by Sasha Wasley
What in hell is wrong with me? She wanted to slap herself. This was so wrong, so selfish. In a strong moment she deleted the app from her phone and blocked the site on her laptop browser settings. There. It would be much more difficult to stalk him now.
That didn’t mean she stopped thinking about it. She hid her feelings from her family, but inside Willow felt flat. Empty. She missed Tom desperately but didn’t know what she wanted from him. What if he were to mention his new girlfriend? Would she be able to hold it together? God, all she wanted was to jump on Rusty and meet Tom at the eastern gate so they could stargaze or talk cattle – or anything. She longed to know he was still her best friend, that he still cared about her, that she was still the number one most important person in his life.
Willow caught her breath.
But she hadn’t wanted that. She’d told Tom in no uncertain terms that she did not want to be his one and only; she didn’t want him to care too much.
She couldn’t have it both ways. She couldn’t have him love her, treasure her above all other girls, and then impose a limit on how much he cared.
No wonder Tom had accused her of confusing him. She had better take advantage of his absence and get this sense of longing and bizarre jealousy out of her system or she might confuse him again.
She was sure as hell confusing herself.
Devi Lai arrived at Patersons and was welcomed back with gusto by the staff. She proved herself to be an asset to the station – good-tempered with a sense of humour, and hard-working. She was just twenty-two but more responsible than most young people Willow had worked with.
Si was also back and Willow caught wind of some ribbing he was getting for having a crush on Devi. Maybe it was warranted – he sure was spending a lot of time loitering around near where the girl worked in the dorms.
Barry recovered so quickly from his procedure that he impressed even Beth, and Willow was grateful for the dramatic improvement in his health. He no longer puffed after a gentle walk and didn’t seem to need as many naps as before. He even got outside and did a bit of work around the house’s garden beds. Now that Willow had banned herbicides at Patersons, he declared a personal war on weeds. He’d always kept a tidy garden. She often spotted him in the front yard, kneeling on the foam board Beth had given him, ripping weeds out of the garden beds with talkback radio turned up loud. Willow smiled whenever she found him like that. This was the Dad she knew.
Her father was more pleased than anyone. ‘I shouldn’t have been worried about getting the surgery, Bob,’ he said when the older Forrests dropped in one morning – no Tom. ‘The doc said it would make me feel a million times better and by oath it has. Reckon I could wrestle a bullock if it came down to it.’
‘We don’t wrestle bullocks at Patersons any more, Dad,’ Willow reminded him with a cheeky grin.
‘Well, I reckon I could give a bullock a Swedish massage and sing it a bloody lullaby,’ he shot back and they all cracked up.
Every night she recounted her day to her father. He was starting to pick up on the new methods. As long as she drip-fed him the information, explained bit by bit in little chunks, he understood better and even agreed that the things she was doing made sense.
Willow decided to start a blog to record her progress. It was as good a way as any of keeping track of the journey from conventional beef to certified organic, humane production. Maybe it would help other station operators in future. She set the blog to private, wanting to build it up and make sure everything was going along as it should before she showed it to the public. But she was honest in what she wrote, describing the problems and setbacks as well as the achievements.
Willow resisted the urge to reinstall Facebook on her phone but couldn’t stop herself from eventually asking Free about Tom and Phoebe.
‘I’m not sure,’ Free mumbled, focused on her sketchpad. She did some bold strokes with her charcoal and tipped her head to the side to gaze at them. ‘I haven’t noticed anything on social media since their first date. Maybe nothing came of it, or maybe they’re keeping things offline while they get to know each other.’
Willow was even more tempted to go online and see what she could discover but battled her temptation and won. It was none of her business. And it shouldn’t matter, anyway. But that sense of flatness inside her continued, and there was still no contact from Tom.
Oh, hell, she was really starting to feel like she had screwed something up. Big-time.
She was writing a blog post about changing the cattle’s diet when the landline rang. Willow heard her father take the call, his voice rising in agitation. Who was he talking to? At that moment her own mobile phone rang and she checked the caller ID. Beth.
