“I—I don’t know.”
Liar. You do know.
At least...I think I did.
Memories slowly smashed through rusty locks, bowling through cobwebs and age-tarnished recollections. The longer I thought about school lessons and motherly chiding, the more I recalled what to do.
Somehow, Galloway sensed that. He turned to me to heal the boy we’d fallen in love with. As an Englishman, living in a country where the deadliest animal was a badger, he had no expertise.
But I did.
I can do this.
Fake confidence became real as my nursing skills slipped into regimented actions.
Pulling Pippa away (again), I bowed over Conner. “Co, I know it hurts and I’m going to help you. But first, I need to know how long you stood on it for. Do you remember?”
His face scrunched up. “Only a second. I stepped, it hurt. I jumped.”
“That’s good, right?” Galloway’s voice bordered rage and anxiousness.
I hope so.
I nodded. “That’s great.”
He has a much better chance of surviving.
“Wait here.” Bolting up the beach, I thanked heavens that I’d already put the water on to boil for lunch. It’d reached temperature, bubbling away in its fuselage container. My memory of how to treat such a sting was rusty at best, but I remembered something about hot water—as hot as the injured could stand (sometimes as high as boiling)—and drawing as much of the poison out with scrubbing and disinfecting.
Grabbing a coconut shell, I scooped boiling water, grabbed the Swiss Army knife, a new coconut from the storage pile by the umbrella tree, the severely lacking medical kit from the cockpit, and a torn piece of clothing we kept for cleaning.
Hugging my possessions, and doing my best not to slosh boiling water on my fingers, I flew back to Conner.
Landing on my knees, my knuckles scalded as I carefully wedged the dripping coconut shell in the sand.
Pippa once again sprawled over her brother, bawling.
Frustration bled through my voice. “Pippa, darling, I need you to let go of Conner.” I pushed the terrified girl. “Galloway, I need you to put Conner flat on his back.”
Without a word, Galloway obeyed, relinquishing Conner to the sand and tugging Pippa into his arms to keep her away while I worked.
Forcing a smile for Conner's sake, I bent over him. “This is going to hurt, but I promise the pain will get better. Okay?”
His tiny fists clenched; his nostrils flared. But he nodded like a World War I trooper behind enemy lines. “Okay.”
I kissed his forehead. “Good boy.”
Moving to his feet, I tested the water. It wasn’t boiling anymore but was still too hot. But we had no antibiotics; nothing to fight whatever battled in Conner’s nervous system. I’d rather burn him than let him die from anaphylactic shock.
“Take a deep breath.”
Stealing his foot, I placed it into the hot water.
He screamed.
“What the hell, Estelle?” Galloway shouted.
Pippa squealed, her sobs turning to hysteria. “Stop it! Don’t hurt him!”
Anxiety and horror at causing more pain made me snap. “Shut up. All of you. This is what has to happen.” I pushed his foot back into the water. “Please, Conner. Be brave.”
He moaned and thrashed, but his strong little heart gave him the courage to keep his foot in such fiery hotness. The moment I knew he’d keep it there, I turned to the medical kit and wrenched open the second-to-last packet of disinfectant swabs we had.
Wrenching his foot out of the water, I scrubbed his wound hard.
I ignored his screams and tugs to pull away. I braced myself against the disbelieving look from Galloway as I deliberately hurt the poor boy.
But I did the right thing.
I was helping.
So I kept scrubbing, hard and fast, using my fingernails where needed in the wound to ensure nothing remained.
Conner retched again, holding his stomach as the cramping began.
More memories returned of what he would go through. The next twelve hours would be a terrible nightmare: tummy cramps, breathlessness, weakness, headache, diarrhoea, vomiting, paralysis, and even skin peeling from the infected area.
But that was only if he had a full dose.
A minor sting would bring him immense agony with a peaked fever for the first hour or two...after that, it would start to fade.
Hopefully.
Please...please let this work.
Conner passed out before I finished cleaning, and Pippa turned almost catatonic with tears.
My own tears threatened to wash me away, but I blocked everything out and focused on holding Conner’s foot in the scorching water before sluicing it with fresh coconut juice (for whatever antibacterial and antioxidant properties it might have).
The rest of the day was the longest I’d ever lived. I remained nurse to Conner, flitting around him like a nervous hummingbird while Galloway turned into nightmare-fighter and tear-protector for Pippa.
She dozed and woke up screaming. She cried and passed out from tiredness.
Poor thing had it worse than Conner did because at least he passed out from pain and let his body heal without being conscious.
It didn’t matter if he was awake or sleeping, I never left his side.
Galloway and I shared numerous looks, gradually fading from horror at possibly losing him to accepting relief as Conner slowly got better.
My calculations were right.
Conner was stung at one p.m. on Saturday (thanks to my phone and its steadfast ability at telling time, even if it couldn’t catch a signal). By one a.m. on Sunday, Conner was over the worst, and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
.............................
Three days passed and my entire attention remained on Conner.
