It still hurt but Josef’s face cleared. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘Even if the media finds out, it can be implied he wasn’t yours. What better reason to end the marriage?’
‘That’s not fair to Ellie.’
‘We’ll pay her enough to compensate.’
As if that would work.
He turned and faced out of the window again, across the manicured palace gardens to the mountains in the distance. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, Ellie was making a life for herself, without him and without their son. It was a decision they’d made together.
Ellie was tough. She’d had to be, with her background. She called life as she saw it.
And now? A legal expert would come blustering in from her past, offering her bribes. Even asking her to swear a child wasn’t his.
He thought of the Ellie he’d known. She was feisty, opinionated...moral. She also had a temper.
‘No,’ he told Josef. ‘It could turn the situation into a disaster.’
‘There’s no other way,’ Josef told him.
‘There is,’ he said heavily and he saw his path clear. This part, at least. ‘If this is as important as you say, then let me do it. I must be able to fly under the radar for a few days. I’ll face the media this morning and then I have a week’s grace until the funeral. Say I’m stricken with grief, incommunicado. If I board a plane this morning no one will notice—the media surely won’t expect me to be leaving the country. I’ll go to Australia and talk to Ellie myself. I’ll make sure the child’s privacy is protected and there are no cracks the media can chisel open. And then...’
He put down his coffee cup. It was fine china with the royal coat of arms emblazoned on the front, and he found himself thinking almost longingly of the paper cups he grabbed after all-night Theatre shifts. That part of his life was over and he had to accept it. ‘Then I’ll come home,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll bury my family and I’ll accept the throne.’
CHAPTER TWO
LIFE AS BORRAWONG’S only doctor was sometimes boring, but just as often it was chaotic. If one person went down with the flu, the whole town usually followed. Kids never seemed to fall out of trees on their own. Ellie had a great team at the hospital, though. Usually she could cope.
But not with this.
Two carloads of kids had been drag racing on a minor road with a rail crossing without boom gates. Maybe the drifting fog had hidden the crossing’s flashing lights and the sight of the oncoming train until it was too late. Or maybe alcohol had made them decide to race the train. Whatever the reason, the results had been disastrous.
The train had just left the station so it had been travelling slowly, but not slowly enough. It had ploughed into one car, pushing it into the car beside it.
If the train had been up to speed, every occupant of the cars would have been killed. Instead, Ellie had seven kids in various stages of injury, distress and hysteria. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—practically the whole town—were crammed into the waiting room or spilling into the car park outside.
Air ambulances were on their way from Sydney but the fog was widespread and there were delays. The doctor from the neighbouring town was caught up with an unexpected traumatic birth.
She was the only doctor.
Right now, she was focusing on intubating seventeen-year-old May-Belle Harris. May-Belle was the town’s champion netballer, blonde, beautiful, confident. At least she had been. Her facial injuries would take months of reconstruction—if Ellie could get her to live past the next few minutes.
Ellie’s team was fighting behind her, nurses and paramedics coping with trauma far beyond their training. But while she fought for May-Belle’s life, she had to block them out.
‘You can make it,’ she told May-Belle as she finally got the tube secure. At least she now had a safe air supply. The girl was deeply anaesthetised. She should have an anaesthetist to watch over her before she could be transferred to Sydney for specialist reconstructive surgery. Instead of which, she had Joe.
‘Can you take over?’ Ellie asked the seventy-year-old hospital orderly. ‘Watch that tube like a hawk and watch those monitors. Any change at all, yell. Loud.’
‘Louder than these?’ Joe said with a wry grimace. There were six others kids waiting for attention, plus the injuries and bruises of the train crew who’d been thrown about on impact. Some of these kids—the least injured—were...well, loud would be an understatement. One of the girls was having noisy hysterics and the very junior nurse allocated to her couldn’t quieten her.
With years of experience, Ellie knew she could quieten her in a minute but she didn’t have a minute.
‘Grab me by the hair and pull me over here if you need me,’ Ellie told Joe. Block everything out and focus on that breathing.
Moving on...
A boy with bubbling breathing also needed urgent attention. There had to be a punctured lung.
A girl with a shattered elbow needed her too. She risked losing her hand if Ellie didn’t re-establish a secure blood supply soon. The lung had to be a priority but that elbow was at an appalling angle. If the blood supply cut...
And what if there were internal injuries?
Focus, she told herself. Do what comes next.
* * *
He was heading for Borrawong’s Bush Nursing Hospital.
Marc hadn’t been surprised when Josef’s discreet investigators had told him Ellie was back working here. This was where her mother had lived, the town Ellie was raised in.
The last time he’d seen her she’d been heading home to care for her mum.
Borrawong was a tiny town miles from anywhere. A wheat train ran through at need, hauling the grain from the giant silos that seemed to make up the bulk of the town. The train felt like the town’s only link with civilisation.
He’d never been there. ‘As long as Mum stays well, I’m never going back,’ Ellie had told him. She was jubilant at having escaped her small-town upbringing, her childhood spent as her mother’s carer. Until those last days when their combined worlds had seemed to implode, she’d put Borrawong far behind her.
