Marion Lennox - Stormbound Surgeon

Very funny.

He checked Marigold’s heart and did some adjusting of the Lanoxin, checked on Rhonda’s lungs, and that was it. It wasn’t exactly intense medicine.

Amy was busy during the day but it was mostly administrative stuff. Organising meals on wheels. Sorting out the myriad problems of an aging community. She was wasted in this job, he thought. Her medical skills were far too good.

It wasn’t worth saying that to her.

The whole set-up was a trap, he decide bitterly, and it was Amy who was trapped. He was here for a few days. Amy would marry her Malcolm and be here for life.

With no excitement at all.

Saturday rolled on. Joss found himself making kites with Lionel and wishing the weather would ease so he could try them out. They really were excellent kites.

He thought of what he’d be doing in Sydney now. He was a workaholic. Saturday afternoon he’d be coping with accident victim after accident victim, most of whom he never saw again after he left Theatre. The comparison with what he was doing now-keeping one old man happy by talking about kites and dogs-was almost ludicrous.

It was still medicine. He conceded that and wondered-how happy could he be in such a life?

He couldn’t be happy. He needed acute medicine. He needed more doctors around him.

Iluka needed those things!

Amy didn’t go home. Well, why should she? For once the nursing home was buzzing and vibrant and happy. Even with her new furniture, White-Breakers seemed dismal in comparison.

Bertram took himself for a run along the beach and came back soaked. Kitty stoked up the fire to a roaring blaze, and Bertram lay before the flames and steamed happily. Cook made marshmallows for afternoon tea and Amy helped the residents toast them in the flames. Thelma and Marie coaxed Joss into learning the basics of mah-jong.

If anyone had said a week ago that Joss could enjoy a day like this he’d have said they were nuts. Now… He put down his tiles, ate his marshmallows, watched Amy’s flushed face as she held the toasting fork to the flames and thought…

His world was tilting, and he didn’t know how to right it again.

He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to try.

David and Daisy came by at dinnertime and firmly took Joss home with them for the evening.

‘You can’t impose on Amy for every meal,’ his father told him and Joss waited for Amy to demur-to say she really liked having him.

But she didn’t.

She’d started to grow quieter as the afternoon had progressed. He’d look up to find her watching him, and her face seemed to be strained.

‘Amy…’

‘I can’t keep you from your parents,’ she told him. ‘You have a house key to White-Breakers. I’m a bit tired after last night so I’ll probably be asleep when you get home.’

Damn.

And when Joss woke the next morning she was already back at the nursing home.

‘Have a good day writing your conference paper,’ the note on the kitchen table told him. ‘I’ll ring if we need you but barring accidents you should have the day to yourself.’

Humph. He didn’t want the day to himself.

He couldn’t stay here. He was going nuts.

He drove to the nursing home-to see his patients, Joss told himself, but it was more than that and he knew it was.

He wanted to see Amy.

Sunday. The day stretched on, interminably, and wherever Joss went, Amy wasn’t. Hell, how big was this home anyway?

The rain was easing, but the wind was still high. The talk was that as soon as the wind dropped they could get a ferry running. He could be out of here by tomorrow.

He might not see Amy again.

Why was she avoiding him?

Amy was going nuts.

Everywhere she tried to go there was Joss. He was larger than life, she decided, with his gorgeous smile and infectious laughter. He had the residents in a ripple of amusement, and she’d never seen them look so happy. Every single one of them seemed to have found a reason why they should be in the big living room.

She had a few residents who kept to themselves-who hated being in a nursing home and who showed it by keeping to their rooms.

Not now. Not when Joss and his big dog and his air of sheer excitement were around. With Joss here you had to think anything was possible. Something exciting might happen.

Exciting things didn’t happen to Iluka, Amy thought drearily, and tried to imagine how she could sustain this air of contentment after Joss left.

She couldn’t.

Exciting things didn’t happen in Iluka.

But something exciting did.

‘There’s a boat hit the harbour wall.’

‘What?’ Amy had lifted the phone on the first ring and Sergeant Packer was snapping down the line at her.

‘Of all the damned fool things, Amy. A speedboat tried to come in the harbour mouth-in this wind! It’s come through the heads and nearly got in but it smashed into the middle island. Tom Conner was down there, trying to fish. There’s someone in the water. Can you come?’

‘Joss?’

