A Proposal Worth Waiting For

Hurting Josh.

Scaring him off.

Saying and doing all the wrong things.

Sabotaging the holiday’s hopes and promises the way he’d sabotaged his personal life in so many other ways.

‘Dr Carlisle?’ Josh’s voice sounded small and scared.

Dr Carlisle…

‘Dr Carlisle, I think I need to use my inhaler.’ The name jolted Nick out of his negative thoughts. Was Miranda here, then? Was she—hell!—coming on this camp? She must be. Of course there would be medical people accompanying the group. He hadn’t had time to think about it. So this was the day, then, that he…or they…had managed to put off for so long.

‘Hey, are you wheezing?’

And there she was, right in front of him, almost exactly the way Nick remembered her, the way he’d glimpsed her two years ago, before making that very fast and very firm decision to pull back. There she was, stepping into the breach with her cheerful, elfin and slightly mischievous face, her calm, sweet voice, her practical attitude, her slim, almost boyish build and her heart worn carelessly and innocently on her sleeve.

‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.

Ten years. Miranda wasn’t going to count the near-miss from two years ago. Of course he remembered her and knew exactly who she was, exactly where she fitted into his past. She saw it in his face, when he reached out a hand for her to shake. ‘We haven’t…uh…managed to connect since you started treating Josh,’ he said.

He wore the same aura of cool and rather distant confidence that she recognised, and that she’d only once seen truly and seriously slip. He used his body the same way, too. He never paraded his height or the strength in his shoulders, but, then, a man didn’t need to when he was as tall and strong as Nick. He was imposing without even trying.

‘No, we haven’t.’

On the surface, their words took care of the subject, but she strongly suspected it would come up again.

Physically, he’d barely changed. His lightly tanned skin had done a little more living, and it showed in the fine creases beginning to form around his eyes and mouth. His body had hardened. She could imagine him running several kilometres a day, or going for gym sessions at six in the morning before starting surgery or hospital rounds.

‘Anna has a lot of confidence in you,’ he added, ‘which is great.’

‘I’m glad you were able to come at such short notice,’ she told him. And meant it, because ten years was a long time, and this man was a patient’s father now, nothing more. She had to remember that. Had to. Hell, what was the alternative? ‘It’ll be great for Josh to have his dad there.’

‘You think?’

‘Well, yes.’

Didn’t he agree? Was that a cynical drawl, or something else? Anna had been very nervous and wound up about the whole thing, which was typical, but her fears did have some basis in reality—at least as far as Josh’s health was concerned. Maybe the man seriously didn’t want to be in for this assignment, and his reluctance and lack of interest would ruin Josh’s whole camp experience.

But Miranda couldn’t think about that abstract possibility right now. In fact, she couldn’t think about Nick Devlin at all. She had to deal with the concrete reality that Josh’s asthma attack was getting more severe by the second. With a sinking heart, she saw the Allandales arriving with their thirteen-year-old daughter—verging on late, heavily laden with luggage, instantly wanting and expecting her full attention, as they always did.

Pretending she hadn’t seen them, she bent down to take Josh’s backpack, wanting to pull out his inhaler and spacer. His breathing was getting worse and he looked increasingly distressed as the seconds passed. He was scrabbling at his backpack now, trying to get it open, but the zip seemed to be stuck and he hadn’t considered his father as a possible source of help.

‘Give the backpack to me, sweetheart,’ Miranda urged him. ‘Don’t try to do it yourself. You just keep breathing, OK?’

‘Dr Carlisle!’ Rick Allandale reached her, his knees roughly at her eye level.

Cutting off what would probably be a lengthy list of questions, explanations or complaints, none of which she needed now, she told him, ‘Let me tick Lauren’s name off on my list in a minute, Mr Allandale. We’re waiting until everyone’s here before we check in.’

‘Do you know his action plan off the top of your head?’ Nick asked in her ear.

Miranda felt rather than saw him. He’d squatted down to Josh’s level, just as she had done, and his well-muscled upper arm bumped her shoulder while his backside rested on his heels. She caught the faint waft of some very pleasant male grooming product. Aftershave or shampoo, or maybe just plain old soap.

