From Hawaii to Forever

by Julie Danvers

  And because many of those expectations that others had had of her were also those she’d had for herself, she hadn’t noticed that her own happiness was no longer a priority. Her desire for her happiness had slipped away as she’d focused on the needs and expectations of others.

  So it had felt natural to live up to Christopher’s expectations of her, as well. No wonder none of her friends had liked him. She hadn’t been able to understand it at the time, because it had felt so natural for her to agree with Christopher and to try to please him. But she wondered now why it had never seemed as important to please herself.

  But the minute she’d stepped off the plane in Hawaii she’d felt something new. That same breeze that had brought her the scent of the plumeria flowers had also brought her a sense of glorious possibility. The possibility of being herself. The mountains and the ocean had promised her adventure; the birds, the flowers and the meandering paths had hinted at peace. And the people had offered an acceptance that she’d never thought was possible.

  She’d been so nervous about earning her place at Oahu General Hospital that she’d never realized she didn’t have to earn it because her place was already there. She didn’t have to work hard to belong. Instead she simply belonged.

  Jack had once told her that he did his best thinking at the beach. He’d said he’d been out on the beach to think on the day they’d met, when he’d rescued her from the rip current. Kat had decided that the beach might not be a bad idea. And, thanks to Jack, she was now an expert at using the beach as a place to think, too.

  Those days when she’d felt as though she couldn’t turn her brain off, couldn’t stop worrying about all the people who mattered to her and all the work stresses were over. The worries were still there, occasionally, but now she could set them aside and focus on the sand and the waves.

  Jack had been right about her need for excitement, too. But as she strolled barefoot on the beach, feeling the sand underneath her toes, she knew that she needed the serenity that these islands could offer her as well. She wondered if she would have been able to appreciate the stillness and the calm of the ocean if Jack hadn’t shown her how much she needed excitement first.

  However she’d gotten to this point, she was glad that she was finally able to relax enough to enjoy something as simple as a walk on the beach. She wanted to soak up as much of Hawaii as possible. She gazed out over the ocean, marveling at its endlessness. She took in the sun, shimmering on the water’s surface, and far in the distance she could see the other Hawaiian islands, where a cloudy haze formed around the green mountains of each one.

  The sand was cool under her toes and for a moment Kat felt completely at peace. She was completely absorbed in the way each part of the beach touched her senses: she could feel the grains of sand that had collected on her feet, the warmth of the sun on her skin, and she could hear the sound of ocean waves in her ears, punctuated by a few birds flying overhead and calling.

  She’d never felt this way about any place she’d ever been to or any choice she’d made. The closest comparison she could think of was the day she’d learned that she had gotten into medical school. In that moment she’d felt the strongest feeling of peace and security wash over her—the knowledge that she was going to do exactly what she was meant to be doing with her life.

  She had that same feeling about Hawaii—that this was where she was meant to be and that she should spend the rest of her life here and continue feeling it was meant to be.

  You could almost call it a kind of love, she thought. And it had been Jack who’d shown her how to fall in love with the islands, how to take advantage of all they had to offer.

  I could visit, she told herself. I could take trips to Hawaii every so often—maybe every other year or so. I could come here for holidays and long weekends.

  You don’t visit the love of your life “every other year or so,” her heart responded. Not if you have any choice in the matter.

  But did she have a choice? At first, it had seemed as though she hadn’t. She’d just reacted without thinking. She hadn’t thought about how Jack would feel at all.

  She felt a stab of pain in her chest as she remembered the hurt in his eyes. She hoped she hadn’t sounded callous.

  Jack had a hard time trusting anyone with his feelings. He’d grown up in a family that had put career above everything—even personal happiness.

  When she’d gone through her breakup with Christopher her family and friends had rallied around her. True, she’d holed up in her apartment for several days, hiding from everyone, but once she’d been ready to face the world again she’d been inundated with supportive texts and voicemails from all the people who cared about her.

  But when Jack had suffered the worst betrayal of his life he hadn’t been able to go to the people he needed the most for support. That was the kind of family Jack had grown up in.

  She’d gotten the impression that there hadn’t been much importance placed on emotion when he was a child, and that that emotionless existence was one of the very things he’d come to Hawaii to get away from. Lonely, emotionally deprived Jack had known exactly what he needed, and he’d come here because he’d known that the islands could provide it.

  And he’d known what she needed, too. He was the first person to have spoken to that wild part of her—the part that needed adventure and excitement. The part of herself that she’d gotten a glimpse of on rollercoasters and waterslides as a child...the part that she’d had to bury so deep underneath her cool, professional exterior.

  A light breeze had picked up over the beach. It felt like a caress over her sun-warmed skin. She picked up a handful of sand and watched it run through her fingers. She wondered if she was doing the same thing to herself: holding happiness in her hand and letting it run through her fingers.

