City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle

CHAPTER FIVE

TERRI stared at the now-silent CB receiver in her hand, noting the tremor in her fingers with an odd detachment. The radio unit clattered slightly as she returned it to the base cradle.

A baby. Eight months. Fever of one hundred and two degrees for several hours. Part of her knew she should have suggested continuing with fluids and waiting another couple of hours before coming in. But the rest of her couldn’t bear to take the risk.

Not today.

Babies were special, the small lives so precious.

Of their own volition, the fingers of one hand splayed across her abdomen. Her own baby would have been eighteen months old if she hadn’t miscarried.

Eyes closed, she bowed her head. Abruptly, her sensory memory delivered a staggering tableau. The pungent stench of cordite clogging her nostrils, Peter’s cries ringing in her ears. The cramping pain in her stomach as she’d crawled to try to help him. So much damage, so much blood. The very air had coated the back of her tongue thickly with the metallic taste.

She could still feel the puff of Peter’s breath on her ear as he struggled to talk, to apologise, to ask her to look after their child. In his final moments, a connection between them, one that had all but vanished after they’d married.

A spasm low in her abdomen reminded her how she’d failed them all: Peter, her baby, herself.

In the aftermath of the trauma, her body had rejected its precious cargo.

Today was the second anniversary.

‘Terri?’

‘Luke!’ Her eyes flew open and she spun round to face him. ‘Luke.’

The room seemed to rock for a second and she put a hand on the bench to steady herself.

He stepped forward, his hand wrapping around her arm above the elbow. The warmth of his fingers a tiny comfort against the chill she felt. Concern filled the blue eyes drilling into hers. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she managed, faintly. Even to her own ears she sounded less than convincing. But she was all right…or she would be. He’d just caught her at a vulnerable moment.

‘Come and sit down before…Sit down and tell me what the problem is.’ His compassionate bedside manner flowed over her, making her want to believe he cared.

She swallowed and stood firm. ‘Really, I’m fine.’

In a way, her turmoil was his fault. Talking to him the other night had left her more vulnerable than usual, that was all. His kindness, his offer to help had left her raw. She’d coped so well with the first anniversary. This second one was ambushing her, ruthlessly exposing the cracks in her defences. The skills she had used to keep herself functioning for the past two years felt fragile and unreliable. Twenty-four months. Would any amount of time be long enough to blunt the pain?

Perhaps she’d have taken today in her stride if Luke’s visit hadn’t unlocked her vault of painful memories, pitching her back into the emotional maelstrom of the tragedy.

But she would get past it, she had to.

‘Terri?’

Luke’s voice snapped her back to the present and she barely suppressed a start. If she didn’t pull herself together, he’d be afraid to have her working in the department tonight. And she needed to work-she couldn’t go home and sit alone with her thoughts. She had one constant, her ability to focus on her work. She was good at her job and that wasn’t going to stop now. She couldn’t let it-work was all she had left.

She took a deep steadying breath. With her eyes on the notes she’d made, she concentrated on the details.

‘We’ve got two patients on the way in. A thirty-year-old male involved in a quad bike accident. Required resuscitation at the scene. He has head, chest and leg injuries.’ Her voice was level and calm. No sign of the turmoil so close to the surface.

‘Right. And the other patient?’

Her fingers tightened and the paper she held crackled a protest. She swallowed.

‘The other patient is a febrile eight-month-old. Some vomiting and diarrhoea with a temperature of a hundred and two for several hours. There’s no indication that his case is anything more serious than a childhood fever but I’ve suggested bringing him in for examination. Mum’s extra-anxious because her niece had meningicoccal disease last year. The family live out of town and Dad’s away on business so…’ She clamped her lips to stop the flow of words. Her reasoning was feeble, the product of personal anxiety rather than professional concern. She needed to marshal a better argument.

‘So you didn’t want to leave Mum isolated in case things deteriorate during the night?’ Luke shrugged. ‘That’s part of the reason we’re here, isn’t it? Better to have a patient come in and prove to be a minor case than to have us miss something major.’

Terri opened her mouth to defend her case for having the child brought in and then his words sank in. He wasn’t questioning her decision, as she’d expected…as she deserved.

‘Um, yes.’ Grateful as she was for his attitude, the quick acceptance of her position made her feel like an inexperienced rookie. She suppressed a sigh and acknowledged the truth-the mood she was in tonight meant that whatever response Luke made, she would be hard to please.

She set the paper aside and glanced at her watch. ‘The ETA on the quad bike victim is any minute now. The febrile infant will be at least twenty minutes.’

As soon as she’d finished speaking an ambulance glided up to the entrance, red and blue lights revolving.

‘Let’s get to work,’ he said grimly, heading for the door.

With Luke’s attention directed towards the unconscious patient being unloaded by the paramedics, Terri felt a subtle release of tension in her muscles. The quiet air of strength and competence that he radiated should have made him a pleasure to work with…it did make him a pleasure to work with, but it was also subtly threatening.

He saw too much and she had secret agonies she couldn’t bear to have exposed. He’d already encroached where no one else had by asking her about the explosion that had killed Peter. Other people tiptoed around the issue, relieved when she moved the conversation away to safer topics. But not Luke. Had he sensed there was a problem?

She had to find the resolve to keep him out, not let his compassion weaken her. The guilt and responsibility, the burden for the terrible loss was hers and hers alone.

Luke watched the diminishing lights of the helicopter ambulance for a moment longer before turning wearily to walk back into the hospital. The future of the quad-bike victim was in the neurosurgeon’s hands now.

The man’s wife had wanted absolute reassurances that he’d recover but Luke couldn’t give them to her. Even if her husband survived, he’d probably have months of rehabilitation ahead of him.

He and Terri had done everything they could. The skull X-ray had shown an intracranial haematoma, as he’d suspected from the blown right pupil. With the help of a telephone consult to a Melbourne neurosurgeon, they’d evacuated an epidural clot through a burr-hole. They weren’t ideally set up for the procedure but they’d had to do it as soon as possible for the man to have any chance of a full recovery. Now stabilised, with the pressure on his brain released, the accident victim was on his way to facilities where he could be monitored by regular CT scans.

The only good thing about the situation was that the couple’s five-year-old daughter had hopped off the bike moments before the performance of the tragic stunt.

Luke stripped off his blood-stained gown, lobbing it into the laundry bin beside the sink before scrubbing his hands.

He wondered how Terri was getting on with the dehydrated infant.

Odd how she’d behaved earlier when he’d first come on shift. She’d been so obviously upset that all his protective instincts had gone on high alert, demanding that he do something, anything, to help. After avoiding him for the best part of a week, she’d seemed positively delighted to see him. A disproportionate leap of pleasure had rushed through him in that split second when she’d turned to look at him, her eyes shining. Until she’d put her hand