The hot water caught in the cavities underneath the surface normally got released right after a heavy wave such as the one I’d just ridden. The two guys waved back, though, and one blew kisses. They must have thought I was into them, or something.
Suddenly, a massive spurt of hot water erupted right underneath their asses and seemed to blast the two surfers four feet in the air. They screamed as if a shark bitten them, and I couldn’t help but smile as I waited for them to paddle out of the water unceremoniously.
“I was trying to warn you guys,” I said with a broad grin when they’d finally made it onto the beach, dripping and panting.
“Oh, thanks,” the one guy said, and then they both disappeared quickly, surfboards clutched under their arms, toward the nearest bar, the only thing hurt being their pride.
I couldn’t help but think the ocean had taught them a much-needed lesson in humility.
I went back into the water and surfed a couple more waves before returning to my bungalow. When I got to my room, I prepared a shower, but first picked up my phone to check for new messages. There was one text from my mom.
Your father is coming to visit you, and he says he wants to persuade you to get back with Tom. Please be warned he seems hell-bent on this idea, for some reason. Sorry, angel, I tried.
Tom must have had a heart to heart talk with my dad and presented some carefully thought-out bullshit, which convinced him it was time to get on his high horse and talk sense into his poor little girl’s silly head. I didn’t need the additional pressure, so I was grateful Stacy kept the exact location where I’d been transferred to a secret thus far. I wouldn’t mind if my dad arrived in Arugam Bay, and I wouldn’t mind him sitting down and shooting the breeze with Tom for a while. I just didn’t want them in Bali, complicating my already complicated search for Logan.
I wondered if the time had perhaps come to move on to the next level. Stacy would love traveling around from one island to the next with me as we searched. This way we would also be able to avoid any unwanted attention from my dad and Tom, should they be so unwise as to try and locate us here.
I dialed Stacy’s number, and she picked up after the second ring.
“There are one or two little complications,” I said. “We may end up having some unwelcome visitors in Bali. My dad is on his way to Sri Lanka to help the perfect Tom Delaney win back his perfect daughter’s heart.”
“Things might get a little crowded if they end up on the island with the two of us,” Stacy replied.
“In any event, I was thinking of chartering a boat to take us from one island to the next.”
Stacy drew in her breath on the other end of the line. “That sounds divine. I’ll go and have a friendly chat with the admin guy and convince him to sign off all the traveling costs as medical expenses.”
I rolled my eyes as I mentally pictured the method Stacy was probably going to use to convince him. “Don’t worry about depleting their budget. My mom will take care of the costs.”
“Still,” Stacy said with a giggle, “I think I should get more involved in the admin side of Doctors Without Borders. I seem to have a talent for these kinds of arrangements.”
“Great. We can discuss those professional career plans of yours along with the other stuff we need to sort out when you arrive.”
After ending the call, I relented and asked my mother to deposit some money for the travel costs, unwilling to deplete the funds of an already threadbare budget … no matter how much fun the accountant might have in agreeing. Heck, if he were the right sort, Stacy wouldn’t need an incentive to make his day.
I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower. Soon I found myself fantasizing about Logan, as had become a bit of habit for me by now every time I got near water. My hands involuntarily moved down toward my crotch, and I started stroking my clit firmly and quickly as I remembered the sexual pleasures we’d shared, and of pleasures, I hoped to share again. I thought of his huge cock and how he filled me all the way when we made love.
As I leaned on the cool wall, the water spraying over my breasts, I could almost feel his strong hands exploring every inch of my body, and I increased the speed of my fingers. I braced one foot on the wall, parted my thighs, and the sensation of warm pleasure mounted.
“Aaah, I miss you so…” I whispered.
I finally reached a climax and slid down to the floor, my fingers splayed, so I stayed open to the fine spray. I lay my head on the wall, dreaming of the moment I would be reunited with Logan.
Not for one second had I thought finding Logan was impossible; it was the only acceptable outcome. Even if he rejected me, it would be an end. A sad end, but one I could handle.
I just needed to know.
I found myself wondering what Tom could have possibly told my dad to move him to come looking for me. It probably had something to do with Logan’s past, and you could count on Tom to make it sound as if Logan was to blame for his girlfriend’s death. Tom probably sketched a scenario of me being in some danger. The truth, of course, was that I had escaped Tom’s ever increasing efforts to lure me back into his web of deceit.
His efforts no longer had anything to do with love. It was a question of pride and ownership for him. Tom believed I was rightfully his property, and that I had no right ever to make the decision to walk away from him. For some reason, he had found an energetic and willing partner in my father to help him force me back into his arms.
I stood, switched off the shower, and got dressed before heading to bed. I still had two days to wait before Stacy arrived, and I just hoped Tom and my father wouldn’t figure out my location before she could make it to my side. As soon as she arrived, we would get off of the island to continue our search for the elusive Doctor Logan Storm.
19
“You finally made it,” I called as Stacy disembarked the ship.
