‘No.’
‘But you want there to be something.’
‘She’s married.’
‘You still want there to be.’
There was only one answer to that. ‘Yes,’ he said gently. He paused but the thing had to be said. ‘Christine, what’s between us… It’s happened so gradually that I’ve hardly noticed but it’s there…the expectation that we’d start a relationship.’
‘We have started a relationship.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Christine, what’s between us is no more a basis for a relationship than what was between Beth and I. I’ve made a mistake. Rachel… Well, it’s true she’s married and there’s no future for us but it’s made me see that you and I can never work.’
‘Because you’ll find someone like Rachel.’
‘No.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can’t find anyone like Rachel. But even knowing there’s someone like her in the world…it makes a difference.’
‘So I’ve been hanging around in this one-horse dump for nothing.’
‘I thought you were here for your art.’
There was a long silence. Then… ‘The fire will make great pictures,’ she admitted. ‘And the publicity…it’ll give me a market.’
‘There you go, then.’ He hesitated but it might as well be said. ‘Be honest, Chris. That’s all that’s ever mattered to you-and to Beth. The art. Things. Not people.’
Silence. She half turned, ready to leave angry, but he held her with his eyes. And continued to hold.
Finally she smiled, a crooked little smile that was half mocking, half furious. ‘Damn you, you know us too well. Me and Beth…’
‘You love your art. People are second.’
‘We could have worked out a great relationship.’
‘Yeah. I practise medicine while I pay for your paints.’
She shrugged but the crooked smile stayed. ‘It was worth a try.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t. Christine, it’s time I did things a bit differently. I think it’s even time I moved on from brocade. Meanwhile, I have a fire-ravaged community to care for.’
She looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged again. A shrug of release. ‘Fine. I have things to paint. But you know she’ll never have you. She’s married to some wealthy medical specialist in town. Why could she possibly be interested in you?’
Why indeed?
No reason at all.
Christine turned on her heel and walked away and Hugo stared after her and thought, I’ve just tossed in a future because of a slip of a doctor who has nothing to do with me. Nothing.
And everything.
The fire threatened for most of the morning, but that was all it did. Threaten. Reports coming into the town were that the line created by backburning was holding. The temperature soared but the wind seemed to rise to a certain velocity and stay. Holding.
Rachel worked through the myriad minor ailments presenting at the clinic. There were so many she had to concede that Hugo had been right in asking her to take over. Asthmatics were having appalling trouble with the smoke, and people who’d never had asthma in their lives had it now. The town’s older residents, their capacity to retain body equilibrium with sweating compromised with age, were in real trouble. Rachel admitted two elderly men to hospital, and Don rang through wanting advice for another in the nursing home.
‘The ash in the air is messing with our air-conditioning,’ he told her. ‘The oldies are suffering enough already and we need to have them fit to evacuate.’
‘You’re planning on evacuating?’
‘Hugo’s down on the beach, setting up a full medical centre in case,’ Don told her. ‘The real problems will be when this wind changes. It’ll strengthen before any change and that’s what Hugo’s most worried about. It’s what we’re all worried about.’
So she should be worried, too. Rachel gave him the advice he needed, replaced the phone and looked out the window. There was nothing to see. The smoke had thickened to the stage where visibility was down to about ten yards.
Toby was settled out in the waiting room, playing with a train set. He seemed perfectly content to be there, watched over by Ruby, Hugo’s receptionist, but within calling distance of Rachel. Unless she was actually examining patients, she left the door open so she could make eye contact. Every now and then he’d look up and make sure she could see him, and then he’d glance over to where the giant suitcase was sitting in a corner.
He had Rachel. He had his precious belongings. Penelope and Digger were out on the veranda, in sight. So… Hugo was out in the wide world but this link made it OK.
For now.
‘Rachel!’ It was a call over the intercom. Rachel had just seen her last patient but the call made her sink back into her seat. Elly, the hospital charge nurse, sounded worried. ‘Rachel, are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you come through to the hospital? Fast? There’s a baby fitting. Katy Brady, the baby’s mother, is bringing her in now but she sounds as if she’s unconscious already.’
A fast word of explanation-thankfully, Toby was a doctor’s child and knew what the word emergency meant- and Rachel ran, leaving the dogs and Toby with Ruby. She reached the hospital entrance as a rust bucket of an ancient Ford screeched to a halt in the entrance.
‘It’s Connor Brady and his mother, Katy,’ Elly told her as they hauled open the car door, but there was no time for more. The young mother almost fell out of the driver’s seat.
The baby was slumped over his mother’s knee. Katy was obviously a teenage mum-young to the point where she was scarcely out of childhood herself. She was wearing frayed jeans and a tiny crop top with tattoos peeking out from underneath. Her hair hung in dreadlocks down to her waist.
But it wasn’t Katy that Rachel was looking at.
Connor Brady seemed about six weeks old and he was in dire trouble. The baby had been lying across his mother’s knees and one look told Rachel what the trouble was-and what was the cause of what was happening. She put her hand on the child’s forehead and winced at what she felt. Fever. The baby’s temperature must be over forty.
And he was wrapped-tightly wrapped-in blankets!
‘My baby…’ Katy was sobbing, almost incoherent in fear, but Rachel already had him, hauling away the blankets as she lifted the little one from the car. The baby was limp, his eyes rolling back in his head as if he’d been convulsing for far too long.
‘I need Dr Hugo,’ the girl wailed, but Rachel wasn’t listening. She was doing a fast assessment, looking for tell-tale signs of a meningococcal rash, checking for neck stiffness, searching…
Thankfully there was nothing.
‘Get me scissors,’ she told Elly. Damn, there were buttons and ribbons everywhere and she wanted these clothes off fast. There were no signs of a rash that she could see, and the little one’s neck was moving freely. The likely cause of this was a simple fever combined with heat. ‘Elly, run me a sink full of cool water.’
As the girl stumbled out of the car and reached for the baby. Rachel met her fear head on. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she told her. ‘Katy, I’m pretty sure that your baby’s convulsing because he’s hot. We need to get him cool straight away.’
‘Give him to me.’ The girl was reaching out for her baby in instinctive protest at losing contact, but Rachel was already moving toward the hospital entrance, carrying the baby with her.
‘Come with me,’ she told Katy. ‘Talk to me as I work. How long’s he been like this?’
Her confident tone must have broken through. The girl hiccuped on a sob and then tried to talk.
‘He’s…he’s got a cold. I asked Dr McInnes for antibiotics but he wouldn’t give me any. Then this morning he
