скачать книгу бесплатно
Rob, however, had talked about tonight as though it was the answer to his prayers. As if diamonds were on his agenda. Which was ridiculous.
‘What do you see in this five-minute set-up?’ he demanded, and Rob gave a crooked smile.
‘My perfect woman’s out there somewhere. I just have to find her. So there was no one tonight who struck your fancy?’
‘Your lady’s hot,’ Jake conceded, being generous. ‘But no.’
‘So what did you say to Doc Nicholls?’ Rob asked. ‘To make her walk out.’
‘Doc Nicholls?’
‘Tori. Barb says she’s the vet up on the ridge, part of the group that rent your house. I’m thinking I should have met her before this, but since the fires life’s been crazy. Any negotiation’s been done through Barb. Then tonight…I couldn’t make her talk, but at least she stayed the full five minutes. Unlike you. You didn’t say anything to upset her, did you? Barb’ll have me hung, drawn and quartered if you’ve hurt her feelings.’
‘How could I have hurt her feelings?’
‘You say it like it is,’ Rob said. ‘Not always best.’
‘I don’t tell lies, if that’s what you mean.’
‘So what did you tell her?’
‘Just that I was here to make up the numbers.’
‘Right,’ Rob said. ‘That’d be a turn-on. I’m speed dating because I’m being kind. Woo-hoo.’
‘Look, it doesn’t matter anyway,’ Jake said, shoving his hands into his pockets and staring out at the vast night sky. Hankering for Manhattan where stars were in shop windows and not straight up. ‘I’ll get the house on the market and leave again, though I don’t know why you can’t do it for me.’
‘I offered, if you remember, and for once you decided to take an interest and come do it yourself.’
‘The figure seemed ludicrously low.’
‘Who wants a house on top of a fire-prone ridge?’
‘It was snapped up pretty fast after the fires.’
‘Only because there was still green feed around it,’ Rob said bluntly. ‘And you offered it rent free. But six months on, there’s feed everywhere, and it’s smoke damaged. Property values on the ridge will rise again but not until the memory of the fire fades a bit. So many of the people round here lost someone. You’re lucky you weren’t living here yourself.’
Yeah, well…Luck had all sorts of guises, Jake thought, as they headed back down the valley towards the second property his father had left him—a lodge with attached vineyard. His mother would definitely say he was lucky not to live here. His mother would be devastated that he was here now.
But how could he help but come? Jake was wealthy before his father died, but his father’s death had made him more so. The combined properties, even at post-fire prices, were worth a fortune.
Why had he held onto them? That was a question he was having trouble facing, and maybe that’s why he was here—seeking some final connection to his father.
Apart from financial support—given grudgingly, according to his mother—Jake’s father had played no part in his life. He hadn’t contacted him all through his childhood. There’d been nothing. But twelve years ago, when Jake qualified as a doctor, he’d finally received a letter. Congratulating him and wishing him all the best for his future. Intrigued, he’d written back. That’s when he’d discovered his father was working as a country doctor in the hills outside Melbourne.
He’d decided he wouldn’t mind getting a personal idea about this man who’d cared for him financially but in no other sense. Tentatively he’d suggested a visit.
But, ‘I hear your mother’s ill and she’d hate it,’ his father had said bluntly. ‘I’ve married again. We’ve all moved on. After all these years, what’s the point? I’m glad you’ve graduated and I’m proud of you. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to contact you before, but now I have…let’s leave it there.’
So he’d left it, and then life grew busy. He’d immersed himself in his career. He’d visit Australia one day, he promised himself, but then five years ago his father died, suddenly, of a massive coronary.
Jake had finally come then, to a funeral that shocked him with the community outpouring of grief. He’d sat at the back of the church and watched strangers cry for a father he didn’t know. A father who hadn’t even objected when his mother had changed his name back to hers. Who seemed to have little connection to him at all.
But when tentatively he’d confessed to the elderly lady beside him who he was, to his astonishment she’d known all about him.
‘I’m one of Old Doc’s patients—and you must be Jake,’ she’d said, sniffing and beaming a watery smile at him. ‘His American son. Doc had a baby picture of you up on his clinic wall. I used to say to him it was a shame your mother took you away, but he’d say, “Just because he’s in the States doesn’t make him any less my son. I love him wherever he is.”’
He’d loved him? That was the first he’d heard of it. The woman had wanted to introduce him around, but he was so shocked he’d simply walked away.
Maybe he should have sold the properties then, but it had seemed wrong. Troubled by the conflicting messages he was getting—had his father indeed cared?—and by the morality of accepting such an inheritance, he’d employed Rob to manage the properties and he’d retreated to the States. To his all-consuming career as chief anaesthetist at Manhattan Central.
