City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle

by Marion Lennox

  Reluctantly he propelled Maggie away from him, holding her by her shoulders until she was steady. She stood back, looking astonished at her own temerity, while around them patients and staff erupted into applause. The guy at his shoulder was an orderly at the head of a trolley, wanting to get past. The patient on the trolley was laughing, too, but the orderly was inexorably pushing them both aside.

  ‘Bedrooms are upstairs, mate,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘It’s young love,’ an old lady on a nearby examination table said.

  ‘At it like rabbits,’ a kid on a trolley called out, and Max found himself blushing from the toes up.

  ‘I just rang Anton and told him you were here,’ Sue-Ellen called from behind them, apologetically. ‘He needs you right away.’

  And to Max’s astonishment, Maggie grinned at their audience and gave Sue-Ellen a cheery wave.

  ‘Take him,’ she called. ‘He’s all yours now.’

  ‘I don’t think I want him,’ Sue-Ellen said, grinning back. ‘He’s looking used.’

  ‘If he’s second hand I’ll take him,’ the old lady called. ‘He looks like there’s still a bit of life in him yet.’

  ‘All the same-out of here,’ Sue-Ellen said, laughing. ‘If we can’t deliver your baby, Maggie, you’ll have to leave. We’ve got an influx expected.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Max asked, fighting hard for composure, and Sue-Ellen’s smile faded.

  ‘Probably. This power grid problem’s not going away and half the city seems to be affected. The power cuts over the last few days seem to be minor in comparison. You’d think drivers would think no traffic lights means slow down. Try telling that to the moronic driver who caused your accident. We’re hearing there’s accidents all over the place. The only reason we’re not rushed off our feet already is that the traffic’s so gridlocked it’s taking ages getting ambulances to us.’

  And it seemed as if the outside world was breaking in from all directions. ‘Max!’ Through the swinging doors burst Anton. ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you. We’ve got a bleeder. Theatre three.’

  ‘Maggie, if the traffic’s a problem…’ Max started, but Maggie was already backing away.

  ‘It wasn’t a problem on the way in,’ Maggie said. ‘Even if it is, I’ll just find a café and sit it out until the power comes back on.’

  ‘I don’t want you-’

  ‘No,’ she said, giving a firm nod. ‘You don’t. You have work to do and I’m in the way.’

  ‘Max,’ Anton said, warningly. ‘This can’t wait.’

  ‘Goodbye Max,’ Maggie said, and tried to smile. She walked away, leaving him staring through the glass doors after her.

  ‘Max,’ Anton said again, sounding more urgent.

  ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Should I find someone else?’ Anton demanded, watching his face.

  ‘No. No,’ he repeated, more firmly. ‘She’ll be okay. She has time.’

  ‘Time until the baby’s due, or time until you go after her?’ Anton said.

  He didn’t answer but he didn’t have to. He knew what Maggie wanted. Her body had just told him, and he knew he wanted the same.

  How soon could he go to her?

  There didn’t seem to be any cabs, so Maggie took a bus, and, as Sue-Ellen had warned, the traffic was a nightmare. Every set of traffic lights was out.

  The city was descending into darkness but, weirdly, people were being friendlier than she’d ever known. The lack of traffic lights, the series of mostly minor accidents at uncontrolled intersections meant that traffic was going nowhere. People sat patiently on Maggie’s bus, discussing whether the supermarkets would be open for candles, where they could get long-life milk, ice, something for dinner that didn’t need cooking.

  Someone had a tiny keyring pig from a Christmas cracker that oinked every time he shone its nose light. ‘I’m going to do my supermarket shopping by pig,’ he told his fellow passengers as after two hours on the bus everyone gave up waiting and decided the only way anyone was getting anywhere was on foot.

  Maggie tried to smile. Normally she’d think this was fun, but too much had happened today and her back was starting to ache. She was still half a mile from her apartment when the bus stopped. Weariness and the shock of the day was taking its toll. She really didn’t want to walk.

