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After more than twenty-five years, Silhouette Romance® is leaving the shelves, and next month will be the last month of publication. However, we are thrilled to announce that the authors you know and love—whose stories have made you laugh and cry—have a new home at Harlequin Romance®!

Each month Harlequin Romance will be on the shelves with six new titles. You’ll find your favorite authors from Silhouette Romance, and some exciting new names, too! Most importantly, Harlequin Romance will be offering the kinds of stories you love—and more! From royalty to ranchers, bumps to babies, big cities to exotic desert kingdoms, these are emotional and uplifting stories from the heart, for the heart!

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Senior Editor

MARION LENNOX

Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on a southeast Australia dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a very special doctor, Marion writes for Harlequin Medical Romance® as well as Harlequin Romance®, where she used to write as Trisha David for a while. In her nonwriting life, Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chickens and goldfish. She travels, and she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). After an early detected bout with breast cancer she’s also reprioritized her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!

Marion’s next Harlequin Romance® novel takes you to the Outback of Australia, where a royal carriage awaits to whisk you to a faraway kingdom.

Don’t miss this regal romance:

The Prince’s Outback Bride

Available in May from Harlequin Romance®.

Rescue at Cradle Lake
Marion Lennox

Fergus took her hands in his, drawing them down, gripping them with a warmth and strength that said he knew what she was going through. That he understood.

Which was an illusion. No one knew what she was going through. She didn’t understand it herself. She felt herself being drawn. She had no strength to fight him. She’d been fighting to be solitary for so long—to stay aloof.

She didn’t need this man to hug her. She didn’t need anyone. But she didn’t fight him. For this moment she needed him too much. Human contact. That was all it was, she thought fiercely. Warmth and strength and reassurance. It was an illusion, she knew, but for now….

For now she let herself be held. She let her body melt against his, letting him take a weight that had suddenly seemed unbearable. He was strong and firm and warm. His lips were touching her hair.

She should pull away, but she couldn’t. For now she needed this too much.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PROLOGUE

HE MADE the decision at two in the morning. There’d been no serious car crashes in the last few hours. No appendices or aneurisms, no ruptures, assaults or dramas. Night shift at City Central was deathly quiet.

He wanted it to be more so. No less than four nurses and one intern had used the lull to ask him how he was coping. ‘No, really, Dr Reynard, if you’d like to talk about it…’

He didn’t. He glowered at everyone who came close, he settled himself in the staff lounge, and he concentrated on his reading. Specifically, he concentrated on reading the ‘Appointments Vacant’ in this month’s medical journal.

‘Where’s Dimboola?’

‘My aunty lives in Dimboola,’ one of the theatre nurses ventured. ‘It’s in North West Victoria. Aunty Liz says it’s a great little town.’

‘Right,’ he said, and struck a line through Dimboola. There was silence while he checked a few more ads. Then: ‘Where’s Mission Beach?’

‘North Queensland,’ the same nurse told him. ‘You remember Joe and Jodie?’

‘Joe and Jodie?’

‘Joe was the paediatric intern here last year. Big, blond guy almost as hunky as you. Six feet tall and yummy—every sensible woman’s dream.’ She grinned, but in a way that said her compliment wasn’t idle banter but was designed to cheer him up. As was everything anyone said to him at the moment. Let’s look after Fergus…

‘Joe married Jodie Walters from ICU,’ she continued, as she failed to elicit a smile. ‘They took a job at Port Douglas last year and that’s close to Mission Beach.’

OK. Fergus sorted the dross and came up with the information he needed. There were people he knew close to Mission Beach.

Another line.

He knew the next place in the list of advertisements, and the next, and the next. More advertisements were consigned to oblivion. Then: ‘Where’s Cradle Lake?’

Silence.

This was hopeful. He gazed around, checking each of his colleagues for any sign of recognition. ‘Does anyone know where Cradle Lake is?’

‘Never heard of it,’ Graham, his anaesthetist, told him. ‘Cradle Mountain’s in Tasmania. Is it near there?’

‘Apparently not. It has a New South Wales postcode’

‘Never heard of it, then.’

‘No one knows it?’ Fergus demanded, and received four shakes of four heads in reply.

‘Great,’ he said, and the line became a circle. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

Ginny got the phone call at two in the morning. She’d known it had been coming, but it didn’t make it any less appalling.

Richard was ringing from his hospital bed. He hadn’t wanted her with him when he was told, and he’d waited until now to call.

Who could blame him? Where could anyone find the courage to face news like this, much less pass it on?

‘They can’t do another transplant,’ he said, in a voice devoid of all emotion. ‘The specialists say there’s no hope it’ll work.’

‘I guessed it must be that,’ she whispered. ‘When you didn’t call earlier, I thought it must be bad news. Oh, Richard.’ She sat up in bed, trying not to cry. ‘I’ll come.’

‘No. Not now.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Staring at the ceiling. Wondering how I’m going to face what’s coming. And whether I have the right to ask…’

‘To ask what?’

‘Ginny, I want to go home. Back to Cradle Lake.’

She drew in her breath at that. She hadn’t been near Cradle Lake for years.

Richard had referred to Cradle Lake as home. Home was where the heart was, she thought dumbly. Home surely wasn’t at Cradle Lake.

‘Richard, there are no medical facilities at Cradle Lake. I don’t think there’s even a doctor there any more.’

‘The time for the clever stuff is over,’ he said, so roughly that he made himself gasp for breath. It took him a moment or two to recover, gaining strength for the next thought. ‘I just need…I just need to know it’ll be OK. Surely having a doctor for a sister has to count for something. You can do what’s necessary.’

‘I don’t know that I can.’

‘You can keep me pain-free?’

There was only one answer to that. The medical part was the least of what she was facing, and it wasn’t her medical skills she was doubting. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Richard, the house…’ Her mind was spinning at tangents, trying to find a way out of what was inescapable. ‘It’s been neglected for years.’

‘You can get it fit for us. If I stay in hospital for a few more days, you’ll have time to organise it. We don’t need luxury. I’m prepared to stay here until the weekend.’

Gee, thanks, she thought, her mind churning through grief, through shock and confusion, surfacing suddenly with anger. He’d wait while she quit the job she loved. While she packed up her apartment. While she salvaged the wreck of a house she hated, and while she moved her life back to a place she loathed.

But at least she had a life. She closed her eyes, willing anger to retreat. She knew from experience that anger made pain recede. That was why she was feeling it now, but in the long term anger didn’t help anything. Pain would always surface.

She couldn’t let her anger show. Nor her pain.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she managed, and was thankful she was on the end of the phone and not by her brother’s bedside. She didn’t want him to see her like this. She was trembling all over, shaking as if she’d been placed on ice.

‘I’m sure,’ he said, more strongly. ‘I’m going to sit on our back veranda and…’

His voice broke off. He didn’t have to finish. They both knew the word that would finish the sentence. This was a family song, sung over and over.

‘Will you do this for me, Ginny?’ he asked in a voice that had changed, and once again there was only one reply.

‘Of course I will,’ she managed. ‘You know I will.’

She always had, she thought, but she didn’t say it. There was no point in saying what they both knew.

The cost of life was losing.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE was lying where he wanted to drive.

Dr Fergus Reynard was lost. He’d been given a map of sealed roads, but sealed roads accounted for about one per cent of the tracks around here. Take the second track left over the ridge, the district nurse had told him, and he’d stared at wheel marks and tried to decide which was a track and which was just the place where some obscure vehicle had taken a jaunt through the mud after the last rain.

Somewhere around here, someone called Oscar Bentley, was lying on his kitchen floor with a suspected broken hip. Oscar needed a doctor. Him. The hospital Land Cruiser had lost traction on the last turn. He’d spun and when he’d corrected there had been a woman lying across the road.

The woman wasn’t moving. She was face down over some sort of cattle grid. He could see tight jeans—so tight he knew it was definitely a woman. He could see ancient boots. She was wearing an even more ancient windcheater, and her caramel-blonde, shoulder-length curls were sprawled out around her.

