The memory of the young lives cut short sent her forward, slowing as she reached the marching man.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ she said, slowing to a jog beside him. ‘I couldn’t either, but running always helps.’
He turned his head and looked at her for a moment, not breaking stride.
‘The team should have had a debrief after an incident like that—after every incident, in fact.’
‘We do, although today, because Blake went with the bodies to the nearest hospital, we’ll have it later. Probably this evening. Mabel will let us know.’
‘Jogging is bad for your knees and ankles,’ he muttered, in an even more critical tone.
‘I don’t usually jog, I run,’ she told him, curt to the point just short of rudeness because the man was causing so many strange reactions in her body. ‘I’m jogging out of politeness to keep up with you, although you obviously don’t want company, so I’ll keep running.’
And she ran on, building up speed until she was running almost flat out by the time she reached her goal.
But even at full speed she couldn’t outrun her awareness of Angus, stoically marching along the track behind her.
She settled on a grassy patch in the middle of the cemetery, beside a carved marble statue of a cherub that presided over the grave of a small boy who’d died back in 1892. His name had been Joshua and she’d been drawn to him although he’d lived for seven months, while her child, also a boy, had not lived at all.
And although her occasional chats with Joshua usually comforted her, today her thoughts were with her baby—Jasper she’d called him—and the way he’d felt in her arms as she’d held him that one time—
Had she been so lost in memories of that terrible day that she hadn’t seen Angus approaching?
‘Sorry I was grumpy,’ he said, hovering above her. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
He squatted down to read Joshua’s memorial.
‘I suppose parents in those days were aware their kids could die young,’ he added, settling himself comfortably on the grass beside her as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be sharing this particular patch of grass.
Her patch of grass!
Hers and Jasper’s...
‘Do you think that would have lessened their grief?’ she asked, handing him the water bottle she’d pulled from her small backpack, while certain she knew the answer to the question.
Nothing lessens grief like that...
He tipped his head back to drink and she saw the strong column of his neck, the slight bump of his Adam’s apple, and added the images to others that she had of Angus, stored away safely in the back of her mind, only taken out to study on very rare occasions.
‘No,’ he said, startling her out of her dreams as he returned the bottle, his fingers brushing hers, confusing her body with the intimacy of a single touch.
‘It could never be easy. I keep thinking of the families of those young people today. I’ve seen too many young people die, Kate, and the more I see, the more I think we owe them something. Owe it to them not to waste our own lives—to make the most of whatever time we have—not solely in pursuit of pleasure but both in work and play.’
Kate was silent for a moment, then admitted, ‘Alice was saying much the same thing to me this morning. It was why I couldn’t sleep.’
Was she saying what he thought she was? Angus hesitated, wondering if he could put it to the test.
Nothing ventured, he reminded himself.
‘So, if I asked very nicely, would you come to dinner with me?’
‘Is that you asking, or asking if you can ask?’
She smiled as she said it and Angus took it as a small victory.
He laughed.
‘I could say pretty please, but someone my size talking like that would be making a joke of it, and I’m not joking. I’d like to see you again, see you socially, nothing heavy or complicated, just a “‘getting to know you” kind of arrangement.’
He wasn’t really holding his breath, but studying the cherub on the grave gave him a chance to watch Kate’s face more surreptitiously than staring at it. He could almost see the argument going on in her head, read it in the shadows in her eyes—more grey today—reflecting the sea?
‘Okay,’ she finally said, turning to face him, ‘but it will be dependent on Blake and when he wants to do a debrief.’
She didn’t smile and something about the set of her face suggested she was pushing herself to accept.
Because she’d been a loner for a long time?
Because whatever had made her that way had left her scarred?
He was surprised to find that it hurt him to think of Kate hurting—scarred by something that had changed her so much.
‘I’m flexible,’ he said, ‘and as I’d like to be part of the debrief we can make it before or after—whatever works.’
She stood up and stretched, her long, lightly tanned legs mesmerising him, her body reminding him—
Nothing heavy or complicated, he reminded himself.
‘Are you walking on to Coogee?’ she asked, and he shook his head.
‘Then we might as well walk back together.’
Without waiting for a reply, she reached out a hand to pull him to his feet, and as he grasped it he wondered just how hard it would be to keep things light between them. Whatever magnetic force that had taken them to that dry bed in Cabin Thirty-Two—whispered to him by one of the staff as they saw the last of the injured and shocked guests off in the helicopter three years ago—was still alive and well between them. Or it was on his part, anyway.
* * *
The debrief, held late in the afternoon, eventually came to discuss whether the train driver should have been airlifted out immediately it was discovered there could be internal bleeding. The patient’s falling blood pressure had suggested that scenario, and although holding onto him until they’d known the condition of the passengers in the car hadn’t made any difference to his outcome, had the bleeding been worse, it could have been fatal.
Discussing it rationally, without the pressure of the emergency situation, was one of the ways they could improve their actions in the field, and was one of the important parts of the debrief.
‘I think we were right to wait,’ Kate said, although she’d been the one who’d asked for immediate evacuation. ‘He was relatively stable and we had the IO line open if he’d needed massive doses of drugs or blood products. The ambulance attendants had started fluid resus and he had a distal pulse. The internal bleeding could have been from a tear to his carotid from the seat belt crossing his shoulder, or damage to an internal vein or artery from the lap-band of the seatbelt. There was no palpable swelling in his abdomen to suggest a lap-band tear and his trachea showed no signs of deviation so if there was bleeding from the carotid it wasn’t affecting his airway.’
‘Yet you suggested lifting him sooner?’
Kate smiled at Blake.
‘Don’t we always think the patient we’re tending is the most important? Besides, it made minimal difference. The car was already out from under the road train and it was only a matter of minutes before you’d have ascertained if either of the occupants was alive. By the time we had Mr Grosvenor in the chopper you were able to tell us to take off.’
‘Thankfully,’