MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO (8 page)

* * *

Outside was weird.

It was as if a giant hand had picked up and shaken the house, leaving its contents a vast, jumbled mess. Outside it almost looked normal.

The veranda steps had cracked and fallen sideways. The downpipes were hanging at crazy angles, windows were broken and a chimney had crumpled. Otherwise you might almost look at it and think nothing had happened.

‘Old and weatherboard,’ Ben said. They’d scrambled out of the house, moving fast in case another tremor hit, but now they were in the yard between house and stables, with no trees close, nothing but open ground. There was a deep crack running across the width of the yard, a foot wide, heaven knew how deep, but they were well clear of it.

‘Wooden houses seem to stand up to quakes much better than brick,’ Ben said. ‘Thank God most of the island houses are wooden.’

He turned and stared towards the town and Ginny could see his mind turning to imperatives. Medical imperatives? Plus the fact that his parents and siblings were in the valley.

‘Tsunami,’ he said, and just as he said it a siren started, loud and screeching, blaring a warning. Even as a child here Ginny had learned what it meant.

What Ben had just said.

‘It’s too close,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘I did a project at school. Tsunamis come when quakes happen out to sea. This one was so big...surely the fault’s right under us.’

‘Let’s not bet our lives on it,’ Ben said grimly. ‘Get in the Jeep, now.’

‘I can—’

‘Get in the Jeep or I’ll throw you in,’ he said grimly, and he grabbed her hand with his free one—he was still cradling Button with the other—and ran across the yard.

Seconds later they were bucketing across the paddocks, heading up the steep valley incline. Fences were ignored—Ben simply steered his battered Jeep between the posts and crashed straight through.

Tsunami.

The word was enough to block out everything else. She held Button tightly—Ben had obviously decided he wasn’t wasting precious seconds fastening her into her child seat—and stared down at the sea. Willing it to be okay.

Willing a wave not to come.

It didn’t. They reached the ridge above the vineyard and stopped, then climbed from the Jeep and watched the sea while the siren still wailed across the island.

Ben produced field glasses from the Jeep and his expression grew more and more grim as he surveyed what he could of the island.

Ginny didn’t ask to see. She didn’t want to see. She held Button and she thought this was a hiatus. The last moment before reality.

She thought suddenly of the day she and James had gone to the hospital for him to get tests. They’d been practically sure but not...not prepared. Did anything prepare you for such a thing?

The tests were run. ‘Come back at six and get the results,’ the oncologist had said, so they’d gone to the beach, swum, had a picnic, talked of everything under the sun until it was time to go back.

‘If I’m okay we’ll even have a baby,’ she remembered James saying.

And she remembered thinking, Please, let this time not end.

Knowing that it would.

She was still watching the sea. Waiting for the world to end?

Ben was jabbing at his cell phone then turning his field glasses toward the island’s small airport.

‘The tower must be down,’ he said, staring at the screen. ‘I hoped it was just a glitch during the shake but everything’s dead. We should be able to see the tower from here. There’s no reception.’

Ginny hauled her phone out of her back jeans pocket and stared. No bars. Nothing.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered.

‘It’ll be okay,’ Ben said, and she saw the way he hauled himself under control. What lay before them might well be appalling. For him to be the only doctor... ‘The guys on the fishing boats have radios that’ll reach the mainland. A quake this big will be sensed from there. I’m guessing we’ll get help fast.’ His eyes roved over the island, noting signs of damage that from up here seemed small but she knew that once they got close it could spell calamity. ‘Choppers can get here fast. An hour to scramble, two hours for the flight...’

‘They’ll come?’

‘If they can’t contact the hospital they’ll come anyway. Hell, Ginny, I need to be there.’ He winced as the siren kept on wailing and Ginny wondered whether if he wasn’t saddled with Button and with her, he would have gone now, tsunami threat or not.

‘If the coast road’s out...we’ll go overland as soon as the siren stops,’ Ben said grimly, his field glasses sweeping slowly across the valley again. ‘The coast road won’t be safe. It’ll be rough but the Jeep should do it.

