The Du Rose Prophecy

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

“Come on, Phoe, please don’t be difficult!” the child’s father complained through gritted teeth, fighting impatience as his long fingers struggled to fit little booties over her socks. The baby whinged and kicked her legs, causing one knitted object to slip off while the other pinged from her father’s hand and landed somewhere near the lounge door. He sighed and sank onto the battered red leather sofa next to her, putting his head into his hands in a picture of despondence. “I can’t do this.”

The little girl beamed a gummy smile. Seven months old with dark wavy hair and a light olive face, she bore the same piercing grey eyes as her daddy. Their combined Māori genealogy screamed out in waves of inherited mana. She sighed, her head touching the back of the sofa and her legs dangling over the edge of the seat cushion as she rooted for her thumb. Turning sideways, she eyed her father with uncanny wisdom, waiting for his next move. His hair was overlong and wavy and he hadn’t shaved for three days or slept properly. Not since the terrible thing happened. He pinched his fingers over the bridge of his nose and willed the headache away. The child extended her legs over towards him and pitched into the crease between the two seats, making a cute gurgling noise over her thumb and smiling broadly.

Logan Du Rose looked down at his baby, her grey eyes crinkled at the edges in an almond shape as she looked at him with mischief. Her dexterous fingers snatched up an offending bootie from behind her head and she flapped it around in front of her face, her pupils dilating with pleasure. Logan exhaled and smiled at her. “I don’t think you need those, do you?” He sighed. “I don’t know how the hell they fit on anyway. That’s Mama’s job. How does she do these silky ties with you wriggling around?” A tightness gripped his chest and fear settled again. He pushed it away. Give me a difficult brood mare any day, over a pair of woolly shoes! “Let’s go find Whaea Leslie,” he said out loud, standing and lifting Phoenix onto his hip. He stooped to retrieve the dirty nappy and the other bootie, hurling the nappy into the roaring fire as he left the room and shoving the woolly article into his tight jeans pocket.

“I hope youse dint throw that nappy on the ahi!” the Māori housekeeper chided him as Logan pushed open the door to the family dining room. He looked guilty and the brown skinned old woman growled at him, hefting the baby against her huge bosoms. “Youse keep doin’ that!” she complained. “It just cooks it and makes the room stink of roke!”

Logan shrugged. s**t was the least of his problems. “Stop, woman!”

“Your mama wouldn’t do that, would she?” Leslie asked the infant, degenerating into baby talk as the child fixed her with a hopeful gaze at the mention of her mother. The woman looked at the child with sympathy, deliberately avoiding the eyes of her employer. She pressed her lips against the baby’s soft olive forehead, neatly avoiding the inquisitive hand which shot out to grab a long, black plait resting temptingly on the old woman’s shoulder.

Logan kissed his daughter on the side of her face and tousled her hair with his big hand. She turned her face to him, offering a knowing smile that made him feel stronger.

“Youse go see the missus.” Leslie smiled at him, “We’re all praying for her.”

Logan nodded once and turned to leave, almost bowled over in the doorway by a group of women who pushed inside roughly. The front girl froze on the spot, causing the other three to run into each other behind her. “Bloody hell!” he spat, grey eyes flashing and his face hard.

“Sorry, Mr Logan.” They shifted nervously in the doorway, fear creating a haze around them. Devastatingly good looking, he was a hard businessman, not afraid of a fight. Two of the women looked at the ground, knowing even if Logan said nothing else, they would get it from the housekeeper later. The other two looked up at the six foot four inch man through their eyelashes, betraying the lifetime crush each of them nurtured since they were all teenagers together. Logan knitted his brow and moved aside for them to pass, hating the way they sized him up like a piece of muscular meat.

He left with a wave at his daughter and a pause to allow her to wave back, her little hand twisting on the wrist as though she wiped an invisible window. The heels of his cowboy boots clicked on the tiled hallway of the old hotel as he strode towards the lobby. He still heard Leslie explode.

“This is a hotel!” Her voice boomed. “Not a bloody playground! Go clear up the dining room and start on the bedrooms. Youse will be the death of me, heahea girls!”

Logan unlocked the silver Honda CRV in the staff area of the hotel car park. The sweet scent of his wife’s perfume hit him in a heady cloud of longing and his chest hurt with fear. He pushed his emotions aside as always and climbed in. The weather was crisp and the mountains rose up around the gothic style house his great-great-grandfather built, over a century and a half ago. Sometimes the hotel felt like a blessing, the hundreds of acres of bush and pasture, thousands of prime quality beef stock and the horse stud. Other times it felt like a millstone hanging around his forty-one-year-old neck. The responsibility dragged him down when he least needed the added complications.

Logan adjusted the rear view mirror as he started the engine, noticing another line of grey hairs beginning in his sideburns, peppering their jet black companions. He exhaled and pulled out of the gravel car park, hitting the five kilometre tarmac driveway at a dangerous speed and almost piling into a campervan lumbering through the huge wrought iron gates.

The driver wound his window down. “Is the campsite round here?”

Logan nodded. “You should have gone off to the right after the last bend, but it’s fine. Go down past the motel units and say Logan Du Rose sent you that way. They’ll have to open the barrier for you.”

