Chapter Twenty-eight
Maddy
Maddy hugged her baby and the tightness in her throat gradually eased as Alma patted her shoulder. She dared to settle mentally into a safer place along with the sound of sucking. She revelled in the weight and warmth of her daughter in her arms, the strange achy emptiness in her belly, and marvelled at how different her world was from where she’d dwelt yesterday. Pregnant. Petrified. In her own private hell.
She sent another prayer of thankfulness for her baby being alive and well. For being alive and well herself, though the concept of death from labour seemed ridiculous now from the distance of only a few hours and surrounded as she was by those who apparently cared. Like her mother would have cared.
Of course she was designed to give birth. But the whole experience made her think of her mum. What would her mother think? What would she recommend she do?
Maddy watched the tiny rosebud lips work furiously around the teat and admired the perfection of her daughter’s dewy-skinned features. How could something so beautiful, so flawless as this angel with a tiny upturned nose, those rounded cheeks, and dark, dark eyes, be hers? With a frisson of distress she added silently, and be Jacob’s baby as well?
No. Never Jacob’s. She needed to trust in the support of these people she really didn’t know well but would be forever grateful to. She didn’t know where she would go from here because nearly everything she owned was at the house with Jacob, but she would make it work. Her daughter would grow up surrounded by love. A mother’s love. Like her mother had loved her. That she could provide.
An hour and a half later Maddy felt her heart accelerate as they drew up at Jacob’s house. She could feel Alma looking at her and she tried to stay calm. Unclench her hands. Tried not to look as the police van pulled up behind them.
Alma’s voice floated softly, almost a whisper. ‘It’s not just the way he talks, is it?’
Maddy felt her cheeks heat up.
Alma said, ‘He hurts you, doesn’t he, Maddy?’
Maddy cleared her throat. Unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth where the trepidation had dried it. ‘Sometimes I might do things that make him angry.’ The silence between them lay like a wraith. ‘It’s okay, Alma. I know I can’t bring my baby here. Or tell him about her. And I’m never coming back after today.’
‘One day I’ll tell you a story,’ Alma said quietly.
They’d left the baby with the doctor, safe from Jacob finding out. Alma understood a lot without being told.
As they got out she said, ‘Nobody has the right to hurt someone else. You know you don’t ever deserve to be hurt. Let’s get your things. Let him know you are never coming back.’
‘He’s not coming in, is he?’ She inclined her head to the car behind.
Alma glanced at the man with a satisfied look. ‘No. But Sergeant McCabe will come in if we need him to.’
So they went up the path and the door opened and Jacob stood there. Dressed in his monster truck shirt and his work shorts over his plaster. Looking normal. Looking like the man she’d first met. Looking confused and hurt as he stood on one leg with his crutches.
‘What’s all this about?’ Jacob said.
Maddy lifted her chin, darted a glance at his face and then away. ‘I’ve come for my things. I’m moving to the pub.’
His eyes shifted to Alma standing at the front door. He glanced past them to the big policeman sitting in the police vehicle. Sent a look of pure hate and malice Douglas’s way. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
But she knew he did.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Sienna
Around morning tea time, Douglas went out on a call so Sienna closed the door to his house and drove the short way back up to the pub. Alma had ensconced Maddy and her baby in the pub accommodation and Sienna had come back to change her clothes.
‘How’s Maddy?’ she asked Alma.
The old lady didn’t look at her as she polished the bar with her soft rag. ‘Settled now. I’m glad I went with her to see that man of hers,’ Alma said darkly. ‘Nice as pie and all hurt by her leaving – but I recognise the type.’
Sienna had her doubts, too. ‘I met him the other day. Blond guy with crutches. I gather he had some type of accident?’
Alma nodded. ‘In his truck. Drunk at the time. Brought up by his uncle and inherited his business. The uncle wasn’t a good drunk either, nice as pie on a good day, but I don’t think young Jacob was spared the rod. Not the best upbringing and no woman around to soften it.’
