Stormbound Surgeon Read online

  ‘Um…one,’ she confessed. ‘A tourist who had penile strangulation. The doctor from Bowra was here seeing someone else when he came in, screaming. I had no choice there either. If I hadn’t given him the anaesthetic he’d have been impotent for life.’

  ‘But…that’s a really minor anaesthetic.’

  ‘I know.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And, of course, as you reminded me, the insurance is a nightmare and if anything went wrong I could get sued for millions. So I shouldn’t have done it, nor should I have done this one. But I’ve seen it done and, the way I figured, I didn’t have a choice. Bleating to you about my lack of training wasn’t going to help anything.’

  She was amazing, he thought, stunned. Amazing!

  ‘You were fantastic,’ the woman called Marie said stoutly. ‘To give an anaesthetic like that… She was wonderful, wasn’t she, Doctor?’

  Joss looked around at them all. He had four helpers in the room. Three geriatrics and Amy. And he had one live and healthy baby and one young woman whose colour was starting slowly to return to normal.

  Because of these people, this baby would live and the unknown woman had been given a fighting chance. Because Amy had been prepared to take a chance, prepared to say to hell with the insurance risk, to hell with the legalities; because these old people had been prepared to shake off their retirement and do whatever they could, then this baby stood a chance of living. Living with a healthy mother.

  ‘I think you’re all wonderful,’ he told them. He smiled at each of them in turn, but then his gaze returned to Amy’s. And there was that jolt of…something. Something that he didn’t recognise.

  Whatever it was, it would have to wait. Now was not the time for questioning. ‘I think you all deserve a medal,’ he said softly. ‘And I think we all deserve a happy ending. Which I think we’ll get.’

  He lifted the baby from Marie’s arms and stood looking down at her. The tiny baby girl had wailed once, just to show she could, but she was now snuggled into the warmth of her prepared blanket and her creased eyes were blinking and gazing with wonder at this huge new world.

  ‘You need your mum,’ Joss said, and as if on cue there was a ragged gasp from the table. And another. Amy’s eyes flew from the baby back to her patient.

  ‘She’s coming round,’ she said softly. ‘It needs only this to make it perfect.’

  The woman was so confused she was almost incoherent, but she was definitely waking.

  Joss took her hands, waiting with all the patience in the world for her to recover. When this woman had lost consciousness she’d been in a truck heading out of town. Now she was in hospital-kind of-and she was a mother. It would take some coming to terms with.

  ‘You’re fine,’ he told her softly, his voice strong and sure, and Amy blinked to hear him. Joss looked decisive and tough but there was nothing tough about the way he spoke. He was gentleness itself. ‘My name is Joss Braden. I’m a doctor and you’re in hospital.’ Of a sort. There was no need to go into details. ‘Your truck crashed. You were in labour-remember?’ And then at her weak nod, he smiled. ‘You’re not in labour any more. You’ve had a baby. The most gorgeous daughter.’

  He held the child for her to see.

  There was a long, long silence while she took that on board. Finally she seemed to manage it. She stared mutely at the softly wrapped bundle of perfect baby and then tears started trickling down her cheeks.

  ‘Hey.’ Joss was gentleness itself. One of his elderly nurses saw his need and handed him a tissue to dry her tears. ‘There’s not a lot to cry about. We’re here to take care of you. We had to perform a Caesarean section but everything’s fine.’

  Her tears still flowed. Amy watched in silence, as did her three geriatric nurses.

  There were more outside. The door was open-just a crack. How many ears were listening out there? Amy wondered and managed a smile. Well, why shouldn’t they listen in to this happy ending? They’d worked as hard as she had, and they deserved it.

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’ Joss was saying.

  ‘Charlotte…’ It was a thready whisper.

  ‘Charlotte who?’

  Silence.

  Her name could wait, Amy thought happily. Everything could wait now.

  But Joss kept talking, assessing, concerned for the extent of damage to the young mother now that the baby had been delivered safely.

  ‘Charlotte, you’ve had a head injury. I need to ask you a couple of questions, just so I’m sure you’re not confused.’