The English driver rolled his eyes in relief, not wanting to brave the breakneck road again for a wrong turn. Logan nodded and sped away, desperate to get to the private hospital in Auckland where Hana was. His phone trilled and he juggled it onto the cradle and pressed the speaker button. “Du Rose. What?”

“Your wahine matua texted last night but reception is bad again so I only just saw it. She wants to see Phoenix. Will you come back for her?” Leslie’s voice sounded crackly on the line.

“No, I’m not!” Logan snapped. He disconnected, rudely avoiding the housekeeper’s tirade. He felt split, knowing his wife wanted to keep breast feeding but was physically unable to cope with the distress. The previous day she struggled against the pain of four incisions in her chest from the heart surgery as the little girl fed. The child coped well with cow’s milk and a feeder cup that morning, Logan reasoned, knowing he was kidding himself. “She’ll kill me.”

Pulling out onto State Highway 1 and heading north towards Auckland, Logan tried to concentrate more on his driving, noticing the cop car hanging around on the hard shoulder touting for business. He touched his brake lights as he approached it, cursing himself for the futile moment of weakness which would show in the radar gun. He indicated and overtook a slower vehicle, maintaining his speed at a steady hundred kilometres per hour until the motorway turnoff to the hospital.

It was after nine o’clock and he missed the rush hour traffic deliberately, although Phoenix made him later than intended. Even though she wouldn’t complain, he knew Hana would be waiting hopefully for his face to appear around the door. And her daughter’s. The thought of her disappointment cut into him and he considered driving all the way back for the baby. Don’t be stupid, he convinced himself; you’re almost there now.

The private Monty Lassiter Hospital or the ‘Monty’ in medical circles was both expensive and fortunately covered by Logan’s medical insurance. Taken ill at Rangiriri Pa, between Huntly and Auckland, the the air ambulance flew Hana straight to Auckland General Hospital, for the lifesaving surgery. A genetic fault led to a thickening and blocking of her aortic valve, slow and deadly. The tear was almost fatal, leading to a massive heart attack. Her brother’s expert compressions dragged her back from oblivion until help arrived. A happy family picnic quickly degenerated into chaos, misery and disbelief as history repeated itself and the Creator attempted to snatch back Logan’s wife, just as he had her mother twenty-six years earlier.

Logan ran a shaking hand over his face, trying not to relive the awful afternoon. It came back to him when he laid his head on the pillow, making him avoid their comfy double bed. He blamed himself, as did her brother. “She’s forty-six years old!” Mark shouted angrily in the hospital corridor as they waited for news of Hana. “She’s just had a baby! How the hell did you miss the fact she repeatedly fainted during her pregnancy? I can’t believe you allowed her to brush it off so casually!” The gifted surgeon was livid. “I suppose you’ll tell me you didn’t know about the other episodes either?”

“I didn’t!” Logan kept his teeth gritted. “You’re the surgeon, not me!”

“Yeah well I checked her over a few weeks ago and told her to see her own doctor. I knew something was wrong!” Mark’s anger switched to himself and he worked to deflect it back onto the handsome Māori pacing the linoleum floor. “Didn’t you notice how tired she got and the weight loss, breathlessness under stress, pains in her upper abdomen and chest...geez man. Don’t you care about her at all?”

Logan balled his fists in fury, wisely keeping his mouth shut but only for Hana’s sake. He didn’t think he had ever felt so helpless or guilty as he did that terrible afternoon, waiting for the emergency surgery to finish. At the pa, Logan and Mark almost came to blows over who went in the helicopter with Hana, but her father, Robert stepped in and insisted Hana’s husband went. “Mark!” he quietly chastised his son, his Scots accent failing to disguise the terrified wobble. “Let her husband go with her. It’s what she would want.”

Mark followed them to the hospital by car and a tense standoff between the men ensued as somehow they both ended up feeling guilty and pushed out.

Logan paced along the corridor to his wife’s room, his boots making no sound on the plush, expensive carpet of the private hospital. He felt the familiar skip of his heart at the thought of seeing her. He loved the wisps of red hair hanging around her face and the shy smile she kept only for him. She was the only person in his life who ever made him feel needed and it completed him. Please be ok, Hana, he begged an unseen God.

Hana’s bedroom was immaculately spotless, not a trace of her remaining. The high bed was stripped and lifeless, the room empty. Logan panicked. He ran back to the nurse’s station with long strides, arriving with a face of dismay and confusion. His grey eyes were the colour of grit and his tanned skin paled horribly.

“It’s ok, Mr Du Rose,” the young nurse said with kindness in her face. “Your wife’s waiting for you in the day room. I’ll show you where it is.” She came around the side of the desk in soft soled shoes which made a dull squeak on the carpet. They entered a room which looked as though it could feature in a Homes and Gardens magazine.

Hana Du Rose sat in a high-backed chair watching television without registering anything happening on the screen. She was rake thin and her clothes hung off her like curtains. The usually pretty face was colourless. Her emerald green eyes were listless and had temporarily lost their twinkle. Curly auburn hair was pulled away from her face in a loose ponytail, which Logan could tell someone else did for her. Tendrils escaped and hung around her face like a curly halo.