Four Weddings

The bike slowed to a crawl.

Disappointment rammed through her and reality jolted back into place. She dropped her arms from Tom’s waist, resting them on her knees.

He brought the bike to a halt, kicked out the stand and hopped off. ‘Sorry about the rough patch, but I wanted you to see this.’

Pulling off her helmet, she followed the sweep of his arm. She gasped. ‘I had no idea. I had my eyes closed most of the time.’

Tom laughed. ‘I thought you might have, but the view’s worth a few bumps, isn’t it?’

She stood up and turned slowly. Everywhere she looked towering mountains dominated, a stunning mixture of red earth, green trees and grey scree. Way below them a river wound its way through the mountains and in the distance a tiny village perched precariously on a ridge, with crops clinging to a steep face. ‘It’s amazing. It’s like being on the top of the world.’

He nodded, a smile of understanding rippling across his face. ‘Beyond those mountains is China.’

‘Really? Vietnam shares so many borders. It’s mind-boggling for a girl from a big island.’ Walking slowly, she approached the cliff edge. ‘It always stuns me to think that water can carve out such a mighty gorge.’ She stepped forward wanting a closer look, to peer way down at the river below.

As her foot touched the ground, an agonising cramp gripped her left leg. Shafts of pain radiated into every muscle and tendon. She gasped, throwing her arms out to steady herself as her leg collapsed under her.

‘Careful.’ Tom’s hands grabbed her, pulling her to his side as he eased her down to the ground. ‘I don’t want to lose you over the edge.’

Her heart pounded, adrenaline meshing with fear. ‘Thanks. That could have been nasty.’

A questioning look mixed with concern radiated from his eyes. ‘Let’s look at that leg. It seems to bother you quite a bit.’

‘It’s fine, really.’ She tried to pull her leg up toward her chest, away from him. A spasm spiralled from hip to toe, clenching every muscle. She bit her lip against the blinding pain.

‘It’s not OK at all.’ He pushed the sole of her shoe up, flexing the foot against the cramp.

Red-hot pain shot through her, slowly easing as the counter-pressure wove its magic. Her shoulders slumped as the pain receded. ‘That’s better, thank you.’

She expected him to release her foot but instead his hand brushed the cotton of her trousers up to her knee. He laid his fingers against her skin, gently kneading her calf, slowly unbunching the knots of tangled muscles.

Rockets of delicious sensation streaked through her. A pulse point fluttered in her neck, fire burned in her belly. His hands on her skin sent waves of longing lapping against her reinforced defences.

You know not to trust a man. Keep a safe distance.

Panic surged. ‘You really don’t have to do that, I’m fine now.’ She tried to pull the leg of her trousers back down over her lower leg.

He raised his dark brows as his hands stilled on her leg. ‘My fingers are telling me otherwise, Bec. I notice you limp and obviously the extra strain of being on your feet for days has taken its toll.’ His finger traced a long red scar down her leg. ‘What happened to you?’

The locked memory creaked open. She forced it closed. ‘I broke my leg.’ She tugged the cotton against his hands. Please, don’t go there.

‘It must have been a nasty break to leave you with some shortening and a limp.’ His expression was neutral but his eyes burned with determination to find out more.

Buried memories bubbled inside her, their pain always snagging her at unexpected moments, dragging her down to the sordid mess that had been her childhood.

She didn’t want to go back there.

She stared into his eyes. Genuine caring reflected back to her, coupled with resolve. He wouldn’t let it go, he’d keep at her until she told him. If she refused to open up to him now she’d only be putting off the inevitable.

She drew her legs up to her chest, hugging her arms tightly around her knees, wrapping herself in a protective layer to withstand the inevitable resurgence of pain. ‘My father pushed me down a flight of stairs, fracturing every bone in my leg.’

CHAPTER FOUR

TOM’S BREATH SHUDDERED out of his lungs as an image of Bec, sprawled on the ground in pain, thundered through him.

Of all the scenarios he’d run through his head, that had not been one of them. The aura of fragility he’d occasionally glimpsed swirled around her, then vanished with a stiffening of her shoulders.

It was as if she was rising through her pain. Her courage awed him.

