Chapter Thirteen

“You see, you hate me already.”

Keira cursed herself for the sudden intake of breath. Let someone die? It couldn’t be true. Tom could never harm anyone, not deliberately, anyway. Reaching over to the bedside table, he flicked on the lamp. As she blinked in the harsh light, she saw pain and anxiety etched around his eyes and his jaw set tight.

“I could never hate you, and I’m sure whatever you think you’ve done, it can’t be that bad. You wouldn’t hurt anyone, I know you.”

She laid her fingers on his forearm, feeling the sinews strung as taut as wire.

“You’re wrong. You don’t know me. What I did, what happened to us, was my fault. My doing. My responsibility.”

Tom wrenched his arm away from her. He couldn’t bear her to touch him or comfort him. She had opened a box he’d tried to keep shut for nearly a year now. A year? Could it really be that long since it had happened? Could he bear to tell her what happened? About his failure? About the day he had played God with the lives of two people he loved? How it had changed his world forever and brought him to this state.

“Why would you want to know?” he asked, knowing his voice was way rougher than she deserved.

“Because I want to help you. I don’t know if I can, but if there is a chance that by telling me, by me just listening, that I can ease your pain a tiny amount, I want to hear.”

“Keira, I don’t think I can talk about it.”

“I want to know because I care about you, Tom.”

Tom wanted to cry out in frustration. You might care about me now, he wanted to shout, but when you hear that because of what I did—and what I didn’t do—a girl is dead, you won’t feel the same, I promise you. A girl I cared about, he wanted to cry out, and the woman my best friend wanted to marry. Now she’s dead, and he hates me.

“Is this woman Sarah?”

Keira’s whisper was like an electric shock. Tom hadn’t realised he’d been speaking aloud, but now it was too late to stem the tide any longer. Keira deserved to know what kept him awake at night when she wasn’t here. She had earned the right to know exactly what kind of a man he was.

Once she did, he reasoned, it would make it so much easier for him to let her go and for her to walk away, but the last thing he wanted was to be comforted. Others had tried to absolve him from guilt before, and that could never be possible. He did at least, however, owe her an explanation.

It had been a year ago now, yet it was as vivid as if the scene had been played out before him in Technicolor. Every second of that time was an action replay, shown from different angles, rerun in slow motion and even in reverse. It was as if his senses had gone into overdrive. Even the sounds were magnified.

He heaved in a breath and hauled the words out of some dark pit. “It was a year ago…almost to the day. We were coming to the end of our two years, and we were desperate for a rest. We’d been making trips into the isolated villages and this was going to be our last one. We were going to be away for a couple of days, three at most…and then…” His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “We thought we were all coming home, Sarah and David and I.”

“They were your colleagues?” she prompted, still holding on to his hand as he spoke. “Other doctors.”

“Colleagues and friends. We grew close out there, naturally…” His voice tailed off. He wasn’t sure how much she’d heard of his ramblings while he’d been having the nightmare or how much she already knew about the relationships in that steamy, extreme place.

“I’d been out of the village overnight with a guide, visiting a patient in a small fishing community a few hours’ walk away. When I got back, I went to my hut. I thought Sarah and David were around the village running a clinic. I lay down in the hut because I was tired. I only meant to rest awhile because I’d set out before dawn for the fishing village with the guide, but I fell asleep the moment my head touched the mat. Ironic, isn’t it, that I can’t sleep now?”

Keira stroked his cheek. “You never told me that. You haven’t had one of these bad dreams before. I didn’t know they were troubling you.”

“They don’t trouble me when you’re here, only when I’m alone, and then not every night. I either can’t sleep or I wake up after a nightmare.” He hesitated and steeled himself to carry on. “I hadn’t been asleep long that afternoon when I heard cries and shouts and running feet. The sun was hot on my face as they pulled the curtain in the hut aside. They were shaking me. I thought it was Sarah and David at first, but then I realized it was some of the villagers.”

Keira’s fingers squeezed his firmly, reassuring him. The rush of tenderness scared him with its intensity. He should have known from the start that she would begin to peel away the layers and get close to the core of him.

“The villagers took me to the elders’ hut. Sarah and David were in there, lying on mats with the elders trying to help them. I’d only been away for a night and a day, but in that time they’d both become sick. David was bad, but Sarah was worse. I should have taken more care. We’d been walking through some bush on the way. We’d all got scratches…”

Tom stopped, the words sticking in his throat like chunks of barbed wire at the memory of his friends lying in the hut. Sarah had mentioned she felt a little unwell but had dismissed it when David and Tom had expressed their concern. In twenty-four hours, she’d developed a raging fever and a cough. David complained of headaches and chest pain, and his lymph nodes were swollen. Tom had known it was serious.