  There were no cabs. She had no choice.

  It was hard to keep herself steady on the pavement. Without streetlights, people were jostling, good-humoured and laughing, but with each step Maggie felt less like laughing. Her back hurt!

  This was tiredness, she told herself. Shock. She’d been bending over the two accident victims, not being careful. She’d been swimming before that. She’d done too much.

  And…She wanted Max.

  Maybe she’d never see Max again.

  She deserved not to see Max again, she told herself dismally. She’d kissed him like a…like a hussy.

  Ooh. She gave herself a mock hoot of horror. A hussy?

  She didn’t feel like a hussy. She felt alone and clumsy and huge, and as she walked steadily onward she was also starting to feel more than a little scared.

  A stab of hot pain jabbed at her back and she thought, no, it couldn’t be. Please.

  She had to be sensible. If there was a chance she was in labour…No, she was imagining things. She was over three miles from the hospital now-it was impossible to walk back. She’d be okay.

  But her back hurt. A lot.

  Her feet slowed. What to do?

  What would she tell a patient to do?

  Call an ambulance.

  That was good advice. She was nine months pregnant with bad backache. Calling an ambulance was only sensible.

  The decision made, she felt better. She stopped walking and searched in her purse for her phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  Damn, she could see it, her phone, sitting on the charger on the bedside table in her apartment. She’d left it there when she’d gone swimming and she’d been in too much of a rush when she’d left with Max to think about taking it.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic!

  She had no phone here, but she could get to her apartment and phone from there.

  She could phone Max?

  Or not. What could Max do that an ambulance couldn’t?

  She kept walking. She could see the glimmer of the moon over the sea. The sea was where her apartment was. Great. Two minutes’ walk and she’d be there. She’d let herself in, make herself a cup of tea, ring the ambulance and then watch the moonlit sea while she waited.

  No power. She wouldn’t be able to make tea.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, she was crying again! She wasn’t a hussy-she was a total wuss.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MAX spent the night with his thoughts returning again and again to Maggie. Uneasy, and getting worse.

  As the city’s traffic became more and more gridlocked, the hospital became quieter. Apparently people were abandoning their cars and walking, or finding accommodation where they could. Once the traffic was truly gridlocked, accidents lessened, and even when they happened ambulances couldn’t get through the blocked roads.

  ‘Contact your local medical centres if you need to,’ radio announcers were telling those with battery-operated radios. Suburban doctors were operating emergency clinics. The population was coping as best it could.

  Tomorrow there’d be questions asked in parliament, Max thought. Heads would roll over this unprecedented mess. Only…

  Only Maggie.

  Dammit, Maggie.

  He needed to know that she’d got home safely, but he rang her apartment block between patients, at ten and again at midnight, and got no answer. He fretted about it to Anton as they worked together on what they hoped would be their last surgical case for the night, and Anton provided an answer.

  ‘Most small apartment blocks don’t man their front desks at night,’ he explained patiently, as he monitored their patient’s air
supply. ‘Phone in the morning when the concierge comes back on duty.’

  ‘There should be an after-hours emergency number.’

  ‘Every apartment will have its own number,’ Anton said, staying patient. ‘Maggie will be able to ring out if she needs to.’

  ‘I need to ring Maggie.’

  ‘You don’t have her cellphone number?’

  ‘No!’ he snapped, so harshly the nurses looked at each other and thought whoa, tread lightly here, surgeon annoyed.

  He just needed to know she’d got home. The radio was reporting total gridlock. Even when he finished here he wouldn’t be able to drive and find out.

  In desperation, when he finally finished in Theatre-after two in the morning-he rang John and Margaret at the farm. Woke them. Frightened them.

  For nothing.

  No, Maggie’s apartment number didn’t work at night but if he rang in the morning the concierge would put him through. Her cellphone number? Actually, she’d given her usual phone to John because the locals used it at need. She’d said she’d buy another for private use but, no, she hadn’t given them that number either.

