The Doctor's Mistress

‘I’m going to get her settled in the ambulance,’ she called to Bruce. ‘When the others get here, we’ll split crews, and Jim can drive me while Paul stays with you.’

She left the front door open and carried Tori to the ambulance, hoping the second car would get there soon. Tori looked tiny on the stretcher in the back of the car. Hayley covered her with a blanket at once. Next she inserted a drip, containing morphine for pain, and was alarmed rather than reassured by Tori’s lack of fight when the sharp prick came. OK, yes, she’d found a nice vein in the back of the child’s hand and the needle had gone in straight away, but she would have expected more of a protest.

She picked up the radio and spoke to the dispatcher. ‘Kathy, is there a second car on its way?’

‘Yes, Car Seven. Car Eleven just called in with a report on their status. It should be with you in a couple of minutes.’

‘OK, thanks.’ She turned back to Tori. ‘What does Daddy do at the hospital, darling?’ she asked. It would help if she could keep Tori alert and reassured.

‘He’s Dr Black,’ came a weak little voice. ‘He makes people better.’

‘Dr Black?’ Hayley echoed. She went cold.

Dear God, it had to be Byron! This was Byron Black’s daughter...

In the distance, the siren of the second car could faintly be heard. Meanwhile, Hayley’s mind raced. She’d seen him, what, twice, in sixteen years? They’d trained together in Arden’s competitive amateur swimming club in their teens. Most people had called him B.J. then, but they probably didn’t any more. She hadn’t used the nickname herself, even back then. She hadn’t felt that it suited him.

He was three years older than she was, but they’d both been backstroke specialists, tackling the sprint distances. This had meant a lot of cheering for each other, a lot of powering alongside each other in the pool and the growth of a friendship. They’d both been keen and competitive, thriving on the atmosphere, and they’d made it to the state championships twice.

Once, they’d even kissed. Lord, she hadn’t relived that delicious memory in years...

Then, when Hayley had been fifteen, Byron had gone off to Sydney to study medicine at Sydney University, and it had seemed as if he’d made a permanent life for himself in the city. He’d been openly competitive in the pool, and he was obviously ambitious about his career. He didn’t come from a professional background. His father worked in a local hardware store, and Byron had had to work hard towards each new goal. In hindsight, she had the impression that he gloried in a challenge, and she couldn’t think of any goal he’d set and failed to meet.

Hayley had run into him once on the beach around Christmas-time about seven years previously, in the company of a pretty, dark-haired woman. ‘This is my wife, Elizabeth,’ he’d said. She had introduced him to Chris that day, and the four of them had talked for a short while.

A couple of years later, they’d bumped into each other in the supermarket and had exchanged two minutes of superficial news. She’d heard a couple of things since. That Elizabeth had died in a plane accident of some kind. That they’d had a little girl.

Tori.

The sirens grew louder and the lower tone of the vehicle’s engine joined the noise as it grew closer. Then the sounds of sirens and engine both died. The second ambulance was here, parked in the street below.

Climbing out the back of her car, Hayley directed Paul Cotter up to the house. ‘Bruce is in the living room with the other patient. First door on the right,’ she told Jim Sheldon. ‘You’re driving this car. Let’s go.’

‘Righto, Hayley.’ Paul hurried up the steps, his black trouser legs a blur, to disappear inside and find Bruce.

Hayley climbed back into the car to Tori.

‘We’re going now,’ she said, gently peeling back the blanket and replacing the gauze, warmed from Tori’s over-heated skin, with freshly soaked pieces. ‘We’re going to see Daddy at the hospital.’

‘Daddy...’ said a tiny voice.

A few weeks ago, Hayley had found out that Byron was coming back to Arden with his little daughter to oversee the accident and emergency department at Arden Hospital and act as Resident Medical Officer. He must have started work there already, judging by what Tori had said. He was replacing an older man who’d retired. But Hayley hadn’t seen him yet because she’d been in Melbourne for the past two weeks, giving Max some time with his dad.

Her heart did a familiar, uncomfortable flip. Chris had been his usual difficult self during her visit. He’d hinted at the possibility that the two of them might get back together. His wistfulness on the issue was a vindication of the way she’d suffered when he’d left, but beyond that... It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that perhaps she’d moved on.

‘You’re my best friend, Hayley,’ he had whispered to her. ‘Maybe that’s what really counts.’

Her reply had been stiff. ‘I’ll always be your friend, Chris.’

