The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (14 page)

‘I can’t reach your toes to tickle them,’ Hamish continued, ‘but can you wiggle them?’

The blonde head moved just slightly but it was definitely a nod, not a head shake.

‘OK, so now we know we can move you a little bit. Do you want to lift your head up so Kate and I can look at you?’

This time it was definite head shake.

Kate, who’d been stroking the blood-matted hair, looked across at Hamish.

‘There’s a scalp wound here, above her right ear, that I think explains most of the visible blood, but if she was wearing her seat belt there could be soft-tissue damage to her chest or abdomen and even organ damage.’

‘I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. Mummy will be cross.’

The muffled words pierced Kate’s heart, and she put her arms around the little curled-up ball of misery and gave her a hug.

‘Maybe this is one case where not wearing a seat belt was lucky. Instead of flying through the windscreen, she’s shot off the seat into that space,’ Hamish said, sliding his arms down under the child so he could lift her out.

‘Lily, we need to get you out of there so we can take a proper look at you. I’m going to lift you now, OK?’

No reply, but as Hamish lifted the little girl, she raised her head and looked at Kate, then put out her arms.

Kate nodded to Hamish and took the child, who attached herself like a limpet to Kate’s chest.

‘Do you think she knows?’ Kate mouthed the words at Hamish above the little girl’s head.

‘Most probably,’ Hamish muttered grimly. ‘She’s been there and conscious all the time and we’ve all been talking about things she shouldn’t have heard.’

Kate rocked back and forth, holding Lily tightly, hoping human contact would help ease the shock and horror the little girl had suffered.

Hamish dressed the scalp wound, then continued his examination, hampered by the fact he could only work on the bits of Lily not clamped to Kate.

‘She seems OK,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief that the child should have escaped unscathed—although it was only her physical self that had been lucky. Who knew what emotional toll losing both parents would take on her?

‘That’s Lily! She survived!’ Harry approached, a rifle in one hand. He walked around Kate so he could see Lily’s face—if she’d lift it from where it was burrowed into Kate’s shoulder.

‘Hey, Lily! It’s Harry. How are you, little darling?’

The head lifted and while Hamish watched, Lily registered first the policeman, who was obviously a friend, and then the rifle in his hand.

‘What are you going to shoot, Harry?’ she asked, and Kate smiled at Hamish, sure this interest in Harry’s job signalled the little girl was OK.

But it was Harry’s response that surprised Hamish. The policeman frowned and looked around as if seeking something to distract the child. Then the bull, which had been mercifully
silent since they’d found Lily, began to bellow again and the quiescent child who’d clung to Kate became a small tornado, kicking and fighting herself free of Kate’s protective arms and dashing to the trailer.

‘It’s Oscar. You were going to shoot Oscar.’

She flung herself down on the torn trailer, so close to the huge head of the angry bull that Hamish reached out and lifted her away. She kicked and fought and screamed to be let down, while the bull became equally agitated.

‘It’s OK, Lily,’ Hamish said, tightening his hold on the little girl, soothing and comforting her. ‘Harry isn’t going to shoot your bull, darling. No way! We won’t let him.’

He handed her to Kate, who kissed her on the head and murmured, ‘You stay here with me and talk to Oscar while Harry and Hamish work out how to get him out.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Hamish muttered, looking from Kate to the bull then back to Kate.

‘You’ll think of something,’ Kate told him, hugging Lily closer to her body. ‘Isn’t there a vet? Couldn’t you get a tranquillising dart?’

‘I tried to get the vet, but he’s out on the Coopers’ place, seeing to the cattle Charles wanted checked.’ Harry sounded defensive. ‘And don’t think I like the idea of shooting a healthy animal, but you tell me what else we can do.’

‘We have sedatives in our bags and the ambos will have more,’ Kate said. ‘We only have to do the sums. Hamish, how much do bulls weigh?’

‘I’m Scottish,’ Hamish protested. ‘We have Highland cows but they’re small, hairy, docile creatures and, believe me, I have no idea how much
they
weigh, let alone this guy.’

‘Can’t you work it out from people? I mean, a really big fat man might weigh, what? Three hundred pounds? Then you look at Oscar and work out how many big fat men it would take to make one of him—’

‘You can’t be serious!’

‘You have any other ideas?’ Kate demanded.

