And then we were in a group hug, a sandwich squeeze and I felt … like Jack felt.
Yep, we’d definitely been given the world.
Eventually Jack carried Bridge inside. Carrie made us all cocoa and produced a packet of Tim Tams, which I’d become decidedly partial to. We toasted Bridge and clunked our dunked Tim Tams (okay, that didn’t quite work) and then it was time to go. Home to Muriel? It didn’t seem so bad. In a few short weeks I’d gone from feeling like I was in an alien world to wondering which of the two houses I felt most at home in.
Maybe I needed to ring Richard. I needed some serious grounding.
The house phone rang in the background. Carrie went to answer it. Bridge was on the floor hugging Drifter.
Jack and I were … well, I was still trying not to grin like a fool.
‘I need to go,’ I said and rose.
But then Carrie was back, looking worried.
‘Problem?’ Jack asked, and I thought this was what he’d get all the time. Islander problems.
‘Mine, not yours,’ Carrie said. ‘At least I hope …’ She paused and appeared to think about it. ‘But Jenny, if there’s a call tonight, if Jack’s called out, can you come over and stay with Bridget?’ And I heard the change from happiness to concern.
‘Of course. Muriel’s safe at nights now.’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ Carrie said. ‘But my ex-husband’s niece, Alice, lives up on the ridge with her partner. I used to look after her as a kid but I hardly see her now. To be honest, she and her Bernard are … well …they’re not very bright. They call themselves artists. They do weird found-object installations that no one will ever buy, they live hand to mouth and they keep themselves isolated. Word is they stick to all sorts of rigid life rules. They seldom come down to town. I know Alice used to see Jack’s grandmother if she was sick, but the thought of using a male doctor would appal her. Now Bernard’s rung, asking me to come. He says she doesn’t need a doctor, she doesn’t want one, but amazingly she wants me. He won’t say why but he sounds stressed. I need to drive up to see what’s wrong.’
‘Would you like me to come?’
‘They probably wouldn’t let you in. Strangers are not welcome. I’d rather you stay here to be available if Jack’s called out. I’ll phone for help if it’s needed. Is that okay?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’ She relaxed. ‘Have another cocoa before you go. Or even two. You two should savour tonight. I wish I could send you to a fancy restaurant where you could drink champagne. Organise some harps and roses. Dance to something romantic.’
‘Carrie!’ We spoke in unison.
‘I say it as I see it,’ Carrie said primly, and she even had the temerity to chuckle. ‘Byee.’
She was gone. Leaving me with a stupid urge to giggle as well.
I didn’t. I got back in the buggy and drove home. Feeling great.
Bridget was walking.
Bridget was walking!
And Carrie thought …
Don’t go there. Go home, I told myself. Go home and ring Richard.
Something had to ground me.
Richard’s phone went to message bank. So much for that idea.
I cooked omelettes for dinner—Surfing-Muriel’s appetite was now enormous—and I told Muriel about Bridge. She even smiled. Muriel went to bed but I wasn’t ready for sleep. I walked down to the beach and stared at the waves for a while, then went back to the garden. I needed a bit of weeding meditation.
Ten minutes later Drifter found me, kneeling in front of the strawberry patch. She jumped, her paws landed on my shoulders and I toppled sideways.
Jack rounded the hibiscus, tripped over my legs and ended up on the grass beside me.
I should have been mortified.
I giggled.
When did I ever giggle? This was starting to become a habit.
‘What the—you damn near killed me!’ he spluttered.
He wasn’t messing with my zone of calm, I decided. Not tonight. ‘Well done me, then. You’ve been scaring me stupid since I got here, with your stories of snakes.’
‘I tried to ring.’
Damn. I’d left the phone inside. What an idiot, after I’d promised Carrie.
‘I’ve been on the beach.’
‘Not surfing?’
‘Are you crazy? I know what’s out there at night, just waiting for toes to snack on. Sharks, manta rays, the odd Loch Ness monster …’
‘There’s no need to get carried away.’
‘No. But there’s also no need for me to put my toe in the water after dark. Night surfing’s for Muriel.’
