by Lilian Darcy
‘I mean, you’re hoping for more,’ he said. ‘You’re thinking that I’ve—we’ve—taken one step forward, so in a couple of months we’ll take another.’
‘Would that be terrible?’ Her tone was mild but he knew she was still angry.
‘There’s only one place we can end up if we keep taking those steps,’ he told her, ‘and it’s not somewhere I want to go.’
‘Where do you want to go, Joe?’ By this time she was close to tears, but she didn’t want it to show, he could tell. Her voice sounded unnaturally hard as she asked the question.
‘Nowhere,’ he answered. ‘Home. That’s where I want to go right now.’ He stood up. ‘To the doctors’ house.’
Where the sheets on his bed still smelled like her laundry detergent, and the flowers she’d put in a vase on the desk were beginning to wilt.
Sand showered out of Christina’s top when she’d put it back on. It tickled on her skin and ended up in her trousers. She followed Joe up to the house. He took rapid strides, clearly as angry and frustrated as she was, getting well ahead of her in seconds. But every time he realised that she’d fallen behind he would stop and wait for her, which made her feel even angrier.
You’re not my white knight. Stop acting like one.
Her feet dragged in the soft sand at the top of the beach. She felt drained and exhausted, queasy with it by this point. She didn’t want to go back inside, where the party was still going on, although there were fewer cars parked out front now. Someone turned the music down lower as she and Joe approached. There were probably people trying to sleep by this time. It was after eleven, and most staff had to work tomorrow.
‘I’m going to head off home, Joe,’ she said.
He nodded carefully. ‘How’re you getting there? Brian picked you up, didn’t he?’
She’d almost forgotten. ‘I’ll walk.’
‘Not at this time of night.’ The white knight was back, his armour shiny and well oiled. ‘Let me duck inside and see if I can borrow someone’s car to run you across.’
‘Don’t. Grace’s car is still here. I’ll ask if she can give me a lift. I can hang around for a bit if she’s not ready to go. And you can go to bed, if you want, because you’re not my personal host here tonight.’
He looked at her without speaking, then kind of apologised for both of them. ‘I guess we’re both tired.’
‘Think so.’ She tried to say it lightly, and ignored the way her body reacted just to the sight of him—weak knees, unsteady breathing, the works.
Looking as if it was an effort to get his feet moving, Joe went directly to his room via the veranda, and Christina went inside. She soon found Grace, who was laughing loudly in a group of four. But she was happy to leave right then, she said when Christina asked for a lift.
They talked in the car.
‘So…Joe’s not coming?’ Grace asked. ‘You know, bit of late-night fence-mending, nudge, nudge.’
Christina raked her teeth across her lower lip and sighed. ‘I think it was the wrong advice, Grace.’
‘Oh, hell, was it?’ She looked stricken, the habitual twinkle of mischief gone from her blue eyes. ‘How could it be wrong? You saw him stuck in front of the fridge like a thirsty ghost. Emily says he’s been like that all week, a total mess. I’m really sorry. I should keep my nose out of my friends’ business, shouldn’t I?’
‘It was what I wanted to hear, Grace, to be honest, but he went all noble and determined to save me from myself kind of thing, and I’m…’ She stopped. ‘Angry?’ she tried, but it didn’t feel right.
Well, nothing felt right.
‘No, just numb,’ she corrected.
‘How about if I stay over? I can sleep on the couch. Then if you want to talk some more…’
‘Gosh, Grace, are you that worried about me?’
‘I’m a bit worried. You look like you’re not sleeping, and not quite well. You look…pooky.’
‘Pooky?’
‘It’s a technical term.’
Christina laughed. ‘It’d be nice if you stayed over. Just so the house doesn’t feel so empty. But you can have Joe’s—’ She stopped. Corrected herself. ‘The spare room. No need for the couch. The bed’s all made up in there.’
She’d washed the sheets yesterday, had left the bed unmade during the day then prepared the room ready for Megan in the evening, even though Megan wouldn’t be moving in for another few days. Nice little strategy of pretending to herself that she was moving forward.