Why was she lying on the road? He was out of the truck, reaching her in half a dozen strides, expecting the worst. Had she collapsed? Had she been hit before he’d arrived? He knelt, his medical training switching into overdrive.

‘At last,’ she muttered, as he touched her shoulder. ‘Whoever you are, can you grab its other ear?’

Medical training took a step back. ‘Um… Pardon?’

‘Its ear,’ she said. Her voice was muffled but she still managed to sound exasperated. ‘My arm’s not long enough to get a decent hold. I can reach one ear but not the other. I’ve been lying here for half an hour waiting for the football to finish, and if you think I’m letting go now you’ve another think coming.’

He needed to take in the whole situation. Woman lying face down over a cattle grid. Arm down through the grid.

He stared down through the bars.

She was holding what looked like a newborn lamb by the tip of one ear. The ear was almost two feet down, underneath the row of steel rails.

The pit was designed to stop livestock passing from one property to another. A full-grown sheep couldn’t cross this grid. A newborn lamb couldn’t cross the grid either, but this one had obviously tried. It was so small it had simply slipped through to the pit below.

OK. Trapped lamb. Girl lying on road. Fergus’s training was asserting itself. In an emergency he’d been taught to take in the whole situation before doing anything.

Make sure there’s no surrounding danger before moving into help mode.

On top of the ridge stood a ewe, bleating helplessly. She was staring down at them as if they were enemies—as if she’d like to ram them.

Did sheep ram anyone?

The girl obviously wasn’t worried about ramming sheep, so maybe he shouldn’t either. But maybe continuing to lie in the middle of the road wasn’t such a great idea.

‘I could have hit you,’ he said. Then, as she didn’t answer, anxiety gave way to anger. ‘I could have run you over. Are you out of your mind?’

‘No one drives fast on this track unless they’re lunatics,’ she muttered, still clutching the lamb’s ear. ‘Sane drivers always slow down at cattle grids.’

That pretty much put him in his place.

‘Do you intend to stand there whinging about where I should or shouldn’t lie, or are you going to help me?’ the woman demanded, and he decided maybe he should do something.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Squeeze your arm through the bars and catch the other ear.’

‘Right.’ Maybe that was easier said than done. The woman was finely built, which was why she’d been able to reach the lamb. It’d be a harder call for someone heavier. Someone with a thicker arm. Like him. ‘Then what?’ he said cautiously.

‘I can’t get my other arm into position. If I release this ear, he’ll bolt to the other side of the pit and it’ll take me ages to catch him again. If you can grab his other ear and pull him up for a moment, I reckon I can reach further down and get him by the scruff of the neck.’

‘And pull him out?’

She sighed. ‘That’s the idea, Einstein.’

‘There’s no need—’

‘To be rude. No,’ she agreed. ‘Neither is there any need for me to rescue this stupid lamb. It’s not even my lamb. But I just walked out to catch some bucolic air and I heard him bleating. It’s taken ages to catch him and he’ll die if I leave him. I’ve been in the one spot for half an hour waiting for the footy to finish so someone would come along this damned road—and the iron’s digging into my face—so can we cut it out with the niceties and grab the stupid ear?’

‘Right,’ he said, and rolled up his sleeves.

It was even harder than he’d thought. He had muscles, built from years of gym work at his well-equipped city hospital, and those muscles didn’t help now. Up to his elbow was easy but then he had to shove hard and it hurt, and even then he could only just touch.

‘Jump!’ the woman yelled, and he and the lamb both jumped—which gave him access to an extra inch of ear. He got a hold.

They were now lying sprawled over the cattle grid with a lamb’s ear each. Neat, Fergus thought, and turned to grin at her.

She wasn’t grinning. She was pressed hard against him, her body warm against his, and she was concentrating solely on sheep.

‘Let go and you’re dead meat,’ she muttered. ‘On the count of three, we pull our ears up.’

‘We’ll break its neck.’

‘I only want to pull him up a couple of inches or so, in a nice smooth pull—no jerking—and then I’ll grab his neck. If I try and pull by one ear, I’ll break his neck. Ready, set… Now!’

What happened to the one, two, three? But he was ready and he’d gone beyond arguing. He tugged the lamb upward, she grabbed—and somehow she had a handful of wool at the back of the little creature’s neck.

Then she had more orders.

‘Shove your hand under its belly,’ she gasped, as she tugged the creature higher, and he did and thirty seconds later they had a shivery, skinny, still damply newborn lamb rising out of the pit into the late afternoon sun.

‘Oh, hooray,’ the woman whispered. She struggled to her feet, cradling the lamb against her, and for the first time Fergus managed to get a proper look at her.

She was in her late twenties, he thought, deciding she wasn’t a whole lot younger than his thirty-four years. She was five feet four or five, dressed in ancient jeans and an even more ancient windcheater. Her tousled curls were blowing everywhere. Freckles were smattered over a pert and pretty nose. She was liberally mud-spattered, but somehow the mud didn’t matter. She was patting the lamb, but her clear brown eyes were assessing him with a candour that made him feel disconcerted.

She was some package.

‘You’re not a local,’ she said, and he realised she’d been doing the same assessment as him.

‘I’m the local doctor.’

She’d been trying to stop the lamb from struggling as she ran her hands expertly over its body. She was doing an assessment for damage, he thought, but now her hand stopped in mid-stroke.

‘The local doctor’s dead.’

‘Old Doc Beaverstock died five years ago,’ he agreed. ‘The people who run the hospital seem to think they need a replacement. That’s me. Speaking of which, can you tell me—?’

‘You’re working here?’

‘As of yesterday, yes.’

Her eyes closed and when they opened again he saw a wash of pain. And something more. Relief?

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said. Then she set the lamb onto its feet and let it go.

The place where they were standing was deserted. To the west lay lush paddocks any self-respecting sheep would think were sheep paradise. To the west was the ewe. To the east was the cattle pit and dense bushland leading down to a lake formed by an ancient volcano.

West or east?

Some actions were no-brainers. The lamb turned and ducked through the woman’s legs, straight for the cattle pit.

‘Stop,’ she screamed, and not for nothing had Fergus played rugby for his university. He took a flying tackle and caught the creature by a back hoof as it hit the first rail.

Face down in the mud he lay, holding onto the leg for dear life.

‘Oh, well done.’ She was laughing, kneeling in the mud beside him, gathering the lamb back into her arms again, and he thought suddenly, She smells nice. Which was ridiculous. In truth, she smelt of lamb and mud with the odd spot of manure thrown in. How could she smell nice?

‘Don’t let him go again,’ he said weakly, wiping mud from his face as he shoved himself into a sitting position. He’d hit the ground hard and he was struggling to get his breath.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She rose and grinned down at him, and she didn’t look sorry at all.

She had a great grin.

‘Think nothing of it,’ he managed. ‘Take the damned thing away.’

‘I haven’t got a car.’ Holding the lamb in one arm, she offered a hand to help haul him to his feet. He took it and discovered she was surprisingly strong. She tugged, and he rose, and suddenly she was just…close. Nice, he thought inconsequentially. Really nice. ‘I’m about half a mile from where I live,’ she was saying, but suddenly he was having trouble hearing.

‘So?’ He was disconcerted. The feel of her hand… Yep, he was definitely disconcerted. She released him and he was aware of a pang of loss.

She didn’t seem to notice. She was looking up toward the ewe, brushing mud from her face and leaving more mud in its place. ‘It was dumb to let him go,’ she muttered. ‘He and his mum need to go in the house paddock until we’re sure he’s recovered.’

‘How do you get them to a house paddock?’ Fergus asked, and then thought maybe that was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was tantamount to offering help.

And here it came. The request.