‘What...what’s a few fences?’ she said unsteadily, and Ben managed a smile.

‘I hear the local landowner shoots trespassers on sight. Risks are everywhere.’

The local landowner would be her. She managed a smile back. ‘You might be granted dispensation.’

‘Dispensation. Wow!’ And then his smile died. ‘Ginny, will you help?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘No,
really
help,’ he said. ‘No holds barred. We’ll need to leave Button with Hannah, as long as Hannah...’ He broke off and went back to staring through his glasses and Ginny followed his line of sight and thought he’d be staring at an old wooden house in the middle of town that held his mum and dad and siblings.

‘I think the hospital’s intact. It’s on high ground overlooking the harbour. It looks solid. I hope to hell our equipment’s safe,’ Ben said.

Ginny nodded. Ben needed to think of medical imperatives, she thought, or any imperatives rather than thinking about family, friends, for a quake of this magnitude had to mean casualties on a massive scale.

‘Your family will be okay,’ she said stoutly. ‘Your house is as old and sturdy as mine, and your kitchen table’s bigger. And I’m thinking your mum’s the one who taught me about diving under it.’

‘And Mum was preparing lamb roast for dinner tonight,’ Ben managed. ‘I hope she’s taken the spuds under there with her. She should be peeling them now.’

She grinned, and then hugged him because she knew how hard it had been to joke—and then she pulled away because there was no way she wanted him to think a hug meant anything but a hug.

‘Ginny,’ he said, and put a hand to her face, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop herself flinching again.

Why did she flinch? Of all the stupid... Wasn’t it about time she learned some control?

There was a moment’s loaded pause, a silence broken only by the wail of the siren. For a long, long moment Ben gazed down at her, as if he was seeing right inside her.

‘What did that
bastard
do to you?’ he asked at last.

No. One minute they’d been talking earthquake, thinking earthquake, feeling earthquake, and the next...this?

She stared at him, stunned to stupefaction. She didn’t want him to see. She didn’t want anyone to see.

‘I won’t hurt you, Ginny,’ Ben said gently, and he touched her face again. ‘How can you think I will?’

She shook her head. This was crazy. There was no way she was answering that, here, now, or at any time.

She’d made a vow. Life on her terms, now and for ever.

As long as this shaking world permitted.

‘Of course I’ll help at the hospital,’ she said, far too quickly.

‘Good,’ he said, and moved his field glasses on. But she knew he wouldn’t be deflected. He knew her, this man, like no other person had ever known her—and the thought was terrifying.

She went back to hugging Button. Apart from the siren, it was incredibly peaceful. It was a gorgeous autumn afternoon. The sun was sinking low on the horizon and the grass underfoot was lush and green.

But there were cattle in the paddocks, and every beast had its head up. Because of the siren?

Um...no. Because the earth had just shifted and neither man nor beast knew what would happen next.

And then the siren stopped.

Ben’s field glasses swung around until he found what he was looking for.

‘We send the siren out from four points of the island,’ he said slowly, thinking it through as he spoke. ‘The sirens are set off from the seismology centre on the mainland. They’re supposedly quake-proof and they get their signal via satellite. If they’ve stopped we can assume that boffins somewhere have decided there will be no tsunami. Thank God.’

‘Thank God,’ she repeated, and once again she got an odd look, the knowledge that he saw more than she wanted him to see. Earthquake or not, she knew now that there was a world of stuff between them, and she also knew it was stuff he’d hunt down until it was in the open.

‘It’s okay, Ginny,’ he said gently. ‘We can work side by side, I promise. This is professional only. We treat it as such. We go see what the damage is and how best we can start putting things back together again. And we put everything else aside until later.’

CHAPTER SIX

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everything else, she was fearful for her farm manager. Henry now lived on the headland beyond the vineyard, on his own.

‘His place is so remote. Ben, we need to check...’

‘We can’t,’ he said, as gently as he could manage. ‘Henry’s four miles that way overland, the coast road’ll be cut and we’ll have casualties coming into the hospital now. Ginny, I’m sorry, but triage says hospital first. We have to get to town.’

