Kitabı oku: «The Doctor's Rescue Mission»

This man was here only as part of a medical team

To save lives and then use his medical knowledge to declare this island unfit for human habitation. The tough decisions would be made and he’d move on to the next crisis—to the next need.

But for now that need was hers. She clung and took his strength here where it was offered. She melted into him for this one harsh kiss, this kiss that must end.

They knew it.

It tore Morag apart. It seemed that in this overwhelming chaos all she had between her and madness was the touch of Grady’s mouth.

He’d stay with her whatever it took, his kiss seemed to say, but she knew it wasn’t true.

He’d stay with her only until tomorrow.

On behalf of the publisher and the author of this book, a donation has been made in support of the tsunami relief effort in Asia.

Dear Reader,

In 1998 a tsunami hit the coastline of Papua, New Guinea, causing massive destruction and loss of life. My awe at the job done by the medical teams in the wake of such chaos led me to write The Doctor’s Rescue Mission. Now, as my book goes to print, another tsunami catastrophe has occurred, this time causing so much destruction to the world that I can scarcely take it in.

Those who provide medical relief and rescue services move into nightmare situations with courage, compassion, skill and endurance. This book is dedicated to the men and women of organizations such as Merlin (www.Merlin.org.uk) or Médecins Sans Frontières (www.doctorswithoutborders.org).

I write of human drama. These men and women face it in reality, and I hold them in the very deepest respect.

To my readers all over the world, stay safe in these troubled times. Please.

Marion Lennox

The Doctor’s Rescue Mission
Marion Lennox

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE call came as Morag prepared for dinner with the man she intended to share her life with. By the time he arrived, Dr Grady Reece was thrust right out of the picture.

The moment she opened the door, Grady guessed something was wrong. This man’s career involved responding to disaster, and disaster was etched unmistakably on her face.

‘What is it, Morag?’

That was almost her undoing. The way he said her name. She’d always disliked her name. It seemed harsh—a name suggestive of rough country, high crags and bleak weather—but the lilt in Grady’s voice the first time he’d uttered it had made her think it was fine after all.

‘We need to talk,’ she managed. ‘But…your family is expecting us.’ Grady’s brother was a prominent politician and they’d been invited to a family barbecue at his huge mansion on North Shore.

‘Rod won’t miss us,’ Grady told her. ‘You know I’m never tied down. My family expect me when they see me.’

That was the way he wanted it. She’d learned that about him early, and she not only expected it but she liked it. Loose ties, no clinging—it was the way to build a lasting relationship.

No ties? What was she about to do?

Dear heaven.

‘You want to tell me now?’ he asked, and she shook her head. She needed more time. A little more time. Just a few short minutes of the life she’d so carefully built.

‘Hey.’ He touched her face and smiled down into her eyes. ‘I’ll take you somewhere I know,’ he told her. ‘And don’t look like that. Nothing’s so bad that we can’t face it together.’

Together…

There was to be no more together. She fought for control as she grabbed her coat. Together.

Not any more.

He didn’t press her. He led her to the car and helped her in, knowing instinctively that she was fighting to maintain control.

He was so good in a crisis.

Grady was three years older than Morag, and he’d qualified young from medical school. He had years more experience than she did in dealing with crises.

His reaction to disaster was one of the things that had drawn her to him, she thought as she stared despairingly across the car at the man she loved—and wondered how she could bear to tell him what she must.

Patients talked to him when they were in trouble, she thought. So must she.

Grady was a trauma specialist with Air-Sea Rescue, a team that evacuated disaster victims from all over Australia. Wherever there was disaster, there was Grady, and he was one of the best.

He’d arrive in the emergency room with yet another appallingly injured patient, and the place would be calmer for his presence. Tall and muscular, with a shock of curly black hair and deep, brown, weather-crinkled eyes, Grady’s presence seemed to radiate a reassurance that was as inexplicable as it was real. Trust me, those crinkling eyes said. You’ll be OK with me.

And why wouldn’t you trust him? The man was heartwarmingly gorgeous. Morag hadn’t been able to believe her luck when he’d asked her out.

As a surgical registrar, Morag’s job at Sydney Central included assessing patients pre-surgery. She’d first met Grady as he’d handed over a burns victim—an aging hippie who’d gone to sleep still smoking his joint. The man’s burns had been appalling.

Morag had been impressed with Grady’s concern then, and she’d been even more impressed when he’d appeared in the ward two weeks later—to drop in and say hello to someone no one in the world seemed to care about.

That had been the beginning. So far they’d only had four weeks of interrupted courtship, but she’d known from the start that this could work. They had so much in common.

They were both ambitious. They both loved working in critical care, and they intended to work in the fast lane for their entire medical careers. They laughed at the same things. They loved the same food, the same lifestyle, the same…everything.

And Grady had the ability to curl her toes. Just as he was doing now. She looked across at her with that quizzical half-smile she was beginning to love, and her heart did a crazy back somersault with pike. He looked gorgeous in his soft, lambs-wool sweater—a sweater that on anyone else but Grady might look effeminate, but on Grady it just looked fabulous—and it was all she could do not to burst into tears.

She didn’t. Of course she didn’t. Tears would achieve nothing. She turned away and stared straight ahead, into the darkness.

The restaurant he drove her to was a secluded little bistro where the food was great and the service better. Grady ordered, still sensing that Morag couldn’t do anything other than focus on the catastrophe surrounding her. With wine poured and orders taken, the waiters let them be.

They must look a really romantic couple, Morag thought dully. She’d taken such care with her appearance tonight. Although dressed for a barbecue, there was little casual about her appearance. Her jeans were figure-hugging and brand-new. She wore great little designer shoes, high as high, stretching her legs to sexy-long. Her crop top was tiny, crimson, leaving little to the imagination, and she’d swept up her chestnut curls into a knot of wispy curls on top of her head. She’d applied make-up to her pale skin with care. She knew she looked sexy and seductive and expensive—and she knew that there was good reason why every man present had turned his head as Grady had ushered her into the restaurant.

This was how she loved to look. But after tonight there’d never be any call for her to look like this again.

‘Hey, it can’t be that bad.’ Grady reached out and took her hand. He stroked the back of it with care. It was something she’d seen him do with patients.