But now Josef’s investigator had given Marc the low-down on Borrawong as well. ‘Population six hundred. Bush nursing hospital, currently staffed with one doctor and four nurses, servicing an extended farming district.’
To be the only doctor in such a remote community, to have returned to Borrawong... What was Ellie doing?
Had her mother died? Why had he never asked?
Because he had no right to know?
He landed in Sydney, then drove for five hours, heading across vast fog-shrouded fields obviously used for cropping. It was mid-afternoon when he arrived, and midwinter. The time difference made him feel weird. The main street of Borrawong—such as it was—seemed deserted. The general store had a sign: ‘Closed’ pinned to the door. The town seemed deserted.
Then he turned off the main street towards the hospital—and this was where everybody was.
The tiny brick hospital was surrounded by a sea of cars. There were people milling by the entrance. People were hugging each other, sobbing. Two groups were involved in a yelling match, screaming abuse.
What the...?
He pulled up in the far reaches of the car park and made his way through the mass of people. By the time he reached the hospital entrance, he had the gist. A train had crashed into two carloads of kids.
How many casualties?
The reception area was packed. Here, though, people were quieter. This would be mum and dad territory, the place where the closest relatives waited for news.
He made his way towards the desk and a burly farming type guy blocked his path.
‘Can’t go any further, mate,’ the man told him. ‘Doc Ellie says no one goes past this poi
nt.’
Ellie. So she was here. Coping with this alone?
‘I’m a doctor,’ he told him.
The man’s shoulders sagged. ‘You’re kidding me, right? Mate, you’re welcome.’ He turned back to his huddled wife. ‘See, Claire, I told you help’d come.’
He was the help?
There was no one at the reception desk, but double doors led to the room beyond.
A child was sitting across the doors. He was small, maybe nine or ten years old.
He was in a wheelchair but he didn’t look like a patient. He was seated as if he was a guard. He had his back to the doors and he held a pair of crutches across his chest. Anyone wanting to get past clearly had to negotiate the crutches, and the kid was holding them as if he knew how to use them.
Right now he seemed the only person with any official role.
‘I’m here to see Dr Carson,’ Marc told him. The kid’s expression was mulish, belligerent. The crutches were raised to chest height, held widthways across the doors. ‘I understand there’s been an accident,’ Marc said hurriedly. ‘I might be able to help.’
‘No one goes in,’ the kid told him. ‘Unless you’re Doc Brandon from Cowrang, or from the air ambulance. But you’re not.’
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘You’re not a relative? They all want to go in.’
‘I’m not family. I’m a doctor,’ he repeated. ‘And I might be able to help.’
‘A real doctor?’
‘Yes. I’m a surgeon.’
‘You have a funny accent.’
‘I’m a surgeon with a funny accent, yes, but I do know how to treat people after car accidents. I knew Dr Carson back when we were both training. When she was at university. Believe me, if she needs help then she’ll be pleased to see me.’
Pleased? That was stretching it, he thought grimly, but right now didn’t seem the time for niceties.
The crutches were still raised. The kid was taking a couple of moments to think about it. He eyed him up and down, assessing, and for a moment Marc took the time to assess back.
And then...
Then he almost forgot to breathe.
The kid was small and skinny, freckled, with dark hair that spiked into an odd little cowlick. He was dressed in jogging pants and an oversized red and black football jumper. One foot was encased in a worn and filthy trainer. The other foot was hidden by a cast, starting at the thigh.
He could be anyone’s kid.
His hair was jet-black, his brows were thick and black as well, and his eyes...they were almost black too.
And those freckles! He’d seen those freckles before, and the boy’s chin jutted upward in a way Marc remembered.
He looked like Ellie. But Ellie had glossy auburn hair that curled into a riot. Ellie had green eyes.
The kid had Marc’s hair and Marc’s eyes.
Surely not.
And then, from the other side of the door, someone screamed. It was a scream Marc recognised from years of working as a trauma surgeon. It spoke of unbearable pain. It spoke of a medical team without the resources to prevent such pain.
Shock or not, now wasn’t the time to be looking at a kid with dark eyes and asking questions.
‘You need to let me in,’ he told the boy, urgently now, as he pulled himself together. ‘Ask Dr Carson if she needs help.’
‘You really are a proper doctor?’ The boy’s voice was incredulous.
‘I am.’
‘Then go on in.’ There was suddenly no hesitation. He peeped a grin at Marc and there was that jolt again. He knew that grin! ‘But you’re either in or out,’ he warned. ‘If another doctor ever walks into this town Mum says we’ll set up roadblocks to stop them leaving. That’s me. I’m the roadblock. No one gets past these crutches.’
* * *
‘Ellie!’
Chris was Ellie’s best trained nurse. While Ellie was treating the kid with a suspected pneumothorax she’d put Chris in charge of the girl with the smashed elbow. Lisa Harley had smashed a few other things as well, but it was her elbow that was Ellie’s greatest concern. The fracture was compound. She’d found a pulse on the other side of the break but it was faint. The blood supply was compromised.
