Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter Read online

  Tom stepped towards her, then, as if yanked backwards by an invisible cord, stepped back again.

  ‘There’s more important things than love,’ he said firmly, then he ruined the strength of this statement by running his fingers through his hair. ‘Especially out here.’’

  Tom stepped towards her again, close but not touching.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know I hurt you that night. It hurt me even more to say no, but I know I’m right, Anna.’

  Now he touched her, reaching out and taking her hand, drawing her back towards the house.

  ‘Let me tell you.’

  She let him lead her inside and usher her towards one of her lounge chairs. Taking what seemed to be for ever, he settled in the one opposite her.

  ‘My mother was a teacher and she came out to teach in a town not unlike Merriwee. My father was a stock and station agent—you’ve met some of those guys around town, they organise cattle or grain sales, and handle a lot of other business for the farmers. Anyway, she fell in love with him and he with her and though she was a city girl, she loved the outback and was sure it was where she wanted to spend the rest of her life. My parents were married in the middle of a drought but things got worse and the town was slowly dying. My father said it was the town dying that did it, though I think that’s fanciful. What I do know is that when I was three years old, she took a handful of pills and didn’t wake up.’

  Anna closed her eyes as anguish for the child who’d probably tried to wake his mother swept over her. She looked in horror at the man who’d been the three-year-old abandoned by a woman for whom the bush had proved too much. She wanted to hold him—and kiss away the pain—to never let him go. But hugs and kisses sometimes weren’t enough. Sometimes words were needed as well.

  Strong words.

  ‘So on the basis of one woman who might have been depressed before she ever came to the outback—who might have had a history of depression for all we know—you turned me down and now keep telling me garbage about Philip being better for me.’

  She folded her arms across her chest and, because thinking about his rejection made her angry, she scowled at him again.

  ‘Your mother might have been suffering from postnatal depression, and probably because the town didn’t have a doctor, no one diagnosed it. But, no, you put it down to the killer outback and rule all women not born and bred here out of contention as a marriage partner.’

  No, that was wrong.

  ‘What about Grace?’ Anna corrected herself. ‘She was city-bred. Yet you asked her to come out here. Was she a sponge-cake champ like Bertha?’

  Tom raised his hands in surrender.

  ‘I have no idea why sponge cakes keep bobbing up in your conversations but, no, Grace wasn’t a country girl but when we got engaged, I was working in a city practice and imagined I’d be there for a long time. It was only when Pat married Keith that I was free to leave, and I believed I knew Grace well enough to think we’d make a go of it anywhere.’

  ‘And you were wrong!’ Anna reminded him, and he had to smile at the note of triumph in her voice.

  ‘I was,’ he admitted, ‘but surely you can understand how Grace’s defection only strengthened my fears about how a woman from the city might fit in out here.’

  Anna was about to explode when the phone rang.

  ‘Anna, the baby’s on the way and Brian’s not here. He went to get Mum. I thought the contractions were just discomfort kind of pains, but now they’re too close for me to drive—Aagh!’

  The cry of pain interrupted the panic-stricken flow of words, and Anna realised it must be Dani, though she hadn’t seen anything of Dani for a while and had assumed she’d gone to Rocky to await the birth of the baby.

  ‘Have you phoned an ambulance?’ she asked. ‘You’d be better off coming straight to the hospital.’

  ‘I phoned them first,’ Dani wailed, ‘but it’s doing a patient transfer to Deep Springs. It won’t be here for an hour, and I’m hurting. Could you come now?’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Anna promised, disturbed by the note of panic in Dani’s voice.

  She glanced across at Tom, who was standing up, looking uncertainly towards her.

  ‘Dani?’ he asked anxiously.

  Anna nodded, busy thinking of what she’d need, grabbing her car keys then phoning the hospital to have them get out a baby bundle.

  ‘I’ll pick it up at the emergency entrance as I go past,’ she told the nurse on duty.

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ Tom told her, taking the keys from her unresisting fingers.

