Marion Lennox: The Doctor’s Rescue Mission

She managed to listen. She managed to understand what he’d said.

Hubert and Robbie would watch to warn of another wave, she thought dully. And in offering to take care of Robbie, she knew what Hubert was saying she should do.

She was the island’s only doctor. The islanders looked to her for help. For leadership.

She had to go down.

‘NOTHING ever happens in this place.’

Dr Grady Reece played with his mug of coffee and stared at the pieces on his chessboard. He’d beaten Dr Jaqui Ford three times and she’d beaten him five.

He was going out of his mind.

The weather was perfect, and that was half the trouble. Enough rain meant no bushfires. No wind meant no dramas at sea. They were out of the holiday season so people weren’t doing damned fool holiday things. Which meant Air-Sea Rescue was having a very quiet time.

‘Aren’t you glad?’ Jaqui enquired.

‘Why should I be glad? I joined the service for excitement.’

‘So you like people killing themselves?’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he growled. ‘You know very well that I try my damnedest to stop people killing themselves. And you live on adrenaline just as much as I do.’

‘Yes, but I have had a life,’ Jaqui said mildly. ‘Husband, kids, dogs. I come here for some peace. Yeah, I like the adrenaline rush of thinking we might be saving someone, but for the rest…work is my quiet time.’

Grady smiled at that. Jaqui was in her mid-fifties and was a very competent doctor. She’d only just undertaken the additional training to join Air-Sea Rescue, but already the tales of her tribe of hell-raising adult sons were legion. Everyone knew why Jaqui thought rescuing people in high drama was a quiet life.

‘No, but you,’ Jaqui said insistently. ‘You can’t depend on this for your excitement. Maybe you need kids of your own.’

‘To provide me with drama? I don’t think so.’

‘So you’re not into families?’ Jaqui was probing past the point of politeness, but Grady’s associate was no respecter of boundaries.

‘Not interested,’ Grady growled, hoping to shut her up.

It didn’t.

‘You’re not gay?’

That got a grin. ‘What do you think?’

‘You never know these days,’ Jaqui said, moving her bishop with a nonchalance that told Grady she was hoping he might not notice she was threatening his queen. ‘Someone once told me you can detect gayness if a man wears one earring, but my sons wear one, two or sixteen, depending on how the mood takes them. As they also seem to have one, two or sixteen girlfriends, depending on how the mood takes them, who would know anything at all? So…’ She sat back and subjected him to intense scrutiny. ‘Not gay. Not seriously involved. There’s never been a woman who looked like being long term?’

‘Cut it out.’

‘Max told me you were really smitten once. A lady called Morag.’

Max was their pilot. Max talked too much.

‘Morag and I went out for about a month. Four years ago.’

‘Was that all? I thought it was serious.’

Maybe it was, Grady thought ruefully. He’d hardly thought through the consequences at the time but after she’d gone…he’d missed her like hell. Not that there’d been any choice in the matter. She’d buried herself in some remote little settlement and that surely wasn’t the life for him.

So what? Why was he thinking of Morag now? he asked himself. He’d moved on. He’d dated. Morag had been a one-month relationship followed up by a letter of sympathy after her sister had died. It had been an intense letter that had taken him a long time to draft, but she’d never answered. So…

So one of these days a lady would come on the scene who’d make him smile as Morag had made him smile. But with no attachments.

‘You don’t want kids?’ Jaqui asked.

‘Why would I want kids?’

‘You want excitement. Kids equal excitement.’

‘I’ll get my excitement some other way,’ he growled. He moved his queen, removed his hand from the board and then saw the danger. ‘Whoops. Check.’

‘Checkmate,’ Jaqui said sweetly, and then looked up as Max came through the door. One look at their pilot’s face and they knew there were to be no more chess matches that afternoon.

‘What is it?’

‘Code One,’ Max said shortly. ‘Huge. We’re going in first, with back-up on the way. The army’ll be in on this, but, Grady, you’ve been put in charge first off. Tsunami.’

‘A tidal wave,’ Jaqui said incredulously. ‘Where?’

‘Petrel Island. Contact to the island’s completely cut. The first reports have come in from fishing boats that were out to sea when the wave hit. All we know is that there were five hundred inhabitants on the island when a wall of water twenty feet high swept through. God knows how many are left alive.’

It was ten minutes before Morag met anyone at all. She was climbing down as people were climbing up, but the shortest way to high ground wasn’t the track she was on. So her path was deserted. At every step she took her dread increased.

Finally she reached the town’s outskirts, and here she met Marcus. Marcus was the head of the town’s volunteer fire brigade, a brilliant fisherman and a man who normally could be absolutely depended on in a crisis. He looked…lost.

‘Marcus…’

He was at the top of the track she was taking into town, the road leading to the fire station. Or it was the track that had led to the fire station. Marcus was standing where the station had once stood. The flimsy shed had given way completely, and a pile of rubble covered the town’s only fire engine.

Marcus was staring unseeingly at the mess, and he didn’t turn as Morag touched his shoulder.

‘I don’t know where they are,’ he whispered, turning to gaze down at the ruined township.

He was soaked. He’d been caught by the wave, Morag thought, stunned, which meant the water must have washed almost three hundred yards inland. A shallow gash ran down the side of his face, and he looked as sick as she felt.

But they weren’t alone. Above the township was bushland and the bush seemed the extreme of the wave’s reach. Morag turned and looked upward and here was the first good news. People were emerging. They were still obviously terrified, but they were slowly venturing out.

All eyes were still turned toward the sea.

‘Marcus!’ It was a cry of disbelief-of tremulous joy. A woman was running toward them, towing two seemingly scared-witless teenagers after her. Judy. Marcus’s wife. Marcus’s face went slack with relief, and so did Morag’s.

This was Marcus’s family. With Marcus behind her she might get something organised, and now he had his family safe she could start.

Something…

What?

First things first. She had to wait until Marcus had gathered Judy and the kids to him in the hug of a man who’d thought he’d lost everything.

Finally he released them and turned to Morag. ‘S-sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Morag said unsteadily. ‘I wouldn’t mind if someone hugged me.’

Judy immediately obliged. Marcus added his mite. Teenage dignity forgotten, the kids joined in, too, until she was squeezed between the four of them. And suddenly she was sobbing like a child.

Two minutes were spent gathering herself, taking strength where she most needed it.

Then…as they finally, tentatively broke away from each other and turned to stare out to sea again, they found space to talk.

‘There’s not likely to be another, is there?’ Marcus asked, and Morag tried to think clearly about the possibility.

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Hubert and Robbie are on lookout with the bell, and Robbie has the best eyes on the island.’