She lightened her grim expression with a wry smile. ‘Bet you weren’t expecting that explanation.’

He should have anticipated this ironic reaction from her—facing the facts head on, deflecting any sympathy. He had a sudden urge to hold her close, wanting to hug her, but every ounce of her petite frame screamed, Do not touch.

So he stuck with the facts. ‘You’re right, I was thinking more along the lines of a car accident or being thrown off a horse. How old were you?’

She took in a deep breath. ‘Sixteen and sassy. Sixteen, naïve and stupid.’

He hated the way she implied that part of what had happened had been her fault. ‘All of us are naïve at sixteen, Bec.’

She shook her head. ‘I should have known better. Anger had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. My father’s rages were legendary. My mother protected me, taking the brunt of his fists to keep me safe, but eventually he wore her down and wore her out. She committed suicide when I was thirteen.’ Her flat voice delivered the words, devoid of any emotion. Only her white knuckles betrayed her pain.

The image of his father’s weather-beaten face, creased with a laconic grin, flooded Tom’s mind. He’d only ever known love from his adoptive father. The only father he could remember.

White rage burned inside him, hot yet impotent, uselessly directed at a faceless man who had caused so much pain. ‘So you lost your mother and your buffer?’

She nodded. ‘But I quickly worked out that if I studied hard at school, agreed with most of what he said and retreated into the background of his life, I could get away with being screamed at rather than hit.’

Deep inside him an aching pain twisted. ‘Until you grew into a woman.’

Her violet eyes darkened to indigo as her brow creased in surprise. ‘Is that what changed?’

He sighed. ‘I met men like your father during my psychiatric rotation. They have a pathological hatred of women. Once their daughter grows up they see that normal development as a betrayal of their love.’ He hated how trite the theory sounded against Bec’s reality.

She shrugged. ‘Whatever. All I know is that things got pretty bad and I had to leave home for my own safety. Only I mistimed my departure and he arrived home to find me with my bags packed.’ A flinching shudder vibrated through her body.

The same shudder he’d seen when his hand had accidentally brushed hers at the clinic. The same flinch as earlier that day at the market, moments after she’d playfully elbowed him. Hell, all this time she’d been on alert, ready to dodge and duck, thinking he might hurt her.

Nausea rolled in his stomach. He wanted to flatten the lowlife who’d created this fear within her. He wanted to make things better but rationally he knew he couldn’t. Yet he had to try. ‘You don’t have to relive this if you don’t want to.’

Her mouth firmed and her chin jutted. ‘A half-told story is as bad as a suppressed one. Surely you learned that in your psych rotation?’ Her eyes flashed with pain and resentment.

His heart took a direct hit with her jibe. ‘I apologise. I ignored your signals that you didn’t want to talk, I asked you a question and I’ve pushed for an answer. You’re right, now I need to listen.’

She blinked. Twice. A look of incredulity raced across her face as if she didn’t believe what she’d just heard. She cleared her throat. ‘To cut a long story short, after I refused to return to my room he threw my bags down the stairs. Then he threw me. In a way it got me out of his life for good. Child Protection stepped in and court orders prevented him from making any contact.’

His gut ached for her but he knew she didn’t want sympathy. ‘At sixteen, though, you were still a kid. Where did you live?’

For the first time in a long time she smiled at a memory. ‘With my aunt—my mother’s sister. He’d not allowed contact with any family so at least that gave me the chance to get to know my real family.’

My real family. He chased away the thoughts her words generated in him. His real family, the one he hadn’t been able to find. Yet.

‘Hey, don’t look so pensive on my account. I got out. Some kids don’t.’ Her pretty face took on a hard edge.

He recognised that expression. He’d seen it cross her face once before. The time she’d talked about the money she had for the clinic. I won’t have anything to do with that money.

‘That two hundred and fifty thousand dollars you want to use for children—it’s your father’s money, isn’t it?’

She bit her lip and nodded slightly. ‘He left it to me in his will. It was the only paternal thing he ever did. You don’t miss much, do you?’ She stared at him, the look long and intense.

