It couldn’t hurt? That was what he told himself as he made the call to tell Gina he’d pick her up and they’d head to town together. It was no big deal.
So he’d spend a few days working with a woman who’d held him as if she knew he needed it.
He hadn’t needed it.
It couldn’t hurt at all.
* * *
The idea that there’d be little work ended up being a pipe dream.
A notice had gone out via the island’s grapevine—official and unofficial—that any minor injuries from the day before would be seen by Gina. Two minutes after they arrived at the set-up behind the general store, Wendy, the storekeeper, upgraded the online information to say Hugh would be on hand as well. The island therefore had a doctor plus a nurse, available for consultation. Half an hour later their list of patients was over a dozen long.
‘You’ll need to get a receptionist if this keeps up,’ Wendy told them, but her smile of satisfaction said she was enjoying it.
‘It won’t keep up,’ Gina told her. ‘We’re just in mopping-up mode.’
But the mopping up extended. Always one to look out for ‘her people’, Wendy took a liberal approach to what mopping up entailed.
They worked through a myriad of scratches, bruises. They also saw Alana, a fifteen-year-old girl who’d woken with tummy pains—her mum had thought the pain had been niggling for some time and Alana would be more comfortable talking to Gina than to the male doctor who came once a week from Gannet. It was a possible case of endometriosis, Gina thought as she listened to the history.
She ought to refer her on to the gynaecologist on Gannet—well, she would—but Hugh was right through the door and he was a doctor after all. She didn’t want to exclude any diagnosis requiring more immediate intervention. She went in as a support person because Alana was nervous about male doctors, but Hugh had her smiling with relief that her pain was being taken seriously and there were things that could be done to help.
And then there was Marjorie Atwell, popping in because—‘Oh, my hand aches, Gina, these fingers are so swollen. I know you’re only doing stuff from yesterday, but it hurts so much and it’s a whole week before the Gannet doctor comes back.’
And so it went. They worked through the morning, mostly separately, with Gina handing over anything beyond her ken. Sometimes together. But the emotions of the night before seemed to have wedged an emotional barrier between them.
They drove home speaking sparingly of the morning’s work, almost rigidly formal.
And then they worked the next morning. And the next.
And then finally it was Saturday and their makeshift clinic was closed. The Gannet Island doctor was due to return on Monday, his weekly sessions resuming. Hugh could retreat to his shell again.
Hugh woke at dawn, made coffee and headed out to the veranda. This was awesome coffee. He’d invested a lot of thought and money putting together a world-class system—beans and equipment that’d be at home in the best urban coffee spots in the world. Mostly his wealth was channelled into the International Aid Trust he administered, but coffee was sanity.
He’d given Gina his back-up plunger and some decent, ground coffee, but for the last few days he’d been making two morning travel mugs instead of one. He’d picked her up on the way over to town, handing her the mug as she’d climbed into his truck, and they’d lapsed into appreciative silence as they’d driven.
It had helped. That dumb kiss had created tension between them, and mutual appreciation of coffee seemed a no man’s land where they could put tension aside. He’d driven, she’d buried her nose in her coffee and he’d glanced across at her and seen her relax.
Which was a state he was starting to figure she didn’t stay in very long.
He hadn’t quite figured out the relationship between Gina and her great-aunt, but he knew there was tension. Sometimes when Gina came out of the house in the morning, her face was grim, and when she climbed out of the truck after work, he saw her almost visibly brace. He could probe, but it was none of his business. He could give her coffee—and thus seemingly a little time out—and that was all that was needed.
And today even that was over. He could retire to...his coffee?
Not entirely.
Hugh came from a family of immense wealth. His father and his grandfather before him had been huge property investors, and the fortune had grown far beyond one family’s ability to spend it.
