by Rebecca Lang
‘I’ve somehow broken your lamp,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
He came over to her, knelt down and took the broken pieces from her carefully and placed them under the bed, his quick movements creating a cool breeze around her so that Signy became intensely aware that she wasn’t clothed and the room was cold.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Get up.’
Obediently she stood up, letting him put a robe on her which he’d taken from a hanger behind the door. As she stood there inertly, he tied the belt for her. ‘Come on. Careful where you tread, there might be some slivers of lamp,’ he said, taking her hand and leading her to one of the big sofas that dominated the sitting room. ‘Lie down there.’ He moved a cushion so that she could put her head on it, so that she lay facing the fireplace.
Moments later Dan came back with a pillow and the duvet from her bed. Mutely she received his ministrations, finding comfort from a rare sense of being cared for as he covered her up. Again she was conscious of being a long way from home. Her face was still wet with tears and she was shivering.
‘Don’t move from there,’ he said. The tight look of irritation that had been on his face when he’d left the house in the afternoon had gone, replaced by a serious, almost professional scrutiny. That expression softened when their eyes met and he knelt down beside her. ‘All right?’
Signy nodded. The familiar feeling of sadness that had been with her when she’d woken up lifted a little when they looked at each other. Unconvinced, his eyes roved over her features, willing her to talk to him, she knew, but not compelling her. Their faces were very close, and she found herself returning his scrutiny unselfconsciously, as though she were an observer of the scene, watching herself looking at him. That other self, coolly removed, focussed on his hard mouth and wanted to lean forward to kiss him, wondering whether she would actually do so. Something told her that he regretted the brusqueness he’d shown her when they’d last spoken.
Her eyes followed him as he went into the kitchen. She listened to him running water into a kettle, moving about. Often when she had one of those dreams there was no one else there. Sometimes she wrote her dreams down in a notebook, trying to wrest meaning from them. It also gave her something concrete to do afterwards, a sense of being in control.
When Dan came back he was carrying two glasses of clear brownish liquid. ‘Drink that, Signy,’ he said, offering her one. ‘It’s brandy in warm water with a bit of honey. It’ll help you to relax.’
‘Thank you.’ Again she wanted to say she was sorry—for waking him up when he so clearly needed sleep and for putting him to trouble—but she held her peace. From his matter-of-fact accepting demeanor she understood instinctively that he knew all about nightmares.
After taking a swallow of his own drink, he went over to the vast fireplace and lifted off a few of the logs, then lit the paper under the ones that remained. Signy watched him, still not fully in the here-and-now mentally. The paper and kindling flared up, filling the room with flickering light and a sweet smell of wood smoke, a reassuring, primal scent. When it was burning well he walked over to the windows and drew the curtains, shutting out the darkness, while still she watched him. The room became cosy, a safe, enclosed world.
Next, he moved a small table and pushed the other sofa parallel to the one she was lying on so that it was close to hers, about six inches away. As Signy sipped the warm, comforting drink, she understood that he intended them to sleep there, that he would be with her, and her tears seemed to fall faster, tears of gratitude. That feeling, together with her antipathy towards him, created such a feeling of dissonance that she felt despair and confusion imposing itself on the comfort she was deriving from his presence.
‘Drink up,’ he said, looking sideways at her as he tended to the fire, his face half-hidden in the shadows. ‘You’ll feel better afterwards.’
The drink was good, just enough honey in it to take the bitterness away from the brandy. He didn’t ask her about her dream, and she sensed that he wasn’t going to do so. In her own good time she would talk…or not.
The brandy induced a warm glow in her, seeming to reflect the outward glow of the crackling log fire. Gradually Signy felt herself coming back to this new reality of being in another country, far removed from the events of her dreams. Having to sleep on a sofa, a few inches away from her new colleague, seemed just part and parcel of the type of life that they had elected to undertake. This mutual support helped them to keep going. Wasn’t that what she had done with Dominic? Sometimes there was a fine line between helping and being foolhardy. Somehow she would work through it all and the dreams would become less frequent.
