Rescue Heat (18 page)

She could see from the look in Matt’s eyes that her words really were not a lot of comfort. “I always think that sometimes we have the easy job,” he replied. “At least we don’t have to tell the family this kind of news.”

He looked at Brigid and realizing his words, flinched. “Sorry, I know sometimes that call is yours to make.”

She smiled and shook her head, “I very rarely make that call these days.”

Dave’s voice came back through their headphones, “Just checked in with Jo and our man’s clothing matches that of Patrick Hughes so after the coast guard arrives we can head back.”

The chopper kept flying in tight formation around the body. Staying hovering in one position put enormous pressure on the engine, so they chose to fly forward when they could.

With the arrival of the Coast Guard, the sense of relief in the cabin was palpable. They could leave and no longer had the strange duty of sentinels, guarding the body.

As they flew away, Chris started in with his dark humour, “Matt you were lucky where you went into the water. Any nearer the river mouth and we would have had to worry about sharks and crocs.”

Matt smiled for the first time since he had come up the wire, “Thanks Chris. At least you waited until I was out of the water to put that thought into my head.”

“You know Chris, here, is the motivational speaker for the crew,” said Dave. “So Matty, do you have a hot date for the ball?”

Brigid knew Dave was just trying to lighten the mood after the tragic result of the mission. She just wished he had chosen another topic, especially after hearing Matt ask, “What ball?”

“Brigid, did you hear that?” asked Dave. “We’ll have to get onto Jo for neglecting to tell Matt about the rescue squad social event of the year.”

Matt arched an eyebrow at her, as he said, “Dave, as no-one has seen fit to educate me, you’ll have to be the social coordinator.”

Brigid was sure that everyone else could only hear amusement in his voice, but as far as she could hear tone through their intercom system, there was an edge that worried her.

“It’s a fund-raiser night for the helicopter unit,” said Dave. “It’s formal, with the mayor and local business people attending. Brigid, don’t tell me you don’t already have some local doctor lined up? Are you parents attending like last year?”

Dave, with his questions, continued to put his unknowing foot in it. Brigid took a moment to answer, seeing in front of her eyes, the fragile threads of her separate lives tangle. A simple discussion about a social event would not have this kind of impact if their relationship was not a grey quagmire in which neither of them seemed to have any real footing.

Brigid steeled herself to put a relaxed ring in her voice, as she replied to Dave’s questions, “I think I’ll be going dateless. My parents are coming, as it seems to suit them to visit Cairns this time of year.”

Brigid didn’t look over at Matt, choosing to keep her eyes on the window. She was very glad to see the buildings of the base appear down below, as it meant an end to this uncomfortable conversation.

Well, that was a damned awful day, Matt thought, as he pulled his car into his driveway with a slightly too aggressive push on the accelerator. First, he had to get close to a corpse, whom he could not save. Then, they had to transfer a screaming five-year-old with a broken leg and deal with the mother who had loudly abused both him and Brigid in turn.

Brigid had sat there through the day, looking so distant and so stoic.

Matt realised he was still sitting in his car, his hands fisted tightly around his steering wheel. He didn’t know why Brigid hadn’t told him about the ball and her parents imminent visit. It bothered him so damn much! Maybe it was because this kind of game playing was what made him keep women at arm’s length. What had they been doing, in the last three weeks together?

Matt went through the motions, preparing to see Brigid, on automatic pilot. If he treated the taps in his shower roughly, he didn’t notice. He pulled an expensive bottle of white wine from his fridge. He might be pissed off, but that didn’t mean he had bad manners.

Matt walked the now well-worn path along the beach; between his house and Brigid’s housesit. He let himself into the back garden, stooping to greet an affectionate Moby. As Matt rhythmically rubbed the obedient dog’s fur, he found a moment of peace from the hot heat of his emotions.

Getting up and knocking on the backdoor of the high-set Queenslander, he locked his feelings under a veneer of distant civility.

“It’s open,” Brigid called.

