A Family to Save the Doctor's Heart
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Marion Lennox
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CHAPTER ONE
âMUM ALWAYS MAKES stew when we find fresh bull kelp. Thisâll make heaps.â
Jenny stared at the heap of sodden seaweed the kids had hauled up from Kelpcutterâs Bay. It was oozing seawater onto the kitchen floor, and already starting to smell. They thought she should cook it? Really?
âWeâll never get it fresher,â Ruby yelled excitedly. âAnd thereâs piles down there for the racks. Soon as the storm stops, we need to get the tractor out.â
And they were gone again, Sam, Ruby and Tom, twelve, eight and six years old respectively. Followed by Nipper and Pepper, their two kelpie-type mutts.
She should stop them. For two days now the weather had been wild. Who knew what sort of junk had been washed up? A good parent would have her children inside, home schooling, sharing educational childrenâs programmes, keeping them clean and dry.
Staying safe.
But safety was not on these kidsâ agenda, and she wasnât their parent. For these kids, safety seemed almost a dirty word.
When sheâd watched them build a campfire in the backyard so they could bury potatoes to cook, sheâd bitten back warnings, though she had insisted they light it further from the house. But when six-year-old Tom had spooned out the innards of his first spud, sheâd lost it. âBe careful, youâll burn yourself.â
The kids had looked at her incredulously and then ignored her. Tom had thus scalded his tongue when heâd bitten into the too hot potato. Heâd cried, but heâd folded into himself, not wanting her comfort.
âDad says we gotta learn ourselves,â twelve-year-old Sam had said briefly, and Jennyâs grief at the death of her brother and his wife had verged on anger.
There was no doubt that Chris and Harriet had loved their kids, but safety hadnât seemed to be in their vocabulary. Self-sufficiency seemed to have been their mantra, but sometimes she wondered if it had verged on neglect.
That lack of concern had seen the family hiking to the far reaches of the island on one of the last hot days of autumnââBecause the waterfall at the head of the river is the coolest place to be in the heat,â Sam had told her. Then theyâd pitched tents under one of the vast eucalypts that even Jenny knew were nicknamed by the locals as âwidowmakersâ. The massive branches were known to drop without warning, and Chris and Harriet were never to realise the appalling consequences of their actions.
Theyâd died instantly, leaving three bereft children. Sam, aged twelve, was still suffering the effects from a major infectionâthe boy had hiked five kilometres in bare feet to get help. âMy shoes were in Mum and Dadâs tent.â His voice had been a bare sob when rescuers had found him. âI couldnât reach anything. I couldnât reach Mum and Dad.â
And that was why Jenny Martin, twenty-nine years old, emergency doctor at Sydney Central, happily single, happily a city girl, was staring at a pile of fresh bull kelp, thinking with searing longing of the menus pinned to her fridge back in Sydney. Thinking of a takeaway Thai feast. Even a pizza would be great, she decided, and sighed, and then picked up the bull kelp and carted it outside, across the wind-blasted yard to hang on one of the long lines of drying racks.
No, she wouldnât eat itâher sister-in-law had left the freezer loaded with cooked kelp and she wasnât going there eitherâbut it might as well make them some cash. Bull kelp had many commercial usesâpharmaceuticals, toothpaste, shampoo, dairy products... The kelp dried on these racks, and every few months a boat would arrive and cart the dried product away.
It was a livingâjustâbut it wasnât a living Jenny would ever have chosen for herself. She used the winch to heave the kelp over the racks, and then stood back and stared at it in dislike. Jenny Martin, highly qualified doctor, carting seaweed to make ends meet.
She couldnât go on like this.
What choice did she have?
âJenny!â
And that brought her out of her reverie. Eight-year-old Ruby was screaming her name as she raced up the path from the beach, and she sounded terrified.
These kids pretty much lived their own lives. Jenny had come when Chris and Harriet had died, expecting to comfort, expecting...well, she wasnât sure what. What sheâd found were deeply traumatised kids, but kids whoâd been raised to be fiercely independent. They didnât want comfort, at least not from her. Sam had had to spend two weeks in hospital on Gannet Island because of the infection that had taken hold of his foot, but once he was home theyâd gathered together into a self-reliant group.
Jenny was the outsider. An aunt they barely knew. An aunt whose role, theyâd decided without discussion, was to be their adult base so their lives could stay exactly as theyâd always been.
They couldnât. She knew that, and she suspected the kids knew that too, but months later she was still trying to figure whether transplanting them to Sydney would break them. And break their future?
âJenny!â
She abandoned the kelp and ran. Rubyâs cry had almost been lost in the wild wind, but sheâd definitely heard fear.
These kids didnât call for her. When they cried into the night, they called for each other.
But now she saw Ruby, her tangle of red curls flying, her feetâin sandals now; thereâd been some things Jenny had insisted onâbarely touching the ground.
Jenny reached her, caught her shoulders, squatted and steadied her.
âWhat is it? Ruby, itâs okay, Iâm here. Tell me whatâs wrong.â
For a moment Ruby couldnât answer. She stared wildly at Jenny, and Jenny had visions of some new horror, some new tragedy. Why hadnât she insisted on going with them?
But these kids knew Kelpcutterâs Bay far better than she did. It was their backyard, their playground. They all swam like fish. Chris had knocked basic water safety into their heads early and let them be, and they regarded their auntâs qualms with bewilderment bordering on distress.
Marc, the physician on Gannet whoâd cared for Sam, had taken her aside after heâd dropped in for a âhome visitâ when Sam had come home from hospital. âJenny, as far as possible you need to let âem be.â These kids have been raised like wild creatures. Youâll need to tame them, but if you move too fast youâll cause more problems.â
All very well for Marc to say, she thought bitterly, but now...
âRuby, whatâs happened?â
âWeâve found...â Ruby could scarcely get her words out. âJenny, thereâs a boat. Itâs smashing into the rocks. And Jenny, weâve found a man.â