She only had one bag with her, and we quickly rounded up a local rickshaw driver to take us to my bungalow. Stacy had not booked a place to stay in Bali, so I prepared a motorboat to take us to the next island. The sea was so calm, it would be like riding on a lake—according to the guy I’d chartered to take us.
“This feels like some crazy kind of Indiana Jones adventure.” She beamed as we got onto the motorboat a half-hour later.
We had booked us a room in a small hotel on the next island but had no other accommodation from that point. We were going to simply travel as we progressed and had as much fun as possible along the way.
The motorboat took off, and we laughed like teenagers as it sliced through the clear blue water.
“Was there any specific reason you picked this next island as our first stop?” Stacy asked when we saw the land approaching.
“Not really. No one seems to have any info on Logan’s whereabouts, so I figured the best way to get started is to get to the next island. Follow a logical route.”
We hopped off, and a black Mercedes taxi took us to our hotel. We checked in and went up to our room, a lovely, spacious accommodation, and we fell onto the bed to relax for a moment. But only a moment. We jumped right in and commenced fine-combing the island for any sign of Logan. I was armed with a clear photo of Logan on my cell phone, so whenever we met someone we figured might have seen Logan, I would be ready to flash them the photo to ask about his whereabouts. The medical center was to be our first stop, something of a trek inland.
As we got ready, Stacy asked, “Do they also have temples on this island like the one you were in when I phoned?”
“I guess so, but even if they don’t, I’ll take you to that place once we get back to Bali.”
“Okay. I’m just so glad to be away from Tom in Arugam Bay that I don’t mind if we see no sights at all.”
“Was he that bad?” I asked.
“I think he spread a rumor that Logan has some hold over you and that he’s lured you away when you’re still in love with Tom.”
“That sounds about right. It explains what he might have told my fat
her to get him to fly over to come and rescue me.”
“You know, I have, to be honest and say I used to think you were exaggerating just slightly about Tom before I met him. Now I realize you never told me the half of it.”
“Yeah, I know it’s kind of hard to imagine how someone can really be that conniving and manipulative.”
“So, what is the word about Logan? Is he now fully restored as a practicing surgeon around these islands?”
“From the sounds of it, he’s taken up a prominent role in the treatment of serious traumas. He’s good at it too, judging from the sketchy reports I’ve been getting so far.”
“I did a little digging too before I left. Your father was due to arrive in Arugam Bay today.” Stacy got up to put on a pair of jungle boots.
I did the same, eager to get started right away.
“Have you got any specific plans at all on how you want us to go about this?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, I think we should start from one end of the island and start asking people at random if they’ve seen Logan at all, places he might have gone. Surf beaches, hotels, the medical center, obviously. I know it’s not much of an organized approach, so feel free to suggest something more structured, if you know of a better way.”
“I can’t think of any other way, so I’m ready to start when you are.”
With the best beaches the other side of the island, we hired ourselves two motorcycles and rode along the dusty little roads that weaved through the jungle to connect one village to the next. Conventional maps still hadn’t been redrawn since the tsunami, and the only people with accurate ones were the army, so we were riding blind for now.
The stark contrast between the magnificent blue ocean water and the destruction left behind by the tsunami was almost unbelievable. Eight months after, there was still debris caught against the trees, and as we rode through villages and townships that had been entirely wiped out, the only structures remaining were the primitive stone foundations of the houses.
We kept traveling, and when we finally made it slightly higher up in the hills, we found some hastily constructed temporary shelters which housed the survivors of the tsunami as they awaited their government’s action on rebuilding. Aid programs were itching to get started, but the Indonesian government was even slower at decision-making than the US.
We got out and started walking amongst the makeshift shelters, looking for someone who might know what was going on. I saw a little boy with a bright expression, and when I showed him Logan’s photograph, he nodded immediately. I couldn’t believe our luck, and Stacy and I followed the boy after I’d given him a ten dollar bill for his efforts.
He might not have been able to speak English, but evidently, he could count American money with no problem at all.
We had to push our motorcycles as we walked after the boy, and when we finally made it right to the top of the hill, there was a large building in front of us. It could have been an office block or something—the kind of structure that Doctors Without Borders might have used as a temporary medical facility.
The boy held up his hand, and we understood he was motioning for us to wait there. We stopped and watched him disappear into the building. We waited for almost twenty minutes, and when there was still no sign of the boy, we walked over to the building and opened the front door. We both drew in deep breaths when we saw what was on the inside of the building … nothing at all.
It was entirely empty, and Stacy and I stared at the open back door through which the little boy must have run after swindling us out of ten bucks. I couldn’t help but smile at his inventive tactics and didn’t feel angry at all. Ten dollars was enough to buy food for a week around these parts, and I regretted not having given him a little more.
We returned to our motorcycles to continue our search.
We followed the dusty road until we reached a dead end, at which point we turned to go back the same way we had come. We weren’t making much progress, apart from the fact we’d established there wasn’t much to see along that route.
