Let the River Run

Louise went quiet. The kiosk lady thumped a plastic spoon onto the counter, but neither of us blinked.

“She told me to apologise,” Louise blurted out. The words looked like they tasted like battery acid. “She said I was being ... how did she put it? A Wicked Witch?”

I let a small, dry smile touch my mouth. “Her words, not mine. Well, okay, mine too. But she endorsed them.”

Louise let out a breath that was almost a laugh, though it had no humour in it. “She’s right. I’m a bitch when I’m scared. And seeing her in that bed, with the tubes and the pallor ... it scared the hell out of me. Then I walk in and see someone I’ve never heard of feeding her cheesecake and making her laugh, and I realised I don’t know her anymore. Not the woman she’s become.”

“I flew the helicopter that pulled her out of the river. Her and her cameraman. You should have seen her when the litter came into the cabin ... struggling to breathe, coughing up dirty muddy Sabi river water, the rattle and wheezing of her chest, her skin cold and wrinkled, blue around the eyes and lips. Her clothes torn to shreds. The shivering of her body ... She was moments away from death ... I could not have let that happen...”

Louise’s eyes went wide: “I didn’t know...”

She stepped closer, the smell of expensive perfume battling the hospital’s antiseptic. “She says you’re a decent man. And Kaity’s internal compass is usually set to True North. So ... I’m sorry, Adrian. For the ‘hunter’ comment. And the ‘Wicked Witch’ energy.”

I looked at her for a long beat. In aviation, you learn to read the weather before you commit to the landing. The storm hadn’t fully passed, but the pressure was dropping.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

“Good,” she said, her professional mask sliding back into place. “Because if you don’t go back in there and finish that cheesecake with her, she’s going to make my life a living hell for the next forty-eight hours. And I have a citrus contract to finalise in Levubu that doesn’t need ‘Ranger Authority’ interfering with it.”

She started to turn away, then paused. “One more thing, Adrian? About the talking? Our ex-brother-in-law was a fool. She said you liked the sound of her voice. If you actually like the sound of her voice ... then maybe you’re the first person in a long time who’s actually listening to her.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She just clicked away, her heels echoing down the corridor.

I stood there by the burnt coffee and the stale muffins, feeling the “structural load” of the last ten minutes settle into my bones.

I turned around and started walking back toward Ward 302.

---

I stopped at the threshold of Ward 302, my hand resting on the heavy door frame. I took a breath, letting the sterile, pressurised air of the hospital settle in my lungs. I wasn’t checking the manifold pressure gauge on a Cessna 172 this time, but I was definitely monitoring the atmosphere.

The room was quieter now, the “thunderstorm” of Louise’s presence having rolled out, leaving that strange, hyper-clear stillness you get after a front passes. The honeyed sunlight was hitting the water jug, turning the proteas into glowing lanterns of pink, gold white, green, and orange.

Kaitlyn was sitting exactly where I’d left her, but the “military precision” of the pillows had slumped. Kait looked smaller. She was staring out the window at the garden, her fingers tracing the edge of the plastic fork. She hadn’t heard me come in.

“The coffee was a total write-off,” I said softly.

She flinched—just a tiny, sharp contraction of her shoulders—and then she turned. When her eyes met mine, the impact was physical. It wasn’t just the blue of the iris; it was the raw, unguarded relief written across her face.

“You came back,” she whispered. The “chirpy” mask was gone. This was the woman who had coughed up the Sabi.

“I had to,” I said, walking toward the bed. I kept my movements slow, like I was approaching a skittish animal in the bush. “I can’t leave a structural load of cheesecake unattended. It’s against safety regulations.”

I sat back down in the visitor’s chair. The proximity felt different now. The air between us felt thick, charged with the things Louise had shouted and the things I’d told her at the kiosk.

“She apologised,” I said, nodding toward the door.

Kaitlyn let out a breath that sounded like a sob trying to be a laugh. “She did? Louise? The woman who treats apologies like a sign of terminal weakness?”