  She understood. Her eyes were still taking in her baby, soaking in the perfection of her tiny daughter, but she was listening to Joss.

  ‘Do you know what the date is today?’

  ‘Um…’ She thought about it. ‘Friday. Is it the twenty-fifth?’

  ‘It sure is. Do you know who won the football grand final last week?’

  That was easy. A trace of a smile appeared, and the girl shed years with it.

  ‘The Bombers,’ she said, and there was an attempt at flippancy. ‘Hooray.’

  ‘Hooray?’ She was a brave girl. Amy grinned but Joss gave a theatrical groan.

  ‘Oh, great. It’s just my luck to bring another Bombers fan into the world.’ Then he smiled and Amy, watching from the sidelines, thought, Wow! What a smile.

  ‘And your surname?’

  But that had been enough. The woman gave a tiny shake of her head and let her eyes close.

  Joss nodded. He was satisfied. ‘OK, Charlotte.’ He laid a fleeting hand on the woman’s cheek. ‘We’ll take some X-rays just to make sure there’s no damage, then we’ll let you and your daughter sleep.’

  ‘So is anyone going to tell me what the set-up is here?’

  With the young mother tucked up in a private room, her baby by her side and no fewer than two self-declared intensive-care nurses on watch by her side, there was time for Amy and Joss to catch their breath.

  ‘What would you like to know?’ Amy was bone weary. She felt like she’d run a marathon. She hauled her white coat from her shoulders, tossed it aside and turned to unfasten the strings of Joss’s theatre gear. They’d only had the one theatre gown, so the rest of their makeshift team had had to make do with white coats.

  But making do with white coats was the last thing on Joss’s mind. ‘Tell me how I got a theatre staff,’ he said. ‘It was a miracle.’

  ‘No more than us finding a doctor. That was the miracle. Of all the people to run into…’

  ‘Yeah, it was her lucky day.’ He gave a rueful grin and Amy smiled back. He had his back to her while she undid his ties and she was catching his smile in the mirror. He had the loveliest smile, she thought. Wide and white and sort of…chuckly. Nice.

  In fact the whole package looked nice.

  And as for Joss…

  He stooped and hauled off the cloth slippers from over his shoes and then rose, watching while Amy did the same. Underneath her medical uniform Amy Freye was some parcel.

  She was tall, maybe five-ten or so. Her tanned skin was flawless. Her grey eyes were calm and serene, set in a lovely face. Her hair was braided in a lovely long rope and he suddenly had an almost irresistable urge to…

  Hey. What was going on here?

  Get things back to a professional footing.

  ‘What’s someone with your skills doing in a place like this?’ he asked lightly, and then watched in surprise as her face shuttered closed. Hell, he hadn’t meant to pry. He only wanted to know. ‘I mean… I assumed with your skills…’

  ‘I’d be better off in a city hospital? Just lucky I wasn’t,’ she retorted.

  ‘We were lucky,’ he said seriously. ‘We definitely were. If you hadn’t been here we would have lost the baby.’

  ‘You don’t think Marie could have given the anaesthetic?’

  ‘Now, that is something I don’t understand.’

  ‘Marie?’

  ‘And her friends. Yes.’

  She smiled then, and there were lights behind her grey eye
s that were almost magnetic in their appeal. Her smile made a man sort of want to smile back. ‘You like my team?’

  ‘It’s…different.’

  She laughed, a lovely low chuckle. ‘Different is right. An hour ago I was staring into space thinking, How on earth am I going to cope? I needed an emergency team, and I had no one. I thought, This place has no one but retirees. But retirees are people, too, and the health profession’s huge. So I said hands up those with medical skills and suddenly I had an ambulance driver, two orderlies and three trained nurses. I’ve even got a doctor in residence, but he’s ninety-eight and thinks he’s Charles the First so we were holding him in reserve.’

  She was fantastic. He grinned at her in delight.

  This felt great, he thought suddenly. He’d forgotten medicine could feel like this. Back in Sydney he was part of a huge, impersonal team. His skills made him a troubleshooter, which meant that he was called in when other doctors needed help. He saw little of patients before they were on the operating table.

