‘I’m fine,’ she said gently. ‘Just a bit tired. It’s been a long day. Goodnight, Malcolm.’
For some reason he was as eager as she was to end the conversation. ‘Goodnight,’ he told her, and hung up- leaving her staring at the receiver.
What on earth was going on?
Amy went to bed but she didn’t sleep. She lay awake and stared at the ceiling, thinking of a kiss.
This didn’t make any sense. The kiss and how she was responding to it didn’t make sense at all.
When Malcolm kissed her it didn’t feel like this.
Maybe it was because Joss was forbidden fruit, she thought bleakly. You always wanted what you couldn’t have-and she couldn’t have Joss.
Maybe she could open her bedroom door…
Oh, yeah, great. What was she thinking of? A spot of seduction?
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she told herself honestly and then bit her lip. Where would that lead her? To a broken engagement and desperate unhappiness when Joss left.
As he surely would.
‘But I could just have fun-for a while. For a few short days while the bridge is down…’
Fun? She’d never had fun. She’d forgotten the meaning of the word. From the time her father had died the world had become a dangerous and threatening place, where the only way to survive was sheer, grinding hard work.
She had six years to go.
And after that? Marriage to Malcolm…
They might even marry earlier, she thought, and there was a note of desperation entering her thoughts now. Malcolm had been pushing for them to marry straight away. He’d have to stay in Bowra as his practice was there, and she was stuck at Iluka, but he could come at weekends. A weekend marriage…
It didn’t excite her at all.
Malcolm didn’t excite her.
‘It’s because he’s familiar,’ she told the dark. She knew him as well as she knew a pair of old socks. But… She thought about it. Tonight he’d been different. Not different in the way Joss was different but different all the same.
She didn’t know what had got into Malcolm tonight.
‘Maybe I don’t know all there is to know about him. Maybe he’ll turn into a James Bond in disguise. Or a Joss…’
The thought made her smile.
But it didn’t make her go to sleep-and it wasn’t Malcolm she was thinking about as she tossed and turned in the night.
It was very definitely Joss.
Joss had had a huge day. He’d almost been killed, he’d almost been swept away in the river, he’d fallen in love…
Hey! Where had that come from?
‘You’re imagining things,’ he told the dark. Love? What did he know about love?
He only knew that Amy was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
But she wasn’t beautiful, he decided, trying to see things dispassionately. Not in the conventional way. She was too careless of her appearance to be classed as beautiful.
But when she smiled…
‘Beautiful,’ Joss told his pillow, and he groaned as he turned over yet again and tried for elusive sleep. ‘Just beautiful.’
At two in the morning the phone rang. Joss was still awake, so he heard it, and he heard Amy’s soft voice answering. Something at the hospital? By the time Amy knocked at his door he was already reaching for his father’s spare dressing-gown.
‘Problems?’
It was hard to concentrate on problems. He didn’t have his lamp on and Amy was lit by the hall light. She was wearing a long nightgown, trailing down to bare feet. It was cut low in the front and her curls were wisping down to her breasts. It was the first time he’d seen her with unbraided hair and the sight almost took his breath away. She looked sort of ethereal. Gorgeous…
But she was already hauling her hair back into a knot, ready for what lay ahead. ‘Joss, can you help?’
That was what he was there for. He was almost grateful to be asked. Any more staring into the dark and he was in danger of losing his mind.
Any more staring at the woman in front of him and he’d definitely lose his mind.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘A child. A little girl…’
He stared at that. ‘A child? In Iluka?’
‘We do have them. Just not many. Margy Crammond has her granddaughter staying with her. Emma’s six years old and she’s woken feeling dreadful. Margy says she can’t walk.’
‘Yeah?’ He tossed aside his dressing-gown, hauled off his pyjama jacket and reached for his dad’s Fair Isle sweater. His mind shifted straight into emergency mode. He was already sifting and discarding diagnoses, so much so that he didn’t even wince as the amazing patterned sweater slipped over his head. Joss was a doctor first and foremost, and an emergency had him putting everything else aside.
Or almost. Amy’s damned negligee was almost transparent…
Concentrate!
‘What do you think the options are?’ he asked. ‘Hysteria?’ Paraplegia in children was so unusual the first suspicion was a psychological diagnosis rather than a physical one.
But Amy was shaking her head. ‘Margy seems to think it’s something more serious. Hysteria would be unusual at two in the morning-though she is homesick. She’s been staying with her grandparents for a week and was supposed to be going home today. She’s a bit upset that she can’t. But Margy said she was sound asleep a couple of hours ago when they went to bed and she’s woken in trouble.’
Hell! He thought about the possibilities-in a place where there were no acute facilities-and he didn’t like them one bit. ‘I’ll go. Where is she?’
‘
‘And you have work tomorrow.’
‘
CHAPTER SIX
THIS was not hysteria.
Emma Crammond was one sick little girl. By the time they reached Margy and Harry Crammond’s house, the girl’s grandmother was beside herself with worry and her grandfather was coming a very close second.
‘She can’t make anything work,’ Margy told them as she led them through the house. She glanced up at Joss with gratitude. The whole town knew who Joss was now. News travelled fast in a small community. ‘Oh, Dr Braden, thank heaven you’re here. She looks just awful.’
She did.
The child was still in bed, but she was wide-eyed and frantic. Her breathing was fast and furious-as if she’d just run a marathon-but by her skin pallor Joss could see that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen no matter how hard she breathed. Even from the doorway he could see that she was cyanosed, her skin taking on the tell-tale bluish tinge arising from inadequate oxygen.
What on earth was wrong?
