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 (30 page)

‘I don’t give a stuff about bloody tourists off a bus,’ an irate man was shouting at the receptionist. ‘I pay my
bloody taxes and I want to be seen by a doctor.
Now!
I’ve been waiting hours. Is this a
hospital
or what?’

Hannah gave the receptionist a sympathetic smile. Near her desk was a sad-looking pile of wet luggage, some backpacks and other personal items like handbags, hats and sunglasses.

The angry man stormed back to his seat. Then he jumped to his feet. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he shouted. ‘I’m bloody going home.’

Casting a glance around the waiting room, Hannah could tell nobody was sorry to see him go. She doubted there had been much wrong with him in the first place. He should see the kind of injuries that were having to wait for attention inside the department.

Hannah didn’t really need a two-hour break. Maybe she should go back and help. She could leave the shoe on the pile because it probably did belong to the little girl and she might come looking for it.

Something made her turn back before she reached the pile, however. Something niggling at the back of her mind since her gaze had skimmed the more patient people still waiting for attention.

And there she was. A drowsy little blonde-headed girl, almost hidden with her mother’s arms around her. She had a pink cast on her arm.

Hannah walked over to them, absurdly hopeful.

‘Is this Chloe?’

The mother nodded, a worried frown creasing her forehead. ‘Is there a problem? I thought we were all finished. We were just waiting for a ride to the shelter.’

‘No problem,’ Hannah assured her. ‘I just wondered if this could be Chloe’s shoe?’ She held the small sneaker out
but the hope that she might have solved this small mystery bothering her was fading rapidly.

Chloe was wearing some white Roman sandals. Two of them.

The little girl opened her eyes. ‘That’s not my shoe,’ she said. ‘It’s the boy with the funny name’s shoe.’

Hannah caught her breath. ‘What boy?’

‘The boy on the bus.’

‘I didn’t see a boy,’ her mother said.

‘That’s because he was hiding in the back of the bus. With his friend.’

‘A friend?’ Hannah blinked. Surely the searchers couldn’t have missed
two
children? And where were the parents? They would be frantic. Everybody would know by now if they had missing children.

‘He had a dog called Scruffy,’ Chloe added. ‘They were hiding so the driver wouldn’t see Scruffy.’

So the friend was a dog? There had been no reports of a dog at the accident site that Hannah was aware of and that would be something people would talk about, surely? Chloe’s story was beginning to seem unlikely.

‘Chloe has a very good imagination,’ her mother said fondly. ‘Don’t you, darling?’ Her smile at Hannah was apologetic. ‘It was a pretty long, boring bus ride.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I
did
see them,’ Chloe insisted. ‘I went down the back of the bus when you were asleep, Mummy. His name was F-F-
Felixx
,
’
she said triumphantly. ‘Like the cat.’

‘I don’t think so, darling. I’ve never heard of a little boy being called Felixx.’

‘But it’s
true
, Mummy.’ Chloe was indignant. She wriggled away from the supporting arm and twisted her head sharply up to glare at her mother.

And then the small girl’s eyes widened in surprise.

A split second later she went completely limp, slumped against her mother.

For a stunned moment, Hannah couldn’t move. This was unreal. Talking one moment and apparently unconscious the next? Automatically she reached out to feel for a pulse in Chloe’s neck.

Chloe’s mother was frozen. ‘What’s happening?’ she whispered hoarsely.

Hannah’s fingers pressed deeper on the tiny neck.

Moved and pressed again.

‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said, ‘but for some reason it seems that Chloe’s heart might have stopped.’

Another split second of indecision. Start CPR here in the waiting room and yell for help or get Chloe to the kind of lifesaving equipment, like a defibrillator, that she might desperately need? There was no question of what could give a better outcome.

She scooped the child into her arms. ‘Come with me,’ she told Chloe’s mother as she ran towards the working end of the department.

‘I need help,’ she called as soon as she was through the door.
‘Stat!’

Ryan looked up from where he was squatting, talking to a man in a chair who had a bloodstained bandage on his hand. He took one look at Hannah’s face and with a fluid movement he rose swiftly and came towards her.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I have no idea. She just collapsed. I can’t find a pulse.’

‘Resus 2 is clear at the moment.’ Charles was rolling beside them. ‘I’ll find help.’

