The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  Now, as he looked at his boy and his beautiful wife curled together on the hospital bed, that dormant fear rose again and, with it, that same primal instinct to protect his family. They should have been at home enjoying a night like any other: Courtney tucking Matthew into his soccer bedsheets and kissing his forehead, David in the study poring over student papers. They shouldn’t be here, in this hospital, waiting for a test that could change the course of their lives.

  13

  BY THE early afternoon, Jade couldn’t so much as smell another meat pie or look at another loaf of bread. It was tedious work but it gave them all a sense of purpose. They had a good system going and they would continue to prepare meals for as long as needed. Whatever food the firefighters hadn’t consumed was brought to the school hall and was quickly devoured by all the displaced locals. Jade admired the way her grandmother, at seventy-eight, had taken charge of the kitchen and was leading the production line.

  When Mary offered to drop Jade at the cabin with her grandmother, she declined and decided instead to walk to her house to see if anything could be salvaged. Jade picked up her pace when she passed the hall so that people wouldn’t stop her, so they wouldn’t tell her their story, so they wouldn’t ask if she was okay. So she wouldn’t see Clarissa walking alone, without John, or the siblings Peter and Ben without their sister, or Cindy without her mother. Too many withouts. With memory. Without homes. With despair. Without hope. With loved ones. Without.

  She followed the sandstone path down to the valley, which led to the back of her house. She was not supposed to be there. There were still fire warnings as the temperature hovered close to forty degrees. She dipped under the bright yellow tape that stood out jarringly against the black earth. The charred tree trunks were like skeletons reaching out, the bones of their branches twisted, naked, broken.

  She pressed her hand to the ground, feeling the place where a sign once jutted out indicating that it was 800 metres to the creek at this point.

  She stepped over layers of ash, careful to dodge trees and fallen debris. When she drew closer to their property, she heard the grind of a chainsaw. Her pace quickened and she ran as if the sound were slicing through her.

  When she emerged at the top of the hill, she could see firefighters at the foot of her oak tree, chopping into its base. Suddenly her heart ached. The tree was still standing and yet they were cutting it down. To them it was just another tree, but to her it was bark etched with memories. On that oak tree her father had built her a tree house and her mother had engraved Jade’s name. This tree is older than this town. It has seen and heard everything. And now the sap is its tears. It hurts. Her mother’s voice tore through her mind as she ran faster.

  ‘Stop!’ Jade yelled, as she reached them. ‘Don’t cut it down,’ she panted. ‘Please.’

  Her voice was loud and strong, and its intensity surprised her. The fireman put down the chainsaw and looked at her as if she were just another emotional town resident overcome with grief.

  They had already hacked into the trunk and she felt physical pain. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  She saw them whisper to each other and then one of the men stepped towards her slowly, delicately, as if she were a hunted animal that might run away. A helmet, goggles and flash hood obscured the man’s face. ‘We have to cut the tree down,’ he said gently. ‘It could fall.’

  The firefighter took his goggles off and Jade’s chest throbbed. She saw a scar above his eyebrow and the pale shade of blue of his eyes. ‘It’s you,’ she said, breathless and unbelieving. ‘You’re the one who saved my life.’

  His eyebrows narrowed as he stared at her with such intensity that she had to look away. For a few seconds he said nothing and Jade froze. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand upright. She was suddenly awash with memories of that terrifying night. Her almost lifeless body in his arms. The strength and tenderness in the way he carried her. His gravelly voice when he whispered, You’re going to be okay. The intensity of the smoke as it closed around her.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d see you again,’ he said finally. His voice was just as she’d remembered it, soft and warm and safe.

  She tried to think of all the things she’d rehearsed saying if she ever found him, but her mind drew a blank. How do you find the right words to thank someone for saving your life?

  By now, the firefighters had picked up the chainsaw to resume work on the tree. ‘Wait!’ the fireman yelled to his team before he faced Jade once more.

  ‘I never got to ask your name.’

  ‘It’s Jade. Jade Taylor. And yours?’

  ‘Adam,’ he said, smiling. He spoke quickly as the sounds of the chainsaw roared to life again. ‘Listen, Jade, I’m really sorry but we have to cut down this tree. We can’t leave any that are unstable.’

  Jade stared at him numbly. She understood and yet the irrational part of her wanted to cry out and insist he leave it. It’s what her mother would have done.

  ‘Adam, come on,’ one of the firemen yelled.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Adam,’ they called again, summoning him back.

  ‘Before you go, I just wanted to thank you,’ Jade said but the sound of the chainsaw drowned out her voice and he didn’t hear her.

  Adam almost had to yell over the noise. ‘Where are you going? You shouldn’t be out here in case any other trees come down.’

  ‘I came to see my house,’ she said, pointing behind him. ‘Well, the rubble that was my home.’

  ‘We’re urging residents to wait until their homes have had safety inspections. There could be live electricity, smouldering coals, asbestos or structures that might fall.’ He turned to face his unit as if formulating a plan. ‘Although if you really want to go, I can come with you, make sure there’s nothing dangerous.’

