Move aside, please.’
People responded quickly to Fraser, reading the waves of urgency in his words. Where was this man’s wife? Sara wondered. Was she on board too? Maybe he’d come here without her? Lots of people came on cruises alone—some kind of escapism, she supposed, from whatever they hoped could be left on shore.
They lifted the man onto the stretcher together.
Was Fraser Breckenridge escaping something out here? He’d tried to call her after she’d left him six years ago, but she hadn’t answered. When she’d fallen pregnant, after an out-of-character, grief-stricken, vodka-fuelled one-night stand, she’d seen it as one more sign that she and Fraser were truly over—especially when he’d stopped trying to contact her. Even if Fraser had wanted to be with her, there was no way she would have asked him to help raise another man’s baby.
‘Let’s get him on life support,’ Fraser said, jolting her back to the moment.
The medical centre, which was more like an infirmary, was located on the second deck. The smell of disinfectant was an extra punch to her swirling gut as they hurried in, and she clicked onto autopilot as they passed oxygen masks and pads and the IV.
Fraser arranged the patient on one of the few beds. It was just the two of them in the room. She started tugging the man’s shirt open even further, noting the soft gleam on his bald forehead, the dents around his ears from his glasses. Where were his glasses?
She prepped him for the defibrillator, just as Fraser rushed to hook it up. She watched him administer the jolts at one-fifty, eyeing the defib screen for signs of life, and noticed, despite herself, the faint lines on Fraser’s face that hadn’t been there six years ago—extra layers of thought around his forehead.
There was still no pulse.
‘Give me more,’ he instructed.
She obeyed and prayed it would work. The room was getting hotter. It felt as if hours had passed in the tiniest space she’d ever had to work in, packed with lab test equipment, immobilisation boards, X-ray and EKG machines and bottle after bottle of pills. Through the window land was now in sight, shimmering green under bright sunshine.
It was still a whole new world to her. It clearly wasn’t to Fraser.
‘We have a pulse!’ she announced finally, and relief flooded her veins.
A knock on the door minutes later made her jump, and she found her hand on Fraser’s arm. He steadied her, and at his touch she felt something inside her waking from a deep slumber.
‘Is he alive? Oh, God, please don’t tell me he’s dead. He always said he wanted to die on a cruise ship... He blimmin’ well said that before we left...’
A busty, tanned woman was talking at the speed of an auctioneer as she tottered over on high heels and placed two leathery brown hands on their patient’s cheeks, peering with squinty eyes into his big round face.
‘He’s breathing,’ she stated.
Sara couldn’t tell specifically if the woman thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.
‘You’ll be happy to know he has more than a few years left in him yet,’ Fraser told her.
Sara watched the woman pull something from her glossy designer handbag. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry. I was in the wine club with the ladies.’ She placed a pair of glasses on his face before dropping a tender kiss on his forehead.
Maybe she really did love poor old Harry, Sara thought, glancing at Fraser, who promptly shot her a wink. Love wasn’t always black and white, after all. Perhaps she should give Fraser a chance to say his piece. What had happened between them hadn’t all been his fault, after all; maybe they owed it to each other at least to get the past out, so that they could put it behind them and work together without it hanging over them.
Right?
No. Bad idea.
Hearing Fraser explain himself might mean she’d open a door that was better off closed. No matter the attraction that would never go away, everything was different now. Esme needed her mother’s full attention. What if they couldn’t find a donor for her?
Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Esme.
‘WHAT’S THAT THING stuck to your body?’ The kid in the bright green board shorts was pointing a finger at Esme’s catheter. ‘Are you an alien?’
Fraser’s brow creased where he sat three feet away on a beach chair, but Esme dropped the spade she was carrying and turned on her camcorder.
‘What do you know about kidneys? Three, two, one—go!’ She was challenging the kid, with five years of confidence behind her words. ‘I bet you don’t know anything.’
The boy’s face scrunched up. He put a hand over the lens as his mother called out from beneath a giant sun hat in the shallows. ‘Marcus! What are you doing?’
‘You’re weird,’ Marcus told Esme loudly, and ran off.
Sara was off her chair in a flash.
‘It’s OK, Mummy.’ Esme sounded tired. ‘I know he just doesn’t understand.’
‘No, he doesn’t.’
Fraser watched Sara reapplying her daughter’s sunscreen, listened to her chatter, trying to make her smile. She made a great mother. He’d always known she would make a good mother, and there had been a time when he’d actually thought they’d make a great team as parents some day—not that he’d ever told her that.
Sara had her work cut out for her, though. Esme was smart and resilient and beautiful, and who knew her fate, exactly? Some people on dialysis lived a long time. Others didn’t.
He stood and got them both to pose with their backs to the ocean for a photo. Jess, the carer, took the camera and urged him into the shot.
‘That’s OK,’ he told her, but Esme had other ideas.
‘Dr Fraser, come and be in our photo!’
He waded into the shallows, eyes on Sara. Her expression gave nothing away. The hot sun was playing on her blue bikini top as Esme clung to their hands in the middle of them and demanded to be bounced up and down in the waves.
‘Again!’ she cried as they lifted her up and down.
‘You’re a bossy little Spielberg,’ Fraser told her, picking her up and putting her on his shoulders in the surf. He pretended he was about to dunk her, lowering himself down into the water and then standing again quickly.
Esme screeched with laughter. When he caught her eye, Sara was laughing too.
‘Where is this place?’ Sara asked him later, taking his hand and letting him help her off the scooter he’d hired. He gestured widely in front of him, to the brownish-red boulders standing tall like fallen pieces of a distant planet