Hannah laid Chloe on the bed. It had been well under a minute since the child had collapsed but, horribly, her instincts
were screaming that they were too late. There had been something about the feel of the child in her arms.

Something completely empty.

Her fingers trembled as they reached for the ECG electrodes and stuck them in place on a tiny, frail-looking chest.

Ryan was reassessing her for a pulse and respirations. ‘Nothing,’ he said tersely. He reached for a bag-mask unit. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

‘Could it be a drug reaction? Anaphylaxis? What analgesia has she had for her arm?’

‘Do you know if there were any prior symptoms?’ Ryan had the mask over Chloe’s face and was delivering enough air to make the small chest rise and then fall.

The normal-looking movement of breathing gave Hannah a ray of hope. Maybe they
weren’t
too late. But then she looked up at the monitor screen to see a flat ECG trace. Not even a fibrillation they could have shocked back into a normal rhythm. She moved, automatically, to start chest compressions.

‘She was fine,’ she told Ryan. ‘A bit drowsy but fine. She was talking to me. Telling me about the shoe and a boy who was on the bus.’

Any worries about a potentially missing child were simply not part of the picture right now.

More staff were crowding into the resus area to assist. One of the doctors, Cal, was inserting an IV line. One nurse was rolling the drugs trolley closer, the airway kit open on top of the trolley.

Charles was there. A solid presence. Beside him, Chloe’s mother was standing, white faced, a nurse close by to look after her.

‘An undiagnosed head injury?’ Charles wondered aloud.
‘A lucid period before total collapse?’ He shook his head. ‘Couldn’t have been that dramatic.’

Ryan looked over to Chloe’s mother. ‘Does she have any medical conditions that you know of? Heart problems?’

‘No-o-o.’ The word was torn from the woman in the form of a sob. The nurse put her arms around the distraught mother. As awful as this was, it was better for a parent to see that everything possible was being done, in case they had to deal with the worst possible outcome.

Hannah kept up the chest compressions. It wasn’t physically hard on someone this small. One handed. Rapid. It didn’t take much pressure at all.

‘Stop for a second, Hannah.’

They all looked at the screen. The disruption to the trace that the movement of CPR was causing settled.

To a flat line.

‘I’m going to intubate,’ Ryan decided. ‘Someone hold her head for me, please?’

‘I’ll take over compressions.’ Cal stepped up to the bed and Hannah nodded. She moved to take hold of Chloe’s head and keep it in the position Ryan required.

‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured a moment later.

‘What?’ Ryan snapped. His gaze caught hers as though challenging her to say something he didn’t want to hear. She had never seen anyone that determined. Ever.

‘It’s her neck,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘The way it moved. It’s …’ She was feeling the top of Chole’s spine now, her fingers pressing carefully. Moving and pressing again. ‘There’s something very wrong.’

It was hardly a professional evaluation but she couldn’t bring herself to say what she thought.

It fitted. Chloe must have had a fracture that had been undisplaced. She might have had a sore neck but that could
have been masked by the pain relief administered for her fractured arm.

A time bomb waiting to go off. That sharp, twisting movement when she’d looked up at her mother could have displaced the broken bones. Allowed a sharp edge to sever the spinal cord.

Death would have been instantaneous.

And there was absolutely nothing any of them could do about it.

In the end, she didn’t have to say anything. Her face must have said it all. Cal’s hand slowed and then stopped. He stepped back from the bed.

Chloe’s mother let out an agonised cry and rushed from the room. The nurse followed swiftly.

Everybody else stood silent.

Shocked.

Except for Ryan. He moved to where Cal had been standing and started chest compressions again.

And Charles rolled silently to the head of the bed where he could reach out and feel Chloe’s neck for himself.

‘We don’t
know
her neck’s broken,’ Ryan said between gritted teeth. ‘Not without an X-ray or CT scan. We can’t just give up on her. Cal, take over again. Hannah, I want an ET tube. Five millimetre. Uncuffed.’

Nobody moved. Only Ryan, his face a frozen mask, his movements quietly desperate.

Charles dropped his hand from Chloe’s neck. ‘Ryan?’

The word wasn’t spoken loudly but it carried the weight of an authority it would be impossible to ignore. So did the next word.
‘Stop!’

For a few seconds it looked as though Ryan might ignore the command. Keep fighting to save a life when
there was absolutely no chance of success. Hannah could feel his pain. She reached out to touch his shoulder.