  Anna registered Tom’s offer on so many different levels she felt dizzy, but primarily it was relief that someone else would be on hand while she delivered Dani’s baby.

  Unfortunately, once she was seated in the car beside him, she remembered the downside of being in Tom’s company, having to suffer all the physical manifestations of being close to Tom—heat, ice, shakes and shivers.

  Yet somehow she kept functioning, directing him back around through the emergency entrance so she could pick up a made-up bundle that should include everything a newborn baby and the doctor delivering same could possibly require.

  He took off like a man out to break a land-speed record, and Anna strapped herself into the seat then clung grimly to the hand-hold above the door. Tom didn’t speak, all his attention centred on the road and on getting the speeding vehicle safely out to Dani’s place.

  He slid to a halt at the gate, and Anna leapt out, opened it and held it, then closed it once the car was through. She smiled to herself as she climbed back into the car, thinking how much she’d learned about the outback since that first, nervous drive with Tom. But the smile faded as she glanced towards him. He was silent, focussed, and, now she knew his deep-held fears about the effect of the outback on women, as unavailable to her as the moon.

  Remembering what Tom had said to her about the moon, she muttered, more to herself than to him, ‘Philip might have been able to give me the moon, but even his money couldn’t buy what I really wanted.’

  Tom glanced her way.

  ‘And what was that?’ he asked as he pulled up outside Dani’s house.

  ‘Love! The kind that lasts and keeps people going through the bad times as well as the good. The kind of love I want to feel for the man I marry and know he feels the same love for me. The kind of love you say isn’t enough! Well, that’s your opinion!’ Anna snapped, climbing out of the vehicle and slamming the door behind her.

  Dani was lying on the couch where Anna had first met her, but this time her distress was that of pain, not illness.

  ‘I thought you’d have been in Rocky by now,’ Anna said, examining the labouring woman and confirming the baby’s arrival was now imminent, though Dani denied feeling anything beyond a mild discomfort prior to the strong contractions starting only an hour earlier.

  ‘Jess said you’d deliver it if I stayed here,’ Dani panted. Her brown eyes looked pleadingly into Anna’s. ‘I was born here, and my mum, and Grandma before her. Probably her mother, too. I wanted the baby born in Merriwee, not in Rocky where no one even knows my name.’

  Anna empathised with Dani’s feelings about having the baby in Merriwee. In fact, with the FOG on hand for emergencies, she really couldn’t see why women couldn’t have their babies in Merriwee Hospital. It was something she would have encouraged, if she’d been staying longer…

  She sent Tom to find some clean towels and a sheet, checked both the mother and the unborn child, pleased to hear strong foetal heartbeats and see no signs that indicated danger for either the mother or child.

  ‘Are you comfortable on the couch, or would you rather be in bed?’

  Dani waited until another contraction passed, then explained she’d tried the bed and the couch was better. Anna spread the towels and sheet underneath her patient then continued her examination.

  Dani was four centimetres dilated, the foetal heart rate strong, then suddenly there was a spontaneous rupture of the membra
nes and Anna was concerned to see the amniotic fluid stained with meconium.

  Thinking of the problems this could cause to newborn lungs, Anna crossed to where she’d left her bag and brought out a bag of saline.

  ‘I’m going to flush this into you, so you’ll have more fluid sloshing around,’ she said to Dani, and though the labouring woman—totally focussed on her pain—took little notice of this remark, Anna knew Tom had guessed there was a complication and had tensed.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered, following her to the table and watching as Anna prepared the infusion.

  ‘It will flush out the meconium which presents a danger if the baby breathes it in,’ Anna told him, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. ‘Hold this,’ she added, handing Tom the bag and tubing while she extracted the foetal scalp monitor, which was part of the bundle, from its packaging.

  ‘I’ll attach this to the baby’s head to check heart rate variations,’ she explained to Tom. ‘But Dani probably won’t even realise it’s there so don’t alarm her.’

