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Which left the little guy. And the other two.

  Oh, fine. In for a penny … I knelt and gathered them all into a sort of group hug which didn’t work on lots of levels but seemed to be exactly what they needed.

  Now I had to figure out what to say.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, gulping a bit. ‘It’s fine. Your daddy’s not crying because he’s sad. He’s crying because he’s been very, very worried and now it’s okay. Your mommy’s going to be well again. Your new little sister is healthy, your mommy’s asleep and tomorrow you’ll be able to see her.’

  ‘Not now?’ The oldest child, Becky, was pulling back from the rest. Her eyes were watching her father, still racked with sobs, and her expression spoke of disbelief.

  ‘Your mom’s been very sick,’ I told her. ‘Something tore inside her when the baby was born.’

  ‘But she was okay after the baby came. We saw her.’

  ‘That’s true. But you know how sometimes your clothes get a little rip, so small you hardly notice, but when you pull on the tear it gets bigger? That’s what happened here. To your mom. She lost a lot of blood. When you see her you’ll see a bag of blood on a stand by her side, dripping into her arm. We fixed the rip and now we’re putting blood back in.’

  ‘What ripped?’ It was the oldest boy. These were intelligent kids, but maybe at the moment I’d prefer kids who’d take things at face value.

  I was stuck with the ones before me. Jack was holding Clive close—his body was still shuddering. There was clearly no help there. I was on my own.

  ‘The man who brought us here told Daddy that you were doing an emergency hyst … hysterectomy,’ the girl whispered. ‘What’s that?’

  Whoops. It was time for retreating—to say all would be explained later.

  By Clive? By Jack?

  Both men had enough on their shoulders. This was something I had no choice but to do for them.

  ‘Mommies have a pouch inside them for carrying babies before they’re born,’ I told them, frantically searching for an explanation that’d make logical sense to kids. ‘Just like kangaroos, only kangaroos have pouches on the outside. Human mommies have pouches on the inside. The pouch is called the womb. In your mommy’s case, her womb got a tear in it. It bled and bled, so we had to operate fast. The quickest way to stop the bleeding—the only way in an emergency like this—is to take the whole pouch out. That’s what we’ve done and it’s called a hysterectomy.’ I gave them a shaky smile. Obstetrician in reassurance mode. Just. ‘But don’t ask me why it’s called a hysterectomy because I don’t have a clue.’

  The sobs had stopped behind me now. Somehow Clive had pulled himself together. They were all listening.

  ‘Can you put the pouch back in again?’ Becky asked.

  ‘No. No, we can’t.’

  ‘Does that mean my mum can’t have any more babies?’ the oldest boy ventured. These kids certainly were smart. I winced, but there was no room here for untruths.

  ‘That’s right. Your mom doesn’t have a pouch anymore, so Henrietta will be the last baby your mom can have.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ It was the second boy, a freckle-faced, gap-toothed four-year-old. Sam. He’d had his thumb in his mouth while he listened intently, and now he took his thumb out to make his serious announcement. ‘My dad’s got a Toyota,’ he declared, with all the solemnity of someone announcing that his dad was President of the United States. ‘It’s got seven seats. There’s one for Daddy, for Mum, for Becky and for Harold and for Benjamin and for me. There’s one left for Henrietta. And that’s all,’ he ended on a note of triumph. ‘So our mum doesn’t need her pouch anymore ’cos our car’s full up.’

  It was the best thing I’d ever heard. We stared at the four-year-old and then every single face split into a grin. Clive blew his nose—hard—then reached out for his little son and hugged him so tightly it was as if he was holding onto a lifeline. But the face resting on his son’s hair was lined with laughter as well as tears.

  ‘You’re bloody right, Sammy boy,’ he told him, his voice muffled. ‘We’ve got all the family we want. Five kids and your mother. My Mary. Who could ask for more?’ And then he looked at me and Jack.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, clearly teetering on the brink of collapse. ‘Just thank you.’

  I escaped soon after. It was too much emotion. Sure, it was a happy ending. There could still be problems from the loss of so much blood but it was looking good. No, it was great. But the way that family was looking at me was … extremely emotional. It made me feel out of control, and there’d been far too much of that about lately.

