How to Find Your (First) Husband

by Rosie Blake

  I looked and sure enough it was Mel, waving with both hands, big waves which at the moment in my mind seemed the universal sign for: THERE IS A SHARK BEHIND YOUR BOAT. I whipped my head first one way and the next but the turquoise-blue water seemed empty of any fins and yet Mel was still waving. Panic seized me as Dex joined her, both beckoning us. Had something horrible happened? I thought of Mum at home, Moregran. Had someone called?

  I splashed breathless into the shallows and waded across to them. Mel was up to her knees and looking at me, her face confirming my worst fears. Something had happened.

  ‘What is it?’ I gabbled, scared now.

  ‘It’s Zeb,’ she said. ‘Ahmad took him to Tekek, there’s a clinic there but he said he was bad…’

  Cold seeped into my chest despite the sun beating down at me relentlessly. ‘What do you mean “bad”?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, I couldn’t understand…he said he was grey, not breathing. He looked scared, Iz, he seemed scared.’

  I felt my knees wobble. ‘I have to see if he’s okay,’ I said, running onto the sand and not waiting for anything, just needing to get back to the hotel and get to Tekek.

  Andrew and Mel were calling me as I stumbled across the sand, my ankle twisting as I moved quickly over the uneven beach, sporadic weeds bursting through as I neared the track back to the hotel. Rushing past Reception and straight up the stairs, I back-tracked as I noticed the cards in the hallway. Phone numbers– people who might be able to get me there.

  I dialled a couple, drumming my fingers on the wall in frustration as they just rung on and on. Mel appeared in the hotel doorway, hovering uncertainly at my shoulder as I looked at her with wide eyes, the mobile held up to my face. Everything felt speeded up and when I finally got through to someone on the end, it was all I could do but gabble urgently down the phone, the hotel name, the clinic in Tekek. I think he sensed the panic and a rusting 4x4 was screeching to a stop outside the hotel within ten minutes.

  I bundled myself into the car, wet, sandy hair scraped back into a ponytail, a T-shirt flung on over some shorts. Mel gave me a quick kiss and it was only really then that I remembered Andrew.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be in touch and tell him to go for it.’

  Mel frowned.

  ‘He’ll understand,’ I said. ‘Please tell him.’

  ‘I will, of course I will,’ she said, hugging me again and then slamming the door.

  Mel’s pale face, stark against her bright-red hair, grew smaller as we veered down the track and then disappeared from view as we bumped into the jungle and off to Tekek and the doctor’s clinic. I was squeezing my knuckles tightly, mouthing a prayer to nobody, hoping that nothing serious had happened and that Mel had been wrong and he was alright. The driver met my gaze in the mirror a few times but the combination of my pallid face and short responses soon put a stop to too much conversation. My head was just too full to concentrate and all I could hear was Tekek, Tekek as we careered and jarred through the track of tree roots, the road growing wider and smoother as we neared the main village, a large dirty sign – a red cross on a white background – confirming that we had arrived.

  Thanking the driver who seemed to have halved the cost, I leaped out of the vehicle and ran towards the clinic, pushing open the main double doors, feeling the weight of them, suckered to the sides. Breathlessly I approached the reception desk, littered with peeling notices of people coughing into tissues, vicious-looking needles and more.

  ‘Please,’ I said, thankful no one else was there waiting. ‘I need to see Zeb, Zebedee, he came here earlier, he—’

  The short nurse, who was wearing round glasses, held up a hand authoritatively. I screeched to a halt.

  ‘He come in. We get him to Mersing, mainland hospital, very good.’

  Hospital.

  The rest of her words seemed to slow and blur in front of me as I realised Mel had been right. Something serious had happened.

  ‘What happened? What’s wrong with him?’ I asked, suck­ing in my breath and biting on my lip. Her answer seemed to drag out of her.

  ‘He need doctor. Emergency, emergency,’ she said which just made my heart pound more.

  ‘How do I get to him?’ I asked, feeling fretful tears spark the back of my eyes.

  ‘Ferry leave, later ferry.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, confused.