I didn’t have time to wonder if Galloway and I would be okay. I didn’t contemplate the fact we hadn’t come or how thick the unspoken discussion hovered around us.
All I could focus on was Conner.
Galloway and I were okay. We were friends. We would work through a bad experience and move on. Sex wasn’t everything. And besides, I loved him so much more than that.
But for now...he didn’t need me.
Conner did.
Luckily, he healed quickly. The skin around the sting didn’t peel, but it did stay bright red (from the poison and the burning water) but that didn’t stop him from growing quarrelsome and wanting to head back out to fish.
Galloway and I flatly forbid him, and Galloway took over, bringing home another octopus and a large eel that strangely tasted like chicken (just like everyone said). My vegetarian preferences had been put on hold in favour of my belly earning a full meal.
Pippa stopped crying whenever Conner went to sleep, and Conner spent most of the day teasing her for causing so much fuss when he was ill. She was wary, not trusting his return to health, as if expecting him to die at any moment and pull a terribly cruel joke on her.
Because of her nervous terror, she never left his side, plastering herself to him wherever he limped to the bathroom and pestering him when she insisted on eating almost in his lap.
Conner rolled his eyes and poked and joked, but he never once snapped at her to leave him alone. He understood how terrifying it had been for her.
After all, he’d lost his parents, too.
Pippa was all he had left.
Despite the passing days and Conner steadily growing stronger, Pippa regressed into sucking her thumb again.
We’d all been through an awful ordeal. But at least our family was still intact.
Late at night, sleeping in my bed and feeling grateful for what we’d achieved, it sucker punched me with realisation of just how insignificant we were.
Against all odds, we’d made a home here. We’d learned how to forage and hunt. We’d educated on how to build and create. And yet...we were so vulnerable to Mother Nature and he
r creatures.
That reminder stole the rest of my naïvety that we would one day be rescued and go home. Ever since the crash, I’d believed that as long as we kept going, kept trusting that we would be found, that everything would be okay.
But that was a lie I could no longer believe.
The chances of rescue became more and more irrelevant every week. We were living on borrowed time.
Hard-earned time.
Time that wasn’t kind nor had any intention of giving us a break.
We’d all healed from our crashed arrival, but it didn’t mean we wouldn’t suffer other injuries, illnesses, mistakes, and consequences.
We wouldn't come out of this unscathed. No matter how much we might wish.
We were on the brink of extinction.
And we couldn’t let our guard down.
Ever.
.............................
Bad luck visited us a second time.
This time...it brought hazardous weather.
On the fourth day after Conner’s accident, the clouds galloped over the sun in the late afternoon, blanketing our island with false darkness. The wind sprung from nowhere with the clamouring hooves of thunder and lightning forked as if Zeus himself waged war on his brother, Poseidon.
Our task of cooking dinner was put on hold as rain droplets the size of school buses fell in a heavy sheet a second later. We all dashed into the home Galloway and Conner had built and gnawed on coconuts and salted fish as rabid winds snapped and masticated our roof, tearing away our window coverings, boring a hole for an impromptu skylight, and threatening to destroy the walls.
Once again, the storm reminded us (just like the stonefish had) that we were insignificant; entirely unsubstantial and dependent on the mercy of whatever the world wanted to give.
Memories of the helicopter crash kept us somber. The tally of how many days had passed since we’d been protected by glass and metal, rather than bamboo and flax, repeated with sorrow.
We huddled together beneath a spare blanket, each consumed with thoughts of loved ones back home and the fact that they would never know we were alive...or dead, if we didn’t survive.
It was a long night.
Luckily, as Fiji slowly lightened, the squalls gradually quietened. The walls held and the sky grew bored trying to kill us.
By the time we climbed from the relative safety of our bungalow, dripping wet, with the mammoth task of patching up our home and food stores, we left optimism behind as we surveyed our island.
Everywhere, the sand was littered with flotsam. A jumbled hodgepodge of broken rubbish, regurgitated by the ocean. Seaweed slithered on the white sand like entrails of a giant squid while plastic shopping bags from purchases long ago fluttered in the trees.
We didn’t say a word as we drifted to the shoreline, collecting useful items given through the charity of the storm.
By the time we’d sunburned and needed to retreat from the noonday heat, we’d collected a broken deck chair that’d been on the ocean bottom for decades (judging by the barnacles on its rusted frame), an empty oil barrel, a few dead seagulls, rotting fish, and a tangled green fishing net.
Apart from the carcasses of dead creatures, every inch of the marine litter would be given a purpose.
Somehow, bad luck had tried to ruin us but the opposite had happened.
We’d been given things that we didn’t have before.
Things that would increase our lifespan for the better.
Instead of always being known as the night from hell, it was christened Christmas morning. The holiday season might’ve been delayed by a few weeks, but Santa had finally found us with his sleigh and reindeer.
.............................
Even though happiness had come from a night of disaster, I still couldn’t shake the memories of what it’d been like when we were first stranded.
The first panic.
The first helplessness.
The first prayers for salvation.