Ryan jerked away as though he’d been burnt. Without a glance at anyone, he turned and strode away. Long, angry strides that didn’t slow as he flicked the curtain aside.

‘Everybody take a break,’ Charles ordered. ‘Jill and I will deal with what needs to be done here.’

The shock was dreadful. Hannah could understand why Ryan hadn’t been prepared to give up. If there was anything that could have been done, she would have done it herself.

Anything.

They all faced terrible things like this, working in any emergency department. That it was part of the job didn’t make it easy. Somehow they had to find a way to cope or they couldn’t be doing this as a career.

What was making it worse than normal for Hannah was the feeling that Ryan
couldn’t
cope with this particular case. There had been something in his body language as he virtually fled from the room that spoke of real desperation. Of reaching the end of a personal, if not professional, tether.

There was no way Hannah could leave him to deal with that on his own.

She had to try and help. Or at least
be
with him. To show him that she cared. That she understood.

An ironic smile vied with the tears she was holding back.

To wallow with him, even?

H
E WAS
disappearing through the doors to the ambulance bay.

Going outside into the storm.

As scary as that was, Hannah didn’t hesitate to go after him. An ambulance was unloading another patient by the time she got there and Hannah had to wait a moment as the stretcher was wheeled through the doors. Mario had done the round trip again. He was holding a bag of IV fluid aloft with one hand, steering the stretcher with the other.

‘How’s it going, Hannah? OK?’

Hannah could only give him a tight smile and a brief nod, unable to think of anything but her personal and urgent mission. She skirted the end of the stretcher to dash outside before the automatic doors slid shut again.

The wind caught the baggy scrub suit she was wearing and made it billow. It teased her hair out of the band holding it back and whipped strands across her face. Her eyes stung and watered but Hannah barely registered any discomfort. It was too dark out here. The powerful hospital generators were being used for the vital power needed inside. Energy was not being wasted on outside lighting.

Where was Ryan?

Where would
she
go if she was in some kind of personal crisis and couldn’t cope?

Just anywhere? Was Ryan even aware of the wild storm raging around him? Would he be thinking of his personal safety? Not likely. What if he went towards the beach? That surf had been wild and couldn’t you get things like storm surges with an approaching cyclone? Like tidal waves?

If he had gone somewhere that dangerous, Hannah would still follow him. She
had
to. The bond she felt was simply too strong. If ever there was a case for following her heart, this was it.

Ryan
was
her heart.

Maybe he was heading for a safer personal space, Hannah thought as her gaze raked the swirl of leaves in the darkness and picked out the looming shapes of vehicles in the car park. He only had one space that could qualify in Crocodile Creek. His room in the doctors’ house.

The room she had spent the most magical night of her life in.

Headlights from another incoming rescue vehicle sent a beam of light across the path Hannah was taking. Strong enough to show she was heading in the right direction to take her to either the beach or the house. The faded sign designating the area as the A
GNES
W
ETHERBY
M
EMORIAL
G
ARDEN
was tilted. Had it always been like that or was it giving up the struggle to stay upright under the duress of this storm?

Hannah wasn’t about to give up.

She had to pause in the centre of the garden, just beside the sundial. She needed to catch her breath and gather her courage. The crack of a tree branch breaking free somewhere close was frightening. She would wait a few seconds in case the branch was about to fall on the path she intended to take.

It must have been instinct that alerted her to Ryan’s presence in the garden. Why else would she have taken a second and much longer look at the dark shape in the corner which anyone could have taken as part of the thick hibiscus hedge behind it? Or was it because that shadow was immobile whilst the hedge was in constant motion, fuelled by relentless wind gusts?

He was sitting on a bench seat, his hands on his knees, staring blankly into the dark space in front of him.

Hannah licked lips that were dry from more than the wind.

‘Ryan?’

‘Go away, Hannah. Leave me alone.’

‘No. I can’t
do
that.’ With her heart hammering, Hannah sat down beside him. Close enough to touch but she knew not to. Not yet. Ryan was too fragile. Precious. A single touch might shatter him.

So she just sat.

Very still.

They were two frozen shapes as the storm surged and howled above them.

A minute went past.

And then another.

Hannah wanted to cry. She had no idea how to help. What would Ryan do if the situation were reversed? When had she ever been this upset over a bad case at work? The closest she could think of was that little boy, Brendon, with the head injury and the dead mother and the abusive father who hadn’t given a damn.

