Burnt (2 page)

Seb narrowed his gaze and focused on the farm far below. Things had gone downhill by the looks of the overgrown house yard and the general condition of the paddocks. A frown creased his brow at the thought. In the few brief phone calls he'd made home on an irregular basis – thanks to his erratic work schedule in the SAS – his father had never mentioned that things weren't going well. Then again, they'd hardly found much to talk about since his mother had died almost two years before.

He saw two dogs emerge from beneath the house, barking as they spun around in circles and jumped excitedly, but he couldn't hear them – he was still too far away. Seb put the car into gear and drove through the gates.

By the time he'd parked in front of the large, three-car tin shed beside the house, his old man was there to greet him.

Christ – when had he got so old? For a minute, Seb could only stare, but he recovered quickly and pulled his face into the expressionless mask the army had invested a great deal of time and money to perfect. Bracing for the wave of pain that was about to come, he opened the door and swung his legs out of the car, biting down hard on the curse that threatened to escape.

His father stood at the gate and held out a hand. ‘You look better than I was expecting,' he said in his gruff voice that sounded rusty from lack of use. They shook hands briefly.

‘Better than I looked a few months ago.' He took in his father's crumpled clothes, hanging off him as proof of the weight he'd lost. When Seb's mother had been alive, his father's clothes would have been ironed to within an inch of their life and there was no way she'd have let him walk around holding his pants up with one hand, hair wild and face unshaven.

Seb took off his sunglasses and followed his father inside, waiting a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He scanned the room and let the familiar furniture and smells take him back. It wasn't the tidy, well-cared-for house he remembered.

‘Guess the place could use a bit of a tidy up,' his father said from behind him.

Seb shrugged, trying to put him at ease. ‘Better shape than some of the places I've been in.'

‘Need a hand to bring in your gear?'

Seb glanced down to the large duffle bag at his feet and shook his head. ‘Nah, this is all I got.'

‘Thought you were here for a while? Where's the rest of your stuff?'

‘I don't have much.' He thought of the four boxes of belongings he'd packed up and stored on base and the small TV and laptop in the back of the four-wheel drive – not much to show for eighteen years out on your own.

Truth was, he was rarely home to accumulate anything. He lived on base and had all his meals cooked for him – he hadn't needed a lot of
stuff.

‘I'm just about to put the kettle on – you want a cuppa?'

‘Sure.' Seb walked out to the kitchen table and sat down slowly.

‘How do you have it, son?'

‘Black.' His father gave him a look and Seb shrugged. ‘There isn't always milk and sugar on hand out in the field – guess I got used to it,' he said, turning his gaze to the door and out across the paddocks.

From the corner of his eye, he saw his father's hand shake as he spooned in the coffee granules and lifted the kettle from the stove. Seb's jaw clenched as things began to fall into place. The weight loss, the general decline of the place, the shakes … His father had been hitting the bottle.

Anger surged through his veins. He couldn't help but think what his mother would have to say about it – she'd have kicked his father's arse from here to kingdom come if she'd been alive. Seb had seen what alcohol could do to people; he'd seen how it had torn apart his best mate's life as a kid and to this day he couldn't stand watching people abuse alcohol, even socially, which had made him a bit of an oddity in his army career at first. He soon learnt to ignore what everyone else said about him; his focus had been on one thing and one thing only – trying out for the SAS – and he'd devoted all his energy to preparing himself to become physically and emotionally tough enough to make it through selection.

First thing tomorrow, he'd go on a bottle hunt and get rid of any alcohol he found lying around the house. Stuffed if he'd sit here and watch his father drink himself to death.

The two men took their coffee out to the back verandah and sat watching the sway of the trees guarding the creek. The cry of a crow out in the paddocks broke the silence and a loud sigh escaped from the young kelpie pup at Seb's feet as he lazily opened one eye, then dropped his head to rest on his folded paws.

‘So it's pretty bad over there, then?' Angus asked.

Seb took a sip of his coffee before answering. ‘It's not good.'

‘We making any progress, you think?'

Seb gave a small snort of contempt. ‘It's like cutting the head off a bloody hydra – it just grows another one to replace it. We're not going to win this thing and the politicians who say otherwise are liars.'

‘You think they'll bring back the troops soon?'

‘Yeah, eventually. The Yanks are supposed to be scaling down over the next few years, but who knows.'

‘So what are you going to do? You going back over?'

It wasn't a matter of
not
going back over – he was trained to do a specialised job and was needed over there – but he'd lost some good mates in the ambush and he'd only barely made it out of there himself. This time it was harder to bounce back and move on. He wasn't afraid of going back – he was more concerned that he wouldn't be able to
stop
going back. The adrenaline rush the job gave him was exactly the reason he'd worked so hard to get into the SAS in the first place: it got into your blood, like a drug. He wasn't sure how he would be able to live like a normal person after he got too old for active duty – he couldn't think about it. There wasn't too much that scared him in this world any more, but a future without the SAS absolutely petrified him. The work defined him, made him who he was. Without it, he was nothing but an empty, lonely man.

Seb stared into the dark coffee as though it were a crystal ball. ‘Dunno yet. I just needed to take a break for a while. Once I get all this under control –' he nodded down to his side and chest, where the scars from the worst of his wounds were, ‘– I'll see what happens.'

‘Well, it'll be good to have you back for a while … it's been too long,' his father said, keeping his gaze fixed on the tree line ahead.

Seb swallowed past a lump in his throat. It was the closest his father had ever come to saying he'd missed him. He wondered what other breakthroughs this visit would bring.

Rebecca gathered the remainder of the used swabs and dressings she'd used on the last patient and disposed of them in the hazardous waste bin next to her.

She loved her job – it was always interesting, never the same thing day after day – but the pace here was a lot slower than she was used to. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it took some adjusting to.

