The Stranding (36 page)

Jimmy poured her a coffee and they stood together watching the new volunteers taking turns to wet the whale down.

‘What’s happening with the machinery?’ Callista asked.

‘Trevor’s onto it, but apparently it’s going to take some time.’

‘Everything takes too much time.’

‘Yep, slow as a wet week. First they have to load the ’dozer and the excavator onto trucks and then drive out here. Trevor reckons the dunes are too steep and unstable, so Ben Hackett’s finding out who owns the property backing onto the lagoon so he can get permission to come through that way. He’s going to help Trevor drive down here and then he’ll bring the excavator through behind the bulldozer.’

‘I didn’t know Ben drove heavy machinery.’

‘He doesn’t, but he’s used to farm machinery and apparently that should help. Trevor’s giving him a crash course. It’ll save time. Trevor can’t be in two places at once, and they can’t raise the other plant operator. He must be away for the weekend.’

A slim dreadlocked girl strode up to the tent to collect more towels. She met Callista’s eyes and smiled. It was a direct smile, overly confident, almost brash.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘I saw you chucking on the beach. Can you believe how bad their breath is?’ She grabbed an armful of towels and ran back down to the water’s edge.

Callista had to admit that the girl and her friends were doing a good job, moving slowly and quietly around the whale, and working efficiently as a team. The girl was standing back with a spare towel, waiting to briskly dry off a lanky dreadlocked man after each foray into the sea to remoisten the towels. Another pair from the team was watching from a distance, ready to take over, and the others had moved further up the beach where they had set up a small gas stove and a billy to boil.

As Callista watched, the girl hooked off her beanie, threaded her fingers through the mass of dreads and deftly twisted them into a plait which she stuffed down the back of her jacket. She looked young, probably in her late teens or early twenties, and she had a relaxed easiness about her and an aura of confidence. Callista wondered where they had come from.

‘Looks like the vet’s here,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll have to go.’

Callista watched him join Taylor and three men who had just arrived at the tent, but she couldn’t hear their conversation because the canvas was flapping and cracking in the wind. The men soon moved towards the whale, carrying toolboxes. One of them, a short, dark, curly-haired man, waved the volunteers away from the whale and Callista noticed that they stepped back slowly and reluctantly. Perhaps they didn’t like taking orders from people.

‘That’s the vet,’ Jimmy said. He had come to stand with her again and was observing the men closely, his hands deep in the pockets of his oilskin.

The vet looked too young to have much experience. ‘Do you think he knows what he’s doing?’ Callista asked.

‘Apparently he used to work in Tasmania,’ Jimmy said. ‘They get lots of strandings down there. Multiple strandings that make this one look like a picnic. Taylor says he’s good at making decisions, picking winners and losers. That’s what they have to do when there are multiples. Decide which whales are most likely to make it and focus on those. They have them dying all over the beach down there.’

‘Who are the other men?’ Callista asked.

‘Whale biologists. From one of the universities.’

‘What do they know about strandings?’

‘More than me,’ Jimmy admitted. ‘I’ve read a lot on paper, but these fellers have had first-hand experience.’

They watched as the vet stepped up to the whale and pulled the towels off. He ran his hand firmly along the whale’s back, slipping up and over the pectoral flipper, but the whale didn’t move. The vet was obviously concerned about this. He shook his head then squatted near the blowhole and spent some time examining it and timing the interval between breaths. Next he moved further around to examine the whale’s eye and mouth. Callista saw him tapping at the corner of its eye and tugging at its mouth. Then he stood up and yelled and clapped his hands. The whale shifted its pectoral flipper slightly, but the vet obviously wanted more. He took hold of the pectoral flipper and wriggled it a bit, lifted it high, let it go and watched it fall back down with a slap onto the whale’s side.

‘What’s he doing?’ Callista asked. ‘Does he have to hassle it like that?’

Jimmy didn’t answer.

They watched as the vet walked into the shallows at the rear end of the whale and pushed at its tail flukes with his gumboot. There was no response. Then he clapped his hands and yelled as he pushed at the flukes again. The whale sucked a quick breath of air and tensed as it tried to lift its tail.

