But this was Grace and he hugged her to him, although he knew he had to do as the man had said—had to put her down to save her life.
He dropped to his knees and gently laid her on the tarred surface of the road, seeing sharp gravel from the recent resurfacing—little stones that would dig into her skin.
That’s when he knew, with gut-wrenching certainty, that it wasn’t physical attraction—right then when he was thinking about sharp gravel pressing into Grace’s skin …
CHAPTER TEN
THE two paramedics took over, moving him aside with kind firm hands, clearing her airway, forcing air into her lungs, breathing for her, then waiting, then breathing again.
No chest compressions, which meant her heart was beating, but somehow registering this information failed to make Harry feel any better.
He loved her?
The concept was so mind-blowing he had to keep repeating it to himself in the hope the three words would eventually become a statement, not an incredulous question.
Was it too late?
He watched the two men work, saw oxygen delivered through bag pressure and a needle being inserted into the back of her hand. But mostly he just watched her face, the skin so pale it took on a bluish hue, her freckles dark against it.
One day he’d kiss each freckle, and with each kiss repeat, ‘I love you.’ He’d make up for all the time they’d lost, he’d—
Sport abandoned his paramour and puppies and came to press against him. Harry dug his fingers into the dog’s rough coat, despair crowding his senses as he looked into the animal’s liquid brown eyes and made silent promises he hoped he’d have the opportunity to keep.
‘We’re moving her now,’ one of the paramedics said, and together they lifted Grace onto a stretcher, raised it to wheeling height, then ran with it towards their ambulance.
Running? Did running mean the situation was even more disastrous than he imagined?
Harry followed at a jog, cursing himself now that he’d sat communing with his dog, now loping unsteadily beside him, when he should have been asking questions about Grace’s condition.
‘What do you think?’ he demanded, arriving at the ambulance as the driver was shutting the back door.
‘She’s breathing on her own—although we’re still assisting her—and her heart rate’s OK, but she’s unconscious so obviously she hit her head somewhere underwater. There’ll be water in her lungs, and she’ll have swallowed it as well, so all we can do is get her into hospital and pump antibiotics into her and hope the concussion resolves itself.’
Totally unsatisfactory, especially that last bit, Harry thought as he drove to the hospital behind the ambulance. His radio was chattering non-stop and he really should return to the meeting, but he had to see Grace first—wanted her conscious—wanted to tell her …
But seeing Grace was one thing—speaking to her impossible.
‘You’re needed other places, Harry. I’ll contact you if there’s any change at all.’
Harry wanted to shrug off the hand Charles was resting on his arm and tell the man to go to hell, but he knew Charles was right. There was nothing he could do here, except glare at the nursing staff and grunt when the doctors told him all they could do was wait and see.
Wait and see what, for heaven’s sake?
Frustration grumbled within him, and tiredness, so heavy he could barely keep upright, blurred his senses. He left the hospital, pausing in the car park to call the station and tell them he was going home to sleep for an hour then back to the civic centre to hear the latest in the evacuation and services restoration plans.
Power had to come first—without it water and sewerage systems failed to work. It would be reconnected first in the area this side of the creek, the original settlement, where the hospital and police station were. But with the flooding …
On top of that, there was still no word from Georgie—not since the one radio transmission that might or might not have come from her. She had his radio—why hadn’t she called in?
It was the inactivity on that front that ate at him. Until the road was cleared they couldn’t get vehicles in, while the heavy rain made an air search impossible. It was still too wet and windy for one of the light helicopters to fly searchers in—if they had searchers available.
Which they didn’t! Sending sleep-depleted volunteers into the mountains was asking for trouble.
So all he could do was wait. Wait for the army, with its fresh and experienced manpower, and heavy-duty helicopters that could cope with wind and rain.
Or wait to hear.
And keep believing that she and Alistair were sensible people and would stay safe …
At midnight, when exhausted city officials and the first wave of army brass had headed for whatever beds they could find, Harry returned to the hospital. Grace, he was told, was in the ICU.
‘Intensive Care? What’s she doing in there?’ he demanded, and a bemused nurse who’d probably only ever seen nice-guy Harry, looked startled.
‘She’s unconscious and running a low-grade fever and has fluid in her lungs so it’s likely she’s hatching pneumonia, in which case the fever could get worse. And on top of that there’s the chance it’s something nastier than pneumonia. Who knows what germs were lurking in that water?’
And having set him back on his heels, almost literally, with this information, the nurse gave a concerned smile.
‘We’re all very worried about her, Harry,’ she added, just in case he thought he was the only one concerned.
Harry nodded, and even tried to smile, but that was too damn difficult when Grace was lying in Intensive Care, incubating who knew what disease.
He strode towards the isolated unit, determined to see her, but no one blocked his path or muttered about family only.
She was lying in the bed, beneath a sheet, wires and tubes snaking from her body.
So small and fragile-looking—still as death.
Gina sat beside her, holding her hand and talking to her. She looked up at Harry and, although wobbly, at least her smile was working.
