Nine Months to Change His Life

‘Mmm?’

‘Can you hand me my clothes?’

‘Knickers is all,’ she said. ‘The rest are still wet.’ She handed him his boxers—and then had second thoughts. She tugged back the quilt and slid his boxers over his feet before he realised what she intended.

‘Lift,’ she ordered, and he did, and he felt about five years old.

She was still scantily dressed, too, in knickers, bra and T-shirt.

Her T-shirt was damp. He shouldn’t notice.

He noticed.

‘So it’s okay for you to stay cold but not me?’ he managed.

‘That’s the one.’ She was helping him to stand, levering herself under his shoulder, taking his weight.

‘Mary?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Hand me my stick. I can do this.’

‘In your dreams.’

‘Not in my dreams,’ he said. ‘For real. I won’t take your help.’

‘This is Smash ’em Mary you’re talking to. I’m tough.’

‘This is a five-feet-five-inch runt I’m talking to. Let me be.’

‘You want to sign an indemnity form so if you fall down the cliff it’s not my fault?’

‘It’s not your fault. How could it be your fault?’

‘Of course it could be,’ she said, and there was a sudden and unexpected note of bitterness beneath her words. ‘Somehow it always is.’

* * *

He managed. He got outside and in again. He almost made it back to his makeshift bed but he had to accept help for the last couple of yards.

He felt like he’d been hit by rocks. Maybe he had been hit by rocks.

Propped up on pillows again, he was handed beef casserole. Excellent casserole.

There were worse places for a man to recuperate.

‘How did you manage this?’ he demanded, intrigued.

‘There’s a solar-powered freezer in the cabin,’ she told him. ‘The solar panels were one of the first victims of the storm so I packed a pile of food and brought it here. I loaded whatever was on top of the freezer so who knows what the plastic boxes hold. This time we got lucky but we might be eating bait for breakfast.’

‘The storm came up fast, then?’

‘The radio said storm, tie down your outdoor furniture. They didn’t say cyclone, tie down your house.’

‘This isn’t a cyclone,’ he told her. ‘Or not yet. I’ve been in one before. This is wild but a full-scale cyclone hits with noise that’s unbelievable. We’re on the fringe.’

‘So it’s still to hit?’

‘Or miss.’

‘That’d be good,’ she said, but he heard worry.

‘Is there someone else you’re scared about?’ he demanded. He hadn’t thought...all the worrying he’d done up until now had been about Jake.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You need X-rays.’

‘I’m tough.’

‘Yeah, and you still need X-rays.’

‘I promise I won’t die.’ He said it lightly but he somehow had the feeling that this woman was used to expecting the worst.

Well, she was a nurse.

Nurses didn’t always expect the worst.

‘I’d prefer that you didn’t,’ she said, striving to match his lightness. ‘I have a pile of freezer contents that’ll be fine for up to two days but then they’ll decompose. If you’re decomposing too, I might be forced to evacuate my cave.’

He choked. Only a nurse could make such a joke, he thought. He remembered the tough medics who’d been there in Afghanistan and he thought...Mary could be one of those.

The nurses had saved Jake’s life when he’d been hit by a roadside bomb. Not the doctors, they had been too few in the field and they’d been stretched to the limit. Nurses had managed to stop the bleeding, get fluids into his brother, keep him stable until the surgeons had time to do their thing.

He kind of liked nurses.

He kind of liked this one.

He ate the casserole and drank the tea she made—he’d never tasted tea so good—and thought about her some more.

‘So no one’s worrying about you?’ he asked, lightly, he thought, but she looked at him with a shrewdness he was starting to expect.

‘I’ve left a note in a bottle saying where I am and who I’m with, so watch it, mate.’

He grinned. She really was...extraordinary.

‘But there is no one?’

‘If you’re asking if I’m single, then I’m single.’