Two weeks ago a small boy had come into Sydney Central after a tractor accident and Grady had sat with the parents and explained there was no way the little boy’s arm could be saved. She’d seen him lift the burly farmer’s hand and touch it just like this—an almost unheard-of gesture man to man, but so necessary when the father would be facing self-blame all his life.

She’d loved that gesture when she’d seen it then. And now, here he was, using the same gesture on her.

‘What is it, Morag?’

‘My sister.’ She could hardly say it.

Don’t say it at all! a little voice inside her head was screaming at her. If you don’t say it out loud, then it won’t be real.

But it was real. Horribly real.

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’ Grady was frowning, and Morag knew he was thinking of her mother, the brisk businesswoman to whom he’d been introduced.

‘Beth’s my half-sister,’ Morag whispered. ‘She’s ten years older than I am. She lives on Petrel Island.’

‘Petrel Island?’

‘Off the coast of—’

‘I know Petrel Island.’ He was focused on her face, and his fingers were still doing the smoothing thing to the back of her hand. It was making her cringe inside. This man—he was who she wanted for ever. She knew that. But he—

‘We evacuated a kid from Petrel Island twelve months back,’ Grady said. ‘It’s a weird little community—Kooris and fishermen and a crazy doctor-cum-lighthouse-keeper keeping the whole community together.’

‘That’s Beth.’

‘That’s your sister?’ His tone was incredulous and she knew why. There seemed no possible connection between the placid islander Beth and the sophisticated career doctor he was looking at.

But there was. Of course there was. You couldn’t remove sisterhood by distance or by lifestyle.

Beth was her sister for ever.

‘Beth’s the island doctor,’ she told him, finding the courage to meet his eyes. ‘She’s also the lighthouse caretaker. It’s what our father did so she’s taken right over.’

‘Beth’s the lighthouse-keeper? And the doctor as well?’

‘Yes.’

‘But…why?’

‘It’s a family thing,’ she told him. Seeing his confusion deepen, she tried to explain. ‘Dad was born on the island, and inherited the lighthouse-keeping from my grandad. He married an island girl and they had Beth. Then the lighthouse was upgraded to automatic—just as Dad’s first wife died. She was seven months pregnant with their second baby, but she collapsed and died of eclampsia before Dad could get her to the mainland.’

Grady was frowning, taking it on board with deep concern. ‘She had no warning?’

‘There was no doctor on the island,’ Morag said bleakly. ‘And, no, he had no warning. Everything seemed normal. She was planning on leaving for the mainland at thirty-four weeks but she didn’t make it. Anyway, her death meant that within a few weeks Dad lost his wife, his baby son and his job. All he had left was two-year-old Beth. But the waste of the deaths made him decide what to do. He brought Beth to the mainland, and managed to get a grant to go to medical school. That’s where he met my mother. They married and had me, but the marriage was a disaster. Everyone was miserable. By the time Dad finished med school, the government decided that leaving the lighthouse to look after itself—even if it was automatic—was also a disaster. The island was still desperate for a doctor, and the caretaker’s cottage was still empty. So Dad and Beth went home.’

Grady’s face was thoughtful. ‘Leaving you behind with your mother?’

‘Of course.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you see my mother living on Petrel Island? But I did spend lots of time there. Every holiday. Whenever I could. Mum didn’t mind. As long as she wasn’t seen as a deserting mother, anything I did was OK by her. She’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy parent, my mother.’

‘I have met her.’

He had. They’d moved fast in four weeks. Morag’s eyes flickered again to his face. Maybe this could work. Maybe he…

But the eyes he was looking at her with were wrong, she thought, confused by the messages she was receiving. He was concerned as he’d be concerned for a patient. He was using a ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this’ kind of voice. He was gentleness personified, but his gentleness was abstract. For Morag, who’d had a childhood of abstract affection, the concept was frightening.

‘So you spent holidays with your father and Beth,’ Grady was saying, and she forced herself to focus on the past rather than the terrifying future.

‘Yes. They were… They loved me. Beth was everything to me.’

‘Where’s your father now?’

‘He died three years ago. He’s buried on the island. That’s OK. He had a subarachnoid haemorrhage and died in his sleep, and it wasn’t a bad way to go for a man in his seventies.’

‘But Beth?’

‘As I said, she’s a doctor, like me.’ Still she couldn’t say what was wrong. How could she? How could she voice the unimaginable? ‘My dad, and then Beth after him, provided the island’s medical care. Because there’s only about five hundred people living on the island, and the medical work is hardly arduous, they’ve kept on the lighthouse. too. Lighthouse-keeping’s not the time consuming job it was.’

‘I guess it’s not.’ Grady was watching her face. Waiting. Knowing that she was taking her time to say what had to be said, and knowing she needed that time. He lifted her hand again and gripped her fingers, looking down at them as if he was examining them for damage. It was a technical manoeuvre, she thought dully. Something he’d learned to do. ‘So Beth’s the island doctor…’

‘She’s great.’ She was talking too fast, she thought, but she couldn’t slow down. Her voice didn’t seem to belong to her. ‘She’s ten years older than me, and she was almost a mother to me. She’d turn up unexpectedly whenever I most needed her. If I was in a school play and my mother couldn’t make it—which she nearly always couldn’t—I’d suddenly, miraculously, find Beth in the audience, cheering me on with an enthusiasm that was almost embarrassing. And when she decided to be a doctor, I thought I could be, too.’

‘But not like Beth?’

‘Beth wanted to go back to the island. It tore her apart to leave to do her medical training, and the moment she was qualified she returned. She fell in love with a local fisherman and the island’s her home. She loves it.’

‘And you?’ he probed.

‘The island’s never been my home. I love it but I never thought of living anywhere but here.’ She attempted a smile but it was a pretty shaky one. ‘I guess I have more than a bit of my mother in me somewhere. I like excitement, cities, shopping…life.’

‘Like me.’

‘My excitement levels don’t match your excitement levels,’ she told him ruefully. ‘I like being a surgeon in a bustling city hospital. I don’t dangle out of helicopters in raging seas, plucking—’

But Grady wasn’t to be distracted. The background had been covered. Now it was time to move on. ‘Morag, what’s wrong?’ His deep voice cut through her misery, compelling. Doctor asking for facts, so he could treat what needed to be treated.

