Nine Months to Change His Life

by Unknown

  ‘Oh, Ben...’

  ‘Schoolkids,’ he said, and he was there again, surrounded by terror, death, chaos. ‘They targeted kids for maximum impact. Twelve kids were killed and Jake was collateral damage.’

  ‘No wonder he has nightmares.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did he lose consciousness?’

  What sort of question was that? What difference did it make?

  But it did make a difference. He’d thought, among all that carnage, at least Jake was unaware.

  ‘Until we reached the field hospital, yes.’

  ‘You were uninjured?’

  ‘Minor stuff. Jake was between me and the bus.’

  ‘Then I’m guessing,’ she said gently, ‘that your nightmares will be worse than his.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘He’s your younger brother.’

  ‘By twenty minutes.’

  ‘You’ll still feel responsible.’

  ‘He’s okay.’ He flinched at the thought of where he might be now. Put it away, fast. ‘He has to be okay. But tell me about you. Why are you here?’

  And the question was neatly turned. She had nowhere to go, he thought as he watched her face. He’d answered her questions. He’d let down his guard. Now he was demanding entry to places he instinctively knew she kept protected.

  They were two of a kind, he thought, and how he knew it he couldn’t guess. But they kept their secrets well.

  He was asking for hers.

  ‘I’m escaping from my family,’ she said, and she was silent for a while. ‘I’m escaping from my community as well.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said. ‘Baby killer, that’s me.’

  It was said lightly. It was said with all the pain in the world.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You expect me to stay in the same bed as a baby killer?’

  She turned and stared and he met her gaze. Straight and true. If this woman was a baby killer he was King Kong.

  He smiled and she tried to smile back. It didn’t come off.

  ‘I’ve exonerated you,’ he told her. ‘Found you innocent. Evidence? If you really were a baby killer you’d be on a more secure island. Alcatraz, for instance. Want to tell me about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I told you mine.’ He lifted the quilt so it reached her shoulders. ‘If you lie back, there are cushions. Very comfy cushions. You can stare into the dark and pretend I’m your therapist.’

  ‘I don’t need a therapist.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘You have nightmares.’

  ‘And you don’t?’ He put gentle pressure on her shoulder. She resisted for a moment. Heinz snuffled beside her. The wind raised its howl a notch.

  She slumped back on the pillows and felt the fight go out of her.

  ‘Tell Dr Ben,’ Ben said.

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘I’m playing psychoanalyst. I’ve failed the army. I’m a long way from the New York Stock Exchange. My yacht’s a hundred fathoms deep. A man has to have some sort of career. Shoot.’

  ‘Shoot?’

  ‘What would an analyst say? So, Ms Smash ’em Mary, you’re confessing to baby killing.’

  And she smiled. He heard it and he almost whooped.

  What was it about this woman that made it so important to make her smile?

  Shoot, he’d said, and she did.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHE GAVE IN.

  She told him.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and he heard weariness now, the weariness of a long, long battle. ‘I’ve told you that I’m a district nurse?’

  ‘Hence the drugs,’ he said. ‘Nice nurse.’

  She smiled again, but briefly. ‘I’m currently suspended from work and a bit...on the outer with my family,’ she told him. She took a deep breath. ‘Okay, potted history. My mum died when I was eight. She’d been ill for a year and at the end Dad was empty. It was like most of him had died, too.

  ‘Then he met Barbie. Barbie’s some kind of faith-healer and self-declared clairvoyant. She offered to channel Mum, using Ouija boards, that kind of thing, and Dad was so desperate he fell for it. But Barbie has three daughters of her own and was in a financial mess. She was blatantly after Dad’s money. Dad’s well off. He has financial interests in most of the businesses in Taikohe where we live, and Barbie simply moved in and took control. She got rid of every trace of my mother. She still wants to get rid of me.’

  ‘Cinderella with the wicked stepmother?’

  ‘She’s never mistreated me. Not overtly. She just somehow stopped Dad showing interest in me. With Barbie he seemed to die even more, if that makes sense, and she derided the things I had left to cling to.’

  ‘There are worse ways to mistreat a child than beat them,’ he said softly, and she was quiet for a while, as the wind rose and the sounds of the storm escalated.

  He thought she’d stopped then, and was trying to figure how to prod her to go further when she started again, all by herself.

  ‘School was my escape,’ she told him. I liked school and I was good at it. I liked...rules.’

  ‘Rules make sense when you’re lost,’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes they’re the only thing to cling to.’ Was that why he and Jake had joined the army? he wondered. To find some limits?

  ‘Anyway, I studied nursing. I became Taikohe’s district nurse. I now have my own cottage...’

  ‘With a cat?’ he demanded. ‘Uh-oh. This is starting to sound like cat territory.’

  And she got it. He heard her grin. ‘Only Heinz, who’ll eat me when I die a spinster, alone and unloved.’ She poked him—hard, in the ribs.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Serves you right. Of all the stereotyping males...’

