Then the chattering began again and relief flooded through her. Her beautiful island was still alive.
Charles and Angus were sitting in a cart at the top of the beach, staring at the shiny white cube that had been deposited by the helicopter. Grubby was striding around it, as if searching for a way in, though perhaps he was simply seeing it was positioned safely.
‘I’m sorry to leave you on your own here, but we’ve had to airlift young Danny to Brisbane and I’ve got to deal with the repercussions of breaking quarantine,’ Charles was saying to Angus, who climbed out of the cart as Beth pulled up beside them. ‘Beth? Have you come to look at the box that came from the sky?’
Beth smiled at the weak joke.
‘I’ve come to help,’ she announced. ‘I may not be one hundred per cent up to date on pathology or lab techniques, but I do know most labs have lab assistants. So, one lab assistant, ready and available.’
Charles didn’t answer for what seemed like a very long time.
‘You don’t have to do this.’ His voice was low and very serious when he finally spoke. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to, and I certainly am not asking you to volunteer. Angus knows the risks involved in any situation like this, but you?’
‘I’m volunteering without being asked,’ Beth assured Charles, more concerned by the weariness in Charles’s voice and the strain showing on his face than in the job she was about to undertake.
Not that she could do much, he was her boss and she barely knew him. What puzzled her was that if, as everyone was saying, Charles and Jill were about to marry, the imminent occasion didn’t seem to be creating much joy in either of them.
Although she hadn’t shown much joy or delight when she’d married Angus—she’d been distracted by feelings of fear and trepidation and a hefty dose of guilt.
She watched the little cart, with Charles in it, head back to the medical centre, and hoped he’d find the joy that seemed to be lacking in his life at the moment.
‘You don’t have to do this. I don’t need anyone to assist.’
The cause of her old guilt was speaking to her in crisp, matter-of-fact Angus tones.
‘No, but I can wash the test tubes for you or hold things or do whatever lab assistants do. That’s why I came across.’
He studied her for a moment, then said, ‘It’s a con trolled environment and I’ll be properly suited. It’s not at all dangerous, you know.’
She nodded.
‘Of course not. That’s why I’m happy to help.’
He looked at her again, then out to sea, towards the mainland, and she knew he was wanting to deny her help, but couldn’t work out how to do it without admitting there could be an element of danger in what they were about to do.
‘This is the bio-hazard lab. I’ve told them to hold off delivering the decontamination chamber. If I find it’s not bird flu and there’s no need for decontamination, we won’t need it.’
‘So, let’s get started,’ Beth said, nodding to Grubby who seemed satisfied the unit was sited safely and was now moving a bag of dead birds out of his cart, setting it down at the door of the unit.
Angus hesitated. He longed to tell her to go away, to tell her he didn’t want her involved in what he was about to do, but he couldn’t without admitting there could be a minuscule element of danger in the process of dissecting the dead birds and testing the blood of infected patients, and he knew her well enough to know she’d insist they share the danger.
So he’d just have to make sure he eliminated that minuscule risk.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Inside the door there’s a chamber with suits, air bottles and breathing masks. We dress in there, fit the masks, make sure everything’s working, then move into another, smaller chamber. It’s a positive pressure airlock so nothing from inside can get outside. We shut the outer door and the inner door won’t open until the air pressure is right in the lock, then we go on into the lab. It has directed air flow that goes up through a series of filters in the ceiling which trap and hold all the gases given off. We’re breathing air through our masks, air from the bottles, not the air in the lab. Do not remove your mask, your gloves or any other item of clothing, okay?’
Beth nodded, then she smiled.
‘Not the place to start our affair, then,’ she teased, and though he knew she’d said it to lighten the tension growing between them, it made him flinch. His body may be excited by the thought of the affair she’d suggested, but the part of his mind not totally focussed on the island’s problems had been toying with the idea and he knew he didn’t like it.
Didn’t like the parameters…
Which was probably why he’d made the stupid suggestion about the dog…
‘We’ll talk about that later,’ he growled, taking a key from the leather bag the helicopter had dropped and fitting it to the door of the unit.
It unlocked easily, and he slid in the bag Grubby had left, waited until Beth was inside, then followed, bringing with him the small cool-box with the patients’ blood and sputum samples.
A light had come on as he opened the door and he knew the solar panels on the top of the unit had kept the batteries fully charged. From the information he’d received from the army earlier, these batteries would supply power for four hours, then a generator would kick in, supplying power for another four hours. But well before that, Grubby would have run leads across from the nearest electricity supply point on the island and they’d be on mains power.
They dressed in silence, then passed together through the airlock into the lab itself.
It was weird, Beth decided, to be shut in such a small space with someone you knew so intimately yet have no intimacy between them at all. They could have been robots—or was it the distortion of their voices as they spoke through the masks that made her think that way?
Angus had cut through three birds, talking all the time into a microphone above the lab counter, detailing his findings, making suppositions as he saw the wasted muscles on the birds—the way the dark red breast muscles had withered away from the breastbone—taking samples and passing them to Beth to seal and label.
