Australia: Handsome Heroes

CJ might well be right.

‘Someone must be here,’ she said, trying to sound assured. She tucked the baby underneath her T-shirt, against her skin, hoping the warmth of her skin would do the same job as an incubator. ‘Come on, CJ. Let’s go find someone.’

CJ was looking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to accompany her or not. ‘Is the baby OK?’

‘I think so.’ She hoped so.

‘You’ve got blood on your shirt.’

She had. She grimaced down at her disgusting T-shirt but she wasn’t thinking of her appearance. She was thinking of how much blood the baby had lost.

Why had he bled so much? And newborn babies had so little…He couldn’t afford to have lost this much.

He whimpered a little against her and she felt a tiny surge of reassurance. And something more.

Once upon a time—four and a half years ago—she’d held CJ like this, and she’d made the vows she found were forming again in her heart right now. She’d loved CJ’s daddy so much. Cal had taught her what loving could be, and she’d pass that loving on to CJ.

And even though Cal no longer came into it—even though Cal was no part of her life and had nothing to do with this baby—she found herself voicing those same vows. She’d protect this baby, come what may.

What mother could have left him here? she wondered. How much trouble must a woman be suffering to drag herself away from her newborn child?

She thought of how distressed she’d been when CJ had been born—how much she’d longed for Cal and how impossible it had seemed that she raise her son without him. But the bond to her tiny scrap of a son had been unbreakable, regardless.

He’d been her link to Cal.

She’d thought of Cal so much as her son had been born, and suddenly, achingly, she thought of him now.

But it was crazy. She couldn’t think of Cal. Neither could she think about the coach growing further away by the minute. Her ticket out of here—away from Cal for ever—was gone.

She needed to find help.

‘Come on, CJ. There must be someone still around.’ She cradled the baby with one hand, took CJ’s hand with the other and went to find out.

The rodeo had been held in a natural arena where a ring of hills formed a natural showground. There was scrub and bush-land on the hills but the rodeo ground was a huge, dusty area that now looked barren and deserted.

But not everyone had gone. As Gina and CJ crossed the parking lot back into the rodeo grounds, they found one solitary person—an elderly, native Australian. Gina had seen him before, working on the sidelines during the rodeo. Was he some sort of ground manager? He must be. He was staring around at the piles of litter and scratching his head in disgust. As he saw Gina and CJ, he shoved back his hat and smiled, obviously pleased to be distracted from the mess.

‘G’day. Come to help me clean up?’

‘We’ve found a baby,’ Gina told him.

He stared. His smile faded.

‘Um…say again?’

‘Someone has abandoned a baby in the bush. I have him here.’ She motioned to the bulge beneath her stained T-shirt. ‘We need medical help. Fast.’

‘You’ll be kidding me.’

‘I’m not joking.’ She outlined what had happened and the man’s jaw dropped almost to his ankles.

‘You’re saying some woman just dropped her bundle behind the rocks—and left it for dead?’

‘She may have thought he was dead already,’ Gina told him. ‘I had trouble getting him to breathe.’

The man cast an uneasy glance at the bulge under her shirt. He took a step back, as if maybe he was facing a lunatic. ‘So he’s under there? A baby.’

‘He’s under there. Can you take us to the nearest hospital?’

The man stared at her for a moment longer, took another step backward and then motioned uncertainly to an ancient truck parked nearby.

‘There’s no other way of getting out of here than that. How did you get here?’

‘Coach.’

‘The coach has left.’

‘Yes,’ Gina said, trying to hold her impatience in check. ‘Will you take us to the hospital? We need help.’

‘Nearest clinic’s at Gunyamurra, twenty miles from here,’ he told her, still really doubtful. ‘But there’s no one there now. The Wetherbys and the Gunnings—the two families that live near there and the workers on their stations—they were all here today so there won’t be a clinic operating. Maybe you need a doctor.’

‘Yes, please.’ To tell him she was a doctor herself would only confuse matters.

He cast another glance at her bulge. His mouth tightened as if he was becoming sure of his lunatic theory.

‘How can I contact medical help?’ she snapped, and he blinked.

‘We had the Remote Rescue Service on call during the rodeo,’ he told her, totally bemused. ‘They flew Joseph Long out with a broken leg an hour or so back. That was near the end with only the novelty events left, so they didn’t come back. Word is that they’re short a couple of doctors back at base.’