Pulling back the curtain that divided the beds in Accident and Emergency, she pushed the trolley into place and headed for the nurses' station to call up the next patient.

‘Rebecca, can you take care of this next one for me? I just got a call upstairs,' Sharon, the other nurse on duty, asked.

Nodding, Rebecca reached out to take the clipboard with the patient's chart.

‘Rebecca's going to take care of you, just take a seat on the end of that bed over there,' Sharon was saying, and Rebecca looked up. She felt the colour drain from her face as the door swung open.

It took a moment for Sebastian Taylor to switch his attention from Sharon to Rebecca, standing a little behind her. The shock that crossed his face, though, was instant and brutal.

‘Sebastian, isn't it?' Sharon took a step closer to his big frame and placed a hand under his arm. ‘Come and sit down, before you fall down, mate,' she said calmly, guiding him to the bed.

‘I'm all right,' he finally said, his gaze still glued to Rebecca.

Shaking herself from her own stupor, she hurried to his side. ‘Thanks, Sharon, I've got him. He'll be right now.' She was already reaching for the curtain to pull around the bed, giving her workmate a confident smile and taking a breath to fortify herself before she turned back to face Seb.

Holy crap
. Nothing in that photo in the paper could have prepared her for looking at the real thing.

‘Hello, Seb.'

‘Bec.'

Rebecca felt her heart trip over the way he said her name. No one else called her Bec – that had always been Seb's name for her. She winced at the memory of her ex-husband trying out the name early in their relationship and the way she'd felt almost violated by another man using it. That should have been her first clue things were destined to fail.

Remembering the chart in her hand, she quickly scanned the information. ‘You're here to do your physiotherapy and get your dressings changed?'

‘Yeah. The only way the hospital would release me was if I agreed to come in here and have them done. I gave the other nurse all the paperwork they sent with me.'

She flicked through the files beneath his chart and gave a brief nod. ‘Sharon's got it all sorted – well, let's take a look.' She put his file down on the trolley by the bed and went to help him remove his shirt. His hands came up to stop her in a reflex action that took her by surprise.

‘Look, is there anyone else here who can do this?'

Rebecca stared at him, completely dumbfounded. ‘Excuse me?'

He let out a long breath and shook his head slowly. ‘It's nothing personal, Bec. I'd just prefer if someone else treated me.'

‘Nothing
personal
?' she repeated in a low, angry tone. ‘It sounds personal to me! Do I make you uncomfortable? Is that what you're saying?'

‘Bec, I've been messed up pretty bad … It's not pretty.'

She softened as she processed the uncertain, embarrassed expression he wore. ‘Seb, I've been a nurse for the last eighteen years – there's not much I haven't seen. If it's me you're worried about shocking, then don't – but if I make you that uncomfortable, then you'll have to wait until Sharon gets back.'

He hesitated for a moment, thinking it over, then shook his head. ‘It's okay. Go ahead.'

She helped him unbutton his shirt, exposing the bandages on his torso. She unwrapped them carefully. From the corner of her eye, she saw that he was looking straight ahead, back rigid, like an immoveable statue. Even prepared for the worst, she still hesitated as she took in the horror of the wound she'd just exposed.

‘What happened to you, Seb?' she asked quietly.

At first she didn't think he was going to answer her; his gaze remained fixed firmly on some point in the distance.

‘Workplace injury – caught a bit of frag in the side.'

‘A bit, huh?' It looked more like he'd absorbed most of the fragments from inside some kind of explosive device. She could only imagine the extent of the damage that had been done on impact. She knew the type of injuries soldiers were coming home with from over there – none of them pretty. There were state-of-the-art medical facilities within flying distance and a lot of soldiers were alive today because of them, unlike the civilians who were unlucky enough to be caught up in the violence and would more often than not die as a result of the same injuries.

She worked quietly and efficiently. She'd like to say her silence was to respect his privacy, but the truth was, she couldn't think of a single thing to talk about to take his mind off the painful procedure. He'd had quite a number of skin grafts and looked like he'd be up for a few more in the future. She had to admire his courage. Even though she was being as gentle as she could, she knew that the cleaning and dressing was painful – yet he didn't flinch, didn't move a muscle. Only the tightly clenched jaw gave away his suffering.

‘When did you come back to town?' he asked, breaking the silence.

‘About three months ago.'
Three months, two days and twelve hours to be precise.
It was a time in her life that she remembered well. That's when her life had finally started again.

‘What brought you back? Last I heard you couldn't wait to leave.'

‘Last you heard? What – eighteen years ago?' she muttered, sending him a sceptical glance. ‘Things change. The city no longer held any appeal. What about you? What are you doing back here?'

‘Nowhere else to go.'

Rebecca paused at the unexpected vulnerability she heard in his voice. ‘You're not married?'

‘Nope. You?' he threw back, with only a heartbeat of a delay.

She lifted her eyes to his briefly before answering. ‘Not any more.'

The conversation stalled again. In her job, it was an asset to be able to chat to her patients; it served a multitude of purposes. It could be a useful tool for finding out more information, something a patient maybe wasn't ready to – or simply couldn't – reveal that might be important to their medical history or state of mind. It also distracted them from the pain or discomfort of a procedure. It could divert a patient's terror of a needle, or prevent them from fainting. But for the life of her, she couldn't make her professional conversation-starting ability kick in with Seb.

‘How long are you staying for?' she finally asked, reassuring herself the question was for the sake of taking her notes.

‘Not sure yet. I'll see how this heals up first.'

‘Then what? You're not going back are you?' She was not usually a judgemental person, but the thought of him going back into a war zone after almost dying horrified her.

He snapped his disciplined gaze from the curtain to her face and she caught her breath at the intensity she saw there. God, it was so familiar … and yet so different.