by Karen Swan
‘So well. How about you?’
‘Fine, thank you.’ But she had heard the hesitation before the word. How was it possible for them all to share a bed, much less with such a sick child?
‘You look tired.’
‘Me?’ He shook his head. ‘No.’ They had stopped at a small pen constructed a short distance from the huts and watched as several skinny black chickens scratched at the ground. Jed reached into the tub and began scattering some feed, sending the birds into a frenzy. ‘We can leave soon if you are ready. We must not leave your guests unattended.’
She watched the chickens peck and flap, then looked back up at him. ‘Sure, yes. Whenever you’re ready.’
He turned back towards the huts without looking at her and she realized he had barely made eye contact with her. ‘But Jed, before we go back—’
He stopped walking, his gaze on the ground. ‘Don’t, Tara. I know what you want to say and it will make no difference. She is my wife.’
Tara ran around and in front of him, determined to make him look at her. ‘And he is your son. This is about what is best for him, surely? He’s suffering. At the very, very least, we could get him somewhere they can make him comfortable.’ Her voice was rising, pleading, her concern an anxious wheedle.
Jed stared back at her, implacable, unreachable. ‘Sarita trusts the Awa, and I trust her.’
He walked away, leaving Tara staring at his broad back. She wanted to scream, cry, block his path again. But it was hopeless. She had no rights here. That child was going to suffer and, in all likelihood, die a slow, drawn-out death and she could do nothing about it.
She followed him back, stepping disconsolately into the hut a few moments after him and taking in the scene from the door. The children were sitting on the ground eating from banana-leaf bowls. They ate with their hands, chattering happily.
‘Please.’ She looked across and saw Sarita beckoning for her to come in. Tara crossed the room and sat obediently on the stool Sarita pointed to for her. A ‘bowl’ of fruit was placed in her hands and Tara could see the anxiousness in her hostess’s eyes that she accept their hospitality, having ducked out last night. She knew her behaviour would have been considered rude. What did jet lag mean to these people out here?
‘Mmm, wonderful,’ she smiled as best she could – but her gaze kept returning to the inert form on the mattress in the corner. To just leave him there . . .
‘Para usted.’ She looked up to see Sarita holding out a carved coconut cup. Inside was a drink she again could not recognize, but which manners compelled her to accept. She watched curiously as Sarita placed two banana leaves curled towards one another by her feet.
‘To balance the cup,’ Jed explained, nodding to the coconut in her hands.
‘Ah.’ She drank – it was stronger and more bitter than the one she had received yesterday but she swallowed it anyway, setting it down on the ‘brackets’ Sarita had set. The system worked.
At least something did.
Twenty minutes later, she and Jed were just reaching the car, when he asked her how she was feeling.
‘Fine,’ she replied, somewhat confused by the enquiry; they’d exchanged pleasantries first thing this morning and he knew her well enough to know that a short hike through the jungle wouldn’t faze her. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘The Awa brought the coffee leaf remedy over for you this morning,’ he shrugged. ‘He said it would help, that’s all.’
‘Help with what?’ But even as she asked, she realized something was . . . missing. She blinked in concentration, then blinked again. She watched him throw his bag in the back of the car, a small smile playing on his lips.
For the first time in five days, she realized, she didn’t have a headache.
‘I’m back,’ she whispered, shutting the hut door quietly behind her and tiptoeing across to the bed.
Two things immediately struck her before she got to Rory’s sleeping form. That he was snoring incredibly loudly; and that the room stank of booze. He was still wearing the shorts he had been wearing when she got back here last night, but now a bottle of tequila was on the crate console.
‘Ror?’ She put a hand to his shoulder and when he didn’t stir at all, lay down beside him, stroking his arm gently. Waiting.
Several minutes went by, but his unconscious form gave no sign of registering her presence. She might as well have been stroking the wall.
She checked the time. It wasn’t yet eight. She felt she’d been up for hours already. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and go back to sleep, but the smell of alcohol on his breath was cloying.
