Janet copes if there’s not time to bring him. She can’t bath him, but she can do most other things. He helps her by climbing in and out of his own cot now.’
‘But you milk.’
Abbey smiled. ‘Yeah. I dash home and milk with the mobile phone beside me and I dash back if needed. The locals are accustomed to the smell of cow dung mixed with antibiotic, and the cows have learned to be a bit negotiable in their milking times.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Ryan said faintly. ‘Abbey, what sort of life is that for a…?’ He had been going to say a girl. And then Ryan looked down at Abbey’s work-worn hands and corrected himself. ‘For a woman?’
‘It’s my life.’ Abbey sighed and smiled again. ‘Well, maybe it’s not for a while. It’s now your life for a week-or at least the medical part is. After that, though, then it’ll be my life ever after. I don’t ask for anything more. Now… If you would, I would like you to take me home.’
‘Abbey…’ Ryan looked down at the white-faced girl in the wheelchair. She was still dressed in the stained shorts and T-shirt she’d worn all day. She looked weary beyond belief, in pain and looking to a future that held nothing but hard work.
And something twisted inside Ryan that hadn’t been twisted in a long time. Something deep and strong and urgent.
It was only that he felt sorry for her, he told himself harshly, but he found his hand wandering to touch Abbey’s dusky curls.
‘You’re hurting.’
‘Just take me home, Ryan,’ Abbey said. ‘Ted can’t drive or I’d ask him to take me.’
‘Stay here,’ he said.
‘I can’t.’
‘You should be in hospital yourself.’ Ryan let his fingers drift though her curls. Absently. Almost as if he wasn’t noticing what he was doing. But he was noticing. He was very definitely noticing. The touch was doing strange things to his insides.
‘And where would that leave Jack and Janet?’ Abbey demanded, ignoring the feel of Ryan’s fingers. Or trying to ignore them. ‘I have to milk in the morning.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘You can’t.’
‘If you can do it,’ Ryan said gently, ‘so can I. You just said that your life is mine for a week. That includes your cows.’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘It is.’
‘Ryan…’
‘Look, I’m a country boy from way back,’ Ryan told her, exasperated. ‘I can milk a cow and I have your medical training. This is my honeymoon you’re supposed to be on, Dr Wittner. I don’t offer every girl a honeymoon. So I suggest you just take yourself to bed and get on with it.’
If only she could.
Abbey looked up into Ryan’s face and thought of the impossibility of doing what he’d suggested. Taking a honeymoon.
Taking a holiday.
‘Work never stops,’ she said wearily. ‘Never. Don’t you know that, Ryan Henry?’
‘It does, Abbey,’ he said gently. ‘It must.’
Only it didn’t. It hadn’t even now. Before Ryan finished speaking there was an urgent screech of brakes outside the casualty entrance. Three seconds later the glass doors opened and a young man burst in. He looked wildly around, dishevelled and frantic, and his eyes focussed on Ryan.
‘Quick. Oh, please, come quick. Tessa’s having a baby.’
She’ll have to go to Cairns.’
‘Nonsense.’
Outside the labour ward Ryan and Abbey were neck deep in argument. Inside, Tessa Ludlow was neck deep in labour.
‘Hell, Abbey, I can’t deliver her here.’
‘She’ll deliver herself, then. For heaven’s sake, Ryan, all you have to do is go in there, check dilatation, check the foetal heart and stand around to catch. In fact, Sister’s probably done all the busy work for you while you’re hanging around here, procrastinating.’
Ryan raked his fingers through his hair. It was true. He was procrastinating. With good reason!
‘Abbey, I’m a surgeon. An orthopaedic surgeon. How many babies do you think I’ve delivered?’
‘They don’t let you through medical school unless you’ve delivered a few,’ Abbey said firmly. ‘Unless US training is very different to what it is here.’
‘But that was years ago. I haven’t delivered a baby since.’
‘It’s what you said about milking-it’s like riding a bicycle,’ Abbey said promptly. ‘Once learned, never forgotten. Nothing’s changed. Unless I’m very much mistaken, babies still come out just the same way they did a hundred years ago. Ryan, get in there and deliver that baby.’
‘But I’m not even registered here.’ Ryan gave a sound that was practically a moan. ‘Abbey, if something goes wrong I can get sued for millions.’
‘You know, if something does go wrong and you’re standing out here in the corridor, arguing about money, then you could be sued for even more!’
‘Abbey…’
Abbey sighed. And took a deep breath. ‘What is it? You want me to deliver the baby, Ryan? Is that what you’re saying? Your offer was for the easy stuff only? Well, I guess I can reach the bed from the wheelchair if I really try. Maybe if you hold me up under my arms… ’
Ryan glared.
‘Go on, Ryan.’ Abbey managed a smile. ‘You remember that day you wanted your tooth to come out so you could spend your tooth-fairy money at the fete the next day? It was wobbly-but only just.’
‘What on earth…?’
‘You showed determination then.’
‘Abbey, I must have been all of ten years old.’
‘No difference,’ Abbey said blithely. ‘You tied yourself up with string and then made me slam the door. And you didn’t even yell. Come on, Ryan, that’s the stuff you’re made of. Where’s your determination now?’
The labour ward door opened. The night sister stood, gazing from one doctor to the other in exasperation.
‘Have you two sorted out who’s delivering this baby yet?’ she asked sternly. ‘Because if you don’t figure it out soon I’m going to get all the credit. And that’d never do, now would it, Doctors?’
She winked at Abbey.
Ryan gave another groan, rolled up his sleeves-both metaphorically and physically-and went to deliver a baby.
In fact, it wasn’t as easy as Abbey had foreseen.
Second stage took far too long. It was a first-time birth. The young mother was exhausted and frightened and it took all Ryan’s bedside skills to calm her. Ryan finally effected a safe delivery, but only after applying forceps.
Funny that he remembered how. Abbey was right. It was like riding a bicycle.
Or like loving Abbey.
The thought flashed into Ryan’s mind as he stared down at the red and yowling infant in his hands, and he found himself smiling at the thought. Abbey had bullied him into delivering this baby and, to his astonishment, he’d found the experience deeply satisfying. Tessa and her husband were gazing at him as if he’d just personally produced their miracle, and the baby was warm and healthy and full of new life in his hands.
How many times in the past had Abbey bullied him into doing something he’d loved once he’d tried? ‘Come on, Ryan. Take your shoes off. You can’t catch crabs properly unless your toes ooze mud…’
Ryan inserted a few neat stitches in Tessa’s perineum, checked his baby over thoroughly-odd how it felt like his-and, with a chest expanded a few inches from an hour ago, went to find Abbey.