“I couldn’t be sure what was wrong other than they must have some kind of infection, but I could see they were going downhill rapidly, and I had to do something. David was half lucid, and from what he said, and what I could diagnose with the basic kit we had with us, I suspected it could be melioidosis.” He shook his head. “I knew then, Keira, that it was probably hopeless.”

“What’s melioidosis?”

“A bacterial infection. You catch it from soil, water and mud. It causes a dangerous fever, and you have to treat it with a cocktail of antibiotics, and even then the cure can kill you.”

“But you said that you killed Sarah. Surely it was the infection that did that? And David is alive?”

“He’s alive, but he wishes he wasn’t. You see, melioidosis is rare, and while I had some antibiotics on the trip, we couldn’t possibly carry everything we needed for every eventuality. I saw that Sarah had the septicemic form of it, and I knew the mortality rate was over ninety percent. There was no chance that they’d survive the journey to get help; it was too far away. She was already dying, so I had to make a decision.

“I gave David the anti-bios I hoped could treat the melioidosis, and I gave some painkillers to Sarah, but I knew they could only make her a little more comfortable and probably even helped her to slip away faster.”

“But what did you do wrong? You only made a decision. Wouldn’t you have done the same if you hadn’t known them?”

“I played God. David thought I had. He was too weak to know what I’d done at the time, but when Sarah… When the rest of the medical team arrived to rescue us and he was stronger, Sarah was dead. I told everyone what I’d done, that I’d given the drugs to David because I knew he had the best chance of surviving.”

“If you hadn’t, they would both have died.”

“That’s what he wanted. They were getting married, and he worshipped her. He told me I’d killed them both, even though physically he was still alive.”

“That was cruel.”

“But understandable.”

“Tom, you can’t torture yourself like this, whatever happened.”

He slammed down any attempt to excuse him. He pulled his hand from hers, focusing on the moon framed in the window, anything to avoid lingering on her expression of pity. “How did you get the scars on your hands?” She spoke gently.

Tom glanced down at his fingers. “That was later, when we got back to the medical centre. It was a glass flask. I was holding it. I didn’t know how hard I was squeezing, and it shattered in my hands.”

She took his fingers again and felt him wince. As she pressed her lips to his knuckles, Tom felt something stinging his eyes. Flinging back the covers, he hauled himself out of bed and crossed to the window. He couldn’t stand it any longer.

“They were engaged, don’t you see? David and Sarah. We were all going to their wedding when we got home. I was going to be best man.” Best man; what a ridiculous irony that was, considering what he’d allowed to happen to the bride.

“I ended up being Matt’s best man instead. Ah the irony of that… When you met me in the churchyard, I’d had to come outside for some air, and you know what happened next.”

“I’m so glad it did. I’m so happy you came back here. You don’t deserve to carry a burden like this. You may think you do, but you haven’t done anything wrong, Tom, can’t you see that? It’s not your fault she’s dead or that David can’t accept that you made the right decision. You made the only decision that you could possibly have made in those circumstances.”

He gazed at her, wrapped in the duvet, sitting in his bed. Her hair highlighted in copper and rich chestnut, her face pale. She really cared about him, and she should have so much more than he could ever give.

“Maybe I could forgive myself, and I certainly understand how he feels. I could get over it, but that’s only part of the story. He knows more than that. While she was ill, before he got too sick to hear, she was delirious and she told him something.”

“What?”

“That she was in love with me, Keira.”

Keira stared at him, her world shifting. Tom had had an affair with his best friend’s fiancée.

“I can see your face. I don’t blame you. It was unforgiveable.”

“You had an affair with Sarah?”

“An affair? Not quite. She came to me the night before she set off. She told me that when we got back from the trip, she intended to break off the engagement, and she told me she was in love with me. I didn’t know what to say…”

“Did you love her?”

“Love? As a friend, maybe. I was very fond of her. She was beautiful and funny and brilliant, but she was David’s fiancée. She kissed me and I kissed her back, and for a moment, I enjoyed it. Then I walked away. She called after me that she knew I wanted her, and I denied it. I told her we had to work together and to forget me and make her life with David. Then we went on the trip, and we were busy working and trying to cope. That’s why I volunteered to go on the trip to the river community, to give her and David time together without me. When I got back, it was too late.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing more than think for a moment of what might have been.”

“But I believe I did wrong, David believes I did too, and that’s all that matters.”

Her arms were open wide, beckoning him back. “Come to bed, please.”

He gave in. As she made room for him and slipped her arms around him, he felt something like comfort creeping over him. “I know you’re trying to help,” he whispered, “but don’t, please. I’ve tried myself.”

Sarah had kissed him, and he had tasted her mouth back. He’d touched her, felt…something for her. He was so far from home, they’d grown so close, he’d wanted her himself for a time until it was clear that David loved her and they’d got engaged.

