Feisty Firefighters Bundle

ripped off his heavy gloves and his helmet and dropped them onto the floor. Then he reached for Laura’s hands.

‘You bloody idiot,’ he told her. Laura could see tears in his eyes as a wobbly smile appeared. ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again.’

Laura couldn’t speak. It was painful to breathe anyway and the look on Jason’s face was enough to make her think she was precious in her own right. He loved her…there could be no doubt about that. But was it a love that was separate from how he felt about his daughter? Did Jason even know that Megan was all right? Still unable to produce any words, Laura pulled one hand from Jason’s grip and pointed to the other stretcher, her lips curving into a smile just as wobbly as Jason’s had been.

Jason turned to look at his daughter. The tears that had brightened his eyes overflowed now and built into a trickle that carved a pathway through the grime on his face.

‘Thank God,’ he whispered. ‘I thought that was just too much to hope for.’

Had it mattered even more than her well being? ‘Sh-’ Laura coughed hard and drew in a ragged breath of oxygen. She pulled the mask from her face and tried again. ‘Shelley?’ she managed to croak.

‘Alive,’ Jason told her. ‘But injured. We got her out just in time. Couldn’t do anything to save her brother, or whoever he was, though.’

Whoever he was became clear much later that day.

Laura and Jason found themselves sitting that evening, side by side, on chairs pulled up to a bed in a side room on the orthopaedic ward of Wellington’s General Hospital. The woman lying on the bed had her plastered lower leg supported on pillows. Her arms and hands were heavily bandaged and her face was red with areas of peeling skin. With her eyelashes and eyebrows singed to virtual baldness, Shelley Bates looked nothing like the attractive female that had walked into their lives only days before.

The sobbing that had accompanied her confession was only now diminishing, and Laura held tightly onto Jason’s hand, unable to swallow the lump in her own throat on witnessing the very real grief on display.

Jason squeezed her hand but his gaze was fixed on Shelley. ‘So…if you loved Darryn that much, why were you prepared to marry me?’

‘It was Darryn’s idea,’ Shelley said. ‘His best mate-the one in Dunedin-has been living in New Zealand ever since his parents emigrated. Darryn’s been wanting to emigrate for years. It was…it was his dream.’

Shelley’s voice still sounded hoarse from the damage of smoke inhalation and she coughed at frequent intervals. Laura could sympathise with that discomfort. She also knew that Shelley was far worse off than she was due to the injuries she had received in trying to find and rescue her boyfriend from the fire.

Shelley blew her nose, holding tissues awkwardly between her bandaged hands. ‘Is Megan all right?’

‘She’s fine.’ Jason nodded. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight just to make sure her breathing’s not affected.’

‘I tried to save her but I couldn’t stand up long enough to open the window. I broke my ankle when I fell trying to drag Darryn…and then I had to go back for him…’

‘She’s fine,’ Laura said reassuringly. ‘You did well, Shelley.’

‘No…’ Shelley shook her head miserably.

‘Yes, you did. If she hadn’t been right beside that window it would have been impossible for me to carry her. And putting her on the floor was the best place with all the-’

‘No.’ Shelley shook her head more vigorously. ‘I meant, I’m not Shelley. I’m Sharon.’

‘But…’ Jason was staring at her blankly. ‘The birth certificate says that Shelley is Megan’s mother.’

‘She is.’ The woman in the bed closed her eyes and there was a long silence.

‘I don’t understand what’s going on here,’ Jason said finally.

Neither did Laura. ‘Are you OK, Shell-Sharon? Do you want me to find a nurse? Do you need to sleep for a while?’

‘No.’ With a weary sigh she opened her eyes. ‘There’s no point keeping this up any longer. Not without Darryn.’ Tears began to flow again. ‘There’s no point at all any more.’

‘Can you tell us, then?’ Jason asked gently. ‘Why you’ve been pretending to be your twin sister?’

‘Because Shell always had everything.’ Even through her exhaustion and pain, Sharon sounded bitter. ‘She was the pretty twin. The clever one. She always got everything she wanted. I was just her shadow. The booby prize.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s dead, like I told you. Except that the blood clot wasn’t caused by her being on the Pill. She had to have a Caesarean to have Megan and something went wrong. She did live for a few weeks and she asked me to find you and make sure Megan was going to be all right. She knew I’d never want to bring up her baby and…and that was when Darryn got the idea.’

‘Of you marrying me?’

Sharon nodded. ‘Shelley said you’d only have to spend some time with Megan to love her and she said you were too nice to abandon your kid after that. I was going to get my permanent residence, divorce you and then find a way to marry Darryn.’

‘But that would have taken years.’ Laura shook her head.

‘That didn’t matter. It was Darryn’s dream and he’s the only person that ever loved me just for myself and not because they couldn’t have Shelley.’

Laura felt her level of sympathy rise a few notches. She knew what it was like to want to be loved just for yourself. The plan could have worked, too. Jason would do anything for his daughter now. He probably wouldn’t hesitate to marry Laura to give her a mother. In fact, Laura was surprised he hadn’t proposed already at some point during the incredibly long day they’d had so far.

‘So what now?’ Jason asked quietly. ‘What do you want us to do, Sharon?’

‘I want to go home. As soon as they’ll let me. I never wanted to come here at all, really.’

‘And Megan?’

‘She’s your daughter.’ Sharon turned her face away. ‘That’s up to you.’

‘We’ll do what we can to help you get back to England quickly,’ Jason promised her. ‘Will you help us sort all the official stuff that will be needed to make sure Megan’s allowed to stay with me?’

‘Sure.’ Sharon’s eyes closed again. ‘I need to sleep now. Come back tomorrow.’

Hand in hand, Jason and Laura walked through the quiet hospital corridors on their way back to the paediatric ward to see Megan again.

‘She’s going to be mine,’ Jason said in wonder. ‘Really mine.’

‘I’m so happy for you, Jase.’ It was hard to sound really happy, though, when part of her heart was breaking.

Jason must have caught something in her tone. ‘But it means that everything is going to be OK.’ Jason pulled Laura to a halt and turned her to face him. ‘For all of us.’ His face lit up as he caught hold of her other hand in his. ‘Will you marry me, Laura?’ His smile widened. ‘And be Megan’s real mother?’

For a long moment, Laura looked up at Jason, taking in every beloved feature. Then she let her breath out in a soft sigh.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I’m not going to marry you, Jason.’ Another piece of her heart cracked and she tried to pull her hands free, but Jason’s grip was far too strong.

The joy, along with some of the colour, faded from Jason’s face. ‘But…but why not? I love you, Laura. Megan loves you. I…I thought you loved us.’

‘I do. And what we have together is wonderful. It’s just not enough to base marriage on.’

‘But why not?’ Jason looked genuinely and totally bewildered. He was still holding Laura’s hands as he pulled her gently out of the way of a patient’s bed being wheeled along the corridor with attending medical staff. He leaned back against the wall and finally let go of Laura’s hands when the procession had passed. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to earn your love,’ Laura told him gently. ‘I’ve been there and done that and I’m never going to do it again.’

‘But I do love you.’ Jason’s voice was loud enough to make one of the nurses following the bed down the corridor to turn and stare. Then she grinned and gave him a thumbs-up signal.