  Tom gave her an ‘as if’ look and accompanied her back to the patient. At Dani’s cry, he settled back down beside her, his arm around her shoulders, urging and encouraging, rubbing at her back with steady hands.

  Anna waited until the contraction finished then helped Dani lie back along the couch.

  No problems except she was once again sharing a birth scenario with Tom Fleming, and the powerful intimacy of the situation was causing chaos in her mind and body!

  She walked away, going back to where she’d spread the baby bundle on the dining table and checking the contents—again—setting aside what she hoped she wouldn’t need and spreading a sterile sheet to receive the new arrival.

  Checked her patient once more, pleased to see the dilatation continuing, but concern for the unborn child nagged at her. If Dani was at the hospital, would she hurry up the labour? Prepare for a Caesar?

  Deciding the answer to both questions was no, Anna settled down to wait, but worry nibbled like mice at the edges of her mind, and every time she looked at Tom, she knew he, too, was concerned.

  But with Dani as comfortable as it was possible to be at this stage of labour, Anna had to be content with monitoring and encouraging while her thoughts, eager to avoid focus on the man who sat beside her patient, also watching, waiting and encouraging, flitted off down strange pathways.

  If she stayed in Merriwee…

  She turned off that path before she strayed too far, and checked the baby’s heart rate yet again, then helped Dani move to a more comfortable position, her hands brushing against Tom’s arms as they both supported the labouring woman.

  No. Much as she knew she’d like to stay, an accidental brush of hands reminded her that living in the same town as Tom for the rest of her life would be a nightmare. Maybe some other outback town might need a doctor…

  Another stupid thought! Just about every outback town she’d ever heard of had trouble getting a doctor willing to stay. She’d find another town—that’s what she’d do.

  And master sponge cakes…

  ‘I need to push,’ Dani announced, and, though Anna urged her to wait a little longer, the baby had decided it was ready. The head crowned, Anna watching to see if an episiotomy might be necessary—and relieved for Dani’s sake to find it wasn’t—then within seconds the head was out.

  While Tom held and talked to Dani, Anna suctioned out the baby’s mouth, hoping to clear all the dangerous fluid from the upper respiratory tract, then when Dani pushed again, Anna rotated the emerging infant so one shoulder was delivered, then the other, and within seconds the wrinkled morsel of a human being was in her hands.

  A tiny boy! He gave a cry, and was turning a satisfactory pink colour as Anna lifted him high for Dani to see. Then, as Tom helped his friend to sit up, Anna clamped and cut the cord, then knelt and put the little boy in Dani’s arms. The look of wonderment on Dani’s face brought tears to Anna’s eyes, and she brushed them away, knowing they were tears for so many things, not just the miracle of a newborn baby.

  A gentle hand brushed against her hair and she knew Tom had seen the tears. She glanced his way and needed no translator to understand the messages transmitted by his eyes—messages of wonder, and need.

  Messages of love?

  Love?

  He didn’t want her…

  Anna turned her attention to her patient, massaging Dani’s stomach to help her deliver the afterbirth.

  Bright lights shone through the living-room windows, announcing the imminent arrival of the ambulance.

  ‘I don’t have to go in it, do I?’ Dani pleaded. ‘I really hated being in hospital that last time.’

  ‘I’m sorry but, yes, you do,’ Anna told her. ‘I want to check out the baby and it’s easier to do it at the hospital than here.’

  Anna hoped she’d spoken calmly enough for Dani to accept this as normal, but the new mother must have had supersensitive hearing.

  ‘There’s something wrong with him?’ she cried, clasping the baby more tightly to her.

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, but as a precaution I want to check his respiratory tract and I need a special laryngoscope for it. The one I carry with me is too big for a newborn.’

  Anna explained about the fluid that might be lodged below the baby’s vocal cords, where ordinary suctioning couldn’t reach, and Dani stopped arguing.

  The ambulancemen had entered the room, one wheeling a stretcher and the other carrying a baby crib.