A look that saw through him, carving deeply, all the way down to the essence of his soul. His gut, which had ached in pain for her, suddenly lurched. Unexpected longing poured through him. What would it be like to have those eyes gaze at him without their shadows?

The thought shocked him. He fought to clear his mind, stay fixed on her story. ‘I guess putting the pieces of a puzzle together are part of my job. After all, that’s what diagnosis is.’

‘I guess it is.’ She trailed some fine gravel through her hand.

He spoke to her bowed head. ‘I understand now why you don’t want to use any of that money for yourself.’

Her eyes glittered hard and sharp for a moment. ‘He will not buy me from the grave.’ A softer expression wafted across her face. ‘But I will use his money to work for the greater good.’

Everything fell into place. ‘And that’s why you want to use the money to improve children’s lives?’ He stood up and stretched his hands out, pulling her to her feet.

She rose up toward him, nodding so vehemently that her hair slipped out of its band. ‘Every child deserves a childhood. Without a childhood how can they grow to adulthood and take on a productive place in society?

‘They need a guarantee of their basic human rights, to live without fear, to have access to food and clean water, health care and education.’ She looked up at him, her sparkling eyes a stunning shade of iris blue. Her lithe body pulsed with the passionate conviction of her beliefs.

His blood heated, surging through his body and pooling in his groin. Her passion and fervour set off a chain reaction, bringing alive every nerve ending in his body, sensation stacking on sensation, driving down to the tips of his toes.

He knew he should let go of her hands but he wanted to soak up her enthusiasm, her innate goodness. His thumbs stroked the backs of her hands, the gentle circular motion absorbing her heat, sucking in her energy, trying to claim a part of her for himself.

Her eyes widened, two translucent discs unfettered by shutters, barriers and guards.

He thought he glimpsed a woman’s naked need, a flare of desire.

For an infinitesimal moment she swayed toward him.

He recognised the precise moment she stopped herself.

Regret surged through him. His arms ached to hold her, to feel her body moulded against his own, just like on the ride up the mountain. He wanted to feel her face snuggled against his shoulder, wanted to let his head drop down against her silky hair and lose himself in her distinctively fresh scent of cinnamon apples. Wanted to taste her, feel her soft lips yielding against his own.

It scared the hell out of him.

He specialised in detachment. He didn’t get involved with anyone. Never had. He couldn’t offer a woman anything until he’d found the missing piece of himself. And Bec didn’t want his touch.

So why did the thought of changing the rules even enter his head?

* * *

‘Leprosy?’ Bec couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘There’s leprosy in this country?’

She and Tom were pulling medical kits out of the back of a truck. They’d left the far northwest of the country yesterday after three weeks in the village. She hadn’t wanted to leave.

She’d never worked so hard in her life as she had during the cholera outbreak. Amidst the hard work and heartache she’d fallen in love with the tenacity of the villagers and the glorious mountains that isolated them.

She’d learnt more in three weeks than in all her years at university.

Now they were on the coast. Wide sandy beaches edged with tall coconut trees extended both north and south as far as the eye could see.

‘There’s still some leprosy, although we’re winning and the rates have dropped dramatically. According to the World Health Organization we’re pretty close to eliminating the disease. But the stigma causes social problems and the health of the lepers needs constant monitoring.’ He handed her a medical kit backpack and smiled. A restrained smile.

She swallowed a sigh. She missed the wide, cheeky grin he used to give her and still gave everyone else. She hadn’t been the recipient of that smile since their trip to the Sunday market.

When he’d stood so close to her at the lookout, holding her hands and caressing her skin with his thumbs, coils of yearning had unravelled inside her like silk streaming in the wind. Glorious sensations had spread through her, making her knees buckle. She’d desperately wanted to lean into him. Wanted to rest her body against him and snuggle into the shelter of his arms.

But stepping into his arms would have been a huge mistake. Way too big a risk.

So she’d pulled back and a dull pain had started to throb under her ribs. It had never completely left her.

When he’d released her hands his eyes had flickered with an emotion she hadn’t quite been able to pin down. Probably relief. The last thing he needed was an emotional nurse throwing herself into his arms. Now he seemed almost wary around her. She missed the laid-back doctor she’d first met.