When he walked into the kitchen, she was busy putting dinner together. He slouched in the doorway and took a moment to watch her. Even dressed down, she was beautiful. Her simple white t-shirt and faded jeans only served to highlight her curves and her dark hair hung heavily on her shoulders. As annoyed as he felt, he still wanted her with a need that continued to surprise him.

With a familiarity that had developed over the weeks of their relationship, he easily found the wine glasses and filled them at the kitchen bench. When he handed one to her, the lack of affection, which had become customary when they were alone, was obvious.

He had decided not to bring up any fraught subjects until after dinner, but Brigid didn’t seem to have got that memo.

She stood before him and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell about the ball and my parent’s visit.”

Matt knew he should accept her apology, but he couldn’t help but push back, “Why didn’t you tell me about them both?”

His question seemed to fire something inside her. Her answer, when it came, was no longer soft and gentle, “To be honest Matt, I wasn’t sure you wanted to know. We haven’t talked about the future. Hell we’ve never planned more than twenty-four-hours ahead.”

“What if I asked you if I could meet your parents and make our relationship public at the ball?” He didn’t expect that sentiment to come out of his mouth and his voice sounded flat even to his own ears.

Matt could see the frustration in Brigid’s face before she walked away and sat down at the kitchen table. She tucked her legs under her and stared at him until he joined her.

“Matt, I work with these people and I’m going to be there for a long time after we break up or you just leave,” she said.

The finality in her voice shocked him as much as her words. He might have avoided thinking about a future with Brigid, but it looked as if she had imagined it through to the grisly end. Didn’t she have any faith in him at all?

“What gave you any idea that I was leaving?” Matt asked. “I bought a house here in Cairns. I’m here to stay.”

“Would that be the house that no-one other than me and my dog ever visits? Or the house that no one knows even exists in case someone finds out the deep, dark secret that you’re actually rich? Because Matt, that good-old-boy routine of yours isn’t looking very genuine.”

Listening to her words, Matt wanted to push the chair out from under him and get the hell out of there. There was a reason why he avoided this relationship stuff. The only thing keeping him in the room was the genuine hurt he could see in Brigid’s eyes.

He kept his voice low, as he said, “If that’s how you feel, I’m amazed that you had any sort of relationship with me at all.”

Cold words perhaps, but Matt was not going to let this woman know how deeply she had stirred him. It had been a long time since he had let any woman know him intimately in both his professional and personal spheres and here she was saying she didn’t think he was committed to either.

“If you remember, I tried not to get involved,” said Brigid. “But you were handsome, kind and brave and I wanted to be with you so much, I stepped over the line. That doesn’t mean though that I’m prepared to put my professional reputation at risk with no promises about the future from you.”

“You say I haven’t been honest with the team,” he said, “but you haven’t exactly been an open book yourself. You seem very determined for the team not to know you’ve been fucking me senseless at every opportunity.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Matt wanted to suck them back in. Brigid’s face had lost its hurt vulnerability. Now she had completely shut her emotions down. Matt hated seeing her upset, but the hardness in her face disturbed him even more.

Brigid got up from her chair, “I hate to be a bad hostess, but you’ll have to forgive me if I rescind my invitation to dinner tonight. I’ve found that I’m just not hungry and I’d like an early night.”

Brigid matched her words to actions as she stood beside the door, making her message very clear. Matt had to take what was left of his dignity and walk out the door, muttering a ‘good-bye’.

He walked home, along the beach, the only illumination coming from the houses alongside it. Matt took one step, after another and tried to convince himself that it was best that the relationship ended this way. Brigid might be angry with him for his crassness but they had not been together long enough for either of them to get too attached.

Even as that thought formed, Matt knew it was a statement of self-delusion. If there were no feelings at stake, he would not have been so deliberately cruel to Brigid. It was not normally in Matt to be hurtful and rude to a woman, but her words had wounded him enough for him to strike out verbally. The thing was, Matt couldn’t remember feeling this bad about a relationship, even when he had caught a colleague sleeping with his girlfriend. He’d been angry. Hell, he had even thrown a punch at his friend Andrew. Nevertheless, what he had not been then was deeply or shockingly heartsore.

