The Desert Midwife

by Fiona McArthur

  He studied her, as if trying to see through to her reasoning. He was an intelligent guy so he must be wondering. At least he didn’t say no straight off. ‘Setabilly Station?’

  She answered the easy part first. ‘Down near Mount Conner, towards Uluru. A cattle station. We’re setting up a sideline as a farmstay, like an ecotourist retreat. It’s early days, but we’re geared for guests.’ She shook herself. ‘I just wondered if you’d like to try our hospitality while you’re still isolated by loss of memory. I understand you can’t go back to work for two weeks. And you shouldn’t fly either.’

  The way he searched her face gave her a tingle of hope. Then his measured ‘Thank you’ dashed it. ‘I’ll probably just stay in the apartment George says I have at the hotel.’

  Ava forced a laugh and pushed a little more. ‘Or you could come with me and be an ecotourist and at least I could keep my eye on you for a few days.’ There. She’d said the words.

  He raised one dark brow. ‘To your family station? A stranger?’

  Ava lifted her shoulders. To hell with it. ‘Not a complete stranger. We did have a six-day relationship that you don’t remember,’ she said quietly. ‘And my family know we’re friends, so they understand why I want you to come.’

  She waited for him to dispute the information, but he didn’t. His eyes met hers and his brows went up. ‘A relationship? Did we? I wondered.’ Although she listened for it, she didn’t detect disbelief.

  Still not sure what he was thinking, she said firmly, ‘Yes. We did. I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘And I have.’ Their gazes met and held. Finally, after the slowest two seconds in the world, he said, ‘That would explain my somewhat out-of-character fascination with your womanly wiles.’ Then he gave her that beautiful smile she’d fallen in love with and she thought her heart would break.

  Oh, Zac.

  After a brief struggle with the lump in her throat, she whispered huskily, ‘Nice to know something still rings a bell.’ She gestured vaguely. ‘The thing is, I’ll worry about you if I leave you here. I was driving that damn car, and if you came as a guest I’d be able to check on you. At least till the ten-day mark.’

  Still he watched her face intently. ‘Make sure I don’t have a secondary cerebral bleed or something?’

  ‘Something like that. Such disastrous complications are strictly forbidden.’ She gestured to the window this time. ‘We have cottages, pre-fab corrugated-iron mini homesteads that my grandmother designed. They’re air-conditioned, self-contained and have desert views. So it’s not like you’d be living in the main house.’ Though her mother or grandmother might still veto that. Old nurses didn’t trust in nature as much as midwives did, and she’d be overruled. In this particular case, her mother and grandmother were the only people in the world she’d allow to overrule her. But that was a worry for later.

  He didn’t look convinced and she could feel him slipping away. Make it happen, she told herself, or lose him. ‘As the one responsible for your loss of memory, I would prefer you to spend the next week or so this way.’ Please, she silently added. ‘And I can’t hang around here because I help at muster this time of year. I’m not back in Alice for a month. But it’s up to you.’

  ‘It’s good of you to offer, but please don’t feel responsible as the driver.’ His face twisted a little as if he understood the price of that, and she thought of his past trauma. Yes, he definitely understood. He probably didn’t connect that she knew about his wife, either.

  Had she put too much pressure on him? Was recuperating with a strange woman the last thing he wanted to do and he didn’t know how to say no? For a moment she cringed, feeling pushy and desperate. Then she pulled herself together. She was fighting for their love. For them. For a future Zac had seen as wonderful, if what he’d said in Yulara was true. This guy was a high-flying city emergency doctor. He knew how to say no if he wanted to. He had amnesia, not a personality transplant.

  Tensely, she waited for his answer, watching him warily. Trying not to let him see how awkward this was for her.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  She could almost read his thoughts. Could read them a little better than when she’d first met him, anyway. She’d bet he was thinking, What sort of relationship have we had? It can’t have become too much in a week, surely? She hoped she didn’t look like a woman who needed him to escape her life, or needed to grasp at men who didn’t remember her.