That she was allowed to do, but he wouldn’t let her touch the birds, insisting he drop them in the waste container, although he let her seal it when the final bird was set inside it. Neither was she allowed to clean the stainless-steel bench. Angus took care of it, wiping it with paper towels that went into a new waste container, then spraying a heavy duty anti-bacterial agent over it and wiping it again.
‘Now bloods,’ he said, moving to the opposite bench, examining the new, state-of-the-art machines arrayed there.
‘Ah,’ he said, the sound conveying satisfaction. ‘We have the very best, the very latest—the MChip. It will still take a couple of hours for the tests to run, but with computerisation we won’t get a false positive.’
He was busy preparing samples for testing, and Beth stood back, handing him things as he needed them, putting labels on samples when asked, aware he could be doing this on his own yet pleased to be near him.
Mainly pleased. His ‘we’ll talk about that later’ remark still niggled in her head, disrupting her concentration from time to time, puzzling her, for what was there to talk about?
Although hadn’t she been thinking they should talk about their feelings? Ho! She and Angus talk? That kind of talk? It was an impossible dream—
‘Did you hear me?’
She shook her head, startled out of her thoughts.
‘I said you should sit down, or you could go—there’s really nothing to do.’
Angus waved his hand towards the machines, which were evidently doing whatever they were meant to do with his samples.
‘You go out through that door.’ He pointed to a door at the other end of the lab from the one they’d entered. ‘There’s another airlock chamber then a shower room. Strip off, put your gear into a drum and seal it, then shower and go through to the other side of the shower room and you’ll find scrub suits.’
&n
bsp; She saw his eyes gleam behind the protective glasses he was wearing.
‘Hardly summer beach wear on an island but less bulky than our current garb. You look like a fat little caterpillar.’
He sounded gentle—loving—and although she knew it was probably the mask muffling his voice, not emotion at all, her bones felt melty and his name, ‘Oh, Angus!’, was little more than a sigh on her lips.
Gloved hands touched her shoulder and she stared at him—a tall white-suited figure, no bit of him visible except his eyes through glass. But his eyes seemed to be saying things to her—the eyes she’d never been able to read.
It was the glass, or maybe too much oxygen in the air mix she was breathing—of course Angus’s eyes weren’t saying that he loved her.
‘I’ll stay,’ she said, holding his gaze, determined not to let him guess at her wild fancies. ‘I want to know the results as much as you do.’
‘They should have them by now on the mainland—the FluChip takes longer but it still gets there.’
‘The samples were lost,’ she said, wondering if anyone had told him that. ‘It took a while to track them down.’
He nodded. ‘And the spinal fluid samples came back negative for meningitis, and with a false positive for encephalitis.’
‘False positive?’ Beth echoed, both relieved and sorry they’d got back onto scientific talk.
‘Something that looks like encephalitis but is unidentifiable as yet. They need to do more tests. The labs are still working on it.’
‘It fits with your mosquito theory, doesn’t it?’ Beth said.
‘Enough for Pat to have started putting mosquito traps around in the rainforest and to have asked for an entomologist to fly in as soon as the quarantine is lifted. He needs guidance on how to control them if it is a new arboviral encephalitis—or one that’s new to Australia.’
Something beeped behind Angus and he turned away again, leaving Beth to wonder if she really did want to stay locked up with him for the next few hours.
The alternative, she realised, was sitting at home, wondering if he was all right, imagining the worst—he’d fallen and hit his head, run out of air and not realised it, both scenarios having him lying unconscious on the floor of the small lab.
Ridiculous, of course, but she’d accepted years ago that part of loving someone was imagining the worst.
She perched on the bench on the far side of the small room and watched the man she loved manipulating knobs and buttons, tapping information into the computer, feeding samples into machines, his hands sure and steady, as they’d been when they’d made love—as they’d been when he’d held Bobby…
Had she said she didn’t want another child?
She was sure she hadn’t, and tried to think back to that time of loss and grief and terrible loneliness.
‘I didn’t want a replacement for him,’ she murmured, only realising she’d spoken her thoughts aloud when Angus turned towards her, eyebrows raised behind his protective glasses.
She shook her head and he turned away, hopefully deciding he’d heard her sigh, not speak. But as she dug deeper into her memories she began to realise how easily they could have picked up the wrong messages from each other.
Lack of communication again!
Now she did sigh, leaning her head back against the wall and letting the air come out softly.
‘Okay!’
Startled out of her daze by the muffled word of triumph, Beth straightened up and looked across the room, to where Angus was pointing at a screen.
‘See that?’ he said, pointing at a pattern of dots on the screen. ‘Now look at this.’
‘This’ was a totally different pattern of dots—luminescent dots.
‘The second one is bird flu and our pattern definitely isn’t that. In fact, it’s not a flu virus at all, so we’re back to mossies and encephalitis and although that can have severe consequences and debilitating effects, it’s not the start of some pandemic. I’ll still send the bird samples to the mainland and some whole birds, too. They can go back in the lab, so they’re contained. But we’re all done here, so let’s go and tell folks the good news. Charles can raise the quarantine, people can leave the island—’
‘Angus, it’s ten o’clock. I doubt if anyone is sitting on a packed suitcase, waiting to leave the island, and hopefully Charles is sleeping. He’s been looking terribly tired and stressed.’
