by Lilian Darcy
‘The money’s there.’
‘It is,’ Philip conceded.
‘So the budget isn’t necessary. And there’s one more thing.’
Philip pressed his fingers over his eyes. ‘How can there be more? Isn’t this enough?’
‘This one won’t threaten your ego too much,’ Charles promised in a mild tone. ‘I’d just like you to find out where that nephew of ours has got to, if you have any information.’
‘Our nephew? You mean Jack?’
‘Your sister Celia’s boy, Philip,’ Jim said. ‘Took weeks for Honey and me to find out his last name was Ransome.’
‘Yes, born and raised in Sydney,’ Philip answered, ‘and then Celia tells me he wants to be a cattleman and can I please train him up.’ He shook his head. ‘You surely can’t hold me responsible for what happened with your daughter, Cooper. They were both over eighteen.’
‘Yeah, and now they’re both parents,’ Jim said softly. The new light of hope that had appeared in his eyes a few minutes ago was getting brighter. ‘And call us naïve, Philip, but it might make a difference. We’d just like him to know.’
An hour out of Crocodile Creek, on the return flight, Mike Poulos radioed a report to Base about the patient they were bringing in. She was thirty-four, on a reef holiday with her husband, in early pregnancy and with a history of pelvic inflammatory disease. They received a confirmation that Dr Turner would be standing by for emergency surgery when they landed.
Because it had to be an ectopic pregnancy.
Knife-like abdominal pain on one side, bloating and spotting, signs of shock…Every symptom pointed to it, as well as the patient’s history. Christina had broken the bad news and the woman and her husband were both upset, mourning the loss of a planned child and the risk to future fertility.
With her own pregnancy constantly in her mind, Christina ached for them but didn’t let it get personal. It wouldn’t help them to hear her own story, or to have her inwardly wondering how she’d feel in the same situation and whether there was any chance that Joe would be by her side—whether she’d want him if they had no future together.
During flight, the options for treatment were standard, straightforward and limited. They were treating the shock and buying time until the surgery, basically. Christina had given oxygen, IV fluids and pain medication, and elevated the patient’s feet.
‘Not long now,’ she told the woman and her husband, seeing the shape of the coastline take on familiar lines.
‘And did you catch that message for you from Charles?’ Mike asked her. ‘That he’s got things sorted out for this week?’
‘Yes, I got it, Mike,’ she answered, not yet daring to think that this was good news.
On the ground, in the ED, Joe heard the sound of the chopper blades overhead, just as he had that morning on the Remote Rescue’s outward flight.
‘Do we know what this is yet?’ he asked Emily.
He’d been all over the hospital that morning, both before and after that scene in Jim Cooper’s room. He hadn’t caught up on what kind of case was being brought in, whether they’d need him.
‘The rescue chopper?’ Emily was writing up some notes, and didn’t look up from them. ‘With Christina? She has an ectopic pregnancy. It’s ruptured. Georgie’s going to operate, with Jill assisting and I don’t know who else. Apparently…’
The world faded. The sounds of the ward, the fluorescent light overhead.
All of it.
Just faded…
Joe blinked slowly. Emily had stopped speaking. He realised that suddenly she was looking at him, and although she’d been sitting half a second ago, she was now on her feet and standing close. ‘Lord, Joe, what is it?’
‘Nothing.’ He whooshed out a breath, willing the room to stop spinning and those blotches in front of his eyes to disappear. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing.’
Although Dr Morgan did have a certain way with words this week!
Resolving the ambiguity had only taken him a few seconds. It wasn’t Christina’s pregnancy that had lodged in a Fallopian tube and ruptured the narrow passage. Good grief, of course it wasn’t! She was bringing in a patient.
But in that brief time when he’d got it wrong…
‘Are you sure, Joe?’ Emily was still frowning at him. ‘You look as if your whole life just passed before your eyes.’
‘It did. But it’s gone now. See? Whee!’ He made his hands into butterfly wings. He did not want to talk about this!
What had talking really done for himself and Christina this week?
The ebb of the momentary burst of adrenaline left him way shakier and more distracted than he should have been. In the two seconds that had ticked by while he’d given Emily’s words the wrong meaning, he’d mentally cancelled his flight home tomorrow, called the other doctors in his practice and arranged for them to cover his workload for the next week, even decided that Amber’s appointment to talk about her surgery could be postponed, because helping Christina through the dangerous loss of her pregnancy was much more important. Anything that Christina wanted he would give her, because it was so important.
Important and a dragging weight of responsibility at the same time, but he couldn’t let that stop him. Would she let him take it on, though, when he’d made it painfully clear to her this week how much of an added burden it would be? When he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide the weight?
‘I’m grabbing a two-minute coffee,’ he told Emily.
‘Are you really sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ He was going to be, as long as he could find some time with Christina today.