  She added, ‘If you like, I could drop in here before I leave this afternoon and introduce you to my mother and grandmother. They can add their invitation to mine. They’ll be going back today ahead of me and you could see if you feel comfortable with them. I don’t want to pressure you.’

  Yes, she did, but she’d try not to. Honestly. Now, however, it was time to go.

  She stood. ‘I pick up my replacement car this afternoon and will be heading to the station tomorrow before lunch. We’ll talk again tomorrow but then I’ll be gone.’ She tried to look calm about his indecision, to look like the patient woman she was known as. Funny how she couldn’t find much calm resignation at this moment. Soon she’d be leaving for a month.

  She hoped he’d make the right decision.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Stella

  In her flat on the outskirts of Alice Springs, Stella gripped the verandah rail and stared down at her work-roughened fingers and tried to bend steel. It wasn’t working.

  Her fingers were white and ugly. She did not possess a sophisticated woman’s hand – like Lorenzo would be used to – with all her cracked, short nails torn in places from hard work. She eased the pressure and looked away from her offensive digits through the buildings across the street to the glimpse of desert beyond. She could just see the sand-crusted hill with saltbush and drew in a deep breath as if the freedom out there could settle her agitation.

  ‘Are you all right, Stella?’

  She turned to see her mother poking her head out of the bedroom door onto the verandah, as if unsure whether it was safe to venture further. Considering Mim didn’t know the meaning of fear, her expression made Stella smile, if a little reluctantly.

  ‘My brain feels like an overfilled chaff bag ready to explode.’

  ‘I can tell that, dear.’

  Oops. If her mother was calling her ‘dear’, she’d been difficult to live with.

  ‘Sorry, Mim.’ Stella gestured to the two chairs on the tiny balcony and Mim came out and sat down. Stella watched as Mim donned her listening pose with her hands settled demurely in her lap, and her smile grew a little. So many times her mother had settled herself in that pose.

  Stella could remember her sitting like that with her father on the verandah at Setabilly while some weighty matter had needed to be discussed. After he’d died, Mim’s attention had focused on Stella and her children, and they were truly blessed. Mim the listener. And the sage, with her sometimes wickedly insightful comments that could make you blush or cry.

  Stella made herself sit and blow out a breath. ‘Lorenzo’s arrival has thrown me.’ She threw up her hands with the agitation that rose just hearing herself say that. ‘I’m confused like a fifteen-year-old would be, not a woman of fifty. How could I make such an impression on a man in one afternoon a whole year ago?’

  Mim raised her brows. ‘Men remember attractive women. And despite hiding it in those farm clothes, you’ve worn well.’

  ‘You said I looked like a cow pat.’

  ‘Got you with that one. I was trying to wake you up.’ Mim’s eyes danced with mischief.

  Mim had been aware all along and never said a word? Maybe Mim did understand her fears. Stella lowered her voice. ‘I’m scared he’s going to ask me to marry him.’ And thought but didn’t say, I did so badly as a wife last time.

  Mim surveyed her from head to foot and then her gaze softened. ‘What if he does ask you? It’d do you good to be looked after for a change. To have a strong man’s arms around you.’

  Stella si
ghed. It was all very well to dream. ‘I can’t waltz off into the sunset with a European Casanova and leave you all.’

  ‘Why not?’ Mim’s question was placid, a gentle puff of amusement on the warm air. As if she had no idea what Stella was het-up about.

  Stella rolled her eyes. ‘We’re all stressed to the max about the station. You know – the drought! Especially Jock, who is turning my hair grey with the way his spirits are sinking, and with Hana expecting the baby, and the bank’s grumbling about the improvements he’s overdrawn on. I need to be here to help and support them.’

  Stella blew out another breath and looked at her mother. Then there was Mim’s advancing age, which she didn’t mention. ‘I have a mother and a daughter who need me as well,’ she said instead and shuddered at the memory of searching for her mother for almost a full day after she’d come off that horse. Someone needed to make sure Mim didn’t do anything else so stupidly dangerous.