He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Because I do. You have other people to take care of. Let me handle this.’

‘Everyone else can wait,’ she answered, not sure if he understood the urgency. He must surely realise that the attack was being exacerbated by Josh’s mix of anxiety and over-excitement.

Too aware that he hadn’t moved further away, Miranda uncapped the Ventolin inhaler and attached it to the spacer, helped Josh get the other end of the spacer ready at his lips. ‘OK, ready to breathe out? Now…’

But Josh couldn’t concentrate and, even with the spacer, he mistimed the dose and took the spacer from his lips too soon. Miranda saw a puff like smoke as most of the drug escaped into the air.

Lauren Allandale was watching Josh’s struggle for breath and his clumsiness with the inhaler, as were a couple of other kids and a parent or two. The atmosphere was chaotic and claustrophobic. Another big group of tourists had just arrived, ready to check in for their flight, and the tour leader was yelling instructions to them in a language Miranda couldn’t identify. Korean? More stares arrowed in Josh’s direction.

‘Please, let me deal with this,’ Nick repeated, needing to lean close to keep a shred of privacy for his son. Miranda felt the warmth of his body, let herself meet his brown gaze for a moment and found it far too familiar. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was motionless, almost forbidding, and yet it stirred her and filled her with memories. Suddenly, as she’d feared all along, ten years wasn’t very much time at all. ‘You have other things to attend to. And he’s my son.’

‘You’re confident that you know what to do?’ She felt their fingers touch briefly as he took the inhaler and spacer out of her hands. Should she grab the equipment back?

‘For heck’s sake, I’m a doctor!’

‘I mean, the exact dosage. The frequency.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he told her shortly, shoving the equipment into Josh’s backpack. ‘The very first thing I’m going to do is take him somewhere quiet. We can’t get him focused and relaxed here. I saw signs for a parents’ room.’ He spoke to his son, turning a shoulder to shut Miranda out, whether through hostility or because she just wasn’t important at the moment she didn’t know. ‘Josh, come with me and we’ll get you breathing again, shall we?’ His voice sounded stiff and almost formal. ‘We don’t want you having to go to bed as soon as we get there. We want to get out exploring, right?’

Josh nodded, but his eyes were still wide with effort and fear. Fear of not being able to breathe? Or of something else?

‘When’s the latest we can get back here for check-in?’ Nick asked Miranda. ‘Twelve-forty? Don’t hold the group up, will you?’

‘Your baggage…’ she recalled. You couldn’t check in someone else’s bags, neither did Security take an innocent view of luggage left unattended.

‘I’ll wait with it,’ said Benita Green, the nurse who had come with the cancer kids’ group.

Miranda and Nick both nodded at the same time. ‘Thanks.’

Then Nick scooped up Josh and carried him off, the little backpack with its bright colours and cartoon motif swinging incongruously from one big male shoulder as he strode at a rapid pace through the terminal. Josh looked so light and small and vulnerable in his arms, his little body stiff and his shoulders lifting with his effort to breathe.

Nick found the parents’ room with no difficulty.

It was like most such places, a small, bland room whose main virtue was its quietness and lack of crowds. Josh’s breathing had continued to worsen as Nick carried him and he had to fight his own sense of growing panic.

What if he couldn’t get an effective dose? What if Josh’s habitual wariness around him made him unable to relax enough to throw off the attack? What medical equipment did the airport medical centre have? It was close by. They’d just passed it. Should Nick have gone directly there instead of attempting to deal with this attack on his own?

Was he in some kind of denial, as Anna had so often accused? Or was this trip to the parents’ room a piece of misplaced heroism on his part? Anna had accused him of that in the past, too. What if this whole precious, scary, miraculously out-of-the-blue week or more with his son was derailed at the very start by another hospital stay?

I want this. I want time with my son.

Even though it challenged his self-confidence on almost every level.

I want the two of us to defeat this asthma monster together, in the next ten minutes, to prove to both of us that we can. I want him to love me, and to know that I love him.

‘OK, this is better, isn’t it?’ he said to Josh. ‘Nobody watching.’

