Healing Her Brooding Island Hero
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Marion Lennox
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CHAPTER ONE
SHE’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT WOMBATS.
Gina Marshall had been on Sandpiper Island for less than an hour before she remembered, and she remembered with a thump. Now she was standing on a gravel track surrounded by thick bushland, shining her phone torch at a wombat lying in front of her aunt’s car. Feeling ill.
How hard had she hit it? Surely not hard enough to do major harm.
Gina had caught the last ferry to Sandpiper, arriving after dark. Her Great-Aunt Babs had organised her car to be left for her at the ferry terminal. Babs’s car was a Mini, old, battered and tiny. The wombat was large. Gina had been lucky the car hadn’t rolled.
Wombats had been a menace on Sandpiper roads for as long as Gina could remember. They were like solid, heavy logs. The locals knew and respected them, but Gina had forgotten. She’d braked when she’d seen the ‘log’, but she hadn’t braked soon enough.
The wombat was now upended, lying on its back with its four little legs in the air.
One of its legs looked...bloody.
Uh oh.
She was in the middle of a national park, and this side of the island was almost uninhabited. The dark and the enveloping bushland were enough to give her the shakes, but she needed to pull herself together. She was a nurse, trained in emergency medicine. Triage. Action. Surely she could deal with this.
‘I’m so sorry I hit you,’ she said, out loud. ‘But what to do next?’
That was helpful. Asking the patient for a plan of action?
And the wombat clearly was unimpressed. It stared up at her, its little eyes unblinking. There wasn’t a huge amount of blood, but it lay unmoving.
Head injury? Spinal injury? Was it lying still because of shock, or something worse?
How could you tell with a wombat?
Given a human, she should check its breathing, its pulse, its vital signs, but she knew enough about wombats to know that, unless the wombat was actively dying, she stood a very real chance of being scratched or bitten.
But she needed to get it off the road, and this was a seriously big wombat. She wasn’t sure she could lift it, even if she was game to try.
Aaghh.
She stood in the middle of the road and tried to think of what to do next. She hadn’t been on the island for years, and she had no contact details for emergency services. She thought back to the darkened little town she’d just driven from. She thought of the sole operator of the ferry terminal, switching off all the lights as he’d left, leaving the place locked and dark.
Black.
That was what the night was. Unwanted memories were suddenly all around her. A mountainside, impenetrable darkness, the stink of blackened ruins, and nothing, nothing, nothing.
This wasn’t black, she told herself. She had the car headlights. She had her phone torch. But beyond their beams...
Get over it, she told herself harshly. Move on.
Her only choice was to phone her great-aunt. Babs was frail, with advanced heart failure, which was why she hadn’t come to collect her in person, but she’d be waiting up for her to arrive. Babs could at least give her island emergency numbers.
And blessedly she answered on the first ring. ‘Gina.’ Her voice was acerbic, a bit annoyed. ‘Are you on the island? Did you find the car? I told Joe to give you the keys. I expected you before this.’
‘I found the car,’ she said. ‘But, Aunty Babs, I’ve hit a wombat.’
‘You’ve what? Oh, for heaven’s sake...’
This wasn’t a promising start. Babs’s tone held astonishment—and also immediate judgement. Sandpiper Island was the smallest of the Birding Isles, an hour’s flight from Sydney plus a ferry ride from the biggest island in the group, Gannet. It had a population of about four hundred, mostly small-scale farmers or fishermen. It was known for its solitude—and for the protection it gave its wildlife.
‘I didn’t hit it very hard,’ Gina said defensively. ‘But I think I’ve hurt its leg, and it’s not moving.’
‘Is it conscious?’
‘It’s looking at me.’
‘I imagine it is,’ Babs snapped. ‘It’ll be terrified. Don’t go near it unless you have to.’
‘Right,’ Gina said, just as dryly. ‘Don’t scare the wombat. Got it. But apart from that... Babs, I need help. What should I do?’
There was a moment’s silence. Then... ‘You need Hugh.’
‘Hugh?’
‘Hugh Duncan. He’s a doctor.’