  But there was more to come. I was no sooner back in the beach buggy, tootling along the coast road, when I thought, Uh-oh.

  Cows.

  Clive had been tinkering with the milking machine when I left. He hadn’t even started milking. How long had it taken me to get to the hospital and how long had I been there before Clive was called?

  Not long enough.

  Would there still be cows waiting for someone to milk them?

  I couldn’t call on Jack. Maybe he’d agree to help, but the way things were looking it’d be well after midnight before he finished everything he needed to do. Plus he needed to be on call for Mary.

  I was on my own.

  Me and my cows.

  Maybe I’d miscalculated.

  Maybe I could phone the salami factory this afternoon.

  Maybe the ground would open up…

  I drove into the farmyard and, sure enough, there were still fifteen or more cows lined up, their udders heavy with milk. Clive must have finished the cows he had on the platform and then run, leaving this lot waiting.

  The cows that had been milked had wandered away back to pasture. All except Christabelle. She remained behind, her head hanging over the rails and her eyes forlorn, as if she was already despairing as to the fate of her compatriots. Maybe she had cause.

  ‘I can do this,’ I told her, with a lot more bravado than I felt. ‘Quit with the look of doom. You’ll scare your friends.’

  They did look scared.

  Okay. Deep breath. I was trained in all aspects of human lactation. I could do this.

  ‘It shouldn’t be any different,’ I told the girls after I’d donned gumboots and cautiously climbed up onto the platform. ‘Don’t listen to Christabelle. I’m a doctor. Trust me.’

  The girls obviously had different ideas. Every one of my brown-eyed girls backed off in alarm.

  ‘But I’m wearing gumboots. Look. I’m practically a home-grown islander.’

  The cows didn’t seem to agree.

  How far did I have to go in the fashion slide?

  There was a pair of overalls hanging on the peg. Carefully, making every move overly slow so I didn’t alarm the cows more than I must, I put them on.

  ‘See. I’m just the same as Clive and Jack,’ I told the girls. ‘Just skin and bones, and gumboots and overalls.’

  The cows looked at me as if I was out of my mind.

  ‘But you’re stuck with me,’ I told them, checking their swollen udders. ‘Don’t listen to Christabelle. She’s just scaremongering. If you don’t let me milk you, you’ll bust.’

  That was hardly a comforting bedside comment. The cows were looking as terrified as I felt.

  No matter. What next? The milking machines. The rotating platform. There was a master switch on the wall. I took a deep breath and walked forward like I was a professional and flicked it upwards. The machines thrummed into life. The platform started its slow rotation and the cows didn’t flicker an eyelid.

  I felt like I’d delivered twins. Breech.

  Or maybe I’d delivered part of breech twins. The toes. There was a way to go.

  I’d watched Jack and Clive. What had they done next?

  Get the cows into the bails.

  Stick with medicine, I told myself. It’s just like doctoring. An early medical lecture came back. ‘Patients are frightened enough without being burdened by your insecurities.
If you don’t know what to do and can’t refer, get yourself out of the patient’s presence, find out the best thing you can do in the circumstances, then come back with all the assurance in the world.’

  At the time I’d been appalled, but over the years I’d learned the advice contained more than a grain of sense. What people most needed in times of crisis was reassurance. If the doctor didn’t know what to do, then who did?

  I couldn’t refer. These patients were insecure. The need was urgent.

  Walk firmly as if you really mean it, I told myself. Don’t hesitate. Get behind the first cow and prod her forward.

  ‘Get lost, Christabelle,’ I told my nemesis. ‘Take your great scary eyes someplace else.’ I stuck out my tongue and waggled my fingers over my ears.

  Very professional.

  I touched the first unmilked cow on the rump, gingerly. The cow walked calmly onto the platform and into the bail.

  It was as much as I could do not to shout in triumph. But this was only step two.

  I dropped the chain in place as I’d seen Jack do and then looked nervously at the cups. They looked like some sort of mechanical octopus, each arm ending with a suction cap.

  The platform was rotating. It was geared so that it’d do one long turn and when the cow got back to the place where she’d got on, she’d be milked. At the speed I was operating, the cow would take half a dozen turns before she had the cups on.

