COULD HE CHANGE? And why would he want to?
For the next ten days the questions sat in his mind like lead.
The drive home from the beach had been done in silence, with Misty staring straight ahead and Angus trying to figure out what had just happened. He was also wondering if his idea had been as stupid as Misty obviously thought it was.
It had seemed obvious, to bring the kids up together, to share the responsibility and take the pressure off them both. Forming a sort of family had seemed a logical solution, but she’d rejected the proposal outright.
Maybe it was a good thing, he decided, as the days wore on. The way he’d felt as they’d kissed had left him exposed and, as the kiss deepened, so had the feeling that he was on the edge of a chasm. He wasn’t sure what that chasm contained.
Or maybe he did. He knew, better than most, what emotional connection cost. The kiss had made him think that the searing pain he’d vowed never to feel again was closing in. The fear. It was just as well she’d refused, because how could she possibly want that?
Clearly she didn’t. She was being sensible for both of them.
The next ten days had seen them revert to formality. Apart from their calls when he updated her with medical information there was no contact.
They’d need contact in the future, though, he thought. She was Lily’s aunt and Alice was Lily’s great-grandmother. Lily’s real family.
But he was Lily’s father...he was Lily’s real family.
The concept felt wrong. He’d lost his family and where they should be was a void.
How could Lily fit into nothing?
But it’d work, he told himself. Children were adaptable and she’d learn to accept the limitations of what he could give.
But over and over his thoughts kept slipping back to Misty. Her commitment to the island was irrational. Her commitment to her gran and to Forrest...maybe that made more sense, but then she hadn’t learned to keep her distance as he had. And if she couldn’t do that, then her rejection of his idea was sensible as well.
So his proposal had been dumb, but there were still questions that refused to be answered. Questions about the way she made him feel. Questions that made him ask himself, honestly, was there part of him that did want commitment?
Did he want her to fall in love with him?
He couldn’t. It’d be unfair, a one-way street where he was protected but she wasn’t.
But there was a voice in the back of his head that kept whispering—or sometimes even shouting—that maybe he didn’t want to be protected?
So, ten days later he was sitting on the veranda, watching the sun set over the silhouette of the distant mainland—and thinking about Misty. Lily had been settling, but now she woke and decided to complain again. He sighed. She’d had a couple of sessions lately where she’d screamed non-stop for an hour or so before she settled. The team, collectively, had diagnosed colic.
‘It’s common around this age,’ Jodie, one of his team, had told him that afternoon as she’d handed Lily back to him—it was amazing how Lily was handed around like a pet, but almost instantly handed back to him when she started to scream. ‘You’re lucky it didn’t start earlier. By four months they’re generally over the worst—you know that.’
Of course he did. How often had he said those same words in his clinic? Superficially. He did his best and then waved the problem goodbye.
But now he conceded that he hadn’t been sympathetic enough. Colic was horrid. He rocked her and cradled her and tried not to let his heart wrench when her face contorted in pain.
And he tried not to think about how Misty would do it better.
Because Misty loved?
Don’t go there.
Saturday night. She lay in her too-big bed and tried not to think about Angus.
The man had proposed a future where her pressing problems would be solved. Her workload would be easy, her life would be easy...
Her life would be empty.
She lay in the dark and let herself imagine what living with Angus could be like. She remembered the note he’d left back in Melbourne as he’d headed off to swim with his mates. Would they have rosters for who cared for the children? Shared meals?
A shared bed?
She’d go crazy.
Because he’d be asking her to leave this island, she told herself, but she knew it was more than that. For deep within she accepted that it was because she was in danger of falling in love and she was sensible enough, grounded enough, to know that living with someone who was afraid to love back would break her heart.
So get over it and go to sleep, she told herself, but there was no way sleep would come.
‘Because maybe I’m not in danger of falling in love with Angus Firth,’ she said at last, speaking out loud into the darkness. ‘Foolish or not, I think I already have.’
The phone rang at four in the morning.
With Misty being the sole doctor, locals knew to only ring in cases of dire need—the islanders had accepted that was the only way she could survive. Angus had set up a roster for night calls, but there’d only been two since he’d arrived, one for a toddler with earache and one for an elderly lady with gastro. His team had handled both.