‘Don’t I need a vet?’
‘Of course you do,’ Babs said, in that condescending voice Gina remembered so well. Gina had been thought of as useless from the moment Babs had met her. ‘But Sandpiper’s not big enough to have a vet. We don’t even officially have a doctor—you remember we take the ferry over to Gannet if we get sick? But Hugh’s worked for some foreign aid organisation—those doctors who go to war zones. Rumour is he was hit by a bomb. He has a gammy leg and he hates being disturbed, but he’ll help in an emergency. If he can keep it alive until tomorrow, you can put it on the ferry to Gannet. There’s a wildlife rehab place there. Meanwhile there’s a rug in my car. Cover it so it doesn’t scratch, put it in the car and take it to his place.’
In the dark? Gina thought. And then she looked back at the wombat and thought even if she wanted to—which she didn’t—picking it up wasn’t an option.
‘I can’t lift it,’ she admitted. ‘It’s enormous.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake...’ Babs’s exasperation was growing. ‘Ring him, then. He won’t like it, but he’ll come.’
‘Isn’t there a policeman or someone else? I mean, I’ll stay until someone arrives but...’
‘You could ring Joan Wilmot,’ Babs told her. ‘You must remember her—she’s our local mayor, and our police. But she’ll just ring Hugh, and then you’ll have two people fed up with you. Three if you count me.’
‘You’re fed up?’ Already, she thought.
‘You should have been more careful,’ Babs snapped, and Gina thought, I’ve come halfway around the world because you admitted you needed me, and I get a lecture before I’ve even arrived?
Suddenly she was thinking back to herself at fifteen, arriving on the island after her parents died, being gathered into Babs’s arms and hugged as if she’d never be released. Then, half an hour later, she was being scolded because she’d set the table with the knives and forks on the wrong side. But even with Babs’s judgement, she remembered staring down at the table and feeling a surge of something that could only be described as relief. After weeks of horror, Babs’s scolding had somehow made her world settle.
At least briefly.
But that was why she was back here now. Babs was ill, but this was the same Great-Aunt Babs she knew. She’d be scolding until the end.
‘So I have to ring this... Hugh.’
‘I’ll ring him for you if it helps,’ Babs said magnanimously, and then spoiled it by saying: ‘You’ll only mix up the directions. I imagine you’ll be on the track leading down to Windswept Bay by now. Up on Windy Ridge?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because wombats are always on that track,’ her aunt snapped. ‘Stay where you are, and I’ll ring now.’
‘Babs?’
‘Yes?’
‘Ring me back and tell me if he’s coming,’ Gina said, trying—and failing—not to sound like a scared kid.
‘I will,’ Babs told her and sniffed. ‘I remember you don’t like the dark. You should have got over that by now, but you needn’t fear. The only bogey man you need to worry about is Hugh Duncan.’
He did not want to answer the phone.
Dammit, he should have chosen another island. One with a medical service.
He’d come to Sandpiper because it seemed about as far from the world he knew as he could get. The island was ninety per cent nature reserve, ten per cent small farms. Most of those farms were on the other side of the island, centred around the only town. This side of the island was practically deserted.
He’d bought this place from a guy who’d seemed almost a hermit, and that was pretty much what Hugh intended himself to be.
He and Hoppy, the little fox terrier retrieved from the hellhole where they’d both been injured, had looked at the natural beauty of the place and thought, Yes! There’d been a few issues with Hoppy and the wildlife, but a three-legged, not very young dog posed little threat. Once Hoppy had learned snakes were for avoiding—and a bite from a blue-tongue lizard had helped—they’d settled well.
And then the islanders had discovered he was a doctor.
He’d never intended to be the sole doctor on a remote island. He needed his head read for not finding out the situation before he’d come, but once the islanders learned of his medical background, he was stuck.
He could refuse to help, and if it was something a ferry ride across to the excellent medical service on Gannet Island could fix, then he did. But in the three years since he’d been here, there’d been calls he couldn’t refuse.
‘Doctor, he’s dying... Doctor, there’s been a crash...’