  Why hadn’t they asked her for it?

  Why hadn’t he asked her for it?

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Margaret asked sharply.

  Max caught himself and said, no, it’s only that the city’s in the grip of a blackout, and he was probably worrying unnecessarily.

  He left the ward and walked slowly across the quadrangle to his apartment. Thanks to the hospital generators everything seemed normal. He felt stupid.

  But he also felt increasingly apprehensive, and the feeling wouldn’t go away.

  Maggie.

  This was not how it was supposed to be.

  And as he stood there he thought…They were supposed to be together. One man and one woman and one baby.

  The knowledge was suddenly so strong it was almost primeval, kicking in where any pretence at intelligence left off. Maggie and her baby weren’t here, so why was he here?

  He stopped and stared southward, toward Coogee. Three miles or so as the crow flew. How long would that take him to walk?

  How long would it take him to run?

  The pain wasn’t too bad if she lay still.

  She lay still.

  The backache grew. It seemed to be coming in waves.

  The apartment was dark.

  She was not afraid of the dark.

  She was afraid.

  Okay, get sensible. Yes, the contractions were indeed contractions. Yes, they seemed to be getting stronger and closer together.

  She rang the ambulance yet again.

  ‘There’s a massive traffic jam,’ a sympathetic operator told her. ‘I’m trying as hard as I can to get a car to you. Can someone take you to your local medical centre? Can you call a neighbour?’

  ‘I’ll call a neighbour,’ she agreed, sweating.

  She staggered up from the settee. Went to the door, unlocked it-just in case the ambulance could get here. Looked out into the pitch-black hallway.

  Tried to remember seeing any of her neighbours. Tried to figure which door she could knock on.

  Thought again she was being stupid.

  This was her first baby. She was hours away from delivery. Maybe a day.

  No, she decided as the next contraction hit. Not a day. But hopefully hours. It was stupid to stumble about in the dark waking neighbours she didn’t know.

  She groped her way back into her darkened living room and collapsed back onto the settee.

  Dammit, she wasn’t going to lie here in the dark and be terrified. She wasn’t!

  Max…

  ‘Don’t think of Max,’ she told herself between gasps. Between contractions. ‘Max has less chance of getting here than an ambulance does, so there’s no use even thinking of him. Think of your daughter instead. Do you want her to meet you sweating with fear in the dark?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So do something about it.

  She took a deep breath, which was supposed to be steadying but wasn’t. ‘This isn’t a scary time,’ she told herself, trying hard to believe it. ‘It’s looking more and more like it’s your daughter’s birthday, so put your party hat on. When the ambulance arrives I want to look brave.’

  As if…

  At least light some candles.

  ‘Okay. I think I can do that,’ she gasped, clutching at her back and trying not to cry out. ‘Maybe. If I don’t have

  something else happen first.’

  Three miles wasn’t very long as far as marathons went, but this wasn’t a marathon, this was a sprint. Max was fit but he kept fit by working out between cases in the hospital gym. He had strength training. He didn’t run. He especially didn’t run in the dark without benefit of streetlights.

  It’d be a sight easier if his heart hadn’t been hammering in his chest before he’d started. The more he ran the more it kept right on hammering.

  He was being dumb, he told himself, over and over again. He was imagining problems when there weren’t any. There was no reason at all for a sane doctor to run across a darkened city, growing more fearful by the minute. But the mantra had started in his head and once started it wouldn’t go away.

  Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.

  He’d let her go home. Of all the stupid, criminal, irresponsible…

  It wasn’t stupid, the sane part of him said. He’d assumed the electricity would come back on as it had come back on last night and the night before.

  He’d never imagined this totally irrational certainty that he’d lose her.

