The Other Side of Nowhere (7 page)

‘I’m freezing,’ Matt complained through chattering teeth.

George nodded as she blew into cupped hands.

Nick lay at our feet, shivering.

Even through the fog of exhaustion that had descended on my brain, I knew we needed to find shelter from the rain and wind or we’d be no better off than if we’d stayed in the ocean.

From the water’s edge I could see about a football oval’s length of sand either side of us and then darkness. I remembered seeing from the yacht that there were cliffs or rocks at each end of this beach, so there didn’t seem much sense in heading along the sand. I decided heading off the beach was our best bet if we wanted to find some shelter.

‘Matt, grab the backpack,’ I told him. ‘It’s on the sand where we came out. George, let’s take Nick up to the trees and see if we can find some cover.’

Matt took off down the beach, and George came over to me. She nodded towards Nick. ‘That shoulder looks bad. If we don’t fix it, it’s only going to get worse,’ she whispered.

‘Fix it?’ I whispered back. ‘What do you mean? How can we fix it?’

‘Well, I think his shoulder’s dislocated,’ George said. ‘We have to put it back in.’

‘Bloody hell, George. As if we can do that!’

‘I’m serious,’ she said. She bent down to take a closer look at Nick’s shoulder. His eyes were closed again, but his breathing was steady.

‘But, how?’ I asked, kneeling beside her.

George chewed on her lip. ‘Well, I don’t know exactly,’ she said. ‘But I’ve seen it done.’

‘You have?’

‘Yeah. Mum’s a physio,’ she reminded me. ‘One time, there was this girl at school who dislocated her shoulder playing soccer, and Mum just, well, kind of popped it back in.’

Popped it back in?
I thought. The idea of ‘popping’ Nick’s arm back into its socket made my stomach churn. I looked up at George, wondering if she was serious.

‘I mean, I just stood there watching, but I sort of remember what she did …’

I scoffed. ‘Yeah, well, I used to kick butt at that board game Operation, but do you hear me saying I’m a surgeon? Look, George, why don’t we just wait till Nick’s dad comes to get us in the morning?’

George shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think we can.’ She looked determined.

Nick’s eyes opened slowly. He moved ever so slightly and it was enough to send a jolt through his body, the hurt showing in the grimace on his face. George leant over, gently wiping away the raindrops pooling around his eyes.

‘Nick, we’ve got to fix your shoulder,’ she said, her voice steady.

He seemed groggy and didn’t seem to register what she’d said.

‘Nick? Did you hear –?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I heard you,’ he muttered weakly. ‘Just do what you need to do.’

George gave him a reassuring smile and gestured for me to get behind Nick.

I moved behind him, but didn’t touch him. ‘George? Are you really –?’

‘Yep, Johnno. I’m sure. So are you going to help or not?’ she challenged.

I reluctantly crouched behind Nick and helped him into a sitting position, so he could lean against me for support. George knelt in front of him, taking hold of his arm and gently rotating it inward to make an ‘L’ shape across his chest.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

‘Yep.’ He was obviously lying. I could feel the tension in his back as he pressed into me, forcing me to dig my feet deep into the sand to stop from falling backwards.

‘So far, so good,’ George said quietly, presumably to herself.

Very slowly, she rotated his bent arm outward. Nick clenched his other fist and grimaced, but didn’t make a sound.

Cocking her head slightly to one side, in intense concentration, she teased the arm up and down, back and forth. After a couple minutes of this, I guessed George had lost her nerve. Even I knew you had to force it back into the joint rather than try and will it.

She sat back on her heels. ‘I can’t do it. I mean, I don’t even know what I’m doing.’

‘C’mon George. Don’t go wimping out on me now,’ said Nick through gritted teeth. ‘Just give the bloody thing a shove.’

‘But what if I make it worse?’

Nick laughed. ‘Trust me … that’s not possible.’

George sighed, shaking her head. Then, with a deep breath, she picked up his arm again.

This time she moved the arm more aggressively and when Nick pushed back into me it was all I could do to hold him in place. Just as George looked like she was about to give up again, we heard a dull
clunk
as the shoulder slipped back into the joint. Nick roared in pain and then sighed deeply.

George and I sat stunned until Matt shouted. ‘How cool was
that
?’ He was back from collecting our backpack and must’ve seen the whole thing.

The deep concentration on George’s face fell away, and a huge grin appeared instead. Then, for the first time in a while, we all laughed – even Nick. And it felt as good as Christmas morning.

With Matt and me at his shoulders and George holding his feet, we managed to move Nick up the beach and into the half-shelter of an overhanging tree. I’d been hoping that once we got off the beach we’d find some decent shelter, but there was only thick bush. With each howling gust of wind, the tree above us shook, sending down a deluge of water from its branches.

‘This sucks,’ moaned Matt. ‘I’m gonna go find something better.’

I grabbed his arm as he pushed past. ‘Stick to the sand, you’ll get lost in the bush.’

‘Sure, Mum. No worries,’ he said, wrenching his arm free, heading off in the opposite way to the sand. For a few minutes I could hear him bashing around behind us, but then there was nothing, as if the bush had swallowed him whole.