But the kid with the pneumothorax had taken priority.
‘I’ve lost the pulse,’ Chris called urgently. ‘And I’m worrying about her blood pressure. Ellie...’
She couldn’t go. She had to release pressure in the chest of the kid under her hands. One lung had collapsed—she was sure of it. Any more pressure and she’d lose him.
A life or a hand...
‘Five minutes,’ she called back to Chris. Could she close this in time? No matter. She had to focus on what she was doing.
The door swung open.
It was too soon to expect the air ambulance from Sydney. It was too soon to expect the doctor from the neighbouring town, but Felix wouldn’t have let anyone in unless they could help. Unless they were a doctor.
So she looked up with hope—and then felt herself freeze.
Marc.
He was older. There was a trace of silver in his jet-black hair. He looked taller, broader...more distinguished.
But he was still Marc.
Marc, here!
Her world seemed to wobble. If she’d had time she would have found a chair and sat down hard.
The boy she was treating needed all her attention. A smashed rib piercing the lung meant air was going in and not getting out. The pressure would be building. The second lung could collapse at any minute. She needed to insert a tube to drain the air compressing the lung and she needed to do it fast.
Marc was here.
‘Where can I help?’ he asked and somehow she forced her world back into focus. No matter why he was here; the one thing she knew was that he was a skilled doctor. A surgeon. Every complication that had suddenly hit her world had to give way to imperative.
‘Chris needs help,’ she told him, gesturing towards the nurse. ‘Lisa Harley, seventeen, smashed elbow—I’m sure it’s comminuted. There must be fragments of bone cutting the circulation. Feeble pulse in her fingers until a moment ago, but now nothing. Chris says blood pressure’s dropping too, but I haven’t had time to figure out why. I’ve given her morphine, ten milligrams. She probably also has alcohol on board.’
Marc’s attention switched instantly to Lisa, lying wanly on the trolley. The morphine had kicked in but the kid looked pallid.
‘I’m on it,’ Marc said, in his perfect English with that French-plus-something-exotic accent that had made Ellie’s toes curl all those years ago. He crossed to Lisa and touched her fingers. He’d be feeling for the pulse, Ellie knew. Even though it was Marc, she could only feel relief.
‘You’re right,’ he said calmly, smiling down at Lisa in a way that would be medicine all by itself. ‘Hi, Lisa. I’m Dr Falken. We need to get your arm sorted, but it’s your lucky day. I treat hurt elbows all the time.’ He checked her blood pressure and frowned. ‘We might also check your tummy and see if there’s anything else going on.’ He flicked a glance back to Ellie. ‘Lisa’s priority one?’
‘I’m coping with a pneumothorax but I have it under control,’ she told him. She hoped. ‘We also have a severe facial injury but I’ve intubated and she seems stable. Nothing else seems life-threatening. Chris, can you assist Marc? Everyone, this is Dr Marc Falken. He’s...he’s an old friend from university and he’s good. Give him all the assistance he needs. Marc, sorry, but you’re on your own.’
* * *
There was no time for shock or questions. There was only time to work.
With Chris’s help he did a fast X-ray. The elbow was a jigsaw of shattered bone fragments.
It wasn’t the greatest of her problems, though. Lisa�
��s blood pressure continued to drop. Chris helped him set up an ultrasound and that confirmed his fears.
Ruptured spleen. She’d have internal bleeding. This was life or death.
Ellie had far more than she could cope with already. This was his call.
He’d like a full theatre of trained staff. He had Chris.
But, even though Chris looked as if she could be anyone’s mum, the nurse was cool, efficient and exactly what he needed.
‘I can give an anaesthetic,’ she told him. ‘I’ve done it before when Ellie’s been in trouble. We can take Lisa into Theatre and go for it if that’s what you want.’
He’d worked on battlefields with less help than this. ‘That’s what I want.’
From the next cubicle, Ellie must have heard. She was focusing on the kid with the punctured lung but she must have the whole room under broader surveillance.
‘You can’t just straighten for the time being?’ she called.
Marc moved so he could talk without being overheard. The last thing Lisa needed to hear was a fearful diagnosis. ‘There are bone fragments everywhere,’ Marc told her. ‘I can re-establish blood supply but if something moves it’ll block again. It’s not safe to transfer her without surgery. But priority’s the ruptured spleen. I’ll need to go in to check for sure but her blood pressure’s dropping fast and the symptoms fit.’
She swore. ‘You can do it?’
‘I can.’ His gaze swept the room, seeing the mass of trouble she was facing. ‘You have enough on your hands.’ More than enough.
‘I can’t help,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘Then do it. Chris, give him all the help he needs.’
And Chris was already wheeling Lisa’s trolley through the doors marked Theatre.
He had no choice but to follow.
* * *
The cavalry arrived two hours later. Helicopters with skilled paramedics. The doctor from the neighbouring town. Everyone and everything she needed was suddenly there, and Ellie was able to step back and catch her breath.
Reunited with Her Surgeon Prince Page 2