But now, finally, he’d returned.
The lodge, once owned by his stepmother and run as a winery and genteel place of retreat, had been needed as emergency accommodation in the first weeks after the fire. Rob had it running again now, but there were few guests.
Rob had worked in hospitality for years. Five years back he’d followed a lady to Australia—of course—and jumped at the opportunity to run the lodge, but getting it viable again could take more than Rob’s enthusiasm. And up on the ridge, Jake’s second property—the one used by Tori and her friends—was smoke damaged and had been used for six months as an animal hospital.
So maybe he should sell both. Maybe he should abandon any last trace of a father he didn’t know, abandon any last connection. Rob would find alternative employment. His friend was born hopeful. The blonde’s car was in front of them, and Rob was speeding up and slowing down, doing a bit of automotive courting. Jake shook his head in disbelief.
‘Hey, stop it with the disapproval.’ Rob grinned, sensing his thoughts. ‘Worry about your own love life.’
‘I don’t have a love life.’
‘Exactly. My life’s work, wine and women. Your life’s medicine, medicine and medicine—and worry. You know you don’t need to. The resort will turn around.’
‘Maybe it will,’ Jake agreed and then thought, Why was he worrying? The winery supported the lodge, he had no money problems, so why was he even here? And the farmhouse up on the ridge—Old Doc’s Place, the locals called it—well, why was he quibbling about price? ‘I’ll go check out the ridge tomorrow, put it on the market and then go home.’
‘Back to your medicine.’
‘It’s what I do.’
‘It’s what you are,’ Rob said. ‘Why do you think I conned you into coming tonight? You need a life.’
‘I have a life.’
‘Right,’ Rob drawled in a voice that said he didn’t believe it at all. ‘Sure thing.’
Chapter Two
SHE was losing the fight—and someone was banging on the front door. Her nurse’s gaze shifted towards the entrance, her brows raised in enquiry.
‘Leave it,’ Tori said tightly. ‘She’s slipping.’
Up until now the koala under her hands had been responding well. Like so many animals, she’d been caught up in the wildfire, but she was one of the lucky ones, found by firefighters the day after the fire, brought into Tori’s care and gradually rehabilitated.
Tori had worked hard with her, and up until now she’d thought she’d survive. But then a few days ago she’d found a tiny abscess in the scar tissue on her leg. Despite antibiotics and the best of care, it was spreading. It needed careful debridement under anaesthetic. That left a problem. With this shelter winding down, she no longer had full veterinary support.
If she took her down the mountain she could get another veterinarian to assist, but travel often took more of a toll on injured animals than the procedure itself. Thus she was working with Becky, a competent veterinary nurse who worked under instruction. It wasn’t enough. She needed an expert, right here, right now, who could respond to minute-by-minute changes in the koala’s condition.
She was working as fast as she could to get the edges of the abscess clean but she couldn’t work fast enough. The little animal was slipping. To lose her after all this time…She was starting to feel sick.
‘Anyone there?’ It was a deep masculine voice, calling from the hallway. Whoever had knocked had come right in.
The door to their improvised operating theatre opened. Tori glanced up, ready to yell at whoever it was to get out—and it was Jake. Her one-and-a-half-minute date.
Whatever. It could be the king himself and there was only one reaction. ‘Out,’ she snapped, and Becky said, ‘I think she’s stopped breathing.’
Her attention switched back to her koala. She could have wept. To lose her now…
‘Can I help?’ Jake demanded.
She shook her head, hardly conscious that she was responding. She had to intubate. But if she left the wound…She couldn’t do both jobs herself.
‘Unless you can intubate…’ she whispered, hopeless. She shouldn’t have tried. The oral conformation of koalas—small mouth, narrow dental arcade, a long, soft palate and a caudally placed glottal opening, all of these combined with a propensity to low blood oxygen saturation—made koala anaesthetics risky at the best of times. And without another vet…
‘I can intubate,’ he snapped. ‘Keep working.’
‘You can?’
Jake was already at the side bench, staring down at equipment. ‘What size tube?’
‘Four millimetre,’ she said automatically.
Another vet? Maybe he was, she thought, as he grabbed equipment and headed to the table. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing.
The soft palate of the koalas obscures the epiglottis from direct view, but Jake didn’t hesitate. He’d found and was using silicone spray, snapping instructions at Becky to hand him equipment.
Tori was concentrating on applying pressure to the wound to prevent more blood loss. She was therefore able to watch in awed amazement as Jake manoeuvered the little animal into a sternal recumbency position, as he applied more spray—and as he slid the tube home.
