Authors: Meredith Webber,Alison Roberts
Hamish caught the look that passed between Kate and Grace. Was Kate really so worried about propinquity between them that she’d enlisted Grace’s help in avoiding him?
The thought saddened the two per cent of his brain he was allowing to linger with Kate, but as he followed Grace into the small treatment room he pushed even that small portion aside. Jason deserved one hundred per cent.
‘We’ll be banished from the room while they take the X-ray,’ Kate said to Julie. ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘Please!’ Julie said. ‘Weak tea with plenty of milk. I’m trying to totally avoid caffeine but I think I deserve a cuppa today.’
Kate sent an aide to get tea and biscuits, then settled Julie on a chair outside the treatment room.
‘When’s the baby due?’
Julie turned to her with a puzzled expression, then pressed a hand to her stomach.
‘Do you know, I’d almost forgotten about the baby!’ She patted her bulge as if apologising to it. ‘I’m thirty-two weeks. My husband had a week off and we took the opportunity to take a holiday before the baby arrived. Heaven knows when we’ll get away again once we’re a family of four.’
Kate waited with Julie until Hamish was satisfied he’d cleaned out Jason’s wounds and the boy could be transferred to the children’s room, so called because it looked more like a magical playroom than a hospital ward.
‘I want to watch him overnight,’ Hamish explained to Julie, ‘and start him on a course of oral steroids. The antivenin is made from horse serum and in some cases can cause serum sickness. The steroids guard against that happening.’
‘Aren’t steroids bad for kids?’ Julie asked.
‘Only if they’re taking them to improve their sports performance,’ Hamish teased. ‘We’re not talking massive doses—fifty milligrams of prednisolone daily for five days. It’s a drug used often for children—particularly those with chronic asthma. We’ll divide the dose into three so he takes three tablets a day.’
Julie accompanied Jason and Hamish to the children’s room, but Kate caught up with her later that day when she finished work and went to see how her small patient was faring.
Bad move as Hamish was there, but Kate was happy to see Jason’s father had arrived and was to spend the night with his son, while Julie went to the hotel to rest.
‘I think we connect more to patients we bring in on emergency flights,’ Hamish said, walking with her out of the hospital.
Kate nodded, but didn’t answer. It didn’t seem to matter how much she avoided Hamish, because the instant he was back in her presence again all the attraction came roaring back to life, made stronger rather than diminished by her stringent avoidance tactics.
Did he know she always walked back through the garden that he guided her that way?
It was early evening, the moon not yet risen, and though bright stars threw mellow light the path was darkly shadowed.
‘I’m sorry I left you at your door on Saturday night,’ he said.
It was the last thing Kate had expected to hear, although he had said something similar before. She stopped—quite close to the ginger plant, for she could smell the flowers—and looked at her companion.
‘Why?’
Hamish drew a deep breath. If he told her he loved her, would it destroy the very fragile thread that linked them?
Or was he imagining even that?
But for days he’d gone along with her avoidance tactics, thinking space might clear his brain, but all it had done had been to confuse him even further.
And if she’d asked Grace to help her avoid him? Well, that hurt!
He took another breath.
‘Because if I hadn’t we’d have made love, and maybe, during love-making, if I’d told you I loved you, it might have meant more than baldly coming out with it in a garden with no moonlight and that damned ginger plant overwhelming me with its perfume.’
‘It is rather strong,’ Kate remarked, and Hamish wondered if she’d even heard his declaration.
He was no good at this. He was good at detached. Very good at flippant. Heartfelt declarations of love were too new. Even thinking about them, practising what he had to say, had made him feel raw and exposed.
Now he’d messed things up with the ginger plant.
Had he actually said the love bit? Had he told her?
If he had, she showed no inclination to reply, merely walking a little further along the path.
He followed, feeling like Rudolph when he’d had a scolding.
‘Well?’ he demanded. Rudolph would have barked.
Much
better at flippant!
But the cramp was back, and his knees were shaking, and he knew flippant wasn’t any use to him at all.
He steadied himself, took hold of her elbows and looked down into her shadowed eyes.
‘I love you, Kate,’ he repeated, just in case he hadn’t said it earlier.
Or she hadn’t heard it.
‘I know, Hamish,’ she whispered. ‘But I don’t know how to answer you. I’m just so confused.’