  Once again Anna accompanied her patients in the ambulance, while Tom drove her car home.

  Home! A word so evocative of family, children, love, she found herself brushing fresh tears away.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time Anna, satisfied that both Dani and the baby were all right, returned to her house. As she crossed the hospital yard, she saw a light on in her house, and wondered why she’d had it on when it had been daylight when she’d left.

  By now she’d lived in the country long enough to not bother locking her doors, though she did keep her car, with her medical bag inside it, locked. But some undefined memory prompted her to move, not to the door but to the window. Not only was the light on, but her house was occupied. Tom Fleming lay full length on her living-room floor, his hands cupped around something small in the middle of his chest.

  The tension of the afternoon exploded inside Anna, and she stormed through the door.

  ‘Well, make yourself right at home, why don’t you?’ she yelled, then she sank into a chair as Tom sat up and held out his hand, palm outstretched, a tiny greyish bundle of fur now revealed.

  ‘This is why I came over earlier. I left her in the car because you were throwing things when I pulled up, and she had to wait there until I got back.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Fortunately for my upholstery, she was in a box!’

  He tilted his hand towards Anna, and she reacted quickly, catching the tiny kitten in her hands and peering into the bright blue eyes.

  ‘Oh, you darling,’ she whispered.

  ‘I was rather hoping you’d say that,’ Tom said, bringing Anna’s examination of her new pet to an abrupt halt.

  ‘I was talking about the kitten, not you,’ Anna told him, and he smiled at her, weakening every defence she’d ever managed to erect against him.

  ‘Would you say it about me if I asked you to marry me?’

  Anna was so dumbfounded she had to put the kitten down, afraid that if she didn’t, she might tighten her grip on it so much she’d strangle the poor thing.

  ‘You came over this afternoon to tell me all the reasons why you couldn’t marry me,’ she reminded him. ‘In fact, you told me I should be marrying Philip. It wasn’t so long ago I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘No, I came over to give you the kitten,’ Tom corrected her. ‘It was just—’

  ‘If you mention my throwing things again, I’ll throw something at you,’ Anna warned him, then had to hide a smile as he quickly scoope
d up the kitten and held it protectively in his hand.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘things changed, didn’t they?’

  Anna stared at him, mesmerised by two pairs of blue eyes looking earnestly at her.

  ‘When you said what you did about love,’ he continued, forcing her to think back through a very confused and tense afternoon. ‘About money not being able to buy it. You see, love hadn’t come into any of our conversations. You’d offered to have my babies, so I knew you weren’t totally repulsed by me, and our kisses were great, so I knew the physical thing was happening, but love?’

  He shook his head as if the problem he’d posed was too big for anyone to answer.

  ‘It’s such an airy-fairy kind of thing, hard to pin down, this love,’ he continued, almost as if thinking aloud. ‘But once you put it as plainly as you did, about wanting to love and be loved in return, I knew you’d got it right.’

  Tom beamed at her as if she’d made some miraculous discovery, and had imparted it only to him.

  ‘That’s what I want, too.’

  He shifted so he was squatting in front of her, then handed her the kitten and cupped both his hands around hers.

  ‘Anna Talbot, I love you,’ he declared. ‘Now and for ever, with all of my heart.’

  He was watching her so closely Anna was afraid to react, terrified if she so much as blinked she’d break the spell binding them together.

  Then he smiled.

  ‘You do have the right of reply,’ he suggested, and she found herself smiling back.

  ‘I can only reply to a question,’ she reminded him. ‘And as you turned me down when I asked you, you’d better do the asking this time.’

  Tom saw the smile in her beautiful eyes and felt his heart lurch with fear that he might not be able to pull this off.

  ‘Are you still available?’ he said, excitement, hope and dread vying for control in his mind and body.

  Anna smiled.

  ‘I might be,’ she said, and he saw the smile turn to teasing laughter in her eyes, while, even as he watched, the tension he’d sensed since she’d returned home seemed to ease from her body.