  ‘You,’ she pointed. ‘Get later ferry. Mersing.’

  ‘Right, right,’ I said, wishing I owned a helicopter.

  I knew where the ferries left from and I backed out of the clinic, turning into the road, the full heat of the day wrapping itself around me, suffocating me as I walked, half-jogged to the jetty.

  The Mersing ferry was going to be another hour and I had never felt time lag this slowly before, dozens of images of Zeb running through my mind. Zeb, energetic, bursting with positivity, I couldn’t imagine him grey, hurt. I felt an ache in my body, clutched my stomach, concerned I was about to be sick. I tried to push the images away, not focus on it but all I could see was his face.

  I called Mel. ‘I’m going to Mersing,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the mainland, Iz.’

  ‘I know, I just, I’m going,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll call you when I know more.’ I heard Dex in the background; he sounded worried. They both did and I didn’t want to stay on the line with them any more; I wanted to stay focused. I needed to get there.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ I reassured them.

  Nodding and hanging up, I breathed in and out deeply, trying to calm myself. It might just be a precaution, they might send lots of people to Mersing.

  The ferry trip itself was dreadful. I felt nauseous from the moment I sat below deck, in an unmoving plastic seat, a faded life raft on a peg to my right, a sign bolted into the wall below a smeared porthole telling me what to do in case of an emergency. It has already happened, I thought. I didn’t know what I might find. I knew I had to go there, he would be alone and, at this thought, the fact that he had been injured with no one there to go with him made my eyes sting. I balled up my fists and flexed my fingers, repeating the action, fiddling with the hem of my vest top.

  God, what had I been thinking? Wasting all this time in paradise running around trying to make things work with a man I had lost all connection to while a man who got me, really understood me and, better than that, seemed to like me for me, had been there all the time.

  The ferry ride seemed to go on forever. COULD YOU BE SLOWER, FERRY? It was as if we were crossing an ocean rather than a thin strip of sea: it seemed the mainland would never come. And then from the window I could make out the island, bleeding into view, slowly taking shape, the rise and fall of the land, then the tiny squares of houses as we gained distance, a thin strip of yellow beach, dots of people and then the covered jetty, hearing the sound of the idling engine as the ferry was steered carefully past idle boats in the water, seaweed and fishing nets hanging loosely from hooks by the jetty. I had raced up to the top deck, desperate to be the first off and into Mersing.

  Thanking the crew, who had pointed me in the direction of a taxi that could take me to the main hospital, I paid hastily. Running down the jetty, past people rolling suit­cases, holding sunhats, enormous smiles on their faces like nothing had happened today, like nothing was wrong.

  Sitting in the air-conditioned cool of the taxi, the fabric patched and worn, covered in part by a faded patterned throw, I strained my neck to catch the first glimpse of the hospital, saw the red cross in the distance, an agonising wait at a traffic light nearby. An ambulance stood motionless outside glass double doors as people moved in and out of them, unhurried, as I tapped out a rhythm in my lap. The nerves were really mounting now. What would I find? What was wrong with him? The taxi driver gave me the occasional encouraging smile in the driving mirror but I found my face frozen in response, drained of the recent tan,
my eyes startled. I turned away, focusing only on the entrance and praying to someone, anyone, to help him.

  Rushing in across the polished parquet floor of the hospital, I waited in line, balancing my weight on one foot then another as the queue for reception worked its way through. A large white board behind the reception desk had names, dates and phrases written on to it in columns. I tried to make out anything familiar but soon gave up. It was a hopeless jumble of felt-pen markings and I might have been reading hieroglyphs. Doctors and nurses moved past in corridors off to the right and left, serious faces, a trolley of towels being pushed, another helping a little boy on crutches. Where was he? Was he here? For a brief moment I felt a genuine terror freeze my insides. Had he made it? Had he survived the journey?

  Starting to panic and fret, I found myself jabbering at the young nurse behind the counter. He had an open face and was trying to keep up with me, his head tilted sympathetically to one side as his eyes creased. I didn’t know where to begin and had simply repeated his name Zeb and Tioman over and over again, hearing my voice as if it were a stranger’s in a strangled tone I didn’t recognise. I had to calm down, I thought, taking a breath and trying to compose myself. ‘A photographer, Zeb…’

  His eyes seemed to spark at the last and when I said photographer he repeated, ‘English photographer, you are?’

