‘I’ll be careful,’ he told Sam.
‘You want me to come with you and hold your hand?’
‘You’re afraid of the dark.’
‘There is that,’ Sam said peaceably, with just the faintest rueful grin to show Ben wasn’t far off the mark. ‘But for the gorgeous Lily…I’ll risk it.’
‘Look, she’s an old friend and she’s in trouble,’ Ben said, exasperated. ‘Unless you have any more dumb comments, you’re holding me back.’
‘Off you go, then,’ Sam said, standing aside. He’d almost been laughing but as Ben rose from lacing his boots Sam put a hand on his shoulder. There was a long line of grim reminders out the back of the hospital, reminding them both just how serious this situation was.
‘Find her,’ he said.
Dusk had given way to darkness when Ben made it to the road leading to the compound. He’d been hailed three times on the way.
‘Ben, this lady’s got a kid who got badly mosquito bitten while they were hiding.’
‘Ben, I reckon I’m allergic to the water. You got something to settle my stomach?’
And finally the worst, which was: ‘Ben, we’ve found another body. You want to come and take a look before we shift it to the morgue?’
It didn’t make sense, Ben thought. The insurgents had appeared at dawn and had stormed toward the compound, shooting everything in their path. If they’d hoped to achieve pandemonium and terror then they’d succeeded, but in doing so they’d created a situation where the islander’s allies had been forced to act immediately. This reeked of fools’ work, Ben thought grimly, and a hostage situation, negotiating with fools was a nightmare.
Where the hell was Lily?
The question became a mantra, running through his head over and over. He asked everywhere. The islanders all knew her, but everywhere he asked he received headshakes.
‘Her boy is missing and also her man. We saw her earlier but she’s no longer here.’
He rounded the last corner to the roadblock before the compound. Here were the men and women he worked with, stopping anyone fool enough to risk their lives by trying to get nearer. There was someone in their midst, a woman, her voice raised.
‘I know some were hurt. Let me ask. I’m a doctor. They’ll let me in. Please, please, I beg you…’
Lily.
And he knew his colleagues’ answer before he heard it. First rule of hostage situations-damage limitation. However many were in there, don’t make it worse by sending more.
He saw Lily’s shoulders slump. There was little light out here-all lights had been ordered off-and she was just a dark shadow in the moonlight. But he knew it was Lily.
She was still in theatre garb.
She looked like Lily.
‘Lily,’ he said, and she looked up and saw who it was. He saw the flash of recognition, but he also saw the defeat, despair and exhaustion.
‘Lily,’ he said again, and reached her and held her, and it was just as well.
‘Ben,’ she whispered, and crumpled where she stood.
He carried her back to the hospital. She’d gone past protesting; she’d gone past anything but lying limply in his arms.
What had happened to his vision of Lily as a fat mama with a brood of happy children? he asked himself. She was thinner even than he remembered. She was only five feet four, a woman of half French parentage, and that parentage showed. She’d stood out from every other medical student in their course, looking elegant and somehow right whatever she wore.
He gazed down at her now as they approached the hospital. Here, well out of range of the hostage-takers, lights were permitted on the roads and he could clearly see her features.
Her jet-black curls were still cut into that elfin style he’d loved, tendrils clinging to her face, making her Audrey Hepburn type features seem even lovelier than he remembered. But this was a new Lily, a battered Lily. There was nothing elegant about the bloodstained jeans and T-shirt and theatre over-gown she was wearing. Dark smudges marred her lovely eyes. There was a scratch across her cheek and she’d bled a little. She looked like…like…
Lily.
Why had he let her go?
That was a dumb question. There had never been any thought of staying together, he remembered. They each had their own path in life and they hadn’t coincided.
‘Ben,’ she managed, rousing a little as he reached the entrance to the field hospital. He kicked aside a canvas barrier and found a stretcher-bed. He set her down and her eyes widened as if she’d suddenly remembered she had to do something. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.
‘You can,’ he said. ‘You have to rest. It’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK.’ She tried to sit up, and as he gently guided her back on the pillows she shoved her hands against his chest and pushed. ‘I need to-’
‘You need to sleep, Lily,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ve worked for thirty-six hours or more without a rest. You’re exhausted past the point of collapse.’
‘I must.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Then will you do it for me?’ she said wildly. ‘Please…Find…Ben.’
He’d thought she’d been talking about her son. What was she talking about now? ‘I’m here,’ he said, but she was staring straight through him.
‘Please.’
‘I’ll look for your son,’ he told her, figuring she was verging on the delirious. ‘I’ll have the men start a search. Tell me about him. How old is he?’
She was focusing on the point where the canvas had been pulled aside to form a door, as if she was expecting any minute that someone would appear.
‘He’ll be with Jacques. He must be.’
‘Jacques?’
‘Benjy,’ she whispered, and the effort she’d made was too much and it was too much effort to hold her eyes open a moment longer. ‘My Ben. He’s six years old,’ she said, defeated. ‘He’s six years old and he looks like you. His name’s Benjy. I called him after his father.’
She slept. Just like that she faded, sinking into a sleep that was almost unconsciousness. Ben stared down at her, incredulous, questions crowding his mind.
The silence stretched out. He stared at Lily as if staring could elicit information, but of course it couldn’t, and the longer he stared the more questions formed.
A six-year-old boy called Benjy…
Could it be?
No. They’d always been careful. They had been medical students, not a pair of uninformed teenagers.
She hadn’t meant it. He said that to himself, thinking there were more Bens than him in the world. She could have been referring to anyone.
He thought suddenly of the last time he’d seen Lily, seven years back. He’d been excited about the life ahead of him, and he’d thought she’d been just as excited about returning here. But at the last moment she’d clung and wept and then closed her eyes and pushed him away. There’d been half an hour until her flight. But…
‘Go now,’ she’d whispered. ‘Go.’
‘Lily-’
‘I can’t bear it. If you stay I’ll break. Please. Go.’
And suddenly, finally, he knew in his heart that what he was thinking was right. Somewhere in the chaos outside, in the dark and frightening rainforest or worse, in the midst of the hostage situation, was a little boy who was his son.
I called him after his father.
He felt…ill.
There was nothing more for him to do here. Dazed, he made his way back through the triage station to the entrance to the island’s permanent hospital. Sam was sitting out on the steps, smoking.
‘That’ll kill you,’ Ben said, but he said it almost automatically, with no passion behind it, and Sam took a couple of drags on his cigarette and ground it out under his heel.
‘Don’t I know it. But seeing I only smoke when I lose a patient, I’m not likely to die any time soon. Damn, the kid had been left too long.’
‘Another kid?’ Ben said, and his heart missed a beat. ‘Who…?’ It was suddenly hard to ask the question but it had to be asked. ‘Not a six-year-old boy called Benjy?’