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Her prepared speech was no longer appropriate. She’d accepted that three nights ago when she’d seen him back at Crocodile Creek, so maybe it was just as well that there were things to say and do now that had nothing to do with their past.
He was past the slowing rotor blades. He was almost by her side.
He stopped.
And he saw who he was facing.
‘Gina.’
The word was a blank expression of pure shock.
He’d had less warning than she. She at least knew that he was in the same part of the world as she was. She’d seen him only three days ago. But Cal hadn’t seen her for five years.
He’d hardly changed, she thought. He was a big man, long and lean and tough. He always had been.
Information about Cal’s background had been hard to glean, but she knew enough. His parents had been farmers on a holding that had been scarcely viable. His mother had abandoned them early. Cal had been brought up to hard times and hard work, and it showed. His bronzed skin was weathered, almost leathery. His deep brown eyes crinkled at the edges, and his strongly boned face spoke of the childhood he’d talked about reluctantly, a childhood where his first memory had been of gathering hay in the blazing sun before a storm on Christmas morning, heaving bales that had been almost as big as he’d been before he had been old enough to stop believing in Santa Claus.
Before he’d been old enough to stop hoping that one day things could change.
But they hadn’t. He hadn’t. He hadn’t changed a bit.
Yet she still loved him. She looked into his shocked face and she felt her heart break all over again.
How could she still love him?
Five years of heartbreak.
She had to move on. He had a life to lead and so did she. There was no room here for emotion.
But… His burnt red, tightly curled hair was just the same as her son’s.
Concentrate on medicine, she told herself fiercely. Use the medical imperative. Medicine had been her lifesaver for five long years and it would be her lifesaver again.
And as for loving?
Get over it.
‘Cal, there’s a baby.’
He was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. She might be moving on, but he hadn’t yet. How could he?
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
The harsh words were like a blow and she found herself physically flinching.
But she had to move past this. The baby’s life was too important to waste time on non-essentials.
‘I’ve been at the rodeo,’ she told him. Somehow. It was almost impossible to make her voice work at all, but when she managed it came out expressionless. Businesslike. ‘I found a baby,’ she managed.
‘You found a baby.’ Shock was still the overriding emotion.
‘It’s wrapped in a windcheater, under her T-shirt.’ Pete had moved into helpful mode now. He was looking from Gina to Cal and back again, as if he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t moving. As indeed they must. ‘She says some woman must have dropped it in the bush.’
‘What—?’
‘I need oxygen,’ Gina told him, hauling herself even more into medical mode and willing Cal to follow. ‘Cal, the baby needs urgent help if he’s to survive. He’s badly cyanosed. His breathing is way too shallow—he’s tiring while I watch.’
She still hadn’t pulled the baby from under her T-shirt so he was just a bulge under her bloodstained clothing. No wonder she didn’t have Cal’s belief. She must look crazy. ‘He’s only hours old. He’s lost blood. He’s prem, I think, and he’s not perfusing as he should. Blue lips, blue fingernails. Heartbeat seems far too rapid. Do you have equipment?’
She watched as Cal caught himself. As he finally managed to flick an internal switch.
‘A baby.’ His eyes dropped to the bulge and his deep eyes widened. He was taking in the whole scene, and it wasn’t pretty. ‘Not yours?’
‘Not mine.’ A little blood could go a long way and she was aware that she looked so gory she might well be a mother who’d given birth only hours before. And maybe she looked shocked and pale to go with it.
‘I need oxygen, and I need it fast.’
‘We have an incubator on board. Everything we need.’ The pilot of the chopper—a guy in a flight suit—was coming toward them now, carrying more equipment.
Medical mode won.
‘Let’s move.’
They moved.
The next ten minutes were spent working as once they’d worked together long ago. The pilot—a youngish guy Cal referred to as Mike—was a paramedic and he was good, but with a baby this tiny they needed every ounce of skill they all possessed.
She and Cal were still a team, Gina thought fleetingly as she searched for and found a tiny vein for the intravenous drip. Newborn babies had such a tiny amount of blood that even a small loss could be catastrophic. He had to have replacement fluid. Meanwhile, Cal had a paediatric mask over the tiny face, using the attached bag to assist breathing. His breathing slowed almost at once. From an abandoned baby with nothing, this little one was suddenly being attached to every conceivable piece of medical technology they could use.