He dropped the backpack from his shoulder, grabbed the inhaler and spacer from where he’d flung them inside. ‘Now, show me how you do this. Show me your very best breath out and then a huge breath in, after you press.’

Josh pressed the inhaler, breathed in and out while Nick counted the breaths and kept a gentle grip on the spacer. His son still hadn’t spoken a word.

‘Good. That was great,’ he said, pushing encouragement into his voice. ‘Is that feeling any better?’

Josh nodded but still didn’t speak. Nick thought he detected a mild improvement but second-guessed the impression at once, as usual. Maybe it was only that the panicky look had softened a bit in a quieter atmosphere.

He had a powerful, gut-dropping need for Miranda to be there, remembering six years of her common sense and sweetness and warmth and diligence and brains, during lectures and tutorial groups and anatomy lab sessions, followed by that one intense night of her body in bed and hours and hours of talking. Remembering it all as if it were yesterday that they’d finished medicine together. Just those few minutes of talking with her near the check-in desk had brought it all back, as he’d somehow known for the past two years that it would.

But she wasn’t there, so he and Josh just had to wait, find some patience and some trust on their own.

And administer a second dose of Ventolin, Nick decided, as the first one wasn’t working the miracle cure he’d hoped for. Time was getting on, but if he pushed Josh to go back to the check-in desk too soon…

So how did they pass the time until the next dose? There were no toys in here, no windows, nothing. Just him and Josh, on their own together for the first time in how long…probably three months…waiting to see if he could breathe.

‘How about a story?’ Nick suggested, and heard his voice come out too hearty.

With a wheezy effort, not looking at him, Josh answered, ‘We have to…go back and…meet the others…and get on the…plane.’

His heart sinking, Nick checked his watch so he’d know when to give the next dose. ‘Not yet, little guy,’ he said, then mentally cursed himself for repeating the phrase Anna had frowned at.

It was a term of endearment, damn it!

Find another one, he decided. Whether she’s right or wrong, play it safe, take the line of least resistance, for Josh’s sake. And for his own?

It was what he’d been doing for far too long.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THEY’LL be closing the flight in twenty minutes, Miranda,’ Benita said. ‘What do you think has happened to Josh and his dad? They wouldn’t have just wandered into a shop to buy postcards?’

‘I’m getting worried,’ Miranda admitted. Nick and his son had been absent for fifteen minutes—enough time to administer the first dose of Ventolin and assess its effect. If it wasn’t working…

It often didn’t. Despite long-term treatment to develop Josh’s lungs, on top of a regimen of preventative action which Anna stuck to like a monk’s ritual, Josh’s sudden attacks had progressed three times in the past year to the point where hospital admission had been the only option.

If that happened now…

She felt a surge of disappointment on Josh’s behalf. He’d been looking forward to this trip so much. Possibly too much. Miranda had privately wondered if any place in the whole world could match the paradise of Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp and Wallaby Island as they existed in little Josh’s energetic imagination.

He’d said to her at his last check-up, ‘There’ll be waterfalls and birds and lakes teeming with crocodiles, and rides and surf and the best food, and toys and campfires and singalongs, and I’m going to swim all day, except when I’m feeding the crocodiles. I’m not going in the water with them! They’re in a lake, they’re not in the ocean or the pool. And I think the lake is going to be purple. And fireworks. There has to be fireworks.’

And Miranda had smiled at him and nodded, ‘Purple, huh?’ And, of course, it was good that he was looking forward to it so much, but kids could make themselves sick with excitement, and then Nick had had to come on the holiday instead of Anna, which added a level of stress and uncertainty to the excitement, and—

‘I’m going to go and hunt them up,’ Miranda told Benita. ‘Can you handle things here, and guard Nick and Josh’s luggage? If I can’t get them to the check-in in the next twenty- five minutes at the outside, bad luck. We can’t have the whole group miss the flight because of two people.’

Even if one of them was one of her favourite patients, and the other one was…

Well, was Nick Devlin.

A very memorable ship passing in the night, practically scraping her all down the starboard side like the Titanic and its famous iceberg, and pushing her off course for far too long.

She hurried through the terminal, found the parents’ room and knocked on the door. ‘Nick? Josh? Are you still in there?’