She bit her lip. ‘I don’t think I can herd a sheep and a lamb up to the house,’ she admitted. ‘Ewes aren’t like cows. They might or might not follow, even if I have the lamb.’ She looked at his Land Cruiser and he saw exactly what she was thinking. ‘Can you give me a lift to the Bentley place? That’s where these two belong.’

‘Oscar Bentley’s?’ he demanded, startled.

‘Yes.’ She handed him the lamb and he was so astounded that he took it. ‘Just stand there and don’t move,’ she told him. Then: ‘No,’ she corrected herself. ‘Joggle up and down a bit, so the ewe’s looking at you and not me.’

‘I need to go.’ He was remembering Oscar Bentley. Yes, the lamb’s needs were urgent, but a broken hip was more so.

‘Not until we have the ewe.’ She moved swiftly away, twenty, thirty yards up the slope, moving with an ease that was almost catlike. Then she disappeared behind a tree and he realised what she was doing.

He was being used as a distraction.

OK, he could do that. Obediently he held the lamb toward the ewe. The ewe stared wildly down at her lamb and took a tentative step forward.

The woman launched herself out from behind her tree in a rugby tackle that put Fergus’s efforts to shame. The ewe was big, but suddenly she was propped up on her rear legs, which prevented her from struggling, and the woman had her solidly and strongly in position.

It had been a really impressive manoeuvre. To say Fergus was impressed was an understatement.

‘Put the lamb in your truck and back it up to me,’ she told him, gasping with effort, and he blinked.

‘Um…’

‘I can’t stand here for ever.’ If she’d had a foot free, she would have stamped it. ‘Move.’

He moved.

He was about to put a sheep in the back of the hospital truck.

Fine. As of two days ago he was a country doctor. This was the sort of thing country doctors did. Wasn’t it?

It seemed it was. This country doctor had no choice.

He hauled open the back of the truck, shoved the medical equipment as far forward as it’d go and tossed a canvas over the lot. Miriam, his practice nurse, had set the truck up for emergencies and she had three canvases folded and ready at the side. For coping with sheep?

Maybe Miriam knew more about country practice than he did.

Anyone would know more about country practice than he did.

He put the lamb in the back and started closing the door, but as he did so the little creature wobbled. He hesitated.

He sighed and lifted the lamb out again. He climbed in behind the wheel and placed the lamb on his knee.

‘Don’t even think about doing anything wet,’ he told it. ‘House-training starts now.’

The woman was walking the sheep down the slope toward the track. He backed up as close as he could.

‘Mess my seat and you’re chops,’ he told the lamb in a further refinement of house-training. He closed the door firmly on one captive and went to collect another.

Getting the ewe into the truck was no easy task. The ewe took solid exception to being manhandled, but the woman seemed to have done this many times before. She pushed, they both heaved, and the creature was in. The door slammed, and Fergus headed for the driver’s door in relief.

The woman was already clambering into the passenger seat, lifting the lamb over onto her knee. Wherever they were going, it seemed she was going, too.

‘I can drop them at Bentley’s,’ he told her. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

‘You’re going to Bentley’s?’

‘That’s the plan.’ He hesitated. ‘But I’m a bit lost.’

‘Go back the way you came,’ she said, snapping her seat belt closed under the lamb. ‘I can walk home from there. It’s close. Take the second turn to the left after the ridge.’

‘That’s the second time I’ve been given that direction,’ he told her. ‘Only I’m facing the opposite way.’

‘You came from the O’Donell track to get to Oscar’s?’

‘I’m not a local,’ he said, exasperated.

‘You’re the local doctor.’

I’m here as a locum. I’ve been here since Thursday and I’ll be here for twelve weeks.’

She stared and he thought he could see calculations happening behind her eyes.

‘That might be long enough,’ she whispered, and he thought she was talking to the lamb. She was hugging it close—two muddy waifs.

He wasn’t exactly pristine himself.

Whatever she was thinking, though, she didn’t expand on it. They drove for a couple of minutes in silence and he realised he didn’t even know her name

I’m Dr Fergus Reynard,’ he told her, into what had suddenly become a tense stillness.

‘I’m Ginny Viental.’

‘Ginny?’

‘Short for Guinevere, but I’m not exactly Guinevere material.’

Hadn’t Guinevere been some gorgeous queen? If that was the case…

But maybe she was right, Fergus decided. Maybe Queen Guinevere wouldn’t be splodged with lamb mud.

But there was definitely gorgeous underneath the mud.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Ginny,’ he told her, figuring he should concentrate on keeping the truck on the slippery track rather than letting his attention stray to this very different woman beside him. It was a hard task. ‘Do you live around here?’

‘I used to live here,’ she told him. ‘I’ve just come back…for a while.’

‘Do your parents live here?’

‘They lived here when I was a kid,’ she said discouragingly. ‘I did, too, until I was seventeen.’

She wasn’t seventeen now, he thought, trying again to figure her age. She looked young but there were lines around her eyes that made him think she’d not had things easy. But something in her face precluded him from asking questions.

‘Oscar Bentley,’ he said cautiously, searching for neutral ground. ‘You’re sure it’s his lamb?’

‘I’m sure. The cattle grid’s on our property but he has agistment rights. Oscar was an ordinary farmer fifteen years back. Now he seems to have lost the plot completely.’

‘He’s hardly made a decent access track,’ Fergus muttered, hauling the truck away from an erosion rut a foot deep.

‘He likes making it hard for visitors,’ Ginny told him. ‘Why has he called you out? Unless that’s breaking patient confidentiality.’

‘I’m not sure there can be much patient confidentiality about a broken hip.’

‘A broken hip?’

‘That’s what he thinks is wrong.’

She snorted. ‘Yeah, right. Broken hip? I’ll bet he’s fallen down drunk and he wants someone to put him to bed.’

‘You know him well, then?’

‘I told you, I lived here. I haven’t been near Oscar for years but he won’t have changed.’

‘If you don’t live here now, where do you live?’

‘Will you quit it with the inquisition?’ she said, her voice muffled by the lamb again. ‘I hate the smell of wet wool.’

‘So don’t stick your nose into wet sheep.’

‘There’s a medical prescription for you,’ she said and she grinned. Which somehow…changed things again.

Wow, he thought. That was some smile. When the lines of strain eased from around her eyes she looked…beautiful?

Definitely beautiful.

‘Why are you here?’ she demanded, hauling her nose off the lamb as if the question had only just occurred to her and it was important.

‘I told you. I’m here as a locum.’

‘We’ve never been able to get a locum before.’

‘I can’t imagine why not,’ he said with asperity, releasing the brakes then braking again to try and get some traction on the awful track. ‘This is real resort country. Not!’

‘You’re seeing it at its worst. We had a doozy of a storm last week and the flooding’s only just gone down.’

‘It’s not bad,’ he conceded, staring out at the rolling hills and bushland and the deep, clear waters of the lake below. Sure, it was five hours’ drive to the nearest city, to the nearest specialist back-up, but that was what he’d come for. Isolation. And the rugged volcanic country had a beauty all its own. ‘Lots of…sheep,’ he said cautiously.

‘Lots of sheep,’ she agreed, looking doubtfully out the window as if she was trying to see the good side, too.

‘If you think sheep are pretty.’

She twisted to look over her shoulder at the morose-looking ewe in the back of the truck. As if on cue, the creature widened her back legs and let go a stream of urine.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Sheep. My favourite animals.’

He was going to have to clean out the back of his truck. Already the pungent ammoniac smell was all around them. Despite that, his lips twitched.

‘A farmer, born and bred.’

‘I’m no farmer,’ she said.

‘Which might explain why you were lying on the road in the middle of nowhere, holding a lamb by one ear, when the entire crowd from the Cradle Lake football game could have come by at any minute and squashed you.’

