A December To Remember

‘Me, too.’ Ellie huffed a long sigh. ‘I got such a shock seeing you across the room, and I don’t seem to have returned to normal since. I don’t want to fight with you. We were never very good at that, and starting now doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

‘I guess four years is a long time, with many things having gone down for each of us. Let’s go back to when we were happy being pals and downing beers as if it was going out of fashion on our days off.’ He’d like that more than anything right about now. A cold beer—with his pal. They had a lot of catching up to do. And not just the bad stuff.

Ellie nodded slowly. ‘That’d be great. A friend is what I really need more than anything.’

Don’t ask. ‘Done.’ He followed through on his previous thought. ‘Get some shut-eye and tonight we’ll go to a bar in town for a reunion beer or two. Then you can catch up on some more sleep before you start to get to know your way around here. How does that sound?’ He held his breath.

At last. A full-blown Ellie smile came his way, like warm hands around his heart. ‘Perfect.’ She started to move past him.

Luca suddenly felt the need to tell her. To get it out of the way, because it would hang between them like an unsolved puzzle if he avoided the issue, and he didn’t want that. ‘I never married her.’

She nearly lost her balance, and when she raised her face to him her eyes were wide. But she kept quiet, waiting for him to finish his story.

As if that could be told in thirty seconds, but he supposed he could give her the bones of it. ‘She terminated the baby. Said she’d met someone else and didn’t want to take my child into that relationship.’ If it had been his child. She hadn’t exactly been monogamous with him. He would’ve insisted on a DNA test being done but he’d been trying to trust her and accept what had happened.

He’d always been supercareful about using condoms during every liaison. But no child of his would ever grow up without his father at his side, and that edict had taken him straight into Gaylene’s hands—until she’d found a richer man. Luca’s hands fisted on his hips, as they always did when he thought about that selfish woman. The only good thing she had done was remind him exactly why he had no intention of ever, ever getting married or having children.

‘You always said you weren’t going to marry or have children. I was surprised when I heard about the circumstances of your wedding, but so many people get caught out by an unplanned pregnancy.’ Ellie leaned against him. ‘I should’ve phoned then.’

But by then he’d told her what he thought of her marrying Baldwin. He got it. She’d still been angry with him. ‘We were both tied up with our careers and finishing exams, not to mention other things. There was a lot going on.’ I wouldn’t have told you anyway. Like I’ve never told you about my father and my grandfather and how they let down those nearest and dearest big time. How my father took his would-be father-in-law’s propensity for deserting his wife and children to a whole new level. Some things were best kept in the family.

Ellie nodded. ‘Our friendship was under a fair bit of strain, if I remember rightly.’

‘You do.’ But he wouldn’t raise the subject that had come between them again. Not today anyhow. ‘Go shower and head to bed. Your eyeballs are hanging halfway down your face. I’ll warn everyone to be quiet around your room.’

‘Nice. How come I didn’t scare the kids, then? I must look very ugly.’ Her smile slipped as a yawn gripped her.

‘They’re a lot tougher than you’d guess.’ Luca felt his usual sadness for these beautiful and gentle people who dealt with so much, then he glanced at Ellie and brightened. ‘But they’re also very like kids anywhere in the world when you buy treats or play cricket with them.’ Things he was always indulging in.

He felt his heart lurch as Ellie stepped through into the ablutions block and shut the door. El. His dearest friend. Damn, but he’d missed her, and he was only just realising how much. No one quite poked the borax at him the way she had whenever he’d got too serious about something she’d deemed to be ridiculous. She was usually spot on too. But now something was definitely not right. He’d never seen her so beaten, as though all the things she held dear and near were gone. Somehow, sometime, over the coming weeks he’d find out, and see if he couldn’t help her to get her spark back.

* * *

Ellie woke to knocking on her door. Where am I? She looked around at the children’s drawings covering the walls and it all came back in a hurry. Vientiane. The amputee centre. She stretched her toes to the end of the bed and raised her arms above her head. She’d slept like the dead and now felt good all over, ready to start her job in this country that was new to her.

Knock, knock.

‘Who is it?’

‘Chi. Luca said you have to get up. I’ve got you more water.’

Luca. So that hadn’t been a dream. She’d be excited about catching up with him if she didn’t know he’d want all the details about her failed marriage. He wasn’t going to get them but he’d persist for days; she just knew it. Then again, he had told her why he wasn’t married. What a witch that woman had turned out to be. Terminating their baby with no regard for its father. That was beyond her comprehension. But then she’d never faced a similar situation. Freddy had made certain she didn’t get pregnant.

‘Ellie?’

‘Sorry, come in.’ Ellie shuffled upright and leaned back against the wall as Chi entered.