  His staff were hand-picked, cool and clinically professional. But here…

  They’d saved a life-what a team!

  ‘I wouldn’t ask it of these people every day,’ Amy told him, unaware of the route his thoughts were taking. ‘Marie’s had three heart pills this morning to hold her angina at bay. Very few of my people are up to independent living but in an emergency they shine through. And even though Marie’s heart is thumping away like a sledgehammer, there’s no way she’s going for a quiet lie-down now. She’s needed, and if she dies being needed, she won’t begrudge it at all.’

  It was great. The whole set-up was great, but something was still worrying him. ‘Where are the rest of your trained staff?’

  That set her back. ‘What trained staff?’

  ‘This is a nursing home. I assume you have more skilled nurses than yourself.’

  ‘I have two other women with nursing qualifications. Mary and Sue-Ellen. They do a shift apiece. Eight hours each. The three of us are the entire nursing population of Iluka.’

  He frowned, thinking it through and finding it unsatisfactory. ‘You need more…’

  ‘No. Only eight of our beds are deemed nursing-home beds. The rest are hostel, so as long as we have one trained nurse on duty we’re OK.’

  ‘And in emergencies?’

  ‘I can’t call the others in. It means I don’t have anyone for tonight.’

  ‘What about holidays?’

  ‘I do sixteen hours if either of the others are on holidays,’ she said, with what was an attempt at lightness. ‘It keeps me off the streets.’

  She was kidding! ‘That’s crazy. The whole set-up’s impossible.’

  ‘You try attracting medical staff to Iluka.’ She gave a weary smile. ‘You try attracting anyone under the age of sixty to Iluka. Both my nurses are in their fifties and are here because their husbands have retired. Kitty, my receptionist, moved here to be with her failing mother, my cleaning and kitchen staff are well past retirement age, and there’s no one else.’

  ‘The town is a nursing home all by itself.’

  ‘As you say.’ She shrugged, and there was a pain behind her eyes that he didn’t understand. ‘But we manage. Look at today. Weren’t my oldies wonderful?’

  ‘Wonderful.’ But his mind was on her worries, not on what had just happened.

  ‘So the two looking after the baby…’

  ‘Marie and Thelma, and they’re in their element. Both are trained nurses with years of experience. Thelma has early Alzheimer’s but she was matron of a Sydney hospital until she retired and there are some things that are almost instinctive. Marie’s with her, and her experience is in a bush nursing hospital. She’s physically frail but mentally alert so together they’ll care for the mother and baby as no one else could. And I’m here if they need me.’

  Joss looked across at her calm grey eyes. ‘I’m here if they need me.’ It was said as a matter of course.

  How often was she needed?

  What was her story?

  ‘Don’t look so worried.’ Her smile was meant to be reassuring. ‘If I didn’t think they’d manage-and love every moment of it-I’d be in there, helping. I’m only a buzz away.’ Her smile faded as his look of concern deepened. ‘What’s worrying you? Charlotte’s showing no sign of brain damage. The baby looks great. All we need to do is find out who she is.’

  ‘Now, that’s something else I don’t understand.’ His frown deepened. ‘Jeff says she’s not a Iluka resident and no one here recognises her.’

  ‘No.’ It had surprised Amy that she hadn’t recognised the girl. She knew everyone in Iluka.

  When she’d thought about it she’d even figured out where Joss fitted in. David and Daisy Braden had been speaking of nothing but their wonderful surgeon-son’s visit for weeks. The whole town had known his exact arrival time, what Daisy was going to cook for him every night, where David intended to take him fishing and…

  ‘What?’ Joss asked, and Amy’s lovely smile caused a dimple to appear right on the corner of her mouth.

  It made him need to struggle hard to concentrate on what she was saying.

  ‘Sorry. I was just thinking we should set the town onto finding out about our mystery mother. They told me all about you.’

  ‘Did they?’ He was disconcerted. He was trying really hard not to look at the dimple.

