Stranded in Paradise

by Lori Copeland

  Pain shot up his calf and he sucked in a breath as he dropped to his knees to extract the blasted harpoon. The slight trickle of blood when he pulled the pin free made him sick to his stomach. He was a lily-livered coward when it came to the sight of blood, especially his own.

  Another brisk knock on the door brought him back to his feet.

  “Okay! Okay! I’m coming!” Hopping on one foot, he slid the security chain free and cracked the door a fraction.

  Oh, great. The wren. What was she doing here? And in a bathrobe? He averted his gaze to the floor.

  “Mr. McConnell? I’m sorry to bother you but—”

  Carter opened the door wider and Tess stepped back, clearly startled. They stared at each other. Finally Carter prompted. “How did you find me here? Are you following me?”

  She stood speechless. Her lips moved but no sound came out. “You’re Carter McConnell?” He nodded his head.

  “How dare you!” she sputtered. “I am not the kind of person who follows total strangers! Besides, you were staying at the Pioneer Inn.”

  He leaned on the doorsill, still fighting sleep. “I thought I was staying at the Pioneer Inn. Some mix-up with the reservations—computer glitch. I move to the Pioneer tomorrow night.” He yawned, running his hand through his tousled hair. “So, what do you want if you’re not stalking me?”

  “The airline delivered your bags to my room by mistake—I thought you’d want to have them right away. Of course, I wouldn’t have disturbed you had I known …”

  He glanced from the towel on her head down to her bare feet. Her left ankle and foot looked like an over-inflated water balloon. “That’s looking worse.” He pointed at her foot. “What was your name?”

  “Tess Nelson,” she spurted. “And I’ll thank you to mind your own business.” She turned and marched toward her room. Carter tugged his luggage into his room and then dropped across the bed and fell asleep before he could think another thought.

  4

  “Looks like that storm is intensifying, Erin,” the radio announcer began. Tess lifted her head to see what time it was—7:12. “The meteorologists are picking out names as this baby grows, with sustained winds up to fifty miles per hour. We’re on standby here in Maui but who knows if she’ll change directions.”

  She turned off the alarm. So much for sleeping in today. If she were home she’d already be on her snack break. She stuffed the thought aside. She was on vacation. She was going to enjoy.

  As she stepped out of bed the pain in her foot surged. She needed to find a doctor and see about getting a contact lens, but not before she got ahold of Beeg.

  Picking up her cell phone and address book she called Beeg’s home number again. The answering machine picked up. When it beeped, Tess said, “Hey, Beeg, I’m here in Maui but I seem to keep missing you. Call me on my cell phone …” She hung up and stared at her phone. Where could Beeg be? It wasn’t as if she didn’t expect her to come.

  Padding to the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and then took out a brush and started in on her hair. A big clump of hair dropped into the sink. She looked at it in disgust. She’d have to wear a hat today, definitely.

  “This is not my idea of the perfect vacation.” Tess exited the hotel in search of an eye and foot doctor. She’d decided to stop back at the airport to rent a car too, since she hadn’t gotten ahold of Beeg and taking taxis everywhere was getting quite costly.

  Once that was taken care of it was time to attend to her injuries. Her ankle now looked like a bloated corpse, and the sprain needed a doctor’s attention.

  Thirty minutes later she was sitting in a clinic, fanning herself with a coverless issue of People magazine— recently and thoroughly mangled by the four-year-old sitting next to her.

  A nurse appeared through an outer door. “Ms. Nelson?”

  “Me.” Tess laid the magazine aside and stood up and hobbled to follow the white uniform. Upon entering examining room 4, she was sat on a narrow table with a long strip of white paper where the nurse efficiently recorded her blood pressure and temperature. Stripping the sphygmomanometer off, she then scribbled notes before positioning a clipboard on her trim stomach. “What can we do for you today?”

  “I sprained my ankle running to catch a plane. It’s very painful.”

  She nodded. “Visiting Hawaii?”

  “Yes.”

  She clipped the pencil on the board. “Doctor will be in shortly.” The door closed behind her, and Tess drew a deep breath, holding her foot out in front of her to reassess the damage. The ankle was blue and distorted— could she have chipped the bone? The prospect added another unwelcome angst to her growing list.

