The Baby Doctor

by Fiona McArthur

  ‘I’m gonna find myself a nice beach, I’ve had enough of the dust and drought, and the heat. This new place will have all the mod cons, and I’ll settle there. I’ve a decent nest egg. Had a couple of good wins on the GGs and I invested. If things go the way I hope, if she’ll come, I’d like Maddy and the baby to live with me. Get her some education that she can use for work. Until she finds herself a real man. One who treats her like she should be treated. Or even if she wants to be a single mum.’

  Alma’s dream expanded as she thought more about it. ‘Maybe she could do some study and I could mind the baby while she decided what to do with that brain of hers. Even if it’s a correspondence course she wants to do at first. I can be the family support she hasn’t had since her mother died. That girl needs a champion. Make something good out of something that happened to me that’s been eating at me for years.’

  Alma bowed her head and felt that deep well of sadness shrinking her soul again like it always did when she thought of her Pearl. But this time, maybe, she could change history if she could find a place of safety for young Maddy and her young’un; there lay a tiny glimmer of hope for the future. Clear as if it was yesterday, she remembered her own baby’s sweet sunbeam smile.

  Something touched her. She lifted her head from her hands and realised that Sienna had moved to stand beside her, had put her cool hand out to rest on her arm. Long white fingers against the brown of her own wrinkled skin. She could feel the empathy from someone she hadn’t expected it from, not pity, thank God, she’d given herself enough of that over the years, but honest understanding from someone she hadn’t predicted had it in her.

  ‘Tell me what makes you so sad, Alma?’

  Alma sniffed. ‘It’s a tragic story from too long ago. You don’t need to hear it.’

  She saw Sienna glance through into the hall, where the door stayed shut to her office. ‘Who knows how long he’ll be in there.’ She pretended to shrug. ‘I can’t do anything else until I have my office back.’

  ‘Kill the time with my tragedy, eh?’ She tried to smile, to make it all seem as if it were nothing this woman needed to put her big brain to. But it didn’t work. She saw a bit of the terrier Blanche Mackay had described in Sienna when she’d told Alma to look after her. The one who would find out why the babies had been born that way.

  Sienna said, ‘Not killing time. Just saying that you are the most important person to listen to at this moment.’

  Alma heard the emphasis on the ‘you’ and couldn’t remember the last time someone had said she was the important one.

  Sienna went on, ‘Everything else can wait. Tell me, Alma.’

  Alma tried to speak, but someone had stolen her voice. Her thick throat just wouldn’t let any words through.

  Maybe the doctor understood because she said, ‘I’m barred from my desk until Art the professor gets through his calls, so how about we have a cup of tea with those eggs and then you tell me.’

  Alma swallowed and studied the bewildering kindness in the woman’s eyes for a moment, and saw with surprise how much Sienna did want to know what lay in Alma’s past that made her so sad. Maybe she could tell her. She was a doctor, wasn’t she? Guess she heard lots of things behind those consulting-room doors.

  For good measure Sienna said, ‘Please.’

  Humph. ‘Out with the dirty laundry, you reckon,’ she said almost under her breath, but the doctor heard and nodded. Maybe it was time. She’d stewed on it for thirty years. Had never even told her friend Shirl about Pearl. Just that she’d run away from a violent man.

  ‘You make the tea, then,’ Alma said and Sienna moved quickly to obey before Alma changed her mind. Fastest she’d ever seen her move. Double Humph.

  After the eggs on toast, which tasted like some of those mine tailings you’d see outside a prospector’s site because food soured when she thought of him, Alma tried to put off the moment. She poked at the eggs she didn’t want, not knowing if she had the energy to tell her story as she set down her knife and fork and sat back.

  Sienna poured her a strong tea, jiggling the pot up and down until it was black like the tar on the road. Just how Alma liked it. Funny, she hadn’t realised Sienna had noticed that with the few times they’d shared a pot in the pub.

  She’d always given Sienna hers first – city people usually liked it weak – but she hadn’t realised that the doctor had cared enough to wonder how Alma liked hers. It was that tiny human acknowledgement that allowed her the decision to share. Though she didn’t make a move to touch the cup.

