‘You want to sit up there?’ Abby scooped up the little boy and sat him on the bed. ‘Don’t move, okay? We’ll both get into trouble if you fall off.’
Coming up to two years old, Blake was overdue for his protection against some of the more dangerous childhood viruses like measles, mumps and chickenpox. Baby Daisy was due for her polio drops as well as an injection. Right now, Blake was grinning up at Abby but he’d be crying very soon, unfortunately. It was never enjoyable having to inflict pain on small children, even if it was for the greater good. Ignoring the ping of a heartstring, Abby reminded herself that she could at least cheer the older children up pretty fast with a bright ‘I’ve been brave’ sticker and a sugar-free jelly snake.
Maybe that reluctance to inflict pain could explain the procrastination of getting caught by the view.
Except it was more than that. Abby had been the clinic’s senior nurse for years now. She was experienced and professional, and personal feelings were not allowed to interfere with her job. What was bothering her so much? She couldn’t help another frowning glance outside as she went to the fridge to collect the vaccines she needed.
Ruth removed her breast from Daisy’s mouth and got up from her chair to have a look out the window herself, rocking baby Daisy when she started grizzling about having her feed interrupted. A moment later, she was also frowning.
‘You’re right,’ she told Abby. ‘Something doesn’t feel quite right, does it?’
‘You feel it, too?’ Abby was holding the small glass vials in her hand, warming them up so the injections might be less painful. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’
‘There’s nothing out there that I can see.’
‘No. It’s kind of like that feeling you get when you’ve gone on holiday and you’re on the plane and then you suddenly wonder if you’ve left the iron on, or a tap running or something.’
Ruth laughed. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever worried about an iron. We’re lucky to get enough hot water from solar power. Clothes stay wrinkly in my house.’
The laughter broke the shared unease.
‘My mother used to tell me off for worrying too much,’ Abby confessed. ‘She said I was a born worrywart and I was never happy unless I had something to worry about and if there wasn’t anything real, I’d just make something up.’
And that was definitely a truthful statement.
Of course she was an expert in the mental game of finding potential causes for a premonition that something bad was going to happen. She’d been doing this kind of thinking since she was three years old. Imagine a disaster, think of every possible reason for it to have happened and then take steps to make sure it didn’t actually happen.
It was why she’d come to Kaimotu Island in the first place, wasn’t it?
Why she hadn’t even tried fighting to keep the man she absolutely knew would prove to be the love of her life.
‘Maybe it was that earthquake a few weeks ago,’ Ruth suggested. ‘It was enough to get everybody a bit on edge and old Squid hasn’t helped with his forecasting doom and gloom about the “big one” being so imminent. There’s a few people upset at the way he chased off the last of the summer tourists.’
Abby laughed. ‘And then all we get is that tiny tremor the other day that most people barely noticed. I hear that poor Squid’s been getting a hard time about that being the “big one”.’
Ruth grinned. ‘Squid says they’ll all be laughing on the other side of their faces soon enough.’
Abby shook her head. Even the larger of the two tremors had been pretty minor. Certainly not enough to make anyone take any more notice of what the island’s oldest fisherman, Squid Davies, had to say about it being a warning of the kind of quake his grandfather had experienced here. It had just been a bit of a rattle. The kind anyone who’d grown up in New Zealand was familiar with.
‘Jack said it was really fun at school the next day. They got to practise their “Drop, Cover and Hold” emergency drill. I think the kids all thought it was just as good as a game of sardines, squeezing in under their desks.’
She snapped off the top of an ampoule and put the needle of a tiny one-mil syringe in to suck up the contents.
‘Ahh….’ Ruth was nodding. ‘That’s what it is.’
‘What what is?’
‘Why you’re on edge and staring out the window so often.’
Abby raised her eyebrows. She was all set to give Daisy her shot now but she stood there for a moment, holding the kidney dish, waiting for Ruth to elaborate.
‘Jack’s only just started school and he’s your only child. I remember what that was like, wondering if anyone else could take care of your baby as well as you could.’
‘I’ve been working since Jack was three. He’s been in day care and play groups for half his life, just about.’
‘Yeah, but he’s off on the big junior school trip today, isn’t he? My Brooke and Amber have gone, too. The hike to the shipwreck this morning and then the visit to the old copper mines after the picnic?’
‘Mmm.’ Abby bit her lip. ‘I would have gone as parent help but I’d already organised this clinic and I couldn’t postpone it when I was out there trying to persuade everyone to come.’
Ruth was right. Anxiety about her precious little boy was undoubtedly the cause for her underlying sense of unease.
Abby’s sigh was part relief, part exasperation. Enough of this.
She could hear a child crying in the waiting room outside and had to hope people weren’t getting too impatient. It would be disappointing if some of them changed their minds about being here after all her hard work of talking to parents at the local schools and playgroups recently. Ben’s younger sister Hannah was in charge of keeping them all organised and entertained but there was only so much a seventeen-year-old could do to manage a room full of youngsters.
Ruth was exactly the kind of result Abby had wanted when she’d embarked on this project. Kaimotu Island, being so isolated from the mainland, attracted people who wanted to live an alternative lifestyle and Ruth and her husband Damien lived with their six children in a converted train carriage out on the edge of the bush. They supplemented their self-sufficient lifestyle by making pottery that they sold to the influx of visitors in the summer months.
Totally against the idea of vaccination, Ruth and Damien had had a huge fright last year when one of their older children had needed urgent evacuation to a large hospital after developing complications from measles.
Thank goodness they weren’t so isolated that evacuation wasn’t a viable option in emergencies. Abby had been in the early stages of pregnancy when she’d first arrived here and potential complications for herself or her baby had been a real worry, to put it mildly. Mix some medical knowledge in with the fervent imagination of a born worrier and obsession was well within grasp.
Reassurance had come from both the impressive skills of the doctor here, Ben McMahon, and how well the clinic was set up to either cope with
