‘The calves won’t go anywhere,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘With Bonnie’s help Angus can drive them home by foot from here.’
Hooray for Angus, he thought. And William and Gran. A whole family. Better and better.
But she was wilting, and he was wasting time.
‘Okay,’ he said, and ignoring protests he lifted her across to his car, blessing the fact that the Aston Martin had a rear seat. Once again, though, he was surprised at how little she weighed.
Were things okay? Was this a normal pregnancy?
This was Not His Problem, he reminded himself sharply. He needed to cope with the emergency stuff only. She’d have her own obstetrician. Her family could take her there.
Stay professional and stay clinically detached.
But as he lifted her into the car he smelled a faint citrusy perfume, and he was caught once again in a totally unprofessional moment.
Her luminous green eyes were framed by long, dark lashes, surely unusual in a redhead. Her freckles were amazingly cute. Her flame-coloured curls were still doing their best to break out of their braids, and he had an almost irrational desire to help them escape.
Whoa. What was it with him? He was being dumb and irrational and stupid.
This was his patient. Therefore he could stop thinking dumb thoughts about how she smelled and how she felt against him and how her hair would look unbraided.
So turn professional.
‘Let’s do formal introductions,’ he said, trying to sound like he was about to key it into her patient history. ‘Can you tell me your full name?’
‘Maggie Maria Croft. You?’
‘Maxwell Harvey Ashton.’
‘Dr Ashton?’
‘Max is fine, we’ll forget the Harvey and I’m hoping we don’t need the Doctor. But if necessary…’ He hesitated but it had to be said. ‘If your family can’t take you, I’ll drive you to the hospital at Gosland—or even to Sydney if you prefer.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, courteously but firmly. ‘But it won’t be necessary. If you can just take me back to the farm I can sort this mess out by myself.’
CHAPTER TWO
SO FIVE minutes later he turned into the farm gate—and found himself staring at a graveyard. A tractor graveyard.
The driveway from the road to the house was a long avenue of gumtrees, and underneath their canopies old tractors were lined up like sentinels. There were tractors from every era, looking like they dated from the Dark Ages.
‘Wow,’ he breathed, and involuntarily slowed to take a better look. Some of the tractors looked like they could be driven right now if he had the right crank and didn’t mind using it. Some were a wheel or two short of perfect. Some were simply skeletons, a piece of superstructure, like a body without limbs.
‘William likes tractors?’ he ventured.
‘Gran and Angus like tractors. Gran bought her first one when she was fifteen. I believe she swapped her party dress for it. The tractor didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now, but she still thinks it was a bargain.
‘She sounds a character.’
‘You could say that,’ she said morosely. ‘Or pig stubborn, depending on how you look at it.’
He glanced into the rear-view mirror, and saw a wash of bleakness cross her face—desolation that could have nothing to do with the accident. And her expression caught something deep within him. For a fraction of a second he had an almost irresistible urge to stop the car so he could touch her; comfort her. It took strength to keep his hands on the steering-wheel, to keep on driving.
He did not do personal involvement, he told himself fiercely, confused by his totally inappropriate reaction. This woman was married and pregnant and he hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Alice died. Had he hit his head in the crash? Was he out of his mind?
They’d reached the end of the driveway now, and he pulled up beside an old estate wagon with its bonnet up. The car with the damaged radiator hose. He focussed on that. Something practical and something that didn’t make his heart twist.
‘So that’s your wagon. Is there something else you can use to drive to hospital?’
‘What’s wrong with tractors?’ she demanded, and he caught a glimmer of a rueful smile in the rear-view mirror. Once again, he had that kick of emotional reaction. This lady had courage and humour. And something more.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, seemingly unaware of the effect her smile had on him. ‘Thanks for driving me home. I’ll give you my licence details, and our insurance companies can take it from here.’
So that was that. He was dismissed. He could retreat back to Sydney. Which was what, until an hour ago, he’d been desperate to do.
