Tom Callaghan woke with the morning sun and turned his head to really look at his wife, still asleep beside him. When busy at work during the day Chris's energy and caring masked what he could so clearly see when she slept. Her face on the pillow was thin and lined; he could see her exhaustion even after eight hours sleep. Tom wasn't quite sure when Chris had changed - in his eyes she had remained the young woman he had fallen in love with. Then after a particularly difficult day, when they had failed to save two children injured in the suicide bombing of a market, he had caught her as she fainted. For the first time in what felt like forever he had really looked at his wife, noticing how her hair was completely grey and that her skin was pale and almost translucent. The lines in her face told of the trials of their lives, and for the first time in many years he began to wonder if he had been selfish in asking her to join him in this lifestyle all those years ago. Maybe it was time to return home.

For years they had been a driven team, going wherever medical help was needed, starting with Africa. The two of them had joined Medicins Sans Frontieres and had taken the opportunity to move onto India, a rather safer spot, when they had discovered a few months later that Chris was pregnant. At the same time they had taken the opportunity to get married, and they had stayed in India for the first eleven years of Rosie's life, improving local health via vaccinations and education programs. They had been wonderful years, Tom reflected. They had combined their valuable work at the clinic with bringing up Rosie, educating her themselves. When Rosie reached secondary age they reluctantly agreed that she needed a more traditional education, so she was sent back to Australia, living in Perth during term time with Chris's former foster daughter, Zoe.

Initially the arrangement had seemed to work well. Zoe was delighted to be able to give Rosie the care that Chris had given to her as a grieving teen, and her two young children greeted Rosie as the big sister they didn't have. Rosie enjoyed her new school and they alternated between Rosie flying to them and them flying to join Rosie in the holidays. Tom was able to persuade Chris that it was time to work in places with even greater needs, which over the years had included Bolivia, Ethiopia, Cambodia and now Syria. But as Tom became evermore involved and committed to his work, their tight-knit little family had started to show the strain. Rosie felt distant from her parents' lives in a way that had never been the case when they worked in India, and Zoe started to find the teenage rebellion harder to cope with. When she was sixteen things came to a head, and Chris had told Tom that she was going back to Australia to support Rosie through the last two years of school. In truth Chris had been torn for years between her husband and her daughter, and she didn't want to lose these last precious years before Rosie was out in the world.

Tom squirmed now to recall his foul moods and temper at what he had thought of as Chris's desertion. It had led to three-way blazing rows during Rosie's summer holidays, capped by tearful goodbyes from both his wife and his daughter and limited, stilted communications between husband and wife over the next eighteen months. Rosie however had settled down and flourished under her mother's eye, and Chris had congratulated herself on her decision, whilst wondering how she could heal the breach with Tom. That particular decision was taken out of her hands when Tom, currently in Cambodia, was bitten by a snake two days before Rosie's final exams started. Chris had flown out at once to be with him, but he was unconscious for two weeks. Meanwhile Rosie, feeling abandoned, had convinced herself that she had failed her exams, and that all hopes of medical school were gone. She spoke to Zoe, promising to keep in touch and left a letter for her parents, asking them not to look for her. Then she packed her bags and left. Neither Tom nor Chris had heard from her directly once in the last six years.

Since Rosie was eighteen, officially an adult, and there was no indication that she was in any danger, the police could do nothing to help. Intermittently she had kept in touch with Zoe, so Tom and Chris knew she was well, but they still had no idea where she was, and they couldn't ask Zoe to break Rosie's confidence for fear of losing all connection to her. Looking at his wife now, Tom could see how the last six years had eaten away at her, but there was something else too. He started to think clinically, methodically cataloguing her symptoms. Her pale skin, weight loss, tiredness and regular breathlessness made for a worrying picture, but he was sure that Chris would brush off his concerns. Right on cue she opened her eyes and saw him looking at her. Her smile at least was unchanged and he bent his head to kiss her good morning before they got up to face whatever today would bring.