Matt unlocked the beach entrance to his house and went straight to the fridge. Snagging a beer, he stood at the marble bench and looked around. Maybe Brigid had a point about this house. It didn’t exactly scream ‘man putting down roots’. It was beautiful, sure, but he had bought it fully furnished and made very few changes. It still looked like a luxuriously appointed holiday house to be lived in temporarily.

Even the purchase of it had caused him no real financial strain. He had accessed the purchase price, in full, from his trust fund and the buying of it had required no sacrifices on his part.

Maybe creating a home required more than writing a cheque, but none of this made Matt understand the coldness that Brigid had exhibited from the moment Matt had walked in, from before the moment he had given her a hard time.

What had happened to the uninhibited woman who had generously used her body to give him pleasure, the woman who was calm and kind with every patient, the woman who had easily laughed when they watched television and always tried to tuck her cold feet under his thigh?

As Matt took a final swig of beer, he decided he couldn’t be bothered cooking dinner. After nuking a pastry in the microwave, he went to his room, and attempted to sleep.

The next day, Matt gripped the helicopter’s internal bar; a tight grip he hoped no one else could see. They were flying in heavy cloud cover, white out of every window. For the first time, Matt found himself hoping that Dave was as competent a pilot as he always appeared.

Matt couldn’t even give Brigid a reassuring smile, as she was studiously avoiding his gaze, staring out into white nothingness.

“I’ve got heavy turbulence on the radar. Thirty degrees east,” said Dave, from the cockpit, as he tensely monitored the instruments.

Matt tried to forget the helicopter crash scenes that he had attended and the high incidents of fatalities when helicopters went down. Funny, that wasn’t something he had ever thought about in regards to his own safety, but now Brigid was sitting opposite him in the chopper it preoccupied his mind. Precious cargo maybe?

Matt was pushing through tiredness. Last night, sleep had not come easily. Thoughts of Brigid and regrets had filled his mind.

He needed to talk to Brigid without distracting Chris and Dave, who were working hard to crosscheck the GPS co-ordinates, and not allowing the helicopter not to drift off course.

“Doctor and rescue paramedic, transferring to channel sixteen,” said Matt, as he manually changed the radio frequency on his helmet and motioned Brigid to do the same.

Now, Brigid looked at him, as if daring him to say something to say something unprofessional within the cocoon of their closed circuit intercom.

Matt had no intention of living up to her worst thoughts about him, “You got a more detailing briefing of the medical situation, while I was involved in the risk assessment. What exactly are we facing out here?”

Like him, Brigid was a medical professional to her core. So when she spoke, some the expected ice in her voice had melted. “It’s not great, otherwise we wouldn’t be flying in these conditions. We have a thirty-four year old man, on a remote property, dirt-bike versus tree. Somewhat sketchy assessment but there is a suspected serious spinal injury and major lacerations.”

“Who’s attending the scene?” Matt asked.

“A police officer is already there and we should get there before the local ambulance crew. Depending on what the situation is, when we arrive, we might be grateful for some extra pairs of hands.”

The long distances of travel involved in life in the far north still sometimes astounded Matt. If it wasn’t for the amount of resources thrown at rescue, with helicopter rescue and the flying doctors, Matt didn’t know how emergency medicine would be practised out here.

“Four minutes out,” Dave’s voice overrode the intercom through their headphones. “Back onto channel twelve for landing.”

“Ok, we’re flying in low,” said Chris.

Matt realised exactly how low they were, when they broke cloud cover. He could see the red mud below and the sheets of water running off the earth.

“I’m glad the police car had GPS, because the old-fashioned method of following landmarks and looking at maps would have made for a hellish landing today,” said Dave.

Matt could only agree. To him the trees and paddocks under them looked the same. The road, when it appeared, was almost indistinguishable from the land around it. Suddenly, the extreme white of the police vehicle appeared, contrasted against the red earth.