‘Yeah?’ He was admiring Myrtle Rutherford’s knitting and quietly going stir crazy. ‘Trouble?’ Amy’s face said there must be-and it was serious.

‘Possible drowning. Can you come?’

IT WAS as bad a situation as Joss could imagine.

The harbour entrance was formed by two lines of rock stretching out from the river mouth. In calm water boats could slip through with ease, but this wasn’t a fishing port. It was a fair-weather harbour, maintained by the millionaires to house their magnificent yachts in the summer season. In winter the yachts were taken up to the calmer waters of Queensland where the élite could use them at their pleasure.

Now the harbour was empty, and with good reason. The rain had stopped but the wind was wild. Surf was breaking over the entrance. There were occasional clear gaps as waves receded but they were erratic. The rocks were jagged teeth waiting for the unwary, and what had come through…

It was certainly the unwary.

Jeff was there, and Tom Conner. The old fisherman and the policeman were identically distressed-and identically helpless.

‘I’ve rung the Bowra coastguard,’ Jeff told them. ‘But it looks hopeless. We can’t get a boat out there and it’ll take a couple of hours to get a chopper here. If a chopper can operate in this wind…’

‘Where…?’ Amy was trying to see through the spray being blasted up by the wind. When she did she gasped in horror.

Right in the neck of the harbour was a tiny rocky outcrop. It formed a natural island, forcing boats to fork either right or left. Normally it was a darned nuisance but nothing more. If the harbour had been used for commercial fishing it might have been dynamited away but because this was a fair-weather harbour built for pleasure craft only, it wasn’t worth the expense to remove it.

‘It almost got through.’ Tom Conner was literally wringing his hands. ‘I saw him come and I was yelling, “Damned fool, go back” but he didn’t hear. Then a wave picked him up and threw the boat like it was a bath toy. I still thought he was going to make it but the wave surged into the island and it hit hard and the guy was thrown out. He’s still there.’

He was. Horribly, he was.

The boat was a splintered mess, half in and half out of the water. Its glossy red fibreglass hull was smashed into three or four pieces and as they watched it was being sucked down into the water.

There was a body on the rocks.

‘He’s been thrown further up,’ Tom told them, and the old man was close to weeping. ‘He hasn’t moved.’

The man-whoever he was-looked like a limp rag doll. He was wearing yellow waterproofs and he was sprawled like a piece of debris across the rocks. While they watched, a wave smashed across the tiny island. The water surged almost up to his neck, shifting him, and they thought he’d slip.

He didn’t. He must be wedged.

‘Hell.’ Joss said what they were all thinking. The island was about two hundred yards out. Impossible to reach him.

‘He’ll drown before the chopper reaches him,’ Jeff said, and he sounded as sick as they all felt. ‘That is, if he’s not dead already.’

‘Was he the only one on board?’ Joss asked, his eyes not leaving the limp figure.

‘Yeah,’ Tom told him. ‘The boat didn’t have a cabin, and it was him doing the steering. I would have seen if there was someone else.’

Another wave crashed into the rocks and Amy’s hand went to her mouth as the body shifted slightly in the wash. She felt sick. ‘I can’t bear this.’

‘We need rope,’ Joss said, and they all stared.

Jeff was the first to recover. He shook his head. ‘Rope? No way. You go in that water and you’re a dead man. You can’t swim against that current.’

‘I’m not going in that water,’ Joss snapped. ‘How much rope can we find? I want a rubber dinghy and I want five hundred yards of rope-or more-and as many able-bodied people as we can find. Are there any families living within calling distance on the other side?’

‘There’s a few farms,’ Jeff told him.

‘Contact them and tell them I want as many people as possible on the opposite shore. Then I want Lionel and his biggest kite.’

‘Lionel’s kite…’ Amy stared at him, seeing where his thoughts were headed. ‘But…’

‘But what?’ His eyes met hers, challenging her to find objections.

She was starting to see what he was thinking. ‘The wind’s a south-easterly,’ she said slowly. ‘It’d take a kite straight across the river.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Maybe it could carry a rope. Maybe.’ Despite the drama of the situation Amy felt a twinge of pleasure. Using Lionel’s kites for such a plan… The old man would be delighted.

If it worked.

‘Will a kite hold that weight?’ Jeff sounded as if he thought the idea was crazy, but Amy was nodding.