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 (43 page)

‘Stay back,’ she yelled at him. ‘Get back inside.’

He looked up as if surprised to see her, then pointed down to the water beside him.

‘It’s Sport!’ he called, and Grace sighed as she splashed towards them. Now she had a dog to rescue as well.

‘I’ll get him,’ she called to CJ, then she put her head down and ploughed through the last twenty metres separating her from the children.

Sport was struggling to get his one front foot onto the decking, and Grace grabbed him and boosted him up, then, fearful that her weight might unbalance the makeshift boat and bring them all into the water, she called to the kids to stay back as far as they could and eased her body up until she could sit on the wooden boards. Then, with caution, she got on to her hands and knees so she could crawl towards them.

She looked around, realising the pantry must once have been part of the veranda because a bit of veranda was still attached, working like an outrigger to keep the structure afloat.

For how long?

With legs and arms trembling either from the swim or fear, she hesitated, breathing deeply, trying to work out what might lie ahead.

She guessed they were maybe three hundred yards from the bridge, and she was reasonably sure the bridge would stop them, but whether it would also sink them was the question.

Kids first.

She crawled forward, wondering where Sport had gone, then entered the small room, where preserves and cereal and sauce bottles were jumbled in with two small children, two dogs, and too many newborn puppies for Grace to count.

‘It’s like being on a boat, isn’t it, Grace?’ CJ said as Grace knelt and wrapped her arms around the children.

‘It is indeed,’ she said, realising he’d been boosting Lily’s confidence with talk of boats and adventure. CJ had never lacked imagination. ‘And soon it’s going to dock down at the bridge and we can all get off. I’m going to radio for someone to meet us there, OK?’

She detached the children, patted the wet Sport and the only slightly drier Molly—was Sport the father of this brood that he’d come through a cyclone to be with their mother? Did dog love work that way? Like human love?—and walked outside to radio SES Headquarters and explain the situation.

‘Dora Grubb’s been in touch,’ Paul told her, ‘and we’ve notified the police to be ready at the bridge. Have you any idea how you’re going to get them off?’

‘If all goes well and we don’t sink, I’ll pass the two kids over to rescuers then the pups and then the dogs.’

‘Dogs?’ Paul echoed weakly. ‘Dora mentioned her dog Molly and some pups, but dogs?’

‘Harry’s Sport has joined the party,’ Grace told him. ‘Though what a policeman is doing with an un-neutered dog I’d like to know.’

‘I guess Harry thought Sport had already lost a leg so didn’t deserve to lose anything else,’ Paul suggested.

Grace huffed, ‘Men,’ and stopped transmission.

Time to see to the kids and try to work out how to keep them all alive if their fragile craft sank.

Harry was in a meeting with local councillors, electricity officials and city engineers when he heard something different over the radio he had chattering quietly on the table beside him.

He’d been paying little attention to it, but had known he had to keep it on, half listening for any situation where he might be needed. Half listening for a report that Georgie and Alistair had returned with two kids.

But nothing so far.

Flood reports had begun to come in, but nothing serious as yet, until he heard a combination of words—flood, house, bridge, kids, and nurse from the hospital with them.

Instinct told him it was Grace and he turned the volume up a little, then, when he realised the transmission had finished, he excused himself to walk to a corner of the room and use his phone to call the station.

‘No worries, Harry,’ the constable who answered said. ‘We’ve got it all under control. A bit of the Grubbs’ house came adrift with a couple of kids inside, but Grace swam out to the kids and she’s radioed in and reckons the room will stop when it hits the bridge. We’ll have people there—’

‘I’m on my way,’ Harry said, anger and concern churning inside him. Grace accused him of taking risks and here she was, swimming through floodwaters filled with debris, snakes and crocodiles.

Stupid, stupid, stupid woman!

‘Small crisis,’ he said to the people gathered in the room as he strode out the door. Contingency plans could wait, or could be sorted without him—he needed to be on that bridge.

Which, please God, would hold.

How detailed had the engineer’s inspection been? How minutely had he checked the structure?

He drove towards the bridge, passing more and more people on the rain-drenched streets, all with the bewildered expressions of disaster survivors. Rebuilding houses was one thing—could you rebuild people?

Maybe …

Maybe the anger he felt towards Grace was something to do with his own rebuilding process …

He swore at himself for such inane philosophising when his thoughts should be centred on rescue.

Swore at the Grubbs for their ridiculous habit of adding bits and pieces to their house—bits and pieces that could break off and be swept away by floodwaters. Damn it all, he’d seen that bit of the house—it had been ready to slide into the creek without the flood.

Then he was at the bridge and one look at the people gathered there made him shake his head. It was like a party—the fishing competition all over again. How word had got around he had no idea, but there must be fifteen people on the bridge with more arriving on foot and on surf-skis. And, far off, he could hear an outboard engine.

A boat! He should have thought of that first, but then he shook his head. With the debris in the water, whoever was running their outboard was also running the risk of hitting a submerged log and being tipped into the water.