There was that grin again. ‘The entire crowd from this side of the lake being exactly eight locals, led by Doreen Kettle who takes her elderly mother and her five kids to the football every week and who drives ten times slower than you. The last of the eight will be the coach who drives home about ten tonight. Cradle Lake will have lost—we always lose—and our coach will have drowned his sorrows in the pub. There’ll be no way he’ll be on the roads until after the Cradle Lake constabulary go to bed. Which is after Football Replay on telly, which finishes at nine-thirty, leaving the rest of Saturday night for Cradle Lake to make whoopee.’

‘How long did you say you’ve been away?’ he asked cautiously, and she chuckled. It was a very nice chuckle, he decided. Light and soft and gurgling. Really infectious.

‘Ten years. But nothing, nothing, nothing changes in Cradle Lake. Even Doreen Kettle’s kids. When I left she was squashing them into the back of the car to take them to the footy. They’re still squashing, only the squashing’s got tricker. I think the youngest is now six feet three.’ She brightened. ‘But, then, you’ve changed. Cradle Lake has a doctor. Why are you here?’

He sighed. The question was getting repetitive. ‘I told you—as a locum.’

‘No one’s ever been able to get a locum for Cradle Lake before. The last doctor was only here because his car broke down here just after the war. He was on his way to visit a war buddy and he couldn’t get anyone to repair it. He didn’t have the gumption to figure any other way of moving on.’

Fergus winced. He’d only been in the district for a couple of days but already the stories of the old doctor’s incompetence were legion.

‘Your truck’s still operating,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘So why did you stop?’

‘This is the hospital truck. And I ran my finger down the ads in the medical journal and chose the first place I’d never heard of.’

She stared. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted a break from the city.’

She eyed him with caution. ‘You realise you won’t exactly get a holiday here. This farming land’s marginal. You have a feeder district of very poor families who’ll see your presence as a godsend. You’ll be run off your feet with medical needs that have needed attention for years.’

‘I want to be busy.’

She considered him some more and he wondered what she was seeing. His reasons for coming? He hoped not. He tried to keep his face expressionless.

‘So, by break,’ she said cautiously, ‘you don’t mean a break from medicine.’

‘No.’

She eyed him for a bit longer, but somewhat to his surprise she didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe she didn’t want him asking questions back, he thought, and he glanced at her again and knew he was right. There was something about the set of her face that said her laughter was only surface deep. There were problems. Real and dreadful problems.

As a good physician he should probe.

No. He wasn’t a good physician. He was a surgeon and he was here as a locum, to focus on superficial problems and refer anything worse to the city.

He needed to think about a fractured hip.

They were bumping over yet another cattle grid. Before them was a ramshackle farmhouse, surrounded by what looked like a graveyard for ancient cars. About six ill-assorted, half-starved dogs were on the veranda, and they came tearing down the ramp baying like the hounds from hell as the vehicle pulled to a stop.

‘I’m a city boy,’ Fergus said nervously, staring out at the snarling mutts, and Ginny grinned, pushed open the door and placed the lamb carefully on her seat behind her. She closed the truck door as the hounds reached her, seemingly ready to tear her to pieces.

‘Sit,’ she roared, in a voice that could have been heard in the next state. They all backed off as if she’d tossed a bucket of cold water over them. Three of the mongrels even sat, and a couple of them wagged their disreputable tails.

She swiped her hands together in a gesture of a job well done and then turned and peeped a smile at him.

‘You can get out now,’ she told him. ‘The dragons have been slain. And we’re quits. You rescued me and I’ve rescued you right back.’

‘Thanks,’ he told her, stepping gingerly out—but all the viciousness of the dogs had been blasted out of them.

But the dogs were the least of his problems. ‘Doc?’ It was a man’s voice, coming from the house, and it was a far cry from the plaintive tone that had brought him here in the first place. ‘Is that the bloody doctor?’ the voice yelled. ‘About bloody time. A man could die…’ The voice broke off in a paroxysm of coughing, as if the yell had been a pent-up surge of fury that had left the caller exhausted.

‘Let’s see the patient,’ Ginny said, heading up the ramp before him.

Who was the doctor here? Feeling more at sea than he’d ever felt in his entire medical training, Fergus was left to follow.

Oscar Bentley was a seriously big man. Huge. He’d inched from overweight to obese many years ago, Fergus thought as a fast visual assessment had him realising the man was in serious trouble.

Maybe that trouble didn’t stem from a broken hip, but he was in trouble nevertheless. He lay like a beached whale, sprawled across the kitchen floor. A half-empty carton of beer lay within reach so he hadn’t been in danger of dying from thirst, but he certainly couldn’t get up. His breathing was rasping, each breath sucked in as if it took a conscious effort to haul in enough air. The indignant roar he’d made as they’d arrived must have been a huge effort.

Ginny reached his patient before him. ‘Hey, Oscar, Doc Reynard tells me you’ve broken your hip.’ She was bending over the huge man, lifting his wrist. ‘What a mess.’

The elderly man’s eyes narrowed. He looked like he’d still like to yell but the effort seemed beyond him. His breathing was dangerously laboured, yet anger seemed tantamount.

‘You’re one of the Viental kids,’ he snarled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m Ginny,’ she agreed cordially, and to Fergus’s astonishment she was looking at her watch as her fingers rested on the man’s wrist. Did she have medical training?

‘A Viental,’ the farmer gasped, and he groaned as he shifted his vast bulk to look at her more closely. ‘What the hell are you doing on my property? Why aren’t you dead?’

‘I’m helping Doc Reynard. Plus I pulled one of your lambs out of the cattle grid dividing your land from ours.’ Her face hardened a little. ‘I’ve been up on the ridge, looking over the stock you’ve been running on our land. Your ewes have obviously been lambing for weeks and at least six ewes have died during lambing. They’ve been left where they died. No one’s been near them.’

‘Mind your own business,’ he gasped. ‘I didn’t call Doc Reynard for a lecture—and I didn’t call you. I don’t want a Viental anywhere near my property.’

‘You called Doc Reynard to get you on your feet again,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no way he can do that on his own—without a crane, that is.’

‘Let’s check the hip,’ Fergus said uneasily, and she flashed a look of anger back at him.

‘There’s no difference in the length of Oscar’s legs. He has breathing difficulties but that’s because he won’t do anything about his asthma. He’ll have got himself into this state because he couldn’t be bothered fending for himself so he feels like a few days in the hospital. He does it deliberately and he’s been doing it for twenty years.’ She glanced around the kitchen and winced. ‘Though by the look of it, it’s gone beyond the need for a few days in hospital now. Maybe we need to talk about a nursing home.’

She had a point. The place was disgusting. But still…

‘The hip,’ Fergus reiterated, trying again to regain control.

‘Right. The hip.’ She sat back and pressed her fingers lightly on Oscar’s hips. ‘How about that?’ she said softly, while both men stared at her, astounded. ‘No pain?’

‘Aagh!’ Oscar roared, but the roar was a fraction too late.

Enough. He was the doctor and this was his patient. ‘Do you mind moving back?’ he demanded, lifting Ginny’s hands clear. ‘I need to do an examination.’

‘There’s no need. He’ll have stopped taking his asthma medication. Do you want me to get oxygen from your truck?’

‘I was called to a broken hip,’ Fergus said testily. He didn’t have a clue what was happening here—what the dynamics were. Her pressure on the hips without result had been diagnosis enough, but he wasn’t taking chances on a patient—and a situation—that he didn’t know. ‘Let me examine him.’

Almost surprisingly she agreed. ‘I’ll get the oxygen and then I’ll wait outside. I’ll take care of the sheep. Someone’s got to take care of the sheep. Then I’ll come with you to the hospital.’

He frowned. He wasn’t too sure why she intended coming to the hospital. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her. There was something about this woman’s presence that was sending danger signals, thick and fast. ‘You were going to walk home.’

‘He’ll have to go to hospital,’ she said evenly. ‘He’s drunk, his breathing’s unstable, and you won’t be able to prove he hasn’t got a broken hip without X-rays. How are you planning to lift Oscar yourself?’

‘I’ll call in the paramedics,’ he snapped.

