The Doctor’s Rescue Mission

CHAPTER TWO

MORAG felt the earth move while she was at Hubert Hamm’s, and stupidly, after the first few frightening moments, she thought it mightn’t matter.

Hubert was the oldest of the island’s fisherman. His father had run sheep up on the ridge to the north of the island. That was where Hubert had been born and the tiny cottage was still much as Elsie Hamm had furnished it as a bride almost a hundred years before.

The cottage had two rooms. There was a tiny kitchen-living room where Robbie sat and fondled Hubert’s old dog, and an even smaller bedroom where Hubert lay, approaching his death with stately dignity.

It’d be a while before he achieved his objective, Morag thought as she measured his blood pressure. Six months ago, Hubert had taken himself to bed, folded his hands across his chest and announced that the end was nigh. The only problem was that the neighbours kept dropping off wonderful casseroles and puddings, usually staying for a chat. His love of gossip was therefore thoroughly catered for. Hubert’s bedroom window looked out over the whole island, and he was so eagle-eyed and interested that death seemed less and less enticing.

With Morag visiting every few days, his health did nothing but improve, to the extent that now Morag had no compunction in bringing Robbie with her as she took her weekly hike up the scree. There was a rough vehicle track round the back of the ridge but the scenery from the walking path was spectacular. She and Robbie enjoyed the hike, and they enjoyed Hubert.

Would that all deathbeds were this healthy, prolonged and cheerful.

‘I’m worse?’ Hubert asked-without much hope-and she grinned.

‘Not so you’d notice. But you’re certainly a week older and that has to count for something.’

‘Death’s coming. I can feel it,’ he said in solemn tones, but a sea eagle chose that moment to glide past his window and his old eyes swung around to follow its soaring flight.

Death might be coming, but life was still looking good.

Consultation over.

‘Have you finished? Is Mr Hamm OK?’ Robbie looked up as she opened Hubert’s bedroom door, and she smiled across at her nine-year-old nephew with affection.

‘Mr Hamm’s great. His blood pressure’s fine. His heart rate’s nice and steady. Our patient looks like living for at least another week-if not another decade. Are you ready to go home?’

‘Yep.’ Robbie gave Elspeth a final hug and rose, a freckled, skinny little redhead with a grin that reminded Morag achingly of Beth. ‘When Mr Hamm dies, can I have Elspeth?’

Elspeth, an ancient golden retriever, pricked up her ears in hope, but back in the bedroom so did Hubert.

‘She’ll stay here until I’m gone,’ the old man boomed.

‘Of course she will,’ Robbie said, with all the indignation of a nine-year-old who knew how the world worked. ‘But you’ve put names on everything else.’

He had, too. In the last six months Hubert had catalogued his cottage. Everything had a name on now, right down to the battered teapot on the edge of the fire-stove. ‘Iris Potter, niece in London,’ the sign said, and Morag hoped that Hubert’s niece would be suitably grateful when the time came.

‘There’s no name on Elspeth,’ Robbie said reasonably. ‘And she’s an ace dog.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re a good lad,’ Hubert conceded from his bed. ‘She’d have a good home with you.’

‘I bet she could catch rabbits.’

‘My oath,’ Hubert told them, still from behind the bedroom door. ‘You should see her go.’

‘You know, you could get up and show Robbie,’ Morag said, trying not to smile, and had a snort of indignation for her pains.

‘What, me? A dying man? You know…’

But she never found out what she was supposed to know. Right at that moment the house gave a long, rolling shudder. The teapot, balanced precariously on the side of the stove, tipped slowly over and crashed to the floor.

For one long moment Morag didn’t realise what was happening. Then she did. Unbelievably, she did. It seemed impossible but there was no time to wonder if she was right or not.

Earthquake?

‘Robbie, out! Get away from the house.’ She shoved Robbie out the door before he could utter a response. Elspeth gave a terrified whimper and bolted after him, and they were barely clear before Morag was back in the bedroom, hauling Hubert out of bed and of the house after Robbie and Elspeth.