Someone else to rescue.

He stopped the car and climbed out, looking upstream. One of his men came to stand beside him, explaining they’d stopped all traffic on the bridge and were getting the volunteers to spread out across it. Beyond his car an ambulance pulled up, then the hospital four-wheel-drive, a woman tumbling out.

The constable was saying something about ropes being in place and more equipment coming, but Harry barely heard, his eyes on the bobbing, slewing apparition riding the water towards them.

The craft looked for all the world like a Chinese junk floating on some exotic harbour, but then an eddy caught it and twirled it round and round, and above the raging noise of the water Harry heard a child’s shrill scream.

His stomach was clenched so tightly it was like a boulder in his abdomen, and he wanted to plunge into the waters and swim towards the now teetering room.

‘It’s going to hit hard—let’s get some tyres ready to give it some protection.’

Harry turned towards the man who’d spoken, recognising a member of Grace’s SES team, then he saw Paul Gibson, looking grey and ill but there because a member of his service was in danger.

‘There are tyres and rubber mooring buffers on the way,’ Paul said, then pointed to an SES truck pulling up on the road at the end of the bridge. ‘Or just arriving.’

More volunteers poured out of the truck, opening hatches to collect their booty. Soon they were walking across the bridge, mooring tyres and buffers in their arms.

‘We’ll wait until she gets closer,’ Paul said, ‘then work out where it’s going to hit and use the protection there.’

Harry was glad to let him take charge. He was far too emotionally involved to be making cool decisions, and rescuing Grace and the children would need the coolest of heads.

Why
he was so emotionally involved he’d think about later.

The wobbly room came closer, moving faster as the main current of the creek caught it and swirled it onward towards the bridge. He could see Grace now. She appeared to have wedged herself in the doorway of the room, and she had the two children clasped in her arms.

It made sense. All around town there were doorways still standing, the frames holding firm while the walls around them were blown to smithereens.

It looked like she was wearing a bikini, which, to Harry’s dazed and frantic mind, seemed strange but still acceptable. Once he’d accepted a room floating on the creek, he could accept just about anything.

He moved across the bridge, trying to guess where they’d hit, needing to be right there to help her off.

And to rescue the children, of course.

A dog was barking.

Sport?

Harry peered towards the voyagers.

Grace couldn’t have been stupid enough to swim out there for Sport?

Love me, love my dog?

His mind was going. It was the waiting. The room was barely moving now, pulled out of the main channel into an eddy. If he got a boat, they could row out to it.

The thought was turning practical when a child screamed again and the structure tipped, taking in water as it met the current once again, and this time hurtling towards the bridge.

Harry was there when it hit with such a sick crunching noise he couldn’t believe it had stayed afloat. Now anger mixed with relief and his mind was rehearsing the lecture he was going to give Grace about taking risks.

He took a child, Lily, and passed her on to someone, took the other child, CJ, chattering away about his adventure but far paler than he should have been.

‘I’ve got him,’ someone said, and CJ was reefed out of his arms. He turned to see Gina, CJ’s mother, clasping her son to her body, tears streaming down her face.

CJ kept talking but it was background noise. Harry’s attention was on the rapidly sinking room.

‘Here,’ Grace said, coming out of the small room and passing a squirming sack to one of the SES men.

Not a bikini at all. It was a bra, but white, not blue.

Harry reached out to grab her but she disappeared inside again, returning with Sport, who saw Harry and leapt onto his chest. He fell beneath the weight of the dog’s sudden assault, and was sitting on the bridge, comforting Sport, when Grace passed the Grubbs’ dog Molly, a strange Dalmatian cross and no lightweight, across to rescuers.

Harry pushed Sport off him, and stepped around the crowd who’d emptied the sack—Grace’s T-shirt—of
puppies onto the bridge and were now oohing and aahing over them.

He was at the railing, reaching out for her, when the timbers groaned and shrieked, then something gave way and the little room was sucked beneath the water and the bridge.

‘Grace!’

He saw her body flying through the air, registered a rope, and stood up on the railing, ready to dive in.

Paul stopped him.

‘We slipped the loop of a lasso over her before she started passing the kids and dogs. She jumped clear as the timber gave way, so we’ll just wait until she surfaces then haul her in.’

Haul her in?

As if she were a bag of sugar-cane mulch?

More anger, this time joining with the crippling concern he was feeling as he and all the watchers on the bridge searched the waters for a sight of her.

He grabbed the rope from the volunteer who was holding it and began to pull, feeling the dragging weight on the end of it, wondering if he was drowning Grace by pulling on it but needing to get her out of the water.

Others joined him, then her body, limply unconscious, surfaced by the bridge. Eager hands reached out to grab her, but as she was lifted from the water, Harry grasped her in his arms, vaguely hearing one of the paramedics giving orders, telling him to put her down, turn her on her side, check her pulse, her breathing.

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 …

T
HE
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 muttered, 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.