Water and Fire
Authors: Demelza Carlton
Tags: #mythical creatures, #adult fiction, #albany western australia, #contemporary rural medical romance, #dangerous australian wildlife, #postnatal depression and stillbirth, #remote nursing and midwifery, #sexy doctor and nurse romance, #steamy shower scene sex, #whiskey and chocolate
DEMELZA
CARLTON
This book is
dedicated to all those who have known the heartbreak of losing a
child.
Despite the
sorrow surrounding her, a stillborn child still has
purpose.
Copyright ©
2012 Demelza Carlton
Lost Plot
Press
Smashwords
Edition
All rights
reserved.
1
A screech and a thump were my
only whisper of warning.
I sighed. Another suicide.
I rounded the corner. The
humped body of the big buck kangaroo sprawled like a sleeping seal
by the side of the road. No other animal has a death-wish quite
like a kamikaze kangaroo. The bitumen glittered in my headlights,
as if frosted over in preparation for the dawn. The crunch beneath
my tyres belied the thought of ice. I knew the sound of crushed
glass.
The tail-lights of the tiny
Toyota bled their glow onto the gravel beneath. The tree toppled
between those two red eyes had folded the roof into a pair of
ominous knitted eyebrows.
I slowed to a stop in the
gravel behind it, hoping my help wouldn't be necessary. I left my
headlights on to illuminate the wrecked hatchback. "Hello?" I
called.
The answering groan was deep
and came from the car. I peered through the back window, but the
inflated airbags inside made it hard to see. I approached the
driver's door.
"Are you okay?" I asked,
knowing the answer already as I surveyed the damage done by both
the kangaroo and the tree the driver had blindly swerved into.
"No," whimpered a female voice.
"I…I can't get out."
Her door had popped partly
open, so it wasn't difficult to pull on the handle to widen the
gap. The airbag sprouting from her steering wheel pinned her to the
seat. Under the weight of the fallen tree, both the roof and the
console tightened into a cage around the airbag, making her car a
padded cell in which she started to panic. She struggled to twist
out of her seat, but she couldn't.
I waited a moment, before
asking, "Can you undo your seat belt, or is it stuck?"
She looked at me in wonder and
began fumbling for the seat belt buckle. I clearly heard the click
that released her, before her scream shattered the air.
When she ran out of breath, she
panted for a moment before she spoke. "I'm sorry," she said
hoarsely.
I gritted my teeth into a
smile. "Nothing to be sorry about. Let's get you out of there."
I helped her out of the
driver's seat and onto her shaky legs. Only as she straightened
beside me did I see the swollen belly that the airbag had hidden. I
had barely a second to recognise her pregnancy before another
contraction seized her. My arms were strong enough to support her,
but her scream was longer this time. I saw the blood and fluid
staining the driver's seat and felt a frisson of fear.
No. Can't hesitate. I'll do
whatever it takes to save her. I won't lose this patient.
When the sound had died away, I
said quickly, "Let's get you to my car, where you can lie
down."
I helped her hobble to my car
in time for her to topple into the back seat as her next
contraction hit. Her scream rang in my ears, but I pulled out my
phone, ready to ring for help as soon as she was silent.
I looked down. No signal. I
held her life in my hands and mine alone. No, not just hers. Her
unborn child, too.
So be it.
"I'm sorry," she whimpered,
"but I think I'm having my baby, too."
For the first time, I smiled
properly. "Then you're in luck. I'm Belinda, one of Albany Regional
Hospital's best midwives and I'm on my way to work. I guess I'm
starting early today, with you as my first patient. What's your
name?"
"Miranda Nelson," she groaned
over the next contraction. A gout of blood soaked the seat beneath
her.
"I'll buckle
you up and then we'd best get going," I said brightly, hoping there
were no police up yet to catch me speeding. If I didn't get her to
hospital soon, Miranda might bleed to death
.
Not on my shift she won't.
"I'm sorry," Miranda sobbed,
before another scream sounded her next contraction.
"No need," I
replied cheerfully. I found myself singing under my breath. I
lifted my voice a little so she might hear the soothing song,
too.
After all, it can't hurt. She's in
enough pain already.
A wail
heralded another contraction, Miranda's panicked panting
punctuating the time between. I glanced at my watch.
Five minutes. With the contractions so close, the
next one should hit just as we get there.
I braked carefully as we
reached the ambulance entrance, the sound drowned in Miranda's deep
groan. I threw myself out of my door and pelted to hers.
"EMERGENCY. I NEED A
WHEELCHAIR!" I bellowed as a stricken-looking ward clerk appeared
at the door.
"Yes, Belinda," Helen replied
smartly, vanishing back inside. She returned in a moment with the
small hospital's only wheelchair, angling it perfectly to catch
Miranda as I levered her out of the car.
