‘That’s what these guys here say I resemble. An elephant with sunflowers. Elegance-R-Us.’
‘You look cute,’ he said lamely, and the lifesavers looked at him like he was a sandwich short of a picnic. Which maybe he was. Cute didn’t cut it.
Sexy did, though.
‘I don’t think anything this big can be classified as cute,’ Maggie retorted. ‘But I’m going for whale rather than the elephant. A cute little sexy mama whale. You say I’m cute? The guys here say I’m sexy. I say I’m just enormous.’ She twirled around, full circle, grinned and unwrapped herself, then proffered her towel. ‘Meanwhile, would you like to borrow this? You need to dry yourself or you’ll get cold.’ And before he could stop her she’d handed her over her sunflowers.
He was dripping. He had no other towel, so it’d be churlish to refuse.
But her towel smelled of her. There it was again, that faint citrusy thing, mixed now with the salt from the sea. She must use it in her washing powder, he thought. Or maybe it was just Maggie. Maggie exuding lemons and limes, tangy, clean and beautiful.
She was smiling happily at him as if she was really pleased he’d dropped by, and she was really pleased that he’d seemed to enjoy the swim she’d persuaded him to take.
Yep, beautiful. And sexy. And cute. The whole lot wrapped together.
But she was reaching into her bag, fetching out a sarong and wrapping it round herself. Sliding her toes into sandals. Preparing to leave.
‘That was wonderful,’ she said. ‘It was great to see you again, Max, but it is getting cold. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.’
So there it was. He’d been dismissed. His duty was done; he could leave.
‘You’re not going to ask me back to your place for a drink?’ he said before he could stop himself, and she looked him up and down, appraisingly.
‘Risky,’ she said.
‘Risky why?’
‘You know why.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘And I’d rather not drive back to my place covered in sand. Your apartment’s just over the road. It was your concierge who told me where to find you.’
That was what his mouth was saying. Was he out of his mind? He needed to leave, yet here he was, arguing.
Something was driving his tongue that wasn’t his head.
‘You’d be second in line to the shower,’ she said cautiously. ‘It’s my shower. I get to go first.’
‘Deal,’ he said, and that was that. The lifesavers looked almost disappointed as Maggie turned to them and waved.
‘See you tomorrow, Craig, Simon,’ she said happily.
‘Unless you’re in hospital tomorrow,’ one of the men said, and for a moment a shadow flitted across Maggie’s face.
Was she worried about it, then? The birth?
Of course she would be. How many pregnant women had Max cared for? Every single one of them worried.
But Maggie was putting on a cheerful front and he watched her deliberately put the shadows aside. ‘I’m not due for a week,’ she told them. ‘And first babies are always late. I’m guessing there’s two more swimming weeks to go.’
‘Well, good luck if there’s not,’ the same guy said. ‘And let us know what happens. We’re starting to feel like we know your daughter already.’
They walked up the beach together, slowly. Max had tugged on his clothes but he still felt…different.
Maggie had introduced the lifesavers to her daughter. She’d made them her friends. This woman could make friends with anyone.
She was beautiful. The word was echoing over and over in his mind. She had the sunflowers draped over her shoulders. She was a huge blue and yellow whale.
Gorgeous!
‘I wouldn’t mind an ice cream,’ she ventured as they neared the street, so Max bought two ice creams and in silent consent they sat on a park bench and ate them.
She was a very neat ice-cream eater, Max noted. Methodical. Cute.
‘And you’re a biter,’ Maggie told him, and he stared.
‘Pardon?’
‘You bite your ice cream. I’ve never been able to figure why people do that. You risk freezing your insides. Licking’s much more sensible.’
‘How did you know what I was thinking?’
‘I just know,’ she said smugly and then relented as she saw his look of bewilderment. ‘You have a very readable face.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘My pleasure. I practise reading people’s faces,’ she explained. ‘So much more dependable than palm-reading—and I like doing it.’
‘I don’t like you doing it.’