‘She always talks to coma patients when she’s nursing them,’ Gina said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘I thought it was the least I could do.’
Then the tears spilled over and slipped down her cheeks.
‘She saved my son. She plunged into that filthy, stinking water and swam out to save him. She can’t die, Harry, she just can’t.’
‘She won’t,’ Harry promised, although he knew it was a promise he couldn’t make come true. Gina stood up and he slipped into the chair and took the warm, pale hand she passed to him.
Grace’s hand, so small and slight, Grace’s fingers, nails neatly trimmed.
‘Does she know?’ Gina asked, and Harry, puzzled by the question, turned towards her. ‘That you love her?’ Gina expanded, with a much better smile this time.
‘No,’ he said, the word cutting deep inside his chest as he thought of Grace dying without knowing. Then he, too, smiled. ‘But I’m here to tell her and I’ll keep on telling her. You’re right, she does believe unconscious patients hear things, so surely she’ll be listening.’
He paused, then said awkwardly to Gina, ‘She loves me, you know. She told me earlier today.’
It must have been the wonder in his voice that made Gina chuckle. She leant forward and hugged him.
‘That’s not exactly news, you know, Harry. The entire hospital’s known how Grace felt for the past six months.’
‘She told you?’ Harry muttered. ‘Told everyone but me?’
Gina smiled again, a kindly smile.
‘Would you have listened?’ she said softly, then she gave him another hug. ‘And she didn’t tell us all in words, you know. We just saw it in the way she lit up whenever you were around and the way she said your name and the way she glowed on meeting nights. There are a thousand ways to say “I love you”, Harry, and I think your Grace knows most of them.’
‘My Grace,’ Harry mut
tered, unable to believe he hadn’t seen what everyone else had. Hadn’t seen the thousand ways Grace had said ‘I love you’. But Gina was already gone, pausing in the doorway to tell him Cal would be by later and to promise that Grace would have someone sitting with her all the time, talking to her and holding her hand so she could find her way back from wherever she was right now.
Again it was Charles who told Harry to leave.
‘I don’t ever sleep late—growing up on a cattle property in the tropics, where the best work was done before the heat of midday, instils the habit of early waking.’
He’d wheeled into the room while Harry had been dozing in the chair, his body bent forward so his head rested on Grace’s bed, her hand still clasped in his.
‘So I’m doing the early shift with Grace,’ Charles continued, manoeuvring his chair into position. ‘If you want some technicalities, her breathing and pulse rate suggest she’s regaining consciousness but the infection’s taking hold and her temperature is fluctuating rather alarmingly.’
Harry knew he had to go. He had to get some sleep then return to the planning room. Evacuation of people who had family or friends to go to close by had begun yesterday and today they were hoping to begin mass evacuation of up to a thousand women and children. Defence force transport planes would bring in water, tents, food and building supplies and fly people out to Townsville or Cairns. Power would come on in stages, and it could be months before all services were fully operational. Getting people out of the crippled town would ease the pressure on the limited services.
He left the hospital reluctantly, and was in a meeting when Cal phoned to say Grace had regained consciousness but was feverish and disoriented, mostly sleeping, which was good.
Harry raged against the constraints that held him in the meeting, knowing he couldn’t go rushing to Grace’s side when he was needed right where he was. But later …
Later she was sleeping, so he slipped into the chair vacated this time for him by her friend Marcia, and took her hand, talking quietly to her, telling her he was there.
Grace turned her head and opened her eyes, gazing at him with a puzzled frown. Then the frown cleared, as if she’d worked out who he was, and she said, ‘Go away Harry,’ as clear as day.
Nothing else, just, ‘Go away Harry.’ Then she shut her eyes again as if not seeing him would make him vanish.
She was feverish, he told himself, and didn’t know what she was saying, but when she woke an hour later and saw him there, her eyes filled with tears and this time the knife she used to stab right into his heart was phrased differently.
‘I don’t want you here, Harry,’ she said, her voice piteously weak, the single tear sliding down her cheek doing further damage to his already lacerated heart.
Cal was there, and his quiet ‘I don’t want her getting upset’ got Harry to his feet.
But go?
How could he walk away and leave her lying there, so still and pale beneath the sheet?
‘There’s work for you to do elsewhere,’ Cal reminded him, following him out of the ICU and stopping beside the wide window where Cal had propped himself. ‘I’ll keep you posted about her condition.’
So Harry worked and listened to Cal telling him Grace was as well as could be expected, not exactly improving but the new antibiotics they were trying seemed to be keeping the infection stable.
It was in her lungs and now he had to worry if pulling her through the water had made things worse, but there were no answers to that kind of question so he worked some more, and went home to sleep from time to time, to feed Sport and talk to him of love.
On the third day after Willie had blown the town apart, Grace was moved out of the ICU and two days later released from hospital, but only as far as the doctors’ house, where resident medical staff could fuss over her and keep an eye on her continuing improvement at the same time.
So it was there that Harry went, late one afternoon, when the urgency had left the restoration programme and he could take time off without feeling guilty.