And what had Ryan done?

Told a joke. A stupid blonde joke. His way of coping or helping others to cope. Trying to make them laugh and thereby defusing an atmosphere that could be destructive.

No atmosphere could be worse than this. The pain of
loving someone and being totally unable to connect. To offer comfort.

Hannah chewed the inside of her cheek as she desperately searched her memory. Had she even
heard
a blonde joke that Ryan wouldn’t already know?

Maybe.

‘Hey …’ Surprisingly, she didn’t have to shout to be heard. The wind seemed to have dropped fractionally and the hedge was were offering a small amount of protection. ‘Have … have you heard the one about the blonde who went to pick up her car from the mechanic who’d been fixing it?’

There was no response from Ryan. Not a flicker. But he’d never been put off by Hannah’s deliberate indifference, had he? It took courage to continue, all the same. More courage than heading out into a potentially dangerous storm.

‘She asked, “Was there much wrong with it?” and the mechanic said, “Nah, just crap in the carburettor.”‘ Hannah had to swallow. This was so hard. How could anything be funny at a time like this? The punchline might fall like a lead balloon and she would seem shallow. Flippant. Uncaring. The things she had once accused Ryan of being. The
last
things she wanted to be seen as right now.

‘And … and the blonde thought about that for a minute and then she nodded and she said, “OK … how often do I have to do that?”’

For a heartbeat, and then another, Hannah thought her fears were proving correct. The stone statue that was Ryan was still silent. Unmoving.

But then a sound escaped. A strangled kind of laughter. To Hannah’s horror, however, it morphed into something else.

Ryan was
crying.

Ghastly, racking sobs as though he had no idea
how
to cry but the sounds were being ripped from his soul.

Hannah felt tears sliding down her own face and there was no way she could prevent herself touching him now. She wrapped both her arms around him as tightly as she could, her face pressed against the back of his shoulder.

Holding him.

Trying to absorb some of the terrible grief that he seemed to be letting go.

Maybe it was Chloe’s case that had caused it or maybe she’d been the straw to break the camel’s back. The reason didn’t matter. Ryan was hurting and if Hannah hadn’t known before just how deep her love for this man went, there was no escaping that knowledge now.

She would never know how long they stayed like that. Time had no relevance. At some point, however, Ryan moved. He took Hannah’s arm and pushed her away.

He couldn’t bear it if Hannah felt
sorry
for him.

Adding weakness to the list of faults she already considered him to have.

He had to push her away. However comforting her touch had been, he didn’t want her pity.

Searching her face in the darkness didn’t reveal what he’d been afraid to find. The shine of tears on Hannah’s face was unexpected.

‘Why are
you
crying?’

‘Because …’ Hannah gulped. ‘Because
you’re
crying.’

Why would she do that? There was only one reason that occurred to Ryan. She cared about him. Cared enough to be moved by his grief, even if she didn’t know where it was coming from.

A very new sensation was born for Ryan right then. Wonderment. He had revealed the rawest of emotions. Exposed a part of himself he’d never shared with another
living soul and Hannah had not only witnessed it, she had accepted it.

Was
sharing
it even.

Oh, man! This was huge. As big as the storm currently raging over their heads.

Bigger even.

Ryan sniffed and scrubbed his nose with the palm of his hand. He made an embarrassed kind of sound.

‘First time for everything, I guess.’

‘You mean this is the
first
time you’ve ever cried?’

‘Yeah.’ Ryan sniffed again and almost managed a smile. The grief had drained away and left a curious sort of peace. Had the crying done that? Or Hannah’s touch? A combination of both maybe. ‘Well, since I was about five or six anyway.’

‘Oh …’ And Hannah was smiling back at him. A gentle smile that was totally without any kind of judgement. ‘I’m glad I was here.’

‘Yeah …’ It was still difficult to swallow but the lump in his throat seemed different. A happy lump rather than an agonised one. How could that be? ‘Me, too.’

They listened to the wind for a moment. Felt the fat drops of rain ping against their bare arms.

‘I’m sorry, Ryan,’ Hannah said.

‘What for?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like that we couldn’t save Chloe.’