With a sigh, she got back up and went outside. All the other hut doors were still closed, so she walked down the beach, enjoying the cool crush of the sand beneath her feet. There was a good surf today, the waves breaking several metres out, some ominously dark clouds on the horizon. She hadn’t yet swum in the ocean, she realized. She stepped out of her shorts and waded out, taking care not to go too far. She had grown up with Jed warning her about the unpredictable currents here and, sure enough, as she trod water and looked back to shore, she could see him standing by the bar, watching her closely. He would run straight into a rip tide if he had to. He might get to reject her offers of help but at the end of the day, she was a Tremain, the big boss’s daughter; nothing would happen to her on his watch.
They hadn’t said a huge amount on the journey back. Once he had definitively rejected her help, it had seemed to stultify all other topics of conversation. She could feel his resistance to even her silent entreaties like a wall between them and she wondered what warnings Sarita had waved him off with as she had stood by the door to the hut. She could guess.
Tara walked back up the beach, picking up her shorts as she passed, and lay back in the striped hammock; she squeezed the water from her long hair and let one leg dangle over the side, propelling her, rocking slightly. She felt agitated still, but there was no headache. Inexplicably, it had gone.
‘Hey, you’re back already! How was it?’
She twisted to see Holly, hair wild and clutching a bottle of water, come over and slump in the neighbouring hammock.
‘Awful,’ Tara sighed. ‘He’s in bad shape.’
‘Bad how?’ Holly frowned.
‘Pyrexia cachexia, palpable lymph nodes, hepatosplenomegaly.’
‘Jaundice?’
‘Not that I could see.’
‘Bugger. Are you still thinking hepatitis?’
‘I am, I think. There were some old scratch marks on his arms and stomach too and itchy skin is a key indicator.’
Holly’s frown deepened. ‘But?’
‘But there were some old blood stains on the sheets by his head which worried me.’
‘Nosebleeds?’
‘Yes. And some bruises too.’
‘Bruises,’ Holly said in an ominous tone, nodding slowly, putting the pieces together. ‘The bruises may not be relevant, of course. Could be a red herring.’
‘Could be, yes. But if they are relevant . . . It could be acute myeloid leukaemia.’ She gave a hopeless shrug. ‘There’s no way of knowing anything without a full workup. He’d need a liver biopsy, blood screen, ultrasound.’
Holly stared at her for several long dismayed moments – she loved her job and she hated it too – before she took a glug of her water. ‘So what’s the plan? Get him over to San José?’
‘Nope. No plan.’
Holly coughed, spluttering on the water. ‘What do you mean, “no plan”?’
‘Just that. There’s no plan. The parents say he’s too sick to move, they won’t listen to any advice to the contrary.’
‘. . . So they’re just going to leave him there, suffering untreated instead?’
‘Oh no, he’s being treated. By the Awa.’ Tara couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.
‘Who?’
‘The shaman, remember? He’s like the . . . doctor, village elder, wise man, all rolled into one.’
‘
Oh please, don’t tell me . . .?’
‘Yep. His action plan is for the patient to exist purely on some . . . leaf sap. No medicine, not even any food. At all, for seven months. Basically starving it out of him.’
‘What?’ Holly was sitting up now, her body locked into a crunch position. ‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’
‘Hols, believe me, I hear you. I feel exactly the same. That child is going to die and . . .’ Tara sighed, her voice breaking on the emotion. ‘I feel so . . .’ Her words ran out of shape, thinning into silence as she rubbed her face in her hands again. The powerlessness was what enraged her most of all. It was so unnecessary. Why couldn’t Jed see she could help him?
Neither of them said anything for several minutes. They both knew how this went.
‘Right, well,’ Holly said finally, her voice thin with bitter defeat. ‘Then that’s that. Like it or not, there’s nothing more to be done. You gave them your best medical opinion.’
‘For all the good it did,’ Tara snapped. ‘It’s not Jed who’s resisting it. I think . . . I really think I could talk him round; it’s his wife. She’s Indigenous, she doesn’t trust Western medicine. I mean, why would she? She doesn’t have any experience of it. She thinks her son will suffer for no reason if we move him to a hospital. She believes everything the Awa says.’