  ‘Hey, you’re the one with the wicked stepmother.’

  ‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said promptly, because he did. ‘Tell Dr Ben.’

  ‘Your bedside manner needs improving.’

  ‘My bedside manner is perfect,’ he said, and put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer. ‘I’d like some springs in this mattress but otherwise I can’t think of a single improvement.’

  ‘Ben...’

  ‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Tell me what happened next. Tell me about the baby.’

  There was a long silence. She lay still. Seemingly unbidden, his fingers traced a pattern in her hair. It felt...right to do so. Half of him expected her to pull away, but she didn’t.

  Tell me, he willed her silently, and wondered why it seemed so important that she did.

  Finally it came.

  ‘So now I’m grown up, living in the same community as my stepmother and my stepsisters and my dad. My dad’s still like a dried-up husk. The others ignore me. I’m the dreary local nurse who uses traditional medicine, which they despise. They put up with me when I drop in to visit my dad but that’s as far as the relationship goes.

  ‘But now they’ve started having babies—not my stepmum but the girls. Sapphire, Rainbow and Sunrise. Home births all. No hospitals or traditional medicine need apply. They’ve had six healthy babies between them, with my stepmother crowing that traditional medicine’s responsible for all the evils of the world. And then...catastrophe.’

  ‘Catastrophe?’

  ‘One dead baby,’ she said, drearily now. ‘Sunrise, my youngest stepsister, is massively overweight. The pregnancy went two weeks over term but she still refused to be checked. Then she went into labour, and a day later she was still labouring. She was at home with my stepmother and one of her sisters to support her. And then I dropped in.’

 
‘To help?’

  ‘I hadn’t even been told she was due,’ she said. ‘When I arrived I realised Dad was in Auckland on business but they’d taken over the house as a birthing centre. I walked in and Sunrise was out of her mind with pain and exhaustion. There was bleeding and the baby was in dire trouble. I guess I just took over. I rang the ambulance and the hospital and warned them but I knew already... I’d listened... The baby’s heartbeat was so faint...’

  ‘The baby died?’

  ‘They called her Sunset. How corny’s that for a dying baby? She was suffering from a hypoxic brain injury and she died when she was three days old. Sunrise was lucky to survive. She won’t be able to have more children.’

  ‘So that makes you a baby killer?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said drearily, ‘how much my stepmother really resented me until then. Or make that hate. I have no idea why, but at the coroner’s inquest she stood in the witness stand and swore I’d told Sunrise it was safe. She swore I’d said everything was fine. I’d been the chosen midwife, she said, and my stepsisters concurred. Of course they would have gone to the hospital, they said, but one after another they told the court that I’d said they didn’t need to.

  ‘And you know what? My dad believed them. The coroner believed them. They came out of the court and Sunrise was crying, but my stepmother actually smirked. She tucked her arm in Dad’s arm and they turned their backs on me. She’s had her way after all this time. I’m finally right out of her family.’

  Silence. More silence.

  He shouldn’t have asked, he thought. How to respond to a tragedy like this?

  ‘My roller-derby team has asked me to quit,’ she said into the dark. ‘My dad—or Barbie—employs two of the girls’ partners. Some of my medical colleagues stand by me—they know what I would and wouldn’t do—but the town’s too small for me to stay. I’m on unpaid leave now but I know I’ll have to go.’

  ‘So you’ve come to the great metropolis of Hideaway.’ His fingers remained on her hair, just touching. Just stroking. ‘I can see the logic.’

  ‘I needed time out.’

  ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘Writing?

  ‘By the fire. While I was snoozing.’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said, shocked.

  ‘Sorry. Diary? No, I won’t ask.’ He hesitated for all of two seconds. ‘Did you put something nice about me in it?’

  ‘Only how much you weigh. Like a ton.’ The mood had changed again. Lightness had returned. Thankfully.

  ‘That’s not kind,’ he said, wounded.

  ‘It’s what matters. My shoulder’s sore.’

  ‘My leg’s worse.’

  ‘Do you need more painkillers? We can double the dose.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said, even though a hero would have knocked them back. Actually, a hero would have put her aside, braved a cyclone or two, swum to the mainland and knocked the heads of her appalling family together. A hero might do that in the future but for now his leg did indeed hurt. Knocking heads together needed to take a back seat. But it wouldn’t be forgotten, he promised himself. Just shelved.

  ‘If I have hurt your shoulder...you can take painkillers too.’

  ‘I’m on duty.’

  ‘You’re not on duty,’ he told her, gentling again. ‘You need to sleep.’

  ‘In a cyclone?’

  ‘This isn’t a cyclone. This is an edge of a cyclone.’

  ‘Then I don’t want to see a centre.’

  ‘Hopefully we won’t,’ he said. ‘Hopefully when we wake it’ll have blown out to sea.’

  ‘Hope on,’ she said, and sat up and found him a couple of pills.

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Sleep with me.’