‘And would there be an offer of hot Milo and a biscuit as well, by any chance?’
‘In case I need another cry on Auntie Grace’s shoulder while we’re drinking it?’
‘Thanks to the nightly Milo and biscuit, it’s a pretty well-padded shoulder. You have to admit it’s well suited for the purpose.’
Having Grace there overnight meant that she was still there in the morning, and in the morning Christina got out of bed feeling fine, but felt nauseous by the time she reached the bathroom and was retching into the basin by the time she’d got the lid off the toothpaste for a freshening of her mouth. She hadn’t even shut the bathroom door.
Little weatherboard Queenslander cottages didn’t have very good soundproofing. Christina had rinsed her mouth out with plain water, since the toothpaste smelled way too strong and didn’t seem like a very good idea. She was wiping her face with a towel, wondering why she still felt so funny in the stomach, why she’d been feeling this way for days, if she thought about it, when Grace appeared.
‘What was that? Are you OK?’
‘Not sure.’ Although she’d begun to have an idea.
‘Did you have very much to drink last night?’
‘Half a glass of wine with Brian. Lemon squash at the party.’
Grace asked a couple more questions.
Christina answered them.
‘I’m a midwife and you’re a doctor,’ Grace said. ‘What do you think?’
They looked at each other.
Christina said, ‘No.’
‘No?’
Grace asked another set of questions.
Christina said, ‘No,’ again, but more desperately this time.
‘We’re going to do a test,’ Grace decreed. ‘I am zipping to the pharmacy this second, and we are doing a test.’ She looked at her watch. ‘They’ll be open.’ Being the only one in Crocodile Creek, the pharmacy had extended hours. ‘It’s after seven. What time do you have to get to the airport?’
‘Not until eight. We have a scheduled patient transport this morning, and another one this…aagh…this afternoon.’
‘Uh-oh, are you leaning over that basin again?’
‘Yup.’
‘I’ll get you some dry biscuits. Or fruit?’
‘Biscuits,’ Christina gasped. ‘And water.’
Grace brought the biscuits and a filled glass, then left the house, which felt very silent and still after she’d gone. The biscuits and water helped. Christina felt better. She managed a shower, towelled her body dry, ate another biscuit and looked at herself naked in the mirror.
She looked the same.
She didn’t look pregnant.
But she probably was.
The dates added up. There had been that stomach upset a month ago which she’d told herself hadn’t lasted long enough to compromise the effectiveness of her contraception, but…How much wishful thinking had lain behind that conclusion?
Did she want to be pregnant, then?
Oh, lord, what had she been thinking a month ago? That she could force a commitment from Joe if something like this happened?
No, that implied some serious thinking about pregnancy over the past few weeks, which didn’t fit where her thoughts had focused at all. Biological clock, yes, actual state of pregnancy, no. So much had changed since then.
She was shaking, nauseous again.
And still naked.
She touched her breasts, remembering Joe’s hands on them last night. Did they feel fuller? Maybe a little. Some
thing went thud in her stomach. Grace would be back with that test any moment now, and pregnancy tests now only took a few minutes to yield a very reliable result. She got dressed quickly, while her mind flooded with questions.
What do I want? A false alarm? A way to pressure Joe?
No.
Not that.
Two could play the solitary heroism game.
She’d have to tell him, of course, but she would make it clear to him from the very beginning that his involvement was not required.
A VW Beetle engine died noisily in her driveway and the front door opened thirty seconds later, while Christina was still in her bedroom. ‘Here,’ Grace said, handing over a paper bag from the pharmacy. ‘I’m going to make you some breakfast. Toast and tea. Just show up for it when you’re ready.’
‘That’ll be Christmas.’
Grace counted off the months on her fingers. ‘Well, I guess by then I won’t need to ask you the result of the test.’
Even without waiting until Christmas, she didn’t need to ask Christina about the result of the test when Christina returned from the bathroom. Her whole face must have said positive.