‘Excuse me, but this is the last home and away football match for Cradle Lake this season,’ Ginny snapped back. ‘If by paramedic you mean Ern and Bill, who take it in turns to drive the local ambulance, then you’ll find they refuse absolutely to come until the match—and the post-match celebration—is over. Especially if it’s to come to Oscar.’

Which was why he had come here in the first place, he thought dourly. The call had come in and there’d been no one willing to take it.

‘That leaves you stuck,’ she continued. ‘For a couple of hours at least. Unless you accept help.’

‘Fine,’ he conceded, trying not to sound confused. ‘I’ll accept your help. Can you wait outside?’

‘Very magnanimous,’ she said, and she grinned.

His lips twitched despite his confusion. It was a great grin.

Get on with the job. Ignore gorgeous grins.

‘Just go,’ he told her, and she clicked her disreputable boots together and saluted.

‘Yes, sir.’

CHAPTER TWO

SHE went. Fergus did a perfunctory examination and then a more thorough one.

Oscar had no broken hip, but Ginny was right—the man was dead drunk. His blood pressure was up to one ninety on a hundred and ten and his breathing was fast and noisy, even once he was on oxygen. Fergus checked his saturation levels and accepted the inevitable.

‘I gotta go to hospital, don’t I, Doc?’ Oscar demanded, with what was evident satisfaction. His breathing was becoming more shallow now and Fergus wondered whether he’d drunk a lot fast just as they’d arrived—just to make sure. ‘I told you I got a broken hip.’

‘You don’t appear to have broken anything,’ Fergus told him. ‘But, yes, you need to come to hospital.’ He gazed around the kitchen and grimaced. ‘Maybe we need to think about some sort of permanent care,’ he suggested. ‘Unless there’s anyone who can stay with you.’

‘That’s not me,’ Ginny said through the screen door. ‘Or anyone in this district. This isn’t exactly Mr Popular here. What’s the prognosis?’

‘Mr Bentley needs help with his breathing,’ Fergus said, trying not to sound like he was talking through gritted teeth. He knew by now that the diagnosis she’d made had been spot on. ‘He’s not safe to leave alone. The ambulance will have to come out to collect him.’

‘I told you—they won’t come for at least a couple of hours.’

‘Will you stay with Mr Bentley until they come?’ he asked, without much hope, and she shook her head.

‘Nope. I’m needed elsewhere and I can’t stand Mr Bentley.’

‘I can’t stand you either, miss,’ the farmer snapped. ‘You and your whore of a mother. You and your family deserved everything you got.’

Ginny had opened the screen door and stepped inside, but Oscar’s words stopped her. She flinched, recoiling as if she had been struck. Her colour faded and she leaned back against the kitchen bench as if she suddenly needed support.

‘No family ever deserved what happened to us,’ she whispered, and she turned to Fergus as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the man on the floor. She swallowed, evidently trying hard to move on from his vicious words. ‘Obese patients like him are the pits,’ she said, ‘and if you leave him alone he’ll stay alive just long enough to sue. More’s the pity. So you need to take him to hospital. If neither of us want to sit here for a couple of hours, that means we use the back of your truck. I got the ewe out.’

‘You got the ewe out,’ he said blankly, and she managed a weak smile.

‘That would be the sheep, city boy. The one that was…well, making herself at home in the back of your Land Cruiser. I put the ewe and her baby in the home paddock.’ She glared down at Oscar with disdain. ‘I put hay in there, too, and I filled the trough,’ she said. ‘Much to the relief of the rest of the stock. You’re so off our property. I’d rather let the place go to ruin than let you agist on our place again. The dogs are starving. The sheep are fly-blown and miserable, and there’s a horse locked up…’ She broke off and Fergus saw real distress on her face. ‘I’ll get the RSPCA out here straight away,’ she whispered, ‘and I hope you end up in jail. You deserve to be there. Not hospital.’

Whew. ‘Ginny, can we keep to the matter at hand?’ Fergus said, trying to keep control in a situation that was spiralling. ‘We can’t take Mr Bentley in the truck.’

‘Sure we can,’ Ginny said, making an obvious effort to shove distress aside. ‘I’ve washed it out—sort of. A nice amniotic smell never hurt anyone. Maybe we could be super-nice and find a mattress. The back of the Land Cruiser is long enough to make an ambulance.’

‘But lifting—’

‘A stretcher won’t do it,’ she agreed. ‘We’d break both our backs. Hang on for a bit and I’ll find a door and some fence posts. And a mattress. Be right back.’

And she was gone, slipping through to the living room and the bedrooms beyond.

‘You gonna let her just walk though my house?’ Oscar roared—or tried to roar, but the drink and the asthma were taking their toll and he was losing his bluster. His roar was cut off in mid-tirade and the last words were said as a gasp.

‘I’m not sure what else to do,’ Fergus admitted. ‘She’s in control and we’re not. So you concentrate on your breathing and we’ll let Ginny sort us both out.’

His opinions were consolidated five minutes later while he watched, as Ginny attacked the kitchen door. She’d found a mattress and had it lying on the floor beside Oscar. She’d also found three cylindrical fence posts, each about three feet long, and now she was unscrewing door hinges.

‘Do you mind letting me in on the plan?’ Fergus asked, but Oscar chose that moment to retch and he had to focus on keeping the airway clear.

‘He took this too far,’ Ginny said briefly, glancing across at their patient with active dislike. ‘If you hadn’t been available he’d have risked dying. He’s played this too many times for the locals to take any notice.’

Fergus sighed. Doctors were trained to save lives, no matter how obnoxious those lives were, but it didn’t always feel good. Now he thought longingly about his beautifully equipped city hospital and his wonderfully trained nursing staff who’d cope with the messy bits that he was forced to cope with himself now. Back in Sydney, if a patient retched he’d step back and hand over to the nurses.

‘I’m good at woodwork,’ he told Ginny without much hope, and she smiled.

‘Not in a million years, mate,’ she told him. ‘I’m on door duty. You’re on patient duty.’

Finally the last screw holding the door to the hinge was released. The door fell forward and Ginny grunted in satisfaction as she took its weight.

‘Great. I was afraid it’d be solid. This is light enough to give us a bit more leverage.’

‘So now what?’

‘Let’s get it under him,’ she told him. ‘Is his airway clear?’

‘As good as I can get.’ Oscar was drifting into alcoholic sleep, which at least meant that they could work without abuse.

‘We’ll leave the oxygen on till the last moment,’ Ginny told him. ‘He’ll have to be unhooked for a bit while we load him into the truck. But we’ll work fast.’

‘Are you medical?’ he asked, bemused, but she wasn’t listening. She was sliding the door toward him, signalling him to shove the other end as close as he could to Oscar.

Then she hauled the mattress on top.

‘Put this pillow between his hips in case he really has got a broken bone,’ she ordered, and he stopped wondering whether she had a medical background. He was sure.

‘Now.’ Fergus was on one side of Oscar. Ginny was on the other with the door-cum-stretcher between Ginny and Oscar. ‘Roll him sideways as far as you can toward you,’ she said. ‘One hand on his shoulder, the other just above his hip. Don’t try and lift—you’re just rolling. And I’ll shove.’

‘Where did you learn to do this?’

‘I had a different childhood,’ she said. ‘I played doctors a lot, and moving patients was my specialty. Shut up and roll.’

So he rolled and she shoved and a moment later their patient was three-quarters on the door.

‘Great,’ she muttered, completely intent on the job at hand. ‘Now we slide. You do the shoulders, I’ll do the pelvis. Let’s keep those hips in a straight line.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he uttered under his breath, but he didn’t say it. Where did her knowledge come from? Even with knowledge, Oscar was huge. How could she do it?

She did it. Fergus was getting more and more gobsmacked by the minute. Her strength was amazing.

They now had their patient fully on the door.

‘Now we tie him on,’ she said, producing something that looked like frayed hay bands. ‘I’m not going to all this trouble to let him roll off.’

