‘CHRISTCHURCH HAS BEEN rocked by the biggest earthquake we’ve had for some time. Just after five o’clock this morning a quake measuring seven-point-one on the Richter scale was recorded; its epicentre was forty kilometres west of the city and it occurred at a depth of eleven kilometres. Several old buildings have collapsed but, while there have been numerous injuries, there are no reported fatalities at this stage. Injuries have been caused by falling masonry and glass but—just repeating—there are no fatalities at present. We’re crossing live now to our reporter …’
Maia Tahana pulled the headphones out of her ears as she walked through the automatic doors of the emergency department of the Canterbury Children’s Hospital, cutting the radio journalist off midsentence. The story of the quake wasn’t news to her; she’d been woken by it, jolted out of a comfortable sleep by a deep bass rumble and the sound of breaking glass. Her heart had hammered in her chest as the house shook and the windows rattled in their frames. It had sounded as if a freight train was hurtling past the front door but Maia had known that was impossible. The closest thing to the house was the Pacific Ocean, fifty metres away on the other side of the sand dunes that ran at the bottom of the garden—but it hadn’t been the pounding of the surf that had shaken the house and its foundations.
The noise had been frightening and the movement of the house disturbing but it wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. Maia had lived in Christchurch, New Zealand, all her life; she’d been through this before. Christchurch experienced thousands of earthquakes each year. She remembered hearing it was somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen thousand, which seemed like an enormous number, but she knew that not all of them were felt by people. Some were only detected by seismic equipment, but it was still a huge number, and it wasn’t unusual around here to feel the ground moving beneath your feet.
Minor quakes were something that barely caused the locals to blink, let alone miss a beat. If the power wasn’t interrupted, if no one was hurt and if there was no major damage, then the tremors were mostly ignored. But this one had been big and much closer to the surface. There had been a couple of smaller aftershocks and Maia was pleased to hear there had been no fatalities. Perhaps she could expect a regular shift, if ever there was such a thing for an emergency-department nurse in a busy paediatric hospital.
The emergency department seemed quiet when Maia walked in but she was superstitious enough not to say anything. The moment someone mentioned the ‘q’ word always seemed to be the moment all hell broke loose. She decided to grab a coffee while she had a chance. She needed a double dose of caffeine after being woken by the quake. She and her sisters had been sweeping up broken crockery and glass since four this morning and she hadn’t had a chance to go back to sleep. She checked her watch. She had time.
She walked into the empty kitchen and took a coffee cup from the cupboard. She had her back to the kitchen door but she heard it open as she lifted a new pod from the box on the bench beside the coffee machine. The room filled with the scent of cedar wood and citrus—grapefruit, not oranges. The scent was familiar to her. It was the scent of an ex-boyfriend. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the memories flood back. A slight smile played across her lips as she remembered Henry.
She opened her eyes and mentally shook herself. She didn’t have time to waste on old memories. She dropped the coffee pod into the machine, waiting for the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to clear her mind. Henry was a long time ago. He was her past. Well and truly. Her life had moved on. She had changed. Life had changed her.
But as she pushed the button to start the coffee-making process she could have sworn she heard his voice.
‘Maia?’
The rounded vowels of his English accent were instantly recognisable. No one else made her name sound like he did—sexy and desirable, full of promise and suggestion.
Her imagination was working overtime.
‘Maia?’ His voice repeated her name and this time she turned around.
Three years evaporated in the blink of an eye as her past collided with her present.
Henry was standing in front of her.
He looked exactly the same: tall, dark and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His features were faultlessly symmetrical. His square jaw was chiselled and his full lips were perfectly shaped. His indigo-blue eyes were the exact same shade as the chest feathers of the pukeko bird. He stood over six feet and he was solid, but in a lean, muscular way. Not fat. He looked just like she remembered—his hair was cut shorter than usual, his dark curls tamed, but he was otherwise unchanged. He was incredibly gorgeous and he was standing five feet away when she’d thought he was on the other side of the world.
‘Henry? What are you doing here?’
She wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if he really was real, to make sure it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her but, if it was, it was extremely good. She resisted the temptation. She wasn’t sure what would be considered appropriate behaviour.
‘I’m back.’ He smiled at her as he gave her his answer and Maia’s heart skipped a beat. He had a little dimple in the centre of his chin that disappeared when he smiled—how had she forgotten about that?
She could see he was back. What she wanted to know was why and when and how long for but all she could do was stare at him.
‘I didn’t know you worked here,’ he said to her.
Maia nodded. Her mouth was dry and her tongue appeared to have glued itself to the roof of her mouth. She forced it free and swallowed as she tried to moisten her throat so she could speak. ‘I left the Queen Liz eighteen months ago,’ she told him.
When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago Maia had been working in the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital—they both had—but she had quit that job eighteen months ago after her father had passed away. She hadn’t wanted to nurse adults anymore; she’d needed a break and the Children’s Hospital had needed staff.
‘I’m sorry about your dad,’ Henry said, putting two and two together with the timing. ‘He was a good man.’
Henry had always had an uncanny ability to read her thoughts and it seemed as if that hadn’t changed.
‘Thank you,’ she said but she didn’t want to think about her father. She didn’t want to think about the last few months of his life. Her dad had suffered a stroke and Maia had helped to nurse him. It had been a difficult and emotional time, and his death had hit her hard. She had spent a vast amount of the past three years grieving. First for Henry and then for her father. She was only just coming to terms with it all now.
The coffee machine beeped at her and she turned away, grateful for the distraction, grateful for the reason to break eye contact and the chance to gather her thoughts. But her first thought was about Henry.
Why was he back?
The comms system crackled overhead. ‘All ED staff to triage.’ Maia heard the voice of Brenda, the ED director, summoning the staff.
Her hand shook as she added sugar to her coffee and picked up the cup. Henry held the door open and fell into step beside her. She wasn’t going to escape the past that easily.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago she had never expected to see him again. He had never mentioned coming back; he’d made her no promises. He’d gone off to save the world, leaving her behind, and Maia could only assume that she didn’t feature in his future plans at all. That had been a bitter pill to swallow but she’d managed to do it eventually.
‘I’m doing project work in disaster management and the New Zealand government offered me a grant to come back. I’ll be looking at the systems in place in the hospitals and how they would cope with mass-casualty incidents. But I’ll be attached to the Children’s. I thought it was an offer too good to refuse.’
That surprised her. Not his project choice—he was an emergency-medicine specialist and she’d known about his interest