‘Maybe it is the best way,’ Harry said, cravenly giving in to Kate’s persuasion.

‘And we’re going to give it to him how?’ Hamish asked.

Harry shook his head but Kate turned her head to look at the bull, which appeared to be communing with Lily over Kate’s shoulder.

‘Intramuscularly, I’d say,’ she told Hamish with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t like to mess around looking for a vein.’

Hamish shook his head again, but now a little smile was playing around his lips and Kate knew she’d won.

‘I’ll see what we have,’ he said, then his smile grew. ‘While you work out how to get it into him.’

‘He seems a nice bull,’ Kate said to Lily when the two men had departed.

‘He’s mine,’ Lily told her. ‘My very own.
And
we’re friends.’

‘I’m kind of glad about that,’ Kate said, eyeing the extremely large animal, which looked as if he ate friends for breakfast. Except he did have soft brown eyes, and now she really looked, he had a friendly face.

‘Does he let you pat him?’

‘Of course he does,’ Lily scoffed, reaching out a skinny arm towards the tear in the trailer.

‘Be careful, you’ll cut yourself,’ Kate warned, but the little arm snaked inside and touched the bull’s soft nose.

‘Would he let me touch him?’ Kate pursued.

Lily turned her head to look more closely at the woman to whom she still clung.

‘If I told him to,’ she said, without a hint of boasting or bravado in her voice.

‘Well, when Dr Hamish gets the injection for him, will you tell Oscar to let me touch him? It’s not going to hurt him, just
put him to sleep for long enough for the men to cut him free and lift him into a truck.’

‘Where will the truck take him?’

Lily’s legs and arms tightened around Kate’s body again and Kate knew the little girl must know, at some level where she didn’t want to go, that her parents were dead.

‘Wherever you say,’ Kate told her, rocking her again.

‘He has to come where I go,’ Lily said, her voice breaking and warm tears spilling down Kate’s neck. ‘He has to stay with me. He’s mine, he’s mine.’

‘He’ll stay with you, darling, of course he will,’ Kate promised, knowing the bond she felt with the child was more than sympathy for her loss, but an understanding of how total that loss must be. ‘I promise you he’ll stay.’

Hamish and Harry returned, Hamish holding a big bulb syringe Kate knew was normally used for irrigating ears.

‘You have a needle on that thing?’ Kate asked, and Hamish nodded proudly at her.

‘Never let it be said a Scot can’t improvise,’ he said, showing her his invention, which had a hard plastic cannula attached to the blunt end of the syringe and a hollow hypodermic needle attached to the cannula. ‘You ready?’

‘Me?’

She may have talked to Lily about touching the big bull, but she hadn’t for a minute imagined either Hamish or Harry would allow her to do it. Forget women’s lib, this was a very large bull they were talking about.

But Hamish was offering her the syringe!

No chance. ‘Lily, tell Oscar Hamish is a friend.’

The little girl, apparently unwilling to take Kate’s word for it, wriggled around to look at Hamish.

‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’

Hamish smiled and touched her cheek.

‘He’ll hardly feel it,’ he promised.

‘Then I’ll hold him.’

Still clinging with one arm to Kate, she stretched out the other and with an imperious ‘Oscar, come!’ she reached her hand into the damaged trailer.

The big bull stretched his neck, lowered his head and nuzzled her hand, allowing her to pat his nose then reach upward to grab hold of one of his horns.

‘Stay!’ Lily commanded, for all the world as if she were talking to a very obedient dog not an animal the size of a small elephant. Kate eyed the set-up. If the bull moved his head, he could tear off Lily’s arm.

‘I’ll hold him, too,’ she said, and shifted Lily to one hip.

‘You’ll stay right out of it!’ Hamish ordered, placing his body between her and the bull and reaching in to grasp the thick horn above where Lily’s small hand lay.

Then he took the chance, reaching in with his right hand and jabbing the needle into the bull’s neck, then squeezing the bulb hard and fast to inject as much of the sedative as he could while Oscar remained still.

‘It’s not going to work,’ Kate said ten minutes later, as all four of them watched the bull watching them through the tear in the trailer.

‘He looks sleepy,’ Lily told her. ‘Soon he’ll lie down.’

And within moments she was proved correct. The big animal started looking confused, then shook his head, before his legs gave way and he sank down onto what was now the base of the trailer.