She straightened her shoulders. None of that mattered. What mattered was the time she had left to learn all she could from him about Vietnam. Then she could decide the best way she could help the children of this wonderful country.

‘Follow me down to the boat.’ Tom turned and walked across the sand.

Bec scanned the water, looking for a boat, but she could only see gentle waves and the horizon. Five fishermen sat on the beach mending nets, leaning up against enormous round bamboo baskets.

As they approached, one of the men rose and greeted Tom. He turned over the large basket and floated it in the water.

‘Put your pack in the middle and then hop in.’ Tom gently placed his pack on the floor of the eight-foot-diameter basket.

Bec shrugged her pack off her shoulders. ‘Where’s the boat?’

Tom laughed, his eyes dancing. ‘This is it.’

Her shriek of surprise caused a great deal of mirth amongst the fishermen. ‘This is a boat?’

‘It’s a Vietnamese dinghy, a basket boat. It’s made from woven bamboo and covered in a waterproof tar-like substance, which is actually sap from a tree. It gets me safely to the island every time I visit.’

He caught her gaze, his eyes suddenly intense and earnest. ‘Trust me, Bec.’ He held out his hand.

Trust me. She tamped down the streak of panic those words generated. She could do many things, but the men she’d known had destroyed her faith in trust.

‘Hold onto me, step in and sit down while I steady it with my foot. It won’t sink, promise.’ His lips curved into a reassuring smile that raced to his eyes as he coaxed her into the boat.

But it wasn’t the boat trip that worried her. It was holding his hand. She could act all independent, avoid touching him and scramble into the boat on her own. She calculated that against the risk of upending the medical supplies into the salt water.

The medical supplies won. She reached out and caught his hand with her own, her fingers dwarfed in his wide palm. His heat fused with hers, racing through her, reigniting all the places that had glowed at his touch once before.

‘Nothing like an adventure, right?’ His solid, dependable tone encased her.

He was worried she was freaking out over the boat. If only it was that simple. ‘I’m always up for an adventure.’ She plastered a fake smile on her face and lowered herself into the round boat, ignoring the vague sense of loss that speared her when she let go of his hand.

Tom and the fisherman took their places in the basket boat, and the fisherman started to propel it forward using a single wooden paddle.

‘We act as counterweights so lean back and enjoy the view.’ Tom slid on sunglasses against the glare of the sun.

Sparkling turquoise water surrounded them as they headed toward an island dotted with coconut palms and golden sands. A conical mountain rose in the middle, dominating the landscape with its jungle green canopy. ‘If this was in Far North Queensland, this place would be an exclusive tourist resort. I’m guessing it became a leper colony a long time ago.’

Tom nodded. ‘The Catholic Church started this colony in the early 1900s, back in the days when the isolation of lepers from the general community was thought to be the way to stop the disease from spreading.’

‘But the world knows now that leprosy is not transmitted by touch.’

His shoulders rose and fell in a resigned shrug. ‘But in some local communities in Africa and Asia attitudes are slow to change. Lepers are still shunned. We’re working on change and some will take place in our lifetime, but it’s a long, slow process.’

She glanced up at the mountains that seemed almost to join the colony to the mainland. ‘Is the only way to get here by boat?’

‘Boat or a rugged jungle trek. Technically it’s not an island but for all intents and purposes it may as well be. It’s hard to walk when you’re missing parts of your legs. The bigger boat left earlier with Hin, the supplies and the rice that Health For Life organized.’

As gentle waves washed the boat up onto the sand, children appeared from behind the trees, waving and running up and down the beach. Tom clambered out of the boat and started unloading the packs.

‘We always get a big welcome when we visit. The kids really suffer from the isolation of the island. If one member of their family has leprosy then the whole family has to move to the village. As their parents are not welcomed in the towns they are stuck here until they’re older. Even then they can experience prejudice when looking for work or trying to attend high school on the mainland.’

The fisherman handed Bec out of the boat and she and Tom walked up the beach, toward some low-roofed buildings.

Bec mulled over how such a beautiful natural setting had become a prison. ‘So this false paradise is both a home and a hospital?’