So now it was ten at night and his phone was ringing. The islanders had learned his response to waste-of-time calls. He knew whatever it was would be unavoidable.
And then he saw the number on the screen, and he thought, Trouble.
Babs Marshall was eighty-four years old. She lived in the only other cottage on this side of the island, but, like him, she kept to herself. He saw her sometimes when he and Hoppy were on the beach. She’d be collecting driftwood, or carting seaweed back to mulch her garden, but she never made an attempt to chat. She was private to the point of surliness.
Then, a few months back she’d had a major heart attack. She’d only survived because he’d noticed her lights hadn’t come on at dark and he’d been worried enough to walk over and check—to find her unconscious, near death. After she’d come home from hospital, he’d ordered her to ring him whenever there was the faintest need, so there was no choice about responding now.
‘Babs,’ he said briefly because social niceties were wasted on his neighbour. ‘Problem?’
‘It’s Gina,’ she said, sounding waspish. ‘My niece.’
He relaxed a bit at that. Despite the best of treatment after her attack, Babs’s heart was still failing, and there was little he or any other medic could do to help. When he’d seen her number on his phone, his own heart had sunk. But...niece?
This Gina must be the phantom niece she’d talked of when he’d worried about her living by herself. ‘I’ve told my niece she’s needed,’ she’d said months ago, but he’d heard nothing since. So now...
‘She’s here? Is she ill?’
‘She’s just arrived, and she’s hit a wombat on the ridge track,’ she snapped. ‘She says she’s hurt its leg, and it’s not moving.’
Silence.
Apart from his and Babs’s smallholdings, this side of the island was a designated nature reserve. Speed limits were strict. Wildlife was sacrosanct.
‘She wouldn’t have been speeding,’ Babs said, seemingly following his thoughts. ‘She’s driving my car.’
He knew the car and he almost grinned. Babs’s tiny car was almost as old as she was. The fact that it still went at all was a miracle, and if there was a choice between the car’s speed and that of a lumbering wombat, he reckoned the wombat might win. But at night, on these roads...
Idiot.
‘All right,’ he said wearily. ‘Tell her to bring it over.’
‘Well, that’s what I can’t do,’ she said, still waspishly. ‘She’s by herself. She says it’s a big one and she can’t lift it. Sometimes she’s not very bright. She’s also scared of the dark. I’d try and help, but she has my car. She just landed on the island tonight, and Joe took my car down to the ferry so she could drive here herself.’
‘She’s a mainlander?’
‘She’s been on one of those cruise ships,’ Babs told him. ‘She spends her life doing that—talk about a waste of space. Only now with the pandemic and everything, the cruises have stopped so she’s finally come.’
Oh, great. The vision he had of the niece was getting worse every minute.
‘You know I hate to bother you,’ Babs was saying. ‘But could you get her out of trouble? Not for her sake, you understand, but for the wombat.’
For the wombat.
He practically gritted his teeth.
But Hoppy was staring up at him in concern. The little dog had been pretty much his lifesaver over the last few years. If you wanted empathy, Hoppy was your dog. Now he had his head cocked to one side and his eyes were huge.
Hugh glanced back to his fire, his book—an excellent mystery, half read—the glass of whisky.
Then back to Hoppy, who was showing his concern in every fibre of his being. Another creature in trouble?
He was anthropomorphising, giving human feelings to a dog. Hoppy couldn’t even hear what was being said.
He was still looking at him.
‘Fine,’ Hugh said, goaded.
‘Thank you.’
He didn’t bother replying, just disconnected and grabbed his boots.
‘Keep the fire going and don’t touch the whisky,’ he told Hoppy, and Hoppy gave a tentative wag of his tail.
‘Yeah, I know, it’s a wombat and I have to help,’ he snarled. ‘But it’s also a dingbat woman who spends her life on cruise ships. I’ll help, but there’s no reason I have to do it graciously.’
She was getting cold. She was also growing more and more nervous. There wasn’t a light to be seen, and the dark was making her shiver. The ocean breeze, balmy during the day in this gorgeous, subtropical climate, was starting to bite through her cotton jacket. The trees were rustling around her, dark and looming.