After an unsettled night Lily was now thankfully asleep, but Angus wasn’t. He heard the phone ring and Jodie get up to answer. He’d been walking the floor with Lily until well after midnight—but for a reason he couldn’t explain to himself he felt guilty for not getting up now.
But Jodie was on call and she could deal with it. If he got up for every call, he’d make himself as exhausted as Misty had been.
As Misty would be again.
And there she was again. Misty. He stared into the night and tried to sort his jumbled thoughts. They refused to be sorted.
He needed to surf again, he decided. Even a long swim might help. Maybe in the morning he could ask one of the team to care for Lily while he...
No. That wasn’t in the contract. Misty was expecting him to be sole carer and he would be.
Misty. Damn, why couldn’t he escape the judgement he’d seen in her eyes.
Why couldn’t he stop thinking of her?
And then there was a knock on his bedroom door.
What? Did Jodie need backup? He slipped out to meet her—no way was he risking waking Lily.
‘Problem?’ he asked. The young doctor was looking worried.
‘I’m sorry to wake you, but... Angus, I think I need to call Misty.’
‘We don’t call Misty,’ he said curtly. That wasn’t in the deal. ‘We can handle it. What’s happening?’
‘It’s Nicholas Mickleham,’ she said, sounding increasingly distressed. ‘You remember? Seventeen years old, primary melanoma with cerebral metastases. You talked to Misty about it a couple of weeks back. Nick’s made the decision not to go back to Brisbane—he wants no further treatment and his parents and oncologist concur. I did another house call yesterday. He was weaker but there was no sign the end was near.
‘But now Tony—his dad—has rung. He’s had what sounds like major convulsions and lost consciousness. Tony says his breathing’s faltering as well. Obviously they’re deeply distressed. They still don’t want evacuation to Brisbane, but they’ve asked me to call Misty. In the circumstances...are you okay with that?’
Was he okay with Misty being called out at this time of night? Three weeks ago he would have said no, but he knew a lot more about Misty by now. What had she said?
‘This island’s my family.’
It wasn’t sensible, not to him, but with an insight that he hadn’t had three weeks ago, he knew that Misty would want to be called.
‘If she’ll go, I’ll go with her,’ Jodie offered.
But he knew instinctively that Misty would go and he also knew she’d be emotionally involved. Then he looked at Jodie and he saw distress. Jodie was one of his mob—medicine without strings. Attending such a situation wasn’t what she’d signed up for when he’d asked her to come, but to ask Misty to go alone...
He couldn’t. Damn, what was happening to his solitary mindset? He was all at sea here, but with a sinking heart he accepted that it was he who had to go. Whether Misty went or not.
‘Would you stay with Lily while I go?’ he asked and saw relief.
‘Would you?’
He sighed, but inwardly. He was the doctor in charge here. ‘I’ll ring Misty and see if she wants to come,’ he told her. ‘But even if she does—and I suspect she will—she’ll be personally involved. I can be clinician, as needed.’
At least he could take the practicalities from Misty’s shoulders, he thought. Being the doctor in such a situation when it was for someone she loved... It must be impossible.
How did he know she loved?
This was one of her islanders. Of course she loved.
Dammit, she was doing his head in. But he had to go.
‘I’ll wheel Lily’s basket into your room,’ he told Jodie, but she shook her head.
‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll kip on your bed. I heard you up with her earlier. If she’s finally settled, there’s no way we should risk waking her up.’
Like there’s no way I want to go to a deathbed, he thought.
Where was surfing when he needed it?
She answered on the third ring and her response was instant.
‘Of course I’ll go. I’ll need to wake Gran and let her know what’s happening, but I can be there in ten minutes.’
Just like that.
Did she even realise what she’d be facing? A dying kid. A family consumed with grief, gutted as he’d been. Parents who hadn’t yet learned to build barricades so this sort of pain could never enter.
And with that came a sweep of emotion so intense it was physically painful. The memory of his brother’s death... The thought of enduring that loss... The thought of Misty, even witnessing such grief...
But she hadn’t even asked for support.
No matter. She had it. ‘I’m also attending,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pick you up on the way.’
‘You don’t need to.’
‘I think I do,’ he said and it came out sounding reluctant, but then he forced his voice to change. Authoritative. Confident. In charge. Everything he wasn’t feeling. ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like backup?’