So they tied, sliding the ropes under the door and fastening them across his legs, hips and stomach. Oscar grunted a few times but he seemed to be intent now on his breathing—which was just as well. They completed six ties before Ginny declared them ready.

‘You’re not proposing to lift this,’ Fergus muttered, knowing that lifting only one end was beyond him.

‘Trust a man to think of brawn when there’s brains at hand,’ she told him. She disappeared briefly outside and came back carrying something that looked dangerously like an axe.

‘Hey! I’m not sure about operating here and axes aren’t my tool of choice,’ Fergus told her, startled, and she grinned.

‘This is a splitter for chopping wood. Or it’s a really neat wedge.’ She laid it sideways so the edge of the splitter lay under a corner of the door. She put her weight behind the handle and tugged it in a quarter-circle.

The splitter dug under the door and the corner rose.

‘I’ll keep shoving and you stick in a pole,’ she ordered and he was with her. The fence posts…. long cylinders, ready to roll, were lined up, ready to insert under the door.

‘I’ll operate the axe, though,’ he told her, seeing her strain to get the sedge further in. Enough was enough. He had to be stronger than she was.

He had to be something more than she was.

Whoever, whatever, the plan worked. Two minutes later they had three poles under the door. At first push the door started rolling, with Fergus and Ginny carefully manoeuvring it toward the back door.

‘What’s happening?’ Oscar muttered, sluggish and barely conscious.

Fergus was hauling a pole out at the back of the door, to carry it forward so it became the front roller. ‘You’re going for a ride,’ he told him. ‘Courtesy of the most amazing ambulance officer I’ve ever met. And the most amazing trolley.’

It worked.

Luckily Oscar had a ramp instead of steps leading to the veranda and the only hard part was keeping the thing from sliding too fast. The dogs watched from a distance, seemingly almost as bemused as Fergus.

Then there was the little matter of getting their makeshift stretcher into the truck, but they did that working as a team, finding wedges and chocks of different sizes in the woodshed, tying the ropes under Oscar’s arms tighter so he couldn’t slip, gradually levering up the end of the door to a new level, chocking, levering again until finally the door reached the height of the floor of the truck.

That was the only time when they needed real strength. There was a moment when they had to take a side apiece and shove.

‘One, two three…’

The door slid in like a dream.

‘This place stinks,’ Oscar said clearly through his mist of alcohol and confusion, and Fergus climbed up beside him to administer oxygen again and tried not to flinch at the by now awful smell in the rear. Oscar was no pristine patient and the ewe’s legacy was disgusting.

But it was Oscar’s ewe. Ginny’s phrase came back to him. She’d just walked out to take in some bucolic air? ‘It’s good bucolic air,’ he told Oscar, trying not to grin. Ginny was still outside the truck, and she, too, was smiling her satisfaction. It had been a neat piece of engineering and they deserved to be pleased with each other. ‘Ms. Viental, wasn’t that what you were stepping out to find this afternoon? There’s lots of it in here. Would you like to ride in the back with our patient while I drive?’

But Ginny was already swinging herself into the driver’s seat, reaching over to the back and holding out her hand for the keys.

‘You’re the doctor,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m just part of the bucolic scenery.’

They made a stop on the way that Fergus hadn’t planned on.

I can’t go straight to the hospital,’ Ginny told him as they left Oscar’s farm behind them. ‘Richard will be worried.’

‘Richard?’

‘I told him I’d be gone for an hour and it’s been two already.’ She was driving more competently than he’d been, steering the truck with a skill that told him she’d spent years coping with eroded country tracks.

Where had she learned ambulance skills? Her farming skills? What else did she have going for her?

Gorgeous figure? Lovely complexion? Good sense of humour?

He had to concentrate on his patient.

Luckily, that wasn’t too difficult. Oscar was rolling from side to side, fighting against the straps, and Fergus was starting to get really concerned. If he had a broken hip he’d be in agony, the way he was moving. OK, he didn’t have a broken hip, but Fergus was starting to worry that the man’s blood alcohol level was dangerously high. He reeked of beer and whisky, and his breathing was getting weaker.

‘We need to get to the hospital fast,’ he told Ginny. ‘Ring Richard from the hospital.’

‘No can do,’ she told him, and turned off the main track onto an even smaller one.

Where was she going? ‘I need ICU facilities,’ he told her. ‘We can’t delay.’

‘I know it’s not optimal care.’ She was intent on the track. ‘But Oscar’s played ducks and drakes with his health for years. If I hadn’t been there today, you wouldn’t have him this close to the hospital now. I’ve sped you up a heap. It’ll take me two minutes to check on Richard, and I am going to check.’

‘Phone him.’

‘Go to hell.’

He sat back on his heels and stared through to the cab. He could see her face in the rear-view mirror. All humour had disappeared and her face was tight with strain.

‘Is Richard your child?’ he asked, confused, and she shook her head.

‘Just concentrate on Oscar,’ she said tightly. ‘Leave Richard to me.’

But somewhere in the haze of alcohol and lack of oxygen Oscar was still hearing. He’d figured what was happening, and he was starting to be scared.

‘You get me to hospital,’ he breathed, shoving the oxygen mask away so he could make himself heard.

‘I’m checking Richard first,’ Ginny flung over her shoulder. ‘He’s just as important as you are.’

‘He should be dead. He damn near all but is.’

There was no response. Ginny’s hands gripped the steering-wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. She kept on driving but Fergus could see what looked like tears…

‘Ginny…’

‘Shut up,’ she snarled. ‘Just shut up and look after Oscar because I’m sure as hell not going to.’

She checked on Richard. Whoever Richard was. Fergus wasn’t allowed to know. They pulled to a halt outside a farmhouse that was even more ramshackle than Oscar’s. Ginny ran inside, yelling at him not to follow, and, as promised, two minutes later she was back in the cab and the truck was heading back out to the main road.

‘Not dead, then?’ Oscar wheezed, and the look Fergus caught in the rear-view mirror was one of pure murder.

But now wasn’t the time to ask questions, not with Oscar ready to put in his oar and with Ginny’s anger threatening to explode. All he could do was keep a lid on it, keep Oscar alive and leave questions for later.

Would he ask the questions?

He wasn’t here to get involved, he reminded himself.

What was he here for?

To turn off. To find a place where he could immerse himself so totally in his medicine that everything else would be blocked out.

But the pain on Ginny’s face…

It found a reflection in what he’d been through. There was something…

Who was Richard? A husband? An invalid husband?

He wasn’t here to get involved.

‘I hurt,’ the man on the stretcher moaned, and Fergus sighed.

‘Where do you hurt?’

‘I told you—I smashed my hip.’

Yeah, right. ‘I can’t give you morphine until the alcohol wears off. And I need to do X-rays.’

‘Old doc would’a given me a shot by now.’

‘Yeah, he would have shut you up whatever the cost,’ Ginny flung at him over her shoulder. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. Dr Reynard, keep me away from that morphine.’

Cradle Lake Hospital was not exactly the nub of state-of-the-art technology that Fergus was used to.

It had been built fifty or sixty years ago, a pretty little cottage hospital that looked more like a country homestead than a medical facility. Most of the rooms were single, looking out onto the wide verandas that had views down to the lake on one side or up to the vast mountain ranges of the New South Wales snowfields on the other.

It was a great spot for a hospital. Unfortunately, it had been five years since Cradle Lake had been able to attract a doctor, and in those years the place had become little more than a nursing home. Old people came here to die. Patients needing doctors on call were transferred to somewhere with more facilities.

Nevertheless, Fergus had been stunned by the level of care displayed by what seemed an extraordinarily talented pool of local nurses. Being the only hospital for a hundred miles, the local nurses were called on for everything from snakebite to road trauma. They dealt with medicine at the coalface, and from what he’d learned in his two days here, by the time emergency cases were passed over to specialist care, the emergency would often be over.