It seemed to Max that Yandilagong was about as far from civilisation as it was possible to get without launching himself off the New South Wales coast and swimming for New Zealand. Not for the first time, he wondered what he’d been thinking to let his friends—a cohort of career-oriented medicos—talk him into coming.
‘It’ll be fun,’ they’d told him. ‘Music festivals are all the rage and this one has a great line-up.’
Since he’d moved to Australia he’d been asked to many hospital social events, but each time he’d refused. Since Alice’s death he’d immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. Now his surgical list was growing to the point where the pressure had become ridiculous. More and more patients were queuing, and his teaching commitments were increasing exponentially.
Last week, working out in the hospital gym in the small hours, trying to get himself so physically tired that sleep would come, he’d realised he was reaching breaking point.
So he’d accepted, but what neither he nor his colleagues had realised was that the festival was a family event. There were mums, dads and kids, young women holding babies, grandmas bossing grandkids, dads teaching kids to dance. His friends, men and women who were truly married to their career paths, were appalled.
‘We’re so lucky not to be stuck with that,’ they’d declared more than once. ‘Hicksville. Familyville. Who’d want it?’
He didn’t, of course he didn’t, so why had it hurt to hear them say it?
Then this afternoon they’d announced they were bored with music and children, so they’d organised a tour of a local winery. He’d spent a couple of hours listening to his friends gravely pontificate about ash and oak and hints of elderberry, and how wonderful it was to be away from the sound of children, and how the advertisers should be sued for not letting ticket buyers know how many children’s events there’d be.
And then his anaesthetist had rung from Sydney. A woman was being flown in from outback New South Wales with complications from a hysterectomy. When was he coming back?
His registrar could cope. He knew he could, but the choice was suddenly obvious. He’d left feeling nothing but relief. For six years he’d been alone and that was the way he liked it.
He wanted to be alone now. But instead he was parked in a tractor graveyard while a seven-months-pregnant woman was struggling to get out of his car.
Wishes aside, he couldn’t leave her. Not before he’d handed her over to someone responsible.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Gran.’
‘But she’s ill.’
‘Yes.’
‘So where’s William?’ he asked, knowing it was a loaded question but hoping there’d be a solid answer.
‘William was my husband,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead.’ He felt like he’d been punched. Dead. Hence the bleakness. Hell.
‘Not recently. You don’t need to say you’re sorry.’
Recent enough, he thought, looking at her very pregnant tummy. Alice had been dead for six years yet still…
Well, there was a crazy thing to think. Make this all about you, he told himself. Or not.
‘So who’s Angus?’
‘William’s uncle.’
‘How old?’
‘Sixty.’
This was better. ‘He’ll look after you?’
‘He’ll enjoy the challenge of getting the calves up to the house. Bonnie’s his dog. Any minute now he’ll be here to demand what I’ve done with her. So thank you, Dr Ashton. I’ll be right from here.’
He was dismissed.
For the last forty-eight hours all he’d wanted to do was get out of Yandilagong. He still did.
But he needed to see how competent this Angus person was, and how forceful. For all Maggie was struggling to pull herself from the car, she was looking paler and paler.
Placental bleeding? The two words had been playing in his head for half an hour now and they weren’t going away.
He might not have done anything closely related to obstetrics for six years, but the training was there and he knew what a strain a car crash could put on a placenta.
Archibald had kicked him. That was a good sign but he needed more. He wanted to listen to the baby’s heartbeat and then he wanted Maggie in hospital under observation.
And that bleak look on her face was etched into his mind. He couldn’t leave her. And even if he could…Still there was that tug he didn’t understand.
‘You’re not walking,’ he growled, and before she could resist he’d lifted her up into his arms again. He strode up through a garden that smelled of old-fashioned roses, where honeysuckle and jasmine fought for smell space as well, where tiny honeyeaters flitted from bush to bush and where noisy rosella parrots swooped in random raids to the banksias around the edge.