Nick opened the door. He looked anxious, jittery and too light on his feet. He wanted action and control and to get on that plane now. Miranda was shocked at the way she could read his emotional state. No, not just read it, feel it as if it was happening inside her own body. As soon as he saw her, he gave a frowning glance at his watch and she knew what he must be thinking.

Can we do this?

Behind him Josh sat on a bland vinyl chair. Still wheezing. Not noticeably better, but not worse. Could they do this, with time squeezing them as tight as Josh’s lungs?

Miranda felt steely determination set in.

Could they? Just try showing her any other option!

‘Time for a second dose,’ she said. ‘Let’s not have you two miss the flight. There isn’t another connecting hop out to the island until tomorrow afternoon.’

‘We’ve just done a second lot,’ Nick muttered, blocking the conversation from Josh’s ears with the bulk of his body in the half-open doorway. His open-necked shirt showed a fine mist of perspiration across his collar-bone. He was literally sweating this—the tight timing, Josh’s breathing, the potential disappointment. ‘What do you think? Is there any point hanging on here for a third, or should I give up now and cancel our flight? Give up on the whole thing?’

She couldn’t keep back a stricken sound. Cancel Josh’s trip?

‘I’m asking you as a doctor, Miranda,’ he added, as if he knew that she was operating far too much on emotion right now. ‘Not as someone who wants my little boy to have his holiday. Should we really push this? Is it a sign that I’m not the right person to be…? No, hell, I can’t think straight about any of this. You need to be the one to make the decision.’

He met her gaze, jaw tight, expression rigid, fighting himself. She wasn’t imagining the appeal reflecting from deep within his brown eyes. It was there, even though he’d never been the kind of man to show any weakness easily or willingly.

Somehow, his look cut to the heart of her just as the whole of him had cut to the heart of her ten years ago, during their one night together, without him apparently even knowing it. Or if he had known, back then, he hadn’t cared.

At some level he trusted her on this, she decided—trusted Anna’s assessment of her as a professional, or his own more personal memories. The fact warmed her too much and she had to push the feeling away. She should remember that after their night of talking and making love, which she’d believed in so much, he’d never phoned…

‘Has he improved at all?’ she asked quickly.

‘A little. More after the dose I gave him a couple of minutes ago. I—I don’t think he trusts me. Is he psyching himself out because I’m here, not his mother? Maybe at some level this is happening because he doesn’t want to go to camp with me.’

He was being incredibly careful not to let Josh hear. Miranda had to step closer and keep her eyes fixed on that barely moving mouth but still she strained to hear him. At this distance, she could see more clearly the lines on his face that hadn’t been there ten years ago, and she had a totally unacceptable urge to soothe them with her fingers.

‘Let’s not think that way. Let me take a look at him,’ she suggested.

‘He knows you almost better than he knows me, I guess.’ The words, barely more than a mutter, cut Miranda to the heart.

She came fully into the parents’ room and dropped to Josh-level. He was sitting in the room’s one chair. ‘Can you talk, Josh?’

‘A bit.’

‘You said the second dose helped?’ She could feel Nick behind her, a ball of strong and very male tension and distress. He really didn’t want to cancel this trip.

‘Yes.’

‘So we’ll just sit here, shall we, and then we’ll give a third dose and that’ll do the trick.’ She spoke as if there was no other possibility, and Josh smiled at last.

While Nick let out a sigh that she didn’t dare to think came from relief.

Not yet, Nick, please.

Josh wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Ten minutes later, they both helped him with the third dose, then Nick put his asthma equipment back in the colouful backpack and they listened to the wonderful sound of Josh breathing better and talking again. ‘Did we miss the plane?’

‘No, sweetheart. We have time.’

Not much of it, though.

Nick took her aside again, holding her arm, bending his head towards hers so that the dark hair spilling across his forehead almost brushed her face. ‘Can we really do this? What if he crashes again during the flight?’ His touch felt impossibly familiar, even after so long. She couldn’t believe how quickly they’d reconnected in such a personal way.

Maybe because she’d been expecting something like this— half dreading and half wanting it—for two years? It was harder than if he’d simply shown up in her life again, out of the blue.