Miriam, the nurse whose job it was to do home visits and who’d welcomed him with open arms, was waiting as they drove into the entrance to Emergency. A middle-aged farmer’s widow, she was as competent as she was matter of fact. Now she came out from the hospital entrance looking worried, and as he emerged from the back of the truck she looked even more worried.

‘Where have you been? I should have come with you. Oscar should be in a nursing home. He’s not fit to be alone, but I was sure he was putting it on. I would have left him until morning, but you insisted…’

He had insisted. Fergus had been in the call room when Oscar had phoned. Miriam had been inclined to be indignant and let him wait, but Fergus had decided to go anyway.

‘He didn’t really break a hip, did he?’ she demanded, and as Fergus pulled the door of the van wider and she saw their improvised stretcher, she gasped. ‘You’ve brought him in. How—?’

‘On a door,’ Fergus said, grinning. ‘And you’re right, he’s not fit to be alone. We need to look at a long-term nursing-home option—especially if by going home he gets to be in charge of animals again. Meanwhile, Miriam, we need a proper trolley to get him out of the truck. We need one strong enough to slide Oscar and a door onto. We’ll not move him again without a hydraulic lift.’

‘Who…?’ Miriam asked, and, as if in response to the unfinished question, Ginny jumped out of the cab. Miriam’s jaw dropped.

‘Ginny,’ she gasped. ‘Ginny Viental.’

‘Hi,’ Ginny said, smiling. ‘It’s Mrs Paterson, isn’t it? I remember you. Can you look after Dr Reynard now? I’m going home.’

‘Wait and I’ll drive you,’ Fergus said, still trying to sound as if he was in control, but Ginny shook her head and he knew that control was an illusion.

‘I still haven’t finished my walk, and Richard’s OK for a bit longer. I’ll enjoy the hike.’

And then she hesitated.

Until now the valley had been blanketed with the hush of a lazy country Saturday afternoon. Everyone was at the football, watching the football on the telly or starting the hike to bring the cows in for evening milking.

But the hush was broken now by a siren. It started low, a soft rise and fall from the far side of the lake, but it was unmistakable.

‘The boys are bringing someone in.’ Miriam stared out over the valley as if she was trying to see what was happening. ‘There was no callout through here and they haven’t radioed in. That means they’re both busy. It must be an emergency from the football.’

They regrouped, all of them. A medical team facing a medical crisis. Fergus glanced at Ginny and saw her reacting the same way he was.

‘Let’s get Oscar stabilised,’ Fergus snapped. ‘Miriam, fetch a trolley. Ginny, go to Oscar’s feet. Move.’

Ginny moved. Miriam moved too and no city hospital could have done it faster. They shoved the door onto a stainless-steel trolley and almost in the same motion they were wheeling it inside. They set Oscar beside a bed in a single ward but there was no time to move him into the bed. Not until they knew what the incoming emergency was.

‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered, but Fergus was intent on setting up an IV line.

‘All in good time,’ he muttered. ‘You’re safe where you are. I need a 5 mil syringe…’

He glanced up, expecting Miriam, but it was Ginny, not Miriam, who was handing him what he needed. While he worked, she was setting up a cardiac monitor and checking the oxygen flow. She’d followed him in behind the trolley and she’d started working without questioning him.

‘Miriam’s calling in reinforcements,’ Ginny told him. ‘As she’s the only nurse on duty, she might need help. The ambulance boys aren’t answering the radio, which makes her think things might be dire.’

‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered again.

‘As soon as we can,’ Fergus told him. ‘You just lie there and sober up.’

‘I’ll stay with him until we’re sure the oxygen rate’s optimal,’ Ginny offered, and Fergus hesitated. The siren was so close now that the ambulance would be there in seconds.

But was she qualified? As what?

And there was no love lost between Ginny and Oscar.

‘You won’t murder him?’ he asked, and he was only half joking.

‘We’ve both taken the Hippocratic oath,’ Ginny murmured. ‘More’s the pity.’

His eyebrows took a hike. ‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Only for now,’ she said, and her tone was a warning. ‘Only when I have to be, so don’t get any ideas about weekends off. Now go. Leave Oscar to me and I’ll do my best to keep him breathing.’

A doctor?

Fergus made his way swiftly back to Emergency, his mind racing.

Suddenly he felt a whole lot better about what he was facing.

He hadn’t thought this through. When Molly had died he’d simply taken the coward’s way out. He hadn’t been able to stay at his big teaching hospital any more. Everywhere he’d looked there had been memories. And people’s eyes… Every time they’d come toward him they’d clapped him on the shoulder or taken his hand and pressed it in gentle empathy. That last day had been unbearable. He’d been performing a simple catheter insertion and the nurse assisting had suddenly choked on a sob and left, leaving the patient sure that there was a disaster his medical team wasn’t telling him about—and leaving Fergus sure that he had to leave.

Some of his workmates had been better, he acknowledged. They’d been matter-of-fact, trying not to talk about it—moving on. But the way they’d spoken to him had still been different. He couldn’t bear them not talking about it as much as he couldn’t bear them talking about it and in the end he hadn’t known which he’d hated more.

‘Have a break,’ his father told him. Jack Reynard was senior cardiologist at the hospital. His father had been caring, but from a distance, all the time Molly had been ill—and after she’d died he’d hardly been able to face Fergus. ‘Go lie on the beach for a month or two.’

The thought of lying on any beach without Molly was unbearable but so was staying where he was. So he’d come here. It was only now, hearing the siren, thinking about how truly alone he was, that he wondered how qualified he was to take care of a rural community.

But now he had back-up. Ginny. Whatever her story was.

His strides lengthened. He could cope with whatever it was, he decided. As long as he had another doctor behind him.

Was she nuts, telling him she was a doctor?

Now was hardly the time for recriminations, Ginny decided. There was work to be done and it had to be done fast. The siren meant there was trouble coming and now she’d admitted she had medical training she knew she could be called on to help.

Ginny adjusted Oscar’s drip, checked his obs and made him as comfortable as she could without trying to move him. It took two people to use the hydraulic lift, and there weren’t two people available. There might not be any people if this was a true emergency on its way here, she thought.

She might be needed but she was concerned about leaving Oscar. The huge man was dead drunk and he could roll off the trolley. If she was called away….

‘OK, Viental, do something,’ she muttered.

She propped him up on pillows so he was half-sitting. There was no moan as she hauled him up—she’d given the broken hip cursory credence and she gave it even less credence now. He was showing little sign of pain. He’d be safer sitting up if he were to vomit, and X-rays of a possible broken hip would have to wait.

Then she stood back and looked at the bed. The bed had rails, ready to be raised at will. Oscar needed those rails to be safe.

‘Right, let’s get you organised,’ she muttered.

The trolley was resting against the bed, but it couldn’t reach the wall at the bedhead because of the bedside table. She could do better than that.

In seconds she was under the bed, grabbing the bedside table and hauling it under. She pushed the head of the trolley hard against the wall at the end of the room, then shoved the trolley sideways till it was against the wall. Which left a foot between bed and trolley.

What was happening outside? Don’t ask, she told herself. Get Oscar safe first. She flipped the bed rails up and shoved the bed sideways, securing her patient with the wall on one side of him and the railed bed on the other.

Oscar was now as safe as she could make him, apart from his breathing. But even there… What else could she do? His oxygen was up to maximum. His airway was clear.

He needed supervision, but if there was a greater need and Fergus needed her as a doctor…

‘What happens if I want to get out?’ Oscar mumbled, but he was so close to sleep she could hardly hear him.

‘You’re welcome to try,’ she told him. ‘But I suspect you’re trapped. Just like I am.’

‘Ginny…’ It was a call from the corridor, urgent. Miriam’s face appeared round the door. ‘Fergus needs you,’ she snapped, and disappeared.

‘I need to go,’ she told Oscar. ‘Stay breathing. That’s an order.’

‘I need a doctor.’

