A Secret Shared... (7 page)

‘Beth was Harry’s mum,’ he agreed. ‘She and Harry’s dad were killed in a car accident. It had nothing to do with her epilepsy, though, Susie—a drunk driver crashed into the family car. Before that...she had a great life. She went to uni, had fun, met a gorgeous boy and married him, had Harry. Nothing stopped her.’

‘I don’t...I don’t like karate,’ Susie managed, and Jack had to suppress a smile. Harry’s tragedy, Beth’s death were taking a back seat to Susie’s problems. Of course they were. Could any adolescent be different?

‘Sports come in all shapes and sizes,’ he told her. He glanced out at the sea. ‘What about swimming? Do you like swimming with the dolphins?’

‘Yeah, but...’ She hesitated, licking her lips, and Jack knew she’d still be struggling with the feeling of coming out of the fog. Her mouth would be thick and dry, she needed fluids, then rest with quiet. But for some reason instinct told him he should go along with this conversation. ‘I wanted to dance,’ she whispered, and he knew he was right.

‘So why don’t you?’

‘She had an episode at dance class last year,’ her mum said. ‘The girls...weren’t very kind.’

‘Ouch. Other girls can be horrid at your age,’ Jack said bluntly. ‘Beth used to complain about them, too. But she never let them stop her. Do you know that one person in every fifty is an epileptic? Two people in every hundred. So I’m willing to bet that some of the most famous dancers in the world are epileptic.’

‘They can’t be,’ Susie breathed.

‘Want to bet?’ Jack demanded. ‘Tell you what, if I’m wrong I’ll let all the kids bury me up to my neck in sand and leave me there for an hour. But I bet I’m right. I have my computer here, and a printer. I’ll look it up tonight and I’ll have a list of dancers who have epilepsy sitting on your doorstep tomorrow.’

‘You’re...silly,’ Susie managed.

‘He is.’ Harry beamed. Finally, here was something he agreed with. ‘Jack’s silly.’

‘And I hope he’s not bothering you.’ It was Kate; of course it was Kate. How long had she been there, on the other side of the screens, listening and waiting for a chance to break in? He tugged back the screen and she was calmly sitting on the sand, with Maisie’s head in her lap, as if this was where she sat all the time. ‘Jack’s an excellent doctor but he can be silly,’ she told Susie, as if she’d been part of the conversation all along. But there was no mention of what had just happened. No fuss. ‘I went to university with him,’ she told Susie. ‘So I should know.’

‘He says I can still dance,’ Susie faltered.

‘Then make him prove it.’

‘He says he will. I...hope.’

‘Then, silly or not, if he says he will then he will,’ Kate said, smiled down at Susie. ‘You feeling okay now?’

‘I... Yes.’

‘Not too fuzzy-headed to swim with the dolphins this afternoon?’

‘No!’

‘Maybe a wee rest first?’

‘Okay.’

‘Great,’ Kate said, and moved on, as if the whole episode was behind them.

* * *

‘How did you know what happened?’ Jack demanded, as Susie and her mum made their way back to the bungalows, walking hand in hand as if nothing had happened.

‘I saw,’ Kate said. ‘I was about to come up but then you took over. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He hesitated. ‘How many medical problems do you have in this place?’

‘More now that I’m here,’ she said. ‘We don’t advertise medical care, but now I’m here we don’t turn away kids with conditions like Toby’s. But Susie doesn’t need medical care. She just needs...confidence.’ She smiled down at Harry. ‘And, Harry, your Jack might be silly but he did a great job looking after Susie. He said just the right thing. I’m grateful.’

What was there in that to make a man want to blush? Nothing. It was a simple compliment, nothing more. But Kate’s smile transferred itself to him and he definitely wanted to blush. Or something.

That smile had stayed the same since the first time he’d met her.

That smile was really something.

‘You want to meet the dolphins now?’ Kate asked Harry, and the moment was broken. But not the sensation. Not the desire to see more of that smile.

Harry hesitated but Maisie had leaped to attention and her whole body quivered. She looked from Harry to Kate and back again, and her message couldn’t be clearer.

There’s fun this way. Come with me and play.

How did they train a dog to do this?

No matter, the message was irresistible. Harry put a tentative hand on Maisie’s collar and it was like pressing a go button. Maisie headed off steadily along the beach with Kate, with Harry clinging behind.