Maybe he’d need them all. Because when Cal hooked him to the heart monitor and she watched his heart rate, she winced.
‘There’s something going on,’ she murmured. ‘That heartbeat’s too fast and with this level of cyanosis…’
‘You’re thinking maybe pulmonary stenosis?’
‘Maybe. Or something worse, God forbid. We need an echocardiogram.’
‘Yeah.’ He cast her a doubtful look. ‘We’ve done all we can here. We need to get him back to the base.’
She hesitated. Yes. They needed to get the baby to help. But…where did that leave her?
For the first time since she’d found the baby, there was a tiny sliver of time to consider. The baby was being warmed and he was hooked to oxygen and an intravenous drip. He was as stable as she could make him—for now. Somehow she made herself block out the fact that Cal was watching her as she forced herself to think through what should happen next.
Should she stay involved?
Now was the time to step back—if she could.
There were three factors coming into play here.
First, she badly needed transport. Once she reached Crocodile Creek, she could get a coach to the outside world. Maybe she could even still catch her flight home.
Secondly, more importantly, this baby needed her. Or he needed someone with specialist training.
‘Is there a cardiologist at Crocodile Creek?’ she asked, and Cal shook his head. He was thinking exactly what she was thinking. She knew it.
‘Our cardiologist has just left,’ he said abruptly, and she nodded. But the way he’d spoken… It brought her to the third factor.
Despite the fact that it was sensible for her to go with him to Crocodile Creek—despite the fact that medical imperative decreed that she go—she didn’t want to get in the helicopter with him. It had been a mistake to come. To drag out the moment…
This baby needed a cardiologist if he was to survive. He needed her.
She had no choice, she told herself fiercely. Focus on medicine. Ignore the personal. The personal was all just too hard.
‘We need to think about the mother,’ she managed, and Cal nodded in agreement. They’d always been apt to follow the same train of thought and it was happening all over again.
‘We do.’ He turned away to where Pete was kneeling a few yards away in the dust. Pete had obviously decided that his best role was in keeping CJ occupied and they were etching huge drawings of kangaroos in the dust. ‘Pete, have you no idea where this baby could possibly have come from?’
‘There’s been three or four hundred people through here over the last couple of days,’ Pete said, looking up from his kangaroo and shaking his head as he thought it through. ‘It could be anyone’s kid.’
‘This baby was born here only hours ago. Did you see anyone who was obviously pregnant?’
‘Dorothy Curtin’s got a bulge bigger’n a walrus but she and Max took off with the kids at lunch time.’
‘There’s no way Dorothy would abandon one of hers. But anyone else? Maybe someone who’s in trouble. A kid? Maybe someone who’s not a local?’
‘There were a few out-of-towners on the coach. But I dunno.’ He scratched his head a bit and thought about it. ‘I dunno.’
‘I didn’t see any pregnant women on the bus,’ Gina told them.
‘I’ll need to get the police involved.’ Cal looked uncertainly across at Gina and then he seemed to make a decision. ‘I want the mother found. But we need to take Gina—this lady—back to Crocodile Creek with us,’ he told Pete. ‘Will you stay on and show the police where the baby was found?’
‘Sure thing,’ Pete said. ‘I gotta clean up anyway. ’
‘I’ll show you exactly where I found her,’ Gina told him, and then hesitated, thinking it through. ‘Cal, we need to check the birth site anyway. We might have a girl somewhere who’s in real trouble.’
‘We might at that,’ Cal said grimly—and then added, more enigmatically, ‘And that’s only the start of it.’ He motioned to Mike. ‘Mike, you go with Gina. I’ll stay with the baby.’
Mike nodded. Until then the paramedic had worked almost silently alongside them, but he was obviously aware of undercurrents. He looked at Gina now, a long, assessing glance, and then he looked across to where CJ was intent on his drawing.
‘Is this your son?’ he asked her. ‘Will he be coming back with us, too?’
Cal hadn’t noticed CJ. He’d been preoccupied with the baby and with Gina, and CJ had had his head down, drawing dust pictures. Now his eyes jerked over to where the little boy knelt in the dust.
