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‘Sorry. I needed that. I haven’t eaten for about six hours.’ She pointed at the baby and answered Sandy’s question. ‘Well, I was pretty glad to see him, with the baby so stunned at birth, and he puts a tube in very well.’ She rolled the sweet wrapper in her hands thoughtfully. ‘He’s got that calmness the really experienced neonatal guys have so that everything seems to go smoothly with no stress. Very easy to work with.’
‘Hooray, you’ve said something good about a doctor finally.’ Sandy pretended to do a Red Indian war dance around the room.
Poppy glared at her. ‘I like Dr Gates.’
‘He’s as round as butter and married with six kids. He’s safe to like. Besides, he finally agreed with your complementary therapies. But this guy is young and Dr Gates says he’s single.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve got a bad feeling about how open his mind is. Also, he’s against a mother choosing the place of birth.’ Poppy rubbed her eyes and stretched her neck again. ‘Still, I suppose if everyone had their babies at home we’d be out of a job.’
Sandy frowned. ‘Don’t worry about him now. It’s been a long day for you and pressure’s on when a baby’s not responding.’
‘It’s OK, Sandy. I’m thinking that at least, having him here, we won’t have to book as many high-risk women into the base hospital.’ She stared dreamily at a rosy vision of babies and mothers filling the nursery.
Sandy shook her head. ‘What I don’t get is why such a qualified guy would come here.’
Poppy sniffed. ‘Why wouldn’t he come here? We have the best beaches on the North Coast and we’re close to about five national parks.’
‘Yeah, right, Poppy. Not everyone wants to tramp through slippery gullies to look at some hundred-year-old forest giant covered in green velvet.’ Sandy rolled her eyes.
Poppy wasn’t listening. ‘Hopefully, more women will come back to having their babies at Midcoast.’ She looked around at the freshly painted walls and the modern equipment.
‘I love this place and we fought hard for the birthing suites. It infuriates me that there’s no guarantee the ward will stay open if the birth numbers keep falling.’ She crossed her fingers superstitiously. ‘Help is here if they need it, but we’re finally offering our clients non-medical forms of pain relief, with great results. People are starting to chose Midcoast for those reasons. We don’t want another doctor to scare them away by being negative. We’ll just have to convince him that, while it has its place, conventional medicine isn’t always necessary.’
She shrugged her shoulders wearily and waved at the baby again.
‘I’ve had it. Bye, little one.’ She blew a kiss at the crib. ‘See you tomorrow afternoon, Sandy.’ With her bag in one hand and helmet and keys in the other, she headed thoughtfully out of the door. Poppy’s red motor scooter was no Harley-Davidson but it meant she didn’t have to walk home in the dark tonight.
Pushing open the external door, she almost collided with Dr Sheppard who was leaping up the stairs three at a time. Poppy stepped back out of his way but stopped when he put out his hand.
‘Hello again, Sister.’ He glanced at her helmet. ‘It’s dark. I’ll walk you to your, ah...bike?’
This tall, muscular man, vaulting the stairs, had knocked her mentally off balance. Poppy forced down the butterflies in her stomach and managed a noncommittal nod. But she smiled to herself at a reaction she hadn’t enjoyed in a while. Hormones.
What was that thing about adrenalin she’d learnt? It warmed your skin with increased blood flow and accelerated your heartbeat. This guy must trigger her adrenalin. And he’d know it, too. The thought steadied her. She’d had the impression he hadn’t even liked her. Strangely, she wasn’t tired any more.
Poppy walked beside him the short distance to the road. ‘Why do you want to walk me to my bike?’ She tilted her head up at him, unable to resist. ‘Did you want to hear why some home births are a good thing? How important it is that if these parents come to us in a crisis situation we shouldn’t judge them?’
His face showed it was the last thing he wanted to talk about and she bit her lip to suppress her smile.
‘Judging isn’t helpful when we’re trying to build a reputation as a liberal birthing unit. Obviously home birth isn’t for everyone, but in this case, prior to the sudden foetal distress, her midwife had a healthy mother with good antenatal care and a history of a previous normal vaginal delivery. That’s low risk.’ She slanted a look at him and saw that his eyes were glazing. She’d have one more go.