When the drinks were finished, Dan squeezed past her to get onto the other sofa to lie down under his own duvet. ‘Snuggle down, Signy. Make yourself comfortable,’ he instructed her. She had been watching his every move, propped up on one elbow, like one passively watching a film, gaining comfort from familiar motions, blotting out her dream, so now she lay back against the pillow.
Unexpectedly, as she lay on her back, looking up at the flickering firelight, he leaned across to her, his face close to hers. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day for both of us,’ he said. ‘Try to concentrate on that. I have more visits to make, a clinic to run at the hospital in the afternoon. I want you to help me, and I think you should stay here for one more night.’
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘Try to sleep now,’ he said.
When he was comfortable in his own bed, she felt his hand touch her arm. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said.
Across that small divide he held her hand, his grasp dry, warm and firm.
The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was the comforting feel of a warm hand holding hers. The first thing she was aware of when she awoke was muted daylight shining into her eyes, then the smell of freshly made coffee.
Signy was lying on her side on the sofa, facing the other one which had been Dan’s bed, now empty, with the bed-clothes in disarray. She had slept heavily and dreamlessly for the remainder of the night. Easing herself over onto her back, she reviewed the events of the night, the vividness of the earlier dream.
‘Good morning. Coffee?’ Dan’s voice broke into her obsessive thoughts.
‘Oh…yes.’ Signy raised her head to look at Dan standing in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘Please. It smells good. Just what I need. I’ll get up. I’ve no idea what time it is.’ She was still wearing the robe that he’d given her the night before.
‘No, stay there. I’ll bring it to you. It’s early yet,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Signy ran a hand through her untidy hair, then got up to go to the bathroom, feeling self-conscious in the robe with this man who was little more than a stranger. However, this was no time for false modesty.
When she got back he had shifted the furniture to its original position, and there was a tray of coffee things on the low table, plus a plate of croissants that gave off a fresh aroma and a pot of honey. There were several things that she wanted to say to him—an apology for disturbing him in the night, for one—yet she kept silent, sensing that he didn’t want her to keep saying she was sorry all the time.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, sitting down opposite her and pouring himself coffee from a pot. To her he seemed overtly masculine, rumpled from sleep, hair untidy, a growth of stubble on his face. Surreptitiously, she looked at him, feeling a reluctant womanly interest in him that left her angry at herself, falling into the mode that Sal appeared to be in. Immediately she strove to dismiss such fledgling feelings. He was the enemy, until she or he could prove otherwise.
‘Just what I needed,’ she said appreciatively, yet feeling the artificiality of the polite verbal exchanges when her thoughts and emotions were churning. There was a certain tension of things left unsaid, as well as from a mutual determination not to disrupt the spurious equilibrium that existed between them for now. ‘You make a very good cup of coffee.’ Although she wa
s sitting back comfortably, she didn’t feel exactly comfortable.
When she glanced at him, there was a slight hint of amusement again on his face, a warmth in his eyes. He inclined his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Is something about me amusing you, Dr Blake?’ she said.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way…you look very cute in a man’s dressing gown,’ he said, looking at her assessingly. ‘And you don’t have to revert to calling me Dr Blake, Signy.’
You don’t look too bad yourself, she wanted to say, but didn’t. And she wondered what he’d thought of her black silk bra with the yellow roses, which was rather pretty. The memory of it made her flush, and she sensed that he was thinking about it too, how she had knelt on the floor with the broken lamp in her hands. ‘You were rather irritable with me yesterday,’ she said, ‘so I think that a certain formality might be better.’
‘I’m sorry for that. Forget it.’
‘I can’t forget it, and you can’t expect me to pretend that it wasn’t that way,’ she countered.
‘Forgive me, then,’ he said.
