for a minute but the bird didn’t move.
Hadn’t Lily picked up a dead bird the other day?
And Ben, one of the rangers who was sick, had also been collecting dead birds.
‘I was just going to page you.’ Grace greeted Beth with this information as she walked into the hospital section of the medical centre. ‘He slept quite well for an hour, then woke up agitated. Actually, I’m not sure he’s even fully awake. Luke’s here, but he’s with Mr Woods, the man you admitted this afternoon with a suspect MI.’
Luke Bresciano was a doctor with the Crocodile Creek hospital and rescue service and, like all the Crocodile Creek staff, he did rostered duty at the medical centre. Officially he was the doctor on duty tonight, but Beth had admitted Robbie, talking to him about his family back home as she’d examined him, and the little boy had relaxed in her presence. If he was distressed, he might react better to her than to the other staff.
She went into the room where he tossed and turned feverishly on the bed, a small figure, his left leg and arm distorted by the cerebral palsy that had also affected his lungs, so even a mild infection could result in respiratory problems.
‘Hey, Robbie!’ she said quietly, sitting by the bed and taking his hand in hers, smoothing back his floppy dark hair from his forehead, talking quietly to him.
He opened his eyes and looked at her but she knew he wasn’t seeing her, lost as he was in some strange world his illness had conjured up.
‘Go to sleep,’ she told him, gently smoothing his eyes shut with the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll stay with you, little man. I’ll look after you.’
And holding his hand, she began to sing, very softly, a funny little song she remembered someone singing when she’d been very young, about an echo.
Had the song sprung from her subconscious as a result of seeing Angus—as a result of that echo from the past?
Surely not, but seeing Angus had unsettled her so she sang to calm herself as well as Robbie, changing to other songs, silly songs, singing quietly until the panicky feeling in her chest subsided and the peace she’d found on this island haven returned.
So what if Angus was here? She was over Angus. Well, if not over him, at least she’d managed to tuck him away into some far corner of her mind—like mementos tucked away in an attic. Could memories gather enough cobwebs to become invisible?
To be forgotten?
Not when they still caused pain in her heart.
‘Bother Angus!’ she muttered, then hurriedly checked that her words hadn’t disturbed Robbie.
They hadn’t, but what made her really angry was that the peace she’d found in this place—even in so short a time—could be so fragile that seeing Angus had disturbed it.
Here, working in a medical centre with a kids’ camp attached, she’d thought she’d found the perfect job. Caring for the children, playing with them, sharing their experiences, she was finally getting over the loss of her own child—her and Angus’s child. In the three years since Bobby had died and she and Angus had parted, this was the closest she’d come to finding happiness again. Ongoing happiness, not just moments or days of it.
At first she’d wondered how she’d cope with the kids, especially with the fact that many of the children at the camp had cerebral palsy, the condition Bobby had suffered from. But from the day of their arrival she’d known that didn’t matter. Just as Bobby, young though he’d been, only three when he’d died, had fought against the limitations of his condition—severe paralysis—so these kids, whether asthmatics, diabetics, in remission from cancer or with CP, got on with their lives with cheerful determination, relishing every fun-filled moment of camp life, and drawing staff and volunteers into the joy with them.
Yes, it was the perfect job, in a perfect place—a tropical island paradise. What more could a woman want?
The L-word sneaked into her mind.
Pathetic, that’s what she was!
Had it been seeing Angus that had prompted such a thought?
Of course it must be. Seeing Angus had raised all kinds of spectres, weird spectres considering Angus had never loved her—she’d known that from the start—although back then she had allowed herself to dream…
Not any more!
She pushed her thoughts back into the cobwebby attic. So what if he was on the island? He was at the resort at the other end, nowhere near the camp or medical centre, so there was no reason for them to meet again.
None!
Except that the island was no longer a haven, she admitted to herself in the early hours of the morning when Robbie slept but her own fears came to the fore, tiredness magnifying them.
She’d tried to tell herself she was unsettled because of the Angus incident—because of his escape from the attic of her mind—but, in fact, it was a combination of things that had her so uptight.
So desperately worried!
Seeing Angus had brought back memories of Bobby’s death. Bobby had died of a massive chest infection they’d at first thought was simply flu.
With vulnerable children was there ever ‘simple’ flu?
And then there were the birds…
Her island paradise had become a place of sick children and dead birds!
The combination of words played again and again—like an echo—in Beth’s head as day dawned, grey and wary, outside the window. Now, tired though she was, she tried to put aside emotion and just list the facts.
The celebration of the opening the previous day had been dampened by the fact that the ten-bed hospital attached to the medical centre was half-full. Sick adults were bad enough, but the sick children?
Lily, Jack and Robbie hospitalised here in the medical centre, Danny not well last night. For these children a simple cold was a big concern—flu was even worse.
Bird flu!
Not a fact but an inescapable thought…
The feared words hadn’t yet been spoken but Beth imagined she could hear them murmuring on the soft tropical wind that blew across the island and whispering at her from the palm fronds. The worrying thing, as far as Beth could see, was that no one was doing anything to find out if this might be the flash point of a pandemic.
Charles Wetherby, head of Crocodile Creek Hospital and the prime mover in expanding the medical presence on Wallaby Island, would normally have taken charge, but he’d been distracted by the official events and the dignitaries attending them, to say nothing of the fact that his ward, Lily, was one of the sick children.
Distracted generally, it seemed to Beth, although she didn’t know him well enough to be sure distracted wasn’t part of his usual personality.
As far as the mystery illness was concerned, blood samples had been sent to the mainland for testing—that was a fact—but there were so many different strains of flu, would an ordinary pathology lab on the mainland think to consider bird flu or even have the facility to test for it?
In the pale dawn light Beth sighed, knowing she had to go through with a decision she’d made some time around midnight as she’d sat beside Robbie’s bed, looking at the child but seeing a much smaller and younger child—not Robbie, but Bobby. Later we’ll call him Bob, Angus had said, it’s more manly than Rob.
But Bobby had never grown to be a man, and Angus?
She sighed again.
Angus was a short electric cart ride away, in the luxury resort on the southern end of the island.
Angus was a pathologist who specialised in epidemiology.
Angus would know about bird flu.
She