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Not now. She couldn’t indulge him now.
‘There’s not a baby,’ she snapped again, and, dignity or not, she peered around CJ’s rock.
There was a baby.
For a moment she was too stunned to move. She stood and stared at the place between two rocks—the place where her son was gazing.
This was a birth scene. One fast glance told her that. Someone had lain here and delivered a baby. The grass was crushed and there was blood…
And a baby.
A dead baby?
She moved swiftly, stooping to see, noting his stillness and the dreadful blue tinge of his skin. He was so pale under his waxy birth coating that she thought he must be dead.
She touched him and there was a hint of warmth.
Warmth? Maybe.
He wasn’t breathing.
She fell to her knees and lifted him against her. His tiny body was limp and floppy. Where was his pulse?
Nothing.
Her fingers were in his mouth, trying frantically to clear an airway that was far too small. She turned him over, face down, using her little finger to clear muck from his mouth and then using a fold of her T-shirt to wipe his mouth clear.
Then she pulled him up to her mouth and breathed.
She felt his tiny chest lift.
Yes!
Heartbeat. Come on. There had to be a heartbeat.
Her backpack was where she’d dropped it, and CJ’s wind-cheater was drooping out of the top. She hauled it onto the grass and laid the baby down on its soft surface. It was almost one movement, spreading the windcheater, laying the little one down and starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
She knew this so well. Cardiology was her specialty but to practise CPR here, on a baby this small…
She wanted her hospital. She wanted oxygen and suction equipment. She wanted back-up.
She had to find help. Even if she got him breathing, she needed help. Urgently.
CJ was standing, stunned into silence. He was too young to depend on but he was all she had.
‘CJ, run to the side of the parking lot and scream for help,’ she told him between breaths.
Breathe, press, press, press…
‘Why?’ CJ seemed totally bemused, and who could blame him?
Could she take the baby and run for help? She rejected the idea almost before she thought of doing it. How long had the baby been abandoned? How long had he not been breathing? Even if she got him back…Every second without oxygen increased the chance of brain damage.
She needed every ounce of concentration to get air into these little lungs. She breathed again into the baby’s mouth and continued with the rhythmic pumping that must get the heart working. Must!
‘This baby’s really ill,’she told CJ, fighting to get words out as she concentrated on CPR between breaths ‘You have to get someone to come here. Scream like there’s a tiger chasing you.’
‘There’s not a tiger.’
‘Pretend there is.’ She was back to breathing again. Then: ‘Go, CJ. I need your help. You have to scream.’
‘For the baby?’
‘For the baby.’
He considered for a long moment. Then he nodded as if he’d decided that maybe that what his mother was asking wasn’t too crazy. Maybe it even appealed to him. He disappeared around the other side of the rock. There was a moment’s silence—and then a yell.
‘Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. There’s a tiger and a baby. Help!’
It was a great yell. It was the best. He’d put his heart into it, and it sounded for all the world like a tiger was about to pounce, and a baby, too. But the end of his yell was drowned out.
The coach they’d come in was huge, a two-level touring affair. It had a massive air-conditioning unit, and even when idling it was noisy. Now, as it started to move and went through its ponderous gear changes, it was truly deafening.
Gina heard just one of CJ’s yells before the sound of the coach took over. The second and third yells were drowned out as the coach turned out of the parking lot, growing louder and louder until nothing could be heard at all.
Gina made to stand—she made to get herself out in front of the coach to stop it—but then there was a tiny choking sound from the baby. Her eyes flew back to him. Was she imagining it?
No.
If he was choking…His airway must still be slightly blocked. She had to get his trachea clear.
Once more she lifted the baby and turned him face down, and her fingers searched his mouth. The coach was forgotten. She desperately needed equipment. There might well be liquor or meconium stuck in his throat or on his vocal cords. How to clear his tiny airway without tracheal suction?
She shook him, carefully, carefully, supporting his neck as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
He choked again.
Something dislodged—a fragment of gunk—and she had it clear in an instant.
She turned him back over and breathed for him again.
This time his chest rose higher.
It fell.
It rose—all by itself.
Again.
Again.
She was breathing with him, willing him to breathe with her. And he was. Wonderfully—magically—he was.
She wiped his mouth again, using her T-shirt, and then searched her bag for a facecloth. She was cradling him against her now. She had to get him warm. Once she had him breathing, heat loss was his biggest enemy.
At least the outside air was warm.
She had to get help.
The coach was gone.
As if on cue, CJ appeared back from his tiger yelling. ‘I think they heard me,’ he told her, uncertain whether to be proud or not. His expression said he was definitely uncertain about the baby his mother was paying such attention to. ‘One of the ladies on the coach waved to me as it went past.’