Even as a kid, though, the life choices of his over-the-top society-darling mother, or his miserly, money-obsessed father had held no appeal—especially as they’d never included him. When his father had died, he’d just finished training as a doctor—despite his father’s taunts he had been intent on saving as much of the world as he could. To his mother’s disgust he’d set up an International Aid Trust with the family fortune, and headed into war zones to personally do what he could.
After his injury he’d become more and more hands on with the Trust. He knew how aid agencies worked, and he knew where the money was needed. His home office was now set up as a control centre, where he coped with applications, with research reports, with the daily minutiae of making sure his wealth made a difference.
So there was always work to do there.
And then there was Hubert.
The wombat had been gradually healing over the week. For a couple of days Hugh had worried that the leg might become septic. He’d made a call to a vet on the mainland, figured the dosage of antibiotic and watched in satisfaction as the wound had responded. Today it was time to release him back into the wild.
Gina would like to help.
Gina? She was the one whose negligence had caused the injury. He was under no obligation to involve her.
Except every day this week she’d asked—sort of causally—‘How’s Hubert?’ He’d heard the anxiety in her voice when he’d told her of the infection.
It wouldn’t hurt to let her know he was letting him go.
It wouldn’t even hurt to let her join him.
Except...except...
Ghosts. Personal stuff. His background of solitude, overlaid now by the stuff that had him retired here, had him keeping his scars and his nightmares to himself.
She’d be drinking plunger coffee now. With Babs. Who, he’d already figured out, was resentful of Gina’s presence, even though she needed her, even though Gina had spent four months battling to get to her. In quarantine. Drinking caterers’-blend coffee.
And she’d worked beside him this week, skilfully but also empathically. He’d even found himself enjoying the sensation of working with her. Maybe even of being part of a team again.
Yeah, let’s put that aside, he told himself grimly. A team? Not going there. He set his mind deliberately back to his coffee.
Focus on the small things, the shrinks had told him as they’d tried to help with the post-traumatic stress that had hit him like a sledgehammer as he’d recovered physically. Good coffee. The feel of the sun on his face. The warmth of his dog. These were the things of sanity.
But Gina was drinking plunger coffee when, with just a small relaxation of his rules, she could be drinking barista-quality stuff.
And coming with him to let Hubert go?
That’d be more than a small relaxation of his self-imposed rules, but then, this whole week had dragged him out of his safe space.
Hoppy was looking at him, head cocked, seemingly questioning.
‘Yeah, okay, mate,’ he told him. ‘I’ll do it. But that’s it. Just for today.’
Hoppy might crave company but he didn’t.
* * *
He picked her up at eleven and she was dressed almost as she’d been the first morning when she’d brought the pie over. For the last few days she’d worn sensible navy trousers and a polo—the polo had even had a research-team logo stitched on the front pocket.
&nb
sp; ‘These are work clothes for the team I’m usually attached to,’ she’d said shortly when he’d asked. ‘I’m not supposed to wear them off the ship, but who’s here to notice?’
Nothing more had been said, but when she emerged from the house this morning looking more like...well, more like herself...he felt a smile grow somewhere in his gut.
She was wearing her pants with glitter stars and a soft white shirt, dotted with the same glitter stars. She’d twisted her curls into a demure knot during the week, but now they were caught back in a ponytail, with that same purple ribbon he’d seen on the first day.
She looked bright, eager...happy?
She put a basket into the back beside Hubert’s crate, she bade Hoppy good morning and climbed in beside him.
‘Hey,’ she said cheerfully, shifting Hoppy and putting him on her knee. And then she looked at the cup holder in the middle. ‘Coffee! Hugh Duncan, if that’s not the way to a woman’s heart I don’t know what is.’
He managed a grunt in reply. He didn’t have to enjoy this.
But he couldn’t resist glancing down as she buried her nose in her coffee.
Sneakers. Purple but closed in.
‘Sensible,’ she said, following his gaze. ‘I figured we wouldn’t be letting Hubert out anywhere where open-toed sandals would be a good idea. Me, I’m touchy about Joe Blakes.’