Sienna worked out the dynamics. Maddy obviously worked and ran the household while Jacob was trapped, without work, and possibly in pain and frustrated to be disabled by his plaster. And drinking. Not a good mix. ‘What does he do for a job when he isn’t on crutches?’
‘Jacob carts animal livestock. Goes where the load is. A better business in his uncle’s day.’
Something niggled about trucks, but she was more focused on Maddy and the events of the morning. Sienna wasn’t naive, not after the stories she’d heard – sometimes from the women themselves but mostly from the midwives. However, there was something confronting and personal about the Maddy she liked being bullied and hurt by her violent boyfriend. Being damaged!
Sienna remembered clearly the black bruises on Maddy’s pale legs, which she hadn’t mentioned to Alma but was tempted to talk to Douglas about.
She detected the note of angst in Alma’s voice, a personal darkness, as she said, ‘No wonder she didn’t tell anyone about the baby.’ Alma turned away though not before Sienna heard the bitter words. ‘Smart, she is.’
Sienna’s head lifted and she stared at the side of the woman’s face as she looked out the window. Saw that Alma’s usually erect shoulders had bowed with distress and that her hand lay across her mouth as if stopping the words.
‘Alma? What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
Sienna noted the rapid denial. Saw the thin shoulders straighten as her hand fell to her side. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said again. ‘I’ll get on, then.’
Sienna watched her leave the bar and head towards the kitchen, but a feeling of disquiet stayed with her as she walked back upstairs to use her phone in private. Something else had happened there. Something personal to the tiny woman. The raw heartbreak she’d glimpsed twisted inside Sienna in a way it hadn’t since that horrible day a year ago when they’d nearly lost her half-sister, Callie, in a car accident. What was Alma’s tragedy?
Sienna wasn’t so hard-boiled and hard-cased that she couldn’t care for people. But she usually didn’t allow it. Though, the idea of caring deeply for the publican was carrying it all to the point of ridiculous and she ran her hand through her hair as if to rid herself of the notion. Freaking outback towns did her head in.
She glanced out the window to the carpark. She had to find the answer to the babies with microcephaly so she could get the hell out of here and back to where she belonged.
And then, out of nowhere, the nausea hit her and she had to run for the hotel bathroom.
Five minutes later, she leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror, the damp tissue she’d wiped with pressed against her mouth as she slowed her breathing. Strangely, she could smell the paper tissue, a cloggy, harsh scent of paper not normally offensive, but she pulled it away in disgust. What the heck? She glared down at the tissue. What had Alma put in that breakfast? She did not have time to contract hepatitis A.
Ten minutes later she was settled enough to ring Eve.
Her sister answered on the second ring. ‘Diamond Lake
Station.’
‘How come you don’t ring me?’
Eve laughed. ‘Hello, Sienna. How are you? And I don’t ring you because you are currently on a mission and would only wish to speak to me if I could help you.’
Darn. ‘Sad when your sister knows you better than you know yourself.’
‘I know. How’s it all going?’ And then archly, ‘Ho
w’s Douglas.’ Sienna had been about to answer the first question when the second question diverted her. She had no difficulty conjuring the man into her mind space. ‘Douglas is Douglas. Impressive. Annoying.’ She paused as she thought more. ‘Delicious.’ Then heard herself like a mooning cow. Good grief. Hastily she said,
‘But that’s not why I rang.’
‘Okay, but you sound . . .’ Eve hesitated, ‘funny.’
More briskly, as if to disguise her previous silliness, Sienna said, ‘I’ve just brought up my breakfast so feeling food poisoned by the publican, but the call’s not about me. I have a young woman here who free-birthed last night and needs some breastfeeding direction with her new daughter. I wondered if you were up to a trip over this afternoon with the hulk in his helicopter. Just until the clinic nurse can fly in and give some suggestions for attachment. Breastfeeding isn’t my forte if the baby doesn’t instantly get it.’
Concern filtered down the line. ‘Birthed on her own? How many weeks? And how old is the mum?’