‘Do you realise that human beings are the only animals who make a nice safe nest to live in then leave it to have their young in a strange place? Don’t you find that bizarre?’
‘Bizarre? No.’ That was too much for him.
Poppy got the feeling she’d suddenly grown another head.
He shook his head in disbelief. ‘To come to a hospital to have your child seems perfectly natural to me—and something any sensible person would do.’ His forehead creased.
‘Look, I came back to check on the baby and I don’t know why I offered to walk you to your bike. Though it’s probably because I don’t like to see women walking alone at night.’
‘Oh, I appreciate that.’ She had no doubt he was wishing he hadn’t, and Poppy tried hard not to let the amusement come through into her voice. She needn’t have worried. He still couldn’t come to terms with women wanting home births.
‘What about infant mortality and morbidity? These people are dangerous.’ He looked down at her walking beside him. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘I don’t find it bizarre and we’ll never agree on home births.’ He smiled to soften the words but his voice was harsh.
Poppy shrugged. ‘Maybe we could talk about it another day?’
‘I don’t think so.’
They both stopped beside her red scooter. He stared at the tiny vehicle and its bottletop-sized wheels.
‘What an embarrassing bike.’
Poppy laughed out loud. And she’d been worried about offending him? ‘Oh very diplomatic, Dr Sheppard. I bet what you drive doesn’t cost less than a soft drink to run every month, and it’s fun. Have you heard of fun?’
He obviously wasn’t used to being paid back and she smiled as he blinked at her tone.
‘I’m sorry, that was rude of me,’ he said. ‘Which reminds me, I left rather quickly without telling you how impressed I was with your resuscitation skills. I thought we worked well together.’
Damn. She’d just decided he was an insufferable prig and he said something nice. She hated that. Now she felt like a louse.
She tried to hide her face by bending down to put the keys in the ignition. She could feel the heat in her cheeks because he’d made her feel self-conscious with his comment.
‘Thank you, Dr Sheppard.’
‘Jake, please.’
‘Jake, then. You’re pretty good yourself at what you do. I’m Poppy.’
He raised his eyebrows.
Poppy sighed. ‘My mother was a sixties flower child and she named her daughters after her favourite flowers. My sister’s name is Jasmine.’
Jake glanced down at her. She was tall for a woman and well rounded. He liked the way her red hair curled and bounced around her face. It was a big improvement on the theatre cap. She looked like a poppy. She had one of those husky, sexy voices that seemed to come out of the most unlikely people.
He watched her face soften when she spoke of her mother, and it made him think of the way she’d looked at the baby outside Theatre. Her face wasn’t beautiful—except when she smiled. Yet she had the kind of face he could watch all day, waiting for the changes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed watching a woman’s reactions so much.
Then she smiled and he realised that had been what he’d been waiting for. She lit up from within and the power of it scrambled his brains again. She could light a dark room with that smile. It made him catch his breath. Like the moment in Theatre when the baby had first cried. He was probably hypoglycaemic. Light-headedness and low blood sugar levels had a lot to answer for. He needed to get away from her.
‘Well, Poppy, you should be safe if I leave you now.’ He went to shake her hand but stopped at the expression on her face. He couldn’t believe it. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. At him. He glared at her. She bit her lip and took the hand he’d let fall. She held it in both of hers and shook it.
‘I’m sorry. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought or your combat skills, Jake, but this is Midcoast.’ She gestured around at the deserted street. ‘Not Sydney or New York.’
The ungrateful minx.
‘You’re laughing at me.’ He couldn’t remember the last time someone hadn’t taken him seriously. Then there had been that crack about fun. He froze. That was a worry. What was he turning into? Then she smiled that smile again.
‘I’m sure you’ll recover.’
She was playing the cheeky minx again, but she intrigued him. Still, he knew better than to lose his usual common sense. He’d always said that women in the health profession didn’t attract him. Women required more than he could give. Look at his marriage before Helen had died.
He was here to do the work he loved. His eyes narrowed. And make someone, somewhere in this small country town pay for his brother’s death, he reminded himself. He couldn’t forget why he’d come here—to find the woman responsible for stealing a month of his brother’s short life.