But then, at the look on his face, my laughter died. I very carefully stopped looking at Jack and looked at Drifter instead. Because Jack looked … hungry.
‘I hope Muriel’s given up night surfing,’ he said, but his voice had changed.
‘She has.’ And that made us smile again.
For both of us saw what was happening with Muriel. Every morning as Jack gave Bridget her dog-paddling lesson, Fraser and Muriel were surfing alongside them. They were catching bigger and bigger waves. Muriel was growing stronger by the minute.
‘She’s some lady, your grandma,’ Jack said.
‘She is.’ I was hugging Drifter, maybe tighter than she liked. She turned and gave me an appreciative slurp, jaw to nose—urk!—and then majestically walked off. This dog knew how to get herself released fast.
‘What is it you want, Jack?’ I was wiping dog slobber with my sleeve. If Richard could see me now, I thought ruefully, I’d be seen as an impending stain on the family escutcheon and cast off forthwith. I was wearing oversized jeans and a battered blouse. I’d given up the battle to keep my curls under control. I was wearing my gumboots. The sleeve of my blouse had caught on something, and it hung frayed and tattered.
We were both sitting on wet grass.
‘I need to thank you,’ Jack said, seemingly trying for casual, as if we were chatting in the hospital corridor. ‘What you’re doing with Bridget is fantastic.’ The casualness faded as his voice broke with emotion.
‘I love helping her,’ I said simply and then frowned. ‘Is she home by herself now?’
‘Of course not. Carrie obviously did a rethink. Ten minutes after you left, Fraser arrived. “To watch the wee ’un while Carrie’s away,” he said, “because we know you’ll be wanting to see Jenny.” Fraser’s Bridget’s great-uncle on her mother’s side. Every islander’s related, or if they’re not they act like it. And he’s right. I did … I do want to talk to you.’ He appeared to collect himself. ‘You know how I tossed my suits?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Cautious.
‘Jenny …’
And there was a note of something in his voice that had me edging back on the grass.
And then his phone rang. The conversation seemed urgent but I carefully didn’t listen. I needed to concentrate on getting my breath back.
This man might have tossed his suits but I had closets of them back in Manhattan. I was extremely attached to them. The tone of his voice … What had he been about to say?
But something had changed. Jack disconnected and pushed himself to his feet, looking worried.
‘Work,’ he said briefly. ‘Jenny, will you come with me?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Carrie’s asking if you can come,’ he said. ‘She’s up in the hills with her niece. Alice hasn’t been to see a doctor since my grandmother had her stroke and now Carrie says she’s in labour. Carrie says she’s in real trouble, too far gone to put in the car and bring down to the hospital.’ He raked his hair. ‘I may need you,’ he said, simply and directly. ‘Can you leave Muriel?’
One minute I was fathoms deep in emotion, the next I was clicking back into work mode. Obstetrician mode.
‘So home birth?’
‘It sounds like it and it terrifies me.’
‘What equipment do you have?’
‘Full obstetric kit in my truck, i
nherited from my grandmother, with more stuff I got from Sydney when I lost another baby this way.’
‘You lost—’
‘Two months ago. The mothers won’t leave, and some, like Alice, won’t even come near me. The islanders are old-fashioned and I’m not trusted yet. Plus I’m not a woman.’
‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Muriel’s been surfing all day. She won’t stir till morning. I’ll change out of my gumboots and be right with you.’
‘We’ll leave Drifter with Muriel,’ he suggested. ‘If I tell her to stay she will. She knows Muriel’s family.’
‘Fine,’ I said and ran.
Family. This whole damned island … It scared me stupid.
It took almost thirty minutes to reach our destination. A mile as the crow flies? That’s what I’d been told, but we weren’t crows and we drove on some of the steepest roads and through the wildest rainforest I’d ever been in. I couldn’t see any moon from the mountain side—the canopy was too dense—but when we emerged from the trees we were on flat land again.
The house Jack pulled up at was a ramshackle weatherboard surrounded by what looked like junk. Fishing pots. Masses of ancient timber. Old furniture. Weird statues.