‘The baby is small but has most of the characteristics of a term baby, good cartilage in the ears, creases over both soles. So term, though I’m guessing it is less than three kilos. Nobody knew she was pregnant. And the mum’s twenty-one. We’re suspecting DV as the reason she was hiding it.’
Eve’s voice held empathy. ‘Sounds like you need a social worker as well.’
‘Of course.’ Sienna’s brows drew together. Yes, yes, Maddy would get to community services, but at this moment she needed a friend. Or a mother. And she had both in Alma.
‘I think she has support now. But there’s only one of the three women in town who’ve recently birthed living on her station and she’s naturally busy with her microcephalic baby. I don’t want to ask her for advice. And I’d like to get Maddy away before the nasty boyfriend finds out he has access to her for life.’
‘I can understand that.’ There was a pause before Eve said quietly, ‘This baby is fine?’
The penny dropped. ‘No small head if that’s what you’re thinking.’
She heard Eve’s sigh of relief. ‘That’s a good thing, then.’ Eve took a few moments to consider things. ‘Lex isn’t here, but when he returns I’ll run it by him. Can I ring you back?’
Sienna had a sudden realisation of what she’d just asked her sister. Her pregnant sister. To come to a town with a high incidence of congenital abnormality at a dangerous time in her pregnancy.
‘Sure. But you know what?’ She ran through the logistics and shrugged. Had to be done. ‘If you have enough room in your enormous homestead maybe it would be better if I drive over with her instead.’
She considered the option of Lex picking up Maddy and baby in the helicopter by himself and discarded it. ‘We could stay the night. She’d have an obstetrician and a midwife in you and me. What more could she want.’
Eve laughed, though a tiny incredulous note crept into her voice. ‘You’d do that?’
Sienna acknowledged that perhaps her willingness to be inconvenienced could seem out of character. She glanced at her watch. It was early, but it was a hell of a drive. ‘We could be there before dark.’
Eve suggested, ‘Or Lex could fly in and pick her up when he gets home.’
It wasn’t that big a chopper. For some reason Sienna didn’t like it. Surely not because it meant she’d miss out on all the fun and couldn’t go with them? ‘She might not want to put her baby in a helicopter.’
Eve might have thought Sienna’s reasoning slightly off centre. ‘Helicopters are safe. She just had a baby without any help.’
This time Sienna heard herself defending Maddy. ‘I don’t think she expected it so soon. She worked right up until she had it.’
There was another of Eve’s pauses. ‘You sound like you admire her?’ she asked without judgement.
Sienna thought about that. About herself becoming involved when any other time it would be the last thing she would think of. Must be that small-isolated-town syndrome, she knew she could get infected with it if she wasn’t extra careful. She sighed. ‘There’s something about her that makes me appreciate her. Yes.’
‘Then I can’t wait to meet her,’ Eve said, her warm voice reassuring. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Maddy. Or Madison. I guess I’d better find her and ask if she wants to drive half the day with me to a strange woman’s house and learn about breastfeeding.’ Then she thought about the noise explosion on wheels if the baby yelled like it had this morning. ‘Any chance the kid will sleep most of the way?’
‘If you’re lucky, she’s new and they do. If she’s fed once, she could well sleep for up to twelve hours, they often can after birth. But you’ll have to get here before she starts demanding to cluster feed after that.’
Cluster feeding sounded like hell on earth to Sienna. She’d make sure she could hand over to Eve before then.
Chapter Thirty
When Sienna left her room, two groups of tourists were parked at the bar, and she could hear laughter as she walked down the stairs. Alma looked up as she arrived at the bottom. The older lady pretended to tip her peaked cap at her and Sienna smiled. She looked like an old-fashioned ticket collector and the tourists seemed amused as she regaled them with one of her tall stories.
Sienna raised her brows and Alma stared for a minute and then nodded. ‘Number four,’ she said.
Sienna lifted her hand in acknowledgement and climbed back up the stairs as she heard the words ‘Min Min’ drift from the bar.
When she knocked quietly there was a shuffle from inside the room and then the heavy wooden door swung partially open. Maddy’s pale face peered out from behind the protection offered. She sagged a little when she saw Sienna.