  I refused to panic.

  There was a bucket filled in readiness in the central work area and I tried to remember Jack’s order of work. Surely he’d washed the teats? The bucket smelled of some sort of antiseptic. That made sense.

  ‘Okay, girl. Bath time.’

  The cow lifted her tail and deposited a vast pile of steaming dung right behind me.

  ‘Yeah, but you still need to have a bath,’ I muttered and wiped each teat in turn. To my amazement the cow didn’t move, stoically accepting what was obviously routine.

  I was still doing it right.

  And then the cups…

  This has to be obvious. This many cows twice a day. It couldn’t be complicated.

  And of course it wasn’t. I lifted the cups and the teats slid in as if they were meant to be there.

  ‘How clever’s this? Hey, cow, the designer of these deserves a medal.’

  The rest was a piece of cake. There was a clip in the overhead pipe that looked as if it was waiting, so I clipped in my end. It worked like magic. With the cups in place, a stream of creamy milk started pumping through the clear plastic pipe—the overhead line leading to the vats.

  If there hadn’t been fifteen cows lined up ready to be scared into yoghurt production, I’d have sent up a cheer that could have been heard in Manhattan.

  ‘There’s nothing to this. Who’s next?’

  I attached cups to three cows. They were moving around the platform smoothly. I had every second bail empty but I wasn’t doing too badly.

  Except I couldn’t remember the end bit.

  What was I supposed to do when the platform came all the way around? I’d have to figure out how to get the cups—and the cow—off.

  ‘Something will occur to me,’ I told the cow I was attaching the cups to, making my voice as reassuring as possible. ‘Otherwise we’ll just go round and round ’til someone comes to rescue us.’

  ‘We might be just in time.’

  Jack. I swung around and there he was, watching from the dairy door, his grin as wide as a house. ‘Well, well, Dr Kelly. Is there no end to your skills?’

  I flushed and straightened from cupping my cow. ‘What are you … I mean, shouldn’t you be back at the hospital?’

  ‘I came to introduce Heather and Steve.’

  I looked over Jack’s shoulder to where a man and a woman, rigged out in the same overalls and gumboots I was wearing, were standing behind him. They were middle-aged, weathered—farmers? All of a sudden my gumboots seemed way too shiny.

  ‘Heather’s Mary’s sister,’ Jack told me. ‘She and Steve have come to milk.’

  ‘Why?’ It was a dumb thing to ask, but to say I wasn’t totally together was the least of it. I was standing on the wrong part of the platform—the rotating part—so I was moving slowly away from them, but I stayed where I was.

  ‘Cows need to be milked.’ Heather stepped up onto the platform to grip my hands. ‘Clive says you saved my sister’s life. This is the least we can do.’

  ‘But you should be at the hospital yourselves. With the children.’

  ‘And leave you to milk your own cows?’ The woman’s face lit with laughter at what was obviously a dumb idea. ‘Nope. Auntie Lorna’s arrived to collect the kids. I faint at the sight of blood, so therefore you do the doctoring, Lorna’ll care for the kids and Steve and I will cope with your cows until Clive can take over again.’

  ‘Though I might have known Dr Kelly would cope on her own.’ Jack was checking progress, whistling in admiration at what he saw. ‘Well done, Dr Kelly. Obstetrician. Dairy farmer. All you need is to learn how to run your surfing school and you’ll have found yourself a niche for life.’

  ‘Yeah, like I could surf.’ It was a silly response and it had his grin widening.

  ‘You’ve figured out how to milk cows.’

  ‘I suspect surfing’s harder.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He checked me out from the toes up, assessing. ‘You mean if we teach you to surf you’ll consider your niche as found?’

  ‘No. I mean…’

  But he wasn’t waiting to find out what I meant. ‘Think about it,’ he said, moving on. ‘Six weeks isn’t long, but it’s a start. Meanwhile, I can’t stay—much as I’d love to watch Jenny cope with the whole herd. Heather, Steve, are you okay with this?’

  ‘Sure,’ they assured him.

  ‘Great. Take care of Jenny for me, will you,’ he told them. ‘Don’t let the nasty cows stand on her.’

