Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

If.

The vast pliers-like equipment nicknamed the Jaws of Life was working now, the noise blocking out any other. It stopped for a minute and she heard Cal.

‘Breathe for me, Karen. Come on, love. Breathe.’

Love. He was fighting with love, she thought, and he didn’t even know he was doing it.

She needed time to think things through.

There was no time here.

Then the helicopter landed, and Gina was so busy she hardly noticed. One of the boys was vomiting and it took all her skill to stop him choking. She had him on his side, clearing his airway, and when Cal’s hand settled on her shoulder she jerked back in surprise.

He was clear of the wreck, but she glanced up and saw that he wasn’t clear. Karen…

Not dead. Not yet.

Cal was looking at the boys she was treating, doing fast visual assessment, trying to figure priorities.

‘I’ll take Karen back to base in the chopper,’ he said, briefly, dully, as if he was already accepting the outcome. ‘Her parents will want to come with us, and by the look of…things, I think that’s wise.’ He stooped to feel the pulse of the boy who’d just vomited. Both boys were seriously injured but not so seriously that their lives were in immediate danger. But both of them needed constant medical attention. It wasn’t safe to leave either without a doctor.

Which left them with a dilemma. Only one of these kids could fit in the two-patient chopper, but if one of them went, Cal’s attention would be divided. Or Gina would need to go, too, leaving one boy untended.

Impossible. They’d have to wait.

‘I’ll send the chopper straight back,’ Cal told her, and she understood.

‘Fine.’

Fine? To be left on the roadside with three dead kids and two seriously injured kids and so many distraught relatives?

‘No one else can stay,’ Cal told her helplessly. ‘Damn, there should be another doctor. We’re so short-staffed.’

‘Just go, Cal,’ she told him. ‘Move.’

‘I’ll send someone back to cope with the deaths,’ Cal said. There were adults keening over the bodies and the scene looked like something out of a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare. ‘Charles said he’d send back-up. Where is it? But, Gina, I need to go.’

‘Of course you do. Go, Cal. I’ll manage.’

He touched her hair, a fleeting gesture of farewell—but then, before she could begin to guess what he intended, he bent and kissed her. Hard. It was a swift kiss that held more desperation than tenderness. It was a kiss of pure, desperate need.

Maybe it had been intended as reassurance for her, she thought numbly as she raised a hand to her face, but it had ended up being a kiss for himself. For Cal.

Cal had never kissed her as he’d just done then.

But he was already gone, stepping away from her. Stepping away from his need.

Into the chopper, back into his medicine, and away from her.

Somehow she organised order from the chaos at the roadside. She couldn’t work miracles—there were still three dead kids. But she sent relatives to start the drive into town so they could be at the hospital when the kids were brought in. She worked with the police sergeant who’d come to assist the white-faced officers who’d been first on the scene, getting details from shocked relatives. The bodies had to stay where they were until the coroner arrived.

She worked.

Finally the helicopter returned and by the time it did, she had her two remaining patients ready to go. She’d hauled the stretchers from the road ambulance she and Cal had come in, so the moment the chopper landed she had them ready to carry on board. Mike was the pilot. He swung out to help her. There was another paramedic or doctor in the back, receiving the patients, but there was no time for introductions.

‘Let’s go,’ Mike told her.

She glanced one last time at the mess left for the police to handle—the detritus of wasted lives—and then she concentrated on the living. She climbed up into the chopper herself. Moving on.

If only it was that easy.

Someone—a big man with a Scottish accent that was apparent the moment he opened his mouth—was organising the securing of the stretchers. He talked over his shoulder to Gina as Mike fastened himself back into the pilot’s seat.

‘You’ll be Gina,’ he said briefly, hanging the boy’s drip from the stand built into the side of the chopper. ‘I’m Dr Hamish McGregor. Call me Hamish.’

‘William’s IV line’s not stable. And his leg…’

‘I’m noticing that, and it’s my problem.’ Hamish was making a calm assessment of each patient. And of her. ‘You look like death and I’m taking over. If I need you, I’ll say so. Meanwhile, sit back and close your eyes.’

‘But—’

‘Just do it.’

She did. She buckled her seat belt and closed her eyes, and suddenly nausea washed over her in a wave so intense that she needed to push her head down between her knees to stop herself passing out.

Hamish eyed her with concern but he left her to it. Every doctor in the world had these moments. They came with the job.

So for a while Gina simply concentrated on not giving way to horror. On not letting the dizziness take over.

Finally, though, the nausea passed. She took a few deep breaths and ventured—cautiously—to open her eyes again. The helicopter was in the air. The two kids seemed settled and Hamish was focussing on her.

‘So you’re Cal’s Gina,’ he said softly.

‘I…No.’

‘No?’

‘I’m just a doctor tonight,’ she said wearily, and then, because she couldn’t think of what else to say, she added, ‘Where’s Cal?’

‘Last time I saw him he was about to drill a burrhole to try and relieve raised cranial pressure,’ he told her. ‘It’s desperate surgery he’s doing. We’re damnably short-staffed. Every doctor at the base is doing two jobs or more tonight.’

‘So where did you come from?’

The big Scot managed a lopsided smile. ‘I’m supposed to be on leave,’ he told her. ‘However, I made the mistake of telling people where I was. Charles radioed the skipper of the game-fishing boat I was on and they hauled me back to town with the boating equivalent of red lights and sirens. To be met by this.’

‘So you’re another doctor with the Remote Rescue Service.’ She frowned. ‘Hamish. The paediatrician?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Or I’m the best we can supply in the paediatric department. I have a post-grad qualification in paediatrics, as well as my accident and emergency training.’