Healed By Her Army Doc

Because of what had happened between us? Kate wondered, guilt biting deep inside her.

But before she could say anything, Angus was speaking again.

‘And it didn’t help telling her about you—about what had happened on the island.’

‘You told her about the island? About the night we spent together? Oh, Angus, why on earth would you do that? It was one night. We were in another world—we knew it didn’t mean anything but relief, or celebration, or something. I can’t—’ She looked up into his face as she said it, and saw that he still disagreed.

And understood.

His integrity would have insisted he tell, while she, Kate, had held onto her own secret, although it hadn’t really been a secret until Angus had reappeared in her life.

And telling now? Wouldn’t he feel the pain she’d felt? Those endless, sleepless nights and empty aching arms? Did he deserve that?

She shook away the thoughts and tried to ignore the cold, hard lump inside her.

‘I need some sleep,’ she said, and turned away from him, although she knew sleep would be impossible.

She made her way up to the apartment in a daze, ate some cereal—soggy—and toast—cold—and tried to pretend it had been just another callout.

‘I’m sorry about the breakfast but I always get it ready when I hear the helicopter land,’ Alice was explaining. ‘Did you have a lot to do when you got back that you were late?’

Kate shook her head. The driver of the road train would have had a battery of tests and was probably getting appropriate treatment right now.

And the two young people, their lives cut short, were being taken by road transport to the nearest hospital.

‘Bad, was it?’ Alice asked, guessing from her silence that things hadn’t gone well.

‘Just about as bad as it gets,’ Kate said, and then, knowing Alice would see or hear a report on a news broadcast, she added, ‘It was a road train against a small car and the two young people in the car were killed.’

‘That’s shocking,’ Alice said. ‘So dreadful for their families.’

She paused, then added, ‘But surely we should always take something from these terrible things—from such waste of life. Shouldn’t it make us think about our own lives?’

Kate looked at the woman who had taken her in when she’d been at her lowest ebb and had coaxed her slowly back to at least a semblance of normal life.

‘Do you have regrets about your life? Wish you’d done things differently?’

Alice smiled and shook her head.

‘I’m talking about you, my dear. I know you’re busy with your studies but life is meant to be lived, Kate. You should get out more, meet people away from your work. Those two had their lives taken from them, you still have yours and for their sakes, if nothing more, you should make the most of it.’

‘And being the best surgeon I possibly can be isn’t making the most of it?’ Kate retorted.

Alice just shook her head and began to clear the table.

But Alice’s words, perhaps because she so rarely talked about personal things and this was twice in two days, remained with Kate as she headed to her bedroom. And a hot shower failed to wash them away, so they lingered in her head, preventing any possibility of sleep. She heard the front door of the apartment open and shut and knew Alice had gone to help out at the charity shop down the road—Animal Welfare on Fridays. Alice’s life was nothing if not predictable.

Giving up on sleep, Kate pulled on shorts and a light singlet. She’d go for a run, head out along the coastal path towards Coogee. Exercise and fresh, salty air would surely make her sleepy.

She enjoyed running, and today was even more special as the sun sparkled on the ocean while a gentle breeze kept her cool, and concentrating on where she put her feet and dodging walkers on the path kept her mind off both Angus’s revelation and Alice’s lecture.

She’d moved to the side of the path to allow a young woman jogging with a toddler in a stroller to pass in the opposite direction when she noticed the tall, upright figure striding—marching?—along the path in front of her.

Her heart flipped, and confusion fogged her mind—secrets, he’s not married, another secret, her secret, and living life before it was too late all jumbled in her head.

And if she kept running she’d have to pass him.

Just run past?

Could she do that?

Not really!

Turn around and go back?

She usually ran as far as the huge cemetery, where sloping grounds gave such a wide view of the ocean, and to turn before that—well, it was hardly a run at all...

The memory of the young lives cut short sent her forward, slowing as she reached the marching man.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ she said, slowing to a jog beside him. ‘I couldn’t either, but running always helps.’

He turned his head and looked at her for a moment, not breaking stride.

‘The team should have had a debrief after an incident like that—after every incident, in fact.’

‘We do, although today, because Blake went with the bodies to the nearest hospital, we’ll have it later. Probably this evening. Mabel will let us know.’

‘Jogging is bad for your knees and ankles,’ he muttered, in an even more critical tone.

‘I don’t usually jog, I run,’ she told him, curt to the point just short of rudeness because the man was causing so many strange reactions in her body. ‘I’m jogging out of politeness to keep up with you, although you obviously don’t want company, so I’ll keep running.’

And she ran on, building up speed until she was running almost flat out by the time she reached her goal.

But even at full speed she couldn’t outrun her awareness of Angus, stoically marching along the track behind her.

She settled on a grassy patch in the middle of the cemetery, beside a carved marble statue of a cherub that presided over the grave of a small boy who’d died back in 1892. His name had been Joshua and she’d been drawn to him although he’d lived for seven months, while her child, also a boy, had not lived at all.

And although her occasional chats with Joshua usually comforted her, today her thoughts were with her baby—Jasper she’d called him—and the way he’d felt in her arms as she’d held him that one time—

Had she been so lost in memories of that terrible day that she hadn’t seen Angus approaching?

‘Sorry I was grumpy,’ he said, hovering above her. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

He squatted down to read Joshua’s memorial.

‘I suppose parents in those days were aware their kids could die young,’ he added, settling himself comfortably on the grass beside her as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be sharing this particular patch of grass.

Her patch of grass!