Marion Lennox - Waves of Temptation

The surfing community looked after its own, but there wasn’t a lot they could do to help. They’d need to employ another doctor for the next round of the championships in New Zealand. As soon as Jess was well enough for Kelly to rejoin the tour, the position was hers again, but pro-surfing ran on the smell of a surf-waxed rag, and they couldn’t afford to pay her for time off.

And she would not use the trust fund.

She needed to move from the hotel. One of the locals offered her a basic surfer’s squat and she accepted with relief. She’d find a decent apartment when Jess was released from hospital but until then she’d live in her surf squat and focus on Jess’s recovery.

From Jessie’s charts and from information she drew from junior doctors, she could track Jessie’s progress. There was therefore no need to talk to Matt Eveldene. The advantage of Matt being head of the orthopaedic ward was that where Matt went, students followed. She could always hear him coming so she could give Jess a quick hug and disappear.

‘Here come the medical cavalry. It’s time to make myself scarce.’

‘He looks at me funny,’ Jess said sleepily on the second day, and she hugged him again, feeling defensive about leaving him.

‘Surgeons are a law unto themselves,’ she said. ‘If he only looks at you funny, you’re getting off lightly. These guys spend their days looking inside people, not practising social skills.’

The surf tour moved on. She spent a couple of hours of her first free day moving into her dreary little apartment. Back at the hospital she found Jess awake and bored, so she spent an hour going over the results of the championship he’d missed out on, talking future tactics, as if those tactics might be useful next week instead of in six months.

Finally he went to sleep. What to do now? She knew how long rehabilitation would take. She had weeks and weeks of wondering what to do.

Okay, do what came next. Lunch. She slipped out to find some—and Matt was at the nurses’ station.

Was he waiting for her? It looked like it. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gorgeous suit, he was talking to a nurse but he was watching Jess’s door. As soon as he saw her, he broke off the conversation.

‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’

‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’

‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’

‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.

But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.

They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.

He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.

‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’

‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’

‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’

‘Unhappiness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jess was clinically depressed,’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor. You know it’s different. He wasn’t just unhappy; he was ill.’

‘No antidepressants showed up either.’

‘He wouldn’t touch antidepressants,’ she said, not sure where this was going, not sure that she wanted to go with him. ‘He’d fallen into addiction once and it terrified him. In all the time I knew him, he took nothing.’

‘How long did you know him?’

She shouldn’t say. She didn’t owe this man an explanation, and her story hurt. But it was also Jessie’s story. It hadn’t been told and maybe...maybe Jess would want his brother to know.

‘Get in touch with Matt if anything happens to me,’ he’d said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll look after you.’

If anything happens to me... He’d obviously been thinking suicide. It still played in her mind, and it was still unbearable. So many questions... The questions surrounded her, nightmares still.

But maybe she had to expose a little of that pain. Matt was waiting for her to speak, and after all these years his gaze was non-judgmental. He wanted to know.

Eighteen years ago he hadn’t asked, and she’d hated him. But then he’d been young and shocked and grieving, she conceded, and shock could be forgiven.

Almost. There was still a part of her that was that cringing seventeen-year-old, remembering this man’s fury.

‘I met Jess when I was sixteen,’ she said, forcing herself to sound like the grown-up that she was. ‘And I was a mess. But not because of drugs. I was just...neglected. My father was interested in surf and booze and nothing else. My mother disappeared when I was four—at least, I think it was my mother; my father never seemed sure. It didn’t matter. It was just the way things were. I was dragged up in the surfing community. There were good people who looked out for me, but they were itinerant and there were lots who weren’t so good. But all of them came and went. I stayed.’

‘It must have been a tough upbringing,’ he said quietly, and she nodded.

‘You could say that. And then, of course, I reached my teenage years. I matured late, thanks be, but finally at sixteen I became...female, instead of just a kid. Then things got harder. Unprotected and often homeless, camping as we often did, I became a target and my father was little use. I was a little wildcat, doing my best to defend myself, but it couldn’t last. Then Jess arrived. He set up on the outskirts of the camp, seemingly intent on surfing and nothing else. I didn’t think he’d even noticed us but there was an ugly scene one night when someone offered my father money. I remember someone grabbing me as if he owned me.’

‘You were so alone.’

‘I... Yes.’

‘With no one?’

‘No one who cared.’

‘Kelly—’

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, and she even smiled a little. ‘You know, when you spoke then, you sounded just like Jess. Just as angry on my behalf. That night he appeared out of the dark, out of nowhere, and he was furious. I hit out—and Jess moved in before the guy could retaliate. He just...took over.’