  She sighed. ‘I married a man like young Maddy’s man, once. A long time ago. Thought he was the ant’s pants until I found out how wrong I was. The pretty ones seem to have a head start because you think you’re so lucky to get them until it’s too late. And living like that you never forget how it was.’

  She shook her head. ‘I used to wear long shirts and long trousers to hide the bruises. Maddy’s never told me, but I was gonna ask soon.’ Alma remembered the silent winces, the stiffness and pain. ‘You never see it on the face with those smiling mean ones.’

  ‘I’ve seen the bruises,’ Sienna said very quietly, and Alma felt her anger rise like one of those hot springs did at the artesian bore pools. She knew it! Bubbling, hot, stinking with rage. She should have asked.

  Alma shook her head again. ‘I’ve been watching her. I think it’s been getting worse. I’ve been waiting for her to tell me – so I could help. I waited too long, didn’t I?’ she said, looking up.

  ‘She didn’t ask,’ Sienna said.

  Comfort words. That’s what they were. Alma knew. She’d waited too long. ‘I shoulda asked. I know how hard it is to ask for help. How they twist your mind and kill your free thought. How useless and powerless and,’ she paused and searched for the word, grimaced when she found it, ‘guilty you feel that they have to punish you because you can’t seem to get anything right.’

  She saw the wince on Sienna’s face and laughed bitterly. But that wasn’t the worst. ‘The worst,’ she paused. Swallowed the lump that seemed to sit in her chest like a piece of that rubble from the hotel up the street she used to call home. ‘Was I had a baby to him.’

  ‘A baby? You have a son or daughter?’ Sienna’s voice drifted softly across the table, when Alma’s breath hitched and she stopped talking.

  Alma could see her baby in her dreams every night. Hear her if she listened real hard to the wind as she lay alone in her bed in the dark. Smell her baby scent every time she used that sunlight laundry soap. ‘A daughter. Pearl.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Sienna’s voice was hesitant. As if she suspected what was coming. The cruellest thing was Alma knew what was coming and her throat creaked like a rusty hinge with the untold secrets from so many years ago. Nothing hurt as much as when you’d held the still warm yet lifeless body of your baby daughter in your arms.

  ‘She was buried in a pauper’s grave out west of Wilcannia.’ The words lay on the table cold and congealed, like the remains of Alma’s eggs. It was enough to make you want to puke. She glanced up at a sound. It looked like the doctor wanted to as well. She had her hand over her mouth and her pretty blue eyes were wide with distress.

  Sienna drew in a breath. ‘Oh Alma. I’m so sorry. What happened?’

  Alma lifted her chin. Remembered. ‘She was a beautiful baby.

  Sienna was nodding. ‘I have no doubt. How did you lose her?’

  Yes. She had lost her. Lost her to stupidity and cowardice. The memories were as stark and real as they had ever been. She could feel the heat from the afternoon. The dry furnace heat of a Wilcannia summer. His temper had been fraying all day with the heat. And the beer that he’d wanted and they couldn’t afford. She’d fed Pearl again, to stop her fretting, him saying Shut her up or I’ll shut her up, and that had been the first time Alma had thought of leaving.

  Her voice came thin and distant. Like someone else’s voice, not her own. ‘She’d gone to sleep, her angelic face pink with the temp
erature in the house.’ She looked up at Sienna fiercely. ‘I remember tucking that thin sheet around her, to stop her moving and waking herself in the cot, but no blanket on top so she wouldn’t get too hot.’

  Sienna nodded. Then she looked through Sienna to the pain beyond. ‘I left her with him when I shouldn’t have. Hung out the washing after tucking her into bed, and she “fell” onto her head so forcefully she died.’

  Sienna’s teacup clattered back onto the saucer and the noise made them both jump. Sienna put one hand on her throat and the other hand over the top of the cup to stop it rattling. ‘Oh, Alma.’

  Alma’s voice seemed to drift from a long way away. So long ago, though it was as if it had happened yesterday, the remembered grief so raw and etched with the bitterness of her own stupidity. Alma blinked away the sting.

