I’ll give you my licence details, and our insurance companies can take it from here.’
So that was that. He was dismissed. He could retreat back to Sydney. Which was what, until an hour ago, he’d been desperate to do.
It seemed to Max that Yandilagong was about as far from civilisation as it was possible to get without launching himself off the New South Wales coast and swimming for New Zealand. Not for the first time, he wondered what he’d been thinking to let his friends-a cohort of career-oriented medicos-talk him into coming.
‘It’ll be fun,’ they’d told him. ‘Music festivals are all the rage and this one has a great line-up.’
Since he’d moved to Australia he’d been asked to many hospital social events, but each time he’d refused. Since Alice’s death he’d immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. Now his surgical list was growing to the point where the pressure had become ridiculous. More and more patients were queuing, and his teaching commitments were increasing exponentially.
Last week, working out in the hospital gym in the small hours, trying to get himself so physically tired that sleep would come, he’d realised he was reaching breaking point.
So he’d accepted, but what neither he nor his colleagues had realised was that the festival was a family event. There were mums, dads and kids, young women holding babies, grandmas bossing grandkids, dads teaching kids to dance. His friends, men and women who were truly married to their career paths, were appalled.
‘We’re so lucky not to be stuck with that,’ they’d declared more than once. ‘Hicksville. Familyville. Who’d want it?’
He didn’t, of course he didn’t, so why had it hurt to hear them say it?
Then this afternoon they’d announced they were bored with music and children, so they’d organised a tour of a local winery. He’d spent a couple of hours listening to his friends gravely pontificate about ash and oak and hints of elderberry, and how wonderful it was to be away from the sound of children, and how the advertisers should be sued for not letting ticket buyers know how many children’s events there’d be.
And then his anaesthetist had rung from Sydney. A woman was being flown in from outback New South Wales with complications from a hysterectomy. When was he coming back?
His registrar could cope. He knew he could, but the choice was suddenly obvious. He’d left feeling nothing but relief. For six years he’d been alone and that was the way he liked it.
He wanted to be alone now. But instead he was parked in a tractor graveyard while a seven-months-pregnant woman was struggling to get out of his car.
Wishes aside, he couldn’t leave her. Not before he’d handed her over to someone responsible.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Gran.’
‘But she’s ill.’
‘Yes.’
‘So where’s William?’ he asked, knowing it was a loaded question but hoping there’d be a solid answer.
‘William was my husband,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead.’ He felt like he’d been punched. Dead. Hence the bleakness. Hell.
‘Not recently. You don’t need to say you’re sorry.’
Recent enough, he thought, looking at her very pregnant tummy. Alice had been dead for six years yet still…
Well, there was a crazy thing to think. Make this all about you, he told himself. Or not.
‘So who’s Angus?’
‘William’s uncle.’
‘How old?’
‘Sixty.’
This was better. ‘He’ll look after you?’
‘He’ll enjoy the challenge of getting the calves up to the house. Bonnie’s his dog. Any minute now he’ll be here to demand what I’ve done with her. So thank you, Dr Ashton. I’ll be right from here.’
He was dismissed.
For the last forty-eight hours all he’d wanted to do was get out of Yandilagong. He still did.
But he needed to see how competent this Angus person was, and how forceful. For all Maggie was struggling to pull herself from the car, she was looking paler and paler.
Placental bleeding? The two words had been playing in his head for half an hour now and they weren’t going away.
He might not have done anything closely related to obstetrics for six years, but the training was there and he knew what a strain a car crash could put on a placenta.
Archibald had kicked him. That was a good sign but he needed more. He wanted to listen to the baby’s heartbeat and then he wanted Maggie in hospital under observation.
And that bleak look on her face was etched into his mind. He couldn’t leave her. And even if he could…Still there was that tug he didn’t understand.
‘You’re not walking,’ he growled, and before she could resist he’d lifted her up into his arms again. He strode up through a garden that smelled of old-fashioned roses, where honeysuckle and jasmine fought for smell space as well, where tiny honeyeaters flitted from bush to bush and where noisy rosella parrots swooped in random raids to the banksias around the edge.
The garden looked neglected and overgrown but beautiful. The farmhouse itself was looking a bit down at the heel, in want of a good coat of paint and a few nails, but big and welcoming and homely.
Once again there was that wrench of something inside him. Like coming home. Which was clearly ridiculous. This was like no home he’d ever known.
He’d reached the top of the veranda steps and as he paused she wriggled out of his hold and was on her feet before he realised what she was about.
‘Thank you,’ she said, breathlessly, sounding…scared? ‘I can take it from here.’
Scared? Was she feeling what he was feeling?
He didn’t know what he was feeling.
‘Not unless there’s someone through that door to give you a strong cup of tea, then carry you out to a nice, safe non-tractor-type car and get you to hospital,’ he said, making his voice stern. ‘Can you tell me that?’ Even though she was standing, he was blocking her way through the door.
‘I can’t,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t have a choice. Please, I can’t leave Gran.’
‘Then I can’t leave you.’ Neither, he realised bluntly, did he want to.
‘Maggie, is that you?’ The high, querulous voice came from inside, and without waiting for permission Max pushed it open.
The first thing he saw as he opened the door was a vast open fireplace filled with glowing embers, a burgundy, blue and gold carpet, faded but magnificent, great squashy settees and a mantel with two ornate vases loaded with roses from the garden. And jasmine and honeysuckle. The room was an extension of the garden, and the perfume was fabulous. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the different light, he saw Gran. She was a tiny wizened woman, bundled in blankets on the settee, looking toward the door with obvious anxiety.
‘I’m okay, Gran,’ Maggie said urgently from behind him, and made to push past, but she stumbled on her bad leg. He caught her and held her against him, and she didn’t fight.
But suddenly Gran was lurching to the hearth to grab the poker. She turned toward him, but then fell back on her pillows, waving the poker, fright and feistiness fighting for supremacy.
‘Let her go.’ Her voice came out as a terrified rasp and he felt Maggie flinch and struggle again to get free.
The two settees in the living room were opposite each other, forming a corridor to the fire. He ignored the poker-there wasn’t a lot of threat when Gran didn’t seem to be able to stand-and moved to set Maggie down. Gran’s head and the poker were at the fire end. He set Maggie the opposite way, so the poker was away from his head.
‘He’s helping, Gran. Put the poker down,’ Maggie muttered, and he felt her tension ease a little. She was back in familiar territory now, even if it was did seem crazy territory. A tractor museum, roses, roses and more roses, and a poker-waving Gran.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s Dr Ashton,’ Maggie said, flinching as she moved her leg. ‘A doctor. Imagine that. Right when we need