  Mim made a rude noise. ‘Don’t you put me in there as your responsibility. Young Hana has already invited me, very prettily, to live with them.’ She thought about that. ‘I’d enjoy having a baby about again.’

  Stella blinked. ‘Are you all talking about the possibility of me leaving?’ Why was she the last to know anything?

  ‘Not all of us. Ava doesn’t know.’

  Ava was one of the reasons her head was going to explode. Imagine if she’d left with Lorenzo. ‘And now Ava has almost been killed by an idiot in a campervan. Imagine if I had been in Italy when that happened.’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s tough like us. And you would fly home.’ Mim smiled beatifically. ‘I think Ava’s in love.’

  Stella felt like the little balcony had just cracked off the side of the building, fallen to the ground twenty feet below them, and carried her with it. ‘Not with the city doctor? The one with amnesia?’

  ‘Just a suspicion,’ Mim said serenely.

  Stella wanted to twist her hands together and cry. Or break something. Neither of which she ever did, but lately the feelings were bubbling inside and tearing to get out, and fifty was a stupid age to lose control.

  This was all her fault. She waited a little until she could speak more calmly. ‘It’s a penance for the lies. I should have told them the truth. That love isn’t enough if that person is from another world …’

  ‘Stella May.’ Her mother’s voice broke in. ‘Stop it. Your father and I were from different worlds and that worked out very well, thank you. Hana and Jock are from different worlds.’

  Stella said softly, ‘What about Noah? What about me? I deserted their father when he needed me and then he died.’

  ‘You got homesick. Tell your children now, be done with it. You were pregnant and lonely. He did something stupid and then he died. It’s time to let go of that volcano of bitterness you’ve carried for twenty years. It’s done enough damage. Don’t let it damage others.’

  This was Mim at her most determined. But how could Stella confess she’d lied to the very children she’d promoted truth to after saying she’d been happy in Sydney, and very much in love?

  Stella stood up as if to take a turn around the room, but the verandah was so small. So she sat down again and thought reluctantly of the painful past. Well, they had been happy for a while. But Ava in love with a man from the city? Her darling Ava, who’d been hit by that campervan and almost killed along with her companion, the amnesic companion her daughter wanted to bring back to Setabilly to convalesce? It all began to make horrible sense and her dread grew.

  Three hours later, Mim and Stella had packed the car in preparation for returning to Setabilly and had driven back to the hospital for Ava.

  Stella walked into Zac’s room to meet him, as requested by her daughter. The instant she saw the way her daughter looked at him, she knew. It took all of two seconds to confirm her mother’s suspicions were correct. Two seconds.

  Oh, she was polite and said the right things, but inside her heart pounded with regret, and she had to force herself not to hope he never got his memory back, because she could also see that he wasn’t returning the affection. He really had forgotten Ava, and despite her misgivings, she could see it was causing her daughter pain.

  Karma had come back to slap her for her dishonesty, because now her daughter had fallen in love with a man from the city like she had and the same struggles would be hers, and Stella hadn’t warned her. If Zac did get over this temporary memory loss, he’d remember he loved Ava, too, and then he’d want to take her back there with him and Ava would be miserable like Stella had been, and history would repeat itself.

  Maybe she deserved it. Ava, however, did not. Stella could only hope this city stranger would decide not to come back to Setabilly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ava

  That afternoon in Alice Springs, Ava watched the side of the road flash past as her mother drove her from the hospital to the family flat. It wasn’t far, and despite their protests that she should travel back to the station with them, they were dropping her off against their better judgement, and heading back to Setabilly before dark.

  Ava said again, ‘I’m fine. If he agrees to come, I want to bring Zac back myself.’ More importantly, she wanted the alone time in the car with Zac to see if they could find the rapport from their previous closeness. It wasn’t much of a plan, though, and it relied on both Zac agreeing to convalesce at her home, and also the privacy while they became acquainted before then.

