Beyond the confines of the bus, night had fallen completely now. The sodden blanket of cloud overhead let no moonlight through, and the rain was relentless, noisy and thick and buffeted by wind. There was a cyclone hovering out to sea, apparently, and people were saying it was getting closer and stronger, and might hit the coast. In these conditions, you could easily believe it.
The bus rounded a bend and Felixx slid toward Janey, still fast asleep. She pillowed his head on her shoulder and wondered yet again why he wouldn’t speak.
It wasn’t a defiant silence, she thought. It came from…fear?
Or grief. He’d just lost his mother.
Oh, lord, could she herself possibly give him what he needed? At thirty-four, she’d never had a child. She loved him, but she didn’t know him, because she and Alice had lived so far from each other since he was born, and Alice had made so little effort to keep in touch. ‘I can’t deal with cities any more,’ she’d said. ‘I need the wilderness.’
Luke Bresciano was Felixx’s father. Janey needed to at least consider the possibility that he might want his son, despite everything Alice had said to the contrary. And she had to consider that Luke might be the best person to have him.
Was she doing the right thing?
Felixx felt warm against her side, and it was getting rather steamy in the damp bus. They rounded another bend and the bus skidded suddenly, bringing forth a chorus of alarmed gasps and cries.
‘Sorry, folks,’ the driver called. ‘It’s evil out there.’
How much longer till they reached the coast? They were late, surely. Should have been there by now. Janey had counted on arriving in time to organise motel accommodation for tonight—this whole trip hadn’t even been on her agenda this time yesterday. She couldn’t just show up on Luke Bresciano’s doorstep without warning.
Stay asleep, little man, so at least you’re fresh when we get there…
She put her arm around his little shoulder, thinking that he seemed so small for his age, loved but possibly not as well nourished as he should have been. They were strict vegans at Mundarri, there wasn’t a lot of money on hand for fancy nutritional supplements, and it took a great deal of commitment to provide adequate nutrition for a child’s growing body on that kind of diet.
His clothing, too…There was a hole in his sneaker that someone—Alice?—had tried to disguise with a cheerful picture of an orange clownfish. And there were mosquito bites, fresh ones and old ones, all over his skin. Alice’s rainforest paradise had had its downside.
Where was the best place for this little boy? Should Janey have taken him back to Darwin with her and contacted Luke later on? But she didn’t want Felixx’s future hanging in limbo for months on end.
Her heart hurt again. What was the best thing for this precious waif of a child?
And then, right in the middle of the wash of churning emotion, the bus gave a tremendous, unexpected lurch. There was no more room for thought. A wild lashing of rain and wind slammed into the vehicle’s side and it began to lean and slide. Outside, there came a violent, unearthly roaring sound. The bus driver yelled and swore. Couldn’t he get the steering back under control? Come on…Come on…
Janey tried to keep hold of Felixx with one hand while fending them both off the seat-back in front with the other. The bus slid and heaved. She screamed. Chaos erupted, and then blackness.
‘WHO do we still have left?’ Luke asked wearily, craning his head for a quick look through the half-open door of the back room at the Bellambour Post Office and General Store.
‘Only three,’ Nurse Marcia Flynn promised. ‘Want to see the kid next? He’s ten, he’s doing pretty well, but I think that arm is broken.’
‘Displaced?’
‘Not that I could see. I’m just going on how much it’s hurting him.’
‘Normally, I’d tell the parents to take him into Crocodile Creek and get it X-rayed,’ Luke said. He was an orthopaedic surgeon, he didn’t believe in letting bones heal crooked.
But conditions were far from normal in the wake of Cyclone Willie, as they all knew. Even supposing the ten-year-old’s parents still had an operational vehicle, which some people didn’t, the roads were a mess, and southbound traffic ran in a slow, continuous stream as people evacuated the cyclone-ravaged coast of Far North Queensland. The hospital was running around the clock, as Luke himself had been doing for three days, living on snatched sleep and even sketchier meals.
He’d only made it back to the doctors’ house for the occasional change of underwear. He’d even showered and slept at the hospital, and had attempted to tune out the mess of stories and rumours that swirled in the cyclone’s wake. Out of stubbornness, or something else?
Grace O’Riordan was in the ICU while Harry Blake looked like death warmed up, Georgie Turner had been swept off her feet by that visiting American neurosurgeon, Alistair, while the two of them had been rescuing Georgie’s seven-year-old stepbrother, a dog and another kid from the very jaws of the storm.
The kid.
Luke was a self-destructive idiot for even thinking about the kid…
Now, here he was in the post office of this little town an hour north of Crocodile Creek at what the local State Emergency Service had turned into a makeshift medical clinic. So that the citizens of Bellambour who weren’t planning to leave the town could see a doctor if they needed to.
Charles Wetherby had virtually ordered Luke to take some time off that morning. ‘You made it to Mike and Emily’s wedding celebration for, what, twenty minutes, the other night?’ Crocodile Creek Hospital’s medical director had accused. ‘Just long enough to get Alistair Carmichael’s blood up when you danced with Georgie. And you’ve been working nonstop since. You need to get out of this place and breathe some air.’
‘I’m fine, Charles.’ Gritted teeth.
‘You’re not, but I can tell you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I don’t want any time off.’ Not until Janey Stafford had regained consciousness and he would hopefully be able to see her. Until then, he’d take any distractions he could.
And he wouldn’t think about the kid.
‘Would it help if I sent you on a busman’s holiday?’ Charles had asked.
‘If you’ll tell me what that is.’
‘Hmm, I keep forgetting that anyone under thirty-five only learns American slang. I’ll send you out on a clinic run, so you can at least have a change of scene while you work yourself into the ground. That’s what I’m trying to say.’
‘That’d be great…’ he’d said, meaning it.
‘Check the broken arm out the old-fashioned way, by feel,’ Marcia said now.
‘And then a backslab and a bandage,’ Luke agreed, dragging his focus back. ‘Shouldn’t be a tough case. If it is displaced, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’
‘If it’s not washed away, like half the other bridges around here.’
He gave a dutiful laugh. It came out rusty, so different from the charm-laden sound he’d once used to such good effect. He sighed. ‘OK, I’ll see him next.’
‘And then the old man, and last of all you can get to the guy who’s doing all the complaining!’
‘You’re