Emergency Baby

by Alison Roberts

  ‘Can’t see Angus settling somewhere like that. He’s not going to give up being a SERT member.’

  ‘He might.’ Sam sped up as they joined the main route to the airport. ‘He might decide there are some more important things in life than work.’

  As Sam had? Alex hurriedly looked for a change of subject. Having sorted the day’s rocky start to his equilibrium, he had no desire to open any fresh worm cans. He’d get the morning’s routine clear in his head, he decided, and then he’d tell Sam all about Dimitri’s surgery yesterday. She was great to tell stuff to. She always asked enough questions to show that she was genuinely interested and her questions always made him think about the subject from a new angle. But first things first.

  ‘What time are we due to land at the school?’

  ‘The memo said 10:00 a.m. It’s only a five-minute flight. The headmistress is going to ring when they’re all safely positioned on the edges of the playing field.’

  ‘And we have to give a talk?’

  ‘More like a question-and-answer session, I believe. They’re just little kids so they’ll probably have some pretty weird ideas. I’ll do most of the talking if you like. You can just stand around and look cool.’

  ‘I’ll cope.’

  Nobody could come up with any ideas weirder than the one Sam had presented him with yesterday of fathering her child. Alex could probably cope with anything any child could ask.

  ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  Alex blinked. He was getting used to the awestruck gaze of dozens of small boys. The excitement they’d generated, landing a helicopter in the school grounds, had been expected. The huge cheer and all the rapt faces when he and Sam had emerged wearing their uniforms and flight helmets had been less expected but rather nice. Now all the children had filed into the school hall and were sitting on the floor. The headmistress had given a brief introduction and outline of the kind of duties SERT members could be expected to perform and Sam and Alex were sitting on the edge of the stage, side by side, ready to tell the children whatever they wanted to know.

  This first question, however, was so unexpected Alex didn’t have a clue what to say. Maybe a joke would fix it. He grinned at the tow-headed, freckled kid.

  ‘We usually try not to do that,’ he said.

  The way Sam cleared her throat made it clear that Alex’s response was less than appropriate.

  ‘We’re paramedics,’ she told the rather solid little boy. ‘We’re trained to help people who are sick or injured. We do whatever we can to keep them alive until we can get them to a hospital where the doctors and nurses can take care of them.’

  ‘But do you have a gun?’ The boy wasn’t about to give up despite a stern warning glance from nearby teacher. He elbowed the child beside him slyly. A troublemaker, Alex decided. He had done the wrong thing in giving the child any kind of encouragement.

  ‘No,’ Sam said decisively. ‘Sometimes we’re asked to help the police and sometimes they carry guns if they absolutely have to, but we never, ever carry them ourselves. We’re not interested in guns.’

  Her tone was authoritative. To one side of the stage Alex could see the headmistress nodding her approval. Sam’s body language as she looked away from the boy and pointed to another waving arm to give permission for a question to be asked was very effective. The boy subsided like a deflating balloon and Alex almost felt sorry for him.

  Man, any kids that Sam had would have to behave themselves, wouldn’t they? Just before he transferred his gaze to the girl who was about to ask the next question, he saw the gun boy reach forward to pull the hair of the girl sitting in front of him, who promptly burst into tears. Discipline would not be a bad thing in some cases, he decided. That kid needed a mother like Sam would be.

  His partner’s attention was on the next chosen child. ‘What would you like to ask us?’

  ‘I want to be a nurse when I grow up,’ the girl said.

  Several sniggers could be heard at the obvious non-question and the girl looked bewildered, in imminent danger of being the next to burst into tears, but Sam nodded and smiled.

  ‘That’s a great thing to want to be,’ she said. ‘When I was your age I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, too.’

  Alex had his doubts about the truth of that statement but the sniggers faded and the small girl’s face shone.

  ‘You might be just like me,’ Sam continued. ‘And decide it would be more exciting to be helping people away from a hospital when you never know where you’re going to be sent next or who you might need to help.’