‘Hi, Beth, hang on, will you? I just need to check on Dad. He’s on the landline and he sounds upset.’
‘It’ll be the Forrests,’ she said, and Beth sounded close to tears herself. ‘Willow, wait, I need to tell you what’s happened.’
Willow was already heading out to the kitchen, her phone pressed to her ear. Her father was also on the phone and he looked bad – the colour had drained from his face and when he met Willow’s eyes, his expression was stunned.
‘Willow,’ Beth was saying. ‘Shit. Willow, you there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘I just heard from the hospital. We might have a major trauma coming in today – the comms on Quintilla’s helicopter went down and it’s overdue back at the station.’
Beth kept talking but Willow couldn’t seem to hear her. Her father spoke. ‘I’ll send the boys out straight away. Channel fourteen? Right.’
He hung up and looked back at Willow. ‘Christ almighty, sweetheart,’ he breathed. ‘Tom took the chopper out this morning and now he’s gone missing.’
People were talking but she seemed to have lost the ability to comprehend the English language. The stockmen ran back and forth, collecting water containers and first aid kits, all thoughts of cattle drafting forgotten. Her father barked orders, slipping straight back into the manager’s role. That was good because Willow wasn’t capable of directing the staff. She stood in a daze on the back patio, heart beating out of control, fighting the panicked nausea that was rising in her gullet.
She managed to glean the facts: Tom had gone out early morning on a routine bore-checking run and had told his staff he’d be back by ten a.m. Around ten-thirty, his father had called the helicopter radio to see how far away he was. There was no reply. By eleven they knew something was wrong. Tom was rarely late back with the helicopter and, if he was, he always radioed in to let them know. To be late and not call was completely unheard of. And the clincher was that there had been a fault with the helicopter recently. They’d thought it was fixed – but maybe not.
Nothing else made it through her haze of terror. Willow watched the activity around her, her mind blank. Should she ride out with the stockmen to take part in the land search, or wait by the phone with Barry and Free?
Land searches were all but pointless in these kinds of circumstances. There was so much land to be covered – an air search was the only realistic way to look for a crash site. But there were some topographical features best explored on horseback or by ground vehicle – not to mention that the Quintilla and Patersons stockmen wouldn’t sit by while Tom Forrest was missing – so the land search would go ahead.
Her father handed out the two-ways and told all the stockmen to switch to channel fourteen to listen and report. Willow went to the kitchen and stared unseeingly at the wall. Ride with them or wait for news? Free had her head down, sobbing into her arms on the kitchen table, and that was what decided it for Willow in the end. She couldn’t stay home and watch Free cry. She had to get out and do something, for Chrissake.
Choppers and light aircraft buzzed overhead as she saddled Peanut. Vern called instructions, splitting up the team into smaller search parties. In her head was a litany of no . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . that seemed to have no end, but changed occasio
nally to please . . . please . . . please . . .
She hooked a two-way on to her saddle and tacked herself on one of the groups riding out to search the patches of trees and rocky outcrops of Paterson Downs. He could have simply landed somewhere, she thought desperately. Grounded because of a chopper fault. But he would radio back, if that were the case. A fault with the chopper didn’t mean a fault with the radio. Maybe he was out of range?
Or maybe the helicopter went down and the radio was destroyed and Tom was lying dead —
She pushed Peanut on and caught up to Nico, the leader of her search team.
‘What about the gully over there, southeast?’
He nodded. ‘You want to go round it and take a look? Rejoin us on the other side.’
There was plenty of chatter on the radio channel – reports of debris spotted in pastures that turned out to be derelict sheds; a call that smoke had been sighted south of the river – but a sweep by a plane revealed that it was another red herring. Probably just a willy-willy whipping up dust.
Willow rode and searched, light-headed and oddly detached from the situation. She didn’t speak, just listened to the radio channel and cast her eyes everywhere as she skirted the rocky promontory. At one point she saw something silver gleaming through the rock formations and the litany of pleases in her head rose sharply, almost blocking out the radio noise. But it was nothing, perhaps the light reflecting off the gleaming rocks, or maybe just her eyes playing tricks.