She was on the veranda, Gina told him. On the old couch. As he walked through the house he sensed Gina tactfully making sure all the other residents had vamoosed.
He came out onto the veranda and there was Grace, pale but pretty, her golden curls shining in the sun that had finally blessed them with its presence and what looked like a dirty black rag draped across her knees.
‘Grace?’ he said, hating the fact he sounded so tentative, yet fearful she’d once again send him away.
‘Harry?’
The word echoed with surprise, as if he was the last person she expected to be calling on her.
A thought that added to his tension!
‘Come and sit down. I’m not supposed to move about much. One lung collapsed during all the fuss and it’s not quite better yet, so I’m stuck in bed or on the couch, but at least from here I can see the sea. It’s quietened down a lot, hasn’t it?’
Harry stared at her. This was the Grace he used to know. Actually, it was a much frailer and quieter and less bubbly version of her, but still that Grace, the one who was his friend. Chatting to him, easing over difficult moments—showing love?
He had no idea—totally confused by what he’d come to realise after that terrible moment when Grace had disappeared beneath the murky floodwaters and then by the ‘go away’ order she’d issued from the hospital bed.
Stepping tentatively, although the old house had withstood Willie’s fury better than most of the houses in town, he moved towards the couch, then sat where Grace was patting the space beside her on the couch.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he began, then wondered if she was well enough for him to be dumping his emotions on her. ‘You disappeared beneath the waters and I realised what a fool I’d been, Grace. Stupid, stupid fool, hiding away from any emotion all this time, letting the mess I’d made of my marriage to Nikki overshadow my life, then, worst of all, blaming physical attraction for the kiss. I know it’s too late to be telling you all this—that somehow with the bump on your head you got some common sense and decided you could do far better than me—but, like you had to say it when I thought I’d lost Sport, so I have to say it now. I love you, Grace.’
Having bumbled his way this far through the conversation, Harry paused and looked at the recipient of all this information. She was staring at him as if he’d spoken in tongues, so he tried again.
‘I love you, Grace,’ he said, and wondered if he should perhaps propose right now and make a total fool of himself all at once, or leave the foolish proposal part for some other time.
‘You love me?’ she finally whispered, and he waited for the punch-line, the ‘Oh, Harry, it’s too late’ or however she might word it.
But nothing followed so he took her hands in his and nodded, then as tension gripped so hard it hurt, he rushed into speech again.
‘I know you don’t feel the same way but you did love me once, so maybe that love is only hidden, not completely gone.’
‘Loved you once?’ she said, and this time the repetition was stronger, and now her blue eyes were fixed on his. ‘What makes you think I’d ever stop loving you, Harry?’
He stared at her, trying to work out what this question meant—trying to equate it with the ‘go away, Harry’ scenarios.
Couldn’t do it, so he had to ask.
‘You sent me away,’ he reminded her. ‘At the hospital, you said to go away and that you didn’t want me there.’
‘Oh, Harry,’ she whispered, and rested her head against his chest. ‘You silly man, thinking I’d stopped loving you. As soon stop the sun from rising as me stop loving you.’
This definitely made him happy, happy enough to press a kiss to her soft curls, but he was still confused. Maybe more confused than ever.
‘But you sent me away when all I wanted was to be with you.’
She turned towards him and lifted one hand to rest it on his cheek.
‘I didn’t want you sitting b
y my bedside—not at that hospital—not again. I didn’t want you remembering all that pain and anguish, and suffering for things that happened in the past through no real fault of yours.’
She pressed her lips to his, a present of a kiss.
‘The fact that you talked about Nikki and your marriage suggested you were ready to move on, so I didn’t want you being pulled back into the past because of me.’
‘You’d have liked me there?’ Harry asked, unable to believe that, sick as she had been, she’d still found this one way of the thousand to say ‘I love you’.
‘Of course,’ she whispered, nestling her head on his chest. ‘Loving you the way I do, I always want you near.’
She smiled up at him, then added, ‘Look how pathetic I am—look at this.’
She lifted the black rag from her knee and it took a moment for him to recognise it as his dinner jacket.
‘I brushed off most of the mud and when Gina said I had to keep something over my knees when I sit out in the breeze, it seemed the best knee cover any woman could have. Gina wanted to have it dry-cleaned but it would have come back smelling of dry-cleaning fluid, not Harry, so there you are.’
Her smile mocked her sentimentality but it went straight to Harry’s heart, because it wobbled a bit as if she felt she’d made a fool of herself.
‘Snap!’ he said softly, and reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a very tattered blue ribbon he’d kept with him since that fateful night.
Then he closed his arms around her and pulled her close, pressing kisses on her head and telling her things he hadn’t realised he knew, about how much he loved her, but more, that he admired her and thought her wonderful, and how soon would she be his wife?
They’d reached the kissing stage when a voice interrupted them, a voice filled with the disgust that only a five-year-old could muster when faced with demonstrations of love.
‘You’re kissing, Grace,’ CJ said, coming close enough for them to see he held a squirming puppy in his hands. ‘I didn’t think policemen did that kind of thing.’
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 47