‘I need a doctor now,’ Gina told him. She was still holding CJ’s hand tight and using her other hand to cradle the baby. But the baby didn’t seem to be moving. He was so limp.

He couldn’t die. He mustn’t.

‘I s’pose I could call them back.’There was another doubtful look at her bloodstained T-shirt—a look that said he accepted there was blood and maybe there had been a baby but he wasn’t too sure that he mightn’t be dealing with an axe murderer. ‘You sure it really is a baby? A live baby?’

She released CJ and held up the T-shirt—just for a moment, just so he could see.

They all looked at the bulge.

At the windcheater-wrapped baby.

He was surely real. He was surely a baby. He was incredibly tiny—more, he was incredibly beautiful. His crumpled little face was now becoming the flushed crimson of most newborns. His eyes were wide, dazed and unfocussed.

And he moved. It was a slight movement, but he definitely moved. He whimpered a little and a hand—a hand the size of a man’s fingernail—broke free from his makeshift blanket.

Gina didn’t say anything. She tucked the little hand back into the warmth of her windcheater, and she waited for this man to make his decision. She needed his help so much.

And it seemed that she had it. The man stared down and his face twisted into an expression she could scarcely read,

‘Will you look at that?’ he whispered. ‘He’s just like mine were at that age.’ He stared down at the baby for a moment longer and then he looked up at Gina. His old eyes met hers and held.

‘You really found him?’

‘We found him. We’re tourists on the coach but we found him just as the coach was leaving. I’ve been trying to get him to breathe. So far, so good, but if he’s to live we need your help. We need outside help. Fast.’

‘I’m moving,’ he told her, and he turned and started to stride swiftly across the dusty arena to his truck.

He took three long strides—and then he started to run.

‘Mommy,’ CJ said, in the tone of a patient man whose patience was being tested to the limit.

‘Yes?’

‘I still need to go to the toilet.’

‘Cal?’

He jumped. Cal had been placing a scalpel in the steriliser, but Charles’s voice from right behind him startled him into dropping it. He swore, then stooped to retrieve it with a sigh. ‘Will you cut that out?’ he demanded of his boss. ‘Quit oiling that damned wheelchair so we have a chance.’

Charles grinned. Charles Wetherby was the medical director of Crocodile Creek Medical Centre. He’d been confined to a wheelchair since a shooting accident when he’d been eighteen, but his paraplegia didn’t stop him being a fine doctor and a medical director who missed nothing. Charles knew his silent approaches startled his staff but he didn’t mind. It never hurt his young doctors to believe their medical director might be right beside them at any time.

Not that he had any need to check on Cal. Callum Jamieson was one of the best doctors they’d ever been blessed with.

Normally doctors didn’t stay at Crocodile Creek for too long. The work was hard, the place was one of the most remote in the world and doctors tended to treat it almost as a mission. They spent a couple of years here working with the Remote Rescue team, they got their need for excitement out of their system and then they disappeared.

Not Cal. He’d come four years ago and had made no attempt to move. There was something holding him, Charles had decided long before this. Something that didn’t make him want to face the real world. Woman trouble? Charles didn’t know for sure what the whole story was, but he knew more than Cal ever admitted—and he’d met Gina. For now, though, he wasn’t asking questions. Cal was a fine surgeon, and he went that extra step with patients. He really cared. Also, Cal was more gentle and painstaking with the indigenous people than any of the younger doctors who struggled with—and often didn’t care about—their culture. Cal was invaluable to this Remote Rescue Service and Charles was deeply grateful that he had him.

Especially now.

‘I need you in the chopper,’ he told him.

‘Trouble?’

‘Out at the rodeo.’

‘Didn’t Christina and Mike just bring someone in?’

‘Yeah. Joseph Long, with a fractured femur. You’d think kids would have something better to do than to risk life and limb sitting on a steer that doesn’t want to be sat on.’

‘How old were you when you got shot pig-shooting?’ Cal asked mildly. ‘Eighteen? Don’t tell me. Joseph’s…what? Eighteen? You’re telling me that kids should learn a lesson from you and stop being risk-takers?’