I’d forgotten the depth of craving for home or the endless begging for a rescuer. Time had adapted us and along with physically becoming able, our thoughts had evolved, too. Days passed where I was content. Weeks even.
I was happy with our life and consumed with lust and need for Galloway.
We’d all become guilty of forgetfulness. And soon...who knew what the word home would mean. Would this island become home? Would this wild existence become preferential over the rat race of society?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know if I wanted to know.
Because if this did become home and our mismatched bandits became a real family...what did that mean for future goals? Did we never try to leave? Did we accept that this was our fate and plant roots more permanent than the ones we already had?
I didn’t have the answers and, a few nights after the storm, when no one was around to see my betrayal, I tore out a page of my notebook with simple lyrics to a song I’d written in my darkest days on the island.
I rolled the parchment.
I stuffed it into one of the plastic bottles donated by the sea and tossed it as far as I could into the tide.
Messages had been what brought me to this place.
Perhaps a floating ownerless message would be the one to set us free.
.............................
The third bad luck strike wasn’t so much our doing or the world trying to kill us...but more of a forgotten date that ruined a little girl’s joy.
Pippa turned eight.
And we didn’t celebrate.
It wasn’t until her sniffles, a week after the monsoon, made me crawl out of bed and go to her that she told me. Holding her in the dark, she broke down, unable to keep a brave face anymore and told me the most awful thing.
She’d had a birthday and not told anyone.
And Conner, being a typical teenager, forgot.
We were so far removed from celebrations and anniversaries that I hadn’t even thought to plan.
Poor thing.
When we’d first arrived, Conner had mentioned Pippa turned eight in a few months. However, I’d never asked the date because I’d believed we’d be with our respective families long before the party. What was worse was...I doubted I would’ve remembered if he had told me. My brain wasn’t exactly my friend these days.
But I was wrong.
The months had passed, and we were still here.
And no one had made a fuss of such a precious girl.
I cuddled her harder, pouring as much affection as I could to make up for our error. Pippa had tried to be brave, not wanting to make a fuss because she was old enough to understand that our circumstances were different now but still fanciful enough to wish for a perfect soiree.
Galloway caught me rocking Pippa to sleep just before dawn. Our attraction and unfinished business stretched to wrecking point.
My nipples tingled. My core liquefied. And everything inside me wanted to hold him, apologise, and forget what’d happened. Pretend we’d never given in, never screwed it up, and try again with a clean slate.
Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I go back in time and do better?
But I couldn’t go back. I could only fix forward.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He smiled sadly. “Nothing to apologise for.”
Somehow, after days of cross tension, it dissolved...just like that.
Our relationship transcended miscommunication and mistakes. It was more mature than snippy arguments and cold shoulders.
I’m so very, very lucky.
Leaving his bed, he tiptoed toward us. His limp stabbed my heart with a thousand love-filled regrets. Slowly, he bent and kissed the top of my head. “Next time...trust me.”
He wants a next time...thank God.
His blue eyes glowed. “If I make a promise, Estelle, I keep that promise. And I promise I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll kiss you however you need. I’ll make love to you no matter your fea
rs.”
He captured my lips with his.
The kiss was soft and stolen. His touch sent pinwheels of togetherness through my blood.
I sighed into his mouth.
Licking me softly, he moved his lips, trailing warm kisses across my jaw to my ear. His breath was sinfully hot as he whispered, “I’ll make you come over and over, Stel, but if it means I’ll never have the pleasure, then fine. I can live without if it means you live with more.”
His gaze found mine again. “You don’t have to be scared of me or of being together...promise me you won’t keep us apart.”
There was so much to say. So much to admit and so much apologising to do.
But now was not the place.
Tasting him on my lower lip, I murmured, “Tonight. Can we go somewhere and talk.”
A half-smile danced across his face. “Talk?”
“Talk...for now.” I blushed. “But who knows what will happen when I get sick of speaking.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. It’s a date.”
A date.
A delighted shiver ran down my spine.
I hadn’t been on a date in forever. And now, I had one with the sexiest, most amazing man I’d ever met.
I’m beyond lucky.
Once again, I found myself slipping. After tossing my bottled message into the sea, I’d noted where and for how long I forgot that this existence was only temporary and not something I wanted.
I didn’t know if I should be happy or sad that I had more moments of contentedness (from watching Pippa playing with the broken deck chair, Conner unravelling the fishing net, and Galloway patching up the roof while shirtless) than I ever did while staring out to sea, waiting for a boat or plane (a habit we all did but somehow, had become less poignant and more inconvenient) to find us.
Dropping his eyes, Galloway whispered, so as not to wake Pippa, “What’s wrong? Nightmare?”
White-blonde hair fell over my eye as I looked down at her. “It was her birthday yesterday.”
The pain and anguish on his face stitched up my heart until it burst with blood-soaked strings.
“Bloody hell. I remember how important birthdays were at that age. God, we royally screwed up.”
We.
As in...us...her parents.
I knew she wasn’t ours biologically, but fate had given her to us. She was ours now. Conner, too. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t let them go.