‘Have you had lunch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Take lunch, Joe.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Look, this new patient is going straight into surgery. Georgie’s already here, waiting to scrub. If you want to talk to Christina, she’ll be free in a few minutes.’
‘What makes you think I want to talk to Christina?’ Oh, lord, if this had become everyone else’s business already, when he still didn’t know what the outcome would be, he’d hate it.
‘Because you said her name, Joe. Didn’t you hear yourself?’
‘No. Said her name?’
‘Just now, when I told you about the incoming case. And you sounded as if it was part of your dying breath.’
His dying breath.
Joe lost count of how many of those he took over the next fifteen hours, but they all felt that way. It had to be some kind of cosmic punishment, he decided. He hadn’t talked to Christina for two years, not about the things she’d wanted to hear. Now he was desperate to talk to her, but their paths just did not cross.
He was called to an emergency admission, and by the time he’d admitted and treated the burns case that had confronted him, Christina had gone out on another urgent flight. He should have been off in the evening, but Charles asked him if he could manage to stay late. ‘We’ve got a staffing glitch suddenly for the coming week. I’m swapping a few people around. I…uh…shouldn’t give you the details, I don’t think.’
‘No. Fine, Charles.’ He blinked. Somebody else had had some confidential emergency. He should probably spare a bit of emotional energy, hoping everything was OK for them since the medical staff at Crocodile Creek had had their share of problems lately, but he couldn’t. Spare emotional energy? There wasn’t any. ‘Yes, I can stay on as late as I’m needed,’ he said.
When Christina returned with their latest patient—a truckie who’d overturned his vehicle and had a query head injury—Joe was busy, and when he thought about her in the quieter hours of the night, wondering if he could grab a break, phone her, go over for half an hour as long as he kept his pager clipped to his pocket, it just didn’t seem to make sense.
One in the morning? She’d be fast asleep. You didn’t waken a woman at that hour to promise you’d ‘be there for her’ when you knew you couldn’t hide from her just how much the promise would cost.
Four-thirty in the morning…Honey was suddenly aware of someone in the room. She’d gone to sleep by Jim’s side and now she woke up, her hand in his. But someone was there. She looked up and it was Megan.
‘Just checking,’ Megan said, and gave a half-smile that was tentative and fearful but still better than any smile Honey had seen for months. ‘Dr Wetherby says Dad’s going to be OK.’
‘He is, love. And such good news. I can’t believe we have access to the creek. The feud is over. We’ll have money to restock. We can go home…’
‘I don’t know…’
‘There’ll be money for you to go to university now,’ Honey told her, reaching out in the dim light to hold her daughter’s hand. ‘Maybe we have to wait until Jackson’s a bit older but there are distance courses…You can study at home and do the access weekends…Somehow we’ll work it out.’
‘We surely will.’ It was Jim, awake, his half-lidded eyes watching his wife and his daughter with a joy that shone through his drugged sleepiness.
‘The first thing is your bypass, Dad,’ Megan said.
‘The first thing is your happiness,’ Jim growled. ‘Megan, girl, I’m so sorry…We asked too much from you. We’ll make it up to you. You’ll see.’
‘I’ll be fine, Dad,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Honey leaned forward and kissed her husband gently on the forehead. ‘We’ll all be fine now,’ she murmured. ‘We’ll be a family.’
Would they? Megan gazed down at her parents and saw the love they felt for each other and felt her heart twist. It had been such a short time…Such a short time to know her heart…
Where was he?
He was out there, she thought. Somewhere, he was out there. Please.
There were footsteps in the corridor. She heard murmured talking and looked out to see Dr Farrelly and Dr Wetherby talking urgently in the corridor. Another drama?
But Charles was tugging Christina down to give her a swift hug, and Christina was carrying a holdall.
Megan closed her eyes. Christina was going to her love, she thought. That Kiwi doctor who’d been so nice this week. Her love…She knew it.
Someday I will, too, Jack, she promised. Someday I will, too.
It was still dark when Joe got up, after a bare three hours’ sleep over at the house. He had his bag already packed, didn’t feel like breakfast. His whole body creaked with stiffness and fatigue. He got to the airport at five-fifteen, every muscle in his body still moving with lead weights attached.
And there was Christina, when he thought he’d lost his last chance to see her for three endless weeks. She’d come to see him off.
‘Tink!’
With the airport lounge almost empty, he’d seen her straight away, standing near the checkin desk, waiting for him. She waved and smiled as he strode towards her, his heavy bag suddenly much lighter in his grip. His stiffness faded.
She stuck out a mile in his vision, the way she always had. She’d always seemed to him to have so much more than any other woman he’d ever met.
More heart.
More energy.
A more beautiful smile.
‘Hi,’ she said as he reached her, her voice husky.