‘I doubt I need...’
‘Misty, would you like me to come?’
That produced a moment’s silence, as if she was torn. ‘I... Is Lily okay?’ she asked at last. ‘You said the colic’s not settling.’
‘She’s sound asleep, with Jodie sleeping beside her.’
There was another silence, then Misty sighed. ‘You and your team, hey? Lucky you. Oh, Angus, you know I can’t get used to having help. But tonight, yes, please, I would like you to come.’
Angus picked her up and they drove the short distance to the Micklehams in silence. There seemed little to say. Angus seemed grim, Misty thought, almost as if he was gritting his teeth for what lay ahead.
As she was, too. Nick was a great kid and the thought of him dying, the thought of the waste, was doing her head in. And she’d known his parents for ever. Before her marriage, a teenaged Chris had sometimes minded the much younger Misty.
Misty had even been a flower girl at their wedding.
She was so involved. Maybe it would be easier to be like Angus, she told herself. But then she arrived and Chris met her at the door, crumpling into her arms and sobbing, and Misty thought, it might sound easier to be like Angus, but how could she ever manage it?
And then Angus put a hand on her shoulder, a light touch, as Chris released her and led the way into Nick’s room.
‘I’m right behind you,’ he said softly, and she thought...
Strangely she thought, Who’s behind you?
Angus had introduced himself, then followed quietly as Chris led them to the bedroom. Then, as Tony also folded into grief and Misty hugged him, he had time and space to assess what was happening.
As expected, Nick was certainly deeply unconscious, his breathing already faltering. His path to death seemed to be happening fast. A catastrophic bleed from the tumour seemed the only possible cause, and the time for heroic medicine was long past.
This was a scenario Angus had spent his career avoiding.
In his Melbourne life, if ever there was the risk of this kind of emotion, this kind of grief, Angus would pass responsibility on fast. He’d refer to specialists, to a palliative care team, to anyone but himself. In this situation there were so many memories, all of them appalling.
But there were no ‘specialists’ here. No palliative care team. There were two parents, Misty and one dying boy.
And Angus.
With Misty supporting a distraught Chris and Tony, Angus had no choice but to take charge. And of course he knew what to do—hadn’t he had that drilled into him the hard way? He examined Nick, concurring with what his parents had assumed. There was no response, no sign of anything but brain death. He did what he could to ease the laboured breathing. He checked and rechecked responses and he accepted the inevitable.
‘If it’s okay with you, I’ll administer morphine and midazolam,’ he told Tony and Chris. ‘I doubt he needs either, but I want to make a hundred per cent sure that he’s not in pain, that he doesn’t have another convulsion, that he slips gently into death. Are you both okay with that? Misty, do you concur?’
Misty agreed—they all did—but as she helped him administer the drugs and move Nick into a more natural position, remaking the bed, she gave him an odd look—almost as if she hadn’t expected him to know what to do? As he moistened the boy’s lips and stood back to let Chris and Tony do the same, her look became even more intense. As though there were questions she wanted answered?
But thankfully now wasn’t the time for questions he had no intention of answering. There was little to do but wait.
‘I’ll stay until the end,’ Misty told him. ‘Angus, you don’t need to stay.’
He should go. More than anything else in the world, he didn’t want to be there.
But he glanced at her face and, despite how he was feeling, he knew his place was here.
‘Unless Jodie needs me, if it’s okay with you all,’ he said, ‘then I’ll stay.’
Nick died an hour later. Peacefully, quietly, while his parents held his hands, while Misty wept silently, while Angus learned...a new way of coping with death?
Was he coping?
What sort of doctor was he if he couldn’t cope with this without disintegrating?
He felt drained. It seemed that all the emotions of the last three weeks had coalesced into this moment.
He’d thought he could never do this again, but at least now he could leave. Word was out. With family members flooding in from all over the island, with officialdom covered, he and Misty were free to go. There was nothing more they could do. As they headed out to his car there was the faintest sliver of light on the horizon.
The day felt unreal.
Stop the clocks...
Who’d said that about death? It was surely someone who’d experienced the enormity of loss, the impossibility of the world continuing to spin when someone you loved was gone.
‘Thank you for being here,’ Misty said. ‘Thank you for what you’ve done. Thank you for sharing.’