  Jack had been able to decide that his life was about living up to his own expectations of himself. And his expectations of himself were good because he was a good person. She knew that to her core. She could see that Jack felt the same way she did about caring for the people around him—not just his patients, but everyone in his life. She and Jack might have taken different paths, but they’d gotten to the same place in the end.

  Maybe her life could be about not living up to anyone’s expectations but her own? Not Christopher’s, not those of her family, her friends or her employers. Her father had wanted her to be a doctor, but Kat was sure that he’d wanted her to be happy, too.

  But what did she want for herself?

  It had been so long since she’d thought about what she wanted, rather than what everyone around her needed, that her brain felt rusty as it mulled over the question.

  Jack had told her that cliff jumping was great for mental clarity. She smiled, recalling that moment. He had certainly been right in saying that you were never more certain about what you wanted than when you were hurtling through the air. But right now she felt she needed something different.

  She stood up from the warm sand. She could have stayed there all day, but it was time to move on. The sun was heating the sand to the point that it was almost too uncomfortable to sit on. Soon it would be too hot to touch.

  She smiled to herself. It was as though Hawaii was telling her to get a move on. Hadn’t the island always known what she needed? Even from the start, when she’d thought the island was trying to drown her, it had just been bringing her and Jack together.

  It was just as Jack had said: she was never going to solve the problem of what she wanted by thinking about it. She could analyze and analyze, obsess and worry and make dozens of pro-con lists without ever figuring out the answer.

  In order to work out what she wanted, she need to understand how she felt. And in order to know how she felt, she needed to be at peace.

  Fortunately, while taking these past few days off, she’d learned a new skill that was great at offering her peace.

 
She’d started her surfing lessons just a few days ago. At first it had been difficult, but she’d gotten the hang of it quickly. She’d anticipated having to learn with a bunch of tourists, but to her very great surprise, in addition to teens and adults, her introductory surfing class had included very young children—children who seemed young enough that they’d barely mastered walking, let alone surfing.

  Her instructor had told her not to worry, that she’d pick it up in time, with enough practice. And then, to Kat’s great surprise, the instructor’s dog had hopped onto a surfboard of its own and paddled out with them.

  No one else in the class had seemed the least bit surprised, and as Kat’s lessons had progressed she started to understand why: they saw at least five other surfing dogs every morning. Apparently the dog lovers of Hawaii hated to leave their furry friends on the beach.

  Determined not to be outshone by surfing dogs and babies, Kat had thrown herself into learning to surf. After all, if she was indeed leaving the islands, she’d only have so much time to learn.

  She was getting better, too.

  Now, she paddled her board out to the waves and sat up on it, letting the waves rock her gently. It was a pleasant way to sit and think. She listened to the sound of the waves lapping and inhaled the salt scent of the seawater.

  It was astounding, she thought, how the island seemed to have a way of knowing just what she needed. It had pushed her into Jack’s arms that first day, even though she’d been so certain she didn’t want a relationship. And it had pushed her toward excitement, toward new ways of challenging herself. Did the island know her better than she knew herself?

  She was still thinking about that when a rogue wave knocked her from her surfboard and pushed her under the water’s surface.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE PHONE CONVERSATION hadn’t been as difficult as Jack had expected. In some ways it had felt like old times. And by talking to his brother Jack felt as though an entire piece of his identity had come back.

  But after several years without speaking things were also different. Jack wasn’t just Matt’s little brother anymore, forever living in his shadow. And Jack felt that Matt respected him in a way that he never had when the two of them had been growing up together. He got the distinct impression that Matt admired him for making the phone call that he had been too afraid to make.

  “I’m not sorry that Sophie and I ended up together, but I am sorry for how it happened,” Matt had said. “It was unforgivable. We should have told you as soon as it started. For my part I kept the secret because I wanted to protect you... I didn’t want to hurt you. But I was a coward. I should have realized that the lie would hurt you more than honesty ever would.”

  Jack had felt tears prick his eyes. “All that was a long time ago,” he’d said.

  He’d told Matt all about Kat, explaining that she was really the person who had given him the courage to make the call. If he’d never met Kat he’d probably never have tried to reconnect with Matt in the first place. And then he explained that Kat was leaving, and that he was about to lose the first person he’d been able to open his heart to in years.

  At which point his brother had said something that had surprised him.

  “It sounds like when she got the job offer you told her to go, to follow her career,” he said. “It even sounds as though you tried to push her away.”

  “I didn’t want her to feel as though I was trying to hold her back,” Jack said. “I would never ask her to make such a major life decision based on her feelings about me. I want her to do what’s best for her.”

  “Yeah, but who are you to decide what’s best for her? Doesn’t that get to be her decision? And wouldn’t she make the best decision if she had all the information?”

  “What do you mean, all the information?”

  “You told her to go. But is that what you really want? I thought you said the aloha culture was all about being real with people? But you haven’t been real with her. Why don’t you tell her how you really feel about her leaving? You say you don’t want to get in her way, but from everything you’ve said she sounds like a pretty independent woman. Don’t you trust her to make the right decision for herself?”