‘We could have, if we’d only known.’ Ryan felt the weight of sadness pulling him down again but he knew he wouldn’t go as far as he had. Never again. Hannah had stopped his fall. Made something right in the world again. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’

‘No, of course it shouldn’t, but I can see why it did. If there hadn’t been so many injuries it would have been standard protocol to check her out a lot more carefully. To collar and backboard her until X-rays were done, given the mechanism of injury. But she was part of the walking wounded group. She only complained about her sore arm.’

‘Tunnel vision.’

‘Not entirely. With so many to care for, you don’t have time to think outside the square. Tick the boxes that don’t seem urgent. Anyway, it happened and it’s dreadful and I know how you must feel.’ A tentative smile curved Hannah’s lips. ‘I’m available for a spot of wallowing.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘I don’t do wallowing, you know that.’ He snorted softly. ‘Hell, if I went down that track with the kind of material I’ve got to keep me going, I’d end up like a character in some gloomy Russian novel. Chloe
did
get to me more than usual, though. Too close to home.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Of course she didn’t. Why had Ryan thought that keeping his private life private would make things easier?

‘I’ve got a niece,’ he told her. ‘Michaela. She’s six and blonde and it could have been her in there instead of Chloe. Not that there’s anything that could save Mikki so to have another little girl that didn’t
have
to die and still did seemed just too unfair to be acceptable.’

‘Mikki
has
to die?’

‘It’s inevitable. She’s got neuroaxonal dystrophy. It’s an autosomal recessive genetic disease and it’s incredibly cruel. They seem perfectly normal at birth and even for the first year or two, and then there’s a steady deterioration until they die a few years later. Mikki can’t move any more.
She can’t see or talk. She can still hear and she can smile. She’s got the most gorgeous smile.’

When had Hannah’s hand slipped into his like that? Ryan returned the squeeze.

‘I love that kid,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s got a couple of older brothers but she was special right from day one.’

‘And she lives here, in Australia?’

‘Brisbane. She’s my older brother’s child. He’s taking it hard and it’s putting a big strain on the marriage. He’s a bit like me, I guess—not good at sharing the hard stuff in life. Easier to bottle it up and have a laugh about something meaningless.’

‘Like a joke.’ Hannah was nodding.

‘Yeah. Shallow, isn’t it?’

‘You’re not shallow, Ryan. You care more than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve just been good at hiding it.’ She cleared her throat. ‘So Mikki’s the reason you come back to Australia so often?’

‘Yeah. I try to be there whenever things get really tough or when she has a hospital appointment. I can explain things again to her parents later.’

‘It’s a huge commitment.’

‘I would have moved there to make it easier to be supportive but my parents live in Auckland. Dad had a stroke a couple of years ago. Quite a bad one and Mum’s finding it harder to cope. So there I was in Sydney, commuting one way and then another. The travel time was playing havoc with my career so I had to choose one city and the job in Auckland happened to come up first. It doesn’t seem to take any longer to get to Brisbane from Auckland than it did from Sydney and I’m only doing half the travelling I used to do.’

Hannah’s smile was rueful. ‘And I was thinking that Michaela was a girlfriend. Or an ex-wife.’

Ryan snorted. ‘For one thing, any wife of mine would never become an “ex”. For another, I haven’t had time in my life for a relationship for years. Who would, with the kind of family commitments I’ve got?’

‘But you go out with everyone. You never miss a party.’

‘I’m in a new city. I need to find friends. Sometimes I just need to escape and do normal, social things. I still feel lonely but if you can’t find some fun somewhere in life, it takes all the sense out of struggling along with the bad bits.’

‘I can’t believe I accused you of being shallow, Ryan. I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I can see why you did. I’ve never told anyone at work what goes on in my private life. I had a feeling that if I started I’d never be able to stop and it would be too hard. I’d end up a mess and people would just feel sorry for me. I’ve got too much pride to take that on board.’

‘
I
don’t feel sorry for you.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’

‘What
do
you feel, Han?’

‘I … feel a lot.’ Hannah was looking down, avoiding his gaze. ‘I’m … in love with you, Ryan.’

There.

She’d said it.

Opened her heart right up.

Made herself as vulnerable as it was possible to get, but what choice had she had? There was no escaping the truth and she couldn’t live a lie.

And hadn’t Ryan made himself just as vulnerable? He hadn’t cried in front of anyone in his adult life. He could have hidden it from her. Stormed off and shut her out before he let himself go. He’d been exercising control over
his emotions for year after year. He could have done the same for a minute or two longer.