Fantastic. She could hear it in the distance, rumbling down the unmade road, starting its long trip to Cairns.
To the airport. To America. Home.
She couldn’t think of that now. All that mattered was this tiny baby. His breathing was becoming less laboured, she thought, or was it wishful thinking? She wanted oxygen so badly.
She didn’t have it. She had to concentrate on the things she could do.
Swiftly she checked the baby’s umbilical cord. It looked as if it had been ripped from the placenta. Now that his heart was beating strongly, the cord was starting to ooze.
How long had the cord been cut? she asked herself, a bit confused. Obstetrics wasn’t her strong point, but surely the cord shouldn’t still be bleeding?
How much blood had he lost?
Where was the nearest hospital to Gunyamurra?
She couldn’t depend on a hospital. She was all this baby had.
She tugged the drawstring from her backpack and tied the umbilicus with care, then hauled the backpack wide and found her own windcheater—a soft, old garment that she loved. It’d do as a blanket.
Once again she checked his breathing, scarcely allowing herself to hope that this frail little scrap of humanity might survive.
But as if he’d read her mind and was determined to prove her wrong, he opened his eyes.
And even CJ was caught.
‘It’s a real baby,’ CJ breathed, awed at this transformation from what must have seemed a lifeless body to a living thing, and Gina could only gaze down at the baby in her arms and agree.
More. There were no words for this moment. For this miracle. She was suddenly holding a little person in her arms. A baby boy. A child who’d one day grow to be a man, because CJ had found him and her lifesaving techniques had blessedly worked.
How could missing a coach possibly compare to this? How could being stuck in this outlandish place possibly matter?
He was so tiny. Four, maybe five pounds? Premature? He had to be. His fingernails had scarcely started to form and he was so small.
His lips were still tinged with blue. Cyanosis? The tips of his fingers were still blue as well, and she started to worry all over again. As he’d started to breathe, his little body had suffused with colour, but now…
She checked his fingers and toes with care, trying not to expose him any more than she had to. It was a hot day, so the wind was warm against the baby’s skin. How long had he been exposed?
Maybe the warm wind had helped save his life.
But there were still those worrying traces of cyanosis. His heart wasn’t working at a hundred per cent.
It wasn’t his breathing, she thought. He was gazing up, wide-eyed, as if wondering where on earth he was, and his breathing seemed to be settling.
So why the skin blueness?
She wanted medical back-up. She wanted it now.
‘How will we get home?’ CJ asked, and she held the baby close and tried to make herself think.
‘We need to find someone to help us.’
‘Everyone’s gone,’ CJ said.
‘Surely not everyone.’
But maybe everyone had. Gina’s heart sank. The rodeo itself had finished almost an hour ago. A group of country and western musicians from down on the coast had booked the coach to transport their gear. They’d played at the closing ceremony, then organised the coach to stay longer, giving them time to pack up.
The timing meant that the crowd had dispersed. The rodeo had taken place miles from the nearest settlement—which itself wasn’t much of a settlement. There’d been mobile food vans and a mobile pub, but they’d gone almost before the last event.
CJ might well be right.
‘Someone must be here,’ she said, trying to sound assured. She tucked the baby underneath her T-shirt, against her skin, hoping the warmth of her skin would do the same job as an incubator. ‘Come on, CJ. Let’s go find someone.’
CJ was looking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to accompany her or not. ‘Is the baby OK?’
‘I think so.’ She hoped so.
‘You’ve got blood on your shirt.’
She had. She grimaced down at her disgusting T-shirt but she wasn’t thinking of her appearance. She was thinking of how much blood the baby had lost.
Why had he bled so much? And newborn babies had so little…He couldn’t afford to have lost this much.
He whimpered a little against her and she felt a tiny surge of reassurance. And something more.
Once upon a time—four and a half years ago—she’d held CJ like this, and she’d made the vows she found were forming again in her heart right now. She’d loved CJ’s daddy so much. Cal had taught her what loving could be, and she’d pass that loving on to CJ.
And even though Cal no longer came into it—even though Cal was no part of her life and had nothing to do with this baby—she found herself voicing those same vows. She’d protect this baby, come what may.
What mother could have left him here? she wondered. How much trouble must a woman be suffering to drag herself away from her newborn child?
She thought of how distressed she’d been when CJ had been born—how much she’d longed for Cal and how impossible it had seemed that she raise her son without him. But the bond to her tiny scrap of a son had been unbreakable, regardless.
He’d been her link to Cal.
