid part of the tight-knit community during the decade they’d lived there, and most people admired and respected them for the boost they’d brought to the small town. Consequently, Jason’s funeral was the largest the district had seen for many years. People came from all over the district to swell St John’s Anglican Church from full to overflowing. And the wake afterwards, which was really a celebration of the forty-five years of Jason’s life, had been held at the Imperial Hotel, courtesy of Mannie.
At Brooke’s request, Wes had organised the details associated with Jason’s death. Her emotions were stretched to the limit, yet, for the children’s sake, she had to appear to be coping. But the truth was she was barely getting by.
‘You think she’ll be all right?’ Wes asked Jean as, from the sidelines, they watched mourners go through the ritual of offering condolences, wishing the family the best, and saying sincerely-meant nice things about Jason.
‘Brooke’s very strong, and she has the kids to think about. She can’t afford to fall apart,’ Jean responded in her commonsense way. She searched for Royce among the crowd of people and saw him engrossed in conversation with Frank Galea and Vince Gersbach. ‘But she’s been through so much. First, her mother’s and brother’s deaths and later that hospital thing in Hobart. Then Adam almost drowning. Then, of course, the motorbike accident and how it affected Jason. Plus the bus accident where she saved a man’s life. All in all, it’s a lot for one person to have gone through.’
Wes looked at Jean and his expression was serious. ‘Everyone has a breaking point.’
‘Give her time, Wes. She’ll deal with it, I’m sure,’ Jean said confidently. Perhaps she knew Brooke better than Wes Sinclair did and was more in tune with her friend’s reserves of inner strength. However, his concern for Brooke came as no surprise. She’d twigged years ago that the man was head over heels in love with her and, for a man like Wes, it couldn’t have been easy to live with being in love with his best friend’s wife. She clicked her tongue in disgust. Small wonder that vain, stupid Sharon Dimarco hadn’t stood a chance with him. Wes had had the sense to see through her.
She glanced up at Wes, who was now talking to Hugh Thurtell, and then across to Brooke, who was with Reverend Dupayne. Brooke needed to do her grieving for Jason before she could move on and see the possibilities of happiness elsewhere. Right now she was sure that Brooke was ignorant of the fact that such a possibility even existed. Jean also had a feeling that her friend had been mourning the loss of the real Jason since the motorbike accident. Now she had to get used to the reality of him not being around. Once that happened, who knew what might happen?
Lying in bed that night, tired yet too hyped up to sleep, Brooke felt as if her brain was overloaded. The finality of Jason being gone forever was starting to kick in, and with it came waves of guilt. If she hadn’t been cowardly about biting the bullet earlier and having him institutionalised, he would still be alive. Had it been arrogance or too much self-confidence on her part that had made her believe that, with Craig’s help, she could continue to look after him? Had she made a mistake in believing that keeping Jason at home with the family was best for him? She had thought that having a loving family around him would help, but in hindsight she knew that he had mentally deteriorated so much that none of that mattered any more.
The children were extremely sad and withdrawn over their father’s death, but were trying hard to be brave. The whole family would have to get used to a life that no longer included Jason in their every waking moment. They were so used to the anxiety of looking after him, but now that he was gone, they were struck by how much they would miss him.
Brooke cast her gaze around the darkened room, refusing to look at the empty twin bed beside her own, which was illuminated by an eerie glow from the street light across the road.
Perhaps, the thought came to her, she might think about moving. Yes, she decided, it would be good therapy—keep her and the children busy. Besides, she didn’t think she wanted to stay here now. Even among the happy memories, now there were many unhappy ones. A new start in a new home and a new surgery would be good for all of them.
Despite the fact that the love had dwindled and died, Brooke knew that she was going to miss Jason. She would miss the commonplace things about living with another human being. He had been an intrinsic part of all their lives, and the habit of thinking about him, worrying about him and checking on him was going to be hard to erase. Not that she wanted to erase all the memories. She didn’t. They had had a wonderful love affair and, while she would have loved to change some things if she could have, there was so much about their lives that she would not change.