That evening though Tom and Chris sat down to talk, and when Tom proposed going back to Australia Chris agreed, much to his surprise. Over the next two weeks they tied up loose ends, preparing to say goodbye to the last twenty-five years of their life. Although it was hard to make the break, at sixty and sixty-three respectively Chris and Tom both knew instinctively that the time was about right for them to move onto a slower stage of their lives, even if Tom at least was aware that it was concerns for Chris's health that were driving him home. Chris's still somewhat semi-formed hopes were that maybe back in Australia in these days of social media she might be able to find a trace of her daughter.

OoOoO

At eight o'clock on a Monday evening the phone rang just as Kate and Geoff Standish were sitting down after. As Geoff began a rant about people who couldn't give a doctor a break even when he was off duty, Kate just rolled her eyes at him, as she had done so many times over the years, and answered the phone. Geoff was shocked out of his usual monologue by Kate's excited squeal.

"Tom? Tom Callaghan! I can't believe it's you! It must be ...twenty years? Twenty-five then - I suppose you must have missed us if you've been counting." Kate flapped a hand at Geoff to get him to quiet down so that she could focus on what Tom had to say. "That would be amazing Tom, but come and stay with us, don't bother with the hotel, you wouldn't know the people there now anyway, lovely as they are...Yes Vic and Nancy are gone now I'm afraid...Yes we're still in the same place of course, you know not a lot changes around here...Well we're still working but I'm matron at the hospital and Geoff is also just hospital based now. Flying's a younger persons game!...Mustn't grumble, but not as young as we used to be - how about you?...We can't wait to see you! Wednesday it is then. Bye."

Turning to Geoff as she put the receiver down, Kate announced unnecessarily "You won't believe it, but that was Tom Callaghan. Coming to stay on Wednesday, after flying into Sydney from Syria tomorrow."

"Syria eh? So has Tom been working abroad all these years? He'll find things a bit changed round here, but it'll be great to see him." So Tom had stuck to his principles all these years.

"See them you mean." Geoff looked at his wife, his eyebrows raised in a question. Kate's smile was practically splitting her face in two. "Tom and Chris are coming to stay. They've been married for years apparently, and we'll see them both in two days time. Oh Geoff, I can't believe it, it's going to be so good to see them again." Geoff smiled back at her, delighted at the thought of seeing their old friends after such a long time and just as thrilled to see his wife so animated. The last few years had been hard for Kate since their youngest, Jonathan, had gone to study engineering at Brisbane University. With Scarlett working as a journalist in Canberra and Olivia completing her medical training in Sydney their lives were much quieter than they had been for years.

Kate had taken their new young RFDS sister, Zanna, under her wing, but it was a poor substitute for their own children. At least her efforts with Zanna would not be wasted though, she was unlikely to be moving on given that she was married to Dave Buckley, a great-nephew of Vic who had arrived to run the pub after Vic passed away. Initially Zanna had just helped her husband run the pub, but then she had owned up to being a trained nurse and offered to help when they were short handed at the hospital, and had stayed on ever since.

"How many people will they know do you think?" Geoff queried. "It's been so long. So many of the old faces are gone - and though we're still working we're both based at the hospital now, no more emergency flights for us. Tom and Chris will really notice some changes."

"Well the people out on the stations are the same - things have just moved on a generation in most cases. But I can't see it bothering Chris or Tom if they don't know everyone, they must have coped with meeting new people all the time while they were travelling the world. And they must have known a fair few of the young adults as babies - delivered them in many cases! And Jack Carruthers and George Baxter are propping up the bar in the pub most days discussing the 'Good Old Days' - they'll soon fill people in on who our visitors are." Kate came to sit down next to her husband. "Well I for one can't wait for them to arrive - do you realise we last saw them when Scarlett was a baby? They don't even know about Olivia and Jonathan! There's going to be so much to catch up on."

"I wonder if it will make us all feel young again, meeting up, or if it'll make us all feel old." Geoff mused.

Kate laughed at him. "Well I daresay there will be far too much to catch up on to feel old or young when we first meet up - though we may all be feeling our age the next morning if we try drinking the way we used to! I don't think any of us can cope with that in the same way any more." Geoff meekly accepted the barbed comment, and resolved that if he and Tom were going to share a pint or two as they used to in the old days, it had better be when their wives were otherwise occupied.