It wasn’t much but Hamish felt considerably heartened.
‘Let’s go to dinner at the Athina and talk about it. Talk it through. There has to be an answer to this somewhere. Besides, you haven’t been there—it’s the most ro—’ he caught himself just in time ‘—beautiful place. Mike’s parents own and run it.’
He took her hands, lifted them to his lips and kissed her knuckles one by one. Would physical contact strengthen his invitation? He took more heart from the fact she didn’t draw away, but even in the shadows he saw her shake her head.
Anger came so swiftly he had no time to stem it!
‘You didn’t say no to a trip to the pub with Harry last night.’
The accusation hung in the air between them, then Kate said softly, ‘There’s no danger in a drink with Harry at the pub. And we were celebrating the fact that Jack’s off the hook. Todd and Digger have been arrested, and because Jack’s agreed to testify against them and Digger’s story backs up Jack’s, it means he’s free and clear. It was a celebration.’
‘Dinner with me could be a celebration!’ he snapped, angry beyond reason, although her explanation had made sense.
‘We’ve nothing to celebrate,’ she reminded him.
‘Because you won’t give in.’ He was speaking far too loudly, but the hot rush of emotion welling inside him refused to be capped. ‘You must feel something for me, or you wouldn’t be
avoiding me. You’d be treating me the way you treat Cal, or Mike, or—dare I say it?—bloody Harry! But you’re not. You’ve even got Grace helping you—’
‘Grace? Helping me what?’
‘Helping you avoid me.’
He knew as he said the words they were wrong. Kate was such a private person there was no way she would have talked about her feelings to Grace, or anyone else.
He wanted to unsay it, but it was too late.
The thread—real or imaginary—had surely broken.
Or had it?
Kate had taken back her hands but she hadn’t moved away.
He tamped down the still smouldering anger and took her in his arms, holding her close, reminding himself that this emotional vulnerability was probably far harder for her than it was for him.
Although he couldn’t imagine it!
He took a steadying breath and tried another tack.
‘Did you ask Harry about your mother?’
The movement of her head against his chest told him she hadn’t.
‘For some reason?’
A nod this time.
‘Still having second thoughts, Kate?’
She edged away and looked up at him, a pathetic attempt at a smile trembling on her lips.
‘And third and fourth and fifth thoughts, Hamish,’ she said quietly. ‘Does it matter? Do I really care? I don’t know any more.’
She kissed him gently on the lips then drew away again.
‘I was running on emotion as I headed north. The idea of finding my father helped me set aside things I couldn’t cope with—grief and loss and anger. And I believed having something to do—a quest—would give me time to arm myself in some way—build defences to protect myself against hurt like that again.’
Another kiss brushed against his lips.
‘Then I met you, before the defences were in place—and that’s terrifying, Hamish.’
He held her closer, wrapping her tightly in his arms, desperate to protect her from the hurt she feared, his own hurt and anger forgotten in the rush of love engulfing him.
She nestled against him.
‘I know I’ve hurt you these last few days, avoiding you the way I have, but it was only to avoid a greater hurt later on.’
Hamish kissed the top of her head.
‘To borrow your own word—piffle!’ he said, sounding more like a frog than a prince as emotion choked the words on their way out. ‘Greater happiness, that’s all there’ll be later on. We’ll work it out.’
‘Will we?’ she asked, moving away. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well I do!’ he said, releasing the reins on both anger and flippancy.
There were times when only they would do.
‘But I’d like you to know this is not exactly a walk in the park for me,’ he grumbled. ‘How do you think I’m feeling—thirty years of age and finding myself in the clutches of the phenomenon I’ve scoffed at all my adult life? Romantic love, I’ve pontificated—usually after several single malts—is an illusion, perpetuated through the ages by merchants with a winning way with words. Think back to the seers and witches who sold love potions—it’s always been a commercial con.’
He paused, looking down into her face and brushing her hair back from her forehead.
Could she feel the change in him? Guess how just looking at her made him feel?
How to explain?
‘And until one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I believed this foolishness,’ he said quietly. ‘Until one afternoon, when a sunbeam shone on a brown curl and turned it gold …’
He knew he sounded strained, and though he’d tried to make light of his emotions, Kate must have heard his pain. She reached up and kissed him on the lips, her kiss denying all the things she’d said. Passion, deep and hot and hard, stirred his blood until he could feel it thrumming through his veins.