Someone had to fight against the new wave of alternative remedies that were causing people to turn their backs on real medicine. Maybe she was one of them.
The herbal scent in Poppy’s hair drifted to him and he found himself staring at her. One part of him sneered at her irresponsible stand on home births and the other half was sliding into a whirlpool of attraction that he knew was dangerous. But for the first time in nearly three years he felt alive. Something had shifted or cracked to allow some light in. He didn’t know if it felt good or not, but it was hard to back away.
If he ignored the voice of reason he had listened to for years, he could just cup her chin in his hand and drop a swift kiss on her parted lips. Just one.
Jake stepped back. She encouraged people to condemn conventional medical care. Just like the woman who’d killed his brother. Hell, that had been close. He turned away. ‘Goodnight, Sister.’
Poppy raised her eyebrows at the coldness and revulsion in his voice. The guy was all over the place. ‘Goodnight, Jake! Nice meeting you, too.’ She pulled her helmet on and puttered away as fast as the little bike could go.
CHAPTER TWO
POPPY felt unsettled all the way home. OK, so Jake was gorgeous. It might be amusing to bait him but it could be dangerous. Stop thinking with your hormones and think of the unit, she urged herself. She’d been crazy to risk alienating him by pushing home birth at him straight off, and then she’d laughed at him. He hadn’t liked that. She giggled and bit her lip. It wasn’t funny. But he was such a stuffed shirt.
It was a shame that what he stuffed in his shirt seemed to start a slow burn in her. Just when she’d thought her libido had been terminally extinguished. And doctors were definitely off the menu.
* * *
The next afternoon, Poppy arrived on the ward to start her shift. She barely had time to put her bag down before being hailed from the birthing room to assist.
Jake was the first person she saw as she entered the room and she instinctively bit back her smile. Strange how there still seemed to be time to notice how broad his shoulders looked in an open-necked white shirt that seemed to go on for ever across his chest. It wasn’t fair that he affected her like this. Her life was fine without a man to complicate it. She frowned and pushed the thoughts away. She’d been through this last night and had decided not to be attracted to him.
Her glance flicked away to rest on the young girl in the final stages of labour. All seemed to be well in hand but she ensured that Dr Gates and the two morning midwives had everything needed before she moved over to the infant resuscitation trolley and Jake.
The paediatrician’s presence meant that something wasn’t right.
She raised her eyebrows in a silent question and he leaned over to speak softly in her ear.
‘Lana is a sixteen-year-old first-time mum, due in ten weeks. She only came in half an hour ago and there was no time to send her off to the base hospital. She had a small antepartum haemorrhage at home and sudden onset of labour. No foetal heart rate found since admission.’
Poppy felt her stomach plummet. ‘It still could have a chance.’ Every midwife’s worst nightmare was a mother left without a baby to take home.
‘I haven’t given up.’ Jake’s quiet words reinforced her sense of denial. She never gave up until the end. They had that much in common. When he continued with, ‘NETS is on standby if the baby looks like it’s going to make it.’ He proved he was prepared to give the baby every chance.
The neonatal evacuation team from Newcastle Hospital flew to country areas with their own portable intensive-care unit, complete with highly trained nursing staff, all equipment and a neonatologist on board to stabilise the baby before transfer.
‘I’ll check the nursery crib.’ She slipped out of the room to turn on the oxygen in the nursery humidicrib, then rolled two hot bunny rugs to lay over the trolley just prior to the baby being born.
When she returned to the unit she could see the tip of the baby’s head as it descended down the birth canal. She arranged the blankets and Jake moved over to stand beside Dr Gates.
‘If we can get a decent heart rate and keep the baby well oxygenated without doing any damage, it has a chance.’
More of the baby’s head showed with each contraction until the tiny flaccid body eased gently into Dr Gates’s large palm.
Poppy winced at the obvious signs of prematurity. Wrinkled, almost transparent skin covered in downy hair. Vernix, the white creamy substance that acted as a barrier cream in the womb, covered her body and the head seemed much larger than the body.