“She’s protective of her baby sister,” I said, and for the first time, I meant it as a compliment. “She told me about ... the ex-husband. About why you’re in the bush.”

Kaitlyn’s gaze dropped to the table. She looked at the pink ring of milkshake on the plastic cup. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t the awkward kind anymore. It was the kind of silence that waits for the truth.

“He used to tell me I was exhausting,” she said, her voice so low I had to lean in. “He said my voice was like background noise he couldn’t turn off. After a while, I started to believe that my words were just ... clutter to him. So, after he left me, I went where the only things that talk are the lions and the wind. They don’t mind the noise.”

She looked up, her eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity. “Did you mean it, Adrian? About the sound of my voice?”

I didn’t think about the tech logs, the maintenance slots, or the 800-Rand breakfast. I didn’t think about the flight back to Skukuza. I just looked at this woman who had survived the river only to be told she was too much for the world.

“Kaitlyn,” I said, and I reached out, resting my hand on the edge of the rolling table, just inches from hers. “In a cockpit, you spend your life listening to static and mechanical whines. You listen for the one frequency that matters. Since I pulled you out of that water, yours is the only frequency I’ve wanted to tune into. You can talk in everlasting words and dedicate them all to me, and I will listen if you should call to me...”

The colour didn’t just return to her cheeks; it flooded them. She didn’t say anything, but she reached out and laid her hand over mine. Her skin was still cool, but the “wrinkled, blue” ghost I’d described to Louise was gone.

“Then I’ll keep talking,” she said, a ghost of that mischief returning to her eyes. “Tell me about the Bell. Tell me about the sky. Just ... don’t go yet.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “The AMO has my bird, and I’ve got a Kia Sportage with its own postcode. I’m a loiterer by profession now. And I’ll not only tell you about ‘Jessie’, but when they say she is fit to go ... I’ll fly you to Levubu in her ... Saves your mom and dad a trip.”

---

That evening, when the clock crept toward the sacred 19:00 visiting hour, I walked into the ward expecting the usual—beeping machines, dangling tubes, and Kaitlyn looking like she’d been assembled by a team of very stressed plumbers.

Instead, she was sitting up in bed like a triumphant meerkat.

The oxygen nose prongs were gone. The IV lines were gone. The only thing left was her grin.

I stopped dead in the doorway.

“You’re ... unplugged,” I said, like I’d just discovered electricity had been cancelled.

She giggled. Not a polite chuckle. A full-on schoolgirl giggle, complete with shoulder wiggle.

“Maybe it was your pep-talk and special medicine.”

“What special medicine?” I asked, very certain I had not smuggled in anything that required legal representation.

“Proteas, cheesecake, and strawberry milkshake...” She leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially, “Don’t tell the hospital, but cheesecake has special properties ... those microbes inside the cheese are what speeds up the healing process, not the stuff they pump into you. That is just for show and to inflate your medical bill.”

I laughed. “You know a lot about microbes for a game ranger.”

She straightened, mock-offended.

“I’m not just a game ranger, although I studied for it, but I’m a Field Guide.”

“Oh,” I said. “And there I thought you were just a normal game ranger...”

She lifted her chin with theatrical dignity.

“Sir! I hold an honours B.Sc., degree in Wildlife Management, with main subjects, Wildlife Ecology & Population Management, Habitat & Vegetation Management, and Wildlife Management Techniques.”

I blinked. “Wow! A B.Sc., Honours! You must have matriculated when you were sixteen!”

Giggle.

“It took only four years. I was eighteen when I started at University of Pretoria to the horror of my mom and dad.”

“Why would that have horrified them?”

“Because they had to let their little innocent snowflake go off four hundred kilometres to Pretoria into the horrors that the city can deal onto a young farm girl.”

I folded my arms and looked her up and down—silk pyjamas, hospital gown, fluffy slippers, hair doing whatever gravity had negotiated.

“And look at you now. A celebrity on international TV. Your mom and dad must be proud.”

The moment I said it, I realised we had never actually talked about her television fame. It hung there between us like an awkward giraffe in a doorway.