  Jade looked at him curiously, weighing up his offer. Was he just being nice or was he going out of his way for her? He didn’t give her time to respond. ‘Wait here,’ he said. He ran over to the men and spoke quietly. They looked at Jade and stopped the chainsaw for a moment.

  ‘The guys are going to go on without me. I’ll catch up with them. It’s safer that you have a firefighter with you.’

  When they were far enough away from the chainsaw to not have to shout to hear each other, he continued: ‘After this, we’re going to retrieve some burned animals and take them to the vet clinic.’

  ‘We lost our alpacas,’ Jade said, and her eyes immediately teared up. ‘It breaks my heart. I keep wishing I had looked for them earlier.’ She took a deep breath, trying to push away the sense of fragility that had overcome her since she woke up in the hospital. ‘I just can’t bear to think about the poor animals,’ Jade admitted. ‘If I had the strength, I would have volunteered to help the vet nurses but I don’t think I would cope. That’s the hardest thing for me about that night,’ Jade said, surprised at how honest she was being with this stranger. ‘They were completely defenceless. They had no idea what was coming.’

  ‘It never gets easier,’ Adam said when they reached the remains of her house, ‘no matter how many injured animals you see. Sometimes I wonder why I chose this job.’

  ‘If you didn’t,’ Jade looked down, embarrassed to meet his eyes, ‘I wouldn’t be here. And I’m sure a lot of other people and animals wouldn’t either. It must be tough for you guys. I can’t imagine how hard the past few days have been.’

  Adam said nothing. Instead, he looked away and scanned the area around them, searching for anything of danger, stepping over the rubble and pushing on the brick wall. Jade turned around to see the chainsaw slice through the final bit of bark. She watched the oak thump to the earth, breaking away from all the years, all the memories that tethered it to the valley.

  Adam seemed to register her sudden paleness. ‘When I left you at the hospital, you were in a bad way. How’s your arm doing?’

  She lifted her wrist up and touched the edges of the gauze. ‘It’s healing well. It’
s a small price to pay for what could have happened if you hadn’t found me when you did.’ Jade steadied herself to articulate what she had planned to say. ‘I’ve been trying to find you since the fires. I thought you’d left town. I wanted to thank you. I am so, so grateful.’ The words came out with difficulty. ‘You risked your life to save me. You didn’t need to, but you did. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’ He smiled warmly. His face was unshaven and his light-brown hair was messy. He had a chiselled jawline and an unflinching gaze. A part of her had hoped he was middle-aged and unattractive, not twenty-something and so handsome she could barely look away.

  ‘There was a moment when I thought I’d lost you.’ He said it with gravity and yet he looked down as if to hide any emotion.

  ‘I don’t remember much,’ Jade admitted. ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly. When you picked me up, I was sure that I was hallucinating. I just remember how black everything was and when I opened my eyes and saw the red sky and red earth all around us, I didn’t think we would survive. I felt guilty that you were in that firestorm with me when I should have left when we were told to. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I signed up for this job. We do whatever we can to save a life. But unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. What I’ve seen in the past few days is worse than anything my training had prepared me for. You just don’t think bushfires like this will ever happen.’ He paused and took a deep breath to compose himself again. ‘I’m just glad I got to you in time.’

  Jade noticed his eyes well up, and she sensed that there were people he didn’t get to in time. She wondered if he had nightmares too. If he dreamed that he was running and being chased from all sides. If he was plagued by images of people trapped in their bathrooms and in their cars. He looked so shaken that she wanted to hug him but he quickly changed the tone of the conversation, clearly embarrassed by his show of emotion. ‘This wall isn’t going anywhere,’ he said, pointing to the only structure that still stood. ‘It should be okay. I’ll lift this piece of roof off.’

  ‘It’s hard to think of this as my house. It looks like a rubbish tip.’

  Her eyes scanned the twisted metal, fallen bricks and indistinguishable debris that was once her home. She picked up a melted hose and remembered how she had tried desperately to douse the ember showers. She stepped around burned tyres and the metal skeletons and helped Adam move a piece of the steel roofing away.

  ‘Here, wear these,’ he said, taking off his gloves and handing them to her. Jade put them on and could still feel the warmth of his hands. She sifted through the rubble, searching for anything that had survived. When she walked over the space where the kitchen had been, she rummaged around and stopped when she found her grandmother’s large ceramic pot. It had been blue but was now almost black. As Jade held it, she remembered the many times she had watched her grandmother cook with that pot, how Helena would always get her to taste test her avgolemono soup and how Jade would get in trouble if she scraped the sides with a metal spoon.

  Adam moved some more steel sheets and then started to sift through the rubble. ‘So, where are you from?’ she asked.

  ‘I was born in Sydney. My mother and brother still live there. I moved to Melbourne four years ago for a change and have been with the brigade since then. A few metropolitan fire units were sent here to help with the fires. What do you do?’

  ‘What did I do?’ she corrected. ‘We had a large olive grove. We were commercial producers of olive oil. It’s been in my family for forty-odd years but,’ she looked around, ‘as you can see, that’s all gone now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Adam said. ‘But aren’t olive trees among the most resilient? Can they regenerate?’

