The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

‘Fine,’ she replied, somewhat confused by the enquiry; they’d exchanged pleasantries first thing this morning and he knew her well enough to know that a short hike through the jungle wouldn’t faze her. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘The Awa brought the coffee leaf remedy over for you this morning,’ he shrugged. ‘He said it would help, that’s all.’

‘Help with what?’ But even as she asked, she realized something was . . . missing. She blinked in concentration, then blinked again. She watched him throw his bag in the back of the car, a small smile playing on his lips.

For the first time in five days, she realized, she didn’t have a headache.

‘I’m back,’ she whispered, shutting the hut door quietly behind her and tiptoeing across to the bed.

Two things immediately struck her before she got to Rory’s sleeping form. That he was snoring incredibly loudly; and that the room stank of booze. He was still wearing the shorts he had been wearing when she got back here last night, but now a bottle of tequila was on the crate console.

‘Ror?’ She put a hand to his shoulder and when he didn’t stir at all, lay down beside him, stroking his arm gently. Waiting.

Several minutes went by, but his unconscious form gave no sign of registering her presence. She might as well have been stroking the wall.

She checked the time. It wasn’t yet eight. She felt she’d been up for hours already. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and go back to sleep, but the smell of alcohol on his breath was cloying.

With a sigh, she got back up and went outside. All the other hut doors were still closed, so she walked down the beach, enjoying the cool crush of the sand beneath her feet. There was a good surf today, the waves breaking several metres out, some ominously dark clouds on the horizon. She hadn’t yet swum in the ocean, she realized. She stepped out of her shorts and waded out, taking care not to go too far. She had grown up with Jed warning her about the unpredictable currents here and, sure enough, as she trod water and looked back to shore, she could see him standing by the bar, watching her closely. He would run straight into a rip tide if he had to. He might get to reject her offers of help but at the end of the day, she was a Tremain, the big boss’s daughter; nothing would happen to her on his watch.

They hadn’t said a huge amount on the journey back. Once he had definitively rejected her help, it had seemed to stultify all other topics of conversation. She could feel his resistance to even her silent entreaties like a wall between them and she wondered what warnings Sarita had waved him off with as she had stood by the door to the hut. She could guess.

Tara walked back up the beach, picking up her shorts as she passed, and lay back in the striped hammock; she squeezed the water from her long hair and let one leg dangle over the side, propelling her, rocking slightly. She felt agitated still, but there was no headache. Inexplicably, it had gone.

‘Hey, you’re back already! How was it?’

She twisted to see Holly, hair wild and clutching a bottle of water, come over and slump in the neighbouring hammock.

‘Awful,’ Tara sighed. ‘He’s in bad shape.’

‘Bad how?’ Holly frowned.

‘Pyrexia cachexia, palpable lymph nodes, hepatosplenomegaly.’

‘Jaundice?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘Bugger. Are you still thinking hepatitis?’

‘I am, I think. There were some old scratch marks on his arms and stomach too and itchy skin is a key indicator.’

Holly’s frown deepened. ‘But?’

‘But there were some old blood stains on the sheets by his head which worried me.’

‘Nosebleeds?’

‘Yes. And some bruises too.’

‘Bruises,’ Holly said in an ominous tone, nodding slowly, putting the pieces together. ‘The bruises may not be relevant, of course. Could be a red herring.’

‘Could be, yes. But if they are relevant . . . It could be acute myeloid leukaemia.’ She gave a hopeless shrug. ‘There’s no way of knowing anything without a full workup. He’d need a liver biopsy, blood screen, ultrasound.’

Holly stared at her for several long dismayed moments – she loved her job and she hated it too – before she took a glug of her water. ‘So what’s the plan? Get him over to San José?’

‘Nope. No plan.’

Holly coughed, spluttering on the water. ‘What do you mean, “no plan”?’

‘Just that. There’s no plan. The parents say he’s too sick to move, they won’t listen to any advice to the contrary.’

‘. . . So they’re just going to leave him there, suffering untreated instead?’

‘Oh no, he’s being treated. By the Awa.’ Tara couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.

‘Who?’

‘The shaman, remember? He’s like the . . . doctor, village elder, wise man, all rolled into one.’

‘Oh please, don’t tell me . . .?’

‘Yep. His action plan is for the patient to exist purely on some . . . leaf sap. No medicine, not even any food. At all, for seven months. Basically starving it out of him.’

‘What?’ Holly was sitting up now, her body locked into a crunch position. ‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’

‘Hols, believe me, I hear you. I feel exactly the same. That child is going to die and . . .’ Tara sighed, her voice breaking on the emotion. ‘I feel so . . .’ Her words ran out of shape, thinning into silence as she rubbed her face in her hands again. The powerlessness was what enraged her most of all. It was so unnecessary. Why couldn’t Jed see she could help him?

Neither of them said anything for several minutes. They both knew how this went.

‘Right, well,’ Holly said finally, her voice thin with bitter defeat. ‘Then that’s that. Like it or not, there’s nothing more to be done. You gave them your best medical opinion.’

‘For all the good it did,’ Tara snapped. ‘It’s not Jed who’s resisting it. I think . . . I really think I could talk him round; it’s his wife. She’s Indigenous, she doesn’t trust Western medicine. I mean, why would she? She doesn’t have any experience of it.