‘You go in as the frontman,’ Jack told me. ‘You’re the lady doctor and Carrie says she’s still refusing to see a man.’
I’d never done house calls. This felt weird but there was no choice. I knocked three times before the door finally opened.
The guy in the doorway was young and bearded. He was wearing ragged jeans and nothing else. He looked sick with fear.
‘I’m Jennifer Kelly and I’m a doctor,’ I told him. ‘Carrie says Alice needs help.’
There was a pause while he looked me up and down, as if he was considering. And then I heard a woman scream.
I’d spent my professional life delivering babies. I could quantify screams.
This one had my adrenaline racing right there and then. It wasn’t the strong scream of a woman in second stage labour, pushing a baby out into the world.
It was the weakest of screams where strength was running out—a last, final heartbreak?
It told me I had to get in there, right now.
‘I’m an obstetrician,’ I said urgently. ‘I deliver babies. And Dr McLachlan’s with me. You have two doctors. Carrie contacted us and said we’re needed.’
I took a step inside. The man stepped into my path.
‘You’re like Dr Louise?’
Jack’s grandmother. ‘Yes. Will you let me help?’
And then Carrie was at the door, and she was crying. Jack was coming up the steps behind me, carrying equipment. Carrie grabbed my arm and tried to tug me forward. ‘Jenny, you have to come. She’s dying, I know she is. Please …’
‘Wait,’ the man said, blocking my path.
‘Let her in,’ Carrie pleaded, but he didn’t move.
‘You don’t belong,’ he said, and his voice was so fearful he seemed to be on the point of collapse. ‘You don’t belong to this island. How can you help?’
And I thought again of Carrie’s words. Word is they stick to all sorts of rigid life rules.
Uh-oh.
‘Jenny belongs,’ Jack said firmly from behind me. ‘She’s already helped one of the local women who bled after birth. Maybe you heard about it. Mary McConachie. Dr Jenny saved her life.’
‘But she doesn’t belong,’ the man said obtusely. In the midst of his fear he seemed to be struggling to find any sort of fact to hold on to. ‘Alice doesn’t want a male doctor, and you’re an outsider.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, are you that stupid?’ Carrie was practically screaming herself. ‘Okay, fine. But she’s not an outsider. Jenny, tell him your family’s lived here for generations.’
‘My grandfather lived here,’ I said. ‘Let me—’
‘How does that make you belong?’
I stopped. I regrouped. I tried to figure it out.
Bernard’s thinking was obviously weird but this was no time to argue about embedded beliefs. What was important was that I get in there fast. The quickest way was … to belong?
Henry’s mother was an O’Connor. The original ship’s captain was an O’Connor. That made me … a fifth-generation islander? The thought was irrelevant, surely.
No. Right now this was important.
‘My great-great-great-uncle sailed his boat onto the reef here,’ I told the man before me. ‘He was the ship’s captain and his sister married and lived here as an original settler. My family had our place on this island. I belong here as much as you do.’
The man stared at me for an agonising moment. Belief and disbelief—and dumb-ox stubbornness—were obviously warring. Finally he reached forward and touched my hair, as if seeing if it was real.
‘This hair …’
‘It’s my grandfather’s hair.’ How strange to be laying claim to my heritage now?
‘But you don’t have a man on the island. You’re visiting. You want to sell.’
For someone so isolated how did he know this? I was close to yelling in frustration, but I had to tick Bernard’s boxes, whatever they were.
I needed to get into that room.
Think of an answer.
But Jack was before me. He stepped forward and lifted my hand, holding it so Richard’s diamond flashed in the porch light. I could see on his face that he’d sensed the same urgency as I had.
‘You know what this ring is, Bernard?’
The man stared, confused. ‘A wedding ring?’
‘It’s an engagement ring,’ Jack told him. ‘This is my woman, Bernard. She’s promised to me. You know I’m an islander and you know that I’ll stay here forever. You know we both belong.’