  She wasn’t his to lose, the sane portion of his brain reminded him, but the sane portion of his brain was getting smaller by the minute, replaced by raw emotion. Maggie was his woman. His heart was telling him that, with every sound of his feet hitting the pavement. And his woman was having his baby.

  His? Irrational? Maybe but it didn’t matter. He knew truth when he heard it and he was running.

  And in an apartment in Coogee…‘I will not have my baby in the dark. I will not have my baby in fear. I will not have my baby lying on a rented hotel apartment settee with no beauty. Not!’

  Her apartment block loomed solid and black in the night. There was a faint light coming from one of the terraces above his head, but none of the windows were lit.

  Maggie hadn’t lit her candles, then?

  Of course not. Maggie would be asleep. She wouldn’t thank him for barging in and waking her. Terrifying her for nothing.

  He made himself slow. Made himself catch his breath. Went into the foyer. Wondered why the door into the foyer was unlocked. Then thought maybe it was attached to some electrical security system that wasn’t working. If the concierge had faced the choice of locking tenants out or letting the foyer stay unguarded overnight, that’s what he would have done.

  So he could climb up the stairs to Maggie’s apartment.

  Just walk up and knock?

  That’s what he was intending to do. Walk up and knock. It’s three in the morning. Wake up, Maggie, I’m here.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Surely the books hadn’t said it hurt this much.

  Breathe…

  You can do this.

  ‘I can’t…’

  He knocked on the door and the impact of the knock had the door swinging inward. What the…? She hadn’t locked it? She hadn’t even closed it properly?

  The corridor he felt his way down was in complete darkness. So was the apartment through the door. Maybe stopping to fetch a torch would have been sensible.

  He wasn’t feeling sensible.

  He swung the door wide and called. ‘Maggie?’

  Nothing.

  Did he stumble round in the dark and see if he could find her? Hell, he’d scare the living daylights out of her.

  He raised his voice. ‘Maggie?’

  Still nothing.

  It wasn’t completely dark. There was a faint glimmer from
the hall mirror, reflecting light from outside. His eyes were finally adjusting to a darkness that was more intense here than in the moonlight outside, but it was still a less intense dark than the corridor. He could see shapes. A bench in the kitchenette. A hall lamp. The living-room settee.

  ‘Maggie?’

  He was feeling his way in, wondering if he had the right apartment. There were four doors in this corridor and he’d got here by feel.

  It’d be just his luck to have the wrong apartment.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ he called, just in case some stranger was sitting bolt upright in bed, preparing to have a heart attack because of a prowler in their apartment. ‘I’m looking for Maggie. I’m looking for a pregnant woman in trouble.’

  He sounded stupid, he thought, edging into the sitting room as he called.

  The drapes were wide open and he could see the moonlit sea beyond. Then, as he drew further into the room, he saw there was another light source outside. Low light, hidden until now by the bulk of the settee.

  He moved cautiously forward, hit his knee on a coffee table and swore.

  ‘Maggie?’ He tugged open the big glass door to see where the light from outside was coming from. ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Did you bring gas?’ a voice demanded from floor level, and the words were a series of breathless, pain-filled, gasps. ‘If you didn’t, kill me now. Oh, Max…’

  She’d set up a birth centre. She was on the tiled balcony floor but on bed of sorts, a mound of soft bedding right at the edge of the terrace, where the open protective rails gave her a sweeping vista of the sea beyond.

  There were candles everywhere. She was surrounded by a sea of light, a complete circle apart from the line of sight between her and the sea. The moon was hanging low, casting a silvery trail of moonbeams over the ocean. They looked almost a ribbon, reaching out to touch the woman on the cushions at his feet.

  Apart from the hush-hush of the waves on the sand below there was complete silence. All this Max absorbed in a fraction of a second. And then…

  ‘Mmmmmmmmmpf…’

  It was a long, low moan, so low that unless he was right next to her he’d never have heard it. For Max, who’d delivered a thousand babies or so, it was the quietest birthing moan he’d ever heard.