  There was silence from her mother and a nod from Mim. Her mother would have to deal with whatever reason she had for her tepid response to Zac.

  ‘So you met him on the plane back from Sydney?’ Stella finally spoke from the front.

  ‘Yes, and then we worked together in Alice.’ It was the second time she’d asked, and Ava thought again that her mother was behaving oddly.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said her mother. ‘And he’s going back to Sydney in a month?’

  Mim interrupted. ‘I think the idea of bringing him back to the station is a good one, Ava. You’ll be able to look after him and show him around. I think that would help take his mind off the horrible feeling of losing a slice of his life. Don’t you, Stella?’

  Ava smiled her thanks at the back of her grandmother’s head. Every few minutes, Granny Mim would turn and give her a little smile. She needed to have her family’s understanding, but when her grandmother’s sympathy came her way, she felt reassured that her heart would not break. That things would turn out well.

  She deliberately breathed in slowly and then out. In and out. She needed to let everything go, and just concentrate on healing herself from the shock of the accident and her own small injuries. She also needed to believe that Zac’s memory would return.

  She’d visit him again tomorrow, convince him to come, and start again. She needed him to come with her. To let whatever their future together would be to grow naturally, because loving someone couldn’t be forced.

  Or forgotten.

  Or lost.

  Could it?

  She slowed her breathing again as a wave of sadness rolled over her, and she brushed away a lone, stupid tear as it threatened to run down her cheek. It could have been much worse. She had to keep telling herself that. He’d be physically fine. Dr Fithers had said he was happy with the scans. It was the amnesia and the loss of the last weeks that felt like a chasm between then when they’d only just found happiness.

  Mim turned her head again as if she knew what Ava was thinking. ‘He’ll be fine, darling.’ She smiled encouragingly at Ava. ‘He seems very strong …’ She paused and her eyes twinkled. ‘He seems like a particularly virile man, and I imagine his recuperative powers are impressive.’

  Was there innuendo in that statement? Surely Mim couldn’t know that they’d slept together. Ava felt her cheeks warm and the sudden lift of her spirits was something she’d not have believed possible even a minute ago, but such was the magic of Mim.

  Darling Mim. Nobody could love their family more, nor m
ischievously direct from the sidelines in the loving way Mim did.

  The next morning, Ava drove back to the hospital, her fingers tense on the steering wheel. She went early, deciding she’d come back to the flat to pack after she knew Zac’s decision. She had things to do in town before she left.

  Mostly she was thinking about if he said no. Which was the opposite to what she should be doing – affirmations and all that. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen because she’d convince him. But what if he did? Then she’d have to try to forget him and also the fact that she’d found the man she instinctively knew could have given her a happily ever after.

  Once at the hospital, she climbed softly so her feet wouldn’t echo in the deserted stairwell. It wasn’t visiting hours and she hoped she wouldn’t meet any staff on the way, more for the fact that she didn’t feel like conversation than any worry they’d tell her she had to leave. Coming out on the second floor, she crossed to Zac’s doorway and found him standing at the window looking out over the hospital grounds. His broad shoulders were silhouetted against the light and there was tension in the stiff set of his neck. She wanted to come up behind him and put her arms around him in comfort. Instead, she knocked quietly on the doorframe and waited, and when he turned, his face lay in the shadow with the light behind him.

  ‘Ah, Ava. Good morning.’

  ‘Morning, Zac.’ She could hear too much cheery brightness in her voice and pulled it back. She only just managed to stop herself from asking, Are you coming? Taking a calm breath, she said, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Feeling remarkably well,’ he replied, then he paused and gestured for her to come in. ‘And you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’ She could feel her heart thumping and this precipice of the future was killing her. She needed to end this indecision before it did her head in. ‘Have you thought more about where you will convalesce?’ she asked as coolly as she could muster.