‘I
CAN’T BELIEVE
you did all that organising for the rodeo then opted to work the day it was on,’ Kate said, looking at the man who’d come lounging into the Emergency Department in search of distraction.
Hamish shrugged broad shoulders in a gesture so familiar she couldn’t believe she wouldn’t be seeing it for ever.
‘The others will all have an ongoing relationship with Wygera and the people out there. I leave next week and probably won’t ever see them again.’
He sounded regretful, but it wasn’t regret that tightened Kate’s stomach when he talked about leaving. It was like the shoulder shrug. The familiarity. And a lot of things she didn’t want to think about.
Except that she did.
Most of the time …
So, she could go to Scotland with him. The offer was there …
But it would take a leap faith and she didn’t have much faith these days.
Except when she was kissing him …
Or he was kissing her …
‘Besides,’ he continued, for once not attuned to her thoughts, ‘you weren’t going to be there and if you ask me which I’d
prefer—a rodeo without Kate or a hospital with her—then there’s no choice.’
Uh-oh, maybe he was attuned to her thoughts …
He spread his arms wide and smiled at her.
‘Stop it!’ she snapped, glad the place was as quiet as a tomb so no one heard her. The entire population of Crocodile Creek must be out at the rodeo.
‘Stop what?’
Dark blue eyes projected injured innocence, making Kate madder than ever.
‘Stop smiling at me. And talking like that. You know I don’t want a relationship.’
His smile became gentler.
‘Don’t you, Kate?’ he said, then he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her closer.
‘Don’t you?’ he repeated as his lips closed on hers.
‘Don’t you?’ he breathed, a long time later, when they drew apart to catch their breath.
‘Don’t do this, Hamish,’ she murmured brokenly, shaking her head to emphasise her words. ‘I really, really, really don’t want this.’
‘Only because you’ve been hurt—because everything you knew and believed in turned out to be a lie. But this isn’t a lie, Kate. Deep down in your heart you must know it’s more than a passing fancy—more than physical attraction or lust or whatever other excuse you make to yourself to fend me off.’
She looked at him and shook her head, but before she could reply Mike burst through the door.
‘You two on call for the Rescue Service?’
Kate nodded.
‘Do you need us both?’ Hamish asked.
‘I think so. Multi-vehicle traffic accident up on the pass. The ambulance is on the way. It was at the rodeo and left from there. The rodeo’s over and the hospital staff who were out there are
all on their way back here, so this place won’t be short-staffed for long.’
‘I’ll just let someone know we’re going,’ Kate told him. ‘It’s been so slow today I’ve been restocking the dressing cupboard and sent the others off for a second afternoon tea. Mrs Grubb’s been baking chocolate-chip cookies, so they didn’t need to be persuaded.’
Kate whisked away, and Hamish watched her go.
‘Not winning her over?’ Mike said, and Hamish turned back to his friend.
‘
What
did you say?’
Mike laughed.
‘Come on, mate. You must know the whole hospital is talking about you and Kate. The staff have been laying bets on how long you’d take to—well, to get her into bed.’
‘They’d better not have been!’ Hamish growled. ‘How dare they talk about her that way?’
Mike touched his arm.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘You know how it happens. It doesn’t belittle you or Kate. If anything, it shows the affection in which people hold you. And sometimes it also shows how stupid we are when it comes to love. Apparently Walter Grubb was running a book down at the Black Cockatoo on when Emily and I would get together—and that was years before we finally did.’
Mike’s lack of concern over the groundsman’s behaviour cooled Hamish’s anger—slightly. Walter Grubb had better not be running a book on him at the local pub.
Though maybe he should take whatever odds Walter was offering on him losing her.
Because, in spite of the passion of Kate’s kisses, and the heat that roared between them, he
was
losing her. Or maybe not winning her was a better way to put it, as she’d never really been his to begin with.
He followed Mike out to the chopper, wondering what she’d been about to say when Mike had walked in—knowing in his heart it had been another rejection.
So why didn’t he give up?
