But he couldn’t stay. Not now she had her son back. For that would be admitting something he couldn’t begin to admit. A need of his own?
No.
‘Just sleep,’ he told her. ‘We have two doctors and six paramedics on duty, and there’s nothing for you to do but to care for your son.’
‘Our son,’ she whispered, and he felt his gut twist as he’d never felt it twist before.
‘Our son,’ he repeated, and he stood and stared down at them for a very long time.
Until Lily’s eyes closed again.
She held her son now and not him.
He was no longer needed.
He left them. Somehow.
When she appeared at the hospital the next morning Ben told her sternly she was to spend the next few days with her son, that she wasn’t to think of anything else, that he and Sam and Pieter had things under control. She looked at him blankly and left, but she didn’t go home. On this island everyone knew everyone’s whereabouts and Pieter told Ben what she was doing. She was working her way through the island homes, talking to each family about what had happened, and there was nothing Ben could do to stop her.
In medical school they’d been taught to stay emotionally detached. Emotional detachment on Kapua? The concept was ridiculous.
The concept of such involvement left Ben cold, but he couldn’t remonstrate. He didn’t understand why she needed to do this, but she did. And he had to take a back seat emotionally as well. She had enough emotional baggage already, without him adding more.
She’d need time to come to terms with Jacques’s betrayal.
For it had been betrayal. It had been confirmed that Lily’s fiancé had been in the group of insurgents who’d made the break away from the island.
‘He was with them,’ Ben had been told, and he’d had to say as much to Lily.
She hardly seemed to take it in. She desperately needed time.
So did he, he thought grimly as he worked on. How did you come to terms with fatherhood?
At least there was work enough to keep his mind busy elsewhere. Somehow the night of the hostage drama had changed the islanders’ distrust of outside doctors. Whether it was Sam’s big mouth or Pieter’s he wasn’t sure, but it was suddenly known everywhere that Ben was Benjy’s father. And if he was Benjy’s father then he had the right to protect Lily, to say, no, she couldn’t come, her first priority had to be Benjy. Astonishingly the consensus now was that he had the right to treat the islanders.
How did Lily manage? he asked himself as the days wore on. He hadn’t realised-had anyone?-what a medical centre Kapua had become. Lily was the island doctor not just for Kapua. She was island doctor for a score of smaller islands as well.
There was such need. In the three days after the hostage release he saw trauma as great as that caused by the uprising. Two men drowned on an outer island-they’d been fishing drunk and had ended up on rocks. Two boys survived the accident but they were now in hospital, one with a broken leg, one with multiple lacerations and shock. As well as that, he had viruses to deal with. He had infections. There was a manic depressive who’d refused to take her medication and was seeing aliens. There was a childbirth.
That was one where he’d really wanted Lily. The girl had gone into premature labour. The women caring for the expectant mother had rung the hospital to ask Lily to come, but they hadn’t said what the need was. When they’d heard Lily wasn’t available they’d simply hung up and tried to cope themselves. By the time they’d admitted defeat and called Ben, he’d had a premature baby of thirty weeks gestation on his hands.
It had still taken all his persuasive powers before mother and child had agreed to being flown to Fiji. ‘Lily will fix my baby when she’s back at work,’ the girl had said, desperately trying to ignore the fact that her baby had major breathing difficulties. In the end Ben had simply said, ‘Ruby, Lily can’t help you. You go to Fiji on the next flight, or you have a dead baby.’
Ruby had conferred with the island women and had finally agreed that, yes, she and her baby could go, but there had been an unspoken undercurrent. If Lily had been there, she’d have fixed the baby herself. What did you expect of a male doctor interfering in women’s business?
What Lily must have to cope with…
He ached to talk to her but he knew she had to have space. Somehow he let her be.
On the third evening he returned from an outer island late. An old lady with bone metastases had needed pain relief but she wasn’t stirring from home, and it had taken him hours to get her settled and pain free. Finally, exhausted, he headed for the mess tent to face a congealed dinner. He carried his unappealing plate over to an empty table-and Lily walked in.
She was such a different Lily to the Lily he’d met and loved at med school, he thought. Oh, she was still dressed as she always was, as she had been then, in light pants and simple T-shirt. Her curls were washed and shining and her features were those of the Lily of old. She was smiling, with a trace of the laughter he remembered so well.
But the strain behind her eyes was dreadful.
She had her Benjy back, but there were still losses that must ache, he thought. Kira had been like a mother to Lily since her own mother had died. He’d gleaned that much from island gossip. Lily’s grief for the old woman would be raw and deep.
There were few secrets on this island and wherever he went people talked of Lily. Even though he was taking away her load of acute medicine, he knew she was working with traumatised islanders, listening to them, being one of them, acting more effectively than any trauma counsellor his team could possibly provide.
‘Hi,’ she said, with that lovely trace of a French accent.
‘Hi,’ he said back, and attempted another mouthful of…What was this?
‘I hear you’ve been out saving my world.’ She sat and smiled across at him. ‘Thank you, Ben,’ she said, and his gut twisted, just like that. A simple thank you…
‘I haven’t saved everybody,’ he said. ‘I sent Ruby Mannering and her baby to Fiji. The women infer that if you’d been there no such trip would be necessary. And a couple of fishermen drowned on Lai. I know it’s unlikely, but I have the distinct impression if you’d been around you could have brought them back from the dead.’
Her smile faded. ‘I heard about them,’ she admitted. ‘Morons. And as for Ruby and the baby…’ Her smile returned again, just a little. ‘Sure, I would have sent her to Fiji and if I’d known she was pregnant I would have sent her earlier. But she didn’t tell me she was pregnant and for once the island’s grapevine let me down. I need to get over there and box some ears.’
‘I can imagine you boxing ears.’
Her smile returned. ‘You’d better believe it. If they want me to care for them then they have to tell me what’s going on. I have enough problems without unexpected births.’
‘You have enough problems anyway,’ he said gently. ‘This set-up is impossible.’
‘It is what it is,’ Ben,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in questioning it.’
There was a moment’s silence. So much to say. Ben attempted another bite of whatever lay on his plate-maybe lasagne?-and gave up. He pushed the plate aside and the mess sergeant came over to collect it.
‘Not hungry?’
‘No,’ Ben lied. ‘They fed me out on Lai.’
There was another silence. They were alone in the mess tent now, apart from the two men behind the workbench. It was hot in there, and still.
‘You want to go for a walk?’ Lily suggested.
‘Where’s Benjy?’
‘Asleep. Henri’s dad, Jean, is staying at my house. Henri’s getting on well, but Jean’s having nightmares. Sam’s sending Henri to Sydney in the next couple of days for reconstructive surgery but meanwhile Benjy and I are helping keep Jean’s nightmares at bay.’
Here it was again. Lily, taking on the troubles of her world.