A Child To Open Their Hearts

‘Then it’s lots and lots and lots. How about you?’

‘Can I count every time I put antiseptic cream on a coral graze?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Then it’s lots and lots and lots and lots and lots.’

And he grinned. ‘You win.’

‘Thank you,’ she managed. ‘It takes a big surgeon to admit we nurses have a place.’

‘I’ve never differentiated. Doctors, nurses, even the ladies who do the flowers in the hospital wards and take a moment to talk... Just a moment can make a difference.’

And she closed her eyes.

‘Yes, it can,’ she whispered. ‘I wish...oh, I wish...’

* * *

He’d stuffed it. Somehow they’d lightened the mood but suddenly it was right back with them. The greyness. The moment he’d said the words he’d seen the pain.

‘What?’

Her eyes stayed closed. The little boy in her arms was deeply asleep now, cradled against her, secure for the moment against the horrors that had happened around him.

‘What?’ he said again, and she took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

‘I didn’t have a moment,’ she said simply. ‘That’ll stay with me for the rest of my life.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Sefina was brought into hospital just before the cyclone. Ruptured spleen. Concussion. Multiple abrasions and lacerations. Her husband had beaten her to unconsciousness. Sefina’s not from M’Langi—she came here eighteen months ago from Fiji. Pregnant. Rumour is that...Joni’s father...brought her here and paid Louis to marry her. Louis’s an oaf. He’d do anything for money and he’s treated her terribly. She’s always been isolated and ashamed, and Louis keeps her that way.’

There was a moment’s silence while he took that on board, and somehow during that moment he felt the beginnings of sick dismay. Surely it couldn’t be justified, but once he’d thought of it he had to ask.

‘So Joni’s father...’ he ventured, and she tilted her chin and met his gaze square on.

‘He’s not an islander.’

‘Who?’

‘Do I need to tell you?’

And he got it. He looked down at the little boy cradled in Hettie’s arms. His skin wasn’t as dark as the islanders’.

His features...

His heart seemed to sag in his chest as certainty hit. ‘My brother? Ian? He’s his?’ How had he made his voice work?

‘Yes,’ she said, because there was no answer to give other than the truth. ‘Sefina is... Sefina was a Fijian islander. As far as I can gather, Ian stayed there for a while. He got her pregnant and she was kicked out of home. In what was a surprising bout of conscience for Ian, he brought her here. He paid Louis to marry her and he gave her a monthly allowance, which Louis promptly drank. But a few weeks ago the money stopped and Louis took his anger out on Sefina. The day before the cyclone things reached a crisis point. They were living out on Atangi. We flew her across to Wildfire, to hospital, but then the storm hit...and I didn’t have that moment...’

‘I’m sure you did your best.’ It was a trite thing to say and he saw a flash of anger in response.

‘She needed more.’

‘She had no one else?’

‘You need to understand. She was an outsider. She was pregnant by... And I’m sorry about this—but she was pregnant by a man the islanders have cause to hate. She married an oaf. Her mother-in-law wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and vilified anyone who did. And the only person responsible—your brother—is now missing.’

‘He’s dead,’ he said, and her gaze jerked to his.

‘Dead?’

‘That’s another reason I couldn’t get back here until now. Ian’s been gambling—heavily. Unknown to me he racked up debts that’d make your eyes water. That’s why he’s bled the island dry. And that’s why...well, his body was found two weeks ago, in Monaco. Who knows the whys or wherefores? The police are interested. I’m...not.’

There was a long, long silence.

She was restful, this woman, Max thought. Where others might have exclaimed, demanded details, expressed shock, disgust or horror, Hettie simply hugged the child in her arms a little tighter.

She was...beautiful, he thought suddenly.

Until now, despite the lacy knickers and bra, despite the attempt at humour, she’d seemed a colleague. A part of the trauma and the tragedy. Now, suddenly, she seemed more.

She was slight, five feet four or five. Her body was tanned and trim, and the lacy lingerie showed it off to perfection.

Her dark hair was still sodden. Her curls were forming wet spirals to frame her face.

Thirty-five, she’d said, and he might have guessed younger, apart from the life lines around her shadowed green eyes.

Life lines? Care lines? She’d cared about Sefina, he thought. She was caring about Joni.

Her body was curved around him now, protective, a lioness protective of her cub. Everything about her said, You mess with this little one, you mess with me.

His...nephew?

‘You realise he’s yours now,’ she whispered at last into the stillness, and the words were like a knife, stabbing across the silence.

‘What...?’

‘This little boy is a Lockhart,’ she said, deeply and evenly. ‘The M’Langi islanders look after their own. Joni’s not their own. He never has been. He was the child of two outsiders, and the fact that an oaf of an islander was paid to marry his mother doesn’t make him belong. The islanders have one rule, which is inviolate. Family lines cross and intercross through the islands, but, no matter how distant, family is everything. Children can never be orphaned. The word “orphan” can’t be translated into the M’Langi language.’

‘What are you saying?’ There was an abyss suddenly yawning before him, an abyss so huge he could hardly take it in.

She shrugged. ‘It’s simple,’ she said softly. ‘According to the M’Langi tradition, this little one isn’t an orphan, Dr Lockhart. This little boy is yours.’

* * *

He had complications crowding in from all sides but suddenly they were nothing compared to this one.