He looked over to where Gina sat under a stand of eucalypts. She was in the midst of a group of women and their distress was obvious. Karen’s grandmother was over there, Cal saw. Mary Wingererra. As he watched, Gina put her arm round the old lady’s shoulders and hugged her.
She went in fast and hard, Cal thought. Maybe he should, too.
Could he? She thought he should. Her accusation was that he didn’t care. It was unfair. That was the problem. He cared too much.
‘When did you last go to school?’ he asked Chris, the kid he was stitching, and the thirteen-year-old looked at him as if he was joking.
‘School?’
‘It’s an option.’
‘No one goes to school. It’s not cool.’
It was the only option, Cal thought. Education was the only way out of this mess.
Yeah, but how…?
It was too hard. Once he’d thought he might try, but then Gina had walked away and he’d abandoned his kids’ club when he’d left Townsville. It had hurt like hell and he wasn’t putting himself through that again.
Don’t get involved. Treat what’s hurting and move on.
Gina was getting involved. Her body language was obvious. He could see her distress.
They were working outside-a hygienic option when the weather was good. It took a long time to get a room clean, and outside the rain periodically cleaned things up. He was sitting at a table and chairs they’d brought themselves. That was his surgery.
Gina didn’t even have that. She was sitting on the grass twenty yards from where he was sitting. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but that they were talking through last night’s accident was obvious.
She’d be expecting him to do something. She’d be judging…
No.
She didn’t expect anything, he reminded himself. She was going home the day after tomorrow and he didn’t have to answer to her. He had nothing to do with her.
Together they had a son.
‘Will I have a scar?’ Chris demanded, and Cal thought if he wasn’t careful, yes, he would have.
‘It’s not too deep.’
‘I don’t mind having a scar.’
‘I can count six already. That’s enough for any kid.’
‘Men have scars.’
‘Only if they live long enough to be men,’ Cal told him. ‘Which you won’t if you keep sniffing petrol and fighting with glass. Scars in the tribe you come from are supposed to be a sign of wisdom. There’s not much wisdom in a scar like this.’
‘No,’ Chris admitted, and he cast a shamefaced glance behind him at his mate. ‘I got a bit scared when Aaron bled. And…’ He swallowed. ‘I don’t like it that they all got killed last night. I reckon they’d been sniffing petrol, too.’
‘So stop it,’ Cal said gently.
‘There’s nothing else to do.’
Gina was rising now. She still had her arm round the old lady’s shoulders. Mary was weeping, Cal saw, and Gina’s face was creased in concern. Gina was upset.
She didn’t know these people. She didn’t have to get involved.
Neither did he.
Gina looked across at him and gave him a half-smile, as if she expected that he share her distress.
‘You need a swimming pool,’ Cal said, and where the words had come from he didn’t know. But he knew where the idea had come from. Something he’d heard on the radio-something he’d heard happening at a remote settlement a thousand miles from here and had thought a great plan.
Someone who might get involved might grab a plan like that and run with it.
‘A swimming pool.’ Aaron and Chris were looking at him like he was stupid.
‘That’s right,’ he said, and it was too late to retract now. ‘It’s fifty miles to the coast from here, and even then you can’t swim during the hot six months. Too many stingers. You guys need a pool.’
‘Yeah, but how would we get a swimming pool?’ Aaron demanded. Cal had been dressing Chris’s leg while he spoke and now he motioned to Aaron to take his friend’s place in front of him. Aaron’s face had a long, vicious scratch. It didn’t need stitching as Chris’s leg had, but it needed to be scrupulously cleaned if it wasn’t to be infected. Cal started work with care but the boys’ attention was caught.
‘You mean one of those paddling pools you blow up,’ Aaron said scornfully. ‘We had one. It lasted a whole day and a half before it got a hole in it.’
Gina was in earshot now. She was walking Mary over to see him, Cal realised, and he wished he could stop this conversation now, but both boys were staring at him in half-resentful expectation that this was nothing. It was definitely too late to back out.
‘If I could talk the politicians into building a swimming pool here, would you guys go to school?’
‘Nah,’ Chris said scornfully. ‘Why would we?’
‘Because Mr Robbins and Mrs Cook run classes every day here, and they never have any more than six or so kids. They have heaps of room, they’re great people, and if you guys learn to read and write then there’s so much you could do.’
‘Like what?’ Chris demanded.’
‘Well, you could get put up for selection for the national footy teams for one thing,’ Cal said. ‘They won’t look at you unless you can read.’
‘Yeah, but that’s not till we’re sixteen,’ Chris objected. ‘We might be dead before then.’
Which was the absolute truth, Cal thought grimly. It was even a probability.
OK.
OK, what?
Gina was watching him now. His conscience. And back at home was a little boy who looked like him-whose very existence seemed to make him aware that he ought to be doing more
He had to get involved. Just a bit.
‘I’m going to work on getting you guys a swimming pool,’ he told them.
They stared at him, disbelieving.
‘You gotta be joking.’
‘I’m not joking.’ He glanced up at Gina but his eyes were caught instead by the little lady she was holding. Mary’s face was swollen with weeping but her eyes were arrested. Her face was still. Waiting.