  Jack had been silent as he’d thought about this and Matt had continued.

  “She can’t make an informed decision if she doesn’t have all the data. Maybe you think you’re trying to protect her by hiding your feelings and keeping them to yourself. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that secrets only hurt.”

  Jack could see the truth in that, but he was still unsure...afraid.

  “What if I tell her how I feel and it doesn’t matter?” he’d said. “What if she still goes back to the mainland?”

  “I don’t know what will happen,” Matt had told him. “There’s no way to know for sure. But if you tell her how you feel, with no expectations of her and no strings attached, then at least you’ll know that you were honest with her and with yourself.”

  Honesty, Jack thought now, as he worked through his shift at the hospital. Now, there was a deceptively simple concept. Hadn’t he and Kat been struggling with honesty since the moment they’d met? It had been a Herculean struggle for the two of them to be honest about their feelings with one another. And then, when they’d almost gotten there, it had all been snatched away.

  Matt was right, though, Jack thought. Kat was a strong woman. She could handle the truth. And he wanted to be honest about how he felt for her. Not because he wanted to convince her to stay, but because he wanted to be real about his feelings. Kat, more than anyone else he’d ever met, had taught him that it was important to be real about what he was feeling. If she was leaving now, then he wanted her to leave knowing exactly how he felt.

  Then she could use that information however she wished, without any expectations from him.

  The problem was he’d been looking for her all day and hadn’t been able to find her. He hadn’t seen her anywhere in the ER.

  It was a slow day, and there hadn’t been many calls coming in that morning, but when an EMT brought in a tourist with an ankle fracture Jack offered to take the patient up to Radiology for X-rays, hoping he might see Kat there. No luck.

  She wasn’t in the hematology lab, nor any of the operating suites. He began popping his head into individual exam rooms, but she was nowhere to be found.

  He gave up searching and went back to the reception desk, where he found Selena and Marceline.

  “Is Kat coming in today?” he asked.

  “She’d better,” Selena said. “We’re planning a surprise goodbye party for her.” Then she glanced at her watch with a worried frown. “She’s thirty minutes late for her shift, though. That’s not like her.”

  Jack had stopped absorbing information after the words “surprise goodbye party.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Isn’t a goodbye party a little preemptive? We don’t even know if she’s definitely decided to leave yet.”

  Selena gave him a sympathetic look. “I’d like to cling to the hope that she’ll stay here too,” she said. “But Kat is a talented physician. I don’t think she’ll turn down a job offer like this just to keep working at our little hospital.” She narrowed her eyes at Jack. “Unless, of course, she has some other reason to stay.”

  Jack decided he wasn’t going to rise to the bait—especially as the other half of Selena’s statement had started to sink in.

  “What do you mean, she’s thirty minutes late for her shift?” he said.

  His concern started to rise. Thirty minutes was an eternity where Kat was concerned; she usually preferred to arrive for her shift at least twenty minutes early, so she could enjoy a cup of coffee while she prepared herself for incoming patients. Of course more recently that time had been used for their supply closet trysts...but no one needed to know that.

  “You know how Kat feels a
bout being on time for things,” he said. “She wouldn’t be late without a reason. Has anyone heard from her? Is anyone looking for her?”

  “Now you’re the one being preemptive,” Selena said. “I agree that it’s strange for Kat to be late for anything, but it’s a little early to start worrying. For now, let’s keep an eye out and assume that whatever’s holding Kat up isn’t too much of an emergency.”

  Jack didn’t like it, but he knew that Selena was right. Catastrophizing wasn’t going to help. But he was still worried. Kat was punctual to a fault, and he knew she wouldn’t be late unless something serious had come up.

  He walked by the reception desk and passed Kimo, who was preparing trays of pineapple and dried coconut for the break room.

  “Hey, Jack, weren’t you looking for Kat earlier?” Kimo said. “They just brought her in—in an ambulance. I think you can still catch her down there, if you hurry.”

  An ambulance? Oh, God. The minute he’d heard she was late he’d known something bad had to have happened.

  He ran at full speed to the ambulance docking bay, where he saw a few EMTs milling about by an ambulance with open doors.

  Inside he saw Kat, unconscious on a gurney.

  He shoved his way through and leapt into the back of the ambulance. He started checking Kat’s vitals. She appeared to be breathing—good. What had happened? Why were the EMTs acting as though nothing was wrong? Why wasn’t anybody taking care of her?

  “Kat?” he said. “Kat, can you hear me?”

  He couldn’t lose her now. His jaw set. He’d do whatever it took to fix his mistakes...assuming they could be fixed at all.

  She lay in front of him, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Her red hair curled about her neck in ringlets and he realized that it was dripping wet—the same as it had been the day they’d first met. In fact, her whole body was soaked.