‘It was my privilege,’ he told her, but he was struggling to speak at all. ‘Do you...do you want to come back to the house and have breakfast?’
She shook her head. ‘I need to go home and have my cry before Forrest wakes up.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m sorry, too. Nick was such...’ Her voice broke. ‘He was such a good kid. To lose him...’
She couldn’t go on and he didn’t push. He started the car—and then he realised she was watching him as he drove.
‘Angus?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I shouldn’t ask, but your face...as you administered the drugs...as you moistened his lips... Angus, it’s none of my business, but...were your family killed instantly?’
He froze for a moment, but then he forced himself to speak. There was no reason not to tell her.
‘My mother and father, yes, but my little brother wasn’t,’ he said, flatly now, consciously dampening down emotion. ‘He was...twelve. He was unconscious for two days before he died.’
‘Oh, Angus...’
‘It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter,’
‘Of course it does. Oh, my dear...’
‘Please. I’d rather not talk about it.’
And that was that. He drove her back to Sapphire Seas. Then he drove back to the doctors’ house. To his daughter.
To responsibility.
To a life that seemed to be cracking at the edges.
‘How is she?’ Jodie must have been listening for him. She emerged from his bedroom almost the moment he walked through the front door.
‘You mean, how are the Micklehams?’
She grimaced, but then gave a wry smile. ‘Okay, I meant how are the Micklehams, though I suspect I know. But I’m also asking about Misty?’
‘Jodie...’
She shrugged. ‘You don’t want me to ask? I guess that’s our group mantra, isn’t it? But you and Misty...’
He stared at her. Jodie had been part of his group for a couple of years now. He didn’t know much about her background—yep, his group’s philosophy was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—but he suspected that, like him, there were things in her past that had made her the loner she was.
So why was she breaking the rules now?
‘The Micklehams are as grief stricken as you’d expect,’ he said brusquely. ‘But the extended family are gathering. And Misty...’ But then he stopped. How to answer?
She was going home to cry? Alone?
And Jodie was still intruding. Not content with that first question, she was heading straight in. ‘You’re falling for her,’ she said and for some reason he heard a faint tremor in her voice. ‘Or you’ve fallen for her. Scary, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not...’
‘I think you are,’ she said gently. ‘And why not? She’s lovely. Why not go for it?’
‘I think I have,’ he said. Normally he’d never discuss such a personal topic but somehow, right now... His world was already off balance, so why not tilt it further? ‘I’ve asked her to move to Melbourne and share my house.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Well, well. But let me guess. She refused?’
‘Of course she refused. Though it was a sensible proposition.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ Jodie said and, to his further astonishment, she took a couple of steps forward and gave him a hug. A real hug, warm and all enveloping. ‘This island, though, it gets to you. Tonight, talking to Tony on the phone, remembering Nick assuring me he didn’t want to go back to Brisbane, seeing his sheer courage... For some reason I’ve been remembering a poem from school. A line, something like... “Anyone’s death diminishes me for I’m involved with mankind.” That’s Misty with this island, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said curtly and couldn’t go on.
He was standing in the hall. A bunch of surfboards were stacked against the wall and he found himself staring at them with a wave of longing so powerful he had to close his eyes. That’s what his life had been before. Before Lily.
Before Misty.
When he opened his eyes, Jodie was watching him with sympathy—and understanding?
‘Lily’s still sleeping,’ she said. ‘You know we can cope if she wakes. Why not go find some waves?’
And that was a siren song. To surf...to put these dumb emotions right of his head and enter a space where there was only waves and sand and the sheer power of the sea. A place where he felt insignificant and his problems seemed insignificant as well.
Like walking away from Misty?
That thought did his head in. It was as though there were chasms on all sides and he could hardly move.
And finally, because emotions were building to the point where his head felt it might explode, he cracked.
‘Has she woken at all?
‘Not a peep.’
She’d cry when she did wake, he thought, as she’d cried most of the afternoon and evening before. He thought of the mums he’d seen in his clinic back in Melbourne, the parents he’d assured blithely, ‘They’re usually over colic by four months.’
He hadn’t been nearly sympathetic enough. Lily’s cries...they twisted something deep inside him.
Was it possible he was starting to love his daughter?
