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“It’s not a bad thing. I can still study and research, but running out into electrical storms...” I shook my head. “Not if it ever hurts you again. I can’t do it. And I’m not sad about it. My priorities are quite clear to me now. And my priorities are you, and my work, of course. But standing out in a clearing holding a metal rod to the sky during a storm is now not so appealing.”
“Jem,” he whispered. “I never meant that you had to stop. I’d never ask you to stop.”
“I know. And I would never ask you to stop either. I know you love it, and I know you’ve had relationships where they’ve not understood. I’m not like them. I do understand and I want you to keep doing whatever you love. I’ll always support you.”
“But you won’t come with me,” he said, frowning.
“Tully, I can’t go through this again. I can’t put you through this again.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes getting that hardened, focused, possibly angry gleam. “See, here’s the thing, Jeremiah,” he said. “I’ve been chasing storms my whole life. Since I was a kid, doin’ all kinds of crazy shit with my dad and then when I was old enough to do it on my own. And I ain’t ever been struck by lightning.”
“Neither had I,” I countered. “And for the record, I wasn’t doing crazy shit. It was a freak electrical discharge. Just because it isn’t raining or storming overhead doesn’t mean lightning can’t strike.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You just said it. It was a freak accident. There was no way you could have predicted it. You didn’t mean for it to happen.”
I may have now only just seen the corner I’d painted myself into.
He smiled as if he knew, though it was still a little sad. “It wasn’t like you were out there holding a metal pole up to the sky, actively seeking out a strike point. Not like when you wanted to trek into mangroves holdin’ a bunch of metal equipment. Or that time you ran out into a storm to fix your weather station and almost got hit. Those were deliberate acts of stupidity.”
I snorted. “Thanks.”
“Or the time you saved Casey and Presley. That was deliberate and stupid, but you saved those kids so I’m giving you a pass.”
I smiled but he was also helping my point. “All these times are just proof that I need to stop.”
“No. It’s proof you need to start thinking. So we keep goin’ to the bunker, and we can take all the monitoring gear.” He leaned in close, his eyes trained on mine. “And we make love on that small bed while the storms rage outside.”
My ECG machine beeped.
He looked at it. “Oops.”
My nurse appeared like a genie from an ECG bottle. “What did you do?”
Tully got off the bed, his hands behind his back. “Just making sure it still works, that’s all. A civic duty, if you will.”
She glared at him, then she smiled at me. “Is he bothering you?”
“Yes.”
He gasped. “Husband! How could you?”
She looked at me. “There’s another visitor waiting out in the hall. I told her there’s only one at a time and that you were here.”
“Her?” Tully asked. “Mum wasn’t coming in till this arvo.”
“I can’t remember her name,” the nurse said. “Tall, older lady, shaved head. Shirt has a dinosaur on it. Was her name Doreen?”
Tully grinned at me. “Our favourite lesbian.”
I laughed and it hurt my ribs. “Ow.”
He kissed the side of my head. “I’ll go get her and she can say hi, and I’ll go and get you a proper coffee.”
They were both gone, and I barely had time to think about everything Tully had said before he came back with Doreen. “Here he is,” Tully said. “Now please talk some sense into him.”
“Sense about what?” she asked.
“He doesn’t think he should come storm chasing with me anymore,” he replied. “Tell him that’s a load of shit.”