‘What the…?’ For someone supposedly ready to meet his maker, Hubert clearly had a way to go. He was white with terror. Morag was practically carrying him across the cottage floor as his old feet tried their hardest to scuttle on a surface that was weirdly unstable.

‘It must be an earthquake.’ She had him clear of the doorway now. Robbie was crouched on the back lawn, holding onto Elspeth, and the dog was whimpering in terror.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Hubert sank to his knees and grabbed his dog as well. ‘We haven’t had one of these on the island for eighty years.’

They were clear now of anything that could fall. The earth seemed to be steadying again and she had everyone well away from the house. Morag was hugging Robbie, and Robbie and Hubert were both hugging Elspeth, so they were crazily attached. It was a weird intimacy in the face of shared peril.

They didn’t talk. Talking seemed impossible. They just knelt and waited for a catastrophe that…that suddenly seemed as if it might not happen.

More silence. It was almost eerie. They sat and waited some more but the tremors seemed to have stopped.

Then they sat up and unattached themselves. Sort of. A bit.

‘Was it really an earthquake?’ Robbie demanded, and when Morag nodded, he let out his breath in one long ‘Cool…’

But his body was still pressed against Morag’s and he was still holding on.

‘We haven’t had one of these for eighty years,’ Hubert whispered.

‘You’ve experienced this before?’

‘We’re on some sort of fault line,’ Hubert told them, his colour and his bravado returning as the ground settled. ‘A bunch of scientists came here years back and did some testing but no one took much notice.’ He snorted, his courage building by the minute. ‘It’ll be the same as last time. A bit of a wobble and a fuss and then naught for another eighty years.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Morag grabbed Robbie around his middle and hugged, hard. Her little nephew was usually the bravest of kids but it didn’t take much for him to remember that the world was inherently unsafe. His ‘cool’ had been decidedly shaky. Seven years ago his father had drowned, and four years back he’d lost his mother. Now he clung alternately to Morag and the dog, and Morag kissed his hair and hugged him tight and wondered where to go to from here.

The only damage up on the ridge seemed to be a dent in Hubert’s teapot. But down below… She shaded her eyes, trying to see down to the little village built around the harbour. It was a gorgeous day. The sleepy fishing village was far below them, but from here it looked untouched.

Maybe a dented teapot was the worst of it.

Please…

‘Maybe you’d better stay up here for a bit in case another shock comes,’ Hubert told her, his voice showing that he was just as wobbly as Robbie.

But she had no choice. She was the island’s only doctor and if there was trouble in the township…

‘I need to head back to check the lighthouse and radio the mainland,’ she told Hubert, but she was speaking to Robbie as well. There was a bit of a stacks-on-the-mill process happening here. Robbie was on her knees, Elspeth was sprawled over Robbie, and Morag had a feeling that if dignity hadn’t been an issue then Hubert would be up here as well. Nothing like the earth trembling to make you unsure of your foundations.

Robbie sat even more firmly in her lap. ‘I think we should all stay here,’ he told her. ‘What if it gets worse?’

‘Aftershocks,’ Hubert said wisely. He’d moved away a little in an attempt to regain his dignity. Now he clicked his fingers for Elspeth to come to him. Elspeth wriggled higher onto Robbie’s lap and Hubert had to sidle closer himself to pat his dog.

They were depending on her, Morag thought despairingly. So what was new? The entire island depended on her-when often all she wanted to do was wail.

This was an earthquake. This was truly scary. Who did she get to tremble on?

No one. Ever. She swallowed and fought for calm and for sense.

‘Hubert’s right. Mild earth tremors are nothing to worry about.’ She put Robbie gently aside and ruffled his hair. ‘Robbie, you know I need to go.’ She sent him a silent message with her eyes, saying she was depending on him.

And Robbie responded. He’d learned from birth what was expected of him as the doctor’s kid, and he rose to the occasion now.

‘Do you really have to go?’ he asked.

‘You know that I do.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘It’d better if you stayed here for a bit.’

He took a deep breath. He really was the best kid. ‘OK.’ Elspeth got a hard hug. ‘I’ll look after Elspeth if Mr Hamm looks after me.’

