Children's Doctor, Meant-To-Be Wife

by Meredith Webber

  ‘This is a beautiful setting,’ he said, shaking his head as he realised just how beautiful it was.

  Beth was smiling at him, as if she could read his surprise and was pleased by it.

  ‘Not a bad place to run away to,’ she teased, and he shook his head again.

  No one had ever teased him as Beth did—gently and lovingly, but still getting under his skin.

  In fact, everything about Beth got under his skin—it had happened six years ago when he’d first met her, and it was happening again. Or maybe she’d just stayed there, and he’d pushed her deep inside, trying to pretend she wasn’t there at all.

  He had to be careful. He didn’t want that to happen again. Losing his child had been something from which a part of him would never fully recover, but losing Beth had been worse. It had disrupted his life to such an extent he’d lost his joy in work, the one thing that had always been there for him, and though he’d continued working—had worked like a madman, in fact—he’d known he hadn’t been getting the results he’d got when he’d been married. Known that he’d lost the ability to find that extra connection to produce brilliant results rather than satisfactory ones.

  The invitation to go to the CDC had been like a lifeline. It had given him a challenge, a new focus—something big enough to stop him thinking, remembering…

  Regretting…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘WHAT’S next?’ Beth asked when she’d finished her late breakfast and no longer had the excuse of eating to save her making conversation.

  Angus, also finished, had been looking out at the view while he drank his tea. He turned back towards her, sipped again, then sighed.

  Stop thinking, Beth…

  Focus.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I’d like to autopsy one of the dead birds.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Beth said, fear for him making her voice too shrill, too loud. ‘That’s exactly how those people in the laboratory overseas died before the virus was isolated. They were studying the dead birds and didn’t realise just how deadly the virus was. And that was in a lab, with at least some containment facilities. To do it here would be suicidal, Angus.’

  ‘I do have some sense,’ he reminded her. ‘Apparently there’s a lab at the park ranger station, but I doubt they’d have a lamina flow room or chimney. But gowned and gloved—’

  ‘It’s still a risk,’ Beth protested, but he quietened her with a touch of his hand on her arm.

  ‘I don’t think it is bird flu, Beth,’ he said. ‘The worst avian influenza outbreaks have been in China, where millions upon millions of birds are farmed, and it is in those populations that the worst outbreaks have occurred. Chickens and ducks in particular have been susceptible and other what we might call domesticated birds like geese and even swans have been found with the virus. Where it’s passed to wild birds, it’s passed to those species, not crossed to other species.’

  His hand had remained on her arm and now his fingers stroked her skin—absent-mindedly she knew, and she should ignore it, but the touch was soothing and electrifying at the same time.

  She couldn’t let Angus do this to her again! Couldn’t let herself be carried away on a tide of physical sensations.

  Although—

  Nonsense!

  She focussed on her argument.

  ‘But it could—in fact, you can’t be certain that hasn’t already happened. You’ve said yourself no one ever knows all the latest developments in any scientific process.’

  He smiled at her.

  ‘Quoting me, Beth?’

  The smile and a softness in the words made her blood swoop along her veins, but she had to maintain her poise—maintain a pretence that this was just a normal conversation with a colleague. She would not be swept into a bundle of dizzy desire by Angus’s smiles.

  Not again.

  ‘Only because it seemed to fit.’ Very mature response, that. ‘And the fact remains that birds are dying.’

  Angus nodded.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that and I believe there could be a simple explanation—sad, but simple.’

  Beth watched him, waiting for more, so ridiculously happy to be sitting here like this with Angus she knew she should probably have herself committed to a secure ward somewhere until the madness passed.

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ she finally asked, when the silence had stretched between them for so long she wondered—more madness—if he might be as comfortable as she was.

  Another smile.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But when I know, I’ll explain it all. In the meantime, you should get some sleep. I’ll see you later?’

  It was such a weird question, asked as if he was taking it for granted that he would—no, more than that, that he wanted to see her later…

  How likely was that?

  When she’d suggested their marriage wasn’t working, he’d walked away without a second thought. So swiftly, in fact, she’d known for sure that what she’d always suspected had been true. Angus had married her because she’d been pregnant, not because he’d loved her…

  But that had been then and this was now, and if it had just been a casual remark, she had to respond in kind.

  ‘I suppose so—if you’ll be around the hospital, we probably won’t be able to avoid each other.’

  She was looking out towards the water as she spoke and didn’t see his reaction, so when he replied, ‘I was thinking more of personal contact, Beth,’ she had to swing around to look at him to see if she could make out what he’d meant from some expression on his face.

  Impossible! It always had been that way when she’d tried to read emotions on Angus’s face.

  So she had to ask.

  ‘Why?’

  His eyes scanned her face and she wondered just what he was reading there.

  Fear?

  Apprehension?

  Hopefully not excitement!

  ‘Would you object?’

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ she managed, although her nerves were now so taut that any movement might snap them.

  He sighed and rubbed his hands across his face, the way he did when he was tired, or worried about something, then turned and looked at her.