Quickly, Dr Gates clamped and cut the cord to enable Jake to whisk the baby over to the resuscitation trolley.
The ease and speed with which Jake assessed, suctioned, intubated and initiated CPR on the infant was something Poppy had to admire. As she watched those large hands giving cardiac massage to the tiny chest to encourage the little heart to beat, she found herself willing the baby to live. Her mouth was dry as she concentrated on being able to anticipate Jake’s requests.
Barely a word passed between them in that fraught ten minutes. Her throat tightened as she saw the tiny hand clench and unclench as the baby’s heart rate settled into a stable rhythm.
‘Get NETS on the phone and on their way.’ Jake’s quiet voice carried clearly to everyone in the room and Poppy blinked the mist from her eyes. She bit her lip and motioned to one of the morning mid-wives to do as he’d bidden.
‘OK, Poppy, let’s get her in the crib and I’ll bag her until we can get her hooked up to the ventilator.’ He looked up and gave the exhausted mum a quick grin. ‘Congratulations, Lana, she’s a beautiful girl. Bag for a second, please, Poppy.’
He swiftly swapped places with Poppy and she rhythmically squeezed the oxygen into the tiny lungs. Jake steered the awkward trolley against the bed and lifted Lana’s hand to touch it to her baby’s cheek. He raised his own to rest it reassuringly on the mother’s head and said softly but firmly, ‘Baby’s going to have the best care we can give her, and she’s a fighter.’
To take the time to reassure the child’s mother made Jake a special man. Poppy had to admit it. A lot of doctors, including her ex-husband, were so one-tracked they didn’t realise how much of a difference that one touch could make—to give a frightened parent that tiny second of hand contact with their child and create bonds and memories that couldn’t be replaced with a Polaroid picture.
Only then did he allow them to wheel the trolley with its precious burden into the nursery. Away from her mother.
‘The next hour will be a battle while we try to maintain the baby in as stable a condition as we can while we wait for the NETS team to arrive.’
They’d connected the baby to the electric ventilator, and the sound of the rhythmic breathing of the machine seemed to dominate the room. Jake’s voice was low as he found a tiny vein into which to insert the even smaller cannula. Poppy could hardly see the blueness under the skin that showed him where to aim, but he slid it in with ease as she held baby’s arm still.
‘That’s impressive. I have trouble finding a vein in mothers sometimes. Remind me not to complain again when I have those big veins to work with.’
He looked at her under his brows and half smiled. ‘I’ve had lots of practice.’
By the time they had a drip running and the baby fully monitored, they could hear the thump of the helicopter.
Even though she’d seen it all before, it always amazed Poppy how much equipment a helicopter could disgorge when it arrived.
The specialist seemed to be surprised and pleased to see Jake, and even the flight sister was on a firstname basis with him.
Poppy turned away and pulled a face at herself for feeling superfluous. Surprised, she realised she felt vaguely annoyed with Jake and his easy camaraderie with the flight crew. She retreated to the birthing unit to take over from the morning midwife. Lana was tidying herself, preparing to go in the helicopter with her baby.
Soon the thump of the helicopter rotor faded into the distance and Poppy finished restocking the emergency trolley in case it was needed for the next delivery. She slowed her hands as she went over her feelings. All her nerve endings seemed to stand up and wave around whenever Jake was near her. She didn’t even know the guy. Get a grip, girl, she told herself firmly.
Poppy heard Jake being paged for the children’s ward, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then, just when she thought she was safe, he poked his head into the room.
‘Poppy.’
His sudden voice made her jump and she spun around. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and the room seemed suddenly airless. It was just that he’d startled her.
‘Yes, Doctor?’ Her voice sounded remarkably cool and she managed to meet his eyes. The more she saw of him the more jangled she became. It was really starting to be a pain.
‘I’ll drop back later—there’s something I want to discuss with you.’ His head disappeared around the door again.
Poppy leaned shakily back against the bench and let out a ragged breath. What was it with this man? She hugged her stomach. How could he reduce her to this?
She’d make herself a remedy when she finished tonight. An essential oil bath perhaps, with a calming and stabilising blend for her nerves out of Mum’s aromatherapy book.
It should help.
