Where the hell was Lily?

The question became a mantra, running through his head over and over. He asked everywhere. The islanders all knew her, but everywhere he asked he received headshakes.

‘Her boy is missing and also her man. We saw her earlier but she’s no longer here.’

He rounded the last corner to the roadblock before the compound. Here were the men and women he worked with, stopping anyone fool enough to risk their lives by trying to get nearer. There was someone in their midst, a woman, her voice raised.

‘I know some were hurt. Let me ask. I’m a doctor. They’ll let me in. Please, please, I beg you…’

Lily.

And he knew his colleagues’ answer before he heard it. First rule of hostage situations-damage limitation. However many were in there, don’t make it worse by sending more.

He saw Lily’s shoulders slump. There was little light out here-all lights had been ordered off-and she was just a dark shadow in the moonlight. But he knew it was Lily.

She was still in theatre garb.

She looked like Lily.

‘Lily,’ he said, and she looked up and saw who it was. He saw the flash of recognition, but he also saw the defeat, despair and exhaustion.

‘Lily,’ he said again, and reached her and held her, and it was just as well.

‘Ben,’ she whispered, and crumpled where she stood.

He carried her back to the hospital. She’d gone past protesting; she’d gone past anything but lying limply in his arms.

What had happened to his vision of Lily as a fat mama with a brood of happy children? he asked himself. She was thinner even than he remembered. She was only five feet four, a woman of half French parentage, and that parentage showed. She’d stood out from every other medical student in their course, looking elegant and somehow right whatever she wore.