The garden looked neglected and overgrown but beautiful. The farmhouse itself was looking a bit down at the heel, in want of a good coat of paint and a few nails, but big and welcoming and homely.
Once again there was that wrench of something inside him. Like coming home. Which was clearly ridiculous. This was like no home he’d ever known.
He’d reached the top of the veranda steps and as he paused she wriggled out of his hold and was on her feet before he realised what she was about.
‘Thank you,’ she said, breathlessly, sounding…scared? ‘I can take it from here.’
Scared? Was she feeling what he was feeling?
He didn’t know what he was feeling.
‘Not unless there’s someone through that door to give you a strong cup of tea, then carry you out to a nice, safe non-tractor-type car and get you to hospital,’ he said, making his voice stern. ‘Can you tell me that?’ Even though she was standing, he was blocking her way through the door.
‘I can’t,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t have a choice. Please, I can’t leave Gran.’
‘Then I can’t leave you.’ Neither, he realised bluntly, did he want to.
‘Maggie, is that you?’ The high, querulous voice came from inside, and without waiting for permission Max pushed it open.
The first thing he saw as he opened the door was a vast open fireplace filled with glowing embers, a burgundy, blue and gold carpet, faded but magnificent, great squashy settees and a mantel with two ornate vases loaded with roses from the garden. And jasmine and honeysuckle. The room was an extension of the garden, and the perfume was fabulous. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the different light, he saw Gran. She was a tiny wizened woman, bundled in blankets on the settee, looking toward the door with obvious anxiety.
‘I’m okay, Gran,’ Maggie said urgently from behind him, and made to push past, but she stumbled on her bad leg. He caught her and held her against him, and she didn’t fight.
But suddenly Gran was lurching to the hearth to grab the poker. She turned toward him, but then fell back on her pillows, waving the poker, fright and feistiness fighting for supremacy.
‘Let her go.’ Her voice came out as a terrified rasp and he felt Maggie flinch and struggle again to get free.
The two settees in the living room were opposite each other, forming a corridor to the fire. He ignored the poker—there wasn’t a lot of threat when Gran didn’t seem to be able to stand—and moved to set Maggie down. Gran’s head and the poker were at the fire end. He set Maggie the opposite way, so the poker was away from his head.
‘He’s helping, Gran. Put the poker down,’ Maggie muttered, and he felt her tension ease a little. She was back in familiar territory now, even if it was did seem crazy territory. A tractor museum, roses, roses and more roses, and a poker-waving Gran.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s Dr Ashton,’ Maggie said, flinching as she moved her leg. ‘A doctor. Imagine that. Right when we need him.’
There was a lot to ignore in that statement, too. He released her onto the cushions, aware once again of that weird stab of a sensation he didn’t understand. Something that had nothing to do with a doctor/patient relationship.
Something that had to be ignored at all costs.
‘You do need a doctor, but not me,’ he growled, moving instinctively to load more logs from the wood-box to the fire. Thankfully Gran kept her poker hand to herself. ‘Maggie, you need hospital.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Your baby needs to be checked.’
‘I can’t leave Gran. I’ll put my stethoscope on my tummy and lie here and listen to him,’ she said. ‘That’s all I can do.
‘You have a stethoscope?’ he demanded, while the old lady rubbed her poker longingly, like she might still need it.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a nurse?’
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘A doctor?’
‘They don’t all come in white coats,’ she said bitterly. ‘Or Aston Martins and gorgeous leather jackets.’
‘Maggie, tell me what’s going on.’ Gran was trying again to heave herself to a sitting position, gasping as if breathing hurt, and the fear was still in her voice.
‘Dr Ashton crashed into our truck.’
‘The calves,’ Gran said in horror, but Max was playing triage in his head, and calves were somewhere near the bottom.
Maggie was a doctor. A doctor!
The personal side of him wanted to take that aside and think it through, for all sorts of reasons he didn’t fully understand, but the professional side of him had work to do and wasn’t giving him time to consider. ‘So you’re a doctor,’ he managed. And you have a stethoscope?’