Her voice faltered. She looked up at him and then away. His hand tightened on hers—just as she’d seen him do with distressed patients. For some reason the action had her tugging away from him. She didn’t want this man treating her as he’d treat a patient. This was supposed to be special.

This was supposed to be for ever.

For ever?

The prospect of for ever rose up, overwhelming her with dread. Somehow she had to explain and she had to do it before she broke down.

‘Beth has renal cancer,’ she whispered.

She’d shifted her hand back to her side of the table. Grady made a move to regain it, but she tucked it carefully under the table. It seemed stupidly important that she knew where her hand was.

He didn’t say anything. She swallowed while he waited for her to go on. He was good, this man. His bedside manner was impeccable.

And suddenly, inexplicably, his bedside manner made her want to hit him.

Crazy. Anger—anger at Grady—was crazy. She had to force herself to be logical here. To make sense.

‘I haven’t been back to the island for over a year,’ she managed. ‘But last time I went Beth seemed terrific. She had a bad time for a while. She married a local fisherman, and he was drowned just after Dad died. But she was recovering. She’s thirty-nine years old and she has a little boy, Robbie, who’s five. She seemed settled and happy. Life was looking good.’

‘But now she’s been diagnosed with renal cancer?’ His tone was carefully neutral, still extracting facts.

‘Mmm.’

‘What stage?’

‘Advanced. Apparently she flew down to Melbourne last month and had scans without telling anyone. There’s a massive tumour in the left kidney, with spread that’s clear from the scans. It’s totally inoperable.’

And totally anything else, she thought bleakly as she waited for Grady to absorb what she’d told him. He’d know the inevitable outcome just as clearly as she did. If renal cancer was caught while the tumour was still contained, then it could be surgically removed—removing the entire kidney—but once it had spread outside the kidney wall, chemotherapy or radio-therapy would make little difference.

‘She’s dying,’ she whispered.

‘I’m sorry.’

Her eyes flew up to his. He was watching her, his eyes gentle, but she wasn’t imagining it. There was that tiny trace of removal. Distancing.

‘I need to go to the island,’ she told him. ‘Now.’

‘Of course you do.’ He hesitated, and she could see him juggling appointments in his head. Thinking ahead to his frantic week. It was what she always did when something unexpected came up.

Until now.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he asked.

Did she? Of course she did. More than anything else in the world. But…

‘I can call on Steve to cover for me for the next week,’ he told her. ‘If we could be back by next Sunday—’

‘No.’

His face stilled. ‘Sorry?’

And now it was time to say it. It couldn’t be put off one moment longer.

‘Grady, this isn’t going to happen,’ she said gently, as if this would hurt him as much as it hurt her. And maybe it would.

‘My sister’s dying. She has a little boy and she’s a single mother. She has a community who depend on her.’

His face was almost expressionless. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That it’ll be a lot…a lot longer than a week.’

‘Can you take more than a week off?’ His face changed back to the concerned, involved expression that was somehow turning her away from him. It was making her cringe inside. It was his doctor’s face.

‘I guess you must,’ he said, thinking it through as he spoke. ‘The hospital will organise compassionate leave for you for a few weeks.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ll come for a week now, and then again for—’

‘The funeral?’ she finished for him, and watched him flinch.

‘Morag…’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—’

‘Oh, the funeral’s going to happen,’ she said, her anger directed squarely now against the appalling waste of cancer. ‘Inevitably it’ll happen. But as for taking compassionate leave…I can’t.’

He frowned, confused. ‘So you’ll come back in a week or so?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ She lifted her hands back onto the table and stared down at her fingers, as if she couldn’t believe she was about to make the commitment that in truth she’d made the moment she’d heard her sister whisper, ‘Renal cancer.’ It was done. It was over. ‘I’m not taking compassionate leave,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m going to the island for ever.’

It shocked him. It shocked him right out of compassionate doctor, caring lover mode. All the things he was most good at. His brow snapped down in surprise, and his deep, dark eyes went still.

‘You can’t just quit.’ Grady’s job was his life, Morag thought hopelessly, and she could understand it. Until an hour ago she’d felt the same way. But she had no choice.

‘Why can’t I quit?’ And then, despairingly, she added, ‘How can I not?’

‘Surely your sister wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘Beth expects nothing,’ she said fiercely. ‘She never has. She gives and she gives and she gives.’ Their meal arrived at that moment and she stared down at it as if she didn’t recognise it. Grady leaned across to place her knife and fork in her hands—back to being the caring doctor—but she didn’t even notice. ‘Petrel Island needs her so much,’ she whispered.

‘She’s their only doctor?’

‘My father and then Beth,’ she told him. She stopped for a minute then, ostensibly to eat but really to gather her thoughts to continue. ‘Because my father was a doctor, more young families have come to the island, and the community’s grown. There’s fishing and kelp farming and a great little specialist dairy. But without a doctor, the Petrel Island community will disintegrate.’

‘They could get someone else.’

‘Oh, sure.’ It was almost a jeer. ‘A doctor who wants to practise in such a place? I don’t think so. After…after Beth dies, maybe…I’ll try to find someone, but it’s so unlikely. And Beth needs my promise—that the island can continue without her.

‘So you see,’ she told him, cutting her steak into tiny pieces that she had no intention of eating. It was so important to concentrate. It was important to concentrate on anything but Grady. ‘You see why I need to leave?’

There was a reason she couldn’t look at him. She knew what his reaction would be. And here it came.

‘But…you’re saying this might be for ever?’ He sounded appalled. As well he might.

‘I’m saying for as long as I’m needed. Do I have a choice?’

He had the answer to that one. ‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘Bring your sister here. You can’t tell me there aren’t far better medical facilities in Sydney than on Petrel Island. And who’s going to be treating physician? You? You know that’s a recipe for disaster. Caring for your own family… I don’t think so.’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘There’s no one else in Sydney?’ he asked incredulously.

‘No. On the island. Beth won’t leave the island.’

‘She doesn’t have a choice,’ Grady said, the gentleness returning to his voice. Gentle but right. Sympathetic but firm. ‘You have a life, Morag, and your life is here.’