Holly was quiet for a long moment. ‘Look, we’ve both had situations like this before. Remember that Jehovah’s Witness family I had in? The girl was trampled by a horse and they wouldn’t accept the blood transfusion?’
Tara nodded sadly, not wanting to remember it.
‘The number of times I have wanted to scream, watching as people’s bloody faith makes them walk out of an A&E department and you know, you just know, they’re going to drop dead in the street.’ She gave a hopeless shrug. ‘But at the end of the day, they have autonomy over their bodies. And even if we disagree, even if we know they’re wrong . . . that is their right.’
‘But it’s so hard, Hols,’ Tara said, talking through gritted teeth as she stared back at her friend with shining eyes.
Holly nodded. ‘I know it is. It fucking sucks.’
‘—would like some fresh coconut water?’
They looked across the beach to find Jed walking across the sand with two topped coconuts, straws sticking out at jaunty angles. It was a jarringly cheery image at such a downcast moment and all the more perverse given the tragedy was his.
‘Thanks, Jedders,’ Holly said, her voice determinedly even as she took one. Tara noticed Jed kept his gaze down as she took hers.
‘Let me know when you’re ready for a proper breakfast, okay?’ he asked.
‘Thanks, Jed,’ Tara said flatly.
They both watched him walk back over the sand, towards the beach bar.
‘See how he didn’t look at me?’ Tara murmured, sipping her drink. It was exquisite.
‘Yeah. Well, that’s a sign he knows, doesn’t he? He knows it’s the wrong thing.’
Tara sighed, looking out to sea, watching the waves roll in in a hurry. There was a definite storm brewing on the horizon, the sky dark and moody. ‘. . . So what happened here last night, anyway? Rory’s out cold.’
Holly gave a groan. ‘They had a session. Fire on the beach, music, dancing, the works.’
‘Dancing?’
‘If you could call it that. Stumbling, mainly. Jimmy was most unimpressed. Dev managed to stand on a bit of broken glass.’
‘Ow.’ Tara winced.
‘Yeah.’ Holly rolled her eyes. ‘It was fun cleaning that out, I can tell you. Sand everywhere.’ She took a sip of her coconut water. ‘Hey, you don’t have any antibiotic cream, do you? I’m already all out.’
‘Yes. It’s in my kit, in the bag.’
‘Great. I’d better slather it on when he wakes up. He probably won’t even remember – until he tries walking on it.’
‘Was he that drunk?’
‘They all were.’ Holly glanced at her. ‘Rory seemed right up for getting caned.’
‘Mmm, doesn’t surprise me. He’s annoyed with me for being gone when he got back yesterday, and then going straight out again with Jed.’
‘Poor baby. Is he feeling neglected?’ Holly asked, pushing out her lower lip.
‘Well, I am a terrible girlfriend, let’s face it. I forgot our anniversary, worked through his birthday. Now I’ve abandoned him on holiday.’
Holly kicked her lovingly. ‘He’s hit the jackpot with you and he knows it. He’s your perfect match.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know – me with a willy,’ Tara said, rolling her eyes. ‘But I don’t blame him. You can see why he’d be hacked off. He’s come all this way and we’ve scarcely seen each other. We may as well be in London, working.’ She dropped her head back against the hammock, closing her eyes against the sun. And something else . . . ‘Talking of which, I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet – I had a call from Helen McPherson.’
Holly looked up. ‘What?’
‘They’re doing an internal investigation, after, y’know . . . the other day.’
‘The little girl?’ Holly’s head tipped to the side sympathetically.
Tara felt her throat tighten. ‘Mmm.’ She swallowed. ‘Rory says it’s standard procedure.’
‘Well, he’s right. But it’s still a shitty thing to go through. Given her parents put her in theatre in the first place, there’ll be a police investigation, surely?’
Tara nodded as the memories bubbled up, unbidden. ‘It’s been bad enough just trying to deal with losing her. It was such a shock. It all happened so fast, and . . .’ She automatically pinched the bridge of her nose before remembering there was no headache to assuage. Her hand fell away. ‘I mean, what were the chances of a blade falling loose? Have you ever even heard of such a thing?’ She spread her hands wide in disbelief.
