by Bowes, K T
Chapter 11
“Bobby, I need your help.”
The blonde man turned at the uncharacteristic use of his first name. He was in the process of fixing a metal plate onto the old tractor in the workshop near the stables. “Hey Miss,” he said and eyed the redhead with wary anticipation. Hana stood slightly to his right, wringing her hands together and panicking. She breathed hard from the hour and a quarter walk down the steep driveway and her thighs and calf muscles complained from the exertion.
“I don’t have anyone else I can ask,” she began and Flick moved out of his crouch position next to the machine and stood up, rubbing the backs of his knees. Seeing the state of Hana, his face softened and he took a step towards her. “What have you been doing? You look like crap!”
“Just walking. It’s a long way down and...Logan won’t let me have the car anymore. In case I...” Hana couldn’t finish the sentence. “I have to stay here now. Forever.” She glanced nervously back at the hotel. “Please help me?”
Flick came forward wiping his oily hands on a dirty blue rag. He looked rugged but far healthier than he had almost two years ago. Hana noticed that his stubble had become streaked with grey, disguising a face he said was still on the ‘wanted’ list and his hair was longer, obscuring much of the top half of his face. He flicked his fringe out of the way of striking blue eyes, filled with compassion and poorly disguised love. “What do you need?”
The man held Hana’s gaze, his heart wide open for her to see and she gulped, realising the unfairness of her request. Of course he would do anything for me. He spends his whole existence trying to pay me back for the wrong he did. Somewhere along the line, Hana’s easy forgiveness of Flick had muddied the waters and produced a mutual admiration. Only his had turned to the most painful kind of love. Hana saw it in his face again, the same as last night; the agony of self-denial and felt crushed for him.
Reaching out, she touched his arm, sensing him react as though she had shot an electrical current through him. “I’m sorry. I had no right to ask. You’ve already done more than enough for me.” Defeated, she turned away.
“No.” Hana felt his hand on her arm, gentle but firm as he prevented her leaving, as though even this slight contact was better than nothing. “Please. Let me help you. I told you last night that I was here for you. I meant it. ”
Desperate, Hana conceded, “I need a vehicle.”
It felt wrong driving away from the hotel knowing Phoenix was still there. It created a sickness in the pit of Hana’s stomach that was so vile, she feared she might throw up. Tama’s mother, Aroha left Kane Du Rose when her son was only a year old, unable to bear her partner’s violence against her any longer. Kane couldn’t have cared less about the baby boy, knowing his birth father was from the wrong side of the stricken family but Reuben Du Rose, having already lost Logan to his own brother, would not let Tama go when Aroha plucked up the courage to return for him. It was a mess of epic proportions, which resulted in Tama receiving the most miserable childhood imaginable and Aroha being denied her son permanently. The damage between Aroha and Tama had never been repaired, despite her recent relationship with Michael, his real father and their subsequent new daughter.
“I can’t do it, I can’t leave Phoe,” Hana leaned her head against the side window and closed her eyes. “Stop the car!”
‘Once you set foot off this property, you forfeit all rights to our daughter for good. You will never see her again.’
“Too late.” Flick cleared the front gates and the old red Jeep laboured up the driveway and headed for the mountain pass. “I’ve nicked this thing from Jack, so I’m already in for a kicking. It might as well be for something worth doing.”
“But I’ve left my baby,” Hana wept, screwing her face up and wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. The phrase out of the frying pan and into the fire sprung to mind. “What if Logan won’t let me back in? What if he sends me away like Reuben did to Aroha?”
Flick drove one handed, reaching across with his left to seize Hana’s flailing fingers. His hands were warm and comforting and she stopped her thrashing. “This is totally different, Hana. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not a prisoner and Logan won’t stop you going back onto the property. He just doesn’t want you to leave him and doesn’t know how else to stop you. Can’t you see that? He loves you but he’s reasoned in that stubborn head of his that if he’s going to lose you, he’s not losing his daughter as well.”
“If you love someone, you’re supposed to let them go,” Hana sniffed. “Not trap them.”
“Not in this family, love,” Flick laughed. “Reuben let Logan’s mother go and look where that got him. Watching his own son brought up over the fence by his brother his whole life and never able to talk to him, or pick him up when he fell down or teach him stuff. Logan doesn’t want that for your wee girl. He’ll never let another man bring up his kids.” Flick squeezed her hand and then put both of his back on the steering wheel to make the turn out of the driveway and onto the main road. “But you must have known that when you married him.”
“I didn’t know what a mess this stupid family was,” Hana sulked and Flick glanced sideways and smiled at her.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ve got enough spirit to see you out. Besides, if you really want out of here, I’ll get you out. You and the wee girl as well. I’ll make sure he never finds you.”
Hana began to calm down as they left the mountain and its occupants behind her, but the emotional umbilical cord stretched between her and Phoenix like a gossamer thread and she ached for her daughter. Bobby’s words brought some comfort though. She didn’t doubt that secretly, he was a single-handed match for the Du Roses. She tried to distract herself by talking to him. The man was uncommunicative to everyone else on the property, preferring to keep to himself but with Hana, he talked openly. “Yeah I miss my boys. Little shits both of them though.”