‘And Robbie? Her little boy? What of his life?’

‘Maybe he’s going to have to move on. Plenty of kids have a city life. It won’t hurt him to spend a couple of months in Sydney.’

‘You mean I should bring them both here while Beth dies.’

‘You have a life, too,’ he told her. ‘It sounds dreadful—I know it does—but if your sister is dying then you have to think past the event.’

‘Take care of the living?’

‘That’s right,’ he said, his face clearing a little. ‘Your sister will see that. She sounds a pragmatic person. Not selfish…’

‘No. Not selfish. Never selfish.’

‘You need to think long term. She’ll be thinking long term.’

‘She is,’ Morag said dully. ‘That’s why she rang me. She’s been ill for months and she’s been searching for some way not to ask me. But it’s come to this. She doesn’t have a choice and neither do I. Without Beth the community doesn’t have a doctor. Robbie doesn’t have a mother. And I’m it.’

Silence. Then… ‘Your mother?’

‘You’ve met my mother. Barbara take care of Robbie? He’s not even her grandchild. Don’t be stupid.’

He looked flatly at her, aghast. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting you throw everything up here?’ he demanded. ‘Take over the care of a dying sister? Take on the mothering of a child, and the medical needs of a tiny island hundreds of miles from the mainland? Morag, you have to be kidding!’

‘Do you think I’d joke about something like this?’

‘Look, don’t make any decisions,’ he said urgently. ‘Not yet. Get compassionate leave for a week or two and take it from there. I’ll come over and do some reorganisation—’

‘Some reorganisation?’

‘I’ll talk to the flying doctor service. We’ll see if we can get a clinic over there once a month or so to keep the locals happy. I can organise an apartment here that’d accommodate your sister. Maybe we can figure out a long-term carer for the kid on the island. He can go to day care here while his mum’s alive, and then we’ll find someone to take him over long term.’

Great. For the first time since Beth had telephoned, Morag felt an emotion that was so fierce it overrode her complete and utter devastation. She raised her face to his and met his look head on. He was doing what he was so good at. Crisis management. He was taking disaster and hauling it into manageable bits.

But this was Beth. Beth!

‘Do you know what love is?’ she whispered.

He looked confused. ‘Sure I do, Morag.’ He reached forward and would have taken her hand again but she snatched it back like he’d burn her. ‘You and I—’

‘You and I don’t have a thing. Not any more. This is Beth we’re talking about. Beth. My darling sister. The woman who cares for me and loves me and who put her own life on hold for me so many times I can’t think about it. You’d have me repay that by taking a couple of weeks’ leave?’

‘Morag, this is your life.’

‘Our lives. Mine and Beth’s. They intertwine. As ours—yours and mine—don’t any more.’ She rose and stood, staring down at him, her sudden surge of anger replaced by unutterable sadness. Unutterable weariness. ‘Grady, I can’t stay here,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going home. I’m going back to Petrel Island and I won’t be coming back.’

He stayed seated, emphasising the growing gulf between them. ‘But you don’t want—’

‘What I want doesn’t come into it.’

‘And what I want?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I want you, Morag.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, you don’t. You want the part of me that I thought I could become. That I thought I was. Independent career doctor, city girl, partner while we had the best fun…’

He rose then but it was different. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her lightly on the lips. It was a fleeting gesture but she knew exactly what he was doing, and the pain was building past the point where she could bear it. ‘We did have fun,’ he told her.

‘We did.’ She swallowed. It wasn’t Grady’s fault that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with him, she realised. Beth’s illness wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t his fault that their lives from now on would be totally incompatible.

It wasn’t his fault that now he was letting her go.

For richer and for poorer. In sickness and in health. Whither thou goest, I will go…

Ha! It was never going to work. Beth needed her.

And Grady wasn’t going to follow.

But his hand suddenly lifted to her face, as if he’d had second thoughts. He cupped her chin and forced her eyes to his. ‘You can’t go.’ His voice was low, suddenly gruff and serious. The caring and competent young doctor had suddenly been replaced by someone who was unsure. ‘Morag, these last few weeks… It’s been fantastic. You know that I love you.’

Did he? Until this evening she’d thought—she’d hoped that he had. And she’d thought she loved him.

Whither thou goest, I will go.

No. It hadn’t reached that stage yet. She looked into his uncertain eyes and she knew that the line hadn’t been crossed. Which was just as well. It made the decision she was making now bearable. Just. Maybe.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You don’t love me. Not yet. But I do love Beth, and she needs me. The island needs me. It was wonderful, Grady, but I need to move on.’

Even then he could have stopped her. He could have come up with some sort of alternative. Come with her now, try the island for size, think of how it could work…

No. That was desperation talking and desperation had no foundation in solid, dreadful reality.

She didn’t need to end this. It was already over.

‘What can I do?’ he asked, and she bit her lip.

‘Nothing.’ Nothing she could ever vocalise. ‘Just say goodbye.’

And that was that.

She rose on tiptoe and kissed him again, hard this time, and fast, tasting him, savouring him for one last moment. One fleeting minute. And then, before he could respond, she’d straightened and backed away.

‘I need to go, Grady,’ she told him, trying desperately to keep the tears from her voice. ‘It’s been…fabulous. But I need…to follow my heart.’

CHAPTER TWO

MORAG felt the earth move while she was at Hubert Hamm’s, and stupidly, after the first few frightening moments, she thought it mightn’t matter.

Hubert was the oldest of the island’s fisherman. His father had run sheep up on the ridge to the north of the island. That was where Hubert had been born and the tiny cottage was still much as Elsie Hamm had furnished it as a bride almost a hundred years before.

The cottage had two rooms. There was a tiny kitchen-living room where Robbie sat and fondled Hubert’s old dog, and an even smaller bedroom where Hubert lay, approaching his death with stately dignity.

It’d be a while before he achieved his objective, Morag thought as she measured his blood pressure. Six months ago, Hubert had taken himself to bed, folded his hands across his chest and announced that the end was nigh. The only problem was that the neighbours kept dropping off wonderful casseroles and puddings, usually staying for a chat. His love of gossip was therefore thoroughly catered for. Hubert’s bedroom window looked out over the whole island, and he was so eagle-eyed and interested that death seemed less and less enticing.