He couldn’t, that was why. Somewhere deep inside him was a certainty that Kate was his future, and all the avoidance, and denial, and, yes, joking in the world couldn’t kill that notion.
He glared at the woman in question as she arrived at the helipad. She took her overalls from Mike, chatting away as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Which she had—lots of cares—so it just proved how much better she was at hiding her emotions than he was!
Growling quietly to himself because, distracted, he’d stepped into the wrong leg of his overalls, he turned his mind from Kate to what lay ahead.
‘Where’s the accident?’ he asked Mike. ‘Right at the top of the pass, or further down?’
‘Further down. There’s a lay-by about a kilometre from the top where I can land. Apparently a fully loaded cattle road train lost its brakes coming down, and as it crossed the road to go up the safety ramp it struck a vehicle coming from the other direction.’
‘A fully loaded cattle train? You’re talking three trailers? A hundred head of cattle, many dead or injured, the others loose on the highway? Anything could happen.’
‘And probably will,’ Mike said.
The flight was short, but as they came into land in the fading daylight they could see the chaos beneath them. Dead and dying cattle lay across the road, policemen with rifles shooting those beyond saving.
‘Pity we’re not vets,’ Kate muttered, wincing as Mike opened the door and another shot rang out.
‘We’ll have enough injured people to worry about,’ Hamish said, but Kate, seeing the mangled cabins of two semi-trailers, was
doubtful. The fire brigade’s crash unit was already on the scene and men with giant tin snips were cutting at the tangled metal.
‘Have you got anyone out?’ Hamish asked, as Harry joined them by the side of the road.
‘Not yet,’ Harry said, his voice not hopeful. ‘The smaller semi is the Alcotts’—the people who supplied the rodeo bulls. They had four bulls at the rodeo so presumably there are four in the trailer. We haven’t looked at them yet—too busy trying to clear the cattle from the other wreck off the road.’
He shook his head then left, answering a call from one of his men.
‘Let’s see what we can in the cabins,’ Mike suggested, and the three of them headed for the centre of the action, Kate and Hamish carrying bags, while Mike had the lightweight stretcher.
The prime mover of the cattle train had ridden right over the smaller vehicle so it was hard to see where one ended and the other began.
‘One more cut and you’ll be able to get at the bloke up the top,’ one of the fire crew told them, and they stood back to let the experts work. ‘Once he’s out, we can cut through to the other vehicle, though it doesn’t look too good for anyone in it.’
The cattle train driver was barely conscious but responded both to Hamish’s voice and to sensory stimulation. Aware they had to get him out before attempts could be made to rescue anyone else, Hamish worked swiftly, starting oxygen, protecting the man’s neck with a cervical collar, sliding a short spine board behind him and securing it so they could lift him out in a sitting position without moving his spine more than necessary.
Within minutes they had him on the ground, well away from the firemen who were continuing their efforts to untangle the two vehicles with the jaws of life and a small crane attached to their unit.
Hamish worked with his usual thoroughness and Kate
thought what a loss he’d be to emergency services when he began his paediatric specialty.
In Scotland …
‘Breathing OK, carotid pulse strong, BP 149 over 80, high but not disastrous, no sign of tension pneumothorax or flail chest, minor contusions without too much blood loss, no facial injuries indicative of hitting the windscreen, no obvious damage to his skull—but he’ll need scans—damage to left patella, broken right tib and fib.’ Hamish was listing the injuries while Kate did the documentation and Mike started an IV infusion. ‘That’s all I can see, and he’s stable enough to move. Let’s get him to the chopper. Mike can take him back to town while we wait to see if they get someone out of the other vehicle. The ambulance should be here soon. We’ll ride back in that.’
Kate looked over at the flattened cabin and wondered if it could be possible for someone to have survived. She carried the bag of fluid while the men carried the stretcher back to the helicopter, then waited while Mike and Hamish secured their patient inside.
‘Get Harry to radio if you need me back here,’ Mike said, then he shut the door and Hamish steered Kate away before the rotors started moving. A tow truck had arrived, its winch lifting dead cattle off the road, but back at the scene of the accident a very much alive animal bellowed for release from the trailer that held the rodeo bulls.