  ‘I don’t seem to have a choice,’ she said, and settled down again, and when he tugged her to him and held her, she didn’t pull away.

  * * *

  At dawn the cyclone hit square on, and even in the safety of the cave the world seemed like it was exploding.

  Afterwards she read that winds had reached two hundred miles an hour or more. They couldn’t measure precisely because the instruments had been blown from their exposed eyrie on a neighbouring island. All Mary knew was that when she woke it sounded like a hundred freight trains were thundering right over, under and into their cave.

  The wind was blasting from behind the cave but with such ferocity that the cave entrance was a vortex, sucking things in. Sand, grit, leaves. Their makeshift bed was far back, out of harm’s way, or she’d thought out of harm’s way, but who could tell with such a force?

  The noise was unbelievable. The pressure in the cave was unbelievable. Heinz was under the quilt, as far down as he could get, whimpering in terror.

  Mary felt like joining him.

  ‘It’s all noise and bluster.’ Ben’s arm was around her, holding her tight against him, and his voice was a deep rumble overriding terror. ‘I don’t think we’re on the outside any more,’ he said, his voice amazingly calm in her ear. ‘Cyclone Lila’s huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down, but she won’t succeed. She won’t because my heroine, the amazing Smash ’em Mary, found us a cave. We’re surrounded by nice thick rock. We’re safe, no matter what she hurls at us.’

  She hurled a tree. Mary heard it crash against the cliffs. In the dim light at the cave entrance she saw the trunk slide sideways across the cave mouth, and Ben might have thought he was holding her but now she was holding him. Tight. Hard. She might be safe in her cave but this was something out of this world.

  She clung. She clung and clung and clung.

  The world was ending. Dawn might be breaking on a new day somewhere in the world but dawn was breaking here on catastrophe. She was expecting her cave to implode. She was expecting her island to pick up its roots and head for England.

  So much for being nurse in charge. Ben had a head injury and a leg injury. She should be doing hourly obs, asking solicitous questions about his health.

  All she could do was cling.

  ‘You’re safe,’ he said into her ear, and when he was this close she believed him.

  She clung. Skin against skin. His warmth and strength were the only things that mattered.

  He was in boxers. She was in bra and panties. His body was rough against hers, and warm, and it was the only thing between her and catastrophe.

  The noise was unbelievable. It felt like the entire world had been picked up and was blowing away. Even the ground under them seemed to be trembling, and their bodies were reacting accordingly.

  She was no longer in charge of her body.

  What were the needs on the Maslow scale? Food first and shelter, but sex was right up there.

  If she buried herself in his body the noise would stop, but it seemed more than that. Much more.

  If she’d been lying with a stranger, surely it wouldn’t be like this, but Ben seemed no stranger. What was it between them? Danger, isolation, but more. She didn’t know and she didn’t have time to think it through. All she knew was that she was in this man’s arms and she wanted him.

  For this moment, this fragment of time, there was nothing but this man. There was no thought of the past or the future. For now, the only escape from the storm was Ben.

  * * *

  Less than twenty-four hours ago he’d thought he was going to die. He’d almost drowned. He was black with bruises. His leg was still giving him hell, but he was holding a woman in his arms and the pain and terror of the past couple of days was fading to nothing.

  All that mattered was her.

  Was this casual sex? Was this a fast mating because it was offered—for it was offered. He could feel her need.

  The noise of the storm outside
was unbelievable. She was holding him for comfort; she needed his strength, his warmth, his presence.

  But this was more than that. She was holding him as if she’d merge with him.

  This was more than casual sex.

  Maybe he’d say that to himself, he thought, or he tried to think as his arms drew her closer, as her skin pressed against his skin. Her breasts were moulding to him, the slivers of her lace bra almost non-existent. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever held.

  The most beautiful woman...

  Was that the storm talking? The adrenalin of the cyclone?

  He pulled away and it nearly killed him. He put her at arm’s length so he could look into those beautiful, wounded eyes.

  This was a wounded creature hiding from the world.

  This was a woman whose past resonated with his.

  Nonsense. He was the indulged son of serious money. His family connections had always made life easy for him.

  But her loneliness resonated with him in such a way...

  But this wasn’t loneliness. This was urgent physical need, and even if it killed him he would not take advantage of this woman.

  ‘Mary, think,’ he managed. ‘I can’t...stop. Mary, are you sure?’

  ‘That I want your body?’ Her voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’m as sure as I’ve ever been in my life.’

  ‘I don’t suppose...’ His voice didn’t match hers. It was ragged with want and there was no way he could disguise it. ‘That you carry condoms in that nurse’s bag?’

  ‘You didn’t pack some in your lifejacket pocket before you jumped overboard?’ Her words might be light but the jagged need, the need that matched his, was unmistakeable.

  ‘I can’t think why not, but no.’

  ‘So...so no diseases I should know about?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then I want you,’ she said, as simply as that, and it took his breath away. ‘Consequences can hang themselves.’