He’d been her first and only lover. He’d been her husband for seven years, and he was the father of her child. Aware of all his faults, she still cared for him. It wasn’t a particularly rewarding feeling but, with Max’s needs to consider, was she just being selfish to want more?

She had driven the eight hours back to Arden in a state of unsettled questioning and hadn’t given a further thought to that trivial yet oddly pleasant piece of news, a few weeks earlier, about Byron Black’s imminent return.

And now, here she was, on her second shift back, sitting in the back of Car Seven with Byron’s injured daughter. Dear God, he would be racked over this.

The driver’s door of the car slammed shut and Jim started the engine. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘Pretty shocked.’

‘And the other patient?’

‘Bruce didn’t have chance to give me much of a report. He’s pretty sure it’s a stroke. They’ll just have to see how it resolves once she’s admitted. She must be in her sixties.’ She would have liked to have said more, to tell Jim, She must be either Byron Black’s mother or his mother-in-law. How’s he going to feel?

But Tori needed her attention. It wasn’t the time for gossip and conjecture with Jim.

‘We’re on our way now, sweetheart,’ she said, taking the child’s soft little hand. ‘It won’t be long. I’m going to get Mr Sheldon to talk to the hospital and tell your daddy that you’re coming.’

But Tori didn’t speak. She had her eyes closed now. Hayley left her hand where it was.

‘Jim, I’ve worked out who she is,’ Hayley told him briefly and quietly, twisting towards the front of the vehicle. ‘Can you contact the hospital and make sure Dr Black is available in A and E?’

Jim whistled. ‘His daughter? The new guy? I handed over to him last week, another CVA. He seemed good—thorough, focused, not too arrogant—but he’s going to be a mess today.’

He was.

Hayley glimpsed him standing in the ambulance bay as they pulled in. He hadn’t changed much since the last time she’d seen him. He still had the broad shoulders of a swimmer, still wore his thick, soft hair short so that it would stand up in dark spikes when he towelled it dry...or when he ran his fingers through it in agitation, as he was doing now.

He had brown eyes. They weren’t puppy brown like Chris’s, however, but tiger brown with a glint of gold, an altogether more dangerous colour. He had a long straight nose, a wide, serious mouth and a broad forehead. Each of those features was stiff with tension now. They appeared to be etched more strongly than usual, as if the sculptor who’d made him—and any sculptor would be proud to have made a human form like Byron Black’s—had dug his tools in extra deep, manipulating them with force.

There had always been an aura around Byron, something that hinted at the capacity for deep-running passion and the capacity to contain that passion carefully inside him. Today it looked as if the passion was threatening to break free.

A nurse and an orderly appeared with a stretcher and a drip stand. Hayley opened the back of the car, unlocked the ambulance stretcher from its metal track and slid it out, extending the wheels down to ground level as she did so. Tori was light and little and easy to shift from one stretcher to the other.

‘Tori! Victoria!’ Byron said hoarsely, curving his long body over her.

He was in the way of the drip line, but Hayley managed to snake it around him. As she did so, the sensitive inner skin of her forearm brushed across the top of that dark, spiky head and his hair was as silky and clean as she remembered. With the hairs of her arm still standing on end, she passed the plastic bag of fluid across to the nurse, who hung it on her stand.

An orderly began to wheel the stretcher inside. Byron was still leaning over it, his long, strong legs working instinctively to keep up as they rumbled from concrete slab to vinyl flooring, through a set of automatic doors.

‘Daddy...’ came a little voice, fuzzy from the effect of the morphine. ‘Grandma wouldn’t wake up from her sleep.’

He went white, straightened like a released catapult and turned to Hayley, blind and helpless. Didn’t even recognise her. She wasn’t surprised. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘What on earth happened?’

‘She has a partial thickness burn over twelve to fifteen per cent of her body.’ Hayley kept her voice calm and impersonal. He needed a clear report, not a lot of words wasted in sympathy. Not yet. ‘No facial or genital involvement. The other patient in the house with her appears to have had a CVA and she’s coming in a second vehicle. The other crew will be able to give you a better report on her status...’

‘A CVA? That’s my mother...’ Byron was paler than ever now. ‘Dear God, and the two of them were alone!’

They could all hear the sirens of the second ambulance now. Byron clearly didn’t know which way to turn next, his usual control and authority momentarily deserting him. His eyes looked wild, his lips were white, his fists were balled hard. Hayley ached with sympathy for him.