Joe Blakes. The Australian idiom for snakes. It was still only spring, and the sun didn’t hold much heat, but they’d still be around. They’d be a bit slower than in midsummer. Easier to step on.
So closed shoes were sensible, but he’d sort of wanted to see those toes again.
‘I touched them up this morning,’ she said, grinning, as if she guessed where his thoughts were going. ‘I reckon I got the smile right.’
Oh, hell, he so badly wanted to see. He wanted to stop the truck and check them out now, right now.
Check all of her out. She looked amazing. Her smile peeped at him and he thought, why had he wondered if she might be miserable, trapped with her grumpy great-aunt? This woman didn’t know how to be miserable.
Hoppy looked pretty contented to be on her knee, and why wouldn’t he be?
‘Hubert looks resigned,’ she told him. ‘Not happy, though. I suspect he was on a pretty good wicket at your place.’
‘I’ve brought chopped sweet potato,’ he told her, trying to focus on the road. ‘I’ll scatter it where we leave him, so he has a few days of tucker before he needs to go back to foraging for roots and leaves.’
‘So he has a picnic, too,’ she said, sounding satisfied.
‘Picnic?’
‘You should have seen Babs move when I told her where I was going,’ she said. ‘I got off the phone and told her I was heading out to release Hubert, and ten minutes later she had handed me a basket with sandwiches, cake, apples... “And don’t come back until after my afternoon nap,” she said. “You know I need my sleep.”
And there was enough strain in her voice then to give him pause. The happiness had backed off, just a little.
‘So you and Babs...’
‘It’s not a marriage made in heaven,’ she admitted. ‘She needs me. I know she’s getting weaker. It must have been a huge effort to make those pies on the first morning, because even filling sandwiches left her exhausted this morning, but she doesn’t want to admit she needs help. I think it’s almost been a relief to her that I’ve been out of the house every morning this week. But there is a need. I’ve come home at night and cleaned and coped with the laundry and done the day’s washing up—she insists on cooking, but it leaves her too tired to face the sink. She doesn’t comment. But I try and do the work when she’s not around, so she doesn’t have to face the fact that I’m helping.’
‘She doesn’t thank you?’
‘She doesn’t need to thank me. She kept me from foster homes all those years ago. I owe her.’
‘But you’re fond of her.’
‘I guess I am.’ She sighed. ‘Yeah, okay, I am, and in a dumb way she’s fond back. When I got home this time, she hugged me and I thought...’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. Or what I hoped. She was landed with me when I was fifteen, she did her duty and I’ll always be grateful. I’d have ended up in foster care if she hadn’t taken me in, and I was in full rebellion mode. Heaven help me if I’d been placed somewhere I could have let out that anger and rebellion in full.’
‘Anger...’
‘Yeah.’ She grimaced. ‘You want to hear?’
He should say no. Her life was none of his business.
‘Yes,’ he said, and she cast him a speculative glance, as if she didn’t quite believe him. And then she shrugged.
‘So I was a wild child,’ she told him.
‘I imagine... Your parents’ death...’
‘I was wild before that.’ She shrugged again. ‘Okay, you’re about to cop too much information but here goes. My parents were in love. Only not in love the way most couples are. They were practically joined at the hip. They met, they fell passionately in love and they stayed that way. They ran an air service, taking people to the remotest parts of Australia. They both had pilot licences and they worked as a team, catering, organising...you paid a mint for their services. They were the best.’
‘So you...’
‘At one stage in their early bliss they thought a baby would be wonderful,’ she said, frankly now, without bitterness. ‘Only when two people are obsessively in love, and with adventure as well as each other, there’s not really time for a kid. They figured it out soon enough. They felt bad about it but not enough to include me. Until I was seven there was Grandma, but she died and then there was no one. Home was wherever they could park me. I learned early not to get attached to places because they always changed, and they hardly ever included Mum and Dad. When I was eleven, I was old enough for boarding school. And I guess I got lonelier and lonelier. Then...well, I won’t bore you with all the trouble a rebellious teenager can get into, but I was a handful. So finally...’