‘The calves are okay, Gran,’ Maggie said, seeming to ignore him. ‘Bonnie’s looking after them.’ Then she turned back to him. ‘Yes, there’s a whole medical kit in the back of the wagon. Enough to cope with anything from typhoid to snakebite.’ She winced again and lay back on the cushions, her hands instinctively returning to her belly. ‘And, yes, I’d appreciate it if you could get my stethoscope.’
He stared at her and she stared back. Defiance and fear mixed.
‘I’ll take you both to hospital,’ he said.
‘Over my dead body,’ the old lady said from the other settee.
‘Mrs Croft?’
‘I’m Betty,’ she snapped.
‘Betty, then,’ he said, and softened his tone. ‘I’m not sure what’s wrong with you…’
‘I’m dying.’
‘So are we all,’ he said without changing his tone. If she wanted histrionics she wasn’t going to get them from him. ‘Some faster than others. I gather you’re ill and I’m sorry. I also know that your granddaughter—’
‘Maggie’s my granddaughter-in-law.’
‘Your granddaughter-in-law, then,’ he said evenly, glancing back at Maggie and knowing he was right. ‘Maggie’s been in an accident and her baby needs to be checked. If the placenta’s damaged, there could be internal bleeding. The only way she can be checked is to have an ultrasound. If she doesn’t have that ultrasound the baby could die, and she could be in trouble herself. Betty, I’m sorry that you’re ill, but it’s true I’m a doctor and I have to sort priorities. Is it right that we risk Maggie’s baby’s life because you won’t go to hospital?’
‘We’re not risking…’ Maggie said, and he turned back to face her. He had to ignore emo
tion here and speak the truth.
‘If you really are a doctor, you know that you really are putting your baby at risk.’
She was torn. He could see it—he saw fear behind her eyes and he knew that she was desperately trying to hide it. Why?
‘We don’t have time to mess around,’ he said. ‘I should have insisted at the start.’
‘I can do an ultrasound,’ she said.
‘What, here?’
‘Not on myself.’ Her voice was suddenly pleading. ‘But there’s everything we need in my car. I know, it’s asking a lot, but if you could help…Gran doesn’t want to go to hospital and neither do I. If I must for my baby’s safety then of course I will, but there’s Angus as well and he’ll be so afraid. So, please, Max, can you do an ultrasound on me here and reassure me that things are okay?’
‘Why will Angus be afraid?’
‘Angus is my son and he’s disabled,’ Gran whispered, as Maggie fell silent. ‘He has Asperger’s syndrome. He’s not…he’s not able to cope with people. It’d kill Angus to leave the farm. He’s the reason I made Maggie come here. She’s promised me she’ll stay and she won’t break that promise. She’s a good girl, our Maggie.’
‘My baby comes first,’ Maggie muttered, looking trapped, and once again he caught that look of utter desolation.
‘Yes, but he’ll be okay and you’ll both look after Angus and the farm,’ Gran said. ‘I know you won’t leave. You’ll keep your word. I know you’ll stay here for ever.’
CHAPTER THREE
THIS was crazy. Worse than crazy, it was dangerous. No, she wouldn’t leave Gran and the unknown Angus, but maybe his responsibility was to pick both women up and take them to hospital regardless.
But he’d have to chain Gran into the car, he thought ruefully. Plus he didn’t know what facilities Gosland hospital had, and the long drive to Sydney was the last thing either of them needed.
But caring for an injured, pregnant woman at home…
And for him personally to have to check her baby…
Max was out on the back veranda, supposedly on his way to fetch Maggie’s gear from the back of her wagon. He’d taken a moment to phone Anton, his anaesthetist, to tell him that their more-than-competent registrar would be needed for the woman coming in with the hysterectomy complications. Now he was staring down at the river winding down to the sea, taking a second to catch his breath. And his thoughts.
City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle / Bachelor Dad, Girl Next Door Page 3
