the barb had found a target.
The faint bars of a piece of classical music came from nowhere. It wasn’t until Alex stopped that she realised the sound was coming from his pocket.
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he said, extracting his cellphone. The phone he had said he was going to switch off. ‘I’d better take this,’ he added, after a glance at the tiny screen. ‘It’s my registrar.’
Susie took another pace or two before she stopped, and she didn’t turn around. Her back could be a silent protest that he could still allow priorities other than Stella to claim his attention.
A rapid exchange of medical terminology was easy to ignore but then the tone of the conversation suddenly changed and Susie found herself eavesdropping.
‘Do the parents want to speak to me again?’ A heavy silence as Alex listened. ‘Please, tell them how sorry I am.’
He sounded sorry.
Sincere. And caring.
Susie tried not to let her opinion of this man take a U-turn. Why hadn’t he sounded like that when he’d been speaking to his own daughter?
It was hard to ignore the heavy sigh she heard. Then a silence that seemed to speak volumes. But then Alex cleared his throat and it seemed to be business as usual.
‘Can you give me a quick update on Melanie? I’m going to be unavailable by mobile for a while. What’s the ICP looking like?’
There was another exchange of medical information, a farewell and then Susie heard the phone give a blip that suggested it was, indeed, being switched off.
‘Sorry about that,’ Alex murmured. He moved to catch up with Susie. ‘It’s been a day from hell in the unit.’
‘Has it?’
Susie was only being polite. She didn’t really expect Alex to start talking to her about his professional life. The silence around them was welcome rather than uncomfortable. Then it became too quiet. Where were all the children? All on the beach, perhaps, or rounded up to participate in some pre-dinner activity.
The shade of the patch of forest they were in had also been initially welcome but seemed to become oppressive. It was hot and there was no hint of any sea breeze reaching them now.
Or did the feeling of oppression come from her companion? Susie looked sideways and was startled to catch Alex’s gaze. He was frowning again and Susie felt as if she was under some kind of new evaluation.
‘I operated on a fourteen-year-old boy in the early hours of this morning,’ Alex said abruptly. ‘He and his brother got collected by a drunk teenager who lost control of his car last night. The brother died instantly. We did our best with Sean but we knew by this morning there was no point in continuing life support. There were potential organ recipients in the wings. I was talking to the parents again as I was arriving here. My registrar tells me they’ve just decided to have the ventilator switched off…and they’ve agreed to donate Sean’s organs.’
‘Oh…’ Susie didn’t know what to say. How glib had she been in considering that his day might have been stressful? Nobody could have missed the pain in his voice when he’d relayed his sympathy to the parents of that boy. Alex cared about his patients. A lot. How much of his mind and heart were unavoidably involved elsewhere at present? Beside a bed in an intensive-care unit where a family was gathered to say a final farewell to a child they should not be losing.
For the second time Susie was trapped by her eye contact with Alex. This time—incredibly—it seemed even more powerful. This wasn’t any kind of surface inspection, however. Perhaps he was trying to gauge the effect his words had had. Did Susie understand why he might have been so horrified at the sight of his daughter having been transformed into a teenager in the space of a few days? That these years were enough of a minefield for any parent to contemplate, let alone someone in Alex’s position who got to see the worst of what could happen?
Of course she understood. And she could respect anyone in the medical profession who cared that much about his patients. But Stella was his daughter. His only child. On top of what was almost always a difficult life stage, she was having to deal with things that, fortunately, most teens didn’t have to face. A life- threatening illness. Stella was…special, and if a line in the sand was being drawn, Susie was not about to allow herself to get tugged onto Alex’s side. She didn’t know this man. Maybe he was clever enough to know how to manipulate people around him.
That could also explain why he had gone over the top when confronted by Stella’s apparent misbehaviour.
Susie dampened the warmth that had started to thaw her opinion of Alex. She looked away, helped by the change of scenery as the track veered to the edge of the forest and afforded another spectacular view of the horseshoe-shaped bay to their right.
‘Who’s Melanie?’ she enquired eventually, her curiosity getting the better of her and providing a means to end another awkward silence.
‘Another patient. An only child. She’s ten and she had her surgery this morning. We discovered her brain tumour was inoperable. Unless we can shrink it with chemo, it’ll be a very short space of time before it invades her brain stem. She’s not doing as well as I’d like post-op, either.’
The first of the eco-cabins came into view on their left. On short stilts to protect their inhabitants from some of the wildlife and made from well-weathered timber that blended into the surrounding rainforest, they looked like dolls’ houses. Small and inviting. A fantasy that was a world away from the grim reality Alex had been relating.
Two of the cabins looked half-derelict, with their windows unglazed and no netting around the verandas, but the third was clearly inhabited. A red-and-white canvas chair stood beside a table made from half a barrel. An old couch with brightly coloured cushions dominated the rest of the space, and the barrel top and veranda railing were decorated with shells and driftwood. A windsong made a tiny sound in appreciation of the puff of sea breeze reaching them again.
Alex stopped, turning slowly to take in the view of the sea and then to take another look at the cabin.
‘How lovely!’ he exclaimed. ‘It looks as if it’s been here for ever.’
‘That’s Beth’s cabin,’ Susie told him. ‘She’s the permanent doctor for the medical centre now and she fell in love with that cabin. It’s the only one of the original cabins that was left intact enough to use after Willie. The others are just shells and we use them for the messy activities like pottery. See?’ She pointed at another veranda which was covered with lumpy-looking, as yet unglazed bowls made from coils of clay.
‘The cabin you’ll be using is brand-new,’ she continued. ‘But they’ve been careful to use the same kind of materials.’ She smiled at Alex, a concession that their relationship might be on a better footing now, thanks to his communication. ‘The mosquito netting will probably work a lot better, as well.’
‘I hadn’t thought about mosquitoes.’ Alex sounded irritated. Did he really expect to keep on top of what was happening so far away in Sydney and still be aware of every potential issue in this environment? ‘How much of a problem are they?’
‘Generally well controlled,’ Susie responded. ‘And you’ll find eco-friendly insect repellent