  ‘Seeing you again,’ he said, so slowly she wondered if he was testing each and every word before he said it, or if reluctance was holding them back, ‘I realise how much I miss you.’

  The words stopped the swooping in her blood, replacing it with song, but this was worse than madness—this reaction was stupidity. She had to stay calm, stay focussed. She’d rebuilt her life and grown to be happy in her own way. Content…

  Mature!

  ‘It’s been three years, Angus, and you’ve just realised that?’

  He lifted one shoulder in an embarrassed kind of shrug.

  ‘I’ve been busy with work. You must know I can do that—can get so involved with it, nothing else matters.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Beth said quietly, then she stood up, stacked the dirty dishes on the tray and walked away.

  Angus watched her go and wondered just which occasion when he’d been too ‘involved’ had sprung into her mind. When she’d phoned to say her labour pains were down to three minutes apart and he’d suggested she get a cab to the hospital and he’d meet her there?

  Even this long after the event, remorse and shame stabbed through him.

  He had met her there eventually, though for an hour he’d used an important phase of an experiment at work as an excuse to not go, afraid that seeing Beth in pain might be too much for him to bear. Afraid of how he might react to her pain—afraid of emotion—that dangerous X factor he’d been trained by his father, and his own childhood experience, to not feel.

  And by the time he had arrived, she’d been in trouble, the cord twisted around Bobby’s neck, everyone too frantic for any talk, everyone intent on saving the infant.

  Saving Bobby…

  Beth rinsed the dishes and set them on the sink to wash lat
er, then considered washing them now in order to prolong the time before she had to face Angus again. The problem wasn’t her pathetic reaction to Angus’s words—his admission that he’d missed her—although singing in the blood was bad enough, but why Angus would say such a thing?

  Angus never said anything that might be even vaguely indicative of his feelings. In fact, at times, early in their marriage, she’d wondered if he had feelings—if perhaps his extraordinary intelligence had somehow taken up the space where feelings should have been.

  But then she’d seen him with Bobby—seen the gentleness in his hands as he’d held his little son, seen the way he’d smiled at the little boy, and stroked his head and cheek when he’d been fretful.

  So, yes, he did have feelings.

  But for her? Or did ‘missing her’ simply mean he missed the convenience of a wife—someone to cut his grapefruit in the mornings?

  She was thinking she had to return to the deck, when the phone rang. Charles, for Angus. She carried the hand-piece out to him then backed away, not wanting to seem to be eavesdropping, although the conversation, on Angus’s side, was unrevealing. Two ‘Right’s and an ‘Okay’ before he stood up and brought the phone into the living room where she was sitting on the couch.

  ‘I’m going back to the medical centre,’ he said, hovering beside her, eventually taking a deep breath before adding, ‘I’ll call in here after I finish.’

  Finish?

  Beth was about to ask, when she remembered his talk of autopsying one of the dead birds. She leapt to her feet.

  ‘You’re not still thinking of looking at one of the dead birds, are you?’

  Had she sounded too anxious—manic?—that he smiled?

  ‘I’ll take every precaution,’ he assured her, ‘but you must admit it might be the fastest and easiest way to allay everyone’s fears.’

  ‘But how? You’d still have to send samples from the bird to the mainland for testing. You can’t tell just from looking at the inside of a bird what it died from—unless it was strangled and had petechiae or some other indicator of cause of death.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Angus said. ‘Something like starvation—that should be obvious. Birds don’t suffer from anorexia.’

  ‘Starvation?’ Beth echoed, but Angus was already crossing the deck, though he paused at the top of the steps, turning around and lifting his hand in a half-wave.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, then leapt the two steps onto the soft sand, striding briskly away before Beth could again ask why.

  It was useless to speculate on exactly what was prompting Angus’s behaviour, so Beth focussed on the earlier conversation.

  ‘Starvation?’ she muttered to herself. Here on an island with abundant life all around it? Most of the birds lived on shellfish, of which there were plenty, so how could they possibly be dying of starvation?

  She reached up to the bookshelf behind her and found her bird book, seeking the chapter on shearwaters.

  Migratory, she knew that. It was because they were migratory, flying north for the Arctic summer then returning south to breed, that bird flu had loomed as a possibility in her mind. The birds’ path took them across Siberia, Korea, China and Southeast Asia. Stopping to feed in any of these places, they could have picked up the virus.

  Although according to Angus, ducks gave it to ducks and chickens to chickens, so was it possible for shearwaters to pick it up on their way south?

  Realising she had no idea, or any way of finding out, she headed for her bedroom. Sleep would do little to clear away her confusion over Angus’s behaviour, and certainly wouldn’t provide answers to her bird queries, but it would make her better able to deal with whatever lay ahead of her on this confusing day.

  Angus made his way back to the medical centre with long, swift strides—trying to escape the strange emotions that had come upon him in Beth’s little hut. Had he really told her he missed her—revealed his confused emotional state to her?

  He had, but was that all bad?

  Wasn’t it not talking about their emotions that had brought them to the end of their marriage?

  Hadn’t they already discussed this earlier?

  So telling her must be good.