She knew he was right but it didn’t make her feel better. Her car was a sedan, not capable of going cross-country. Ben’s Jeep was their only mode of transport. They needed to travel together and there was only one direction they could head.

Henry was on his own and it made her feel ill. How many islanders were on their own?

They headed down the valley. It sounded simple. It wasn’t.

Driving itself was straightforward enough. Ben had wire cutters in the Jeep, so if they came to a troublesome fence they simply cut the wires. The ground was scattered with newly torn furrows where the earth had been torn apart, but the Jeep was sturdy and Ben was competent.

Ginny thought they’d get back to the hospital fast, and then they crossed the next ridge and her nearest neighbours came into view. Caroline and Harold Barton. Caroline was sitting by a pile of rubble—a collapsed chimney—and she was sobbing.

‘He went back in to try and get the cat,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t get the bricks off him. And the crazy thing is...’ she motioned to a large ginger tom sunning himself obliviously on a pile of scattered firewood ‘...Hoover’s fine. Oh, Harold...’

There was a moan from underneath the bricks and then an oath.

‘Would you like to stop reporting on the bloody cat and get these bricks off me?’ Harold’s voice was healthily furious.

Ben lifted Button from the Jeep and handed her over to the sobbing lady.

‘Button, this is Mrs Barton and she’s crying because she’s had a fright,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘But now she’s going to introduce you to her cat. Caroline, your job is to keep Button happy. Ginny, how are you at heaving bricks?’

‘Fine,’ Ginny said, knowing how desperate Ben was to get to the hospital but knowing they had no choice but to help the hapless Harold.

Ten minutes later they had him uncovered and, miraculously, his injuries were minor.

‘Felt the bloody thing heave so I dived straight into the cavity itself,’ he said. ‘It could’a gone either way, on top of me or around me, so I was bloody lucky.’

He was, Ginny thought as Ben cleaned a gaping gash on his arm and pulled it together with steri-strips. It’d need stitching but stitching had to wait. The important thing to do now was stop the bleeding and move on.

Triage. The hospital. What was happening down in the town?

Bricks had fallen on Harold’s leg as well. ‘There’s possibly a break,’ Ben said, but Harold waved him away.

‘Yeah, and you might be needed for something a bit more major than a possible ankle break. Caroline can put me on the tractor and we’ll make our way down to town in our own good time. With the cat. With this ankle I’m not even going to be able to kick him so there’s not a lot of choice. Get yourself down to those who need you, Doc.’ And then he turned to Ginny. ‘But thank God you came home when you did, girl. When you were a kid we always reckoned you belonged here. Seems we were right. You’ve come home just in time.’

They passed three more houses, with three more groups of frightened islanders. They crammed two women, three kids and two dogs into the back. There was nothing wrong with them except scratches and bruises, but they were all stranded and they wanted, desperately, to be in town with community support.

‘I’m hoping someone’s set up a refuge,’ Ben said tightly to Ginny. ‘I need to be there.’

He couldn’t be there, though. At the next farmhouse they came to, an entire stone barn had collapsed. Once again they found a sobbing woman but there was no humour about this situation. One of the women distracted the kids while the rest grimly heaved stone. The elderly farmer must have been killed instantly.

They left old Donald Martin wrapped in a makeshift shroud, they tucked Flora into the front of the Jeep, and Flora sobbed all the way to the village—and hugged Button.

Button was amazing, Ginny thought. She was medicine all by herself. She even put her arms around this woman she’d never met before and cuddled her and said, ‘Don’t cry, lady, don’t cry,’ whereupon Flora sobbed harder and held her tighter. A normal four-year-old would have backed away in fear but Button just cuddled and held her as Ben pushed the loaded Jeep closer to town.

He was desperate, Ginny thought. The hospital, the whole town was currently without a doctor. It was now almost five hours since the quake. They’d seen a couple of helicopters come in to land and Ben had relaxed a little bit—‘Help must be coming from the mainland.’—but she could still see the tension lines on his face. Why wasn’t he at the hospital?

