CHAPTER TWO
OK, SO Angus was matchmaking but that was fine by him. Anything to get him to agree to have them stay, Jake decided as he made his way down the magnificently carved staircase.
He walked out the front door and stopped.
He’d left his car blocking the castle entrance, with only just enough room for a pedestrian to squeeze past. The verge on either side was rough, corrugated by recent rains.
He’d expected Kirsty and her sister to walk along the cobblestones.
What had happened was obvious. One of the women hadn’t been able to walk.
Halfway along the walkway was a wheelchair, upturned. A woman was lying in the mud. Kirsty was bending over her.
Jake took one look and started to run.
She was Kirsty’s sister. There was no doubting it. An identical twin? Maybe. The similarities were obvious but there were major differences. The girl lying in the mud was heavily pregnant. Her face was bleached white and a fine hairline scar ran across her forehead. She lay in the mud and her eyes were bleak and hopeless. Jake had seen eyes like this before, in terminally ill patients who were alone and who had nothing left to live for. To see this expression on such a young woman was shocking.
‘Oh, Susie, I’m so sorry,’ Kirsty was saying. She was kneeling in the mud, sliding her hands under Susie’s face to lift her clear. ‘There was a rut. It was filled with water and I didn’t realise how deep it was.’
‘What’s happening?’ Jake knelt and automatically lifted the woman’s wrist. ‘You fell?’
‘You really are smart,’ Kirsty muttered, flashing him a look of fury. ‘I tipped her out of the wheelchair. Susie, what hurts? Have you wrenched your back? Don’t move.’ She sounded terrified. One hand was supporting Susie’s head; the other was holding her sister down.
Jake’s fingers had found the pulse, automatically assessing.
‘Did you hurt yourself in the fall?’ he asked, and the young woman in the mud shook her head in mute misery.
‘I’ll live.’ She put her hands out to push herself up, but Kirsty’s expression of terror had Jake helping her hold her still.
‘What do we have here?’ He held the woman’s shoulders, pressuring her not to move. ‘Can you stay still until I know the facts?’ He spoke gently but with quiet authority. ‘I don’t want you doing any more damage.’
‘She suffered a crush fracture at T7 five months ago,’ Kirsty told him in a voice that faltered with fear. ‘Incomplete paraplegia but sensation’s been returning.’
‘I can walk,’ Susie said, into the mud.
‘On crutches on smooth ground,’ Kirsty told Jake, still holding her twin still. ‘But not for long. There’s still leg weakness and some loss of sensation.’
‘Let me get my bag.’
‘I can get up,’ Susie muttered, and Jake laid a hand on her cheek. A feather touch of reassurance.
‘Humour me. I won’t take long, but I need to be sure you’re not going to do any more damage by moving.’
It took him seconds before he was back, kneeling before her, touching her wrist again. Her pulse was steadying. He glanced again at Kirsty. If he had to say which was the whiter face, his money was on Kirsty’s. Such terror…
‘I’m going to run my fingers along your spine,’ he told Susie. ‘I’d imagine you’d have had so many examinations in the last few months that you know exactly what you should feel and where. I want you to tell me if there’s anything different. Anything at all.’
‘We need help,’ Kirsty snapped. ‘We need immobility until we can get X-rays. I want a stretcher lift and transport to the nearest hospital.’
But Jake met her eyes and held. ‘Your sister’s break was five months ago,’ he said softly. ‘There should be almost complete bone healing by now.’
‘You’re not an orthopaedic surgeon.’
‘No, but I do know what I’m doing. And it’s soft mud.’
‘Hooray for soft mud,’ Susie muttered. ‘And hooray for a doctor with sense. OK, Dr Whatever-Your-Name-Is, run your spinal check so I can get up.’
‘Susie…’ Kirsty said anxiously, but her sister grimaced.
‘Shut up, Kirsty, and let the nice doctor do what he needs to do.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Jake said, and smiled.
So he did what he needed to do, while Kirsty sat back and alternatively glowered and leant forward as if she’d help and then went back to glowering again.
It was like two sides of a coin, he thought as he tested each vertebra in turn, lightly pressing, examining, running his fingers under Susie’s sweater, not wanting to undress her and make her colder but finding he could examine by touch almost as easily as he could if she had been undressed. They had to be identical twins, he decided as he worked. One twin battered and pregnant. One twin immobilised by terror.
But Susie’s spine was fine, he decided. Or as fine as it could be at this stage of recovery. As far as he could see, there was no additional damage.
There was still a complication. ‘How pregnant are you?’
‘Eight months,’ she told him. ‘Four weeks to go.’
‘There’s already been a false labour,’ Kirsty muttered.
‘So you decide to go travelling,’ he said dryly. ‘Very wise.’
‘Mind your own business,’ Kirsty snapped.
‘Be nice,’ Susie told her twin, and Kirsty looked surprised, as if she wasn’t accustomed to her sister speaking for herself.
‘You’ve flown from the US to Australia at eight months pregnant?’ he asked Susie, but Susie didn’t answer.
Kirsty waited for a moment to see if her twin would answer, but when she didn’t, she spoke again. ‘We came a month ago. We thought it might help Susie if she could find Rory’s Uncle Angus and talk to him about Rory. But Susie went into prem. labour and it’s taken a month before we’ve been game enough to leave Sydney. Enough of the inquisition. Could we get Susie warm, do you think?’
Kirsty’s anger and distress were palpable. She’d have liked to direct them straight at him, Jake thought, but he could see the warring emotions on her face and knew that the anger and the distress were self-directed. She was blaming herself.
But he had to concentrate on Susie. Triage decreed that psychological distress came a poor second to possible spine damage. He was helping Susie into a sitting position, and now he smiled at her, encouraging.
‘Slow. I don’t want any sudden movements.’
‘This doctor’s almost as bossy as you are,’ Susie told her sister. ‘Nice.’ She turned back to Jake. ‘But be bossy with Kirsty,’ she told him. ‘She needs bossiness more than me.’
‘I’ll deal with your sister after you,’ Jake told her, and glanced between the two of them. There was more going on here than a healing back and pregnancy. Why was Kirsty so terrified?
Susie was so thin.
‘Is anything else hurting?’
‘My pride,’ Susie told him, and some of her bravado was fading. ‘I have mud everywhere.’
‘Can we take her inside?’ Kirsty demanded in a voice full of strain, and Jake glanced at her again. OK. Enough of the mud.
He stooped and lifted Susie up into his arms. Despite her pregnancy, she was so light she alarmed him even more.
Kirsty gave a sigh of relief and started tugging the wheelchair forward, but instead of placing Susie into it he turned toward the gate.
