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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WAZZA OPENED HIS eyes. His neck was sore as hell, and he adjusted his position slightly to try and unkink it. That’s what you got when you slept in a chair half the night. A warm weight shifted slightly on his chest, and he stopped moving, not wanting to wake Benni. They’d both fallen asleep around midnight, exhaustion finally overcoming them. Benni had refused to leave his side, clung to him like a limpet on a rock. And he didn’t blame her. So, he’d got as comfortable as was possible in a hospital chair and let her snuggle into his chest. Someone had draped a blanket over them both; probably that nice nurse, Peggy. That was the last thing he remembered.
Wazza rolled his head to the side so he could see Kee. She was still lying in the hospital bed, the same as last night. She hadn’t moved an inch. With a tube down her throat and an IV line into her arm, she looked small and alone lying there. She was alive, but unconscious, and the doctors couldn’t tell him how long she’d stay that way, or if there was any brain damage from lack of oxygen. They’d moved her from ICU to a private room late last night, which was one small mercy, because it meant he and Benni could be by her side. A pediatric doctor had come in at some stage to check on Benni, and given her the all-clear, which had relieved a little of Wazza’s stress. Benni kept asking for Dolly, but her little doll must still be sitting in the red vehicle back at Diesel’s house. He tried to tell Benni that he would get Dolly back as soon as possible, but in his heart, he thought the toy was lost.
Light was sneaking in under the blinds, so it must be morning, but he had no concept of the exact time.
Aaron and Dale were flying the chopper up to Cairns this morning to be with Wazza. Be there for him as friends, as well as offer their help in any way they could. Wazza had to talk Daniella and Steve out of coming, too. They were both determined to be there. But after Wazza had appealed to Dale, he’d helped him talk them into letting Dale go, instead. He didn’t want Kee to be overwhelmed when she woke up and he’d feel guilty if they dropped everything at Stormcloud to come and sit by her bedside. Because she was going to wake up. She was.
Wazza had called Steve late last night to tell him what’d happened. After the initial shock, Steve had gathered Daniella, Dale, and Julie around and put him on speakerphone, so they could come up with a plan. It made him so grateful that he had a boss and a team of friends who he could count on, who had his back through thick and thin. He found it impossible to communicate his appreciation properly, but he hoped they all understood how much they meant to him.
Yesterday was a blur of mixed emotions and fragments of images. He could hardly remember Diesel driving into the main dock of Karumba, screaming that they needed a doctor. Or the locals staring at them, fishing poles forgotten, until they scrambled up and ran to find the local GP and grab the defibrillator from its spot on the wall near the amenities block. He was still performing CPR on Kee, even though his arms were like leaden weights, and his shoulders felt like they were about to dislocate from his body.
Wazza had never used a defib machine, but he’d kept his nerve and followed the instructions as the robotic voice intoned its commands.
He had to do it twice, but the defibrillator was what’d eventually brought Kee back to him. At first, he could hardly believe what the machine was telling him; a pulse had been detected. He’d hovered over her face, placing his cheek close to her mouth, and had heard her shallow intake of breath. And then her equally shallow exhale.
Then a man had jumped into the boat and pushed him out of the way. “I’m a doctor,” he’d said and so Wazza let him take over, waiting until the doctor confirmed his own diagnosis, that she was breathing on her own.
Then he’d grabbed the gunnel and retched over the side of the boat.
Afterward, Diesel told him it’d only taken them around five minutes to get up the river to town, but Wazza was sure it’d taken them five hours.
Once Kee was stable, the GP had called for the flying doctor to airlift her to Cairns, the closest hospital with an ICU.
Wazza had been prepared for a fight with the pilot, because he wasn’t letting them go without taking Benni; she needed to be checked by a doctor as well, and she needed to be by her mother’s side. But they’d surprised him by offering both him and Benni a seat on the airplane. Benni had sat in his lap the for the entire flight, which was over two hours, refusing to take her own seat, no matter how gently the nurses tried to cajole her. Wazza wasn’t surprised. After everything that little girl had been through, he was the only solid thing she had left to cling to. She also refused to look at Kee, lying on the stretcher, hooked up to all kinds of machines. Wazza didn’t push her on that, either, after she muttered, “That’s not my mummy,” quietly into his ear. He could understand what Benni was feeling, because even in his grown-up mind, he hardly accepted that the motionless, pale woman was Kee. That wasn’t the vibrant, beautiful woman he knew.
He glanced over at her again with a frown. Please wake up, Kee, he implored.
The door opened, and a nurse bustled in. “Good morning,” she said brightly.
Wazza didn’t recognize this woman. Benni twitched on his chest and then sat up suddenly.
“Hello, gorgeous.” The nurse came over and bent down so she was at Benni’s level. “Did you have a good sleep? Your daddy’s taking good care of you, isn’t he?”
Wazza didn’t correct her, he merely sat up straighter in the chair, stretching out his legs with a groan.
“Is Mummy awake yet?” Benni asked, clambering down over Wazza’s long legs.
“Not yet, honey, but she will be soon, don’t you worry. This one is a fighter, I can tell.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Wazza wasn’t sure if the nurse’s optimism was a good thing, or not. Should they be giving Benni false hope?
“Why don’t you take your daughter and grab some breakfast down in the cafeteria,” the nurse said with a kindly lift of her eyebrow.
“Sure.” It was probably a good idea, although he doubted he’d be able to eat anything, but he needed to take care of Benni.
He had lots of things to do this morning. Top on his list was contacting Kee’s parents. They needed to know what’d happened, and perhaps they’d even want to come up and be by their daughter’s bedside. He could make some phone calls while Benni ate breakfast.
There was also the dilemma of what to do with Benni.
Last night, he hadn’t let himself think about the future, about what might happen if Kee didn’t wake up. But in the cold morning light, he knew he needed to at least consider the option.
He loved Benni like she was his own daughter, and he’d keep her safe and by his side for as long as he could. Hell, he’d adopt her in a heartbeat, if it came to that. But he understood that’s not how the world worked. There was a custody battle with Jakov’s parents to be faced. For a fleeting second, he considered taking Benni and fleeing back into the bush, so Jakov and his family couldn’t get hold of her. That’d cause more problems than it solved, however, and he discarded that idea fairly quickly.