‘Whatever,’ she said happily. ‘But biting ice-cream cones is nuts. You’ve finished already, and mine’s only quarter way down. So…do you always take your pleasures this fast?’
She eyed him sideways, her eyes twinkling, deliberately appraising, deliberately teasing, and he felt himself respond—maybe exactly how she hoped he’d respond. Trying not to blush like a schoolboy!
First the boxers, now this. She was enjoying herself at his expense.
He’d found her expecting her to be lonely, maybe anxious, maybe depressed. Maybe she was all those things, but she was making a good job of hiding it.
‘When did you last have an antenatal check?’ he demanded, trying to get back to sounding businesslike, but instead sounding like he was feeling, out of his depth and flailing.
‘Yesterday—Doctor,’ she said, raising her brows, still laughing. Still teasing. ‘I’m being very good.’
She had him off balance and she knew it. All he could do was flounder on. ‘So what did he say?’
‘She. A lovely obstetrician called Helen.’ She says my baby’s head’s not engaged yet so I could be at least a week.’
‘So what are you doing with yourself?’
‘Reading,’ she said, and looked virtuous. ‘Reading, reading, reading. And no—Doctor—not a romance or a thriller or even a trashy magazine. Medical journals. If I’m going to be a family doctor I’m going to be a good one. Did you know bed bugs are on the rise?’
‘Bed bugs,’ he said faintly.
‘World travel’s getting so common that the little pests are spreading,’ she said. ‘Apparently, if a patient comes in covered in red welts I should check if they’ve been in a hotel recently. And if a local hotel gets infected then there’s a whole list of things that need to be done. I’ve been reading Health Department Guidelines. As district medical officer—that’s me now—I need to know what to look for. Did you know they hide in the seams of mattresses during the day? And you can’t just spray the place with an insecticide bomb and move on either. There’s serious health implications. I need to know what to do—and I get to close the place down if they won’t comply.’
‘Really,’ he said faintly.
‘Really,’ she said, sounding reproving. ‘And don’t sound dismissive. You get bitten by bed bugs and you’ll be the first to complain to the local health officer. There’s so much to learn.’
‘I see there is.’
‘Don’t belittle it,’ she said, even more reproving, and stood up. He looked up at her—wrapped in her sarong and towel, balancing her ice-cream cone—and thought there was no way he could belittle this woman.
And suddenly the focus was no longer on bed bugs. Or ice creams. Or even mischief and teasing. Suddenly he didn’t know where to go from here.
‘Look, I’d better go,’ she said, as he rose to stand beside her. ‘That shower…Maybe it’s not a good idea.’
‘Maybe it’s not.’ What was going on here?
But he knew. What he was feeling was an irresistible attraction to a woman who represented everything he didn’t want. Commitment. Giving himself. Emotional entanglement.
Everything he didn’t want?
How many doctors did he know that’d take bed bugs on as a commitment? But he knew that Maggie would take on everything she cared about as a commitment.
The farm. Angus. The community of Yandilagong.
Him?
See, there it was. He looked down into her eyes and thought he could read her. If he wanted her…
He did want her.
No. To leap into that abyss…
‘Maggie…’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You don’t really want…what’s between us. Not now, maybe not ever. It’s better you go.’
‘John wants me to keep checking.’
‘You can ring me at the hotel. John can ring himself if he wants. Come to think of it, he does already, so you needn’t bother.’
‘Is there anything at all that you need?’
‘No.’
‘So that’s it, then.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and turned away.
And then…
They were standing near where pedestrians were streaming over the road from the beach-side park to the shops beyond.
The traffic lights across to the shops didn’t appear to be working. At some subconscious level while they’d been eating their ice creams Max had been conscious of confusion, cars slowing, honking at each other, pedestrians scurrying between cars.
The car came from nowhere, overtaking others that had slowed to a crawl. Its tyres were screeching into acceleration where others were braking. It was bearing straight down on the intersection like there was no question it had right of way. It was travelling way beyond the speed limit, a crazy speed, even if people weren’t there.
