Selwyn ached in every muscle. His eyes were red and irritated from dust and lack of sleep. His hands were raw in places from lifting debris and pulling people out of their collapsed homes. Like everyone, he flinched whenever one of the aftershocks rocked the ground. Screams of terror assaulted his ears and nerves.
Sitting out in the open, in the hastily assembled tent city, an elderly woman comforted a sobbing child, her shaking hand smoothing over the little boy’s dirty hair. In a disaster, it was losing those you loved that destroyed you.
Selwyn gulped the last of his bottled water and looked around restlessly. He was on an enforced time-out. He’d be no use to anyone if he didn’t get some sleep. But when he stopped working, he started thinking about Kiara and how he’d left her. The second earthquake, more devastating than the first, would have set in concrete her resistance to his disaster relief work, and to him.
He couldn’t even be sure that the message he’d sent with a departing truck driver would reach her. The driver would do his best, but messages from healthy people to the wider world weren’t a priority.
Kiara would be living with the echo of the last words she’d said to him, words that attacked his weakest points and re-opened scars that he’d shown only her.
‘Hell.’ He found himself pacing and stopped, suddenly enough that a child ran into the back of his legs. He turned and picked the girl up, swinging her in a circle that had her uncertainty turning to giggles while his shoulder muscles protested against the strain. He handed the girl to her mother and focused on finding the tent where he’d nab a bunk and try to force sleep.
When he ducked into the tent, he found two other workers already asleep. He unlaced his boots and stretched out on a camp bed, pulling a blanket over himself. Exhaustion clobbered him. He fell into its darkness with one overwhelming desire: to explain to Kiara that he understood that her words and her resistance to his departure had sprung from panic, and that he was sorry for his own anger, but he didn’t regret it. He saw her strength, and he wanted her to see it, too. She had the courage to risk loving him and he needed that love. He needed her in his life.
***
‘Oh God, please.’ You prayed easily in a disaster zone, pleading with Fate — if you believed in nothing more.
Kiara was chasing her own miracle.
‘The golden-haired, so beautiful giant sleeps in there.’ Kiara’s informant, a giggling little girl, pointed at a rescue crew tent.
Kiara’s Kurdish barely coped with the translation, but surely a golden giant had to be Selwyn. She had traced him this far by questioning everyone for ‘the Australian, the one caring for the old people’ and showing a photo from one of his old modelling campaigns. After so many encounters where people fixated on his good looks and refused to believe that such a handsome man could be slaving in the disaster zone, she shared his frustration at people’s superficial judgments.
Exhaustion and an awareness of time passing pressed in on her. In a couple of hours, she had to return to the second tent city twelve kilometres away over a bad road. She’d hitched this lift with a supply driver and would be returning when he did, salving her conscience by closing her eyes during the drive, even if she didn’t get much real, and really needed, sleep.
Yet here she stood, feet locked to the ground, staring at a tent and afraid to hope.
‘Thank you.’ She slipped her last chocolate bar into the little girl’s hand.
The child dashed off, shouting, ‘Mama, Mama.’
Two unshaven and filthy men stumbled out of the tent. ‘Good morning,’ they mumbled, although it was more like lunch time. With floodlights set up, the rescue work continued twenty-four hours a day.
Her rescue worker ID gave her uncontested access to the tent. The canvas of its flap felt rough under her fingers. It crumpled as she clutched it.
‘Please, Selwyn, be here.’ She ducked into the tent.
A weight like a granite boulder rolled off her and she could have fallen where she stood. ‘Selwyn.’ After worrying and regretting so much, she had found him. Safe.
Three steps had never been so far. So important. He was safe, but what about them? Had she destroyed the connection between them with her immature, selfish words? Whatever she had to do for a second chance, she would do it.
She knelt beside his bed and stared at the dirt in his hair and on his face that dulled the fairness of his stubble.
His eyelids lifted and vivid blue eyes stared into hers, focussed and opened wide. He grabbed her and pulled her over him, kissing her with such desperation that it was as if he drank her in.
Stubble grazed her face and his fingers bit into her shoulders. She revelled in the pain, in the reality of it. She had thought of so many things she might say to him, ways to explain and ask forgiveness.
None of it mattered.
The truth was there in their raw encounter, stripped of all self-protection or luxury surroundings.
A tear rolled down her face and became a salty part of their kiss.
Selwyn pulled back, his thumb swiping up a second tear.
‘I’m happy.’ She excused the water leaking from her eyes.
‘So am I.’ In his deep voice, the words sounded like a vow. He kissed her again. ‘So am I.’
***
Their return journey from Armenia touched down briefly in Moscow and Hong Kong, and ended in a Sydney television studio.
Selwyn looked gorgeous in his work shirt, cargo trousers and scuffed boots.
Kiara wore the same gear, but by her own wish, she stayed in the background; something the television show’s producer fought hard against. Apparently her and Selwyn’s romance would really ‘sell’ the segment.
‘No,’ Selwyn said.
She loved him for that veto, knowing how much he wanted to build Grey Knot’s profile, but not at the expense of their relationship. She trusted him to put their relationship first.
The disaster relief effort in Armenia had changed her life in more than one way. Recognising her love for Selwyn was the most important takeaway, but Armenia had also shown her her parents’ work from an adult perspective. She was no longer a child, powerless to help or to shape a response to desperate need. Now she saw and shared her parents’ and Selwyn’s need to help.
It was he who pointed out to her that she’d always shared that need. ‘Your career is crisis ecology, Kiara. Disaster relief for non-humans.’
She’d never considered it that way, nor seen how far she’d run, just to come home.
Because home wasn’t a place: it was being with those you loved.
She watched the television cameras roll and Selwyn reach through the cameras to touch viewers with his charm and conviction. And then he was off-air and walking in her direction, all his attention for her. Over his shoulder she saw the producer signal and the cameras switch back on, the filming go live again. It was incredibly unethical, and yet…she smiled at Selwyn.
Let the television viewers have their romance.
She had the real thing.