CJ was totally intent on the task at hand, as he was always intent on everything he did. Pete had been showing him the traditional way aboriginals depicted kangaroos and he was copying, dotting the spine of his kangaroo with tiny white pebbles. Each stone was being laid in order. His drawing of the kangaroo was three feet high—or three feet long—and it’d take many, many pebbles to complete it, but that wouldn’t deter CJ.
So for now he knelt happily in the dust, a freckle-faced, skinny kid with a crop of burnt red curls that were coiled tight to his head. With deep brown eyes that flashed with intelligence.
With hair and with eyes that were just the same as his father’s.
They all saw Cal’s shock. Gina watched his eyes widen in incredulity. She could see him freeze. She could see the arithmetic going on in his head.
She could see his life change, as hers had changed with CJ’s birth. Or maybe before that.
As it had changed the day she’d first met Cal.
‘Hey, the kid’s hair is just the same as yours,’ Pete said easily—and then he fell silent. He, too, had sensed the tension that was suddenly almost palpable.
‘It’s great hair,’ Mike said, with a long, hard stare at Cal. Then he recovered. A bit. ‘OK.’ He stared at CJ for another long moment—and then turned back to Gina. ‘You said your name is Gina? I’m assuming you’re a doctor?’ Cal had been working with her as an equal and her medical training must have been obvious.
‘That’s right. I’m a cardiologist from the States.’ But Gina was hardly concentrating on what she was saying. She was still watching Cal.
‘Then let’s get this birth site checked, shall we?’ Mike said, taking charge because neither of the two doctors seemed capable of taking charge of anything. ‘There are questions that need answers all over the place here.’ He directed another long, hard stare at Cal—and then he took another look at CJ. ‘So maybe we’d better start working on them right now.’
The flight back to Crocodile Creek was fast. They put CJ in the passenger seat next to Mike—helicopter copilot was a small boy’s dream—and Gina and Cal were left in the back to tend to the baby.
But there was scarcely room for both of them to work, and for the moment there was little enough for both to do. It was Gina who opted out, Gina who sank into a seat and harnessed herself in for the ride and Gina who said, ‘He’s your patient, Cal.’
Which was fine, Cal thought as he monitored the little one, adjusting the oxygen rate, listening to the baby’s heart, fighting to keep him stable.
The baby was his patient.
Gina’s son was…was…
Hell, he couldn’t take it in. It was overwhelming. The sight of the little boy had knocked him so hard he still felt as if he’d been punched.
How could Gina have borne a child—his child?—and not told him?
Could it be a mistake? Was he jumping to conclusions? Somewhere there was a husband. He knew that. A husband with coiled red hair the same as his? And eyes that looked like his?
He glanced across at Gina. She looked older, he thought. Much, much older than the last time he’d seen her.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her. She’d just arrived in Townsville, a young doctor from the States come to try her hand at Outback medicine. She’d been thin—almost too thin—her green eyes almost too big for her pinched, white face, and with her riot of deep brown curls tied back in a casual knot that had accentuated her pallor. He’d thought she seemed too young, too frail to take on the job she had applied for.
But over the year she’d been with the Remote Rescue Service, she’d proved him wrong. She’d fast become an important member of the service. She gave her all. She’d thrown herself into her work with total enthusiasm and skill. With basic training in cardiology, she’d proved an indispensable member of their team, and the rest of the doctors had only been able to wonder what had driven her from her high-powered training to life in far north Queensland.
‘I had a relationship that didn’t work out. It was…a bit of a drama.’ It was all anyone had been able to get from her. She didn’t talk about her past.
But finally she did talk, though still not of her background. As they’d worked together over the ensuing months, the pinched, wan look had disappeared and she’d blossomed. She’d gained weight, her eyes had lost their haunted look and had filled with life and laughter, and she’d brought life and joy to…
To his world.
He’d thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
He glanced again at her now. Her hands were clasped on her knees. She was staring straight ahead, unseeing.
She seemed haunted again, he thought. She was too damned thin again. The bloodstained clothes made her look like the victim of some disaster, and he had a sudden feeling that she’d look like that even without them.
He didn’t know her, he thought bleakly. He had no idea what was happening behind that blank mask. She’d walked away from him five years ago and he hadn’t seen her since. His only phone call had elicited a brutal response.