‘Is that OK with you, Mr Hamm?’ she asked, and Hubert flashed her a worried look.

‘It’s fine by me, girl, but you-’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You know, the first quake is usually the biggest,’ Robbie volunteered. It really hadn’t been a very big shake and it was already starting to recede to adventure rather than trouble. ‘I read about them in my nature book. There’s not likely to be another bigger one. Just little aftershocks.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Maybe a bigger one’d be cool.’

‘No,’ Morag said definitely. ‘It wouldn’t be cool.’

‘Or maybe this was a ginormous one out to sea and we just got the little sideways shocks a long way away,’ he said, optimism returning minute by minute.

‘Well, that’d be better,’ Morag conceded, thinking about it. ‘With the closest land mass being the mainland three hundred miles away, there’s not much likelihood of any damage at all. Mind, a few dolphins might be feeling pretty seasick.’

Robbie chuckled.

And that was that.

The earthquake was over. Even Elspeth started to wag her tail again.

But she still had to check the village.

Robbie’s chuckle was a good sound, Morag thought as she started down the scree. She’d worked hard on getting that sound back after his mother had died and now she treasured it. It was a major reason she was here, on this island.

Without a life.

Who was she kidding? She had a life. She had a community to care for. She had Robbie’s chuckle. And she had flying teapots to check out.

But it didn’t stop her mind from wandering.

Even though she lived in one of the most isolated places in the world, there was little enough time for her to be alone. She had so many demands made on her. If it wasn’t her patients it was Robbie, and although she loved the little boy to bits, this time scrambling down the scree when she wasn’t much worried about what she’d find below was a time to be treasured.

She liked being alone.

No, she thought. She didn’t. Here she was seldom by herself, but alone was a concept that had little to do with people around her.

She liked being by herself for a while. But she didn’t like alone.

Always at the back of her heart was Grady. The life she’d walked away from.

There was no turning back, but her loss of Grady was still an aching grief, shoved away and never allowed to surface. But it was always there.

He’d written her the loveliest letter when Beth had died, saying how much he missed her, offering to take her away for a holiday, offering to organise things in Sydney so she could return, offering everything but himself.

She’d taken the letter up to the top of the lighthouse. There she’d torn it into a thousand pieces and let it blow out to sea.

Enough. Enough of Grady. She hadn’t heard from him for four years.

Concentrate on need.

Surely an earthquake was worth concentrating on.

Two hundred yards down the path she paused. The closer she came to the village the more it looked as if there was no damage at all.

Hubert really did treasure his isolation. The path up to his cottage was little more than a goat track on the side of a steep incline. She could stand here for a moment with the sun on her face, look out at the breathtaking beauty of the ocean beyond the island and wonder how she could ever dream of leaving such a place. It was just beautiful.

The sea wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

She blinked for a moment, thinking her eyes were playing tricks. The tide’s a long way out, she thought inconsequentially, and then she thought, No, it’s a crazy way out. The beach was normally twenty or thirty yards wide but now…the water seemed to have been sucked…

Sucked.

A jangling, dreadful alarm sounded in her head as her eyes swept the horizon. She was suddenly frantic. Her feet were starting to move even as she searched, hoping desperately not to see…

But she saw.

There was a long line of silver, far out. She thought she was imagining it at first-thought it must be the product of dread. Maybe it was the horizon.

Only it wasn’t. It was a faint line beneath the horizon, moving inexorably closer. If it hadn’t been such a calm, still day she might not have seen it at all, for in deep water it was only marginally above the height of a biggish swell, but she was sure… There was a boat far out and she saw it bucket high-unbelievably high-and then disappear behind a wall of water.

No.

The villagers were out of their cottages. She could see them. They were gathering in the street beyond the harbour. They’d be comparing notes about damage from the tremor, fearing more. They wouldn’t be turned toward the sea.

She was running now, racing up the goat path. She’d never moved so fast in her life.

At least she knew what needed to be done. This place had been the graveyard for scores of ships in the years since the first group of Scottish fishermen had built their homes here, and the islanders were geared for urgent warning. The track she was on overlooked the entire island. There were bells up here, set up to make the villagers aware that there was an urgent, life-threatening need. At every curve in the track-every couple of hundred yards-there was a bell, and every island child knew the way to be sent to Coventry for ever was to ring one needlessly.