The wombat was still on its back, its little eyes staring up at her. If she couldn’t see its eyes following her, if she couldn’t see it breathing, she might have thought it was dead.
‘Which would have been easier,’ she muttered and then winced. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m very glad you’re not.’
The wombat didn’t appear to be worried either way. Its eyes were unblinking, looking up at her, judge and jury rolled into one.
‘Babs said someone’s coming,’ she told him, and finally she saw headlights, coming up from the opposite side of the bay to where her aunt lived.
‘Mr Jefferson’s place,’ she told the wombat, as if he might be interested. She remembered Jefferson from the two years she’d lived here after her parents died. He’d lived in a ramshackle log cabin set back from the beach, collecting stuff, wheeling and dealing in whatever he could get his hands on. He’d declared the southern end of Windswept Bay his half, and if she dared walk even one metre inside his perceived territory, he’d threaten to turn his dogs on her.
Babs had told her the National Park officials had moved in a couple of years ago and demanded he shifted his stores of suspect stuff. So this guy... Hugh...had taken his place?
A doctor.
Another hermit?
She stood and waited, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop a tremor or two. She was all grown up now, not the scared fifteen-year-old who Henry Jefferson had terrified, she told herself. But still, as the car drew to a halt, leaving her in the full beam of its headlights, she found herself bracing, drawing herself up to her full five feet three inches.
Wishing she were back with her team, somewhere safe, somewhere like the wilds of Antarctica.
The vehicle was an SUV, solid, heavy, built for hard work. The driver’s door swung open and the driver stepped out.
All she could see was his silhouette. Big. Broad-shouldered. A dark shadow behind the headlights.
It was all she could do not to whimper.
Which was ridiculous. She’d spent the last few years working as a medic with a research team that travelled to some of the most remote places in the world. She was a nurse, and a good one, her extra training as a nurse practitioner having led to her career in emergency medicine. This guy was a doctor. Her professional credentials must surely put her as this guy’s equal—or almost.
‘Hi,’ she said, and almost kicked herself as it came out as a quaver. ’You’re Dr. Duncan?’
‘For my pains. And you’re Gina. Who’s hit a wombat?’
There was such censure in the harsh, gravelly voice that she winced all over again.
‘It was in the middle of the road.’ She sounded small and defensive. For heaven’s sake, she had to pull herself together. ‘And I didn’t hit it very hard.’
‘You’re in the middle of a national park.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Why was she apologising to this guy? She’d already apologised to the wombat. ‘It’s hurt its leg.’
‘You hurt its leg.’ He came forward, limping a little, and she got a clear sight of him in the beam of his headlights.
He was indeed big, tall, with broad shoulders tapering down to narrow hips and long legs. He was wearing a stretched, faded T-shirt, old jeans and heavy boots. What looked like a scar was etched deep, running from the side of his mouth to the base of his left ear. He had short-cropped dark hair, a strongly boned face, shadowed eyes and a mouth set in grim lines.
He was pulling on leather gloves as he walked. He ignored her, just bent over the wombat and flicked on his torch.
The wombat turned its gaze to him. Like...she’s hurt me, mate. Get me out of her clutches.
‘I think I might have broken its leg,’ she said. Damn, why was her voice so small?
‘Let’s see.’ Amazingly his voice had gentled. He was running his gloved hands over the creature, carefully, taking his time. ‘It’s okay, mate,’ he said in the gentlest of tones. ‘We’ll get you somewhere safe as soon as we can, but let’s see what the damage is first.’
And then she was ignored. She stood back, feeling guilty and helpless and, okay, like a superfluous idiot. She had the feeling that if she got into her car and drove away, he wouldn’t even notice.
Finally, he rose and headed to his car. ‘Wh...what...?’ she stammered, because for an awful moment she thought he might be about to drive away. But he snagged a heavy blanket from the car and returned.
‘I don’t think the leg’s broken,’ he told her, the harshness returning to his voice again. ‘Lacerations, but not too deep. Gravel rash. He’s lost a bit of fur. I reckon he’s concussed, though. Hopefully nothing he won’t get over with a bit of peace.’