Helen pursed her lips at the
sight of blood in the back seat of my car, but she said nothing. I
passed her my keys as I took hold of the wheelchair. "Can you take
care of my car, Helen?" I asked brightly, already rolling Miranda
inside.
With the help of a sleepy
orderly named Rob, I quickly ensconced Miranda in a birthing suite,
her wail rising as another contraction hit her.
"Where's Jill?" I asked Rob,
before he left the room.
"In with Mrs Barker. She went
into labour and won't let Jill leave. Jill and the anaesthetist are
trying to persuade her to have an epidural, but she swears she
won't."
Two difficult births in one
night – Mrs Barker and now Miranda. This was going to be harder
than I'd thought. I sucked in a breath, wondering who else would be
able to help me. "Where's Dr Henderson?"
Rob shrugged. "He's not on duty
– he's on the afternoon shift. We got a new intern for the morning
shift – he's shaking in his office. I swear he goes whiter every
time Mrs Barker bellows. Not like you – everyone knows you're the
ice queen. Cool, calm and collected – no matter what."
The last
thing I needed was a terrified intern for this
birth
. Alone, then
. "Can you send the anaesthetist to me, after he's done with
Mrs Barker? Miranda Nelson was in a car accident, and it looks like
she's gone into premature labour."
Miranda let out another hoarse
scream.
"And get someone to call her
husband. He's up in Perth this week, I believe – tell him we'll
have her flown up to King Edward Memorial Hospital as soon as we
can. Call the Flying Doctors for transport, too." I looked at
Miranda, straining through another contraction.
Rob hurried out, leaving us
alone.
"Just you and me, Miranda," I
said softly.
"No," Miranda gasped out.
"She's coming. She's coming…urngh!"
Not wanting to believe her, I
examined her as quickly as I could. She was almost fully dilated.
There would be two patients for transport, not one.
And it's up to me to make sure
they survive.
"So she is," I replied, keeping
my voice calm. "It's time to push, Miranda. I hope you have a name
picked out."
I watched with worried eyes as
the paramedic strapped Miranda into a stretcher and loaded her into
the small aircraft, followed by her newborn child.
"Thank you," Miranda said
hoarsely, a smile stretching her face as her eyes shimmered with
tears. "I don't know what would have happened without all your
help."
My smile was more strained than
hers. She didn't know what would have happened, but I did. The
child would be in the hospital morgue and Miranda might have
followed soon after. "My pleasure. The hospital staff in Perth will
take care of you both. Your husband will be there when the plane
lands."
The Royal Flying Doctor Service
plane's doors slammed shut and the pilot crunched across the gravel
on his way to the cockpit.
I heard a shout from across the
field.
"Wait!"
The emergency gate ground open,
motor whirring and metal grating on metal.
Both the pilot and I turned to
see a lanky man running through the grinding gate and across the
gravel beside the tarmac. His long strides cleared the distance
faster than I could have. He waved a paper file that looked like
medical records.
The man was breathless when he
reached us, but he still managed to make his words intelligible.
"The patient's file. Has to go with her on the plane." He held out
the white cardboard folder with a rainbow of numbered stickers up
the side.
The pilot took the folder with
a nod and climbed into the plane. I backed away to a safe distance
and the breathless man did the same. "Glad I got here in time," he
gasped. He was almost doubled over, his hands near his knees, as he
tried to catch his breath. He appeared to be speaking to the gravel
beneath his large feet.
I looked around, but I saw no
one else within earshot, so the man must have been speaking to
me.
"What did you do to make the
hospital staff send you racing out here with medical records? Did
you steal one of the doctors' parking spots?" I asked, hoping to
head off any further conversation.
Privately, I thought it more
likely that he was a member of the cleaning staff that I hadn't met
yet, who'd been sent here by the cowering intern, too shaken to
venture out of his office to drive.
Instead of being offended, the
man laughed. He stood up and I realised for the first time that the
length of his limbs matched his height – he was taller than me. "I
may be the most junior doctor at the hospital, but I still get my
own parking spot. I'm Aidan Lannon, the intern. I wrote up the
patient's notes so slowly that I didn't realise she'd left without
them, so it was my responsibility to take them to the airport."
So this is
the new intern – and he's not the useless, quivering wreck Rob said
he was. He's a man who takes his responsibilities seriously and
doesn't send a flunky to make up for his mistakes.
I found I almost liked him. Begrudgingly, I
began, "I'm Belinda," but that's as far as I got.
"I know who you are. You're the
midwife who saved that woman's life, and her baby. If it weren't
for you, they both would've died." His eyes shone with something
like admiration.
I sighed. "I'm the student
midwife, who happened to drive past where she'd crashed her car
into a kangaroo and took her to hospital with me at the start of my
shift. When she went into premature labour, she became my patient,
as Jill, the qualified midwife, was dealing with a difficult
delivery for a woman who refused anaesthesia. I told Jill I'd let
her know if I ran into trouble, but it wasn't necessary, and her
patient needed her more."