Behind his mask she was sure Angus was smiling when he said, ‘You’re right about the general raising of the quarantine, but do you want to bet Charles isn’t sitting outside the unit, waiting for a result?’
‘I do hope he’s not,’ Beth said, anxious for the man who’d been so kind to her.
Angus was tidying things away, stacking vials into a small freezer.
‘Does that run all the time?’ she asked, relief that it wasn’t bird flu allowing room to marvel at the equipment in the mobile laboratory.
‘It has its own battery and inverter running off the solar panels with its own small generator to kick in if the batteries fail. But when mains power is on, that tops up the batteries as well, so this has fridge and freezer capacity all the time.’
He closed the door then nodded towards the exit, clearly marked.
‘You go ahead and shower,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a few minutes here.’
Which neatly saves any conversation about showering together, Beth thought, remembering his ‘talk about it’ statement once again.
She went ahead, stripping off her suit and the clothes underneath it, dropping the lot into bins to be taken away.
And no doubt destroyed, but she had other shorts and T-shirts. She showered, then dressed in a scrub suit and stepped out of the unit, finding Charles, as Angus had foretold, sitting in a cart at the top of the beach.
As she walked towards him a light flashed. Had Charles flashed his headlights?
Beth shook her head, too tired to think, although as she drew closer to the cart she smiled and called to Charles, telling him the good news. Behind her she heard the door of the unit close and a key turning in a lock—Angus.
‘Angus will explain,’ she told Charles, as another light flashed. ‘Did you see the light? I guess it’s one of the rangers, doing a spotlighting tour for resort guests.’
Charles made a noncommittal noise.
‘Are you all right?’ Beth asked, driven beyond boss and employee lines by the exhaustion in his face.
‘Should I be?’ he said wearily. ‘We’ve had an outbreak of a potentially fatal disease on the island—and bird flu or encephalitis are both potentially fatal—I’ve had my ward—daughter—Lily in hospital, we’ve had to break the quarantine to fly a desperately ill child to the mainland, and now Susie’s collapsed and she’s in the medical centre, possibly with the same thing the others have had but Miranda thinks it’s ARDS.’
‘Oh, Charles, I’m sorry,’ Beth managed, wanting to put her hand on his shoulder, to offer the comfort of touch. She knew from listening to the others talk how often Charles had helped or comforted them, but from whom did he draw his strength. From Jill?
Beth doubted that Jill had much to offer at the moment. She’d been looking tired and stressed herself the few times Beth had seen her recently.
‘Do you want me back on duty at the centre?’ she asked, thinking practical help was all she had to offer.
Charles offered her a tired smile.
‘You’ve done enough,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not the type to make a fuss, it’s one of the reasons I wanted you for this job, but going into that lab today was a very brave thing to do, Beth. You wouldn’t have been human if you hadn’t had reservations.’
Beth shook her head. No need to admit she had had reservations—but they’d been more for Angus than for herself.
Angus joined them and Beth stepped aside, returning to the cart she’d driven to the beach. She was finished here. Charles and Angus could work out what happened next—as far as the quarantine and encephalitis was conc
erned.
What happened next with her and Angus—well, that was a different matter. She was starting to have qualms about her suggestion they have an affair…
* * * Beth left the cart at the medical centre. Charles and Angus parked beside it, deep in plans. Inside the centre she looked into the room where Susie lay, Alex by her side. He nodded at Beth as if to say, I have everything under control, and she moved on to Robbie’s room. He was sleeping, so there was nothing for her to do except to walk back through the bird calls of the night towards her hut.
But once inside, what? Crawl naked into bed? Would that look too needy?
And what the hell should she do with the condoms?
Forget about them?
Leave them on the shelf in the bathroom—where Angus couldn’t help but see them?
Put them on the bedside table, within reach?
How stupid to be thinking such things. Angus must be exhausted—all he’d want to do was sleep, which was what she should be doing.
But if that’s what he wanted, should she pull out the couch—make it up into a bed—at least leave sheets and pillows out?
She reached her hut—the home that had become a refuge—and, not knowing any answers, walked on to where the tide shushed against the coral sand, crystal clear, so she could see the small, flat sand sharks darting in the shallows. She walked into the water, up to her ankles, up to her knees, letting the warm moisture soak into the thin fabric of the scrub suit, then she turned and splashed along parallel to the beach, not wanting to get out, not wanting to go deeper, watching the water she kicked up arc into the air in tiny diamond drops.
Her diamond fantasy was ridiculous.
An affair with Angus would start the pain again—pain she’d barely learnt to erase from her life.
She could pretend she was mature enough to cope with it, probably pretend enough to fool Angus, but she couldn’t fool herself.
‘We’re lifting the quarantine in the morning. I have to give my paper at the convention which means I won’t be involved in meetings and press announcements, so I thought I might go back to the hotel and sleep.’
Children's Doctor, Meant-To-Be Wife Page 12