‘Don’t play the moral bit on me.’ Charles’s craggy features twisted into a wry grin. There weren’t many people who could joke with Charles about his background, but Cal had been around long enough to become a firm friend. ‘Just get on that chopper,’ he told him. ‘Fast.’

‘What’s up.’

‘Newborn. Breathing difficulties.’

Cal came close to dropping his scalpel again. ‘A newborn at the rodeo?’

‘There’s a woman there says she found him.’

‘A woman?’

‘Hey, I don’t know any more than you do,’ Charles said, exasperated. ‘I know it sounds crazy and if I could, I’d be in the air right now, finding out what’s going on. But Pete Sargent—the rodeo groundsman—has radioed in, saying there’s a baby and a woman and for some reason they don’t match. He says the woman found the baby. The baby’s certainly in trouble and he wants a doctor out there fast. Mike’s refuelling the chopper as we speak. You’re the only doctor available. So what are you standing here for?’

Gina was just about frantic.

The blue tinge to the baby’s fingertips and lips was becoming more and more pronounced. Cyanosis in a newborn had to mean heart trouble—but she didn’t even have a stethoscope. She was sitting in the rodeo judges’ stall and as a hospital ward it made a great judges’ stall. There was no equipment whatsoever.

Pete—bless him—had taken CJ in charge. Out on the grounds the pair of them were collecting litter. Pete had supplied CJ with a pair of work-gloves that were longer than his arms, and CJ was enjoying himself immensely.

That left Gina free to concentrate on the baby, but there was so little she could do. She kept his airway clear. She watched his breathing. She kept him against her skin, curving in so he had as much skin contact as possible, cradling any exposed parts into her soft, old windcheater. She was using herself as an incubator.

She willed him to live, and she waited.

Help came so slowly she thought she might well lose him.

But finally the helicopter came in from the east, low and fast and loud. It hovered for a moment above the car park as if the pilot was checking for obstacles. But Pete had already checked. There was no problem with its landing, and before it reached the ground Gina was running toward it.

She stopped just out of range of the rotor blades. Pete had come up behind her. The elderly groundsman was holding CJ’s hand and he gripped her arm, too, as if warning her that the rotor was dangerous.

Maybe he still thought she was deranged, Gina decided. He must think there was a possibility she might run into the blades.

She wouldn’t. She knew about helicopters. She’d flown with the Remote Rescue Service before.

So she stood and she waited, but she didn’t have long to wait. A man was emerging from the passenger seat, his long body easing out onto the gravel. He hauled a bag out after him, then turned.

Her world stopped.

Cal.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR how long had she dreamed of this moment? For how long had she thought of what she might say?

Her prepared speech was no longer appropriate. She’d accepted that three nights ago when she’d seen him back at Crocodile Creek, so maybe it was just as well that there were things to say and do now that had nothing to do with their past.

He was past the slowing rotor blades. He was almost by her side.

He stopped.

And he saw who he was facing.

‘Gina.’

The word was a blank expression of pure shock.

He’d had less warning than she. She at least knew that he was in the same part of the world as she was. She’d seen him only three days ago. But Cal hadn’t seen her for five years.

He’d hardly changed, she thought. He was a big man, long and lean and tough. He always had been.

Information about Cal’s background had been hard to glean, but she knew enough. His parents had been farmers on a holding that had been scarcely viable. His mother had abandoned them early. Cal had been brought up to hard times and hard work, and it showed. His bronzed skin was weathered, almost leathery. His deep brown eyes crinkled at the edges, and his strongly boned face spoke of the childhood he’d talked about reluctantly, a childhood where his first memory had been of gathering hay in the blazing sun before a storm on Christmas morning, heaving bales that had been almost as big as he’d been before he had been old enough to stop believing in Santa Claus.

Before he’d been old enough to stop hoping that one day things could change.

But they hadn’t. He hadn’t. He hadn’t changed a bit.

Yet she still loved him. She looked into his shocked face and she felt her heart break all over again.

How could she still love him?

Five years of heartbreak.

She had to move on. He had a life to lead and so did she. There was no room here for emotion.

But…His burnt red, tightly curled hair was just the same as her son’s.

Concentrate on medicine, she told herself fiercely. Use the medical imperative. Medicine had been her lifesaver for five long years and it would be her lifesaver again.