She met the team around the back of the gully and they continued on through the undulating terrain. They searched all afternoon, exploring outcrops and patches of vegetation inaccessible by vehicle or obscured from aerial view.
‘We’ve come twenty-five clicks, I reckon,’ Nico said at last.‘I think we’d better turn back, fellas.’
She couldn’t reply. She could hardly refuse to go home when everyone else was exhausted, but the chorus of no’s in her head shouted in protest. The group turned towards the homestead and she turned with them, wordlessly.
No, her soul howled, Tom, please. He couldn’t be lost. She mustn’t give up on him. Her body was flagging so badly she could barely ride. Her horse simply followed the rest of the crew home. But Tom would never give up on her – he had never given up on her. How could she do this to him? She pulled on Peanut’s reins, determined to bring him around and keep searching. At that moment a call came through on the two-way, a voice she didn’t recognise.
‘Shit, I think I’ve found him. Yep, definitely a chopper. It’s crashed. Jesus, it’s mangled.’
Willow stopped and grabbed the radio, holding it up to her ear while she listened without breathing.
‘I can see him in the wreckage. There’s blood. I can’t tell if he’s unconscious or . . .’ The voice trailed off. ‘I’m going to try and land.’
The man gave his coordinates and there were responses promising an ambulance and back-up assistance. Then there were more torturous minutes while she waited for the rescuer to land his helicopter. No . . . please . . . no . . . no . . . please . . . no . . .
Finally, the call came through. ‘He’s alive. We need transport, fast. Over.’
Willow drove into Mount Clair that afternoon, although Barry tried to stop her.
‘You’re too shaken up to drive all that way, sweetheart – I can see it. And Bob says even they haven’t been allowed to see him yet. The docs are doing a transfusion and trying to patch him up. There’s nothing you can do.’
‘Then I’ll just wait with Bob and Cathy,’ she said, grabbing a phone charger for her car. ‘I’ll go and support them. They’d do it for us.’
‘They’ve got Beth there for support.’
‘I’m going.’ She seized her handbag and shoved her phone into her pocket. ‘I’ll stay at Beth’s if I’m too tired to drive back.’
He gave up and she left. She wasn’t tired at all. She seemed to be running on adrenaline and it had her pumped up, jittery, heart working overtime. The inner chanting was still echoing in her brain, too, although now it was sometimes coming as thank you . . . thank you . . . thank you . . . She wasn’t precisely sure what or who she was thanking. Maybe just the universe in general.
Tom’s alive.
Willow parked at the hospital, but called Beth before she went inside. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘Yeah, I spoke to the emergency team. I don’t have all the details and they’re still doing scans.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Willow interrupted. ‘Why hasn’t he been taken to Darwin yet?’
‘The Kennedys’ chopper brought him straight to Mount Clair. No one wanted to wait for an ambulance to try and get out there – he looked too bad. He’d been bleeding heavily and his blood pressure was extremely low, so the team here gave him a transfusion and did some scans, made the call to keep him in the ICU here until he’s stable enough to fly to Darwin. His vitals aren’t strong and there’s swelling around the brain. He might have damage.’
Willow clutched the steering wheel, the world outside the car spinning. ‘Brain damage? What are they going to do?’ she asked thickly.
‘They’ve sedated him, placed him in an induced coma to let his body rest and help with the swelling.’
‘When can they transfer him?’
‘They’ll do it as soon as possible, hopefully tonight.’
Willow rubbed her eyes, willing her swimming vision to settle.
‘It’s pretty amazing he survived,’ Beth went on. ‘We think he must have got the heli quite low to the ground before it crashed. If it had gone down from any higher, well —’ She paused. ‘This is a very clear phone line. Are you in Mount Clair, Willow?’
‘Yeah, I’ve just arrived at the hospital.’