‘Tink,’ he said again. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling the scent of her hair in open appreciation. ‘Mmm, you smell so good!’ And she was the only person who ever made him feel this way when he hugged her.
Tingling.
Exultant.
Where he belonged.
He couldn’t help the relief and happiness he felt, even if it was an illusion, even if the weight came down hard on his shoulders again a minute from now. At least this way he’d get to tell her face to face that she wouldn’t be going through pregnancy and parenthood alone.
‘What are you doing here at this hour?’ he asked her, trying to keep it light. ‘Seeing me off?’
‘Coming with you,’ she said. Her mouth pressed hard against his hair, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. She held him tight. ‘I’m flying to Auckland with you, Joe.’
‘That’s…not possible.’
‘It is, thanks to Charles, who cleared my roster for the week, and to the airline, which fortunately had some spare seats.’
‘Wh—?’
She was still smiling at him. No, she was grinning. Laughing into his face, stroking his jaw, looking happy and excited, like a tourist on her honeymoon.
Yes, and she had a packed bag at her feet.
His heart began to lift.
It shouldn’t be doing that.
Why was it doing that?
It should be sinking like a stone, weighed down with his awareness of what she was prepared to give, with his responsibility for her happiness if he let her give it. For hours he’d been expecting this sinking feeling, steeling himself against it, dreading it.
But now it wasn’t happening. His heart wasn’t sinking, it was lifting. Like a bird. Like a plane. Like…Superman? Except that he’d just begun to glimpse the possibility that he didn’t have to be Superman any more.
‘Because you said it yourself, Joe,’ she said, speaking only for him. ‘Sometimes talking isn’t what counts. There has to be action.’
Her eyes were alight. Yes, she could see how he felt. See that weight lifting. See him about to float up in the air like an untethered balloon.
‘So I stopped listening to what you said, and started thinking about everything you’d actually done over the past two years since we’ve been together. I know you love me,’ she said, ‘and I’m not letting this go. I’m not letting you shoulder everything on your own. You’re not shouldering anything on your own from now on, because you have me. I’m spending a week in New Zealand with you and your family while we make some plans for how we’re going to handle our future together. I don’t care about the details, if we live here or there, if we use my savings or keep them, but the together part is non-negotiable. I’m fighting for that. OK?’
Her eyes narrowed a little and she lifted her chin. He suddenly saw that she was a little less confident and bulldozer-ish about this than she would have him believe, and that was unbearable. He couldn’t let her suffer the doubt for another second.
‘I love you,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘I love you and I want you, and you’re right, I’m not letting you go. I’m fighting for it. You know what? I’m not reacting right.’ He shook his light, giddy head, grinning. ‘I never thought—Well, I never thought you’d do something like this. I thought we wouldn’t see each other for three weeks and that when I came back it would go on being tough. But even if I’d expected you here this morning, saying what you’ve said, I would have thought it would make me feel…loaded down. Even more than before. And that I’d just drag you down, too.’
‘That’s why you wouldn’t let me do it.’ She understood.
‘Yes. Only yesterday, something happened…it was stupid…When Emily said you were bringing in the ectopic pregnancy she worded it so that for a few seconds I thought the patient was you. And I knew in that instant that I’d drop everything to be with you, no matter what. And something clicked.’
‘Yeah?’ She pressed her nose against his.
‘I was going to offer you everything, all my support. I was so glad to see you standing here, because it gave me the right chance to say it. But I thought it would feel as if I’d put the last nail in my own coffin. Only it’s not making me feel that way. It’s making me feel—Oh, lord, Tink, if you really want to do this…’
‘Actions speak louder than words.’ She waved her passport in his face. Through the terminal windows, the light of dawn had begun to seep higher and brighter in the eastern sky.
Joe laughed out loud. ‘It feels good. It feels great. I’m…just happy. Christina Farrelly, I’m happy!’
‘The way we’ve always felt when we’re together, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘And it’s not going to change.’
‘You think?’
‘I know! But I didn’t know how to ma
ke you see it. Just telling you didn’t help. I finally realised I had to show you. Take action. Prove it.’
‘And let my reaction argue the case? It has, Tink. I’m—’
‘Happy!’ She grinned, then kissed him sweetly.
‘Happy.’
‘And about the baby?’
‘So happy.’
She didn’t seem to doubt him.
‘I’m never going to let you go,’ he whispered.
‘We do have to check in.’
‘Don’t have to let you go to do that. I have skills. See?’ He shouldered his bag and picked up her suitcase in the same hand, which left plenty of him still for her.
‘Oh, Joe!’ She laughed and grabbed his spare arm, and together, half an hour later, they took flight into the dawn, towards their shared future.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
MILLS & BOON and MILLS & BOON with the Rose Device are registered trademarks of the publisher.
© Lilian Darcy 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5859-7