‘They have oxygen on board,’ Miranda answered, ‘and the fact that he’s responded to these first few doses is a good sign. In the past, when he’s crashed badly, it’s been downhill all the way.’

‘True,’ Nick said. ‘Ambulance ride to the hospital. The full works.’

‘He’s been very excited about this trip.’

‘Don’t I know it!’

‘I so-o-o don’t want to pull the plug on it for him now.’

‘Neither do I,’ Nick said.

‘Is it the excitement, do you think?’ Miranda asked him quietly.

‘That and…’ He stopped, took a breath and readied himself to choose his words carefully. ‘Anna can’t…uh…always hide when she’s stressed. He picks up on it far too much. As far as she’s concerned, the timing of her mother’s accident couldn’t have been worse, and maybe she’s right…’

Anna’s emotions sometimes made Josh sicker. Nick and Miranda were in agreement on that. But then he added, ‘And maybe she’s right to think it’ll be disastrous to have me with him on the trip. He and I haven’t spent as much time together as I’d like.’

He hated saying those outwardly bland words, Miranda could tell. Hated saying them because they were true? Or because they weren’t? Had he genuinely wanted a better relationship with his son all along? Or was Anna right in saying, as she frequently did, that Nick was the one to withdraw?

His smile was forced. ‘We looked at pictures of a Very Greedy Frog.’

‘As much time as you’d like with him?’ she echoed, before she could stop herself. It had sounded a little too much like a challenge— Yeah, really? That’s not what Anna says. Why had she felt the need to plumb the level of his honesty now, when they were in such a rush?

He looked at her and she could almost see him mentally prioritising his battles. Most important, get himself and Josh onto the flight. Way down the list, argue with his son’s respiratory physician about which divorced parent most deserved the prize for honesty and clear thinking and sacrifice.

‘Look, is there still time?’ he asked. ‘That’s what’s important now.’

‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Benita has been waiting with your luggage. Everyone else will have gone through by now. We have to get to that check-in desk now, if you’re going to make the flight.’

He nodded for the third time. Wasn’t going to waste words when he didn’t have that luxury. Once again, he scooped Josh into his arms and slung the backpack over one shoulder. ‘Let’s do it. Josh, can you breathe?’

No answer.

‘Josh, can you? You have to talk to me!’

‘Yes. I’m breathing.’

‘I’ll put you down later, so you can walk onto the plane on your own, OK? For now I’m carrying you, because we need to hurry.’

‘So are we still going?’ came a thin little voice.

‘Well, do you want to?’ Wooden tone.

‘Yes!’

‘With me?’

‘Y-yes.’ A lot less emphatic.

‘Good,’ Nick said, and suddenly hugged him fiercely. ‘Because I think we’re going to have a great time.’ His voice was thick with sudden emotion that almost brought tears to Miranda’s eyes.

He cared. Whatever else she might doubt about him now, she couldn’t doubt that.

They almost ran through the terminal.

A sympathetic desk clerk, who’d been told about the situation, waved them through to the first-class check-in desk and despatched their luggage along the conveyor with practised speed. Waiting in a queue to go through Security, they heard the announcement for final boarding for the flight, but Nick said stoically, ‘They’ve let our baggage through, and the desk clerk knows we’re on our way. They should hold the flight a few minutes for us, now. I hope,’ he added.

Their departure gate seemed miles away, at the far end of the concourse. Nick loped ahead, seeming untroubled by Josh’s light weight. Miranda struggled to keep up. Last night’s sleepless mental list-checking of today’s travel details was taking its toll. Finally she saw the gate lounge and the open door leading to the access tunnel. The area was bare of passengers and a member of the ground crew was speaking into a telephone.

‘Boarding pass?’ Nick barked at Miranda.

‘Right here. You’ve got yours and Josh’s?’

‘Yes.’ To the ground crew he said, ‘Nick Devlin, Josh Devlin, Miranda Carlisle.’

‘Good. You’re the three we’ve been waiting for.’

Breathless, Miranda followed Nick down the tunnel, the blood beating in her ears and her limbs weak with relief. They’d made it. Just. Josh was smiling. Everything was going to be OK.