Free MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO by Marion Lennox

Kaimotu?
    ‘He... I think he’ll be okay,’ Ginny said, and Ben cast her an anxious glance as well. Henry had worked for her parents for ever. Did she consider him a friend? The tremor in her voice said that she did.
    ‘We’ll settle him and transfer,’ Ben said, forcing his hands to be steady, forcing his own heartbeat to settle. ‘I want him in Coronary Care in Auckland.’
    ‘He won’t want that,’ Margy said.
    ‘Then we transfer him while he doesn’t have the strength to argue,’ Ben said. ‘I’m fond of this old guy, too, and he’s getting the best, whether he likes it or not. Thank God for Ginny. Thank God for defibrillators. And thank God for specialist cardiac physicians and gastroenterologists on the mainland, because if we can keep him alive until morning, that’s where he’s going.’
    * * *
    It was an hour later when he finished up. Henry seemed to have settled. Margy had hauled in extra nursing staff so he could have constant obs all night. Ben had done as much as he could. It was too risky to transfer Henry to the mainland tonight but he’d organised it for first thing in the morning. With his apartment so close he was just through the wall if he was needed.
    Enough.
    He’d sent Ginny home half an hour ago, but he walked out into the moonlight, to walk the few hundred yards to the specially built doctors’ quarters, and Ginny was sitting on the rail dividing the car park from the road beyond. Just sitting in the moonlight.
    Waiting for him?
    ‘Hey,’ she said, and shoved up a little on the rail to make room for him.
    ‘Hey, yourself,’ he said, feeling...weird. ‘Why aren’t you at home?’
    ‘You reckon I could sleep?’
    ‘I reckon you should sleep. What you did was awesome.’
    ‘You were pretty awesome yourself. I didn’t know you were surgically trained.’
    ‘And I didn’t know you’d done anaesthesia.’
    ‘Once we were friends,’ she said softly into the night. ‘We should have kept up. I should have written. I should have let you write. One stupid summer and it meant we cut our friendship off at the knees.’
    ‘As I recall,’ he said carefully, ‘it was a very nice summer.’
    ‘It was,’ she said, and smiled. ‘We had fun.’
    ‘You were the best tadpole catcher I ever knew.’
    ‘I’m going to teach Button,’ she said, and he wanted to say he would help but it wasn’t wise. He knew it wasn’t wise. She was opening up a little just by being here, and he wouldn’t push for the world.
    Except...he needed to ask.
    ‘Why did you give up medicine?’ he asked into the stillness, and the night grew even more still.
    ‘You know,’ she said at last, ‘that when the world gets crazy, when there are things around that are battering down in every direction, a tortoise retreats into his shell and stays there. I guess...that’s what I’ve done.’
    ‘Your shell being this island.’
    ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘But medicine?’
    ‘While James was dying... We tried everything and I mean everything. Every specialist, every treatment, every last scientific breakthrough. None of it helped.’
    ‘You blame medicine?’
    ‘No,’ she said wearily. ‘But I thought... My dad pushed and pushed me to do medicine and James pushed me to specialise, and when both of them were in trouble...Dad and then James...they both turned. They were so angry and there was nothing I could do. I used to go to bed at night and lie there and dream of being... I don’t know...a filler-up of potholes. A gardener. A wine-maker. Something that made it not my fault.’
    ‘It wasn’t your fault your dad and James died.’
    ‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘But you try telling them that.’
    ‘They’re dead, Ginny.’
    ‘Yes, but they’re still on my shoulder. A daughter and a wife who didn’t come up to standard.’
    ‘That’s nuts,’ he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. He felt her stiffen.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘So you’ve rejected medicine because of them. You’re