Finding Abby

8

"I'm so sorry," I rasp into my phone.

"It's totally fine," Ben says, and the warmth in his voice causes another bout of stupid tears.

Five minutes later his van cruises up and he jumps out and runs to me. Seeing how worried he is makes me sob again.

He kneels beside me and starts checking me over. "Anything broken? Do you need an ambulance? Do we go to the hospital? Those grazes look painful."

I snuffle heavily and hold my wrist up. "I hurt something in here."

"Hospital then?"

"I guess."

Ben loads my bike in the back of his car and wraps his arm around my waist to help me hobble over to the passenger door. I lean into him and take in his earthy smell.

"I'm sorry," I mumble after he's helped me lower myself into the seat. "I'm gonna mess the car up."

"Least of our worries," Ben grins before he shuts the door.

He starts the engine which kicks in with a low rumble, and says, "Should you call your mum and get her to meet us at the hospital?"

I stare out the side window. "No."

"You sure?"

I turn back to him. His hand is on the gear stick between us, his fingers curled loosely around it.

"I'm sure."

"Okay," he says after a moment, shifting in his seat to face me. "She's not all bad, you know."

I don't say anything. My whole body pounds and stings and throbs. I don't want to talk about my mum. I want to curl up in bed under the covers and never get up.

"She ... she's struggling to move on," he continues. His eyes are on mine, dark brown with rich amber flecks, staring at me.

"Well, she's taken my whole life to do that." I swallow down a threatening sob while my hands tremble.

Ben looks at me closer. I know lines of tears and dust and snot cover my face so I look down at my hands. He reaches and brushes some dirt off my shoulder before putting his hand back on the gear-stick.

I look at him.

He moves his gaze from me, out the windscreen towards the view down into the crater where two emus move slowly through the yellowed swamp grass. "Hey, so, you know my job?"

I don't say anything.

"I always thought the Barrier Reef would be here forever," he continues, "but the coral's dying." He turns back to me and his eyes have a watery film over them.

An ache grows deep inside me at the thought of the knife-edge future for the Great Barrier Reef. Now I want to tell him everything's going to be okay, but I can't because talking about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef feels too overwhelming with everything else going on right now.

I swallow the ache back down and listen as he keeps talking, his eyes on me this time; a fixed gaze. "The whole reason I went to Townsville was because I realised the Reef isn't something we can think about later on. We need to save it. Now. Today. While we still can." Ben gives me a small smile that makes me think the world with him in it is a good place.

I nod. "That's why I want to do science. To save the oceans."

"I guess what I've learned from ... everything ... and from working up there, is that 'later' might not come. We can't wait to fix things because sometimes ... we don't get a chance." His eyes travel over my face and I can see he hopes I understand what he's trying to say.