Page 157 of Just One Look
Barren Ground
He didn’t haveto worry about sleeping with her in his bed that night after all, because the younger woman, Sarah, was in there with the baby. A baby who had no nappies, so while Sarah was in the bath, his mum fashioned some, cutting up a cotton blanket and finding pins while Gran made tea with sugar, Sofia found dry clothes for the two women and put their wet things into the washing machine, and Elizabeth held the baby.
She wasn’t checking her over, not anymore. She was just holding her. The tiny girl, even smaller than Arielle, was dressed in one of Sofia’s T-shirts and wrapped in another piece of blanket, and her head was against Elizabeth’s neck, under her chin. That little round head, bald except for a fuzz of fine blonde hair, nestled into her, and Elizabeth had her hand on the baby’s back, supporting her neck and holding her closer. “She needs to snuggle now,” she told him when she caught him looking. “She needs comfort and calm. People think babies aren’t affected by trauma, because they don’t remember consciously later on, and because they’re nonverbal. They’re affected at least as much as adults are, though. Maybe more, because they have no perspective. Their universe of experiences is so new and so limited. So she needs to be held now.”
He sat beside her, because standing up was getting harder. Every muscle was drained, more than after any rugby game he’d ever played. She asked, “How’s your neck?”
“All right.” It was a lie. It hurt. He couldn’t think about that now, though. There was too much, all of it was pressing in, and his armor was gone.
Finally, though, the baby was tucked into Lana’s bed with her mum and grandmum, Sofia was in her own bed, and Luka was in the shower himself. Not much hot water left. Never mind. He shivered and soaped up and rinsed under the rapidly cooling spray, toweled himself off and dressed again, went out to the lounge, and told Elizabeth, “No hot water. Tried to save some, but there wasn’t enough.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “I was barely out in it. I’m fine. I’ll go wash up.”
He thought,She probably still wants to talk. I can’t do it. Not now. I can’t.
It didn’t matter anyway, because the minute he wrapped up in a blanket and lay down on the carpet, he was asleep.
* * *
She’d thoughthe’d say more to her. He didn’t. Not that night, because he was asleep, or he was pretending to be, and not the next day, either, when they left their refugees, who’d miraculously transformed into capable, low-drama Kiwis after a night’s sleep, in the care of Luka’s family. And she and Luka left for Auckland.
They drove the long way around, through Tutukaka, through Matapouri, because the main road wasn’t cleared. A glorious day, a day of blue sky and sun, the wind blowing the storm before it. They drove past cliffs and sea stacks and sparkling water and sandy beaches, past summer houses and farms and a thousand shades of blue and green.
The Poor Knights Islands were out there still, though she’d probably never see them again, with their hidden landscape of buried caves and tunnels and cliffs under the water, their schools of fish in shining blue, in silver, in orange and red. And in their loneliness, because the land was tapu, and it always would be. Boats all around them, divers in their waters, and the islands, overlooking it all but never a part of it, because when it came to people, they were barren ground.
Back in Ponsonby, finally, and any conversation they’d had dying. She climbed out of the car, and so did he. Lines of fatigue and strain on his face, and a stiffness about the way he moved that told her he’d hurt his neck again. When she’d tried to ask, tried to get him to let her drive, he’d shut her down. She needed to know, to go with him to get it checked, but he wasn’t going to let her.
He handed down her suitcase without a word, and that hurt his neck more. She said, “I’ll go pack,” and he nodded.
He didn’t come into the bedroom while she did it. He didn’t kiss her goodbye.
That was Monday. On Tuesday, she went to her chief of surgery. And then she went to Nils.
* * *
Wednesday,and Luka was in Nils Larsen’s office once again to get the results of his scans.
He’d always hated the hospital. He just hated it more now.
Nils in his white coat, all business today, pointing to a scan in the viewer and saying, “As I told you, we won’t have a really good picture of the fusion for months, so we won’t know whether you impacted it or not without going back in there, and I don’t want to do that. It’s possible you may just have delayed the bone fusing.”
Luka let out his breath in a long sigh. That was good, then.
“Icantell you,” Nils said, “unfortunately, that you’ve badly herniated the disc above, L3/L4. Not uncommon. The stress has to go somewhere.”
“So,” Luka said, trying for calm, trying for cool, “injections.”
“Yes. And some strong non-opioid pain medication that you’ll actually take, with a muscle relaxant at night until we can do them. And if that doesn’t work, a laminectomy. More surgery, but not as extensive as the fusion.” His eyes were too serious, though. Why?
Luka said, “Fine. Whatever. I’ll still be healing from the other anyway. It’ll barely slow me down.”
Nils said, his tone still cool and dry as he dropped words like bombs, “I’d think seriously at this point about the future. There’s no doubt that your cervical spine is weakened. At a certain point, these injuries are a contraindication to rugby. I feel we are approaching that point.”
“The research on that is thin and inconclusive,” Luka said. “More an art than a science to making that call, from what I’ve heard.”
Nils said, “Elizabeth. Of course. We could get her in, if she’s still in Auckland, and get her opinion. I didn’t discuss this with her yesterday, naturally, since you hadn’t given permission.”
Luka’s neck still burned, but the rest of him was cold. He’d been cold for three days now, since the rescue. Cold, and tired. He was almost never tired, not like this, but it was as if that night had taken his strength away. Like a Bible story, where his hair had been cut, and he couldn’t be a warrior anymore. He said, “We aren’t together.”