  ‘We have about four thousand trees, so we’ll have to look at each one. They have the potential to recover but it all depends on their size and age, the extent of the damage to each tree, whether any parts of the trunks are unscathed. We can hopefully cut some of the older ones back to about a metre high. Even if we can save some of the trees, it will probably take five years before they return to full production levels. And that’s our livelihood, so I don’t know what we’ll do.’ Jade sighed. ‘Which is why, right now, I want to busy myself and do anything I can to help around the town. I’ve been preparing food with my grandmother for your headquarters. But they seem to have a good system going now.’

  ‘I actually think I might have met your grandmother.’

  ‘She’s hard to miss,’ Jade joked. ‘She’s the loud Greek one who always insists everyone needs to eat more.’

  He laughed. ‘No, she was very sweet but, now that you mention it, she did try to coax me into having another pie.’

  ‘She can be very persistent. She already has the kitchen running like an army base. So, given that they don’t really need me anymore, can I help your team rescue the animals?’

  ‘I appreciate the offer, but given the risks of trees and fallen power poles, I don’t think it would be allowed.’ He paused for a moment in thought. ‘Although, there is an area we desperately need help with. The headquarters has started to get donations for just about everything – food, clothes, hay, feed, fencing, medical supplies. There’s no space at the school hall, so it’s all been directed to us. People mean well but we have no one sorting through it or distributing the supplies. The captain’s wife Pamela and a few volunteers have been moving things into the pub next door, but it’s chaos.’

  ‘Hey, Adam,’ one of the firemen shouted from the distance, ‘we’re heading off.’

  The three men in his unit started to walk towards the road. ‘Thanks so much, Adam. I really appreciate it. And I’ll head to the station first thing tomorrow and see what I can do to help.’

  He smiled and opened his mouth to say something but seemed lost for words. ‘Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you around.’

  Jade felt herself blushing. ‘Your gloves,’ she said, taking them off before he ran to catch up with his unit.

  As he disappeared through the black shadow of trees, Jade stopped at the oak tree that was now lying on its side, its burned trunk resting on the ash. She touched its rough surface and walked along it until she came to the spot where her mother had etched her name into the bark. Jade ran her hand along the letters of her name and paused when she saw an etching she’d never noticed before. A single rose.

  14

  A STREAM of sunlight pried open David’s eyes. It was 6 am. He turned to find Matthew still asleep and Courtney gone. His shirt was folded on the table and his shoes were now neatly resting against the wall. He felt sticky with perspiration. Courtney had put Matthew’s school uniform in a bag, which was when it dawned on David that they hadn’t been home for twenty-four hours.

  He kissed his son’s forehead and felt a pain in his heart. There had to be another explanation, he assured himself. Doctor Anderson was wrong and David shouldn’t have let the doctor’s early doubts cement in his mind as if they were already proven.

  Matthew began to toss and turn and opened his eyes with a look of confusion. ‘Dad?’ he said, still heavy with sleep. ‘Did you stay here?’

  David wiped his son’s damp hair away from his skin. ‘I sure did. Do you like my bed?’ David pointed to the foldout chair.

  ‘You slept on that?’ he asked. ‘And Mom?’

  ‘She slept in your bed all night.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know. Can we leave here soon?’

  ‘They just have an important test to run today and then they’ll tell us when we can go home,’ David replied.

  The nurse walked in. She had thin, mousy brown hair that she had tossed into a bun, and large eyes. ‘Good morning, Matthew,’ she said. ‘You’re looking more awake today.’ She smiled at him warmly.

  ‘Can I have more lemon ice-cream?’

  ‘Not yet. You know you can’t eat anything before your test. But you can have as much as you want afterwards.’

  She took his blood pressure and tempe
rature before placing a pulse oximeter on his finger to check his oxygen saturation.

  As the nurse walked out Courtney turned into the room carrying two takeaway cups of coffee. ‘Good morning, pumpkin pie,’ she said, leaning over to kiss Matthew.

  She made her way over to David and handed him a coffee. He took it, gratefully, and stood up. As he kissed her gently on the lips, he noticed that she had brushed her hair back and cleaned the mascara off her face. She looked tired but more refreshed, and she carried a different expression that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. She sat on the edge of Matthew’s bed.

  ‘What time did you get back from the cafeteria last night?’

  David sipped his coffee, then answered vaguely. ‘Not sure, I didn’t look at my watch, but you were both fast asleep.’

  ‘I left a message for your secretary to tell her to reschedule your patients.’

  Thank God for Courtney, David thought.

  When Matthew went to the bathroom, she turned to David and spoke softly. ‘I was thinking, you know, I shouldn’t have got myself into a panic, right? The biopsy is probably just precautionary like you said.’

  David wanted to lie to her and tell her, yes, it would all be nothing. But he knew better. Matthew returned from the bathroom, giving David a reprieve from answering.

  ‘Sweetheart, you know today you’re having a test?’ Courtney said.