It struck her as she lay there that she was a widow at forty. The knowledge sent a little panic through her, especially when her thoughts drifted to Jean and the lonely life she’d had until Royce had re-found her.
Alone. Did she want that? Could she see herself living alone for the rest of her life? Would she ever be able to fall in love again? Oh, God! She fiercely reprimanded herself as she rolled onto her stomach, knowing that she shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. Jason’s body was barely cold in the grave. She buried her face in the pillow to muffle the noise, and began to cry.
When she finally stopped, drained but strangely calm, there was something else she decided she had to do: bury the past, for good. She had to rid herself of the emotional baggage she had carried with her since Hobart.
She sat up in bed, propped the pillow behind her back and began to plan. First, they would find somewhere else to live and she would organise a new surgery. Then she would take the children on a trip back home. She would show them where she had grown up, visit her mother’s and Travis’s graves, and where she had studied and practised at Royal Hobart Hospital. She would catch up with her friend Janice and the husband she’d never met, and then show the kids the Tasmania Travis had dearly loved. It would be a pilgrimage of sorts, an opportunity to shed all of the misery that had plagued her over the years. Instinct told her that only then would she be free to embrace a new life wholeheartedly.
It took till almost the end of the summer to sell Wilson’s cottage and find a new property. Avonlea was a twenty-five-hectare farm located about five kilometres west of Bindi Creek and mostly suited for agistment. The twins had turned fourteen in January and Adam thought he was old enough to learn about breeding quarter horses. Avonlea would be a good place to start.
During those months Brooke also focused on a new location for her surgery. One of the shops in Bindi had closed—the curios and old wares store, which was a couple of doors up from the butcher’s shop. Brooke negotiated a lease with the owner and renovated the premises to become her new surgery. Then she advertised for a locum and got lucky. Dr Cate Creeley, a friend of John Honeywell, was looking for locum work. Brooke realised her patients probably wouldn’t like having a new locum for a month or two, but there was no other way. She had to make this journey home, whether they liked it or not.
Someone else who didn’t like the fact that she was taking off for an indefinite period of time was Wes. Since Jason’s death, he had become very protective and possessive, not just of her, but of the whole family. Having explained to him the reason for her pilgrimage, she thought he understood th
e need to rid herself of the demons of the past, and so she accepted that Wes was just being Wes and let it go at that.
The day they left, Wes insisted on driving them to Sydney airport. After they’d checked in their baggage, got their seat allocations and gone to the allocated transit lounge, the children wandered off to explore and buy magazines and other goodies for the flight.
‘So, you’re not sure how long you’re going to be away?’ Wes asked, for maybe the fiftieth time.
She noted how nice he looked today in his casual clothes. He was wearing beige trousers and a patterned, long-sleeved shirt and had rolled the shirt sleeves up. Brown, highly polished leather boots and a wide brown belt around his waist made him look very much the well-off country gentleman.
‘No. It might be as short as a month or as long as three months. It will probably just come to an end when the money runs out.’
They were standing near the window, looking down to the tarmac at the steady stream of aeroplanes of different shapes and sizes going back and forth. She glanced at him. ‘You do understand, don’t you? That I need to get away from…from the memories for a little while.’ Seeing him nod, she went on, ‘It’s time the children learned something about my life, too. They knew so much about Jason’s—that he grew up in Carcoar, had you for a friend, and so on. Relatively speaking, they know very little about my life and I think they should.’
‘Sure, I understand. It’s just that…’ He stopped and frowned. ‘It’s going to be strange, you and the kids being away for so long.’ He studied her features, as if he were committing them to memory. ‘You think you’ll be back for Easter?’
For weeks he’d tried to convince himself that he understood why she was going and what she was doing. He did, but damn and double damn, he just didn’t want her to go. She and her children had become a very important part of his life, and their departure was going to be a wrench. He’d accepted that she had to do her grieving for Jason. Hell, he was grieving too, but in a different way.
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