“Do you wish you could see them?” Hana asked, wondering if it felt as painful for him, as her absence from Phoenix did.
“Course,” he answered. “But I’m meant to stay up at the ranch and not come to town, so that’s that really. It’s no good telling them where I am because trouble will follow them up there and I’ll end up arrested, knowing them pair. Both of them have big, skyting mouths between them. And then if they tell the missus, well, she still thinks I owe her big time from the divorce so she’ll follow me there an’ all and there won’t be any peace for anybody. So no, it’s best they think I’m dead, or on the run. But I think about my two boys every single day and wish them well.” Flick became silent, processing his thoughts some more privately.
“I’m sorry,” Hana sighed eventually. “I feel partly to blame that you have to spend your life hidden away.”
Flick placed his hand back over hers, knowing if Logan saw him, he would lose more than just his fingers for touching Hana. “No, it was my mess. My boy hid the land deeds under your car and I had to get them back. But I didn’t have to hurt you to do it and I certainly didn’t have to enjoy it as much as I did. I’m sorry for all the times I scared you and that other time, when I nearly broke your wrist.”
“I’m sorry for trying to stab you with the carving knife and for whacking you round the head with the rolling pin.”
Flick touched the spot on his temple where the blow had landed over two years ago under very different circumstances and took a peek at Hana out of the corner of his eye. She was smirking. “You’re not feckin’ sorry at all, are you?” he growled.
“A bit,” she replied, “but you did deserve it. You terrified me, Bobby. I was so upset when Logan took you up to the hotel to hide out. I felt like he was being disloyal. Yet you’ve become one of the people I trust most in the world. It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
The look Flick bestowed on the beautiful redhead was one of adoration and worship and Hana felt cruel playing with his emotions. It began to dawn on her quite how much he liked her and agains
t her better judgement, she sensed the shiver of a thrill entering her bones. It felt good to be desired.
An hour and a half later they managed to find a parking space in the multi-storey car park at the Waikato Hospital in Hamilton. Flick nosed the Jeep into its slot almost burying its bonnet into the concrete surround. “Tax has run out,” he explained as Hana looked at him curiously.
“We’re supposed to be inconspicuous!” she complained. “I thought you would have taken something roadworthy so we didn’t get pulled over! Geez Bobby. Do you want to get caught and locked up or something?”
The look he gave her was withering and Hana ended up apologising. “I’m sorry. Look, you stay here and I’ll go to my appointment. I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s just a scan and hopefully they’ll be running on time. We could be out of here in an hour. What are you doing?”
Flick bounced down from the drivers’ side, placing his Jackaroo hat firmly on his head. He resembled something from the Wild West.
“You’re not coming in, surely,” Hana said, looking horrified.
“May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” he said smiling. “And don’t call me, Shirley.”
Hana arrived at the reception flustered, trailing a man in cowboy boots and Jackaroo hat who wandered in with his hands in his dirty jeans pockets.
“Ah, Mrs Du Rose,” the receptionist said with a grimace and two other hospital personnel also turned and raised their eyebrows. “We’ve finally managed to summon you.”
Hana looked apologetic. “Sorry, I haven’t been at home much. I only found out about the appointment this morning.”
“You’ve missed three others.” The receptionist sounded hostile. “Those appointments could have been taken by other women.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chastened, Hana was given a number and went to sit down in a row of blue plastic chairs all joined together.
“What do you mean, you haven’t been at home?” Flick asked in a loud whisper as he plonked himself down unceremoniously next to her. Hana caught the faint whiff of horse poo, probably from his boots.
“My home down here, which is now Bodie’s home. I want to have my baby in the Waikato, not in Auckland. Stupid boy hasn’t been passing on the letters. Amy forwarded this one on to me and Logan brought it up last night. Thank goodness he didn’t open it. It had ‘hospital’ emblazoned all over it.” Hana pressed her lips to Flick’s ear to whisper and he winced when her breath tickled his skin.
“Er, about Logan,” he started to say, visibly dismayed when Hana raised her hand in warning.
“I don’t want to hear about Logan right now. I need to be calm for the scan and I already need a pee real bad. I need to think nice thoughts.” Hana exhaled slowly and deliberately and tried to slow her heart rate. She stopped her mind from straying towards contentious things and imagined standing on the porch at Culver’s Cottage, looking out over the Waikato River on a hot sunny day. The problem was, in her mind, Logan kept coming up behind her and wrapping his strong arms around her waist. She sighed in exasperation as the imaginary Logan moved her long hair out of the way and kissed her neck seductively. All happy thoughts seemed to include him nowadays. Life could be so unfair.