With Morag visiting every few days, his health did nothing but improve, to the extent that now Morag had no compunction in bringing Robbie with her as she took her weekly hike up the scree. There was a rough vehicle track round the back of the ridge but the scenery from the walking path was spectacular. She and Robbie enjoyed the hike, and they enjoyed Hubert.

Would that all deathbeds were this healthy, prolonged and cheerful.

‘I’m worse?’ Hubert asked—without much hope—and she grinned.

‘Not so you’d notice. But you’re certainly a week older and that has to count for something.’

‘Death’s coming. I can feel it,’ he said in solemn tones, but a sea eagle chose that moment to glide past his window and his old eyes swung around to follow its soaring flight.

Death might be coming, but life was still looking good.

Consultation over.

‘Have you finished? Is Mr Hamm OK?’ Robbie looked up as she opened Hubert’s bedroom door, and she smiled across at her nine-year-old nephew with affection.

‘Mr Hamm’s great. His blood pressure’s fine. His heart rate’s nice and steady. Our patient looks like living for at least another week—if not another decade. Are you ready to go home?’

‘Yep.’ Robbie gave Elspeth a final hug and rose, a freckled, skinny little redhead with a grin that reminded Morag achingly of Beth. ‘When Mr Hamm dies, can I have Elspeth?’

Elspeth, an ancient golden retriever, pricked up her ears in hope, but back in the bedroom so did Hubert.

‘She’ll stay here until I’m gone,’ the old man boomed.

‘Of course she will,’ Robbie said, with all the indignation of a nine-year-old who knew how the world worked. ‘But you’ve put names on everything else.’

He had, too. In the last six months Hubert had catalogued his cottage. Everything had a name on now, right down to the battered teapot on the edge of the fire-stove. ‘Iris Potter, niece in London,’ the sign said, and Morag hoped that Hubert’s niece would be suitably grateful when the time came.

‘There’s no name on Elspeth,’ Robbie said reasonably. ‘And she’s an ace dog.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re a good lad,’ Hubert conceded from his bed. ‘She’d have a good home with you.’

‘I bet she could catch rabbits.’

‘My oath,’ Hubert told them, still from behind the bedroom door. ‘You should see her go.’

‘You know, you could get up and show Robbie,’ Morag said, trying not to smile, and had a snort of indignation for her pains.

‘What, me? A dying man? You know…’

But she never found out what she was supposed to know. Right at that moment the house gave a long, rolling shudder. The teapot, balanced precariously on the side of the stove, tipped slowly over and crashed to the floor.

For one long moment Morag didn’t realise what was happening. Then she did. Unbelievably, she did. It seemed impossible but there was no time to wonder if she was right or not.

Earthquake?

‘Robbie, out! Get away from the house.’ She shoved Robbie out the door before he could utter a response. Elspeth gave a terrified whimper and bolted after him, and they were barely clear before Morag was back in the bedroom, hauling Hubert out of bed and of the house after Robbie and Elspeth.

‘What the…?’ For someone supposedly ready to meet his maker, Hubert clearly had a way to go. He was white with terror. Morag was practically carrying him across the cottage floor as his old feet tried their hardest to scuttle on a surface that was weirdly unstable.

‘It must be an earthquake.’ She had him clear of the doorway now. Robbie was crouched on the back lawn, holding onto Elspeth, and the dog was whimpering in terror.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Hubert sank to his knees and grabbed his dog as well. ‘We haven’t had one of these on the island for eighty years.’

They were clear now of anything that could fall. The earth seemed to be steadying again and she had everyone well away from the house. Morag was hugging Robbie, and Robbie and Hubert were both hugging Elspeth, so they were crazily attached. It was a weird intimacy in the face of shared peril.

They didn’t talk. Talking seemed impossible. They just knelt and waited for a catastrophe that…that suddenly seemed as if it might not happen.

More silence. It was almost eerie. They sat and waited some more but the tremors seemed to have stopped.

Then they sat up and unattached themselves. Sort of. A bit.

‘Was it really an earthquake?’ Robbie demanded, and when Morag nodded, he let out his breath in one long ‘Cool…’

But his body was still pressed against Morag’s and he was still holding on.

‘We haven’t had one of these for eighty years,’ Hubert whispered.

‘You’ve experienced this before?’

‘We’re on some sort of fault line,’ Hubert told them, his colour and his bravado returning as the ground settled. ‘A bunch of scientists came here years back and did some testing but no one took much notice.’ He snorted, his courage building by the minute. ‘It’ll be the same as last time. A bit of a wobble and a fuss and then naught for another eighty years.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Morag grabbed Robbie around his middle and hugged, hard. Her little nephew was usually the bravest of kids but it didn’t take much for him to remember that the world was inherently unsafe. His ‘cool’ had been decidedly shaky. Seven years ago his father had drowned, and four years back he’d lost his mother. Now he clung alternately to Morag and the dog, and Morag kissed his hair and hugged him tight and wondered where to go to from here.

The only damage up on the ridge seemed to be a dent in Hubert’s teapot. But down below… She shaded her eyes, trying to see down to the little village built around the harbour. It was a gorgeous day. The sleepy fishing village was far below them, but from here it looked untouched.

Maybe a dented teapot was the worst of it.

Please…

‘Maybe you’d better stay up here for a bit in case another shock comes,’ Hubert told her, his voice showing that he was just as wobbly as Robbie.

But she had no choice. She was the island’s only doctor and if there was trouble in the township…

‘I need to head back to check the lighthouse and radio the mainland,’ she told Hubert, but she was speaking to Robbie as well. There was a bit of a stacks-on-the-mill process happening here. Robbie was on her knees, Elspeth was sprawled over Robbie, and Morag had a feeling that if dignity hadn’t been an issue then Hubert would be up here as well. Nothing like the earth trembling to make you unsure of your foundations.

Robbie sat even more firmly in her lap. ‘I think we should all stay here,’ he told her. ‘What if it gets worse?’

‘Aftershocks,’ Hubert said wisely. He’d moved away a little in an attempt to regain his dignity. Now he clicked his fingers for Elspeth to come to him. Elspeth wriggled higher onto Robbie’s lap and Hubert had to sidle closer himself to pat his dog.