  Thirty minutes later the doctor appeared. Tess sat up quickly: she’d finally given in to the uncomfortable table and laid back. Absently smoothing her hair, she smiled at the gray-haired physician with a noticeable paunch.

  He peered at the chart in his hand. “Having ankle problems?”

  “I sprained it while I was running to catch a plane. It’s been throbbing for hours.”

  “Hummm.” Setting the chart aside, he took her bare foot and examined it.

  “Yes … hummm. There’s considerable swelling and bruising.”

  “I’ve taken Advil and used ice packs but nothing helps.” She waited, heart pumping erratically. What if it was broken and she had to endure a hot cast—which would undoubtedly mean crutches… . Her heart banged against her rib cage.

  “Humm… .” He bent closer and carefully manipulated the smarting appendage. Tess gritted her teeth and closed her eyes.

  “Hurt?”

  Pain! Searing agony, you masochist!

  She grinned. “A little.”

  “Hummm.” Straightening, his eyes focused on a mole on her left arm. Narrowing in on the site, he examined the barely distinguishable discoloration. “How long have you had this?”

  The heart again. Thumping wildly, crowding the back of her throat. “All my life—I think.” She tried to remember— she’d had the mole all her life, hadn’t she? The blemish looked vaguely familiar—but maybe it had come up lately. She felt faint.

  “Does it look strange? Dangerous?” She turned to peer at the now definitely suspicious looking thing on her left forearm.

  “Hummm.” He pulled a light over to the table, switched it on, then reached for a magnifying glass. Wide-eyed, she studied his grave demeanor, ankle forgotten. Drawing the light nearer, he scoured the object for what seemed an inordinately long time.

  “What?” she asked faintly.

  “Hummm… .” The magnifying glass moved back and forth—an inch here, half inch there… .

  Sweat broke out on her forehead.

  Straightening, he snapped off the light and pushed the stand back. “I’m going to write you a prescription for pain and something to relax those muscles. Before you leave I’d like to take an x-ray of that foot, but I believe we’re dealing with a simple sprain.”

  Nodding mutely, she tried to fathom how pain and muscle relaxants could relate to a suspicious looking mole? Dear God—she’d never noticed. Len had thrown her into such a tailspin, and she’d been so busy with work… . Had she overlooked something? Melanoma. She’d read article after article about the dreaded skin condition. She lifted her forearm and stared.

  The doctor wrote on the pad. Her mind faintly registered the scrape of ball point against paper. She’d have to fly home immediately—consult her doctor, who would then refer her to a specialist. How good were Denver oncologists? Her hands trembled. She would fly to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota—she’d have the best of care there—maybe even extend her life a few more years… . Her heart sank. There was so much yet to do—so many things she’d wanted to experience. Motherhood. She wanted to spend a summer in Ireland, take an Alaskan cruise.

  “I’ll wrap the ankle—should give you some relief,” the doctor was saying. He tore the prescription off the pad. “You call the office tomorrow and my nurse will give you the results of the
x-ray. Meanwhile,” he smiled, “enjoy our beautiful island.”

  She nodded, numb now. “The … mole. Should I see …?”

  “The mole?” He flapped the air. “Perfectly normal. You’ve probably had it all your life.” He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Weakly lowering herself flat on her back, she stared at the ceiling, trying to still her racing heart.

  An hour later and two blocks away, Tess walked through the door of an optical service whose flashing red sign promised, “ready in one hour.” Now to get rid of these glasses.

  For the next hour and a half, she read magazines and filed her nails. One whole morning in paradise shot on medical emergencies plus the visits cost twice what she’d have paid on the Mainland.

  “Ms. Nelson?”

  Tess tossed the magazine aside and for the second time that morning hobbled into a small cubicle—this one filled with strange looking apparatus for a preliminary exam. She read numbers, pointed right and left, and pushed a button each time a flash occurred.