‘Oh, gosh! Oh, wow!’ Grace breathed. ‘Oh, I’m going to hug you!’ She did. ‘Oh, that’s…momentous!’
‘Yes,’ Christina agreed shakily.
Understatement of the year. She still had no idea what this would mean, how it would change her attitudes or her plans. She couldn’t focus at all. It didn’t seem real, and yet at another level it felt right. She’d always known she wanted to be a mother, even if she’d never imagined it starting like this…
‘Christina?’
‘Hmm?’ She blinked at her friend. She’d been miles away.
‘When are you going to tell Joe?’ Grace asked her gently.
CHAPTER NINE
DO WE turn the flight around?
Christina looked at Jill and saw the same unspoken question reflected in the older nurse’s face. This should have been a routine afternoon patient transport from the hospital back to this boy’s isolated home on a cattle station in the Gulf country.
Ben was nine, in plaster from hip to toes after fracturing his femur falling from a horse, and he’d greeted them with a grin wider than his face, just after lunch, because he’d been so happy to be out of his hospital bed and going home with Mum to his dad and his sister. His mum had looked pretty happy about the whole thing, too, hugging him and getting dithery about packing up the get-well gifts he’d received.
‘So much chocolate! The balloons are beautiful, but…’
‘We don’t let them on the plane,’ Christina had had to tell her.
Forty minutes into the flight, Ben Cartwell wasn’t grinning any more and Judy Cartwell wasn’t thinking about balloons.
‘I don’t understand why this is happening, ’she said in a strained voice. She squeezed her son’s hand. ‘Just try and get your breath, Ben, try to relax. It’s OK.‘
The asthma attack had taken everyone by surprise. ‘Mild asthma,’ Mrs Cartwell had reported after the leg break, when staff had taken a patient history. But this attack wasn’t mild. It had begun with an audible wheeze and moderate respiratory distress, and they’d quickly put up a nebuliser mask and given a dose of Ventolin, but if these were helping, they weren’t helping enough.
‘I’ve never seen him like this before,’ Mrs Cartwell said. ‘Ben, you don’t have to be scared. Just relax.’
Turbulence rocked the aircraft once again, making equipment lockers rattle and stomachs swoop up and down. Christina didn’t like the unpredictable motion any more than Ben did, and was beginning to wish she had a supply of those nice dry biscuits with her that Grace had found in the pantry this morning.
Speaking of which, Joe knew nothing about the pregnancy yet. She didn’t know when she’d get the right opportunity to tell him, and she hated having to wait like this. It gave her too much time to plan out conversations that wouldn’t work in real life the way they did in her head, because important conversations never did.
And was talking enough, anyhow? She craved action, but didn’t know what she could do.
‘This was what started it,’ Jill murmured. ‘It’s very rough. He got scared, and that can be a strong trigger.’
‘Glenn?’ Christina said into her headset. ‘What’s the story? Do we know what weather we’re coming into? More rough stuff?’
‘Good chance,’ Glenn answered. ‘I could try flying higher.’
Jill and Christina looked at each other again. Fly higher, yes, but away from hospital care?
‘What’s happening?’ Ben’s mother wanted to know. ‘What are we doing?’ She sounded panicky herself, even though it was obvious she was trying not to. Ben could see the panic and it didn’t help.
‘How are you feeling, Ben?’ Jill asked. Her voice was always much softer when she talked to a paediatric patient. ‘Breathing better?’
As a highly experienced theatre nurse as well as the hospital’s director of nursing, she didn’t come on flight duty very often, but she liked to do it from time to time ‘to keep my hand in’, she said.
Grace was off today, so Jill had rostered herself for the two patient transport assignments, instead of sending another more junior nurse. That morning’s trip had been quite uneventful, but Christina was grateful for Jill’s level of experience right now.
You didn’t want to turn a flight around for nothing. Like any medical service, this one operated on a budget that was always too tight, and flying cost money.
On the other hand…
Ben was shaking his head in answer to Jill. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. With his best, most desperate effort, nothing would come. Mrs Cartwell moaned in a shaky voice, ‘Oh, Ben!’