She grimaced. ‘Okay, I was maybe a bit too rebellious and I was kicked out of school.’ She managed a wry smile. ‘I had a pet ferret, you see. Arsenic.’
‘Arsenic?’ he said faintly, and she grinned.
‘I’d like to tell you he was cute and cuddly, but he really wasn’t—he was pretty much as grumpy as I was. And maybe a bit more smelly. But he was mine. Anyway, the school’s housemistress found him and told me to get rid of him, and I said I would but of course I didn’t. And then he got loose and found his way to the kitchen. Cook thought he was a rat and dropped a huge vat of soup. When they were cleaning the mess, someone found him and realised he wasn’t a rat—and of course they knew whose he was.’
‘Because he didn’t actually look like a rat?’ he ventured, and her irrepressible smile emerged again.
‘Well, maybe not. When I first got him, I spray-dyed him with one of those non-toxic hair dyes. Purple. He looked great and I’m sure he liked it. I was trying to figure how to get him a nose ring to match mine, too. Sadly the colour had faded and there was no nose ring—hence the rat conclusion—but there was enough purple to make identification certain.’
She sighed and the smile faded. ‘Anyway, the long and short of it was that I was expelled. Mum and Dad were away—of course. They were running an expedition in the high country—extreme skiing—and they got the call to get me. So they flew to Melbourne to collect me—did I tell you they had their own plane and they both had pilots’ licences? Only they had to do it on the only day they had free, and the day was foul. We tried to fly back, but there was a storm, and the plane hit the side of a mountain. They died instantly. But not me. I...’ She faltered and then forced herself to go on. ‘I sat in the dark all night, waiting for someone. Anyone. I guess... It was a bit of a nightmare.’
There was a gap of d
eathly silence while he took that on board. ‘A nightmare,’ he said at last. ‘That has to be an understatement.’
‘It was grim,’ she admitted. ‘I still... I still have trouble being alone in the dark. Anyway, somehow Arsenic and I survived. I had a week in hospital, and someone finally contacted Babs. They told her she was the only person I had.’
‘Oh, Gina.’ He was imagining it, a terrified kid, injured, stuck, alone. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m over it,’ she said darkly. ‘Though I still have Arsenic issues.’
‘Um?’ he said faintly, and she managed a smile.
‘I got him here,’ she told him. ‘One of the guys on the chopper who rescued me was great enough to keep him for me. He gave him back to me the day I left hospital. He didn’t know I was being taken straight to the airport to come here. So I landed here with Arsenic hidden under my jacket—we were pretty good at the hiding by then. And at the start Babs was great. She hugged me as I got off the plane—which was a huge deal for Babs. Huge for me, too, even though it nearly squashed Arsenic. But then of course she found him. There was a bit of a yelling match, and the next morning when I woke up...well, she explained it all pretty reasonably. There are no ferrets on the island, and he was absolutely a prohibited import. The wildlife officers would have had pink fits if they’d found him. So she dealt.’
‘Dealt?’ he said, cautiously.
‘A brick.’ She sighed. ‘At least it would have been quick. And I guess it was sensible, but me and Babs... It wasn’t a great way to start a relationship.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, there it was. I was stuck with Babs and she with me, and, when I wasn’t at school, I was stuck on this side of the island with an aunt who always let me know she was doing her duty by me. She told me that first morning, when I was so angry, so upset, that I was only here on sufferance, until I finished school. So that was it. I decided my best option was to study—there was little else to do. I would have loved to study geology, but there was never enough money—Mum and Dad had died broke. A teaching or nursing scholarship seemed the only options, so at seventeen I got a nursing scholarship to Sydney and Babs was overwhelmingly relieved to see me go.’
Healing Her Brooding Island Hero Page 8