  She jumped when a blast of air hit her right eye: glaucoma test. Moments later she was ushered into the optician’s chair. When the man entered, she did a double take at his bottle-thick lenses, which he repeatedly shoved to the bridge of his nose with his forefinger.

  “Lost a contact?”

  “In the airport.”

  “Shame.” Up went the glasses. After a series of tests— ptosis, exophthalmos, lesions, deformities or asymmetry problems—he got down to the business at hand.

  She heard a flipping sound. “Is A better, or B?” the doctor asked.

  “B.”

  She heard a click. “B or A?” Up went the glasses.

  “A.”

  Click. “A or B?”

  “Uh … A—no wait. Let me see B again.”

  Click.

  “What was the question?”

  “A or B.” Up went the glasses.

  “B. No, A.”

  “A or B?”

  “A.”

  She was getting dizzy.

  Click. “B or A?”

  “B—A—I don’t know. They both look the same.”

  Twenty minutes later she walked out, after paying for the examination and ordering one contact, which she now had to kill an hour before she could get. She settled on lunch and a brief excursion through a trendy dress shop where she purchased a silk blouse for an outlandish price. All in all, she considered the morning had cost her close to three hundred dollars, and it was barely noon.

  Breezing out of the optometrist shop, she smiled, relieved to be free of the annoying glasses. Her foot hit something sticky on the sidewalk and she paused and lifted her heel, groaning when she saw a wad of pink bubble gum stuck to the leather sole. Lowering the good foot, she scraped back and forth, keeping an eye out for curious bystanders. Her sandaled foot moved back and forth, back and forth, each rub producing nothing more than a long, stringy, sticky piece of gum-based latex.

  Sun glared down on her and she felt perspiration running down her neck. Her wrapped ankle throbbed. Gum was stuck tight as an eight-day clock. She could remove the shoe, but walking barefoot on the warm pavement didn’t interest her—not when she had to shuffle anyway. She’d have to make it back to the car and get rid of the sandal.

  With a goal fixed in mind, she limped down the concrete, trailing a long gooey slick of pink bubble gum on the hot pavement.

  This vacation was going nowhere but to the dogs.

  With her health care needs dealt with, Tess decided to walk to Beeg’s gallery near the historical Baldwin Missionary Home. She crossed the street and stopped to gawk at the Banyon tree in the middle of a small park where craft vendors peddled their wares. The tree branches spread for blocks.

  “Something, isn’t it?” a voice said.

  She turned to see a nicely dressed woman sitting on a bench, smiling at her. She wore her iron gray hair braided and looped in a coronet. Even sitting on a rustic bench, her posture and the way she held her head appeared almost queenly. Her eyes, blue as Hawaiian skies, were warm and alert, expressing a friendly interest. A native woven basket containing cut Plumeria and Birds of Paradise sat next to a shopping bag. Tess glanced at a loaf of fresh baked bread and a carton of milk in the shopping bag.

  “The tree was planted by the sheriff of Maui in 1873 and is now the largest in the state,” the woman offered.

  “It is amazing.” She turned back to study the tourist attraction. Where the tree’s roots thickened, they formed a series of columns like tendons in the tree’s neck to support the ever-lengthening branches.

  “Ficus benghalensis,” the lady said in explanation. “The tree now stands nearly sixty feet tall and covers more than two-thirds of an acre.” Her timeless features softened as she stared up at the sun filtering lacey fingers through the branches. “One of God’s many marvels.”

  Tess smiled and moved on. God’s marvels.

  She’d never thought of it that way.

  Trekking by ocean-front stores, she spotted the Lopsided Easel half a block away. The small upstairs gallery looked inviting with its colorful array of watercolors decorating the window. She paused to read the list of artists represented there; of course Beeg as well as other talents like Don Jusko, Michael Krahan, and Jim Kingwell, who was noted for his watercolors of local scenes.

  She entered the store, alive with color, space, and movement, and smiled at the pretty young Polynesian girl behind the counter. “Hi,” she said. “Tell Bee Gee her past has come back to haunt her.”

  New York City.