Only, of course, people were there. Families were leaving the park. Tourists were holding ice creams and cameras, chatting to each other as they headed to the shops. A couple of office workers, their suits at odds with the casual crowd, looked like they were heading home. A young mother was pushing a stroller.
All were frozen by the noise of a car out of control.
There was no time for screaming. Just the roar of the car’s engine.
It didn’t even slow. It came straight through.
There was a flash of yellow, a sickening thump, a crash of breaking glass. A body flew high, above the car’s bonnet. All the way over.
It crumpled to nothing on the road behind.
The car didn’t pause; indeed, the scream of its engine increased. The bright yellow motor with huge wheels and about a dozen exhaust pipes behind simply kept right on accelerating, screaming along the esplanade, through the next set of lights—also not lit—around the corner, up the hill and out of sight.
Leaving behind mayhem.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR a moment nobody moved. It was like some sort of Greek tragedy—players turned to statues where they stood.
Then someone screamed, and Max was gone from Maggie’s side in an instant.
She hardly saw him go. He was simply no longer with her, and by the time she could take in the enormity of what had happened—what was still happening—he was crouching by a body crumpled on the roadway.
Dear God, it was a child.
She dropped her ice cream and her bag and ran.
Triage. Max was with the child. What else?
No one else seemed to have been hit. Or maybe there had.
Yes, there was another. A woman was standing in the middle of the road, behind a stroller, staring numbly at the child who was now more than ten yards away from her.
Maggie’s eyes dropped from her face and saw her arm, which was streaming with blood. Far, far too much blood.
Maggie was with her in a heartbeat, seizing her hand and raising it above her head.
‘Sit,’ she said, and the woman looked wildly toward the child Max was tending.
‘No. I…’
‘Help me,’ Maggie said harshly to a kid standing by—a teenager with green-spiked hair and a T-shirt with a message that was shocking. If she was in the mood to be shocked. She wasn’t.
‘Give me your shirt,’ she said, and to the kid’s enormous credit he peeled it off almost before she’d finished saying the words.
‘Help me sit her down,’ she said, and the kid took the woman’s good hand and Maggie gently pressured the woman to sit. And then, as she sagged, to lie down.
Her arm was gushing, blood pumping out at a rate that was terrifying. Maggie had it still in the air. She grasped one of the kid’s hands and placed it on the woman’s wrist so he was holding her arm up. ‘Hold it high,’ she snapped, ‘Keep it there.’ She was twisting his T-shirt into a tie, twisting, twisting.
‘Grace…’ the woman managed.
‘I’m a doctor,’ Maggie said as she wound the T-shirt round her upper arm. ‘There’s two of us here. Dr Ashton’s looking after Grace while I look after you. I need to stop your arm bleeding before you can go to her.’
It sounded simple. Stop the bleeding. Stopping a gushing artery was an almost impossible ask.
She’d do it. She had the twirled T-shirt right round the woman’s arm now and was twisting it cruelly. The woman cried out in pain.
‘Ambulance!’
To Maggie’s astonishment—and relief—the kid—Spike?—was holding his cellphone with his spare hand, barking orders. The kid looked all of about fifteen, yet he was acting with the responsibility of a trained paramedic. ‘Esplanade, Coogee. Traffic accident. Two hurt, bad. Bleeding all over the place. Get here fast!’
‘I’m going to be sick,’ someone moaned faintly behind them. The kid turned and snapped, ‘Get away from us before you do, then. And give us your cardigan. We need a pillow.’
‘Great,’ she said, as someone else handed over a jacket—not the woman who was threatening to vomit but it didn’t matter who gave it, as long as they had it. ‘Keep that hand raised.’
‘Got it,’ the kid said—and not for the first time Maggie thought how impossible it was to predict from any group of people who could be called on to help.
Who was helping Max?
Did he need her?
She couldn’t look. Not yet.