It was like the Angel Gabriel had suddenly appeared from the heavens. Ask and ye shall receive. She’d barely been aware that she’d prayed.
No matter where he’d come from, no matter that she couldn’t see his wings and he sounded autocratic and fierce rather than soft and halo-like, her one-and-a-half-minute date was definitely assuming angel-like status. He had oxygen flowing in what seemed seconds. The monitor by Tori’s side showed a slight shift in the thin blue line—and then a major one.
She had life.
‘Heart rate’s seventy beats a minute,’ Jake snapped, adjusting the flow. ‘How does that compare to normal?’
Not a vet, then? Or not a vet who cared for koalas. Of course not.
‘Low, but a whole lot better than before you arrived,’ she told him, but there was no time for questions. Stunned, she went back to what she was doing. She was incredibly grateful but now wasn’t the time to show it. She had to get this wound debrided, then get it dressed so the anaesthetic could be reversed.
Koalas died under anaesthetic. This one wouldn’t. Please…
As if in echo of her thoughts, Jake said, ‘She seems knocked around. Wouldn’t euthanasia be the kindest option?’ He’d had time now to take in the scar tissue, the signs of major trauma.
‘Says the man who just saved her,’ Tori muttered. ‘Let’s try to keep her alive until I finish. We can do the moral debate later.’
‘Right.’
There was silence while she worked on. Becky had faded into the background, assisting both of them, deeply relieved, Tori guessed, to be freed from a task she hated. There was so much they’d done in the past six months they’d all hated—including putting down more animals than she wanted to think about.
How to explain that after so much death, one life became disproportionately important. This little one she was working on didn’t have a name. Or…she shouldn’t give her one. She should not be emotionally involved.
Only, of course, she was emotionally involved. Koala Number Thirty-seven—the thirty-seventh koala she’d treated since the fire—belonged in the wild, and Tori was determined to get her back there. She would win this last battle. She must.
Thanks to this man, she just might.
Who was he?
She was finishing now, applying dressings, having enough time again to pay attention to the man at the head of the table. He was watching the monitors like a hawk, his face fierce, absorbed, totally committed to what he was doing.
Inserting an endotracheal tube in a koala was always dangerous territory. If you went too deep there was a major risk of traumatising the trachea and extending the tube into bronchus. She hadn’t told him that. There hadn’t been time, but he’d seemed to know it instinctively. How?
Maybe he was a vet, or maybe he did paediatric anaesthesia. Sometimes she thought paediatrics and veterinary science were inexplicably linked. Varying weights and sizes. The inability of the patient to explain where the pain was.
Who was he?
She was finished. Another check of the monitors. Pulse rate eighty. Blood oxygen saturation ninety percent.
Koala Thirty-seven just might live.
She couldn’t help herself; she put her hand on the soft fur of the little koala’s face and bestowed a silent blessing.
‘You keep on living,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve come so far. You will make it.’
‘She might well,’ Jake said. He was working surely and confidently, removing the endotracheal tube with care and watching with satisfaction as the little animal settled back into normal breathing pattern. ‘So who’s going to pay her bill?’
‘Now there’s a question,’ she murmured. She was carrying the little animal carefully back to her cage in the corner. She wasn’t out of the woods yet—she knew that. Any procedure took it out of these wild animals, but at least there was hope.
She’d done all she could, she thought, arranging the IV line the little animal needed to provide fluids until she started eating again. Then she was finished.
Really finished, she thought suddenly. There was now nothing left to do.
The sensation was strange. For the six months since the fires Tori had worked nonstop. This place had been a refuge for injured wildlife from all over the mountain. They’d had up to fifty volunteers at one time, with Tori supervising the care of as many as three hundred animals. Kangaroos, wallabies, possums, cockatoos, koalas—so many koalas. So many battles. So much loss.
It was over. Those who could be saved had been saved, and were being re-introduced in the wild. The spring rains had come, the bush was regenerating; there was food and water out there for animals to re-establish territories.
This little koala was the last of her responsibilities. She glanced down at her and, as she did, she felt a wave of the deep grief that was always with her. All those she’d failed…
‘Is it okay if I go now?’ Becky said, glancing uncertainly at Jake. ‘It’s just…Ben’s picking me up. He’ll be waiting.’
‘Sure, Becky. Thanks for your help.’
‘You won’t need me again, will you?’
‘No.’ She glanced back at the koala. If there was a need for more surgery, she knew what her decision would have to be, and for that she wouldn’t need Becky.
‘See you, then,’ Becky said. ‘I’m out of here. Hooray for the city—I’m so over this place.’ And with another curious glance at Jake she disappeared, closing the door behind her.