  Bee Gee had gone to the Mainland for an art showing and she’d be gone two weeks! She vaguely remembered Beeg saying something about New York. She wanted to pull her hair in sheer frustration. But she knew with the state her hair was in that it wouldn’t be wise. The clerk at the gallery had given her the Marriott number where Beeg was staying, but what good would it do to call? Beeg was in New York and she was in Maui.

  After she’d left the Lopsided Easel, she had aimlessly wandered the streets of Lahaina, trying to gain control of her emotions. A cacophony of tropical bird calls and Don Ho’s voice blared from street corner vendors’ stereos.

  Now what? Should she book the next flight back to Denver or stay in Hawaii and force herself to enjoy her time off?

  She needed aspirin.

  Depressed, she drove back to the Mynah Nest. The foul odor of rotten eggs met her again. Well, Tess decided, the least she could do was find a nicer place to stay. She drove to the Pioneer Inn where the clerk assured her there were now open rooms.

  When the clerk gave her the key to her room she smiled and made her way up. This room was markedly cleaner and smelled fresh. Still, Beeg was gone. She had no one to share her time with. She hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and then did exactly what she promised herself she wouldn’t: she called home to check her messages. She had a three o’clock dental appointment on Monday that she’d forgotten to cancel. The jewelry store had the broken locket fixed. She could pick it up anytime.

  She downed two aspirins and went to bed.

  5

  In spite of the pending tropical storm which, according to the weather bureau, had just kicked up another notch, she was determined to start her vacation. The travel brochure she had picked up in the Pioneer Inn lobby claimed that there was nowhere on earth more beautiful to witness at sunrise than the summit of Mount Haleakala. Her ankle was stronger this morning so she rented a car, purchased a latte, and made the two-hour drive to the crater and the short hobble to the summit. As she watched, the blazing ball eased up over the dormant volcano crater radiant light gradually spreading until it infused the sky with brilliant golds and yellows. It was the most glorious thing she had ever seen. On her drive home, she was still affected by it, almost as if it were a religious experience, as if she’d somehow seen a bit of God in that sunrise.

  She knew she was far from spiritual. She thought about the times her grandmother had taken her
to Mass when she was a child. It held the same sense of reverence and hushed awe. Mom, of course, didn’t like priests, or the church.

  “Religion gives outgoing folks something to do on Sunday mornings. But really—God? You’re smarter than that, Tess.”

  “But Mom,” Tess had said. “The nice woman in the black robe and funny-looking thing on her head—that ‘Sister’— she says there is a God, and that He loves little children.”

  “And there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!”

  Tess hadn’t known what to think. She’d wanted to believe in a God who cared about her, but as she’d grown older she’d seen too little of such kindness, especially with people like Len Connor. She felt more and more certain that her mother was right.

  As Tess drove into Maui she felt as though she was marooned on the moon.

  Restless now, she decided to ignore her smarting ankle and do something. Food. She needed a decent meal to put events in perspective, to put her life into perspective. When she asked where she could find a good meal, the concierge suggested a luau—the Old Lahaina Luau located within easy walking distance of Pioneer Inn. She had been thinking more along the lines of swordfish and salad at the grill below the hotel, but maybe a little entertainment would jumpstart the vacation mode.

  Returning upstairs, she dressed in a pair of white walking shorts and a butter-yellow T-shirt and pulled her hair atop her head and stuffed it into her hat. Slipping on a pair of sandals, which looked awful with the injured ankle wrapped, she went back downstairs and exited the hotel.

  The air outside was scented with tuberose and jasmine—or so she tried to imagine—after all this was “paradise.” Actually the scent of hamburger from that cheeseburger joint a couple blocks away accompanied her as she took her time walking to the luau. Gusty winds had slackened to a nice breeze though the evening was slightly overcast.

  The luau grounds were typical native Hawaiian. Palm trees, grass huts, and steel guitars blended to create an authentic setting. A handsome Polynesian young man wearing a brightly flowered tupenu smiled as he looped an orchid lei over her head. Her mood lightened as she accepted a glass of fruit punch with a fresh orchid floating in it. Demonstrations of lei making, coconut cutting, and Ti leaf shirt weaving lined the walkways. She wandered the grounds, sipping her drink.