Morag knew exactly where the closest one was, and her feet had never moved so fast as they did now. Seconds after she’d first heard her own mental alarm bell, she reached the closest warning place and the sound of the huge bell rang out across the island.

This wasn’t a shipwreck. It was the islanders themselves who were in deadly peril.

They’d have to guess what she was warning of. ‘Guess,’ she pleaded. ‘Guess.’

They heard. The islanders gathered in the street stilled. She saw them turn to face her as they registered the sound of the bell.

She was too far away to signal danger. She was too far away for her scream to be heard.

But there were fishermen among the villagers, old heads whose first thoughts went to the sea. They’d see a lone figure far up on the ridge ringing the bell. Surely they’d guess.

Maybe they’d guess?

She stood on the edge of the rocky outcrop and waved her arms, pointing out to sea, screaming soundlessly into the stillness. Guess. Guess.

And someone responded. She saw rather than heard the yell erupting-a scream of warning and of terror as someone figured out what she might be warning them about. Someone had put together the tremor and her warning and they knew what might happen.

Even from so far away, she heard the collective response.

People were yelling for their children. People were grabbing people. People were running. A mass of bodies was hurling off the main street, scrabbling for the side streets that led steeply out of town.

She could see them but she could do nothing except go back to uselessly ringing her damned bell.

People were stumbling, stopping to help, to carry…

‘No,’ she was screaming, helpless in the face of the sheer distance between here and the town. ‘Don’t stop. Don’t stop.’

She could see their terror. She felt it with them.

And she could see the smaller and smaller distance between the islanders and the great wash of water bearing down.

‘Run. Run.’

The wall of water was building now as it approached land. It was sucking yet more water up before it. The shore was a barren wasteland of waterless emptiness.

And Morag could do nothing. She could only stand high on the hill and watch the tsunami smash toward the destruction of her people.

There was a soft, growing rumble. Louder…

Then it hit.

She watched in appalled, stupefied fascination as the water reached the shore. There were dull grating sounds as buildings ground together. Sharp reports as power poles snapped. It was a vast front of inrushing water, smashing all before it in a ghastly, slamming tide, the like of which Morag had never begun to imagine.

And there was nothing to do where she stood but watch.

Maybe she could have closed her eyes. She surely didn’t want to see, but for the first awful seconds her eyes stayed open.

She saw the tiny harbour surge, boats pushed up onto the jetty, houses hit, the water almost to their eaves. Dear God, if people were inside…

She saw old Elias Cartwright open his front door just as the water hit-stubborn old Elias who’d consider it beneath his dignity to gather outside with the villagers just because of a mere earth tremor…

The water smashed and that was the last Morag saw of Elias.

It was then that she closed her eyes and she felt herself start to retch.

She kept her eyes closed.

Closed.

This was safe. Here in the dark she could tell herself she was retching for nothing. It was a dream-a nightmare-and soon she’d wake up.

But there was no line separating dream from reality.

The sun was still warm on her face. One of the island goats was nudging her arm in gentle enquiry. The world was just the same.

Only, of course, it wasn’t. When she finally found the courage to open her eyes, the tiny Petrel Island settlement was changed for ever.

The houses nearest the harbour were gone. The harbour itself was a tangle of timber and mud and uprooted trees.

Devastation…

Her first thought flew to Robbie.

She looked upward to Hubert’s place and the old man was staring down at her, her horror reflected in the stock-still stance of the old man. She was two hundred yards away but his yell echoed down the scree with the clarity of a man with twenty-year-old lungs.

‘I’ll take care of the lad. We’ll watch the sea for more. Robbie and I’ll stick with the bell and not leave it.’

She managed to listen. She managed to understand what he’d said.

Hubert and Robbie would watch to warn of another wave, she thought dully. And in offering to take care of Robbie, she knew what Hubert was saying she should do.

She was the island’s only doctor. The islanders looked to her for help. For leadership.

She had to go down.