‘You know you won’t even get to see him, don’t you?’
‘I’ll just see if Bob and Cathy need anything, then.’
Her sister sounded disapproving. ‘You should have phoned me first. The likelihood is you won’t see him at all and he’ll be transferred to the city this evening. I could have told you there’s no point coming in.’
Yeah, there is a point, actually, Willow thought. My sanity.
‘Stay at mine tonight,’ Beth said. ‘You know where the key is.’
‘Thanks.’
She went in and found Bob and Cathy huddled together on chairs in the waiting room, looking shell-shocked. Willow hugged them both.
‘You shouldn’t have come all this way,’ Cathy said.
‘How could I not?’ Willow dropped her bag onto a chair. ‘What can I do to help? Do you need coffee or tea? Do you want me to call anyone to let them know?’
‘The staff here are looking after us,’ Bob told her. ‘Just sit down with us, love. I can see you’re all worked up.’
She’d thought she was presenting as relatively composed. She made an effort to calm herself down and sat with Tom’s parents.
‘Beth told me a bit about Tom’s condition. What are they doing for him?’
‘They managed to stop the bleeding and gave him a transfusion. They’ve placed him in a coma,’ said Cathy, her face pinched with fear.
‘They’re worried about his brain,’ Bob added. He opened his mouth as though about to make a crack about Tom’s brain but closed it abruptly and looked away, his eyes welling.
Willow felt like her heart was ripping at the seams with the pain – first her own but now the Forrests’ grief.
‘What caused the bleeding?’ she asked.
‘He’s got a bad injury to his leg,’ said Cathy. ‘A compound fracture. Bob’s given blood in case he needs more.
‘Does anyone know what went wrong out there?’
Bob pulled himself together. ‘There was an electrical fault with the heli a while back. Thought we got it sorted out but it seems not.’ He gave a technical explanation that went over Willow’s head but she understood the important bit: ‘Looks like he tried to land but couldn’t get it all the way down before he lost control.’ He pulled up a photo someone
had sent to his phone and showed her the remains of the helicopter, a scattered mass of metal pieces and smashed glass. She held in a shudder, nodding.
The waiting set in and time seemed to pass at a peculiar pace. Sometimes the minutes crawled by so slowly Willow wanted to scream, and at other times she would look up and get a shock to find an hour had passed while she fetched tea for Bob and Cathy, or messaged with Beth and Free. Beth finished work and joined them at the hospital at six o’clock in the evening. She disappeared briefly into the staff area and came out looking carefully blank.
‘Dr Finch said he’ll to try to pop out soon to give you an update,’ she said to Tom’s parents. ‘Willow, come with me to get a coffee.’
Willow followed her obediently, although she made up her mind to hurry back so she could hear what Dr Finch had to say as well.
‘It’s not looking great,’ Beth said as soon as they were out of earshot.
Willow stopped, realising why Beth had taken her aside: so she could tell her the truth without the Forrests overhearing.
‘He’s critical. His vitals are all over the place every time they reduce the phenobarb —’
‘Speak English,’ Willow snapped.
Beth turned to face her, and her expression softened. ‘Sorry. I forgot for a moment how close . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Every time they try to bring him out of the induced coma, his vital signs crash. His body is trying to repair itself, sending blood to injured areas, and it’s putting him in more danger.’
Willow sagged against the wall. ‘He needs better care than he can get here.’
‘Yes and he’ll get it. As soon as he’s stable, they’ll fly him out.’
‘Beth.’ She stared at her sister’s shoes. She mustn’t cry. If she started, she might not be able to stop. ‘Could he die?’
‘I’m not going to lie to you. It’s bad. I’m sorry, Willow, but he could die. The next few hours will be touch and go.’
‘Oh, God.’ Willow took a gulping breath. ‘What will I do without him?’
Beth’s face folded in sympathy and she pulled Willow in for a hug. ‘Look, he’s not beyond hope. I just can’t promise you he’ll make it. We need to try to stay positive for Bob and Cathy’s sakes, okay?’