What was he doing? He didn’t get involved.
He was involved.
‘I was reading about a place like this near Darwin,’ he told them, thinking it through as he talked. ‘The locals started a collection, they got a government grant to help and they’ve built a swimming pool. They feed it from an underground bore. There’s bore water here.’
‘No one would do that for us,’ one of the boys muttered.
‘If they did it there I don’t know why they wouldn’t do it here,’ Cal said. ‘All it needs is some pressure.’
‘No one here’d be a leader enough to put pressure on anyone,’ Mary said slowly, and the old woman’s voice was husky from weeping. ‘We’re so…’ She searched for an appropriate word and didn’t find one. ‘Stuffed,’ she said at last. ‘Finished. We keep getting hit and the more we’re hit the more we can’t get up again. Now…all our young ’uns are dead…’
‘Not all your young ’uns,’ Cal said gently. He was clearing every trace of dirt and broken glass from Aaron’s face. ‘I’m so sorry about last night. But there’s kids left and we need to move forward for them. We need desperately to move forward. I’m prepared to fight on your behalf.’
‘You,’ the old woman said, and Cal grimaced inside. He’d been coming out to this settlement for years, and until now he’d never got personally involved. It was no wonder the woman’s tone was incredulous.
‘Yeah, me,’ he said ruefully, and tried not to look at Gina-who was looking as incredulous as the old lady. ‘It’s not only a way to give you some pleasure, but it’s a way to get the kids to go to school.’
‘How?’ Aaron said belligerently.
‘Stay still,’ Cal told him, and Gina moved in to help, cutting a dressing to size so he had it ready as soon as the antiseptic was in place.
‘Easy,’ Cal said. ‘Once we get the pool, there’
d be a rule in place. If you miss a day’s school without a very good reason, you’d be excluded from the pool for a month.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ Aaron said. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘That’d make ’em go to school,’ the old lady said, thinking it through. Deflected for a moment from her tragedy. ‘It’s so hot and dusty here all the time, and the kids are bored stupid, and if they got to stay outside a fence, watching other kids swim…’
‘Not fair,’ Aaron said again, and Cal grinned.
‘Fair or not, you’d go to school.’
‘It’d be a start,’ Gina said, and he glanced at her and glanced away again. Fast.
He wasn’t doing this for her. He wasn’t.
‘You say you’d get it going?’ Mary whispered, and he nodded.
‘I’ll come out next week and we’ll have a community meeting. Next Wednesday?’
‘So soon?’
‘It might help,’ he said diffidently. ‘You need it, Mary.’
‘Mary has been having what seem like panic attacks,’ Gina told him. ‘I thought maybe we could give her a script for something to help over the next few days.’
‘There’s no need,’ Mary muttered, and she fixed Cal with a look that said now he’d offered there was no way he could back down. ‘I couldn’t see a way past this mess we’re in. Now, though…a pool… If you really think it’s possible…’
‘I do.’
‘Then I don’t want no tranquillisers,’ she told him. ‘I just want a plan forward.’
‘Do you mean it?’
They were in the car, headed back toward Crocodile Creek, and Gina was looking at him as if he’d grown another head.
‘Of course I mean it.’
‘You’d build a swimming pool out here.’
‘It’s possible,’ he said, and he knew he sounded defensive but he couldn’t help it. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read about the other place. It seemed such a good idea. How to bribe kids to go to school in one easy hit.’
‘And you’ll get the money? These people don’t look like they have anything.’
‘I might have a route through Charles,’ he told her.
She frowned. ‘Charles is rich?’
‘Charles’s family is rich. The Wetherby station is vast. Old man Wetherby was a nasty piece of work. After Charles’s accident he couldn’t bear looking at him. Disability disgusted him. That seemed fine by Charles-he couldn’t stand the old man either. Anyway Philip, Charles’s brother, now runs the place. Charles refused to take anything personally from the farm but he’s not above touching his brother’s conscience when he needs something for the hospital. Or in this case, if he needs something toward a pool. Philip can well afford it.’
‘But will he?’
‘There are things going on between Charles and his brother that I don’t understand,’ Cal told her. ‘All I know is that Philip is a weak reed but an incredibly rich weak reed, and a contribution for a pool wouldn’t touch his huge financial base. As long as he doesn’t have to commit any effort…’
‘It’ll be you who has to commit the effort. ’
‘So it seems.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she said, so softly he hardly heard.
Why was he doing this? Good question. ‘It has to be done,’ he said, trying to figure it out for himself. ‘Those kids last night shouldn’t have died.’
‘No, but they’re just more in a long sequence of tragedies. Mary was telling me. The death rate among the adolescents out here is horrific.’
‘So it is.’
‘So why today?’ she whispered ‘Why today did you get out of your comfort zone and offer to do something about it?’
‘I don’t know.’ And wasn’t that the truth?
‘Was it because of me?’
‘Gina…’
‘Because I accused you of not letting yourself care?’
‘I care.’
‘Of course you care,’ she told him. ‘You care and you care, even when you try so hard not to. It’s impossible not to care, Cal. It’s impossible not to expose yourself to get hurt.’