  ‘Wife,’ I blurted, needing that to have the desired effect. How could I see him otherwise? They might refuse. He was here. He was here and this man knew who I was talking about. ‘Is he okay? Can I see him? What happened?’ I fired the questions back at him but the man seemed to not understand more.

  ‘Photographer. Wife,’ he said, standing up and moving round the desk. ‘I show you.’

  And he left his post to take me, muttering endless thanks at him down the corridor and into another ward, the signs translated into English but my mind too slow and fuzzy to really take anything in.

  ‘He have head,’ the nurse said, craning round and tapping himself on his own head. ‘Head.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, not keeping up. That was good, wasn’t it? Heads were pretty vital.

  ‘He have head,’ he tapped again and poked his tongue out a bit, rolled his eyes.

  ‘Head,’ I said, tapping my own now. ‘A head injury?’ I guessed, heart drumming as I quickened my pace. Oh god, had he hurt his head? The worst thoughts crashed through my consciousness and I found myself stopping, still in the middle of the corridor.

  The nurse had run on ahead and now did a double-take over his shoulder, no doubt noticing I was missing. He moved back towards me slowly. ‘It’s okay.’ His smile was gentle and uncertain. He nodded once at me and beckoned me to follow with a jerk of his head. ‘It’s okay,’ he repeated and I kept those words on a loop as I fell back into step with him. It was okay, it would be okay, he was okay.

  The nurse pushed open a door and we entered a ward, a couple of fans moving overhead, some beds in a uniform line, bone-white, waiting for occupants. A window at the far end, a shiny cream curtain pulled around it, shielding anything else from view. On the other side of the room an old man stooped over a soup bowl, ladling it into his mouth, and a woman slept on her side, a window at the far end throwing sunlight over the foot of the bed, highlighting the thin pink blanket she had clearly brought from home.

  The curtain seemed to loom ahead now, the nurse moving across to it to draw it back. I didn’t know whether I was yet ready to see what lay beyond it, had dashed across here with no other thought than Zeb. I needed to know he was alright, but if he wasn’t I wanted a few more moments of that, wasn’t sure what I would find, what I would feel. The air seemed to seize up in my chest as the nurse drew the curtain back slowly, a lump in the bed where someone’s legs were then, further up, a chest, a man, and then him, Zeb, lying, an eye opening at the disturbance.

  ‘Iz.’ He made a move to sit up and then, realising he couldn’t make it the whole way stopped, a faint panting as he rested back on the pillow.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, coming towards him and trying to smile at him. The nurse melted away and I was too slow in my thanks, turning to mutter it as he left the ward.

  He looked at me then, head sunk into the pillow. ‘How did you get in here?’ he croaked, his voice scratchy, lower than normal.

  I shrugged. ‘I told them I was your wife.’ I blushed, feeling strangely embarrassed at the omission.

  ‘Well, there goes my chances with the nurses,’ he said, weakly attempting to raise an eyebrow as a nurse with a bottom as wide as she was tall pushed a trolley into the room, heading over to the man with the soup.

  I was too worried to react and stared at the large roll of bandage wrapped around his head, hair sprouting out of it at the top as if it were a thick gym headband.

  ‘Not my greatest look,’ he said, noting my gaze.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, concerned that he wasn’t able to focus on anything for more than a second or two, his eyes closing involuntarily. ‘Zeb,’ I said, feeling panic rise up in my chest, my whole body clenching.

  His eyes flickered and he was back. ‘Fell,’ he explained. ‘I’d climbed up on some rocks, wanted a photo of…I don’t remember…’

  ‘Shhh, don’t try,’ I hushed, stepping forward, biting on my lip.

