Except that around the next corner his heart froze for a millisecond to see the morning midwife crouched on the path in front of him.
He quickened his pace. ‘Are you okay?’
She turned to look up at him, cradling something brightly coloured against her chest, and with the shift of her shoulders he saw the bird cupped in her hands. ‘She flew into that window and knocked herself out.’
The lorikeet, blue-headed with a red and yellow chest, lay limp with lime-green wings folded back in her hands. A most flaccid bird.
Still, the red beak and chest shuddered gently so it wasn’t dead. ‘How do you know it’s a girl?’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. But he’d actually thought it was her that had been hurt and relief had made him stupid.
She must have thought he was stupid too. ‘I didn’t actually lift her legs and look. Not really of major importance, is it?’
Just a little bit of impatience and, surprisingly, it was good to be at the receiving end of a bit of healthy sarcasm. So much better than unending sympathy.
He held up his hands in surrender and Piper’s voice floated over both of them from his back. ‘Dad, Dad, Dad!’
The girl sucked in her breath and he could see her swan-like neck was tinged with pink. ‘Sorry. Night duty ill temper.’
‘My bad. All mine. Stupid thing to say. Can you stand up? It’s tricky to crouch down with Piper on my back. Let’s have a look at her.’
The morning midwife rose fluidly, calves of steel obviously; even he was impressed with her grace—must be all those uphill walks she did. ‘She’s not fluttering her wings,’ she said, empathy lacing a voice that, had it not been agitated, would have soothed the bird. He shook himself. She was just being a typical midwife. That was how most of them had spoken to him when Clancy had disappeared.
‘Still breathing.’ He stroked the soft feathers as the bird lay in her small hands. ‘She’s limp, but I think if you put her in a box for a couple of hours in the dark, she’ll rouse when she’s had a sleep to get over the shock.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I do. She’s not bleeding. Just cover the box with a light cloth so she can let you know she can fly away when she’s ready.’
‘Do I have to put food or water in there?’
‘Not food. A little water as long as she doesn’t fall into it and drown.’ He grimaced at another stupid comment.
She grinned at him and suddenly the day was much brighter than it had been. ‘Are you a vet?’
‘No.’
‘Just a bird wrangler?’
She was a stunner. He stepped back. ‘One of my many talents. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Bye.’
She looked at him oddly. Not surprising. He was odd. He walked on up the hill.
Her voice followed him. ‘Bye, Piper.’ He heard Piper chuckle.
Trina
TRINA FINISHED HER night shift at seven a.m. on Friday and picked up her mini-tote to sling it on her shoulder. Her last night done, except for emergencies, and she did a little skip as she came out of the door. At first, she’d been reluctant to take the night shift to day shift change that Ellie had offered her because change could be scary, but it had started the whole paradigm inversion that her life had needed. Look out daylight. Here she comes.
Yes. She’d come a long way in almost two years since Ed had died.
Not just because on Monday morning she’d return as acting Midwifery Unit Manager, an unexpected positive career move for Trina at Lighthouse Bay Maternity.
But things had changed.
Her grief stayed internal, or only rarely escaped under her pillow when she was alone in her croft on the cliff.
And since Ellie’s wedding last year she’d begun to think that maybe, some time in the future, she too could look at being friends with a man. If the right one came along.
Not a relationship yet. That idea had been so terrifying, almost like PTSD—the fear of imagining what if history repeated itself; what if that immense pain of loss and grief hit her again? What then?
She’d been catatonic with that thought and to divert herself she’d begun to think of all the other things that terrified her. She’d decided to strengthen her Be Brave muscle.
Last week she’d had her first scuba lesson. Something that had fascinated but petrified her since she’d watched the movie Finding Nemo with the daughter of a friend. And in the sparkling cove around the corner from Lighthouse Bay the kindly instructor had been so reassuring, so patient, well... Maybe she’d go back on Saturday for another lesson.
And when she’d mastered that she was going out on a day of deep-sea fishing. The captain’s wife had not long delivered a late-in-life baby and Trina had been the midwife. Even though he’d fainted again, he’d promised her a day of deep-sea fishing when he felt better. She’d bought seasickness bands and stored them in her drawer just in case.
She wasn’t sure about the parachuting. The girls at work had all joined the idea factory and brochures and social media tags of extreme sports and adventure holidays appeared like magic in her pigeonhole and on her private page. Parachuting? She didn’t think so but she’d worry about that later.
Her aim to do one challenge a month seemed possible to allay the fear that she was relying on work to be her whole world. Though not too adventurous—she didn’t want to kill herself. Not now.
Her friends were cheering. Thinking of the midwives of Lighthouse Bay...well, that made her whole world warm into a rosy glow. A fiercely loyal flotsam of women tossed here by the fickle cruelty of life, forging into a circle of hands supporting birthing women and each other. All acutely aware of how fortunate they were to have found the magic of the bay.
There was something healing about that crescent of sand that led to the cliffs.
A mystical benevolence about the soaring white lighthouse on the tallest point that looked benignly over the tiny hamlet of coloured houses and shone reassuring light.
And the pretty pastel abodes like a quaint European seaside town were a delight, a new trend that had taken off with the gentle crayon façades dipping in colour like playful toes into the sea.
Crazy coloured houses, and if she could do all those crazy-coloured feats of bravery then just maybe she could be brave enough to begin a real conversation with a man. Like yesterday. She’d almost forgotten the handsome dad was a man when she’d snapped at him. They’d almost had a whole conversation. She wouldn’t mind another one so he didn’t think she was a short-tempered shrew but she had been concerned about the bird. The one that had flown away two hours later, just like he said it would.
If she could talk to a man she could try again to go out with one. At least once. She’d been turning them down for six months now. None of them had been Ed.
Now there were more midwives around to lessen the on-call restrictions. Four new midwives had come on board to swell their ranks with the shift to a midwife-led unit. They still had old Dr Southwell in the hospital for non-maternity patients and maternity emergencies, but all the midwives had moved to