Children were not meant to be this still. This quiet.
The Serendipity had anchored just two days ago. She’d taken the children in her class to see it. The vast vessel, a floating hospital ship, sat there in the waters of the Mozambique Channel, waiting to give aid to those who needed it for free.
The children in her class had drawn pictures of the boat, and she’d used the lesson to teach them about kindness and giving. About helping others. They’d even been able to go on board briefly and talk to one or two of the nurses, who had generously given their time.
Maria and Rob were from Ireland and were volunteers, helping out on board for six months before returning to their paying jobs back home.
Back in class, she had pinned the children’s pictures to the peeling walls of the classroom, instantly brightening up the place with their happy colours. That had been the day she’d first found herself worrying about Abeje.
Abeje was Tasha’s star pupil. She tried not to have favourites. All the orphaned children in her class were special, brilliant and curious. But Abeje was different.
She had been orphaned at a young age after both her parents had died, and the only home she’d ever known was the Sunshine Children’s Centre. She’d never had a proper family, but she was bright and intelligent. A deep thinker. A philosopher. And she wanted to be a doctor.
The similarities between them had struck Tasha hard. She recognised that gleam in her eyes. That yearning and thirst for knowledge. To do well. She wanted to let Abeje know that she could be anything she chose to be—that Tasha would help give her that chance. That the whole world could be hers as long as she pursued a passion.
But on the day they’d visited the Serendipity—the day that Tasha would have expected Abeje to be at her most attentive, her most intrigued and excited—Abeje had seemed somehow off. A little listless. A little tired, and complaining of a headache.
All children got sick. It was inevitable. So when Abeje hadn’t come to school the next day Tasha had figured she was probably just taking a day to recuperate. Knowing that Abeje had no mother or father to soothe her brow, she’d thought it might be a nice gesture to go to the children’s centre and check on her, take her some pretty flowers to brighten her room. Just to let her know that she was being thought of and worried about.
But the second she’d seen Abeje, semi-conscious and sweating, Tasha had known that there was something to be worried about. With the matron’s blessing, she’d scooped Abeje up into her car and had screeched away in a trail of thick red dust in an effort to get to the hospital ship.
The vehicle hit a pothole and Abeje moaned as the car bounced them around in their seats. Tasha risked a quick glance. The poor girl was drenched through with sweat and the sun was glaring down at them, burning everything it cast its gaze upon.
‘Not far now, sweetie! We’re nearly there...just stay with me!’
Horrible thoughts were rushing through her head—meningitis, encephalitis. Maybe a waterborne infection? A slideshow of horrific images passed through her brain, courtesy of the books she’d once studied.
She could smell the docks as they inched closer. The heat, the brine, the dust. The fish caught during that morning’s outing were only now being brought back to port. Fruit, meat, chickens in cages were all piled high, the chickens squawking and flapping, the busy trade causing human traffic that she had to struggle to get through.
She cursed quietly, biting her lip, hitting the horn in frustration as the giant sides of the ship loomed over her—so near and yet so far. The car was surrounded by a thick crowd of people and she was making minimum progress.
Growling, she stopped the car, put her keys in her pocket, scooped Abeje into her arms and began to push her way through the throngs of people.
‘Excuse me! Sorry! Can I just squeeze through?’
Suddenly she was at the gangplank, Abeje heavy in her arms.
She ran up it, panting in the heat, sweat prickling her underarms, her back. The coolness of the ship’s interior was welcoming. The air-conditioning a blessing. For her, at least.
Desperately she tried to remember her way around the ship from the brief tour they’d taken a few days ago. The emergency clinic was down this corridor.
Hefting Abeje into a firmer grip, she ran down it and burst through the double doors into the clinic, where there was a twenty-bed ward. ‘I need help!’ she yelled at Maria and Rob, who were making up a bed with new sheets.
Tasha ran to a spare bed and laid Abeje down upon it as gently as she could. The two nurses moved towards the bed.
‘She’s sick! I don’t know what’s wrong, but I think it’s serious! Please help her!’
She stepped back as the two nurses rushed forward. It was hard to fight the urge to do something herself. To let go. To give her precious charge up into a stranger’s hands.
‘What’s going on?’
The male voice instantly cut through the haste. Authoritative. English. The sort of voice that made you turn around and pay attention to the speaker.
It was a voice she’d heard before. One that took her right back to her childhood.
To that moment.
Him.
It can’t be...
Surely she was wrong? Memories were fickle, and she’d done her level best to forget his very existence. How he looked. How he sounded. The voice that she had once closed her eyes to listen to.
Tasha glanced over her shoulder...
At the man that had once torn her heart in two.
Only now her heart was galloping, her head was pounding with incredulity and her mouth was dry, clogged with all the dust from the road. She was aware of sweat drenching her skin.
How can it be him?
How is he here? In this place?
They’d been children. She just thirteen years old. Him three years older. And it might have been an adolescent crush, something silly, but she remembered the pain and the humiliation all too well, even now. It was like being that teenage girl all over again.
‘Quinn?’
The doctor frowned at her briefly, clearly wondering how she knew his name, but then his attention was returned to Abeje, who lay still on the bed. ‘Tell me her symptoms. When it began.’
Tasha blinked hard, still not quite believing that he was here. Of all the places in the world he might have gone he was here. On this ship.
As if from a world away, unable to tear her gaze from his face, she began to relay Abeje’s symptoms, stunned into numbness and a creeping sense of hurt. The box she’d put him in, and all her feelings about him—the box that she’d locked and hidden away for all these years—was finally beginning to crack open, creating a canyon of a scar upon her heart.
* * *
There was something about the tall blonde who had just appeared in his clinic. Something weirdly familiar. But he didn’t have time to place her. He’d thought he knew most of the English people here in Ntembe, but obviously not.
Perhaps she was new? She had corkscrew honeyed curls, deep blue eyes and a mask of sun-kissed freckles across her nose. Cute.
But he didn’t have time to think about her, much as he would like to. She wasn’t the important one. The most important female at this point in time was the semi-conscious one lying on the bed—not the one who somehow knew his name.
Quinn