If he hadn’t been calling in on her... If he hadn’t been bringing Button’s test results...

‘Ben, I’m so sorry,’ she told him from the back seat, and Ben swivelled and gave her a hard stare before going back to concentrate on getting the Jeep across the next paddock.

‘There’s no fault,’ he said grimly. ‘Cut it out, Ginny, because I won’t wear your guilt on top of everything else. I don’t have time for it.’

And that put her in her place.

It was self-indulgent, she conceded, to think of guilt. She was crammed between two buxom women. She had kids draped over her knees.

Ben didn’t have time to think about guilt, she thought, and then they entered the main street and neither did she.

* * *

The first things they saw were road cones. Orange witches’ hats were stretched across the main street, forcing them to stop.

The light was fading but they could see the outlines of the buildings. They could see devastation.

Porches of old, heritage-style shopfronts had come crashing down. A car parked at the kerbside was half-buried under bricks and stones—and maybe it was more than one car, Ginny thought, gazing further along the road.

Right near where they’d been forced to stop, the front of Wilkinson’s General Store had fallen away. So had the front of Miss Wilkinson’s apartment upstairs. The elderly spinster’s bedroom lay ripped open as if a can opener had zipped along the edge. Her bedroom, with chenille bedspread, her dressing gown hanging on the internal door, her teddy bears spread across the bed, was on view for all to see.

She’d be mortified, Ginny thought, appalled for the gentile old lady. And then she thought, Please, God, that she’s safe enough to feel mortified.

There were no lights. At this time of day the streetlights should be flickering on, but instead the scene was descending into darkness.

A soldier was approaching them from the other side of the road block. A soldier?

Ben had the Jeep’s window down, staring at this uniformed stranger in dismay. For heaven’s sake, the man even had a gun!

‘The main street’s been declared a red zone,’ the soldier stated. ‘It’s too dangerous to proceed. My orders are to keep everyone out.’

‘I’m needed at the hospital on the other side of town,’ Ben said with icy calm, and Ginny felt like reaching out from the back seat, touching him, reassuring him—but there was no reassurance to be had. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said. ‘I have people here who need treatment.’

‘Sorry, sir, you still need to follow protocol,’ the soldier said. ‘You can pull the car to the side of the road—as far away from the rubble as you can, sir, and report to Incident Control Headquarters.’

‘Incident Control Headquarters?’ Ginny demanded, because Ben seemed almost speechless. She could see where his head was. Soldiers coming in and taking control of his island? ‘Where exactly is Incident Control Headquarters?’

‘Um...it’s the tourist information centre,’ the soldier said, unbending a little.

‘Thank you,’ Ben said tightly, and parked the Jeep, and he and Ginny ushered his tight little group of frightened citizens round the back of the shattered buildings towards the sounds and bustle and lights of...Incident Control Headquarters?

Here there were people everywhere. Floodlights lit the outside of what was normally tourist central. Serious men and women Ginny didn’t recognise, wearing hard hats and bright orange overalls, were spilling in and out.

Ginny was clutching Button and holding Flora’s hand with the hand she had spare. She was feeling ill. Ben was carrying two of the toddlers they’d brought down from the ridge, and he looked as grim as she felt.

It was almost five hours since the quake had hit, and what five hours ago had been a peaceful island setting had now been transformed. These people represented professional disaster management, she thought. They’d have been brought in by the choppers they’d seen.

Kaimotu Island must now be officially a disaster scene.

And then there was Abby, flying down the steps to meet them. Abby was also wearing orange overalls and a hard hat. A grim-faced man came behind her, obviously keeping her in sight, but Abby had eyes only for Ben.

‘Ben—oh, thank God you’re okay,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ve been so worried. Where have you been? We’ve been going out of our minds. Your mum—’

‘She’s okay?’ Ben snapped, and Ginny had a further inkling of what he’d been going through. What he still was going through.

‘She’s fine,’ Abby said hurriedly. ‘As far as I know, all your family is okay. Doug’s out with the searchers. Your house is intact and your mum and Hannah have set it up as a crèche.’