And as for loving?

Get over it.

‘Cal, there’s a baby.’

He was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. She might be moving on, but he hadn’t yet. How could he?

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The harsh words were like a blow and she found herself physically flinching.

But she had to move past this. The baby’s life was too important to waste time on non-essentials.

‘I’ve been at the rodeo,’ she told him. Somehow. It was almost impossible to make her voice work at all, but when she managed it came out expressionless. Businesslike. ‘I found a baby,’ she managed.

‘You found a baby.’ Shock was still the overriding emotion.

‘It’s wrapped in a windcheater, under her T-shirt.’ Pete had moved into helpful mode now. He was looking from Gina to Cal and back again, as if he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t moving. As indeed they must. ‘She says some woman must have dropped it in the bush.’

‘What—?’

‘I need oxygen,’ Gina told him, hauling herself even more into medical mode and willing Cal to follow. ‘Cal, the baby needs urgent help if he’s to survive. He’s badly cyanosed. His breathing is way too shallow—he’s tiring while I watch.’

She still hadn’t pulled the baby from under her T-shirt so he was just a bulge under her bloodstained clothing. No wonder she didn’t have Cal’s belief. She must look crazy. ‘He’s only hours old. He’s lost blood. He’s prem, I think, and he’s not perfusing as he should. Blue lips, blue fingernails. Heartbeat seems far too rapid. Do you have equipment?’

She watched as Cal caught himself. As he finally managed to flick an internal switch.

‘A baby.’ His eyes dropped to the bulge and his deep eyes widened. He was taking in the whole scene, and it wasn’t pretty. ‘Not yours?’

‘Not mine.’A little blood could go a long way and she was aware that she looked so gory she might well be a mother who’d given birth only hours before. And maybe she looked shocked and pale to go with it.

‘I need oxygen, and I need it fast.’

‘We have an incubator on board. Everything we need.’The pilot of the chopper—a guy in a flight suit—was coming toward them now, carrying more equipment.

Medical mode won.

‘Let’s move.’

They moved.

The next ten minutes were spent working as once they’d worked together long ago. The pilot—a youngish guy Cal referred to as Mike—was a paramedic and he was good, but with a baby this tiny they needed every ounce of skill they all possessed.

She and Cal were still a team, Gina thought fleetingly as she searched for and found a tiny vein for the intravenous drip. Newborn babies had such a tiny amount of blood that even a small loss could be catastrophic. He had to have replacement fluid. Meanwhile, Cal had a paediatric mask over the tiny face, using the attached bag to assist breathing. His breathing slowed almost at once. From an abandoned baby with nothing, this little one was suddenly being attached to every conceivable piece of medical technology they could use.

Maybe he’d need them all. Because when Cal hooked him to the heart monitor and she watched his heart rate, she winced.

‘There’s something going on,’ she murmured. ‘That heartbeat’s too fast and with this level of cyanosis…’

‘You’re thinking maybe pulmonary stenosis?’

‘Maybe. Or something worse, God forbid. We need an echocardiogram.’

‘Yeah.’ He cast her a doubtful look. ‘We’ve done all we can here. We need to get him back to the base.’

She hesitated. Yes. They needed to get the baby to help. But…where did that leave her?

For the first time since she’d found the baby, there was a tiny sliver of time to consider. The baby was being warmed and he was hooked to oxygen and an intravenous drip. He was as stable as she could make him—for now. Somehow she made herself block out the fact that Cal was watching her as she forced herself to think through what should happen next.

Should she stay involved?

Now was the time to step back—if she could.

There were three factors coming into play here.

First, she badly needed transport. Once she reached Crocodile Creek, she could get a coach to the outside world. Maybe she could even still catch her flight home.

Secondly, more importantly, this baby needed her. Or he needed someone with specialist training.

‘Is there a cardiologist at Crocodile Creek?’ she asked, and Cal shook his head. He was thinking exactly what she was thinking. She knew it.

‘Our cardiologist has just left,’ he said abruptly, and she nodded. But the way he’d spoken…It brought her to the third factor.

Despite the fact that it was sensible for her to go with him to Crocodile Creek—despite the fact that medical imperative decreed that she go—she didn’t want to get in the helicopter with him. It had been a mistake to come. To drag out the moment…

This baby needed a cardiologist if he was to survive. He needed her.