‘Never.’ Holly reached for her hand and clasped it in her own. ‘Which is why you can’t blame yourself for not thinking to check for it. It was a freak one-off.’
Tara stared back at her, wanting to believe her friend’s words, that this was logic talking and not kindness. ‘It’s all just left me feeling . . . shaken, you know? Like everything’s about to come crashing down. I mean, if they took my licence, I don’t know what I’d do.’ Her voice slid up an octave.
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Oh yes I do,’ Holly replied calmly. ‘You’re the best they’ve got.’
‘Rory says I’m their show pony.’
Holly’s mouth tightened. ‘You’re the best they’ve got,’ she repeated.
‘He’s always telling me I can’t save everyone.’
‘That, he and I can agree on.’
‘But Hols, right now, I can’t seem to save anyone.’ She thought again of Paco, still lying on the mattress in the hut, the sound of the jungle alive and pulsating around him. ‘They won’t even let me help.’
‘Look, you’ve tried your best, but you’re fighting their emotion with logic and they’re not going to hear you.’
‘But he’s going to die, Hols.’
‘Probably, yes,’ Holly agreed, looking angry again, her mouth flattening into a line. ‘But if there’s nothing they will let you do, then there’s nothing you can do.’
The two women stared at one another, frustration in both their faces.
‘We could kidnap him,’ Tara suggested after a silence.
‘Shit, I can’t even tell if you’re joking.’ Holly gave an uncertain laugh. ‘You probably actually know people for that kind of thing.’
Tara wasn’t sure if she was joking either. The words had just escaped her. ‘We could, though,’ she pressed.
‘I don’t think it would end well. What if they shot you with a poison dart or something?’
‘Oh that is just offensive!’ Tara protested. ‘This isn’t . . . Pocahontas!’
‘You’re the one talking about kidnapping a sick kid.’
&
nbsp; They smiled at one another, appreciating each other’s dark humour. It had seen them through some hard times.
‘Jed said the leaf sap the Awa’s using is just a . . . backup remedy,’ Tara murmured.
‘To what? Tea-leaf reading?’
‘Oh no, better! There’s another leaf, apparently. A magical, mystical, unicorn leaf that only grows on a sacred mountainside two days’ travel from here.’
Holly rolled her eyes. ‘That’s helpful. So when the kid dies, he can say it was because he didn’t have the right kind of leaves?’
‘Mmm,’ Tara murmured, staring out at the horizon. She ran a hand across her forehead again. ‘It’s funny, though. He’s given me some tincture that’s really worked on my headache.’
‘Huh?’ Holly lifted a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Really?’ She knew better than anyone how Tara suffered with them.
‘Seriously. This morning, before we left, I had to drink something gross – I don’t even know what it was – but it’s really done the trick.’
‘Why would you drink something gross when you didn’t know what it was? Don’t you know anything?’ Holly scolded. ‘Did you accept sweets from strangers too when you were a little kid? He could have been poisoning you.’
‘I was being polite.’
Holly groaned. ‘You and your sodding manners.’
Tara smiled, but gave a small shiver as an old joke resurfaced from the depths of her memory, tiptoeing across her mind and leaving little scorch marks. ‘. . . Anyway, it’s just a coincidence.’
‘Well, of course it is! Don’t start going all voodoo on me now, girl.’
‘Mmm,’ Tara hummed. But it occurred to her now . . . she hadn’t actually told the Awa about her headaches. Not a word. Nor about the child who had died, either. And yet somehow he had known both . . . And her headache, as much a part of her as her own shadow, was now gone. Gone after the drink . . .
‘Just suppose for a moment . . .’ Tara narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘Bear with me here – but just suppose there was something in it.’
Holly laughed. ‘No.’
‘I mean, I know it’s highly unlikely. Of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘But us refusing to even admit to the possibility that this stuff might work . . . how is that any different to Sarita refusing to concede that our medicine might work?’