‘Flora!’ It was a cry from inside the hall. A group of ladies was dispensing sandwiches. One of these ladies darted forward and Ginny realised with relief that it was Daphne Hayward, Flora’s sister.

And then she thought, irrelevantly, I know these people. I haven’t been near this island for twelve years but I know them.

I’m one of them?

‘Can you clear the entrance, please?’ a soldier asked, and they all turned round and glared at him, Ginny, too, and Ginny thought incredulously, I’m an islander.

And then Ben lifted Button from her arms and she let her be lifted because it was the natural thing to do, to let Ben help her.

Ben. Her friend.

Her island, in trouble.

‘Why aren’t you at the hospital?’ Ben was asking Abby as he hugged Button close. ‘Who’s in charge there?’

‘Things are as under control as they can be,’ Abby said, but her voice was tight and strained. Really tight and strained. ‘We’ve had four choppers arrive containing emergency personnel, including two doctors. Margy’s doing triage, and every nurse on the island’s with her. One of the helicopters has already evacuated Percy Lockhart and Ivy Malone—both have serious crush injuries. One of the doctors is a surgeon. He’s reducing a compound fracture now—Mary Richardson’s arm. It’s bad, Ben, it’s really bad.’

Her voice faltered and she motioned to the grim-faced man behind her. ‘This is Tom Kendrick. I... We know each other. He’s with Search and Rescue from the mainland. We’ve been out. They wanted a nurse who knew people. I... I...’

The stranger behind Abby moved in closer, and Ginny saw his arm go round her waist. That was odd, she thought, but Ben was standing really close to Ginny, and she was sort of leaning against him. In fact, her own arm was suddenly round Ben. It was because she needed contact with Button, she told herself, but she knew it was more.

She wanted contact with Ben, and if Abby needed contact with this stranger...it sort of gave her permission to ask for contact herself.

But even as she thought it, she looked at Abby’s face, she saw the lines of strain and fear—and suddenly she got it.

‘Abby, where’s Jack? Where’s your son?’

‘On...on the bus,’ Abby whispered. ‘We’ve just come back to get the chopper. Tom’s organising a drop of blankets and food.’

‘What the...?’ Ben started.

‘It’s okay,’ Tom reassured him, solid, professional, assured. ‘We had a tense time for a while when we couldn’t locate the school bus but we have it now. One of the fishing boats has seen it from the sea. It’s trapped on the coast road round past the mines at the back of the island. There’s been two landslips and the bus is trapped between them. As far as we know, they’re all fine, but we’re not going to be able to get them out until morning. Hence the airdrop. We’ll drop a radio in as well.’

‘So it’ll be okay,’ Abby said, still in that tight, strained voice, and Ginny wondered what else was wrong. But she had to move on. They all had to move on.

‘They need you at the hospital,’ Abby said, forcing her voice to sound almost normal. ‘Here’s Hannah— Ginny, is it okay if Button goes with her? You and Ginny are needed for medical stuff. Please, go fast. There are so many casualties. But Tom and I need to go now. We need this food drop done before it’s completely dark. Tom, let’s go.’

* * *

New Zealand was set up for earthquakes. Emergency services stood ready twenty-four hours a day. It had been years since there’d been a major quake but that didn’t mean they’d relaxed.

The personnel who’d arrived were moving with clinical precision. As Ben and Ginny walked through the almost abandoned town, skirting damaged buildings, they saw teams moving silently from house to house, quickly checking, in some cases with dogs by their sides, making sure everyone was out and then doing lightning assessments of each building.

Using spray paint. Numbers. Colours or degrees of risk. Miss Wilkinson’s general store came under the ‘Do Not Approach Under Any Circumstances’ heading and Ginny thought bleakly of those little pink teddies and a dignified old lady having to bunk down in the school hall tonight without her dressing gown and her pink friends.

Ben was holding her hand. Ginny hardly realised it, but when she did she didn’t pull away.

This was too big to quibble. If Ben needed reassurance...

She even managed a slight smile at that. Who was she kidding? Her hold on his hand tightened and he gave her a reassuring smile in the dark.