  A teacher was clearly priming a child to ask a more suitable question. She caught Alex’s gaze and he responded by pointing to the child.

  ‘Yes, mate,’ he called. ‘What’s your question?’

  ‘What is the most exciting job you’ve ever been sent to?’ the child recited carefully.

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Alex said quickly.

  Then he paused for a moment. It’s wasn’t actually that easy, was it? Yesterday’s winch onto a pitching ship would qualify for contention but what about the shootout between rival gangs they’d been to last year when three people had been seriously injured and the armed police had used tear gas to clear the way for Alex and Sam to reach their patients?

  No. Best not to start talking about guns and tear gas, but the whole school was waiting expectantly for an answer. He wasn’t very good at this, was he?

  ‘Lots of our jobs are exciting.’ A silent plea got flicked to Sam. ‘What would you say was the most exciting, Sam?’

  ‘How ’bout the one we did just a couple of weeks ago?’ Sam suggested. ‘In the caves?’

  Alex grabbed the suggestion gratefully and once he got started it was easy to make it all sound exciting.

  ‘There’d been an earthquake and one of the tunnels had collapsed so we didn’t really know if it was safe. There could have been another earthquake any second and maybe the tunnels we were crawling through would come tumbling in and bury us…

  ‘It was really, really dark and cold and wet and we scraped our elbows and knees on the rocks…

  ‘We had to climb down a long, skinny ladder that wobbled and there was a lake of icy, black water waiting to swallow us up if we fell off.’

  The children’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. Their jaws dropped until Alex had the impression that he had an enormous flock of baby birds in front of him, waiting eagerly to catch each morsel he provided.

  He wasn’t so bad at this after all. They loved him! He could keep going for hours, entertaining kids like this. It was fun!

  But more hands were waving furiously. Other children were begging for a chance to ask questions.

  ‘Why do you have a boy’s name?’ one asked Sam.

  ‘My real name is Samantha,’ she replied. ‘But we often have to talk to each other when it’s difficult to hear on the radio and stuff so it’s much easier having a short name.’

  Which sounded quite plausible but Alex couldn’t imagine that Sam had ever gone by her full name. She was, and always would be, just ‘Sam’, as far as he was concerned.

  ‘My dad’s a policeman,’ a boy at the back yelled.

  The freckled kid who’d asked the very first question swivelled swiftly. ‘I bet he hasn’t got a gun!’ he yelled back.

  ‘He has, too! I’ve seen it!’

  ‘That’s enough.’ The headmistress stood up. ‘I have a question,’ she said. ‘We’ve been studying the way a major disaster affects children and their communities. What would your jobs be if something like that happened here?’

  ‘We’re a small part of a large network of people trained in the emergency services,’ Alex responded. ‘In a major disaster you’d have people from the army, the Red Cross, Urban Search and Rescue, police, fire and ambulance all working together to help people.’

  ‘We’d be used for things like rescuing people when the only way to get to them is by winching someone in from a helicopter,’ Sam added. ‘Or getting to peopl
e that are buried under a building that’s collapsed maybe.’

  ‘How many people are trained in your field? SERT, is it?’

  ‘Yes. Specialist Emergency Response Team,’ Alex confirmed. ‘There are twelve of us in the unit here and there are other units in the north island.’

  ‘And how many of them are women?’

  ‘Only Sam.’ Alex couldn’t help sounding proud. ‘She’s special.’

  Sam shrugged off the compliment. ‘Any girl could do it if they really wanted to,’ she said. ‘It just takes lots of hard work and determination and a good level of physical fitness.’

  Alex wasn’t about to argue in public but Sam was wrong.

  She was one in a million. He could think back to any one of dozens of jobs they had done together over the last few years where Sam’s courage and determination had been outstanding enough to make him have to dig deeper into his own emotional resources.

  The headmistress was thanking them for coming now. The children were clapping. Alex smiled but he wasn’t really taking in the appreciation. He was still thinking about his partner.

