Pregnant With His Child

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She skirted it and the tarred planks of the two-lane bridge went thunkety-thunkety-thunk as she drove across. ‘No,’ she added, more certain about it now. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Because she’d been thinking about the bridge, about not wanting to see it go. She’d have noticed.

  ‘It’s dangerous, anyhow. We should stop and get it off the road.’

  She slowed further and looked for a place to turn, which was easy to find at this time of night when there was so little traffic. The kangaroo had been unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Back on the far side of the bridge, she parked safely on the shoulder and walked across to the still, silent shape in Joe’s wake.

  ‘Yep, it’s still warm,’ he said. He felt its neck. ‘But it’s dead, all right, poor thing.’

  Except that just then it moved.

  No, not the mother, Christina realised, the joey in her pouch.

  ‘Crikey!’ Joe said. ‘There’s a little fella in there!’

  ‘Don’t start doing your crocodile hunter imitation, Joe Barrett!’

  She couldn’t help laughing. For a man who’d just spent around eleven hours in transit, on top of a solid week of general practice, he’d summoned up his energy and his good humour pretty fast. He was always like this. Loved the chance to get a laugh out of a situation. Never complained for long, just got on with things.

  The way she had to do, as soon as they got home…

  ‘I could do my British wildlife documentary presenter instead,’ he offered.

  She summoned another smile. ‘No, because you’re terrible at him, too. Just be nice and male and masterful for me and tell me what we’re going to do.’

  Because I’m tired and stressed and I wanted an excuse to put off the dumping-you conversation, but not this kind of an excuse.

  ‘Well, we can’t leave it, Tink.’ He was working as he spoke, carefully dragging the warm, soft body of the mother safely off the road and turning her so that they could gain access to the pouch.

  ‘I know that. I wouldn’t want to.’ She gathered herself, focused on the right priorities. ‘There’s the park, up towards the mountains—would that be best? They have a sanctuary and an animal nursery enclosure. We’d have to wake up the ranger.’

  ‘He’ll handle it.’ From the size of the movement they’d seen, this joey should be big enough to survive the loss of its mother, as long as it hadn’t been injured itself.

  A ute rumbled across the bridge with a load of bulging garbage bags bouncing in the open tray at the back. It slowed.

  ‘You right there, mate?’

  Christina recognised Bill Doyle, owner of the Black Cockatoo Hotel.

  ‘Dead mother, living joey,’ Christina summarised quickly. ‘Hi, Bill. It’s me, Christina Farrelly.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Doc. You’re branching out into the vet business now?’

  ‘Something like that. We thought we’d take it up to Atherton National Park, to the ranger.’

  ‘Right you are, then.’ He nodded, and drove off, happy to leave them to it. He was obviously heading to the town rubbish tip.

  Christina and Joe shared the task of examining the joey, which was half-grown and should have been thrashing its gangly, growing legs around in terror, but wasn’t. Huddled in the pouch, it had its eyes open and it was breathing fast, but there was no obvious sign of injury.

  ‘We do need to get it to the ranger,’ Christina said. ‘We can’t feed it or take care of it ourselves.’

  ‘I’ll grab my sweatshirt from the car,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll wrap it in that.’

  It was awkward and both of them narrowly escaped getting scratched by the sharp toenails at the end of those long legs, but once Joe had the animal on his lap in the car, all bundled up tight, it seemed to settle again.

  Christina got behind the wheel and drove.

  The highway leading to the south-west was dark and empty, apart from one lone long-haul truck that roared past at one point, making her wonder about the driver’s schedule and the chemical means he might use to keep himself going. On a couple of the main highways down south, cameras captured licence plate details at certain points on the route and truckers were fined for making the journey in too short a time, but out here that wasn’t practical. The accident rate was higher than it should have been.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ she asked Joe.

  ‘He’s good. Quiet. Breathing.’

  She risked a glance across.

  Joe and a joey, both good, quiet and breathing.

  Her stomach sank as she thought again about rocking the boat.

  The truck slowed. Was it stopping for him? It had to be.