The firemen moved in immediately, cutting through the metal shell then calling the tow truck closer and wrapping ropes around the inert body.

‘Where am I taking him?’ the truck driver asked, when Oscar was settled into the back of a cattle truck.

‘To the hospital,’ Kate answered, and all the men involved in the rescue turned to stare at her.

‘He’ll be OK when he comes round,’ Hamish assured her,
his voice the kindly one he probably used to people who were off the planet.

‘He needs to stay with Lily,’ Kate explained, resting her head against the head of the now dozing child. ‘Or she needs him to stay with her. And we have to take her to the hospital to check her out and contact relatives. There’s that paddock at the back of the Agnes Wetherby Garden—I asked Charles about it one day and he said in the old days the hospital had its own cows. Oscar can go into the cow paddock.’

Harry shrugged and turned to the driver.

‘You heard the lady,’ he said, while Hamish came over and gave her and Lily a hug.

‘And how long did it take you to work out all of that?’ he asked, his arm around the pair of them, leading them away from the damaged trailer then stopping abruptly within sight of the ambulance.

Kate shifted Lily so the little girl’s weight was on her hip and smiled at Hamish.

‘You’d have worked it out just as quickly if you’d heard Lily talk about her bull,’ Kate replied, then she checked to make sure the little one was still sleeping. ‘She’s lost so much, Hamish. How could we not keep her bull close to her?’

He hugged her again and she realised it wasn’t just shoulder shrugs and kisses she’d miss. She’d miss Hamish’s hugs …

But he wasn’t thinking about hugs. Or, if he was, they weren’t happy thoughts for he was frowning and looking around as if he’d lost something. Then he turned her and Lily round again and walked back towards the accident.

‘Wait here a moment,’ he said, sounding so definite Kate didn’t argue, though Lily was growing ever heavier in her arms.

He returned, this time with Harry.

‘I’ll send you back in the second police car,’ Harry said, and Kate, glancing back towards the ambulance that was to have been their transport, looked at Hamish and understood. He
hadn’t wanted Lily travelling with the vehicle that held her parents’ bodies.

This was the Hamish that got under her defences. He might joke and make light of things most of the time, but underneath his detached exterior there was a heart that felt the pain of others and a steely determination to do whatever was possible to alleviate it.

‘You’ll go straight to the hospital?’ Harry asked.

‘Yes, we need to check her out and the staff there can start a search for relations,’ Hamish told him.

‘Good luck with that,’ Harry said, still frowning, though Hamish felt the frown was directed at him, not at the task that lay ahead of them. ‘Brad was a runaway and although a whole crowd of locals and rodeo folk turned out for Jenny’s mother’s funeral, I don’t know that any of them were relatives.’

‘We’ll do our best, and in the meantime there are plenty of people at the hospital who can keep an eye on Lily.’ Hamish wasn’t sure why he was getting such negative vibes from Harry, who was usually an extremely positive person. Though maybe having to deal with two dead people and an untold number of dead animals might destroy anyone’s positivity.

‘So, tomorrow?’

It took a moment for Hamish to realise the question hadn’t been directed at him. And that Kate was already answering it!

‘I don’t know,’ she was saying hesitantly, looking down at the blonde head on her shoulder. ‘I’ll stay with Lily while ever she needs me. I’ll let you know.’

Harry gave Hamish another disgruntled look and walked away.

‘You were going out with him tomorrow?’ Hamish demanded of Kate the moment the policeman was out of earshot.

‘He was going to take me out on the river,’ she said, ‘but now …’

They were in the middle of the highway—mercifully still closed to traffic—halfway between the wrecked vehicles and
the second police car, but Hamish wasn’t moving another step until he’d sorted this out.

‘Take you out on the river? I’ve asked you to dinner at Athina’s, to a beach barbeque, to the movies and to the Black Cockatoo for a drink, and every single time you’ve given me the same excuse—you don’t want to get involved. Yet you had a drink with Harry at the pub on Wednesday and now a second date?’

Somewhere deep inside him a voice Hamish didn’t recognise was suggesting he was making a fool of himself—that maybe the woman just didn’t like him, or liked Harry better. But he was sure the voice was wrong about her not liking him. Hadn’t she kissed him—or at least returned his kisses—just that afternoon?