‘Can’t he see it’s buried in sand?’ Callista said.

Jimmy said nothing.

The vet gave a small nod, as if finishing a discussion with himself, and joined the biologists just beyond the whale’s head. They talked amongst themselves animatedly for several minutes. The vet spoke least and stood looking down at the sand, interjecting occasionally.

Callista saw the slim girl go up to them. She must have asked if they could resume their support work, because the vet nodded and four of the team started replacing the towels across the whale’s back. Then the vet came up to the tent looking for Peter Taylor who was up at the dunes making phone calls. Jimmy went to fetch him, leaving the vet with Callista.

He seemed quite shy standing away from her while he waited, hands thrust in his trouser pockets. He shifted from foot to foot, avoiding eye contact, and his agitation made Callista nervous. She wasn’t sure yet whether she could trust his judgment. He seemed so uncertain, so unconfident.

‘You’ve got a hard job,’ she said. ‘I don’t envy you.’

‘These things are never much fun. I’d rather be kicking a football with my son back in Sydney.’ He glanced at her quickly then his eyes skated away.

‘How’s the whale going? I was one of the people who found it this morning, and I keep hoping it’ll be okay.’

‘You’re just the person I need to talk to.’ The vet pulled a notebook and a pencil out of his hip pocket and peeked up at her briefly, then back down at his notebook. ‘Have you been taking any notes? Writing anything down?’

‘Only for the past hour or so. Respirations, movements, things like that. Before that I didn’t have anything to write on, and to be honest, I didn’t think of it.’

The vet nodded. ‘Anything you can tell me could be useful. Just chat and I’ll make notes while you’re talking.’

Callista told him about how they’d found the whale, how it was responding then, where the tide had been, what the weather had been like. She referred to the notes she had taken for Jimmy, mentioned the frequency of breaths and moans, how things had changed since early morning. She wanted to talk about her discussion with Lex, and ask the vet what he thought of Lex’s so-called options, but she wasn’t game and she stuck to the facts.

‘Thanks,’ the vet said. ‘All of that really helps. I can compare your observations with mine and that gives me a gauge of the whale’s deterioration.’

‘Deterioration?’

The vet gave a small smile. ‘They all deteriorate out of water,’ he said. ‘There’s only one way to go and that’s downhill. We monitor how quickly they’re sliding and that gives us a measure of the chances of survival. By the way, I’m Tim Lawton.’ He extended his hand, leaning forward to reach her, reluctant to come closer.

‘What could you tell from your assessment?’ Callista still felt uncertain of him.

‘Things aren’t looking too bad,’ he said. ‘He’s hanging in there. Muscle tone’s not great and breaths are a bit few and far between, but we’ll give him a bit of stimulus soon and try to stir things up a bit. We don’t want to hassle him too much, but if we just leave him lying there, he might forget to breathe. We’ll keep up with the support treatment too. You guys made a great start getting those wet towels on him, but there are a few other things we can do too, before the machinery gets here. We can hand-dig some trenches to free up his chest and tail a bit. Then he’ll feel a bit more comfortable and it might help with his breathing.’

‘Do you think he’ll make it?’

The vet looked at her seriously. It was the first time he had met her eyes directly. ‘It’s too soon to tell,’ he said. ‘There’s a long day ahead of us yet. We’ll just have to wait and see. Here comes Taylor now.’

Tim quickly filled Taylor in on the whale’s status and then asked permission to take some samples. He wanted to try to collect some blood, and also to get a swab from the blowhole. He asked if somebody could take the samples back to the nearest hospital for him. The tests were fairly basic, he explained, but would give him a few hints on how the whale was faring.

Callista watched him pick up his toolbox and walk down to the whale with the two biologists. She was still unsure. She had expected optimism and positivity from him. She hadn’t expected him to be so frank. Of course the whale had deteriorated over the past few hours. She knew it. But she hadn’t wanted the vet to say it so directly. Then again, perhaps there was little room for coddling people in a situation like this. Everyone had to be prepared for the worst.