They were depending on her, Morag thought despairingly. So what was new? The entire island depended on her—when often all she wanted to do was wail.

This was an earthquake. This was truly scary. Who did she get to tremble on?

No one. Ever. She swallowed and fought for calm and for sense.

‘Hubert’s right. Mild earth tremors are nothing to worry about.’ She put Robbie gently aside and ruffled his hair. ‘Robbie, you know I need to go.’ She sent him a silent message with her eyes, saying she was depending on him.

And Robbie responded. He’d learned from birth what was expected of him as the doctor’s kid, and he rose to the occasion now.

‘Do you really have to go?’ he asked.

‘You know that I do.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘It’d better if you stayed here for a bit.’

He took a deep breath. He really was the best kid. ‘OK.’ Elspeth got a hard hug. ‘I’ll look after Elspeth if Mr Hamm looks after me.’

‘Is that OK with you, Mr Hamm?’ she asked, and Hubert flashed her a worried look.

‘It’s fine by me, girl, but you—’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You know, the first quake is usually the biggest,’ Robbie volunteered. It really hadn’t been a very big shake and it was already starting to recede to adventure rather than trouble. ‘I read about them in my nature book. There’s not likely to be another bigger one. Just little aftershocks.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Maybe a bigger one’d be cool.’

‘No,’ Morag said definitely. ‘It wouldn’t be cool.’

‘Or maybe this was a ginormous one out to sea and we just got the little sideways shocks a long way away,’ he said, optimism returning minute by minute.

‘Well, that’d be better,’ Morag conceded, thinking about it. ‘With the closest land mass being the mainland three hundred miles away, there’s not much likelihood of any damage at all. Mind, a few dolphins might be feeling pretty seasick.’

Robbie chuckled.

And that was that.

The earthquake was over. Even Elspeth started to wag her tail again.

But she still had to check the village.

Robbie’s chuckle was a good sound, Morag thought as she started down the scree. She’d worked hard on getting that sound back after his mother had died and now she treasured it. It was a major reason she was here, on this island.

Without a life.

Who was she kidding? She had a life. She had a community to care for. She had Robbie’s chuckle. And she had flying teapots to check out.

But it didn’t stop her mind from wandering.

Even though she lived in one of the most isolated places in the world, there was little enough time for her to be alone. She had so many demands made on her. If it wasn’t her patients it was Robbie, and although she loved the little boy to bits, this time scrambling down the scree when she wasn’t much worried about what she’d find below was a time to be treasured.

She liked being alone.

No, she thought. She didn’t. Here she was seldom by herself, but alone was a concept that had little to do with people around her.

She liked being by herself for a while. But she didn’t like alone.

Always at the back of her heart was Grady. The life she’d walked away from.

There was no turning back, but her loss of Grady was still an aching grief, shoved away and never allowed to surface. But it was always there.

He’d written her the loveliest letter when Beth had died, saying how much he missed her, offering to take her away for a holiday, offering to organise things in Sydney so she could return, offering everything but himself.

She’d taken the letter up to the top of the lighthouse. There she’d torn it into a thousand pieces and let it blow out to sea.

Enough. Enough of Grady. She hadn’t heard from him for four years.

Concentrate on need.

Surely an earthquake was worth concentrating on.

Two hundred yards down the path she paused. The closer she came to the village the more it looked as if there was no damage at all.

Hubert really did treasure his isolation. The path up to his cottage was little more than a goat track on the side of a steep incline. She could stand here for a moment with the sun on her face, look out at the breathtaking beauty of the ocean beyond the island and wonder how she could ever dream of leaving such a place. It was just beautiful.

The sea wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

She blinked for a moment, thinking her eyes were playing tricks. The tide’s a long way out, she thought inconsequentially, and then she thought, No, it’s a crazy way out. The beach was normally twenty or thirty yards wide but now…the water seemed to have been sucked…

Sucked.

A jangling, dreadful alarm sounded in her head as her eyes swept the horizon. She was suddenly frantic. Her feet were starting to move even as she searched, hoping desperately not to see…

But she saw.

There was a long line of silver, far out. She thought she was imagining it at first—thought it must be the product of dread. Maybe it was the horizon.

Only it wasn’t. It was a faint line beneath the horizon, moving inexorably closer. If it hadn’t been such a calm, still day she might not have seen it at all, for in deep water it was only marginally above the height of a biggish swell, but she was sure… There was a boat far out and she saw it bucket high—unbelievably high—and then disappear behind a wall of water.

No.

The villagers were out of their cottages. She could see them. They were gathering in the street beyond the harbour. They’d be comparing notes about damage from the tremor, fearing more. They wouldn’t be turned toward the sea.

She was running now, racing up the goat path. She’d never moved so fast in her life.

At least she knew what needed to be done. This place had been the graveyard for scores of ships in the years since the first group of Scottish fishermen had built their homes here, and the islanders were geared for urgent warning. The track she was on overlooked the entire island. There were bells up here, set up to make the villagers aware that there was an urgent, life-threatening need. At every curve in the track—every couple of hundred yards—there was a bell, and every island child knew the way to be sent to Coventry for ever was to ring one needlessly.

Morag knew exactly where the closest one was, and her feet had never moved so fast as they did now. Seconds after she’d first heard her own mental alarm bell, she reached the closest warning place and the sound of the huge bell rang out across the island.

This wasn’t a shipwreck. It was the islanders themselves who were in deadly peril.

They’d have to guess what she was warning of. ‘Guess,’ she pleaded. ‘Guess.’

They heard. The islanders gathered in the street stilled. She saw them turn to face her as they registered the sound of the bell.

She was too far away to signal danger. She was too far away for her scream to be heard.

But there were fishermen among the villagers, old heads whose first thoughts went to the sea. They’d see a lone figure far up on the ridge ringing the bell. Surely they’d guess.

Maybe they’d guess?

She stood on the edge of the rocky outcrop and waved her arms, pointing out to sea, screaming soundlessly into the stillness. Guess. Guess.