‘You’ve had one,’ she told him. ‘Relax and let yourself go to sleep.’

‘Get lost,’ he snapped, and added another word for good measure.

She turned away but she couldn’t help but grin. That last expletive had been strong and sure, reassuring her more than anything else that the man might very well survive.

She was right back into medical mode now, almost as if she’d never been away. In truth, the adrenalin surge was there, as it always was in these situations. She’d missed it.

Maybe she could work a little with Fergus.

What sort of man was he?

‘Dangerous,’ she muttered as she pushed open the swing doors to Emergency, though she wasn’t sure why she thought it. But that was her overriding sensation. She’d looked up from the cattle grid as she’d tried to hold onto the lamb, and she’d been caught. Fergus was tall, big-boned and a bit…weathered? He had deep brown hair, crinkly, a little bit too long. It needed a comb. Maybe he raked it with his fingers, she thought inconsequentially. That was what it looked like. His lazy grey eyes held laughter and a certain innate gentleness. He wasn’t much older than she was.

He seemed nice.

Definitely dangerous, and she didn’t have time in her life for dangerous.

She didn’t have any inclination to go down that road. Ever.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT was the last chance Ginny had time to think of the personal for hours.

The moment she opened the doors to Emergency she could see why the ambulance boys hadn’t had time to radio in. A woman was lying on the trolley and one glance showed Ginny that they were in trouble. She seemed to be unconscious, limp and flaccid, with each breath shallow and rasping. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, Ginny guessed, simply dressed in faded jeans, white T-shirt and pink sandals. Long blonde hair lay limply around a pallid face and even from the door Ginny could tell that here was a woman who was fighting for her life.

Or maybe here was a woman who’d come to the end.

‘Mummy…’

Ginny glanced across to the main entrance to see a little girl being carried in. Four years old, maybe? She looked a waif of a child, tear-streaked and desperate. Her blonde hair, shoulder length, was tied back with a red ribbon with blue elephants on it, but the ribbon was grubby and the curls hadn’t been brushed for days. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and nothing else.

But it was her feet that caught Ginny’s attention. She was barefoot, and her soles seemed to be a mass of lacerations. There was blood on her ankles.

Triage.

Fergus was working over the mother, and he had Miriam and an ambulance officer helping him. The guy holding the child seemed helpless.

Ginny moved at once to the child.

‘Mummy,’ the little one screamed, every fibre of her body straining toward her mother’s trolley.

‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy,’ Ginny told her, but the child was past listening. The ambulance officer was looking to Ginny, desperate to hand over responsibility.

‘Give her to me.’ Ginny sat on the examination couch and gathered the little girl into her arms.

Miriam was hauling the crash cart toward the trolley and Ginny thought, Uh-oh.

Should she swap places with Miriam? She watched for a minute as the child fought her hold. Miriam looked competent and swift. There was already a cardiac monitor set up. The woman’s breathing seemed to be pausing. She was suddenly so limp that Ginny thought, Oh no.

But Fergus was shaking his head at Miriam, signifying the paddles weren’t needed. There must be a heartbeat but the expression on Fergus’s face as he looked at the monitor…

Ginny knew what that look meant. She’d worked for three years in ER in a major teaching hospital and she knew it all too well.

Triage. The child’s feet were bleeding—badly—and her terror was palpable. Unless Fergus said otherwise, Ginny was needed where she was.

‘You’ve cut your feet,’ she told the little girl, making her voice sound astonished. She was trying to haul the child’s attention from her mother to her feet. ‘Goodness, what have you been doing?’

‘I want Mummy,’ the little girl sobbed, and Ginny’s heart twisted. But this was hopeless. Fergus needed all his concentration if he was to get a good result, and there was no way the little girl could go to her mother.

So make a break and make it fast.

‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy and I’m looking after you,’ she told the little one, forcing her voice to sound authoritative, hugging her close but standing and moving toward the door. ‘We need to get bandages for your feet before you can come back and see Mummy.’

‘Mummy.’ The child’s voice was a terrified scream.

Fergus looked up and met her eyes. He gave an imperceptible shake of his head.

Get her out of here, his body language said. Please.

‘Let’s go,’ Ginny said. ‘Bring what I need for stitching and dressing,’ she told the nearest of the ambulance boys. ‘Now.’

It took almost an hour to get the little girl’s feet dressed. She sobbed and sobbed and in the end Ginny administered a sedative and then simply sat and hugged her close until the child’s sobs subsided. Finally she collapsed into exhausted sleep and Ginny was able to lay her down on the bed in an empty ward and take care of the worst of the damage.

Some time while she’d hugged, the ambulance officer who’d brought her the dressings she’d needed had disappeared. Soon after he had been replaced by a young male nurse who’d introduced himself as Tony. Tony wasn’t what Ginny was accustomed to in a nurse. Under his obviously hastily donned theatre gown, he was dressed in football gear—filthy shorts, a black and orange jersey, muddy socks and muddy knees. The six-foot-three footballer looked a mile away from a competent nurse, but his concern was genuine and when she started work she couldn’t have asked for anyone better.

He helped clean the gravel from the worst of the cuts. It was painstaking work. Many of the stones were deeply embedded and when the feet were fully cleaned there were two cuts that needed stitches.

‘Do we have any idea what happened?’ Ginny asked as she stitched. Until the child had drifted into exhausted sleep she’d spoken only to her, but now there was space and time to talk to Tony.

‘My beeper went off just at the final siren,’ Tony told her. ‘The groundskeeper gave me a ride in and he told me what he knows. The mother seems to have collapsed at the wheel of her car, half a mile or so from the football ground. Any houses close by would be empty. Everyone’s at the footy. Maybe the mother told the kid to get help or maybe the kid figured that the source of noise was the only place to come. But they’ve just resurfaced the road. Gravel over bitumen. By the look of her feet, I’d reckon she must have run the whole way in bare feet.’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Ginny agreed, wincing in sympathy as she applied another piece of dressing over the stitched lacerations. ‘Of all the brave…’ She swallowed and looked down to the tear-stained little face. ‘Do we know what’s wrong with the mother?’

‘Cardiomyopathy.’ Fergus’s frame was suddenly filling the open door, his face as bleak as death. ‘And we’ve lost her.’

‘Lost…’ Ginny stared at him in consternation. She’d known. She’d seen it in the woman’s face. ‘But…’

‘She went into cardiac arrest just as you left,’ he said, and then, interpreting her distress, he put a hand out as if to ward off recriminations. ‘There was nothing you could have done to help. Believe me, I’d have called you back if there was. We’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong and now we know.’

‘Cardiomyopathy,’ Ginny whispered, dazed. ‘How on earth?’

‘The local police sergeant’s been through the car. There was a full medical history on the back seat. She must have travelled with it accessible—just in case. Plus she travelled with an oxygen supply. Plus enough medication to stock a small dispensary. She was desperately sick.’

‘Then why on earth was she travelling?’

‘Looking for one Richard Viental.’ He hesitated, his eyes meeting hers and holding. ‘Would that be…your Richard?’

‘My Richard?’ Ginny shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You think I do?’ Fergus sounded weary, as if he’d taken in too much information for one man to absorb. As maybe he had. He’d lost a patient under his hands less than an hour ago—a young mother who by rights should have lived for another fifty years. No matter how long you were a doctor—did anyone ever get used to it?

‘This letter was inserted as the first page of the medical history,’ Fergus said, after a break while they all seemed to have trouble keeping breathing. Tony was winding leftover bandage, but after he finished he automatically started rewinding. Without the spool.

Fergus was holding a sheet of notepaper—a letter handwritten in a spidery hand that scrawled off the page.

‘The police sergeant’s read this,’ he said, sounding apologetic and unsure. ‘I’ve read it, too.’ He sighed and looked down at the bed, where the little girl lay huddled in exhausted sleep. ‘It’s addressed to Richard but maybe you should read it as well,’ he suggested.

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