Signy shrugged. ‘I’ll see,’ she said. ‘May I ask what the precise plans are for today?’ She forced a casualness and a retreat to a safer topic.
‘First, I want to visit our patient who was attacked by the cougar. I want to make sure the wounds aren’t getting infected. He’s on IV antibiotics. I called the hospital very early this morning and he’s all right so far. Then I have a few more house calls to make of a general nature, then an obstetrics clinic for prenatal and postnatal patients at the hospital. There are quite a lot of women giving birth around here.’
‘A busy day,’ she said automatically, her thoughts going over what they would have to do.
‘Dr Marianne Crowley, who does general medicine, also sees some of those patients when I’m not around, although she prefers not to do deliveries. Of course, she can’t do Caesarean sections, she’s not a surgeon. She works up here for part of the year.’
Signy nodded. ‘I see,’ she said, careful not to react in any way at the mention of the woman who had once meant something to him, and maybe still did. She didn’t want to put herself in the category of gossip, with the avid Sal.
The dawn light was slowly changing from pale grey to pale yellow. Still they sat opposite each other, drinking a second mug of coffee.
‘In this job,’ she said, as though compelled to speak by his quiet air of waiting, his will overcoming hers perhaps, ‘you lose your innocence. You lose your faith that things will turn out all right.’ Signy didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the mug that she held in her hands on her lap. ‘It frightens me sometimes.’
‘And your dream?’ he said gently.
Haltingly, she told him about her dream, still not looking at him.
‘Who was the man on the motorbike?’ he said.
‘He came from the organization to rescue me—from the head camp. He was a South African named Joachim…very brave, very sensible. If it hadn’t been for him I might not be here, talking about it. I’m beginning to realize that now.’
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘On the way to get to me he had an accident with the bike and injured his knee, but managed to get back on and drive to me. I was the only one left behind at the medical station, you see. I wanted to wait for Dominic because he’d gone to look for some UN people. All the others had gone already. I had to drive the bike out, with Joachim on the back…he was in a lot of pain. I put a dressing on the knee and splinted it.’
Again Dan waited.
‘In retrospect, of course, it seems madness that I stayed behind, now I know that the medical station was subsequently burnt out by rebels, whoever they were. But at the time it seemed all right to me, even though I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out. The others had said they would send someone back for me…and Dominic. I…had such a naïve faith that we would get out, both of us.’ Signy’s voice trailed off.
‘Only Dominic didn’t show,’ Dan prompted softly, matter-of-factly, ‘by the time you really had to leave?’
‘No…’ she whispered. ‘The system failed him.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘THE pace is pretty slow, isn’t it?’ Terri said, sotto voce, to Signy as they stood in the obstetrics clinic that afternoon, waiting for their next patient to arrive for her appointment. ‘You know, at this rate, Signy, we might lose our survival skills.’ She giggled slightly. ‘Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I could do with a little break, especially after yesterday, seeing those two guys who’d been mauled by the cougar.’
‘Yes, don’t knock it, Terri,’ Signy said, sitting down behind the reception desk. The nurse who worked there regularly had gone off to the dining room for a teabreak, leaving the two World Aid nurses to hold the fort for half an hour or so. Dan was behind the scenes somewhere, writing up charts from the patients he’d seen already. Their next patient was late.
Signy knew exactly what Terri meant about losing survival skills. In the work they did, the places they went to, they had to hone their instincts to assess situations constantly. Sometimes they got it wrong, she knew that.
That morning she and Terri had made some more home visits with Dan, while Connie and Pearl had gone with Max to do the same, and now the other two nurses were in the emergency department. The other nurses in the group who had been on Kelp Island had gone to other parts of the mainland with other doctors.
‘Dan asked us this morning if we wanted to stay in Brookes Landing until Friday,’ Terri said, ‘then go back to the island so that we can have a long weekend off to rest. After all, we are supposed to be resting some of the time. I said it was all right with me to stay here—it makes more sense than going back and forth, even though it is only about twenty minutes by plane. What do you think, Signy? You’re the one who’s sharing his cottage.’