  She lifted her head again, refocusing on the room for a moment. ‘I waited so long to have a baby.’ Her voice croaked and she cleared her throat. ‘He always said wait. One day. I thought her birth would change him. Help our relationship. Make us a proper family.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was afraid of what would happen.’ She clenched her fists. ‘I should have left him before the birth. Or hidden my baby like Maddy did.’ Her face screwed up with that vicious bitterness against herself. Against her timidity. ‘I was too much of a coward and it cost my child’s life.’

  This time Sienna’s voice snapped with authority. ‘You are not a coward. He was a monster. Did they charge him?’

  Alma sighed. Charging him wouldn’t bring back her Pearl. Her skin had been so beautiful. Like a pearl. That was why Alma had named her that. ‘No. They never could prove he did it. He said I left her on the change table when I knew I’d tucked her into her crib. It was my word against his. But I always tucked her away from him. The town believed him. I never judged anyone else after that. People don’t always get the truth right.’

  Alma turned her wrinkled cheek to hide the tears and looked into the empty hallway, seeing another time. Another house in another place. A tragedy too long ago.

  She drew in a shuddering breath. Lifted her chin. Sought Sienna’s eyes until she could look right into them. ‘Did you know women are most likely to be attacked in a domestic violence situation when they’re pregnant?’

  Sienna nodded. ‘I’ve read that but I didn’t “know” it until now.’

  Alma took a shaky sip of her tea, almost spilling the contents of the cup. ‘So you see, if I could help Maddy be free of that man, and she can keep her baby safe, my Pearl would not have died in vain.’

  Chapter Forty-two

  Sienna

  Sienna sat back, the air knocked out of her by Alma’s tale. Sienna had always prided herself on her intellect. Her ability to stand on her own feet and grow her career, achieve new goals and be the savvy, consultant obstetrician that hospitals vied for.

  She’d had it easy and it tasted bitter in her mouth at this moment. She looked across at Alma and didn’t see the tiny wizened firecracker she’d first seen. After today, she’d see a woman who had suffered, been beaten and the victim of the cruellest crime in the world, the malicious death of her infant daughter, and yet this woman had survived!

  Sienna wasn’t sure she would have survived all that. Hell, she’d bitched and moaned about her parents not living together, but at least they’d both loved her. And now Douglas. She’d complained about falling for a man who didn’t want to live where she lived, and whined about an unexpected pregnancy. It was pathetic really.

  Not only had Alma suffered the most devastating loss a mother could suffer, the man responsible had shifted the blame to her, had never been punished by the law, and she’d had to live with that. Yet, she’d also lifted herself away from the tragedy, had started a new life, until she’d come from being reliant on a monster to owning her own hotel in an outback town.

  Yesterday crashed back. Of course, now, it had all been taken away from her by another violent man and she’d almost lost her life at the same time. No wonder she’d said she almost wished Douglas hadn’t saved her.

  Yet, Sienna could see how now, Alma’s focus sat firmly in helping Maddy. Cynically, Sienna could only wonder if Alma should run as fast as she could away from the chance of being associated with another violent man. Jacob might go to jail, but he’d get out someday and Alma could be embroiled in heartbreak all over again. That thought didn’t bear thinking about.

  She glanced at the clock. Art had still not appeared, and Sienna took a sip of her own tea to ease the ache of thick emotion in her throat as she swallowed. Oh, Alma. And to think that Maddy had been travelling down that same perilous road clutching her pregnant belly silently in fear.

  And Eve, her good-to-everyone sister, praying her baby wouldn’t be affected by the bloody snake bite. And the three mothers of the babies living for the rest of their lives with the effects of a misplaced source of radiation. So tragically unfair. All of it.

  Sienna sat, aware of her own pregnancy, one she had lamented as it grew within her, and squirmed with shame that she hadn’t cherished the gift she’d created with a man she finally admitted she loved, probably from the first moment.

  Guess she’d have to figure out how to make her blessings work.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Maddy

  The excitement of Madison’s first flight in a helicopter from Diamond Lake to Spinifex plummeted as they flew over the ruins of the pub before they landed. Thin tendrils of blue smoke still drifted from the charred rubble and a hollow horror sat like a stone in Maddy’s chest as they landed.