  The observations that were happening were mutual. He looked nice when he was disconcerted, Amy decided.

  Nice.

  There was that word again but it described him absolutely. The more she saw of him the more she liked what she saw. Joss was taller than she was by a couple of inches. He had deep brown hair, curly, a bit sun-bleached and casually styled. His skin was bronzed and he had smiling green eyes.

  And his clothes… He’d hauled off his sweater before they’d gone into Theatre but she’d been too rushed to notice, and then he’d put on a theatre gown. Now she was seeing his clothes for the first time.

  They were…unexpected, to say the least. He was wearing faded, hip-hugging jeans and a bright white T-shirt with a black motif. The motif said:

  ‘You’ve been a bad, bad girl. Go straight to my room.’

  She blinked and blinked again. Then she grinned. This wasn’t her standard image of a successful young surgeon. It was a rude, crude T-shirt. It shouldn’t make her lips twitch.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, and her smile widened.

  ‘I was thinking I shouldn’t be in the same room as you-with that on.’ She motioned to his T-shirt.

  Damn. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. His father had given it to him for his birthday… Good old Dad, still trying to get his son moving in the wife department…

  Fat chance.

  But Amy had moved on. ‘I need to talk to Jeff,’ she said, and crossed to the door.

  Joss frowned. ‘I need to find him, too. He’s looking after my dog. Or did one of your residents take him?’

  ‘Lionel has him.’ Her eyes creased into the smile he was starting to recognise. ‘I saw him. Actually, I’ve heard about him, too. I thought he was much larger than he really is.’

  ‘Have you been talking to my stepmother?’

  Amy assumed an air of innocence. ‘I might have been.’

  He sighed. ‘According to Daisy, he’s the size of an elephant. That’s because Bertram takes exception to anyone else sitting on my knee-and her dratted Peke decided it would grace me with its favours.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘As you say.’ He shook off the light-headedness he was feeling. Was it the crash? Or…was it just the way she made him feel? Like he ought to get the conversation back to medicine-fast.

  ‘Sergeant Packer and I could find no sign of identification at all in the mother’s truck. But he is able to run a plate check. We’re hoping we can find out who she is that way.’

  She nodded. ‘And I guess we need to fully examine the baby.’

  ‘I’ll do that now.’

 
; ‘Thank you.’

  Joss nodded, aware that he was retreating. He’d come out of his shell a little-a very little-but he didn’t want to stay out.

  He had to leave.

  ‘I’m going to have to figure out how I can get away from this place,’ he said.

  Her brows rose at that. ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘I was. Until my car was totalled.’

  ‘Your father said you were here for two weeks.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’

  ‘The honeymoon couple were a bit much for you, were they?’ Her eyes danced in sympathy, demanding that he smile in return.

  ‘You know my father and Daisy?’

  ‘I certainly do.’ She grinned. ‘Until she met your father, Daisy had her name down here as a potential resident.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Right.

  ‘They’re very happy,’ she said-and waited.

  And out it came. ‘They’re always happy.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘My father’s been married four times.’ It was impossible to keep the bitterness from his voice.

  She thought about that. Looking at his face, she saw the layers of pain behind the bald fact.

  ‘Divorce?’

  ‘Death. Every time.’

  That made it so much worse. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He gave a laugh that came out harsher than he’d intended. ‘You’d think he’d learn.’

  ‘That people die?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can be unlucky,’ Amy said softly. ‘Or you can be lucky. I guess your dad has had rotten luck.’

  ‘He keeps trying to replace…’

  ‘Your mother?’

  He caught himself. What was he saying? He was talking as if she was really interested. As if he wanted to share…

  She was a nurse. A medical colleague. He didn’t get close to medical colleagues.

  He didn’t get close to anyone.

  But she’d seen the expression on his face. She knew he needed to move on.

  ‘But you do have two weeks’ holiday, right?’ she probed. ‘Being stuck here isn’t a disaster.’

  ‘I’ll get out.’

  ‘How?’

  That stymied him. ‘I guess…when it stops raining…’

  ‘If it stops raining.’