‘Luca said you’re going out at seven o’clock.’ The girl spoke precisely and slowly as if searching for the right words.

Damn, she’d forgotten Luca’s suggestion of a beer in town. Taking the proffered bottle of water from Chi, she snapped the lid open and said, ‘Thank you, Chi.’

The girl beamed as Ellie poured the cool liquid down her parched throat.

‘What time is it?’ she paused long enough to ask.

‘Half past six. Are you still tired?’

‘A little bit, but eight hours is more than enough for now. I wouldn’t have slept tonight if you hadn’t woken me.’ As Chi sat down on the chair in the corner Ellie asked, ‘Where did you learn to speak such good English?’ The girl looked so cute in her oversize shirt and too-small trousers.

‘Here. The doctors and nurses teach me.’ Pride filled her face, lightened her eyes.

‘How long have you been in the centre?’ To have learned to speak English to a level she could be understood without too much difficulty she must’ve been around the medical staff a long time.

‘I was this high when I came with my brother.’ Chi held her hand less than a metre above the floor. Ellie guessed she was now closer to one hundred and twenty centimetres. ‘Long time ago. My brother was this high.’ Half a metre off the floor.

‘Is your brother still here, too?’

Chi blinked, the pride gone, replaced with stoic sadness. ‘He died. The bomb cut off his leg and the blood ran out.’

Ellie shuddered. Reality sucked, and was very confronting. Flying fragments of metal did a lot of damage, and were often lethal. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision to come here. When she’d heard about Sandra’s family crisis she’d thought about the weeks looming with nothing to keep her busy before she took up her next job and put her hand up. Helping people in these circumstances was so different from working in an emergency department back home, where life was easier and a lot of things like medical care taken for granted. Here people, many only young children, were still being injured, maimed or killed by bombs that had been left lying around or shallow buried decades ago.

‘Louise and Aaron adopted me. My mother and father are gone, too.’

How much reality should a child have to deal with? Leaping out of bed, she scooped the girl into a hug. ‘I’m so happy to know you, Chi.’

‘Knew I couldn’t trust a female to get my message across without stopping to yak the day away.’ Luca stood in the doorway, his trademark grin including both her and Chi in that comment.

With sudden clarity Ellie understood how much she’d missed that grin and the man behind it. Missed their conversations about everything from how to put a dislocated shoulder back into its socket to which brand of beer was the best. They’d argued, and laughed, and fought over whose turn it was to clean the house. They’d cheered each other on in exams while secretly hoping they did better than the other.

She ran to throw her arms around him. ‘I’m glad I’ve found you again.’

‘I’m glad, too, because tomorrow’s your turn to do the washing.’ He laughed against the top of her head.

His hands were spread across her back, his warmth seeping into her bones and thawing some of the chill that had taken up residence on the morning she came home from work to find Freddy and Caitlin in her marital bed, doing what only she should’ve been doing with her husband. She breathed deep, drawing in the scent that was Luca, her closest friend ever, and relaxed. Friends were safer than husbands and sisters, the damage they wrought less destructive.

‘I have missed you so much.’ I just hadn’t realised it. How dumb was that? Who forgot someone important in their lives because they’d fallen out about a man? Not any man, but Freddy. Luca had been right about him, but she wasn’t going to acknowledge that. She couldn’t bear to see the ‘I told you so’ sign flick on in his eyes again. Not yet anyway. Even if she could laugh because he’d won that argument there was too much pain behind it for her to be ready to make light of what had happened. That day would probably never come. ‘We should never have stopped texting or emailing even when we were in different cities, no matter what we thought about what the other was doing.’

Luca swung her around in a circle, her feet nearly taking out the bed and then the chair with Chi sitting on it. ‘I do solemnly swear never to stop annoying the hell out of my best buddy, Ellie, ever again.’

‘Look out.’ Chi leaped on top of the chair out of the way of Ellie’s legs. ‘Ellie makes you crazy, Luca.’

Ellie was put back on her feet and then Luca grabbed Chi and swung her in a circle. ‘You’re right, she does. I’d forgotten how to be crazy until today.’

Chi giggled and squirmed to be put down. ‘Ellie, can I be your friend, too? I want to be crazy.’

‘Absolutely. We’ll be the three crazies.’ Ellie reached for the girl and hugged her tight, trying hard not to let the lurking tears spill. What a day. What a damned amazing day. She’d found Luca, gained a new friend and was starting to feel a little bit like her old self. A teeny-weeny bit, but that was a start.

‘Okay, crazies, time Ellie got ready to go out. Chi, I’m sorry but you’re too young to go to a bar, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere else to take you while Ellie’s here.’ Luca cleared his throat and when Ellie looked up she’d swear there was moisture at the corners of his eyes, too.