“Mrs Du Rose,” the radiographer called Hana’s name and she started abruptly from her day dream. The pretend Logan had progressed beyond her neck and Hana realised that she missed him with a tangible ache, deep in her gut. Blaming the pregnancy hormones, she walked quickly after the uniformed woman, fanning herself rapidly with a leaflet about sexually transmitted diseases that she’d grabbed off the chair next to her. “What about your husband?” The woman stopped and Hana almost ran up the back of her, alarmed when the lady beckoned to Flick with manic enthusiasm. He looked around him awkwardly, before pointing at his own chest and then following at a discreet distance.
At the doorway to a darkened room without windows, Flick halted and shook his head. “I’ll wait here,” he said grimacing. “I’m just the driver.”
The radiographer closed the door in embarrassment, sitting on her swivel chair and fiddling around with a keyboard after pulling a curtain across the door. Then she asked Hana to raise her sweatshirt above her bra and slotted blue paper towels around her clothing to prevent the lubricant staining them. Hana’s tracksuit pants rolled down over her belly obligingly. The radiographer looked at Hana’s stomach and then at her notes. “Is this your first scan?” she asked.
Hana nodded, hearing excuses tumble from her lips. “I’ve been out of town staying with relatives. The pregnancy sort of...got away from me before I realised it. I just need to know that everything’s all right and then I’ll be fine.”
“The notes from your doctor say you should be about nineteen weeks pregnant, is that right?”
Hana nodded lamely. “My husband and I went travelling. We ended up in Paris and...” Hana flapped her hand at her unborn infant in explanation, feeling stupider by the second.
“Well, just by looking at you, I’d say you’re more like twenty-three weeks, at least.”
“No, definitely not.” Hana looked and sounded certain, blushing hotly at the thought of the passionate night in Paris and the missed contraceptive pill which caused all this.
The gel for the probe was cold and made Hana uncomfortable, but not as much as its gliding action across her bladder. That was positively excruciating. The radiographer took measurements and scanned around, letting out an annoyed hiss when a loud knock came at the door. She looked sternly at Hana. “I take it your husband’s changed his mind?”
“He’s not my husband,” Hana said, biting her lip at how wrong that sounded. She gripped the leaflet and fanned her face again as the woman went behind the curtain and opened the door. Noticing suddenly what she was using to cool herself with, the leaflet screaming, Herpes - Early Detection and Treatment, Hana looked horrified and searched for somewhere to hide it. She managed to throw it behind her head overarm and it hit the wall and made a shushing sound as it slipped down behind a trolley. She had just got her hands back down by her sides when the whispering at the door stopped and the woman returned, with Logan behind her.
“This man says he’s your husband.” She turned angrily to the imposing Du Rose male at her shoulder, “I asked you to wait outside!”
“Sorry I’m late,” he said with conviction, “I’m here now.” He strode confidently across the small space and planted his neat derriere on the chair next to Hana. He caught his wife’s eye once but any warning there was tinged with amusement. Hana wanted to slap him. And then you want to kiss him.
Feeling betrayed, Hana gritted her teeth and thought murderous thoughts about Flick. Then again, if Logan found out some other way, Flick was probably sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a black eye by now. The radiographer ran through some more checks and then turned the screen towards the baby’s parents. The 3D image was spectacular. Hana gasped at the sight of the little person in front of her. She felt as though she could almost reach out and touch her child.
“Do you want to know the sex of your baby?” The woman fiddled with more keys. Logan opened his mouth and Hana knew he was going to say, no and devilment rose up in her from somewhere painfully raw.
“I already know thanks,” she said, enjoying her husband’s discomfort.
“I guess it is quite obvious,” the radiographer chortled and Hana laughed too, more at the confusion on Logan’s face as he peered hopelessly at the screen. The baby began to wriggle and the picture distorted. He would never be able to see now. Logan sat back and stared at Hana, his grey eyes leaking acid glares. She didn’t care. For once she felt powerful and in control and it was releasing. My body, my baby.
It was cold in the toilets and Hana’s stomach felt sticky and miserable after the scan. She wiped away lumps of gel with a wad of toilet roll and stopped to apply lip gloss and ruffle her hair a little. She expected Logan was at the reception desk buying pictures of his son and sniggered at the secret she hugged to
herself. Lunchtime was past and Hana’s stomach gurgled hopefully, but the thought of facing Logan outside was enough to stem her appetite. She wondered if she could call security or make a scene to get him to go away. But then how would she ever see Phoenix again?
Hana poked her head out of the toilet door finding Logan leaned against the wall right outside. He seemed calm and unruffled but Hana still eyed him warily. To her surprise, he handed the packet of photos and DVDs to her. She took them gingerly, having assumed he would keep them for himself. Their fingers touched and she felt their chemistry arc between them, all the tantalising emotions that made up who they were together. Logan’s pupils dilated for an instant and Hana saw that he felt it too. Like a spooked deer, she wanted to run.
Logan took her arm with gentle fingers. “I don’t want to fight you. I’m hungry. Let’s find somewhere to eat.”
Hana looked around the reception. “Where’s Bobby?”
“Gone. And you should have known better than to make him come here.”
“Did you hit him?”
“No!” It was enough of a reprimand to silence Hana. She hoped her friend wasn’t in trouble now.