‘Can we do without the life lesson?’
‘Sorry.’ She relapsed into silence but she still seemed uncomfortable.
‘We could still get married,’ he said, and she jerked into rigid awareness.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘You could stay here. We could marry. I could care for you and CJ.’
‘Care…as in look after.’
‘Of course.’
‘Why would I want you to look after me?’
‘Hell, Gina…’
‘I might agree if it was mutual,’ she told him.
‘How do you mean-mutual?’
‘Well, if you, for instance, told me that what happened out there today moved you to tears and you felt just dreadful and you needed a hug in order to get the strength you need to keep going.’
He froze.
There was a long silence. Her words played over and over in his head.
It was like there was a huge carrot in front of his nose-no, a wonderful, amazing dream, enticing him, sweetly singing its siren song. All he had to do was take a step forward.
And fall into a chasm so deep he could never get out of it.
He’d fallen before. He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t. He’d taken one small step today and he hadn’t fallen, but this wasn’t a small step. This was huge. Vast. Overwhelming.
To admit he needed someone.
He needed Gina.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
‘No.’
‘Of course, no,’ she said softly into the stillness. ‘Of course, no, Cal Jamieson. So I guess that means we’re stuck. You’re here working your wonderful medicine-and taking one tiny step into caring that might or might not destroy you. And me returning to Idaho. And never the twain shall meet.’
‘If you weren’t so pig-headed…’
‘Not pig-headed. Sane.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve broken my heart over you once before, Cal,’ she said steadily. ‘I’m not going down that route again.’
‘I’m not asking you to break your heart.’
‘You think living with you and loving you and watching you not need me for ever and ever and ever would do anything but drive me crazy?’ she asked. ‘Cal, you’re a doctor short in this wonderful hospital of yours, and Hamish’s make-do medicine won’t cut it. You definitely need a psychiatrist.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CJ WAS waiting for them when they got back, sitting on the veranda steps, licking the world’s biggest ice cream, while Rudolph Mutt sat adoringly at attention beside him. Hamish was watching them, and as they appeared he uncoiled his long legs from the veranda seat and smiled.
CJ was still wearing Bruce’s hat.
Tomorrow his son was going to spend his last day in Australia with the man who had given him the hat, Cal thought.
Not him.
‘Here they are, CJ,’ Hamish was saying. ‘The world’s best medical team, home from sorting out the problems of the world.’
‘How are things here?’ Cal wasn’t in the mood for smiling. He was feeling like things were out of his control and he wasn’t sure how to get them back.
Hamish’s smile faded. ‘We’ve had the coroner working through the autopsies, and one of the kids’ dads has had a heart attack.’ He hesitated. ‘Gina, we were wondering whether you’d see him. You looked after the prawn fisherman last night…’
‘He just had indigestion,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take a cardiologist to work that out.’
‘Yeah, it was a pity we had to take the chopper two hundred miles out to sea when all he needed was antacid.’ He hesitated. ‘But this guy’s a definite case. Charles wants to send him down to Cairns but he won’t go. And maybe I wouldn’t either if I had a kid to bury.’
‘I’ll see him,’ Gina said. CJ had risen for a hug and she was hugging him, hard-ice cream a
nd all-and that was doing something really strange to Cal’s insides.
Damn, he wanted to be in that hug.
No, he didn’t. What was he thinking?
‘Our baby?’ Gina asked, her face muffled by small boy. ‘Lucky?’
‘Lucky’s good,’ Hamish told her. ‘His heart rate’s settled beautifully. A couple of minor prem hassles but I’m thinking he’s no more than three weeks early. We have him on oxygen but it’s more a precaution than a necessity.’ He eyed Cal and then stooped to pat Rudolph. ‘We might be seeing a happy ending with Lucky.’
‘The von Willebrand’s?’
‘Tests came back positive,’ Hamish told them. ‘It’s a hassle but properly treated it should be no more than a minor inconvenience as he goes through life. And it does mean we called it right in not giving him heparin now.’
‘What of his mother?’ Cal asked.
‘No news. Harry has every cop in the state looking for her, and every medical clinic within a thousand miles. I told him about the von Willebrand’s thing and he’s scared we have a bleeder.’ He stooped and hugged the dog as if he needed some comfort himself. ‘I guess we all are.’
‘I’m not sure. I’m guessing it may well be the father,’ Gina said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I am just guessing. But I saw the birth site. If the mother had been a bleeder as well, there would have been a lot more.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Hamish said, relaxing a little. He looked from Gina to Cal and back again and he stopped relaxing. He looked interested. ‘So, out at the settlement…bad?’
‘Bad,’ Cal said.
‘Cal’s going to organise them a swimming pool,’ Gina told him, still hugging CJ, and Hamish stared.
‘The hell you are.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m going to take a shower first,’ Cal said, and tried to push past him to go into the house, but his friend blocked the way.
‘You’re going to organise them a swimming pool?’
‘To bribe the kids to go to school.’ Gina smiled. ‘It sounds a fantastic idea.’
‘I read about that,’ Hamish said. ‘I remember showing Emily and saying what a great idea. And Em said what we needed was someone to get enthusiastic and organise it here.’
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