  She kept him on his toes intellectually, too. Sam was always up with the latest developments in any pre-hospital medical setting. She was the first to put her name on any list for in-service training or refresher courses and she used a lot of her down-time to study. She could go to medical school if she had the inclination and Alex would put good money on her being top of the class all the way through.

  Sam was waving and smiling at the children as they filed past in long lines. Quite apart from her professional attributes, Sam was a nice person. Always fair and considerate and with a great sense of humour. She was quite capable of defending herself, and occasionally that could come across as being stroppy but Alex didn’t consider that to be a fault.

  He watched the sea of small faces as the children filed past to go back to the playing field to watch the helicopter take off and he could just imagine what Sam would have been like at primary school. She had probably played rugby or whatever else she’d deemed necessary to keep up with the boys, and she had probably kicked them in the shins if they hadn’t been co-operative enough.

  Not that she lost any of her femininity through being tough and feisty. Or from having a ‘boy’s’ name. There was no way Sam’s fine features and delicate build could have ever led her to be mistaken for a boy, even with the short, spiky haircut she favoured. Had her hair been that short when she’d been little? Or had it been in bunches with ribbons or long plaits, like the small girl who smiled shyly at Alex as she left the hall?

  Alex smiled back and then found himself watching the child’s progress towards the door. If he’d ever contemplated a point in his life where he might have a child himself, he’d always imagined it to be a son. The idea of having a daughter was way too scary. But what if a daughter had a smile like the one he’d just been given?

  If it had a personality anything like Sam’s?

  It would be a lot more fun than having a son, that’s what.

  No wonder Sam was finding the idea of having a child attractive. Alex could see her with a small clone of herself. A toddler, maybe, standing with its hands on its hips refusing to do something it didn’t want to do. He’d sure love to be a fly on the wall in the scenario. Sam might well find she had created more than a match for herself.

  Alex grinned at one of the last kids to leave the hall. The boy looked startled but then returned the grin.

  And just imagine if the kid had some of his own genes in the mix? It would be cute, smart, tough and as determined as hell. An unstoppable force, in fact.

  Whoa! You’re not even on the short list, Alex reminded himself as he followed Sam. She doesn’t want your genes, remember? She told you to forget it.

  Except that he didn’t really believe that. Not when he’d seen that certain look in Sam’s face when she’d dropped that conversational bomb in ED yesterday. He’d seen that kind of look before. Usually when Sam was about to hurl herself out of a helicopter or something equally challenging. When she’d gathered the confidence to know that she could do whatever it was that needed doing.

  When she’d suggested that he was the perfect candidate to father her child, she’d meant it all right—no matter how fast she’d backpedalled afterwards.

  If he had any desire to see what a mix of his genes and Sam’s could produce, the opportunity was there, he was sure of it.

  But he didn’t have any desire to see such a creation.

  Or did he?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TALK ABOUT shooting herself in the foot!

  Not only had Alex been totally aghast at being considered a perfect candidate for sperm donation, he was now going to be grumpy and suspicious every time he saw her talking to an adult male. Like now, when it was Sam’s turn to interview a patient they had been called to see at an airport terminal.

  ‘And how old are you, Peter?’

  ‘Forty-two.’ The would-be international traveller was now sitting in the first-aid room adjacent to the departure lounge. He was still pale and it wasn’t the first time he had wiped his palms against his trouser leg. ‘Bit young to be having a heart attack, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not all chest pain means you’re having a heart attack, Peter,’ Sam reassured him. ‘Do you have any medical history we should know about? Are you taking any regular medication?’

  ‘No. I’m perfectly healthy.’

  And there it was again. A quick glance. Enough to let her know that Alex thought she might be sizing up her new acquaintance as a potential sperm donor. Sam gritted her teeth. What would happen when she asked for the details that would allow her to fill in the spaces for a home address and phone number and next of kin? Did he think she would be pocketing the information for some kind of personal follow-up?