  ‘As if they could,’ Heather retorted.

  ‘Or would. I have a feeling they’re starting to be as impressed with their new owner as I am.’

  And before I could respond—before I could even think about what he’d said—he was gone.

  I stared at his retreating back, and then turned and found Christabelle still watching, her expression thoughtful.

  I stuck out my tongue again.

  I could have sworn the stupid cow grinned.

  I kept on milking, helping where I could. Steve and Heather would have taken over completely but I needed to get my boots disgusting before I could look like a local. And to be honest, I was having fun.

  Yeah, fun. I grinned at the thought of Richard’s face if he could see me, but Manhattan seemed like another life. It was another life.

  ‘You must have things to do,’ Heather said, but I admitted out loud that it was sort of okay to be sloshing around in mud, getting the milk from creatures I was fast becoming accustomed to. Friends in Manhattan would never believe me when I told them what I’d been doing. Isabella would think it was amazing! I might even have to agree to coffee so I could tell her.

  Really? The thought had me startled. How far was I from Manhattan to even think of such a thing?

  Focus on cows.

  ‘Teach me properly, in case there’s another emergency,’ I told Heather, and she happily complied.

  ‘Though, touch wood, there won’t be another emergency,’ she said. ‘This one shouldn’t have happened. Steve and I had arranged to take over when Mary had to go to Sydney, but she lied about her dates.’

  ‘Lied?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Heather’s good humour faded. ‘Until now she’s been a paddock breeder, birthing the kids with no fuss. But of course we had two doctors. Doc McLachlan’s grandparents were getting too old to practise at the end, but they were good. They backed each other up and could do a caesarean fast. But Doc says it’s not safe to do deliveries with just the one doctor here, and now he’s been proven right. Mary, though, decided going to Sydney was a waste of time, and Doc was being a fussbudge
t for worrying. It was dumb. We know Doc doesn’t want to be here but he’s all we have. Mary should have taken his advice. Fussbudget or not.’

  Fussbudget, I thought grimly, my fun-fantasy bubble dissipating.

  Cows. Babies. Surfboards.

  This was not the life I was accustomed to, but it wasn’t all fantasy. It surely had its grim side.

  He doesn’t want to be here. Was he as stuck as I was?

  ‘And we can’t believe you helped,’ Heather said softly, giving me a smile that was almost teasing. ‘And you an O’Connor…’

  ‘Now that,’ I said waspishly, ‘is something I don’t understand. I’m a Kelly.’

  ‘Mm, but Henry’s great-grandma was an O’Connor. I think it was great. Maybe it’s great-great. Anyway, Elizabeth was the sister of the original captain himself. You know the story of the shipwreck that practically populated this island? She inherited this farm. She left the island of course—her husband’s family had real money—but this is O’Connor land. You’ll still be an O’Connor in island eyes.’

  I tried to take this in and failed. ‘There’s some sort of feud?’

  ‘Not really,’ Heather said. It was peaceful on the platform, moving from one cow to the next. ‘It’s more a joke now but folk keep bringing it up when an O’Connor does something they don’t like.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The ship was full of émigrés,’ Steve said. ‘Our ancestors were from the west coast of Scotland. An adventuring lot.’ He grinned. ‘Descendants of Prince Charlie’s men. A bunch of fighters without a cause, with cows and a passion to start a new life. Others were bringing sheep. Our guys saw their future in dairy. So off to New South Wales we came, but all we could afford was a hulk, captained by one Drury O’Connor. We made it to here. The story is the captain was drunk one night—or most nights—and the ship hit a reef a mile or so off Nautilus. The captain tried to keep going, making matters worse. Ploughing deeper and deeper onto the reef. Then one of the passengers, one Alisdair McLachlan, thumped the captain on the head with his whisky bottle and took charge. He managed to get the ship through the bulk of the reef before it sank. That gave the crew a chance to launch the lifeboats. But there weren’t enough. So McLachlan swam, over and over, to shore and back again, hauling kids, women. When dawn broke and everyone was safe he even managed to get some of the livestock landed—the beginnings of our dairy herd. He was a real hero.’