I sucked in my breath. What was he saying? But Bernard’s obstinacy seemed to be wavering,
‘You’re an islander, as Dr Louise was an islander?’ Bernard demanded.
‘Yes.’
And Jack had it right, I thought incredulously. The man’s face went slack with relief and his fear resurfaced with a vengeance. ‘Alice needs you,’ he stammered. ‘You’ll help?’
‘Of course.’ I paused. Don’t rush this, I told myself. I wasn’t going into this wondering what I was and wasn’t permitted to do. I needed no boundaries, and this man seemed dumb enough to interfere even now.
‘If I agree to help, then I need to be able to treat her my way,’ I told him, not looking at Jack. ‘You will not interfere.’
The man almost managed a smile. ‘That’s what Dr Louise would say. I agree.’
‘I want Dr McLachlan to help.’
‘He’s a man. This is women’s bus—’
‘I’m in charge and what I say goes. Dr Louise had her husband to help her and I’ll bet she used him. As I need Dr McLachlan.’
‘You need your man?’
He really was thick. My man? As if. But whatever worked. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Both of us or no one. You decide.’ It was no use persuading Bernard to let me help if I didn’t have backup for a possible caesarean.
There was a moment’s silence. Tears welled in the man’s eyes and rolled unchecked down his face. ‘Then I accept,’ he said. ‘Get the baby out. Please.’
If only it were that simple.
Alice was exhausted past the stage where she could greet us. That scream seemed to have been a final capitulation. She could no longer cry out, or even question what was happening.
Her eyes were filled with pain and so dulled by exhaustion they no longer mirrored her terror. Her waist-length hair was splayed out around her in limp, sweat-stained strands. I lifted her wrist and had to suppress a wince.
‘How long since you had your first pains?’ I asked, trying to sound calm, and Bernard hung his head like a big, dumb animal who had no idea why he was being kicked but only knew that it hurt.
‘The day before yesterday,’ he answered for her. ‘Before dawn. Alice says women have been doing it by themselves forever. She didn’t want help. But finall
y she let me contact Carrie. I should have before but—’
‘Don’t cry, Bernard,’ I snapped. ‘I need you to help. Alice, you’re going to be fine. Bernard, I need you to reassure her, not frighten her. Hold her hand.’
He stared at me. Then he seemed to brace. He stepped forward and took Alice’s hand as if it was so delicate it might disintegrate at any moment.
I was feeling the girl’s abdomen through her flimsy nightshift. The baby was low—incredibly low. As I felt, a contraction took hold, weak, useless. She hardly reacted.
Had her body given up? Her eyes were staring, unseeing.
‘Alice, I’m here to help you.’ I took her other hand. ‘Bernard is here and so is Carrie. We’re all here to help.’
She still didn’t focus. She stared upwards in blank incomprehension.
She’d gone past trying to expel this baby.
In the background Carrie choked back a sob. I turned and glared. ‘Don’t you dare cry,’ I said. ‘Alice, there’s nothing to cry about. We’re going to get your baby out.’
‘Do we take her to hospital?’ Jack asked from the doorway and I shook my head. I knew what I was seeing. Any minute now Alice could go into heart failure. She seemed already in deep shock. Whatever could be done—if anything could be done—had to be done here.
‘I want oxygen and a drip, fast. I hope your kit’s comprehensive.’
‘It is. Even for a caesarean if we need it.’
With the baby this low? A caesarean was surely impossible.
Don’t say it.
‘That’s a start,’ I told him. ‘Get whatever you have. Oxygen first. Carrie, I need boiling water for sterilising, and as many towels as you can find. Put a couple in the oven to warm them—for the baby. Bernard, I want you to sit with Alice and stay holding her hand.’
‘I should wait outside,’ he said fearfully, but I shook my head.
‘This is your baby and this is your woman. Your place is beside her. Sit. Everyone else move.’
‘Do what the lady says,’ Jack said—and moved.
Three minutes later I was washed, gloved, lubricated and performing a fast examination while Jack adjusted oxygen flow and inserted a drip. Intravenous fluids were vital. Two days …
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