Christina whipped her stethoscope back into her ears and practically glued the other end of it to Ben’s chest, listening in several different places.
Silence. A layperson might have thought that the wheezing had stopped and that Ben’s condition was improving. Christina knew better.
‘Glenn, we’re going to head back,’ she yelled. ‘Now, please. Ben, love, we’d better not take you home today after all. That’s a disappointment, I know.’
But at the moment he was too distressed and frightened to care. The aircraft lurched again as the boy kept up his panicky, desperate and futile efforts to breathe, half his face hidden by the misted mask of the nebuliser. His condition was worsening rapidly, his lungs almost completely closed. Fighting her queasy stomach, Christina found a pulse of almost 140, and a respiratory rate of forty-five. His trachea tugged inwards as he tried to breathe, using muscles that shouldn’t need to be involved.
Jill had already begun to draw up the life-saving adrenaline he needed. ‘Country nice and flat out here, Glenn?’ she asked in a casual tone, and they all knew what she meant.
If Ben’s condition didn’t improve with this latest barrage of treatment and he arrested, they’d need to intubate him to maintain airway control, and that could only be done safely on the ground.
No, Christina resolved. By hook or by crook, she was going to bring this patient back from the brink before he got to that point.
‘Flat? Yeah, mostly,’ Glenn answered Jill, serious as ever. ‘That’s my problem, not yours.’
‘Are we landing?’ Mrs Cartwell said. ‘Please, tell me what you’re going to do for Ben.’
‘We’re heading back,’ Jill said. ‘Just for safety’s sake.’
And, please, Christina added inwardly, let us not have to land in the middle of nowhere, on the way, so we can save this kid’s life…
She had been hoping so strongly for a routine day. She would have been able to sign off at the end of it, drive across to the hospital from the flight base, find Joe, work out a time when they could talk. Nothing would make their conversation easy, but at least she’d have had some lead up, some preparation, a chance to stay calm. Now, even with the best-case scenario for Ben, she’d be jittery, awash with ebbing adrenaline, mo
re tired than ever.
She felt the slow bank and lift of the aircraft as they turned back towards Crocodile Creek and gained some height. Jill gave the adrenaline. Christina listened to Ben’s chest again, tried another dose of Ventolin. The turbulence eased.
And so, fractionally, did Ben’s breathing, but he still looked desperately scared and struggling. It was so hard watching a child unable to breathe, and the time remaining until they would be back on the ground stretched ahead too far.
‘Pulse rate has dropped a bit,’ Jill reported. ‘One-thirty. Respiratory rate at thirty-five now.’ She raised her voice. ‘Ben, love, you’re doing a lot better. It might not feel that way yet, but you’re getting better. Your chest is opening up again. Good lad!’
‘We’re doing the right thing, heading in this direction,’ Christina said.
‘Oh, absolutely!’
Their descent began at last, bumpy for most of the way. Even in the midst of his distress, Ben flinched every time, and Christina realised he was frightened about his leg.
‘Your cast’s protecting the break,’ she told him. ‘It’s not going to go crooked, and it’s not going to hurt.’
She wasn’t sure that he believed her. His knuckles were white as he gripped his mother’s hand, and she looked ill with fear.
On the ground, they made the transfer between aircraft and ambulance, and from the ambulance to the ED, with the boy’s condition still touch and go.
Joe was working today, and things were busy. He always looked so energised and focused under these conditions, his big body moving efficiently, no hint of clumsiness or unnecessary noise. He turned away from an elderly woman who’d apparently taken a fall, saw the new stretcher being wheeled in, and saw Christina, too.
Be right with you, he gestured, but didn’t spare the time for a smile.
My baby’s going to look like him, Christina thought suddenly.
‘This is a bounce,’ she told him, as soon as Ben had been set up in an emergency cubicle. She meant that this patient had been discharged and had needed to come back. Joe understood the medical slang at once, and made a characteristic face. Bounce, hey? It never looked good for a hospital to have too many of those!