She had no choice, she told herself fiercely. Focus on medicine. Ignore the personal. The personal was all just too hard.

‘We need to think about the mother,’ she managed, and Cal nodded in agreement. They’d always been apt to follow the same train of thought and it was happening all over again.

‘We do.’ He turned away to where Pete was kneeling a few yards away in the dust. Pete had obviously decided that his best role was in keeping CJ occupied and they were etching huge drawings of kangaroos in the dust. ‘Pete, have you no idea where this baby could possibly have come from?’

‘There’s been three or four hundred people through here over the last couple of days,’ Pete said, looking up from his kangaroo and shaking his head as he thought it through. ‘It could be anyone’s kid.’

‘This baby was born here only hours ago. Did you see anyone who was obviously pregnant?’

‘Dorothy Curtin’s got a bulge bigger’n a walrus but she and Max took off with the kids at lunch time.’

‘There’s no way Dorothy would abandon one of hers. But anyone else? Maybe someone who’s in trouble. A kid? Maybe someone who’s not a local?’

‘There were a few out-of-towners on the coach. But I dunno.’ He scratched his head a bit and thought about it. ‘I dunno.’

‘I didn’t see any pregnant women on the bus,’Gina told them.

‘I’ll need to get the police involved.’ Cal looked uncertainly across at Gina and then he seemed to make a decision. ‘I want the mother found. But we need to take Gina—this lady—back to Crocodile Creek with us,’ he told Pete. ‘Will you stay on and show the police where the baby was found?’

‘Sure thing,’ Pete said. ‘I gotta clean up anyway.’

‘I’ll show you exactly where I found her,’ Gina told him, and then hesitated, thinking it through. ‘Cal, we need to check the birth site anyway. We might have a girl somewhere who’s in real trouble.’

‘We might at that,’ Cal said grimly—and then added, more enigmatically, ‘And that’s only the start of it.’ He motioned to Mike. ‘Mike, you go with Gina. I’ll stay with the baby.’

Mike nodded. Until then the paramedic had worked almost silently alongside them, but he was obviously aware of undercurrents. He looked at Gina now, a long, assessing glance, and then he looked across to where CJ was intent on his drawing.

‘Is this your son?’ he asked her. ‘Will he be coming back with us, too?’

Cal hadn’t noticed CJ. He’d been preoccupied with the baby and with Gina, and CJ had had his head down, drawing dust pictures. Now his eyes jerked over to where the little boy knelt in the dust.

CJ was totally intent on the task at hand, as he was always intent on everything he did. Pete had been showing him the traditional way aboriginals depicted kangaroos and he was copying, dotting the spine of his kangaroo with tiny white pebbles. Each stone was being laid in order. His drawing of the kangaroo was three feet high—or three feet long—and it’d take many, many pebbles to complete it, but that wouldn’t deter CJ.

So for now he knelt happily in the dust, a freckle-faced, skinny kid with a crop of burnt red curls that were coiled tight to his head. With deep brown eyes that flashed with intelligence.

With hair and with eyes that were just the same as his father’s.

They all saw Cal’s shock. Gina watched his eyes widen in incredulity. She could see him freeze. She could see the arithmetic going on in his head.

She could see his life change, as hers had changed with CJ’s birth. Or maybe before that.

As it had changed the day she’d first met Cal.

‘Hey, the kid’s hair is just the same as yours,’ Pete said easily—and then he fell silent. He, too, had sensed the tension that was suddenly almost palpable.

‘It’s great hair,’ Mike said, with a long, hard stare at Cal. Then he recovered. A bit. ‘OK.’ He stared at CJ for another long moment—and then turned back to Gina. ‘You said your name is Gina? I’m assuming you’re a doctor?’ Cal had been working with her as an equal and her medical training must have been obvious.

‘That’s right. I’m a cardiologist from the States.’ But Gina was hardly concentrating on what she was saying. She was still watching Cal.

‘Then let’s get this birth site checked, shall we?’ Mike said, taking charge because neither of the two doctors seemed capable of taking charge of anything. ‘There are questions that need answers all over the place here.’ He directed another long, hard stare at Cal—and then he took another look at CJ. ‘So maybe we’d better start working on them right now.’