  Yes! Yes!

  The big rig ground to a laborious halt and he ran after it, eager to seize on the first piece of good luck he’d had all day. Make that all year. His whole life, it felt like.

  This was an omen.

  ‘Looking for a ride somewhere, mate?’ the driver said.

  ‘Yes.’Anywhere. ‘Over the ranges.’

  ‘Hop in, then.’

  It felt so good. To be off his feet. To be moving. He’d been standing there for hours and no one had even thought about picking him up. Did he look that much like a deadbeat or a criminal?

  Evidently.

  Other people had thought so. Her father, for example.

  Her.

  His love.

  The reason for this journey.

  His mates would laugh if they knew he thought this way about her. Like some soppy male lead in a soppy film who can get any girl he wants but can’t forget The One.

  Not that you can get any girl you want, you drop-kick. How many do you even meet?

  But he didn’t care. He was the soppiest of the lot. He just wanted her.

  He’d been turfed off her parents’ property in a blast of anger so intense it had driven him five hundred kilometres north, and he’d really believed the old man might kill him if he went back.

  But the loss of her from his life had taken the heart out of him. He should have fought harder for her, he should have stood up to her father’s anger. Why had it taken him so long to get it right? Why had he let other people make his decisions for him?

  He couldn’t understand the person he’d been back then. He’d toughened up since, a lot, because it had been months ago, and you’d never know now that he’d grown up pampered in Sydney—private school, bloody violin lessons, of course you can learn to ride if you want, darling, which had meant tutoring in dressage, not the bush horsemanship that he knew was in his blood.

  So if the drought-crazed old man killed him, or tried to, so be it. He’d fight back a lot harder than he could have done six months ago. He’d had his twenty-second birthday last week. He’d shaken off a lifetime of parental mollycoddling. He could show her, now, how much his love was worth and maybe she’d leave with him this time, leave her father and her mum, and it’d all be OK.

  Yes, sitting here high in the cabin of the big rig he could see it, how it would all work out, as long as he could get to her, see her and talk to her and be with her even just for a few precious hours, show her what he was made of, before he had to turn around again and head back north tomorrow, noon at the latest, or lose his job and the three months of precious back pay that was owing to him.

  His boss hadn’t wanted to let him go at all, but he’d managed to squeeze just these few days before the big cattle drive began. They were moving the beasts hundreds of kilometres between properties, starting next week, and taking a route through rough country that stirred something deep in his spirit. If he could hear from her own mouth that she still loved him, he’d go droving with the feeling that he owned the whole world.

  ‘As far as the turn-off to Mount Evelyn. Is that far enough for you?’ he heard.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said I’m only going as far as the turn-off to Mount Evelyn.’

  ‘Right. OK.’His heart dropped like a spent firework.

  Talk about omens!

&n
bsp; This guy was going a tenth of the distance he needed. Less. He’d never get there before morning. His stomach rumbled. He should have stopped for a hamburger and chips in Crocodile Creek, but he hadn’t wanted to lose the precious time. That seemed stupid now. He wasn’t going to get to her tonight. He’d have to go back, leave it for weeks more. He hadn’t thought this through.

  Talk about omens.

  This one, he’d listen to.

  He couldn’t see that he had a choice.

  It was almost midnight by the time Joe and Christina reached the park entrance. The boom gate was closed and locked, but a four-wheel-drive such as the light one she drove could skirt around it if she moved a couple of half-rotted logs.

  Joe had reached the same conclusion. ‘If you take Junior here…’

  ‘No, I’ll do it. He’s quiet, don’t disturb him.’ She jumped out while she was still speaking, and the job was easy in her sensible jeans, T-shirt and running shoes. The T-shirt wasn’t quite adequate warmth-wise. They’d climbed around six hundred metres from the coastal plain, and at this hour on a May night, it was chilly.

  ‘You’re an Amazon,’ Joe teased her when she got back in the car.

  I’m going to have to be, she thought. And she wasn’t thinking physically.

