Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family. Lilian Darcy

would be turning six in just a few weeks.

      Luke wouldn’t even recognise him, he knew.

      He hadn’t seen him since he was three months old.

      ‘He’s coming in to see you now,’ Dr Wetherby reported to Janey.

      Charles, she remembered. He’d asked her to call him that, and he knew she was a doctor herself. Charles Wetherby. In a wheelchair. Somewhat of a local legend, she gathered. He was the hospital’s medical director.

      Her brain still felt fuzzy and disoriented, slow to process what was happening around her and the things people said, struggling to make sense of everything. But she kept trying, deeply anxious to return to full health, to get out of here, although she didn’t know where she and Felixx would go.

      Felixx, who was coming in to see her now.

      ‘Georgie Turner’s bringing him,’ Charles continued. ‘Our obstetrician. She’s terrific.’

      ‘He’s been staying with her since the crash.’ She still had blanks in her memory, and forgot things she’d been told.

      ‘That’s right.’ Dr Wetherby was very patient. ‘She and Dr Carmichael risked their lives to find him and Max, right in the teeth of the cyclone. We’re all devoutly thankful that the four of them survived.’

      ‘How long have I been in here now?’

      ‘Since Saturday night. And now it’s Tuesday. You missed all the drama.’

      ‘Not all of it.’

      Except that she couldn’t remember. She and Felixx had been on the bus that had slid off the road. There had been a landslide, triggered by the massive dump of rain that had heralded the cyclone, apparently. She remembered when they’d left Mundarri a few hours earlier, trying to get her waif-like, silent nephew to say goodbye to Raina and Maharia, but as usual he hadn’t said a word, just waved, taken Janey’s hand, stretched his small legs to climb the bus’s high steps.

      And that was all.

      After this, everything remained blank, and when she’d regained consciousness, she’d had to ask, ‘Where am I?’ like an accident victim in a bad movie, before she’d remembered finding Luke Bresciano’s contact details at Mundarri among Alice’s things. The second thing she’d asked had been, ‘Where’s Felixx? My—my little boy.’ Because, for the moment at least, he was hers.

      ‘Is he OK?’ she asked now, having been told at first that he was but not quite daring to believe it.

      ‘Well, we have a couple of concerns…’ Charles Wetherby said.

      ‘Is he speaking?’

      ‘No, he’s not, and we were wondering if there’s anything you can tell us about that. He doesn’t seem to have a hearing problem.’

      ‘He hasn’t spoken to me either.’

      ‘Since when, Janey?’

      She frowned and tried to will the fuzz out of her brain. Since when? Since ever! But had she managed to explain…? No, that’s right. They would have assumed the obvious relationship, and she’d been too fuzzy to correct them. ‘He’s not my son,’ she said.

      ‘But I thought—’

      ‘He’s my nephew. My sister’s child. I don’t know him very well. She—They believe in alternative healing at Mundarri. I don’t know if you’ve heard of—’

      ‘Mundarri? Some kind of spiritual retreat, up in the rainforest?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘Well, I do think there’s a place in our system for alternative medicine…’

      ‘I do, too, sometimes.’

      ‘But I’ve heard they have some odd ideas.’

      ‘Odd ideas that killed my sister.’ She sketched out the story as briefly as she could, sidetracked into an ambush of emotion before she could swallow it back, and even just that amount of effort tired her out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a doctor myself. Right, yes, I did tell you that.’ Her head hurt. ‘As you say, I think alternative healing has its place, but—’

      ‘We’re both doctors, you don’t have to explain.’

      ‘Will I be discharged today?’ she asked, knowing the answer even before she heard it.

      ‘Not before tomorrow, I shouldn’t think,’ Charles said gently. ‘Should we postpone your nephew coming in?’

      ‘Oh, no, please. I want to see him! Let me just close my eyes for a minute…’

      And the next time she opened them, not long afterwards, there he was, being ushered into the room by an attractive and very energetic-looking woman with bright red dangly earrings. She had a pretty impressive bruise on the side of her face, which Janey put down to the cyclone.

      ‘Felixx…’ Janey struggled to sit up, struggled yet again not to cry. She didn’t want to scare him any more than he’d been scared already by all that had happened, all the uncertainty, all that he’d lost. ‘Oh, sweetheart…Oh, darling…’

      She held out her arms, but Georgie Turner had to nudge him forward. ‘Come and hug your Auntie Janey.’ Charles Wetherby must have explained their relationship to her.

      At last he came, and she felt his warm little body. Had a momentary flashback to the bus. That’s right, he’d fallen asleep on her shoulder, so warm and trusting and relaxed. Now she wanted to hold him for ever, just for the reassurance that they were both alive, that she hadn’t let him down, that they were together, so everything would be all right.

      But he pulled back.

      Didn’t speak, of course.

      Why didn’t he speak?

      He looked scared. She could see him taking in the equipment—the drip stand and bag of fluid and cannula taped to her hand, the monitor reporting on her oxygen and heart, and the imposing side rails and wheels and crank handle of the hospital bed.

      Alice, she remembered. He was scared because his mother had died, and now his Auntie Janey was ill, too.

      ‘I’m feeling so much better, Felixx,’ she said quickly. ‘Dr Wetherby says I can probably get out of here tomorrow. I’m sitting here going woo-hoo!’

      On Felixx’s face the sun came out from behind a cloud. It was the only way Janey could describe it to herself. His smile spread wide, his eyes went happy, his tense little shoulders dropped and relaxed. He looked as if there was something else he wanted to say or ask, but didn’t know how. Or didn’t dare.

      ‘Were you scared I was really sick?’

      He nodded, cautious about it.

      Oh, hell, of course he had been scared!

      ‘Nah,’ she said, deliberately casual and dismissive. ‘Takes more than a few bumps on the head to knock me around. We’ll be able to check into a nice motel, and—’ She stopped.

      Georgie was shaking her head. ‘No motels,’ she mouthed.

      The cyclone, Janey remembered. As she hadn’t seen it or heard it or even seen the damage yet, she had to take it on trust and her foggy brain kept forgetting. None of the motels in town were currently open for business apparently.

      She put on a bright voice. ‘Well, we’ll have to camp or something.’

      ‘If you’re not feeling well enough to travel yet, Janey, we can arrange something. There’s a big house—it’s the original hospital building—where several of the doctors live, and we can usually find extra room.’ Georgie’s bright earrings bobbed as she talked. She looked like the kind of woman who could arrange emergency accommodation on an uninhabited planet if she had to. ‘We can lend you some clothes. Rowdy, here, was pretty happy to be reunited