The bleeding was slowing. Thank God. Heaven only knew how much blood the woman had lost in those first seconds—her arm had been ripped almost from elbow to wrist and spilled blood was impossible to quantify—but the bleeding was easing now to almost nothing.
‘I need another shirt,’ she yelled back into the crowd, and someone handed one over. ‘And a towel.’ She’d dropped hers and there was no time to return to the side of the road to fetch it. But someone handed one over.
In seconds she’d fashioned a pad to fit over the whole wound. She placed it on, then wrapped it tightly with the shirt, using the sleeves to tie and tie again.
She now had a tourniquet and pressure on the wound itself, and Spike was still holding the arm high.
‘Grace,’ the woman moaned again, and finally Maggie let herself glance across to Max.
He was working furiously. Alone. No one had moved to help him. There was a gathering crowd of onlookers but that was all they were. Onlookers.
She had Spike to help her, and the woman’s bleeding was controlled. Triage said she had to move on.
‘Can you tell me your name?’ she asked, and the woman’s pain-filled eyes stared up at her like she didn’t hear.
‘Your name,’ she said again, softly but urgently, and put her hand fleetingly on her cheek. ‘It’s okay. Spike and I have stopped your arm bleeding. You’re going to be okay. But I need your name.’
‘J-Judith.’
‘The little girl—she’s yours?’
‘I…Yes. Thomas is in the stroller. Grace is…Grace is…’
‘Dr Ashton’s looking after Grace,’ Maggie told her. ‘He’s good. He’ll take good care of her. I’ll go now and see how she is.’
‘Thomas…’
‘Thomas is fine.’ She looked around her at the onlookers. Met the eye of an elderly woman who was looking shocked, but was already turning away as if she was about to leave. That was what sensible people did at the scene of an accident. If they couldn’t help, they left.
She wanted sensible.
‘Can you help with the baby in the stroller?’ she called and the woman paused and pointed to h
erself.
‘Me?’
‘Please. What’s your name?’
‘Mary. I know these people,’ she ventured. ‘They live near me.’
‘Great.’ She motioned her to come close, so Judith could see how comfortingly grandmotherly she looked. ‘Judith, Mary’s one of your neighbours and she’ll be looking after Thomas. Spike here is holding your arm up until the ambulance arrives, so it doesn’t start bleeding again. You’re going to be fine. I need to help Dr Ashton with Grace. If you promise to stay still then there’ll be two doctors looking after Grace.’
‘Go,’ the woman whispered without hesitation. ‘Go.’
He heard her in the background and he blessed her for it. He’d never questioned her competence, but now…She was skilled and she was fast and she was sure. People jumped when she said jump, recognising her natural authority even if she was nine months pregnant, covered with sand and dressed in a bright yellow sarong.
There was so much blood…The woman Maggie was working on must have torn an artery but he couldn’t help her. He had urgent work to do himself.
Vaguely he heard the voices in the background, the woman’s voice naming her children. The blonde-ringletted child under his hands was dressed endearingly in a pink tutu over a bathing costume stained with rainbow ice cream. She was called Grace?
She was conscious. Just. Considering the force with which she’d hit the road, consciousness was a miracle. But like her mother, there was far too much blood. From her leg. Torn femoral artery? It must be.
He’d ripped his shirt—he was getting good at this!—and was twisting a tourniquet. Slowing the bleeding. Her leg was twisted at an appalling angle. There was a gash across her abdomen, bleeding sluggishly, and the bitumen had ripped her skin like sandpaper. Her tutu was bright with blood.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ he murmured as he worked, and she gazed up at him in pain and confusion and shock. ‘It’s okay. The car hurt your leg. I’m a doctor and I need to fix it.’
‘M-Mummy…’
And then her eyes rolled back in her head. Her tiny body was suddenly limp.
No!
Blood loss. Haemorrhagic shock.
He dropped the shirt-cum-tourniquet he was working on and moved to cup her face in his hands. Breathed. Hit her chest.
City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle / Bachelor Dad, Girl Next Door Page 11