Bemused, Jack was left to follow.

He walked slowly, watching Kate chat to his nephew. Down at the water two of the dolphins were playing with a ball, tossing it seemingly just for pleasure. The sun was glittering on the sea, the tiny waves were only knee high at most and sandpipers were once again searching for pippies along the shoreline. This was the most perfect place.

‘You’re welcome to join us but you don’t have to come in with us, Jack,’ Kate said, quite kindly. She’d slipped her hand into Harry’s and to Jack’s astonishment Harry didn’t tug away. This was a child who’d hardly let himself be touched since his parents had died. ‘We can have fun ourselves.’

‘I’d like to come,’ he said, thinking he did not want to be excluded from the fun his nephew could have with this woman.

Fun? He thought of the story she’d told him last night, of the pain she’d gone through, and he thought, here she was, dispensing fun.

‘Then you need to know the rules,’ Kate told him. ‘Harry and I were discussing them while you dawdled.’

‘I did not dawdle.’ Astonishingly, she was laughing at him.

‘You did so dawdle, didn’t he, Harry?’ She chuckled. ‘But for the slowcoaches, here are the rules again. The main one is no touching.’

No touching? He’d been expecting touchy-feely stuff. Riding the dolphins? Maybe not, but close.

‘Dolphins don’t like being touched except on their terms,’ she told him. ‘All the dolphins in this pool were born wild. They’re here because they’ve been injured, or orphaned, or somehow left so they can’t survive in the open sea. But that doesn’t mean they’re pets. Some of them will nudge us. Hobble, for one, is a very pushy dolphin, but it’s for him to decide, not us. But they do like playing. In the wild, dolphins surf. They seem to leap just for the joy of leaping when they’re wild and free. But what’s happened to them in the past means that they can’t be free. Even though this pool is half the bay wide, it’s not enough. They get bored so it’s up to us to make them happy.’

And as she said it she walked into the water, lifted a beach ball floating in the shallows and tossed it far out.

It never hit the water. As it reached the peak of its arc a silver bullet streaked up from the surface. The dolphin’s nose hit the ball square on, it rebounded, another silver bullet flashed from nowhere, the ball rebounded again—and landed in the shallows in front of Kate.

Harry had been standing behind Kate, open-mouthed with awe. Kate took a step back to stand beside him.

‘This is our favourite game,’ she said idly, and Jack couldn’t tell whether she was talking to him, to Harry or to the dolphins. ‘But it makes me tired.’ She lifted the ball again and threw, with exactly the same results. ‘My arm aches,’ she said. ‘I’ve been tossing it for ages. That might be all I can do today.’

‘I will throw the ball,’ Harry said.

‘You’d have to throw it far out,’ Kate said dubiously, looking out to where one of the dolphins was rearing out of the water as if checking to see if the ball was returning.

‘I can.’

‘If you think so,’ Kate said, and stepped back still further.

She didn’t pick up the ball for him, though. The ball was floating about six feet in front of the little boy, in the shallows. He’d have to wade forward.

For three months Harry had been totally passive. He’d done exactly what he was told. He’d submitted to everything with stoic indifference. His world had been shattered and he’d been totally, absolutely joyless.

Now, as the world seemed to hold its breath, something changed. The little boy’s shoulders, for months slumped and defeated, seemed to square.

He looked out at the dolphins and as if on cue they both reared, skating backwards.
Come on
, their body language said.
What are you waiting for?

And then they dived, so deep they disappeared, and that message was obvious, too. Time to start the game now.

And while Jack watched in awe, and Kate said nothing at all, Harry strode purposefully out into the waves, grabbed the ball and tossed it high out over the sea to the waiting dolphins.

There was nothing for Jack and Kate to do but stand and watch. The dolphins did the rest.

This must be a game they played over and over with withdrawn children, Jack thought. Harry was putty in their...flippers?

Harry threw the ball and they tossed it back to him, but as they did they gradually returned the ball a little further out. The waves were tiny and non-threatening. Harry found himself chest deep in the water before he knew it, but he was focussed only on the ball.

The next time he threw it, the dolphins flipped it back, but this time they flipped it over his head. He turned to grab it but before he could, a silver streak flew through the shallows, reached the ball before he did and flipped it back to where it had been landing before.