  An hour later she walked with Alma to the site of the devastation and she wished she’d brought her daughter with her to hug instead of leaving her with Lily at the police residence. She could have done with the warmth of that small body and the comfort she gave. ‘I’m so sorry about your hotel, Alma.’

  They stood looking at the scorched remains, breathing in acrid residues of smoke and visual reality of the tangled wreckage, and the whole scene made Maddy’s throat close. If Alma hadn’t befriended her this would never have happened.

  Alma sighed. ‘It’s done. Sad but true and not the end of the world. She was a great lady, but she’s great piles of rubble now.’ She stared at the burnt and buckled remnants of the once-grand stairway. ‘I did love those stairs and that beautiful banister. Real shiny it was. Never did slide down it. I should have.’

  There was no shine to what was left of the banister now. Through her sadness, Maddy felt the flicker of a smile rise fleetingly at the mental image of Alma flying down the sweep of mahogany with her peaked bookie’s cap on.

  ‘I’d have liked to see that. Maybe I could have tried it, too.’

  Alma straightened her cap. ‘Well. Next time we see one we’ll just have to do it.’

  ‘You’re on,’ Maddy said, and wanted to hug the old lady but wasn’t sure if she could. She settled for a small sympathetic pat of Alma’s arm.

  They stared for another moment at the blackened wood that lay where once walls and the grand staircase has resided. A few hanging steps led to the gaping holes in the perilously balanced sections of remaining roof. There’d be no poking around in there until the roof had been demolished. It wouldn’t even be possible for Alma to search for any of her smaller possessions, or have a final pat of Maestro.

  ‘Let’s get on.’ Alma turned away first. ‘Lucky I wasn’t one of them women who kept her money under the mattress or I’d be broke as well.’

  Maddy thought about that. About how she kept her small savings tucked in her backpack. She should open a bank account. She had a daughter now. Maybe save up for life insurance. There were so many things she had to think about.

  ‘I really do appreciate you coming with me to the house,’ Maddy said. But even with Alma’s presence there was an awful tightness in her throat as Jacob’s empty house came into view.

  ‘You just pack the rest of your things and be shot of this place now that he’s done a runner. He won’t show his face back in
Spinifex.’

  As they drew closer, Maddy could feel her heart begin to thump in her chest. She really didn’t want to show her face back in Spinifex either. She doubted she’d ever feel safe showing off her daughter around here. Hence the reason she’d left her with Lily and Sienna.

  Alma stopped walking. ‘You know I’m moving on. Gonna find a new place to live out my days. Thought I might go to the seaside.’

  Maddy stopped as well and turned towards her. Alma seemed to be waiting for something. ‘I think that sounds wonderful.’

  ‘Good.’ Alma nodded her head decisively. ‘Want some company though and wondered if you and Bridget might like to come live with me for a while. Till you find your feet?’

  It was a gruff offer. Almost an embarrassed one. Maddy couldn’t believe Alma wanted her to join her. That this was a genuine offer of a new life.

  Her throat prickled at the enormity of this woman’s forgiveness. Maddy’s association with Jacob had caused so much pain and loss for Alma. She couldn’t grasp it. Dared not. ‘Me? And Bee? Live with you?’

  ‘Yeah, well. Just until you get a better offer.’

  Maddy threw her arms around the old lady and hugged her fiercely, fighting back the tears. Alma would hate tears. ‘If you’re sure. I’m not sure why you would. But yes, please. We’d love to. Can’t think of a better offer. Ever.’

  Alma grunted, but Maddy could tell that she was pleased. ‘Get your stuff and we’ll work it out.’

  Chapter Forty-four

  Sienna

  Sienna pulled out the typed timeline of the affected pregnancies. Looked across at Blanche, who had flown in with Maddy and her baby.

  ‘The problem for the babies was radiation exposure. At fifteen weeks’ gestation. That’s the most likely cause of the microcephaly cluster in Spinifex. The company will be prosecuted and the women compensated.’ Her voice came out quietly, but Sienna might have shouted it for the effect it had on Blanche. The older woman paled and put her hand on the desk to steady herself even though she was already seated.