‘It’s like any other village, except the two hundred people here can’t leave to work. Those that can grow rice and fish but the poverty here is dire. When you’re missing an arm or a leg, the physical work of farming is pretty much impossible.’

Tom grimaced. ‘There isn’t a hospital here. They have a medical clinic with health aides. If they need surgery they have to go to a provincial hospital. That creates its own set of problems. We don’t run a clinic here but we provide bandages, gauze and dressing supplies, which are always needed.’

‘What about crutches and artificial limbs?’

‘We work with some charities to source those when we have patients who need them. Today we’re going to do some skin checks and help the health workers.’ He slowed his pace. ‘Bec.’

The tone of his voice made her pause. ‘Yes?’

‘It can be pretty confronting if you’ve never seen the ravages of leprosy before.’ Again his eyes shone with concern.

The feeling of being cared for welled inside her, warming her.

Scaring her.

‘Thanks for the heads up.’ With a monumental effort she dragged her eyes away from his, away from the feeling of wanting to fall into their softness and be cared for. But she cared for herself, that was how it had to be. You’re here to work.

The clinic was L-shaped. Concrete walls were painted a bright cheery yellow and blue shutters lined the windows. The low thatched roof sloped downward and was rimmed by wide gutters to cope with the monsoon rains. Bec gave a wave to Hin, their interpreter. He stood chatting to people in an attractive courtyard dotted with flowering plants, and swept to within an inch of its life. Patients waited for their turn to see the health worker.

The peace and tranquillity of the tropical paradise setting clashed dramatically with the physical disfigurement of leprosy. Some people sat in wheelchairs—empty spaces below them where their legs should have been. Others had both legs but muscle contractures had left them bent and disfigured. One man was missing a hand, another an earlobe. Scarred eyes peered out of ulcerated faces, the cloudy whiteness of the pupils obscuring all vision.

Yet their calm smiles radiated a spirit of survival.

An elderly woman greeted her warmly, her gnarled, two-fingered hand gripping Bec’s five-fingered one. ‘Xin chào.’

Bec repeated the oft-said greeting, which came out sounding like Sin jòw. She knew immediately the task she would be working on for the day, and why a pallet of bandages had been delivered to the island.

She quickly got to work, setting up dressing packs.

‘Even with the Multi-Drug Therapy, leprosy can never be totally removed from the body. But the damage can be limited to pale-coloured skin patches.’ Tom spoke quietly while they worked together, debriding wounds. ‘Many of the villages didn’t have access to the antibiotic therapy that is offered today so by the time they got help, the bacterium that causes the lesions had led to a lot of skin thickening and nerve damage.’

‘So they get peripheral neuropathy, which adds to the problems, right?’ Bec’s mind clawed back to find any memories of leprosy from nursing lectures. ‘When part of the body is numb, the patient can’t feel properly, which puts them at risk of injury and ulceration.’

She carefully snipped away the blackened skin around the edges of the wound on the old woman’s leg, biting her lip in concentration.

Her patient gave her a toothy smile and patted her hand as if to say Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, keep going.

Tom’s large hands belied the way his fingers could delicately debride a wound and carefully bind it with bandages. ‘The extremities of the fingers and feet are hardest hit but the eyes can be involved and blindness is common.’

Tom spoke in Vietnamese to his patient as he taped the bandage in place.

The woman put her hands over his as her words floated out into the hot, humid air.

Tom smiled at her, shaking his head, his cheeks unusually bright for a man who seemed to take the heat in his stride.

Hin added a few words and then laughed a big belly-shaking laugh. Turning to Bec, he wiped his eyes. ‘She says he has the touch of an angel but he should also use his hands to get himself a wife.’

The old woman nodded her head vigorously toward Bec.

Hin continued, ‘She says you would be wise to choose a man with hands of delight.’

Bec forced out a polite laugh against a tight chest. It didn’t seem to matter which side of the world she was on, patients always wanted to matchmake. It seemed to be an international hobby.

She caught Tom’s gaze, wanting to share the ridiculous joke with him. His eyes, the colour of dark chocolate, held laughter and mirth, which confirmed that the old woman’s idea was a preposterous notion.