And someone responded. She saw rather than heard the yell erupting—a scream of warning and of terror as someone figured out what she might be warning them about. Someone had put together the tremor and her warning and they knew what might happen.

Even from so far away, she heard the collective response.

People were yelling for their children. People were grabbing people. People were running. A mass of bodies was hurling off the main street, scrabbling for the side streets that led steeply out of town.

She could see them but she could do nothing except go back to uselessly ringing her damned bell.

People were stumbling, stopping to help, to carry…

‘No,’ she was screaming, helpless in the face of the sheer distance between here and the town. ‘Don’t stop. Don’t stop.’

She could see their terror. She felt it with them.

And she could see the smaller and smaller distance between the islanders and the great wash of water bearing down.

‘Run. Run.’

The wall of water was building now as it approached land. It was sucking yet more water up before it. The shore was a barren wasteland of waterless emptiness.

And Morag could do nothing. She could only stand high on the hill and watch the tsunami smash toward the destruction of her people.

There was a soft, growing rumble. Louder…

Then it hit.

She watched in appalled, stupefied fascination as the water reached the shore. There were dull grating sounds as buildings ground together. Sharp reports as power poles snapped. It was a vast front of inrushing water, smashing all before it in a ghastly, slamming tide, the like of which Morag had never begun to imagine.

And there was nothing to do where she stood but watch.

Maybe she could have closed her eyes. She surely didn’t want to see, but for the first awful seconds her eyes stayed open.

She saw the tiny harbour surge, boats pushed up onto the jetty, houses hit, the water almost to their eaves. Dear God, if people were inside…

She saw old Elias Cartwright open his front door just as the water hit—stubborn old Elias who’d consider it beneath his dignity to gather outside with the villagers just because of a mere earth tremor…

The water smashed and that was the last Morag saw of Elias.

It was then that she closed her eyes and she felt herself start to retch.

She kept her eyes closed.

Closed.

This was safe. Here in the dark she could tell herself she was retching for nothing. It was a dream—a nightmare—and soon she’d wake up.

But there was no line separating dream from reality.

The sun was still warm on her face. One of the island goats was nudging her arm in gentle enquiry. The world was just the same.

Only, of course, it wasn’t. When she finally found the courage to open her eyes, the tiny Petrel Island settlement was changed for ever.

The houses nearest the harbour were gone. The harbour itself was a tangle of timber and mud and uprooted trees.

Devastation…

Her first thought flew to Robbie.

She looked upward to Hubert’s place and the old man was staring down at her, her horror reflected in the stock-still stance of the old man. She was two hundred yards away but his yell echoed down the scree with the clarity of a man with twenty-year-old lungs.

‘I’ll take care of the lad. We’ll watch the sea for more. Robbie and I’ll stick with the bell and not leave it.’

She managed to listen. She managed to understand what he’d said.

Hubert and Robbie would watch to warn of another wave, she thought dully. And in offering to take care of Robbie, she knew what Hubert was saying she should do.

She was the island’s only doctor. The islanders looked to her for help. For leadership.

She had to go down.

CHAPTER THREE

‘NOTHING ever happens in this place.’

Dr Grady Reece played with his mug of coffee and stared at the pieces on his chessboard. He’d beaten Dr Jaqui Ford three times and she’d beaten him five.

He was going out of his mind.

The weather was perfect, and that was half the trouble. Enough rain meant no bushfires. No wind meant no dramas at sea. They were out of the holiday season so people weren’t doing damned fool holiday things. Which meant Air-Sea Rescue was having a very quiet time.

‘Aren’t you glad?’ Jaqui enquired.

‘Why should I be glad? I joined the service for excitement.’

‘So you like people killing themselves?’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he growled. ‘You know very well that I try my damnedest to stop people killing themselves. And you live on adrenaline just as much as I do.’

‘Yes, but I have had a life,’ Jaqui said mildly. ‘Husband, kids, dogs. I come here for some peace. Yeah, I like the adrenaline rush of thinking we might be saving someone, but for the rest…work is my quiet time.’

Grady smiled at that. Jaqui was in her mid-fifties and was a very competent doctor. She’d only just undertaken the additional training to join Air-Sea Rescue, but already the tales of her tribe of hell-raising adult sons were legion. Everyone knew why Jaqui thought rescuing people in high drama was a quiet life.

‘No, but you,’ Jaqui said insistently. ‘You can’t depend on this for your excitement. Maybe you need kids of your own.’

‘To provide me with drama? I don’t think so.’

‘So you’re not into families?’ Jaqui was probing past the point of politeness, but Grady’s associate was no respecter of boundaries.

‘Not interested,’ Grady growled, hoping to shut her up.

It didn’t.

‘You’re not gay?’

That got a grin. ‘What do you think?’

‘You never know these days,’ Jaqui said, moving her bishop with a nonchalance that told Grady she was hoping he might not notice she was threatening his queen. ‘Someone once told me you can detect gayness if a man wears one earring, but my sons wear one, two or sixteen, depending on how the mood takes them. As they also seem to have one, two or sixteen girlfriends, depending on how the mood takes them, who would know anything at all? So…’ She sat back and subjected him to intense scrutiny. ‘Not gay. Not seriously involved. There’s never been a woman who looked like being long term?’

‘Cut it out.’

‘Max told me you were really smitten once. A lady called Morag.’

Max was their pilot. Max talked too much.

‘Morag and I went out for about a month. Four years ago.’

‘Was that all? I thought it was serious.’

Maybe it was, Grady thought ruefully. He’d hardly thought through the consequences at the time but after she’d gone…he’d missed her like hell. Not that there’d been any choice in the matter. She’d buried herself in some remote little settlement and that surely wasn’t the life for him.

So what? Why was he thinking of Morag now? he asked himself. He’d moved on. He’d dated. Morag had been a one-month relationship followed up by a letter of sympathy after her sister had died. It had been an intense letter that had taken him a long time to draft, but she’d never answered. So…

So one of these days a lady would come on the scene who’d make him smile as Morag had made him smile. But with no attachments.

‘You don’t want kids?’ Jaqui asked.

‘Why would I want kids?’

‘You want excitement. Kids equal excitement.’

‘I’ll get my excitement some other way,’ he growled. He moved his queen, removed his hand from the board and then saw the danger. ‘Whoops. Check.’