That morning Signy had told Terri about her bad dream. ‘Oh, I get them all the time,’ Terri had said. ‘For quite a while I was scared to go to sleep, but they’re getting fewer.’
‘It does make sense to stay here,’ Signy agreed. ‘It was a bit odd being in the same house with him because he was bad-tempered yesterday, but he was very sweet to me when I needed someone.’
Terri looked at her consideringly. ‘I think he’s basically a very nice guy,’ she said. ‘Men get huffy like that when they’re attracted to a woman and don’t want to admit it to themselves, because it’s inconvenient, let alone admit it to anyone else or the woman involved.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything like that,’ Signy said. ‘Actually, although he’s nice to me when he has to be, I think he really thinks I’m pretty naïve, and is barely hiding the fact that he’s impatient with me. I get the impression that he doesn’t think I’m cut out to be in World Aid Nurses.’
‘Mmm. Who is, really?’ Terri said. ‘Is there a type? To have common sense, be calm in a crisis…I think those things count for a lot, and I would say that you have those qualities as much as anyone else here. There are people who are very intelligent but don’t have any common sense, we’ve all met those.’
Signy laughed. ‘Yes, I’ve met a few.’
‘Dan’s spent an awful lot of time with you,’ Terri went on, ‘and he could have left you to share a room with one of us.’
‘You’re getting like Sal.’ Signy grinned.
‘Heaven forbid!’
‘He spends time with me because he’s watching me, Terri. That’s what I think, anyway.’ As she said that, a conviction of its veracity grew into a certainty. ‘And that’s not a compliment. He’s waiting to pounce, I suspect, to pick up on something negative, waiting for me to slip up so that he can report back to headquarters that I’m not the type they’re looking for.’
‘A bit late for that. What makes you think that, anyway?’ Terri asked.
‘He asked me a lot of questions when we were driving into the camp, like whether I could drive a motorboat or ski, as though they were essential requirement
s.’
‘Huh! Don’t let it worry you. I don’t suppose he’s really in a great position to judge you, Signy. Maybe he just wants to help, knowing we’ve all been traumatized by our experiences. Max is always asking me if I want to un-burden myself to him,’ Terri said.
‘Did you?’
‘No. I didn’t feel ready, and I’m not sure he’s the right person. I guess I’ll know when I’m ready.’
‘Mmm,’ Signy murmured in agreement.
‘Have you seen anything of Sal, by the way?’
‘No. She’ll be quizzing me, no doubt.’
‘I hope I never get like that,’ Terri said, ‘where my whole life revolves around a tiny place and its gossip. Maybe that’s why we’re with World Aid Nurses to begin with.’
‘Yes, you have something there. I try to analyse why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m here…and I can’t come up with a good answer, except I feel that it’s right. Even so, sometimes I think I must be mad.’
‘I know what you mean. There are no half-measures in what we do, are there? You’re either in or you’re out.’
The telephone on the desk shrilled. ‘Obstetrics clinic,’ Signy said into the receiver.
‘Is Dr Blake there, please? This is the labour room, I’m one of the nurses here,’ a voice informed her. ‘We need him up here right away to look at one of his patients in labour. She’s not progressing, and I think a Caesarean section might be in order.’
‘He’s here,’ Signy said. ‘I’ll get him for you.’
Dan, wearing a white lab coat over a green scrub suit, was sitting at a desk in a tiny office behind the scenes, hunched over a pile of patents’ charts. ‘A phone call for you, Dr Blake,’ she said, going on to explain the reason for the call.
Dan stood up, stretched and ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. ‘I thought I might have to do a C-section on that woman,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come up there with me, then help me in the operating room if need be? I shall have a scrub nurse but not an assistant surgeon, which is what you would have to be.’