Tim stopped several metres away from the whale and pulled some large needles and syringes from his toolbox. He poked along the whale’s back down towards the tail, then unsheathed one of the needles. Bending down, he poked around the tail a bit more and then pushed the needle in. Callista looked away, feeling faint. It must be the cold—so many hours sitting waiting on the beach—and the needle looked so large. When she glanced back, one of the syringes was already full of blood. Tim passed it to one of the biologists then he attached another syringe and filled it also. The biologist was busy filling blood tubes. There seemed to be dozens of them.

Feeling weak, Callista sat down and wrapped her arms around her legs. The girl with dreadlocks came over and crouched on the sand beside her.

‘What do you think about all this?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Callista looked at her more closely. The girl’s hair was wrapped around her neck like a shawl and it smelled of smoke. She was concentrating hard on the vet’s actions, her young face firm and her eyes clear.

‘I don’t like the way he touches it,’ the girl said. ‘Do you?’

‘Not really,’ Callista admitted.

‘It’s a matter of respect. He’s rough.’

‘He’s doing a medical examination.’

‘I don’t care what he’s doing. He lacks compassion.’

‘He’s trying to make an objective assessment. That’s his job. He’s been looking for reflexes, responses, those sorts of things, so he can tell how far gone the whale is.’

The girl shook her head. ‘If he doesn’t have compassion for animals, I don’t see how he can help.’

‘Don’t you think we should give him a chance?’ Callista said. ‘He’s seen more whales than we’ll ever see. And perhaps it doesn’t work to be gentle with an animal that big. The vet said if they leave it alone it might stop breathing.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s breathing less frequently than it was this morning.’

The girl looked at Callista with bright level eyes.

‘You’re straight up and honest, like me,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend Jarrah describes it as tactless. But I think there’s too much tact around these days.’

Callista tried not to smile. She didn’t think she’d ever been as forward and confident as this young girl. But the girl was very serious. She wiped the sand from her hand and offered it to Callista.

‘I’m Jen.’

‘Callista.’

They clasped hands.

‘With a name like that it’s no wonder I like you.’ Jen looked knowingly at Callista. ‘I can pick it. I can see things in people. It’s a skill I have.’

She looked around and waved her hand towards Lex who was standing with Jordi watching the vet. ‘Like that guy over there,’ she said. ‘He picked me up on the highway a few weeks ago.’

Callista tried not to tense.

‘He’s the polite type,’ Jen said. ‘He hides behind silence. You’d think an older guy like him would jump at the chance to be with a young chick like me. But he was overwhelmed. Didn’t know what to do.’

Callista looked at Lex, tingling. ‘Not everyone is what they seem,’ she said. ‘The vet does care. He wants the whale to live.’

They looked back to the whale and watched Tim as he dabbed around the blowhole with a wad of gauze and then dipped inside it with a cotton bud on a long stick, swirling it around. The whale exhaled with a blast. There might be a medical reason for needles and swabs, but Callista felt a surge of nausea. She couldn’t watch anymore.

‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ she said.

She heaved herself quickly to her feet and walked up the beach.

Twenty-eight

Looking back later, Callista had difficulty pinpointing exactly when things changed on the beach. But there was a distinct turning point when everything shifted from being casual and interactive to being more organised and controlled. That was the moment at which something was lost. But it was inevitable, and it was because of the number of people massing on the beach.

Word had spread via live-to-air reports on radio and TV, and over several hours the beach had transformed. More tents were pitched further back up the sand, folding tables were set up, generators were fuelled and kicked into life, and more and more bodies scurried back and forth from the hill lugging equipment. The chopper came and went, disgorging gear, and cars crowded the horizon in haphazard disarray.

Sue, John Watson and a contingent from the church arrived with bags stuffed with food—sandwiches, chocolate, fruit, sweets—and thermoses of hot drinks. They came with gas stoves and moved straight into two tents. One was set up to cook sausages that Helen Beck provided. Some of the church ladies, led by Mrs Jensen, organised themselves in the other tent to serve tea and coffee.

More media crews arrived. They closed ranks with the other reporters and hung out in tight circles, badgering Peter Taylor for interviews. Callista was surprised they left the vet alone, but Jimmy explained that Taylor was protecting him. Tim had a more important job to do than performing for the media sharks.