  Alex had attached ECG electrodes and turned on the monitor. He turned the life pack so that Sam could see the screen as well. ‘Normal sinus rhythm,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘No ST changes.’

  It wasn’t a twelve-lead ECG, though. It was quite possible for damage to heart muscle to be occurring in places that wouldn’t show up in the areas their portable equipment could investigate. Sam was pretty confident that Peter was not suffering a major event, however.

  She hadn’t put any oxygen on because he was still breathing far too fast. Hyperventilating, in fact. The way he flexed his fingers, having wiped sweaty palms on his trousers again, was eye-catching.

  ‘Any funny feelings in your hands?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of pins and needles. My lips feel a bit numb, too.’

  ‘You’re still breathing too fast, mate. Try and slow it down,’ Alex suggested.

  Sam wrapped the BP cuff around Peter’s upper arm and inflated it. She let it down slowly. ‘One-thirty on eighty-five,’ she noted. ‘No problem there. Still a bit tachycardic, though.’ She glanced at the monitor screen to confirm what she had heard through the stethoscope. ‘Rate’s dropped to 105.’

  ‘Where are you heading off to?’

  Alex’s question seemed irrelevant except that Sam was still watching the ECG trace and saw the quick blip and then increase in speed.

  ‘Australia,’ Peter said. ‘Sydney.’

  ‘And you’re OK about flying?’

  ‘Not really.’ Peter gave an embarrassed and slightly breathless chuckle. ‘Actually, it scares me stiff,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s business and I have to go this time.’

  ‘Try and slow your breathing down, Peter,’ Sam instructed again. ‘Hyperventilating is what’s giving you the symptoms in your hands and lips. It could well be causing the chest pain you’re experiencing as well. Were you feeling all right earlier today?’

  ‘Until I got through customs.’ Peter nodded. ‘They said there was a bit of a delay and I thought there might be something wrong with the plane and that was when I started feeling bad. It got worse and worse until the lady in the duty-free shop noticed and called for you guys.’

  ‘How long ago was tha
t?’

  Peter glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, no! It was nearly an hour ago. I’ve missed my flight. Why didn’t someone tell me?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be allowed to fly if there was any question of you becoming more unwell en route. I’m sure there’ll be a later flight you can catch.’

  ‘It’ll be too late for me to get to the meeting. There’s no point in going if I miss that.’ Peter checked his watch again, sighed heavily and then shut his eyes. ‘No. There’s no point in even trying now.’

  Sam exchanged a glance with Alex. Their patient was visibly relaxing in front of them. His breathing slowed and some colour crept back into his face.

  ‘You know, I’m feeling a bit better,’ he said a minute later. ‘I think that pain’s gone now.’

  A hint of triumph showed in Alex’s face. Was that because he’d been right all along and this call had not required the intervention of paramedics, or was he pleased that Peter might have been deemed totally unsuitable as a potential sperm donor because he could pass on a life-disrupting level of nervousness?

  The fact that such an unprofessional notion could even occur to Sam was annoying. It would be easy to blame Alex for creating this undercurrent of tension that was growing ever so slowly but, in all fairness, Sam could understand exactly where her partner was coming from.

  They left their patient in the care of airport staff, with instructions to call them back if necessary, and made their way back to their base in the crash-fire hangar. Alex drove their ambulance behind the airport security vehicle with its hazard lights flashing. They had quite a long way to go along the edge of one of the main runways. Alex was keeping an eye out for any approaching planes. Sam was staring through the front windscreen but she wasn’t really looking at anything in particular.

  Yes. She could sympathise with Alex right now. They were a team. They had welded themselves into such a tight unit in their time together that their whole lives were intertwined. The hours they worked together were long enough, but it didn’t stop there, did it? They went to the same gym and shared training sessions in other physical disciplines like rock climbing and scuba diving. They’d even psyched each other into sharing an introductory course in sky diving the previous year.