After another two hours driving around aimlessly, we decided to hit our hotel and reassess our method of search.
“I’m not sure what we can do to be more effective,” Stacy said as we both sipped margaritas in the hotel bar. “But I do see how we might end up spending days on end riding around on our motorcycles without success.”
“We could split up and search different areas,” I suggested, hoping she would hate the idea as much as I did.
It was not that I felt unsafe or anything, but I’d spent enough time alone in Bali and enjoyed having Stacy’s company.
“Mmm, I’m not sure about that,” she said. “Let me quickly think of a reason why that would not be a great idea.”
“Don’t worry, I hate it,” I replied, and we each ordered another margarita as we racked our brains for a more acceptable solution to the question of effective searching techniques.
“I know we don’t have any personal knowledge of the area, but we can get one of the locals to help us,” Stacy suggested.
Maybe was onto something.
“Okay, but we should make sure we don’t get someone like that little boy who took us both for such a ride,” I said with a smile.
“Why don’t we get an early night and then start first thing in the morning?”
I agreed. We finished our drinks and took the stairs up to our room.
The hotel we were in was built high up on a hill, which was why it had survived the great wave. We had a wonderful view of the island from our room, and we gazed out over the entire area for a while before turning in for the night. Looking out over the island made us realized how important it was to get a local to assist us, as everything looked the same from our bird’s eye point of view. It would be simple to get lost on the island or to search the same area more than once by accident.
We woke at the crack of dawn, both of us excited to continue our quest.
“Okay, first of all, let’s walk down the street and see if we can find someone to help us map the area,” I suggested.
We soon found ourselves gazing at the faces of complete strangers on the street outside our hotel to try and discern whether they might be reliable sources of mapping information. When Stacy approached an old man who looked like he’d been around a while, we finally caught a break as he turned out to speak some broken English. We quickly ascertained he’d lived on the island all his life and knew where most of the villages were situated. We tested his knowledge by asking him some questions about the area we’d traversed on our bikes the previous day, and everything he said checked out, so we at least knew he was reliable.
The old man helped us put together a rough map with spots marking the places where there had been villages before the tsunami and those where the army and medical teams had been known to operate. He couldn’t say how up to date it was, though, as these things shifted often. We knew most of the survivors created temporary shelters reactively close to where their original villages had been, so we were confident of finding some people to question.
We thanked the man for his help, and I gave him a fifty dollar bill. Then we headed for the closest spot on our homemade map, which indicated the erstwhile location of a relatively large village not far from our hotel. We had to travel downhill to get there, and it took quite a bit of skill to stay on top of our motorcycles as we traversed the tricky road.
When we finally arrived in the place where the village was supposed to be, we were not surprised to only see ruins again. We searched for a trail that might lead to some temporary gathering, and finally found a small mountain pass that looked like it had formed recently.
When we made it to the top of the hill, we found dozens of tents and shacks which provided shelter to the village’s survivors, and we quickly started moving from one dwelling to the next to ask the people if they’d seen Doctor Logan Storm.
Almost none of these people could speak English, so our inquiries amounted to l
ittle more than the act of showing them the picture on my cell phone and looking intently at their faces for any sign of recognition. We had no luck at all and spent the day repeating this fruitless procedure at three more villages before it became late, and we had to return to our hotel. We had not covered a quarter of the hand drawn map, and I found myself wondering if our efforts had any real prospect of succeeding at all.
“Any thoughts on how to keep improving our searching methods?” I asked Stacy as we once again sipped our margaritas at the hotel bar.
“Yes, I have some. We can get someone to come along and make us some of these wonderful margaritas to keep our whistles whet while we are searching,” she replied and drained her drink. I quickly followed suit, and soon we were both on our fourth margaritas with no immediate end in sight to our little impromptu drinking spree. “Do you think your father and Tom are on Bully yet?”
I tilted my head to try and decipher what she was referring to. “What is this Bully you are talking about?”
“Bully, the island where you first went to go and search for Logan,” Stacy replied, and rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe how slow I was.
“Bali.” I laughed, motioning for the waiter to bring us each another drink.
“Yes, that’s what I said … Billy.” Stacy drained her margarita.
Later that evening, when we lay in bed, a deep sadness descended upon me.
“I don’t think we are ever going to find Logan,” I said and, maybe it was the booze exaggerating, but I started to cry.
“We will find him, don’t you worry. He’s probably just doing some doctor shit somewhere on one of these islands, and we will eventually get to him,” Stacy reassured me with some choice drunken wisdom, but I kept sobbing away until I fell asleep in her arms.
The next morning, we took a while before feeling ready to get out there and continue our search, as we both had mild hangovers from the previous night. When we finally hit the road on our motorcycles, I simply couldn’t face another long day of riding around for nothing, and when we stopped at the first village marked on the map, I almost felt like turning back and going to our hotel to sleep some more.
My Doctor Without Borders Page 8