Like he’d loved his little brother?
There was another emotion.
But, staring at the surfboards, he felt a sliver of pressure lifting. When Lily was colicky he could do little to help, but in the mornings she’d seemed better. And Jodie was right here.
‘Would you...?’ He hesitated, but the longing was too great. It was as though those surfboards were calling him.
‘Could you stay in charge for a bit longer?’ he heard himself say.
And Jodie’s face softened. ‘Of course. I know why you need it. Surf as long as you want. But, Angus...’
‘Yes?’
‘I just hugged you,’ she said. ‘And you responded as though you needed it. We don’t do it, do we, in our group? But I’ve given you a hug and you took it. So maybe you need to pass it on? Take a hug, give a hug—and maybe Misty’s waiting?’
She didn’t sleep. How could she? She lay and stared at the ceiling and tried to get her emotions in order. When the day began, she was almost grateful.
But the morning seemed to drag. Alice and Forrest decided to bake. She wasn’t needed—how rare was that, but she wasn’t appreciating it.
She swam in the magnificent pool, but no matter how hard she swam she couldn’t lose her thoughts. Angus as a kid. Angus having to cope with the unbearable.
And then Jodie rang and the moment she answered she knew something was wrong. Really wrong. Her anxiety was unmistakable.
‘Problem?’ she asked, trying to supress her apprehension.
‘Misty, I’m sorry to ring but we think Lily has intussusception.’
And that took her breath away.
Intussusception...
She knew it—of course she did. The term referred to a type of bowel obstruction, usually occurring in babies or toddlers, where a portion of their intestine somehow folded inside another. What followed was blockage, swelling and intense pain. In its early stages it was often mistaken for colic, but once things completely blocked it meant agony.
If it wasn’t treated fast it could cause irreparable damage to the bowel, leading to lifelong problems. Intestinal tissue could die. There could be internal bleeding. Peritonitis.
Death.
It was a frightening diagnosis at the best of times.
It was the type of emergency that isolated doctors dreaded.
‘How...how long?’ Misty managed to ask. The words were hard to get out—she felt as though all the air had been punched from her lungs. Lily...the little girl she’d cared for. Her sister’s baby.
‘It’s just turned acute in the last couple of hours,’ Jodie told her. ‘She woke half an hour after Angus left. For the last few days we thought she had colic, but now there’s no mistaking it. She’s in obvious pain, she’s vomiting and, when I changed her, the staining’s unmistakable. Molly and Dan have gone to try to find Angus...’
‘Where’s Angus?’ Her shocked mind was struggling to take this in.
‘He went surfing just after he got back from the Micklehams’, but he didn’t say where and I didn’t think to ask. He thought, as we all did, that Lily had settled. Misty, Martin’s not answering his phone. Does he walk his dogs at this hour? We have no one to ask about the procedure for evacuation to Brisbane, but that’s surely what she needs. Proper evaluation, with a paediatric surgeon on standby.’
‘Yes.’ Thank heaven for Jodie, Misty thought. Thank heaven there was someone who could think straight.
‘So give me details,’ Jodie said, calm and sure. ‘I’ll make the calls.’
‘I will...’
‘Your voice is shaking,’ Jodie said, gentling. ‘Tell me who to contact and I’ll do it. Then you concentrate on getting yourself over here. If we can’t find Angus in time, will you go with her?’
And there was only one answer to that. ‘I’m going with her anyway.’
Somehow she relayed the information Jodie needed. Then she went to find Alice. Alice was supervising Forrest spooning honey into muffin batter. When she saw Misty’s face she let Forrest’s overloaded honey spoon drop into the mix without a word.
‘What?’
Misty told her. ‘I have to go.’
‘I should think so.’ Baking forgotten, Alice looked as distressed as Misty felt. ‘Forrest, let’s finish up here and go pack a bag for your aunty. If Lily’s ill, she’ll need her.’
‘Of course,’ Forrest said, wide eyed. Sometimes he really did sound older than his years. ‘Like when Misty held my hand when I vomited?’
‘Exactly,’ Alice said. ‘And when the doctors had to take off my foot, Misty stayed with me the whole time. That’s what families are for, young Forrest. Right, go give Misty a hug because that’s what she needs most and then let’s get ourselves organised.’