‘But...he’s conscious.’
‘You can be concussed and still conscious,’ he told her, in the tone of one addressing someone a bit thick. Or maybe very thick.
She knew that. Why was she sounding so dumb? Dammit, she couldn’t seem to help herself.
‘I... What will you do?’
‘I’ll take him home, clean the leg and keep him warm and quiet for a day or so,’ he said. ‘We’re lucky you’re looking at a male. A female with young in her pouch could have been much more complicated. Hopefully I can bring him back here as soon as he’s healed, with a warning to look out for idiot drivers who don’t look out for wombats in a nature reserve.’
Ouch. She deserved it, she thought, but still ouch.
‘I was driving slowly.’
‘If you hadn’t been driving Babs’s car, you’d have killed him.’
‘Then wasn’t it lucky I was?’ she said, a flare of anger coming to her aid. ‘I didn’t mean to. Babs’s headlights are crap, and the thing was just...here.’
‘It’s a national park. It’s allowed to be here. You aren’t.’ He stooped and laid the rug beside the wombat, then moved it effortlessly into its midst. Then he wrapped it and lifted it, as if it weighed nothing at all.
Once upon a time Gina had found an orphaned wombat, during a storm when she’d lived here. She’d had to care for it until the weather settled enough to take it over to the refuge on Gannet Island. It had been little more than a baby, yet it had felt as if it weighed a ton.
This one was maybe four times as big, and Hugh lifted it as if it were a bag of feathers.
‘Is your car still drivable?’ he snapped, and she blinked and then turned her attention to the front of the car. The fender was a bit bent, but it wasn’t touching the wheel. A hammer tomorrow, a spot of amateur panel beating, and it’d be fine.
‘It’s drivable.’
‘Then go slow. Being here after dark is stupid.’
Like she didn’t know?
‘I had to drive along the track,’ she said defensively, and was annoyed that she sounded sulky. ‘There’s no other way to get here. And Babs needs me.’
‘She needed you months ago.’
Wow, talk about judgemental. She fought for something she could say to defend herself, but the reasons were all too complicated. Besides, he already had his back to her, moving the wombat to the back of his vehicle. He closed the door on it, and then turned back to her.
‘Go, then. I’ll stay and watch until I see your lights reach Babs’s place.’
‘In case I hit more wombats?’
‘In case you’ve done some damage to the car you don’t know about. I don’t want to be called out again.’
‘Gee, thanks.’ But she was grateful. Sort of.
‘Are you okay yourself?’ he asked suddenly. ‘No sore neck? You were wearing your seat belt?’
And that disconcerted her. He’d changed, as he’d changed when he’d spoken to the wombat. Suddenly she was the patient, and he...he had a duty of care?
He was a doctor, she reminded herself. He’d be doing what he had to do.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, a little stiffly, but was suddenly absurdly conscious of a desire to weep. It’d be shock setting in, she thought, and fatigue. It had been a huge journey, an endless road to get here.
‘You’re sure?’ And he was striding back to her, torch in hand, shining its light into her face.
Seeing the fatigue? Seeing the trace of stupid tears? She blinked and blinked again.
‘I’m sure,’ she managed. ‘Just...tired. And a bit sad about hitting the wombat.’
‘Your aunt says you’re scared of the dark.’ His voice gentled even further, and she thought weirdly, He’s seeing me now as he’s seeing the wombat. As a creature to be cared for?
Haul yourself together, woman, she told herself, and she did. She managed a nod and stepped out of the glare of his torch.
‘I’m not scared,’ she told him. Which was, actually, a lie. ‘My aunt still thinks of me as a kid. Thank you very much, Dr Duncan. And can I...can I pay you for the...house call?’
‘I don’t charge wombats,’ he told her, and she thought she saw the trace of a smile. But it was only a trace. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Take it slow, and I’ll watch your lights.’
‘Th...thank you,’ she said again, and there was nothing else to say.
‘Go,’ he said, and she went.