  His brown skin was tinged with a greyish light, perhaps from the stark light of the room, the bumpy cream walls which needed a lick of paint, the chart at the foot of the bed, utterly indecipherable.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Stiches.’ He indicated his head with a finger, a pathetic attempt to point. ‘I’m fine,’ he insisted, sounding anything but, his voice sinking again, eyelids drooping shut.

  ‘Zeb,’ I whispered tentatively.

  He opened his eyes slowly, taking me in, a lazy smile growing which made me want to cry. ‘They’re keeping me in because they think I have concussion.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I can’t decide whether I can’t read signs because I’m concussed or because they’re in Malaysian.’

  ‘Zeb,’ I said, a gurgle of choked laughter rising in my throat. If he could joke surely it couldn’t be that serious? My eyes were pulled as if on a thread back to the bloodied T-shirt on the chair beside him. The blood had streaked and matted on the material. I gulped, reaching out a hand automatically and placing it over his. His fingers curled over mine and he gave me a weak smile, blinking slowly as he seemed to zone out again.

  ‘Stay, Iz,’ he whispered as his head lolled a little to one side. ‘Stay.’

  I squeezed his fingers in response, not wanting to let go of his hand, awkwardly dragging a stool over with one foot.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ I said. His camera lay on the floor by the chair, the lens was cracked. ‘I’ll stay.’

  Epilogue

  One month later

  ‘Hold it steady, dingus,’ I screeched, my hair falling across my face as I tried to balance myself on a rock on Phi Phi Don, a gorgeous beach in Thailand.

  Zeb emerged from behind the camera lens, his turquoise-blue eyes crinkled in amusement. He sighed. ‘When did I land such a hot girlfriend?’

  We were making the latest vlog for our travel website and somehow I had been persuaded to dress up as a mer­maid. Hair falling in waves, a flower behind me ear, I read­justed myself and was ready to go. The last few entries had been a huge success and the site was starting to attract advertising. It paid for our flights and board. We could

  travel anywhere.

  ‘Hey, go easy,’ I said, seeing him clamber up a little higher. I was quick to worry about him now; it had only been a couple of weeks since he’d left hospital.

  This clip was focusing on trying to find deserted spots. Often the day-trippers flocked to some parts but, after a few days in the village and armed with some local knowledge, Zeb and I had discovered some incredible places. The shallow
waters were inviting, packed with marine life, the water clear, the sand pristine. I felt like I was moving around a movie set at times, it was so jaw-dropping.

  Next week we were heading off to Bangkok to pick up all the bustle and madness of the nightlife there. Zeb had already told me something about ping-pong balls that I hadn’t needed to know, a filthy glint in his eye, his hair mussed from sleep. From there, east for a couple of months to be back in LA for Mel and Dex’s beach wedding. She’d sent me the photos of her dress last night, a stunning backless lace dress. She was grinning in the pictures. She looked completely fabulous.

  ‘Oi, fishwoman,’ Zeb said, walking towards me. ‘Stop undressing me with your eyes, it’s indecent.’

  ‘I wasn’t undressing you with my eyes, you ’nana.’

  ‘’nana?’ he frowned, pursing his lips together.

  ‘’nana,’ I repeated firmly, holding my breath as he moved in front of me, his tanned chest inches from my face. I peeked up at him. His look, tender and amused, instantly lit me up and a smile spread across my face.

  He traced a line down my jaw with his finger and I shivered. Pulling me towards him for a kiss I felt, as I had done this past month, my whole body cave in, curved into his, feeling his arms secure and warm around me. His mouth was firm on mine, a smile growing as he grabbed my bottom.

  ‘Get off my scales,’ I squealed, pulling away in mock outrage.

  ‘Okay, but let’s get this done so that I can ravish you properly.’

  I felt my insides fire up, a heat spread through my body. I couldn’t believe he was mine. Grinning as he dived back behind the lens, his face was quickly lost and only his thick, dark hair was around the camera in view. I readjusted my outfit and waited for his signal.

  The red light flashed and he gave me a countdown. Licking my lips, I turned towards the camera. ‘We’re here in Phi Phi Don and it’s total heaven.’

  Acknowledgements

  How to Find Your (First) Husband was great fun to write and, as ever, I had plenty of help along the way.