‘We’ve checked,’ Harry said. ‘Although the Alcotts had four bulls at the rodeo, the only passenger in the trailer is this huge fellow—I think he’s the one they call Oscar. He’s stamping and pawing and bellowing like crazy, but I daren’t let him out without someone here who knows how to handle him.’ He frowned in the direction of the cranky bull. ‘I guess the other option is to shoot him.’
‘You can’t shoot a healthy animal,’ Hamish protested, and Harry shrugged.
‘You want to try calming him down?’ he said, nodding towards the trailer that had jackknifed and tipped onto its side in the middle of the road.
Kate walked towards it, seeing the tear in the top that had allowed Harry to check for dead or injured animals. A huge head, grey-black, with curved horns and, below them, floppy grey ears looked back at her. Somehow, the animal had managed to turn himself so he was upright, stamping and bellowing with either pain or frustration.
Knowing there was no way he could get out, she moved closer, talking softly to him, but he refused to be placated and kept up his complaints, his roars an accompaniment to the awful screeches of tearing metal.
‘We’re in, Doc,’ one of the men called, and Kate left the irate bull to follow Hamish to the cabin.
Both its occupants, a man and a woman, were dead.
‘It doesn’t matter how often I see it, I hate the waste of life road accidents cause,’ Hamish said, as he straightened after examining both bodies. ‘Is the ambulance here?’
Kate nodded and waved the vehicle closer.
‘It can take them into town. We’ll do all the formalities at the hospital. I guess Harry will know who they are and who we need to contact.’
‘It’s Jenny and Brad Alcott,’ one of the ambos said gruffly. ‘They met on the rodeo circuit when they were young kids. Brad was a runaway who somehow hooked up with a rodeo stock contractor, and Jenny’s mother ran a food van at rodeos for years. She died about six months ago from pancreatic cancer. These two nursed her to the end.’
After a fortnight in a country town, Kate was no longer surprised about how much people knew of each other’s business, but she was saddened by the regret in the ambo’s voice as he talked of the young couple.
‘They were making a good job of providing quality rodeo
stock. Their Oscar is one of the best bulls on the northern circuit,’ the man was saying to Hamish as they lifted the second body from the wreck. ‘Dunno who’ll take over from—’
He stopped abruptly, looked around, then said, ‘Cripes, where’s Lily?’
‘Lily?’ Hamish and Kate both echoed the name.
‘Little ‘un,’ the ambo explained, holding out his hand to measure off about three feet from the ground. ‘She was at the rodeo.’
Hamish and Kate looked at each other, but Kate was the first to move, scrabbling into the blood-covered seat from which they’d taken the adults, searching desperately through the twisted metal.
Although it hadn’t been immediately obvious, the truck was a dual cab, with a second row of seats behind the front ones. Hamish pulled Kate out, explaining the crane would lift the damaged front seats out of the way.
‘She might be alive. She might be injured and moving the seats will harm her.’ Kate knew her anxiety was unprofessional, but the thought of a child trapped in the twisted mess of metal had her heart racing erratically.
The firemen hooked a chain to the less-damaged passenger seat and gave the signal for the crane to lift.
The little girl was curled in a foetal position in the footwell behind the seat, which had been tipped backwards on top of her. Blonde hair, a pink dress and blood. Blood everywhere.
Kate broke away from Hamish’s restraining hand and knelt beside the child, talking quietly while her hand slid beneath the girl’s chin, feeling for a pulse—praying for a pulse.
‘Damn it, be alive!’ she ordered, and felt not a pulse but a movement.
‘She moved,’ she cried, as Hamish squatted beside her, resting one hand on her shoulder while reaching out to touch the little girl’s head, then sliding his hand down to the far side of her neck, seeking a pulse where Kate had found none.
It seemed to Kate that he took for ever, then one word.
‘Pulse!’
Kate closed her eyes and uttered a little prayer of thanks. She wasn’t certain anyone was listening to her prayers these days, but it didn’t hurt to say thank you just in case.
‘Lily!’ Hamish’s voice was gentle. ‘Sweetheart, we’re here to help you. My hand is on your back. Can you take a deep breath for me?’
Katie tensed as she waited, then Hamish nodded, shifting his hand so it followed the skinny little arm as it curled inwards.
‘Now I’ve got your hand, sweetheart. Can you squeeze my hand?’
Another pause. ‘Great!’
Kate heard the genuine delight in that one word.