I must have looked worried because George reached out her hand to me. ‘He’ll be okay, Johnno,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to do anything stupid.’

‘Unlikely,’ I groaned. ‘Everything he does is stupid.’

‘Well, Matt does have a point. This is not exactly a shelter,’ she said, as another shower of water splattered down onto Nick. Even in his semi-coma Nick screwed up his face in annoyance.

While we huddled together against the cold, half leaning over Nick in an attempt to keep the rain off him, I rummaged through the backpack. There was a torch, fire-lighters, waterproof matches, some knives and forks, one of George’s jumpers and a pair of tracksuit pants, a single bed sheet and a coil of rope. The only things to eat were a packet of dry biscuits and two chocolate bars. We scoffed the chocolate on sight, saving some for Matt.

George had a despondent look on her face as we sorted through the bag’s contents. ‘I guess the first-aid kit and water bottles were in my pack.’

‘Never mind, at least we can see what we’re doing now,’ I said, shining the torch into the bushes. I passed George her wet jumper and soggy tracksuit pants. ‘They’re a bit damp but you might as well put them on.’

She slipped the tracksuit pants over her shorts and lay her jumper over Nick. She grabbed the bed sheet and draped that over him, too. Just then, I heard footsteps and shone my torch into the gloom. Matt was standing there, breathing hard, with his face and arms covered in scratches.

‘What happened to you?’ asked George.

‘Me? Nothing,’ he said. ‘But I found us a cave. Down there through the trees … Easy as.’

Matt’s definition of easy was rarely in the same universe as mine, but a dry cave was a tempting prospect. I passed him the torch and backpack, and then slid my arms under Nick’s arms. George held his legs, and together we lifted him until his body was just clear of the sand.

We shuffled along, following the faint glow from the roaming arc of torchlight until Matt led us through a gap in the trees. Pretty soon we came to a mound of large rocks nestled at the base of a cliff. We followed the cliff line for a bit and then passed through a curtain of water droplets into a shallow cave.

Propping Nick up against the rock wall, George and I slumped down next to him. I felt instantly warmer to be out of the wind and took a moment to savour the lack of rain on my face.

‘Bags carrying the torch next time,’ moaned George, kneading the muscles in her shoulders.

Matt came over and sat next to us. When he noticed George’s tracksuit pants he started fossicking through the backpack for something similar.

‘There are no more clothes,’ I said. ‘But there’s a fire starter. See if you can find some dry wood?’

Matt shot me his best ‘you’re an idiot’ look and stood up. ‘Yeah, sure. And maybe I’ll find some marshmallows, too,’ he muttered, heading back outside.

George draped the sheet over Nick. But it was wet and it wasn’t going to do much good. We really needed a fire or we were all going to get hypothermia.

To my surprise Matt reappeared ten minutes later with an armful of twigs and branches that were miraculously relatively dry. He and I got busy piling the wood into a small mound and with the help of some of the fire lighters we soon had a small fire going.

As the flames lit up the cave walls with dancing shadows, I felt a flicker of hope inside me for the first time in many hours.

‘Nice work, guys!’ George cheered.

Matt went and slumped down beside her and she gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I watched him drop his head onto her shoulder, feeling a pang of jealousy. George gave me a soft smile and then looked at the fire.

I turned away. Thankful for the glow from the fire to disguise the flush I felt spreading across my cheeks, I pretended to adjust the sheet over Nick.

The fire picked up as we sat quietly, transfixed by the flames, hunched forward for warmth and each lost in our own thoughts.

‘I’m exhausted,’ sighed George as she lay down on her back next to Nick.

‘Me too,’ said Matt stifling a yawn. George put her arm out and he rested his head on it, almost melding into the crook of her neck.

Suddenly George’s voice echoed in the little cave. ‘To think we could have been hanging out at the farm right now, and going to bed on real mattresses … Johnno Jones, you sure know how to show a girl a good time.’ She lifted her head in my direction and smiled.

I gave a small smile back.

Then she whispered, ‘You did good today, Johnno … you really did.’

Did good?
The ache that I’d felt earlier returned. I sure didn’t feel good
.
More like scared, confused and ashamed. ‘You think so?’

‘Yeah, I do,’ she whispered, looking at me seriously. ‘When Nick got hurt you really kept it together.’

I gave her a slightly wider smile. If there was one person who could bring me up when I was feeling down, it was George. But right now I felt like such a loser not even she could make me feel better about myself.

‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘You’re the lifesaver, Doctor G.’

This time there was no reply. I twisted around to look at her, but she was lying down again. I could see her hair, spilling in damp waves across her cheek, the shadows of the fire bringing out the line of freckles across her nose. Her mouth, set in a half smile, twitched at the corners as if she were talking in her sleep. I hoped it was a sweet dream. I wasn’t someone who wished for much, but I sure was thankful that she was okay. That we all were.

I leant back with my arms behind my head, listening to the crackle of the fire and the constant plop, plop, plop of rain dripping at the mouth of the cave. It sounded like the storm was passing. I closed my eyes and filled my head with reassuring thoughts.