The day stretched on. It was the quietest of days, there was no trauma at all.
Cal was almost longing for the radio to burst into life, bringing action, bringing something to keep his thoughts occupied.
Nothing.
In the nursery Em was sitting by Lucky’s incubator and he knew she was feeling exactly as he was.
‘He doesn’t need specialling,’ he said gently, and Em flashed him a look of anger.
‘He needs someone to love him.’
‘We’ll find his mother.’
‘Yeah, right. And meanwhile I’ll love him for her.’
She’d fallen for Simon, he thought bleakly. This was the consequence.
Gina would never treat him as Simon had treated Em.
Cut it out.
Jill was in the nurses’ station. Rigid, uncommunicative Jill, who took her job as director of nursing with all care but as little humour as possible. He walked in to look up patient notes before doing a ward round, and she met him with a rueful smile.
‘This place is like a tomb.’
This, from Jill? Things must be really bad.
‘Too much has happened too fast,’ he said softly. ‘All these deaths. And Simon and Kirsty…’
‘Em still doesn’t believe he’s not coming back. Even though Kirsty told Mike what the situation was.’
‘I think she knows in her heart,’ Cal said. ‘She’s hurting.’
‘And how about you, Cal? Are you hurting?’
He sighed, dug his hands into the pockets of his coat and glowered. ‘Jill, I thought I could depend on you to butt out of what’s not your business.’
‘It’s my business if everyone in my hospital is going around with a face as mournful as that stupid dog of yours. Speaking of which, Rudolph is now draped across the entrance to the kitchen. Will you ask him to move?’
‘Sure.’ A marrow bone should do it, he thought. He and Rudolph had rather enjoyed sitting on the back step and communing over a marrow bone at three that morning.
She eyed him with caution. ‘So you’re going to keep him?’
‘CJ wants me to.’
‘CJ won’t know anything about it when he goes back to the States.’
‘Jill?’
‘Yes?’
‘Leave it.’
‘Sure,’ she said, and smiled, which for Jill was unusual all by itself. ‘I’ll leave it. But do cheer up.’ She shoved a clipboard at him. ‘This’ll help.’
He stared down at the name on the chart. Albert Narmdoo. Mild coronary. Father of one of the boys who’d died.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Great. What’s happening?’
‘Nothing.’
He raised his brows in query.
‘Just nothing,’ Jill repeated. ‘He’s not eating. He’s just staring at the ceiling. His wife came in this morning and the rest of his kids, but he didn’t even speak to them. He’s just…lost.’
His heart sank. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Of course you will,’ she told him. And then, before he could begin to imagine what was coming, she leaned forward and hugged him. Jill. Hugging. Unbelievable.
‘Go on, Cal,’ she said softly. ‘Let go. There’s a life out there, just waiting.’
As Jill had said, Albert was motionless. He was a big man, one of the elders of his community, his skin so dark his face seemed almost a chasm on the pure white pillows.
Cal walked forward and touched him on the shoulder, but the man didn’t register.
‘Albert?’
Albert turned eyes that were dulled with pain toward him, and the pain behind them made Cal’s heart wrench in pity. ‘The kids say you’re going to build us a swimming pool,’ he whispered.
‘I’m going to try.’
‘Won’t bring…anyone back.’
One of the hardest parts of the indigenous culture was the rigid rule that the names of the dead were no longer spoken. Cal gripped Al’s shoulder and watched the agony on his face, and thought they should be able to speak of his son.
He was right. This was what loving was all about, he thought bleakly. Loss. He watched the raw pain on Albert’s face and he thought, no, he was right, it was better to do as he’d learned to do. Not to love…
But as if he’d spoken the words out loud, the man reached up and gripped his hand. Hard.
‘I’ve had so much,’ he whispered. ‘Six kids. Six kids and their mother, and this is the first I’ve lost. It wrenches you apart, losing, but I’ve been lying here thinking what if I hadn’t had him. You know, when I was a young ’un I didn’t want any of it. I wanted to be by myself.’
‘You would have missed out,’ Cal said, seeing where Albert was headed, seeing where he wanted to head.
‘Too right I would have missed out.’ His face twisted. ‘You know, two days ago, me and…well, we went outback to where we buried his grandfather. Spent the night out there. We woke at dawn and we sat and watched the sun rise over the ranges, just him and me…and it was…well, it was worth everything. And now there’s death and my ticker’s playing up and maybe it won’t be long for me either, but that moment… Hell, to have lost that… If I’d had my way and not had him…’ There were tears streaming down the man’s face and he gripped Cal’s hand, hard. ‘You just grab it, boy,’ he told him. ‘You just never know…but you just grab it now, ’cos the pain will come regardless, but those moments…no one can take them away from you, ever. Me and my boy, that morning. It’ll stay with me for ever and it’s my gift and I’ll love him for life.’
Enough. He released Cal’s hand and he turned his face into the pillow. Cal stood, motionless, his hand on the man’s shoulder. He stood until Al’s face eased a little. He checked the chart, he wrote up medication and then he hauled a chair up beside the window and sat.
‘No need for you to stay,’ Albert said.
‘I’d like to, if you don’t mind,’ Cal said. ‘I can see the sea from here.’
‘Got your own thinking to do?’
‘I have.’
He could go down to the beach and do his thinking, he knew. But he wanted to be here.
He needed company.
He needed…
The afternoon was hot and humid and there were no crocodiles. They drifted slowly down the river. The Americans were talking to Bruce, swapping yarns, intent on outdoing each other in travel tales. CJ had Bruce’s binoculars, checking out every floating log, every mound in the mangrove swamps on the riverside. Imagining jaws.
Gina let her mind go blank and she drifted.
Tomorrow she’d leave.
For ever.
She was empty, desolate and she was turned into herself so she didn’t hear the boat until it was almost on them. A speedboat, blasting along the river far faster than was legal or safe. A group of people on board with beer cans waved in greeting, yelling, yahooing, blasting past them with a wash of white water in their wake.
Bruce shouted a warning and she swerved around, reaching automatically for CJ. But CJ was rocking, falling. He clutched the side and held on, and she thought he was safe, but his hat, his dratted hat, fell overboard.
With a gasp of distress he was up, leaning over, trying to hold it.