  They knocked at the front door of the ranger’s house five minutes later, and roused his wife. ‘Don’t worry, I was up with the baby anyway. Oh, look at him, he’s a gorgeous little fella, isn’t he? Yes, we can take care of him, he’s big enough, and we have a couple of others so he won’t be lonely.’

  She offered a cup of tea, and her sleepy husband appeared, but Joe and Christina looked at each other and wordlessly reached the same conclusion—which happened quite often. They didn’t want to keep these two up in the middle of the night, or themselves out, driving on an inadequate rural road, any later than necessary.

  ‘We should get back,’ Joe said. ‘Shouldn’t we, Tink? We’re both working full days tomorrow.’

  This time he drove, which gave Christina too much time to think.

  I can’t do it tonight. But I won’t sleep if I don’t. Oh, I won’t sleep anyhow. It’ll be impossible in the morning, we’ll both be scrambling to get out the door and get to the hospital and the base. I can’t leave it, though, not if I’m really going to say it. That room is waiting for him, and people will be wondering what on earth is going on. Maybe now, while we’re driving?

  She got ready. Tried to. Took a deep breath and prepared herself to say his name. Joe, we have to talk. But then she let the moment pass. She was a coward!

  They came to a bend and he veered around it, seeming not fully in control. His breath hissed out sharply between his teeth. ‘That’s not right,’ he said.

  ‘What, Joe?’ She touched his shoulder instinctively, her open hand dwarfed by its warm bulk.

  ‘Think we’ve got a flat tyre.’ He slowed the vehicle carefully and pulled onto the verge.

  She erupted into silent, stress-filled laughter. ‘You are joking! Just tell me you’re joking, Joe Barrett!’

  ‘Uh, no. That’s just slightly the last straw, isn’t it?’ Joe said.

  ‘You got that right!’ More than you know, Joe.

  If she believed in omens, she would have taken good notice of this one, and decided that somebody up there really didn’t want her to dump Joe tonight. But she didn’t believe in omens—didn’t believe her personal life warranted quite that much cosmic attention—so she just gritted her teeth and thought, Maybe while we’re changing the tyre?

  Which was indeed impressively flat. It was the front left one, while the bend Joe had taken curved to the right. No wonder he had struggled to keep control of the vehicle.

  As they’d done when they’d examined the joey, they worked together in silent harmony. Joe set the hazard lights flashing. Christina got out the jack. Joe positioned it and wound it up till it was in the right position to take the vehicle’s weight. Joe stomped his foot on the wrench to loosen the nuts while Christina detached the spare from its big bracket on the rear door.

  He was so strong! She felt a crippling wave of longing wash over her as she looked at him, and it was hard to drag her eyes away. I won’t be able to look at him this way after tonight. I won’t have the right to. And it’ll hurt too much.

  Together, they took off the damaged wheel and manoeuvred the spare into position, then took turns tightening the nuts.

  Joe grinned at her when they were done. ‘Love a woman with axle grease on her nose,’ he said. ‘Ver-r-ah sexy.’

  ‘Joe, we have to—’

  Talk.

  Too late. He kissed her, a raunchy, confident, full-bodied, sweet-tasting smooch on the mouth, anchored in place with his hand, which was no doubt leaving more grease on her jaw…Oh, and probably a smudgy handprint on her backside as well. When he pulled away, he was still grinning, and he was so gorgeous, big and full of life and gorgeous. She couldn’t utter any fateful words to him right now.

  She couldn’t have uttered them anyhow. They weren’t alone.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘What the heck—?’

  ‘Hey, wait! Wait!’ A figure came jogging towards them, out of breath and frantic for their attention.

  Joe waved and nodded, then muttered, ‘Not our night, is it?’ He put the jack away and closed the back door of the four-wheel-drive. He and Christina both stood waiting and watching as the figure approached. It was a man, a young man, not nearly as big and tall as Joe but well built and strong all the same.

  He came to a halt, panting, and Joe asked sharply, ‘What’s wrong?’

  Christina knew he’d be thinking about an accident, some kind of emergency. It happened out here. As doctors, they’d seen more than their share of the unexpected, and there weren’t many ordinary, innocuous reasons why someone would be running along a deserted highway like this one in the middle of the night.