‘Come in,’ she said breathily, and stood back to make way. Sienna frowned. ‘You okay?’
‘I thought it was Jacob.’ Her voice shook. ‘Come to find me.’
Sienna felt her heart contract. Nothing had officially been said. Technically, it was all supposition about the domestic violence. ‘If you don’t want him to find you, we can help, Madison. We can all help there.’
Maddy forced her shoulders up. ‘You’ve helped enough already.’
‘We’ll see.’ She glanced across the room at the sleeping baby. ‘Has she tried the breast yet? Has she woken for the next feed?’
‘Not since we gave her that bottle.’
‘And you’re okay? Not bleeding too much? Going to the toilet okay?’
Maddy blushed and looked down at the floor. ‘Yes. All of those.’
Sienna smiled at the bent head. ‘And just checking, no pressure, do you still want to breastfeed? Or are you happy with the bottle?’
Maddy lifted her head and more fiercely than she expected said, ‘I always assumed I’d breastfeed if I had a baby.’
Sienna smiled. ‘Okay, then. I have an idea. My sister is a pretty awesome midwife. She lives at Diamond Lake Station, about six hours from here, and she’s offered to be your mothercraft nurse for a day or two. I was thinking of staying the night over there tonight and wondered if you’d like to come and maybe pick up a few hints from her about the feeding and baby stuff. You don’t have to, but she’s offered their hospitality. Could save you flying out with the RFDS.’
Maddy had a strange look on her face and Sienna stopped and raised her brows in question? ‘No?’
Maddy seemed to shake herself. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t quite believe it. I’ve been sitting here worrying about how I could get away for a little while just to get my head sorted without having to worry that Jacob was going to swing in here with his crutches at any moment.’ A shy smile crossed her face. ‘And you offer that!’
Sienna nodded. ‘A six-hour trip in a car with a newborn sounds good?’ They were both mad. But needs must. ‘So, yes?’
Maddy nodded vehemently. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Next problem. We’ll have to find a baby capsule or Douglas will pull me up and fine me.’
Maddy laughed a touch hysteri
cally, and Sienna couldn’t blame her. But she sobered fast. ‘Alma mentioned there’s a second-hand one for sale in the shop.’
‘God bless Alma.’
‘Amen,’ said Maddy cheekily, and they grinned at each other. Then on a less exuberant note Maddy said forlornly, ‘At least my bag is packed.’
Sienna glanced at her but didn’t comment. That would be a discussion for the car. ‘I’d better go pack one of mine.’ She turned back as she headed for the door. ‘I’ll ask Alma to come up for a minute and you can sort logistics with her.’
Thirty minutes into the drive with the sun at their backs Sienna decided it was time to out the elephant in the car. She sorted the variation of standard domestic violence screening questions in her head and came up with a shortened version. ‘It sounds like sometimes you could be frightened of Jacob?’
Sienna kept her eyes on the road yet she felt the girl’s shock. She didn’t say anything else. Just waited. It was Maddy’s choice to disclose if she needed to.
Finally, she said, ‘Sometimes.’
‘Was that a factor when you didn’t tell anyone about your pregnancy?’
‘Yes,’ she replied in a smaller voice.
Sienna let that sit for a minute. Then in a matter-of-fact tone she said, ‘My car’s a safe place, Maddy.’ She looked at the girl. ‘We’re speeding away from Spinifex and not even Douglas could catch us. Let alone a bloke with crutches.’
Maddy’s shoulders did relax a smidge, and mindful of the precious cargo in the back Sienna remembered to reduce her speed from just over to just under the speed limit.
‘I’m not going to judge you. I’m not even going to judge Jacob because I don’t know enough. But you need to feel safe in speaking to me. If it helps I can tell you that I do have patients from difficult home lives and I want to help.’
Still no comment. Sienna tried again. ‘When I knocked on your room in the pub today,’ she paused and looked quickly at the girl and then back to the road, ‘I had the impression you still didn’t feel safe, even though Alma was downstairs.’
The Baby Doctor Page 17