‘Checkmate,’ Jaqui said sweetly, and then looked up as Max came through the door. One look at their pilot’s face and they knew there were to be no more chess matches that afternoon.

‘What is it?’

‘Code One,’ Max said shortly. ‘Huge. We’re going in first, with back-up on the way. The army’ll be in on this, but, Grady, you’ve been put in charge first off. Tsunami.’

‘A tidal wave,’ Jaqui said incredulously. ‘Where?’

‘Petrel Island. Contact to the island’s completely cut. The first reports have come in from fishing boats that were out to sea when the wave hit. All we know is that there were five hundred inhabitants on the island when a wall of water twenty feet high swept through. God knows how many are left alive.’

It was ten minutes before Morag met anyone at all. She was climbing down as people were climbing up, but the shortest way to high ground wasn’t the track she was on. So her path was deserted. At every step she took her dread increased.

Finally she reached the town’s outskirts, and here she met Marcus. Marcus was the head of the town’s volunteer fire brigade, a brilliant fisherman and a man who normally could be absolutely depended on in a crisis. He looked…lost.

‘Marcus…’

He was at the top of the track she was taking into town, the road leading to the fire station. Or it was the track that had led to the fire station. Marcus was standing where the station had once stood. The flimsy shed had given way completely, and a pile of rubble covered the town’s only fire engine.

Marcus was staring unseeingly at the mess, and he didn’t turn as Morag touched his shoulder.

‘I don’t know where they are,’ he whispered, turning to gaze down at the ruined township.

He was soaked. He’d been caught by the wave, Morag thought, stunned, which meant the water must have washed almost three hundred yards inland. A shallow gash ran down the side of his face, and he looked as sick as she felt.

But they weren’t alone. Above the township was bushland and the bush seemed the extreme of the wave’s reach. Morag turned and looked upward and here was the first good news. People were emerging. They were still obviously terrified, but they were slowly venturing out.

All eyes were still turned toward the sea.

‘Marcus!’ It was a cry of disbelief—of tremulous joy. A woman was running toward them, towing two seemingly scared-witless teenagers after her. Judy. Marcus’s wife. Marcus’s face went slack with relief, and so did Morag’s.

This was Marcus’s family. With Marcus behind her she might get something organised, and now he had his family safe she could start.

Something…

What?

First things first. She had to wait until Marcus had gathered Judy and the kids to him in the hug of a man who’d thought he’d lost everything.

Finally he released them and turned to Morag. ‘S-sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Morag said unsteadily. ‘I wouldn’t mind if someone hugged me.’

Judy immediately obliged. Marcus added his mite. Teenage dignity forgotten, the kids joined in, too, until she was squeezed between the four of them. And suddenly she was sobbing like a child.

Two minutes were spent gathering herself, taking strength where she most needed it.

Then…as they finally, tentatively broke away from each other and turned to stare out to sea again, they found space to talk.

‘There’s not likely to be another, is there?’ Marcus asked, and Morag tried to think clearly about the possibility.

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Hubert and Robbie are on lookout with the bell, and Robbie has the best eyes on the island.’

‘Was it you who rang the bell?’ Judy asked, and when Morag nodded she was hugged all over again.

‘Thank God for you, girl. There we all were, like sitting ducks, huddled in the main street waiting to be washed away.’

‘Who was left behind?’

‘God knows,’ Marcus said frankly. ‘I was just climbing into the fire truck, thinking after the tremor I’d pull it clear in case it was needed. I heard your bell, but I was trying to get the engine started. It seemed…important. Then as the bell kept ringing I came out—just as the water surged up. I ran. Even so, I had to grab a fence or I’d have been washed away. Judy, you…’

‘I was with most of them,’ Judy told them. She was still clutching the kids—Wendy, aged fourteen, and Jake, who was sixteen. Normally they wouldn’t be seen dead clutching their mother but they were clutching her just as much as she was clutching them. ‘Most of us got to the bush. If we made it to safety, then I’d guess most people would have. Then I thought you’d be at the fire station, Marcus, so I came.’ She hugged her husband again, and her teenagers hugged, too.

‘There must be casualties,’ Morag whispered, and Marcus nodded.

‘Yeah. Thank God it’s Sunday so the school’s empty.’

The school was on the foreshore. The thought of what might have happened—and hadn’t—was almost enough to steady her.

‘OK.’ Deep breath. Somehow she had to figure out a way forward, though the extent of the calamity was overpowering. But she had four able-bodied people—five, counting herself—and, by the sound of it, the bulk of the townsfolk were safe. She needed to gear up. She needed to think.

‘Let’s get everyone safe first,’ she told them. ‘The cricket ground is on high ground and we can set up the pavilion as a clearing house. Marcus, I want you and Jake to start a house-to-house search—get others involved if you can—and send everyone to the cricket ground. I want everyone settled on high ground as fast as possible. Judy, I want you to make a register so we can see who’s missing. Every person has to report to you.’

She paused and gazed across the village where she could see the roof of her tiny, four-bed hospital. Thankfully it was on high ground but she knew at once that it’d be too small for what lay ahead. Plus, even though it was on high ground, it was low enough for a higher wave to do damage. It’d have to be evacuated.

‘I’ll set up a medical centre in the cricket pavilion,’ she told them. ‘On the way I’ll go past the hospital and make sure everyone’s out and safe. Judy, can you and Wendy come with me and help me carry things? I need supplies, plus the files holding every islander’s records. Wendy, are you able to cross-match names with the list Judy’s making?’ She gave them all a tiny, watery smile. ‘I know. I’m sounding bossy when all we want to do is hug each other. But we need to move. Marcus, that cut—’

‘Can wait,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve a feeling that’s the least of our problems.’

As if on cue, there was a yell from below them. An elderly man—the village grocer—was running toward them, and his terror reached them before he did.

‘Doc. Doc, thank God you’re safe. Doc, Mavis got caught under water. She’s so cold and limp… Oh, God, Doc… She looks awful. I’ve taken her to the clinic but there’s no one there who can help. Can you come?’

Morag started work right then, and she didn’t raise her head for hours.

So many injuries… She didn’t know how many injuries. She could only focus on what was before her.