He’d embraced her in the tiny room where they kept their scant store of medical supplies; then he’d come to his senses and pushed her away, leaving the two of them miserable and the third duped and betrayed.

“Even if I accepted that I made the right decision about treating David, I can’t forgive myself for betraying a friend. I know exactly what I have to do. I have to go back—I want to go back—and put things right.”

Keira struggled to reply. “I don’t want to be hard, but how can you do that? You can’t turn the clock back. No one can. Isn’t it arrogant to think you can?”

“You’re absolutely right. I can’t turn back the clock, but I can help in one respect—the only one—and that’s what I’m going to do. Because of me, there are now three fewer doctors in that village. Three fewer people to help the villagers, a brilliant doctor dead and another one bereaved and shattered, and so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Keira wasn’t giving up, and his heart went out to her for it.

“Tom, I know you believe you have caused all this, and I know you’re wrong, but I don’t know what to say. But think about this. Your friend—David—I’m sure he doesn’t blame you now.”

“I haven’t seen David since we got back to the medical centre. They airlifted him out, and he’s back home now.”

The sharp remembrance of that final meeting stung him more than anything. After he’d been to visit David in the medical centre and heard that Sarah, in her ramblings, had revealed her feelings for Tom. Perhaps, Tom thought, it would have been kinder to David—certainly kinder to himself—to have claimed that Sarah was delirious and rambling and that her dreams had been just that. Feverish dreams. But Tom had been unable to lie to his friend. His silence had told David everything, and afterwards, when Tom had tried to explain that it had been just a kiss, that he had walked away, it was too late. David knew the truth: that Sarah and Tom had betrayed him, and now he had nothing.

“I flew home to England soon afterwards and tried to visit the hospital as David recovered, but he refused to see me. The only way I can see of saving anything from the whole mess is to go back.” As Keira’s breath feathered against his chest, he touched her head with his lips. The lightest touch…

“No one needs me here. The people there need me, and I’m going. I just hope I don’t make the same kind of mess again.”

No one needed him here… As she lay in his arms, Keira may as well have been naked outside in the cold morning frost. His words chilled her to the bone. There was no fighting the demons that Tom had chosen to embrace, and she felt powerless to help him. In time, he might choose to let those demons go, but he had to make that decision for himself. She knew she had nothing, absolutely nothing, to compete with that. All she could do was set him free and take her destiny into her own hands.

“Come here,” she whispered.

Tom let her make love to him, take the lead as he never had before. He lay obediently as she brought him comfort with her fingers and with her mouth. He bore it all, patiently, until she brought him to the point of bursting need. Only then, when he could stand it no longer, did he take control, settle her astride him and thrust his way into her willing body, deeply and powerfully, bringing them both the oblivion they craved. It was in that moment, as she took him so far away from everything he’d clung onto, like grim death, for a year, that he knew he was completely, utterly in love with her.

It was still dark outside when Keira slipped from their bed, leaving Tom sleeping deeply. She shivered as the cool air stripped the warmth of his body from her almost instantly. It tasted bitter, the pain of being in the arms of the man she loved but who was leaving her forever. Of seeking and giving comfort to the very person who was giving her pain. Now she refused to taste the agony of the final good-bye.

Outside, the dawn seemed to creep reluctantly across the sky. As she gathered up her clothes from the bedroom floor, she stopped and held her breath, fearful of waking him and having to face the questions, maybe even see the relief in his eyes, as she told him she was going.

Yet he didn’t move. His breathing stayed regular and quiet as she stole out of the bedroom into the landing. Clutching her clothes and bag to her chest, she crept downstairs to the drawing room and got dressed.

Now she faced the decision: whether to leave the ultimate cliché—a note—and what to say if she did. In the end, she decided to write a brief line on the back of an envelope in the waste paper bin. A pen, free from a pharmaceutical supplier, lay on the worktop. A purple felt tip. It would have to do. Was there really a right colour to write a good-bye?

She wrote without thinking, for if she did, she’d never write at all. Nothing heavy, nothing to suggest he’d broken her heart, shattered her life. Just light and simple and brief.

Tom,

Lukum yi bihain.

I’m going so we won’t have to say good-bye.

I hope you find peace—do what you have to do.

Keira xx

PS Don’t try and call me. It’s easier this way.

No “love”… If she’d felt less, she could have added it. But to add it here, when she felt so much, was too much. As she propped the note against the shiny coffeemaker, a numbness enveloped her that she hoped would last forever but knew would evaporate as soon as she’d driven out of the gates. She’d got to the kitchen door before creeping back and adding to the PS:

Try to be kind to yourself.

Keira knew it would be impossible for both of them.