‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Silence.
‘Does your mother know you’re gay?’ Ryan asked, and Ian shook his head.
‘No. That’s why, well, I live in Sydney.’
‘You don’t think it might be kinder to tell her?’
‘I don’t want people here to know,’ Ian said explosively. ‘They’re so damned judgemental.’
‘They’re not, you know,’ Abbey said softly. ‘I think you’ve forgotten all the good things about small towns, Ian Miller. You and Ryan both. You left here when you were fifteen and seventeen respectively and you’ve hardly been back since. But Sapphire Cove… Well, one of the things it’s really good at is protecting its own. You belong here, Ian. You won’t be tarred or feathered by your family when they know.’
‘How do you know?’
Abbey tilted her head. ‘Well, for a start I’d imagine many of them have guessed you’re gay already. Ryan had, and he’s working on old memories. Maybe you’re underestimating them. Tell them, and see if I’m not wrong.’
‘But AIDS… Hell, Abbey, I’m not just confessing I’m gay. I have AIDS.’
‘At the risk of repeating something that’s been said time and time again, AIDS is a word. Not a sentence,’ Abbey told him. ‘You tell him about the current treatments, Ryan.’
‘Ian, for a start you don’t have AIDS,’ Ryan said steadily, ‘you’re HIV positive. So just stop being so damned dramatic and negative and listen.’
Then Ryan outlined the treatments now favoured in the USA-and Abbey was stunned.
Ryan had certainly done his homework. This wasn’t a brief description of AIDS treatments at the superficial level most doctors could give. Some time between the time Abbey had left Ryan last night and now, Ryan had read every piece of pertinent modern literature on the current treatments and prognoses for AIDS. Ian had a sharp lawyer’s mind and he threw questions at Ryan almost faster than Abbey could think them up-and Ryan calmly answered every one.
‘Look, mate, the information you’re working on is years out of date,’ he said firmly. ‘The breakthrough in AIDS research has been monumental. You’ll no longer be treated with just the one drug. There’s a real mix. The side-effects of the combined therapies are minimal and life expectancy is increasing dramatically-to a stage now where the medical profession is refusing to make predictions on life expectancy at all.
‘They’re cautiously optimistic that in cases like yours, where you haven’t converted to full-blown AIDS, then that conversion may never happen.’
‘A couple of years ago we were saying life expectancy was up to five years,’ he continued. ‘Now… now we don’t endline it at all. Every case is different. The life expectancy is stretching out and out and we’re hopeful that many cases like yours will never develop at all into full-blown AIDS. There’s millions being poured into AIDS funding and new breakthroughs are happening all the time.
‘Maybe, well, just maybe, given the present rate of learning, you’re more likely to get run over by a bus than to die in the next ten years from the disease you have.’
Ryan smiled.
‘And that would have been a waste of a funeral if you’d happened to bump yourself off last night-now, wouldn’t it?’
Ian stared at Ryan. His face was intent and fearful, as though he was afraid to let himself hope.
‘You’re kidding.’
‘It’s all here, mate.’ Ryan produced page after page of copious notes. ‘I thought you wouldn’t believe me so I had a colleague fax through the literature.’
Ian stared up, unbelieving. He lifted the first sheet and read. Then the second. And then he lifted the whole pile. Some of the greyness eased from his face, and all of a sudden he looked lighter and younger. A life sentence had just been lifted-and he might just choose to live.
His face clouded again.
‘My job, though,’ he said fretfully. ‘I’m a corporate lawyer for an international company. We’re required to have a full medical every year as part of our superannuation scheme. When they know, there’s no way they’ll keep me on.’
‘Then quit,’ Ryan said promptly-so promptly that Abbey blinked.
‘Yeah? And do what?’
‘Do an Abbey.’ Ryan looked across to Abbey and his smile gentled. ‘Hell, Ian, while you and I have been out in the big wide world, making our millions, Abbey’s been here holding Sapphire Cove together with a piece of string. And the locals love her for it I’ve been asking around this morning about lawyers in Sapphire Cove. There’s one. He’s about eighty and is capable of signing affidavits if someone holds his wrist and the magnifying glass-and that’s the extent of it
‘If you were to come back… Well, like Abbey, the locals would fall on your neck and ask questions later. Maybe it’d work long term and maybe it wouldn’t, but in the short term I think Sapphire Cove might be just what you need.’
‘Come back…’
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t-at least for a while,’ Ryan said. ‘You’re emotionally and physically exhausted. It doesn’t take Abbey’s or my medical qualifications to tell us that. You’ve been living a nightmare, and a stressful corporate job with an axe hanging over your head isn’t what you need. So why not come home for a while and see if Sapphire Cove can’t work its magic on you?’ He smiled. ‘Ian, Abbey and I saw a turtle laying her eggs last night. Why don’t you stick around and see those eggs hatch?’
‘A turtle?’ Ian pushed himself up on his pillows. Like Ryan and Abbey and most kids around Sapphire Cove, Ian had done his own turtle-hunting. His eyes lit up like magic. ‘Where?’
‘A mile south of where we found you, filling yourself with exhaust fumes. If you like, I’ll run you out later and show you.’
Ian stared, and then let the doubt creep back. ‘You don’t have to do that. Hell, Ryan, I don’t need patronising.’
‘And I don’t need humouring,’ Ryan said mildly. ‘If you don’t want to come then say so. I’m going out to check anyway. I’ll stick my head in here when I leave and see if you’re up to a drive.’ His smile faded and he fixed Ian with a challenging look. ‘Now, Abbey and I have work to do and you need to think. Any questions?’
‘Maybe in a while,’ Ian told him slowly. He stared down at the sheaf of papers on his bed. ‘When I’ve read this.’
‘We’ll leave you to it, then,’ Ryan told him. ‘Take it that we’ll discharge you when you’ve summarised the lot!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Ryan, you sounded almost homesick,’ Abbey told him as they left the room together. ‘Talking Ian into coming back here to work… ’
‘If he agrees it’d be the best thing for him.’
‘But he’s a corporate lawyer. His mum says he spends half his life overseas on one international deal after another. How could someone like that be happy in Sapphire Cove?’
Abbey glanced uncertainly at Ryan. She’d once known this man so well, and now she knew him hardly at all. He’d sounded convincing in there, talking Ian into a life in Sapphire Cove. Yet… Yet Ryan had left it without a backward glance.
‘Ian’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He’s left here, Ryan, and I don’t think you can come back again. To be content with Sapphire Cove after you’ve seen the big wide wodd…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, you’d know how hard that could be.’
Silence.
Ryan didn’t answer. For the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Abbey looked at him for a long moment-and then turned away from his side to go and visit Janet.
Sam Henry arrived back at Sapphire Cove an hour later, and within two minutes of arriving he demanded to see Janet.
‘You don’t think we should get you settled into a ward and give you a rest first?’ Ryan asked doubtfully. Sam had come though the operation with flying colours. Now ten days post-op, he was looking good but it was a long ambulance drive from Cairns.