  Mustn’t it?

  As he neared the new building, he realised he might be creating an impression of urgency which could panic someone watching him, and deliberately slowed his pace.

  But taking shorter steps didn’t make it easier to switch his thoughts from Beth to science, although now he’d mentioned starvation—thinking aloud as he’d talked to her—something was niggling in his brain, something to do with flight paths of migratory birds.

  Focus.

  Think.

  Where?

  Korea, he rather thought, teasing at the idea, sure if it was an article he’d read, he’d be able to recall it word for word as his memory was visual.

  Had it been something he’d heard?

  ‘So much for keeping it quiet,’ Charles said gloomily as Angus, still trying to recall the snippet of information, walked into the medical centre office. ‘The phone’s ringing off the hook—journalists wanting a story. Next thing we know there’ll be news helicopters hovering overhead, all looking to photograph dead birds. We’re trying to contact all the parents of children who are at the camp without their families, so we can allay their fears before they hear or see a news report, but that’s not easy, with so many parents at work.’

  ‘Have you someone competent who can handle the press calls?’ Angus asked, and Charles smiled.

  ‘Fortunately, we have an excess of staff available. It might not have come from her training as a cardiac surgeon, but Gina Jamieson is a genius at using a lot of words to say nothing. And she’s got an American accent so she sounds as if she really knows things. All the press calls are going to her.’

  ‘And the vaccination programme?’

  ‘Will get under way as soon as stocks of vaccine arrive. In the meantime, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service has contacted the army, who will fly in a mobile bio-hazard laboratory and a mobile decontamination unit to Crocodile Creek. An army helicopter will then airlift them to the island. Both units should be here tomorrow afternoon at the latest.’

  ‘Are they sending personnel—scientists?’

  Charles shook his head, then he smiled at Angus.

  ‘They seem to think they’ve got one of the best on site. You spent some time at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently?’

  Angus nodded. Like epidemiologists the world over, he’d jumped at the chance to spend time in the world’s premier disease-control centre, and one of the things he’d studied there had been the genetics of the bird flu virus. But then his learning had been theoretical.

  Putting what he knew into practice was different…

  Testing without an MChip was different…

  The bed was too hot, or maybe it was too soft. Beth tossed and turned, telling herself she had to sleep, knowing she wouldn’t. In the end she forsook the bed and wandered out onto the deck, climbing cautiously into the hammock which had been known to tip her out if approached unwarily.

  But there, with the salt-laden breeze cooling her skin and the smell of the reef in the air wrapping around her, she dozed.

  And dreamt…

  The raucous squabbles of a pair of sooty terns, fighting over a morsel of food, woke her, and she looked around blearily. Above the noise of the birds was another noise, also familiar, although why a helicopter should be circling overhead, she wasn’t sure.

  The small aircraft throbbed into view and tilted over the beach, then swung in a wide arc and the noise slowly faded into the distance.

  Press, Beth realised. The island was already in the news. The now-familiar fear tightened her nerves, but Angus had said it probably wasn’t bird flu and that the quarantine was just a precaution.

  Angus!

  The thought of him calmed her, and now she realised that, through the leaves
of the pawpaw tree, she could see a tall figure on the beach—a bizarre sight on this tropical island, for the man was wearing a white business shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and with sleeves turned up to the elbows, and grey trousers, rolled up to just below the knees. And beside him a little boy—Sam?—running in and out of the water, splashing with his hands so the man’s trousers were probably spotted with salt water.

  She remembered back to what Angus had been wearing at breakfast this morning—not for him casual, tropical wear of baggy shorts and floral shirts. No, he was at a conference—working—and work wear was grey trousers and a white business shirt.

  But Angus paddling? Splashing with a little boy? Angus?

  She remembered thinking that morning that he’d changed, but paddling? For that was what the man was undoubtedly doing. Sloshing through the shallow water at the edge of the lagoon, bending over to splash water at the child and looking, for all the world, as if he was enjoying it.

  She tipped herself out of the hammock and went to join them, passing Angus’s shoes set neatly by her bottom step, her bare feet enjoying the crunchy texture of the coarse coral sand on the path down to the beach.

  ‘You were sleeping,’ he said, as she drew closer, and Sam greeted her with a shout.

  ‘You could have come in anyway,’ she told him, uncertain now she was closer just why she’d come.

  ‘Your little friend was heading for the beach. He tells me he’s supposed to be in the hall, having quiet time. I did check with one of the carers—Mrs Someone, an older woman—who said as long as he stayed with me and kept his hat on, he could play in the water. Actually…’ He smiled as he added, ‘The water tempted me as well.’

  Ordinary enough words but something in his voice suggested a subtext in the phrase.

  She studied him, then smiled back at him, certain he couldn’t have meant anything more than he’d said—certainly not that seeing her asleep had tempted him in some way.

  ‘And Charles? You’re not wanted at the medical centre? You’ve given up the idea of autopsying a dead bird?’

  ‘Until tomorrow,’ he told her, and although he explained about the containment laboratory and the precautions they would put in place, her heart still filled with fear for him.