Harry lunged for it but the second dolphin reached it first, tossing it high again.

‘It’s mine,’ Harry yelled, and grabbed for it, got it and tossed it out again. ‘I got it, I got it,’ he yelled, and he turned to Jack and Kate, his face alive with excitement. ‘They tried to take it away from me but I got it.’

‘Watch out, they’re coming back,’ Kate said, chuckling. ‘They’re champions at playing keepings off.’

The ball came back again and Harry pounced.

He was twisting on his injured leg, Jack realised. It had been badly broken. It still hurt to weight-bear so he usually tried not to use it. But Jack hadn’t needed the physio’s explanation to know where the problem lay—they all knew it. The only way Harry could get back the use of his leg was to use it.

He was using it now. It must be hurting, at least a little, but he was too entranced to notice.

‘I can’t believe this,’ he murmured to Kate, while Harry was ball-chasing, out of earshot.

‘It’s our specialty,’ she said, flashing him a look that was almost smug. ‘None of your hospital physiotherapists have this—the means to make kids forget every single thing that’s wrong with them. It’s why this place is magic.’

‘I don’t believe in magic.’ But maybe he did, he thought as he watched Harry pounce again. He thought of Susie, withdrawing into herself, desperately unhappy but still aching to play with the dolphins. He thought of Toby, his last days made happy. And he watched Harry.

It seemed like a miracle. Maybe he was even prepared to give magic a shot if it’d get Harry well again.

He was feeling disoriented, watching his nephew throw the ball, standing beside this woman in her crazy blue swimsuit.

He felt totally out of his depth.

Medicine. When all else was confusion, focus on medicine. It was a mantra that had served him well for years and he retreated to it now.

‘His leg shouldn’t be taking so long to heal,’ he told Kate, trying to sound professional, two medical colleagues discussing a patient. Two medics in swimsuits. ‘His femur was badly fractured but, even so, most kids with intramedullary nails are weight-bearing almost straight away. But we haven’t been able to get him to use it.’

‘He’s had no reason to use it,’ Kate said gently. ‘It hurts and he’s had enough hurting, losing his parents. Why put himself through more?’

He thought of the last physiotherapist Harry had seen—a young man not long out of training. He’d sat back and exclaimed in exasperation, ‘Harry, you’re not trying. I can’t help you if you don’t try.’

Harry’s quadriceps were growing more and more wasted the less he used them, but that sort of reasoning got nowhere with him. Why should he try? It hurt and there was no point.

But now this woman had nailed it. She knew instinctively why Harry was like he was. They were in her hands, he thought, and his doubts were fading. Hers were competent hands. She knew what she was doing. He watched her subtly manoeuvre Harry, using the dolphins and the ball to have him bounce up and down, twist left and right. He threw and threw and the dolphins seemed to love every moment of it. Occasionally Harry winced and grimaced but he wasn’t complaining. The dolphins—and Kate—seemed indeed to be magic. This was better than any medical intervention Jack could have thought of.

He’d love this back in Sydney. He thought of so many of his terminal cancer patients. How much joy this could give to families in distress.

He was willing to bet, even without his conversation, Kate would have got Susie back dancing.

He and Harry were blessed to have found this place.

Whoever Kate was, he thought, she was okay by him.

* * *

Finally Kate glanced at her watch and called a halt.

‘It’s almost lunchtime,’ she told them. ‘The dolphins need a break, even if we don’t. Harry, later today you could do some leg exercises with Dianne in the swimming pool. She’ll show you how to use a kick board so you can chase balls further. Then you can come back into the dolphin pool and see what the dolphins think of your new skills. Meanwhile, you can dig with Maisie or build sandcastles or have a nap or whatever you and Jack want to do. But now we’re having hot dogs for lunch. Coming?’ And she held out her hand.

Once again Jack found himself holding his breath. There was so much in those few short statements.
You could do some leg exercises in the swimming pool...
Using a kick board would be the best possible therapy for Harry—it would mean strengthening the quadriceps in the most natural way possible. The physios in Sydney had tried to get Harry to use one in the hospital therapy pool and Harry had refused, but here it had come out naturally, as if there could be no possible objection. Kate had moved straight onto hot dogs, and now she was holding out her hand as if she expected Harry to take it.