Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

‘Lovely Lauren, don’t tell me you’re concerned for my welfare?’

Lauren didn’t need to look around to know that plenty of locals had heard the exchange. She was sure Tom had known that too, and had said it as revenge for her demented ‘date’ ploy and the encyclopaedia reference. She’d kill him! She’d climb up there and do it now if not for the fact that another person up there might endanger him.

Him?

No, she meant the other people still up there. Cam and whoever he and Tom had been tending.

Didn’t she?

She didn’t have a clue, she just knew that seeing Tom up there jumping on the already damaged scaffolding had sent cold chills through her body and clamped a band of steel around her heart.

‘The kids are all gone now.’

The voice, laden with doom although obviously the message was good, made her turn. Bobby Sims was right behind her, fear and apprehension making his usually bright, mischievous face pale and tense.

‘And I still can’t find Mum.’

The way he said it melted Lauren’s heart. For all his exasperating devilry, Bobby was still a little boy who loved his mother and had been with her through her string of abusive boyfriends.

‘You stay with me, we’ll find her,’ she told him. ‘If she’s not around here, maybe we’ll find her at the hospital. I have to go up there to talk to the people waiting to find out about their friends and family. We’ll get something to eat and drink up there as well. The canteen will be open.’

To Lauren’s surprise, she felt a small hand slip into hers, making her very aware that this wasn’t Bobby, the torment of her life, but a little boy who couldn’t find his mum.

She gave the little hand a squeeze, then knelt in front of him.

‘I’ll look after you, whatever happens, Bobby,’ she promised, drawing him into her arms to give him a comforting hug, repeating the promise that she’d take care of him, rocking him slightly as she offered comfort beyond words.

To her surprise he not only accepted the hug but he hugged her back, although as soon as she felt he’d had enough, she stood up. She led him up the road towards the hospital, following straggling groups of people who were also missing someone they knew or loved, the night silent with shock so the whispering shush as the waves slid onto the sand sounded loud in the darkness.

Once at the hospital, she realised she needed to start sorting people again—telling anyone not injured to wait on the veranda so the nurses on duty and those who had come in when they’d heard of the emergency listed the others according to the severity of their injuries. Jo, Cam, Tom and the other hospital doctor were all at work, Jo and Cam in the ER, working their way through the patients. Tom, Jo explained as she splinted a sprained wrist, was in Theatre with a man with a broken femur.

After checking with the ER manager that Joan Sims hadn’t been brought in, Lauren took Bobby through to the canteen.

‘What would you like to eat?’

For the first time since she’d seen him by the devastated stands, Bobby’s face lit up.

‘I can have any of that stuff?’ he asked, looking at the offerings, hastily prepared, Lauren guessed, in the servery.

‘Go for it,’ Lauren told him. ‘Grab a plate at one end and fill it up with whatever you want, but if you eat too much and throw up you have to clean up the mess.’

‘Me? I’m only eight!’

‘You,’ Lauren confirmed. ‘You’re never too young to learn to do a bit of cleaning.’

She watched as he heaped his plate then put some of his choices back, settled him at a table, told him she’d be on the veranda and to come out there when he finished. She was about to depart when she saw shadows chase across his face and tears well in his eyes.

‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘I should have something to eat as well. Wait here while I get some food and we’ll eat together then we can both go onto the veranda.’

She grabbed a sandwich and a cup of coffee and returned to find Bobby had nearly finished his large dinner.

‘There was apple pie there and some chocolate stuff and ice cream,’ he reminded her.

‘Go get some,’ she said, ‘but, remember, not too much.’

She was surprised to see him pick up his plate and carry it over to the servery, something she knew he refused to do at the refuge, telling whichever woman on duty in the kitchen it was a ‘girls’ job’ in tones of such lofty disdain they knew he must be echoing at least one of the men who’d moved through his mother’s life.

Back in the ER things seemed to be more chaotic than ever, but as Joan Sims hadn’t turned up Lauren stopped in her office to phone the police station. She spoke to a civilian helper who’d come in to assist, telling him Bobby Sims was with her if anyone phoned to enquire.

The helper checked his lists.

‘No one’s called us so far,’ he told Lauren, who was beginning to get a really bad feeling about Joan. She looked at Bobby, sitting dejectedly on a couch in the little anteroom where therapy patients waited, and had a brainwave. A lot of the OT and physio patients were kids so there was a TV, DVD player and a stack of DVDs in the small room.

‘Can you work a DVD player?’ she asked Bobby.

‘Course I can,’ he scoffed, then his eyes lit up. ‘Can I watch one of those DVDs?’

He’d obviously seen the shelves of them.

‘They’re all yours,’ Lauren told him. ‘I’ll be just outside on the veranda if you need me.’

She was about to walk away when the image of him standing there in front of the shelf made her turn back. She crossed the office and went into the little room where she gave him a big hug, then knelt so they were on eye level with each other.

‘Are you okay to stick with me until we sort this out?’ she asked him.

He nodded, then for the first time in the turbulent few years that she’d known Bobby he put his arms around her neck and pressed a quick kiss on her cheek.

‘Have fun,’ she whispered in his ear when she’d kissed him back. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

For some weird reason she found she had a lump in her throat and was swallowing it as she came out of the office into the corridor, slap bang into Tom.

‘I was looking for you,’ he said. ‘Are you all right? Do you have to be here? Can’t you go home and get some sleep?

Someone should be resting—there’ll be a lot of fall-out over this and plenty of traumatised people for you to have to deal with over the next few days.’

He’d put an arm around her as he spoke and was holding her close enough for her to see the concern in his eyes.

For a moment she felt like Bobby—she wanted to return the light hug he was giving her, return it with interest because a hug was what she needed right now—but she’d already embarrassed Tom enough for one night with her encyclopaedia statement so she stepped away.

Practical Lauren returning!

‘I’m fine. Have you eaten? Should I be rustling up some food for you and Cam and Jo?’

‘We’ve people feeding us all the time,’ Tom assured her, ‘but it will be a long night. At last count there are about thirteen with serious enough injuries to be hospitalised, and another seven or so who need bones set, or stitches in wounds, then there are muscle tears, that kind of thing, strains and sprains.’

‘No fatal injuries?’ Lauren had to ask, although just thinking of it made her cold all over.

Tom closed in on her again, resting his hands on her shoulders.