  Not many ordinary reasons, but this was one of them. ‘Can I hitch a ride?’ He looked as if he wasn’t that long out of his teens. Twenty-one or twenty-two.

  ‘Into town? Home? You from around here?’ Joe asked.

  ‘No, but, yeah, I’m heading into town.’ He didn’t offer an explanation as to what he’d do when he got there, and the admission that he wasn’t local had been hurried and edgy.

  Christina and Joe looked at each other again. They really had to take him. He didn’t look dangerous. But what was he doing here?

  ‘Hop in the back,’ Joe said, then added casually to Christina, ‘You OK to drive again?’

  She nodded, understanding the direction of his thoughts as she so often did. If this guy did turn out to be trouble, it made sense for big, strong Joe to be the one with his hands free.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Joe asked, as Christina sped up along the road.

  ‘Uh, Jack.’

  Joe and a joey. Wheel jack to prop up the car, strange Jack appearing in the night, hopefully not planning to car-jack Christina’s four-wheel-drive. It was too far past her bedtime for any of this.

  ‘You look like you were a bit stranded back there,’ Joe said. ‘We had an errand up at the park headquarters, but we didn’t pass you on the way up, did we?’

  ‘Think I passed you,’ Jack said. ‘In a truck. But the driver turned off to Mount Evelyn. He reckoned someone else might still come through, but I got cold and no one did, and—yeah.’

  ‘So you turned round?’

  ‘Yeah, and you passed me—I was off to the side—and then I saw your hazard lights flashing through the trees, and so I ran.’

  ‘Where were you headed?’

  ‘Ah…just one of the stations out west. To see a friend. I’m on a station further up. I’m a stockman, and I had a couple of days off. Thought I could make it, but I just didn’t get the rides.’

  For someone who’d been reticent, not to say cagey, at the start, after five minutes they couldn’t shut him up. He discoursed on the pitfalls of hitching, the need for rain. It must have been the relief at
getting picked up when he’d resigned himself to a cold, lonely night of walking back towards the coast.

  He wouldn’t have let Christina get a word in edgeways, even if she had been happy to dump Joe in front of a total stranger. He seemed quite bright, articulate. And there was something about the way he talked, a suggestion that he was deliberately lowering the pitch of his voice by a couple of notes, roughening the edges of his accent.

  If he was working as a jackeroo, that made sense. City lads with cowboy fantasies could get given a rough time up here if they didn’t fight back. This one looked strong enough and intelligent enough to make his way—although not, perhaps, when he was hitching.

  ‘Should have known I couldn’t do it in two days.’ He sounded defeated suddenly, as the lights of the base and the town came into view. ‘My…my mate would probably have been…’ He paused again. ‘Yeah, busy anyhow.’

  They reached the T-junction a couple of hundred metres south of the hospital and air rescue base, where the highway to the west joined the coast road. ‘Where should we drop you?’ Joe asked their passenger.

  ‘Oh. Here? Right here is fine.’ The reticence was back in place.

  ‘You’ve got somewhere to go?’

  ‘Yep. No worries.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Joe said. ‘Because we can take you into town.’

  ‘Nope. It’s fine.’

  OK, he’d had his chance. If he was sleeping rough, it wouldn’t matter. Down here at sea level, the temperature was several degrees warmer, and there was no rain forecast. They let him off at the junction, and Christina glanced at him a couple of times in the rear-view mirror. He hadn’t moved by the time the dip of the road towards Crocodile Creek took him out of sight.

  ‘Was he real?’ she asked Joe.

  Or had he been sent by a meddling cosmos to prevent her from biting the bullet on the big break-up talk?

  All her tired, repetitive thoughts came crashing back into place. I don’t want to do this. I’ll leave it until tomorrow. But we’re both working all day. If someone at the hospital—bloody Brian—mentions the room at the house…

  They crossed the bridge and reached the overhead lights in the main street. Joe looked at his watch. ‘Sheesh, it’s a quarter past one!’