New Doc in Town / Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Very organised,’ Cam said, but as the mass of young people continued to expand he began to wonder just what lay ahead of him in the week to come.

  He didn’t have to wonder long. On duty in the zone that evening, the sun had barely set and the bands were thumping out their beats when two young women came in, their friend, agitated and babbling excitedly but not making any sense, held between them.

  ‘She just got all twitchy and hyper,’ one of them explained, while Cam helped the woman onto one of the couches in the zone and bent to examine her.

  He couldn’t smell alcohol on her breath, but she felt hot to the touch and her pulse was erratic. He loosened her clothing, asking at the same time, ‘Has she taken anything?’

  One of the girls immediately said no, but the other one looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing the uncomfortable one a bottle of water. ‘I’ll sit her up and you give her sips of water.’

  He turned to the second friend.

  ‘You can wet one of those small towels and wipe it over her skin to cool her down, and—’ he looked directly at her as he emphasised the word ‘—you can tell me what she took.’

  ‘It was only an E,’ the friend replied, hurrying to obey Cam, adding, when she returned, ‘She’s had them before.

  She brought them for us so they were hers, not bought here off some stranger.’

  As if that made it all right, Cam thought wryly.

  ‘Been dancing a lot?’ he asked, and the two girls nodded, while their sick friend began to moan and shake. Cam grabbed a bucket, held it while she was sick, then shoved it under a table, thinking he’d have to find out about disposal later. There were three chemical toilet stalls at the back of the zone but he wasn’t sure if they were suitable for handling the bucket’s contents.

  The patient was obviously feeling better, although still pale and shaky.

  ‘Keep drinking water. You’re dehydrated and you’re very silly to be taking any kind of drug. You’ve, all three of you, got such a wonderful life in front of you, you don’t want to be risking it with something that could kill you and, believe me, badly cut drugs can kill people and you’ve obviously got hold of some Ecstasy that’s been badly cut.’

  He left them sitting on the couch, looking more scared than penitent, but scared was good. He delved amongst the welllabelled plastic boxes of supplies. Found what he was looking for, some rehydrating salts in tablet form that dissolved to make a palatable drink.

  ‘You drink this,’ he told his patient. ‘Then rest here for a while. Your friends might like to go back to the concert and come by later to take you back to where you’re staying.’

  The young woman looked at her friends, who both leant down to give her a hug.

  ‘We’ll stick with you,’ they said in unison, one adding, ‘It’s what we promised each other. Anyway, we can hear the bands okay from here—down there on the beach they’re far too loud.’

  ‘That’s a job well done,’ Cam heard a voice say as he left the girls together on the couch. ‘And I’ve emptied and cleaned out the bucket for you,’ Jo added, smiling at him and pointing to where she’d stacked the disinfected bucket. ‘In case you were wondering, you can empty them into the toilets. Apparently the chemicals they use can cope with anything.’

  She moved into the light and he noticed she was wearing a dress for the first time since they’d met. Well, almost wearing a dress for it was a very skimpy mini, all frills and tiny flowers and so unlike Jo’s usual uniform of khaki shorts and tank tops Cam was aware he did a classic double-take.

  ‘You look fantastic!’

  The words were out before he’d had time to consider them but she didn’t seem to mind, giving him a half-wry smile.

  ‘Not my usual style at all, is it?’ she said, but she gave a twirl that suggested she was enjoying the difference. ‘Actually, it’s my schoolies’ gear. Look around at what the young women are wearing. In this dress I fit in, and I can wander through the crowds without attracting too much attention.’

  ‘Yes?’ Cam said, his eyebrows rising. ‘I would think in that gear you’d get all the attention you can handle and probably more. Why the need to wander? Are you the second sniffer dog?’

  Jo grinned at him and he felt a spurt of heat in his veins.

  ‘More or less,’ she answered. ‘I just mooch around and listen so if anything’s going on—like a whisper that you can get dope behind the clubhouse kind of thing—we’re prepared. A number of the younger lifesavers do it as well, two young couples and another teenager, mingling with the crowds. The problem isn’t the schoolies but the lot they call toolies—men usually, a couple of years out of school—who come back each year, some just to hang around but others who could be predators, on the lookout for girls who’ve had too much to drink and have lost their caution.’

  Revulsion now coiled where heat had been.

  ‘Rape?’ Cam asked.

  ‘We had one report last year but the young woman couldn’t remember what the man looked like, except that he looked older. She left the enclosed area in front of the stage to walk along the beach with him. It was low tide and he took her in behind rocks near the headland. It was two days before her friends persuaded her to tell someone in the chill-out zone and by then it was too late to do anything apart from helping her over the experience. This year we’re being more proactive, being more insistent that the young people look out for their buddy or buddies.’

  ‘And you’re walking around as shark bait?’ Cam suggested, distinctly uneasy at the thought of Jo out there asking for trouble.

  Jo shook her head.

  ‘It’s fairly obvious to anyone on the lookout for an easy mark that I’m not eighteen, but it doesn’t hurt to have people wandering through the crowd.’

  She waltzed away, leaving Cam feeling very disturbed, especially as she’d no sooner left the zone than a couple of young men hit on her. He watched as she laughed and joked with them, then moved on, apparently convincing them she wasn’t interested in their company.

  Was he concerned about her?

  The thought brought a tingling sensation crawling up Jo’s spine and she probably smiled too warmly at the two young men who approached her as she left the zone. They didn’t seem too unhappy when she refused their invitation to the pub, probably realising she was older than she’d looked as they’d approached her.

  But if Cam was concerned about her …

  Of course, it was probably just in a boss-employee way, so she should forget the tingles, although …

  She mooched through the crowd of teenagers, feeling very old among them, aware it was okay to look the part, but she no longer knew the passwords of acceptance—the speech patterns and ‘in’ words, even what band was hot and what was not.

  Two hours later, feeling fairly confident that all was well this first night of the five the schoolies would be in residence, she returned to the zone to find Cam still there, not tending a patient but sitting chatting to a couple of young men. The words barrelling and shore breaks told her the conversation was about surfing so she didn’t intrude, although when the visitors left he waved her over.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he suggested. ‘You look as if you’ve been dancing the night away.’

  He passed her a bottle of water, their fingers touching, almost lingering together, as he passed it.

  It’s not happening, she told herself, denying the signals from her body, sending the moon a dirty look—moon-madness.

  ‘How did you go?’ Cam asked as she finished a long draught of water and set the bottle down on the grass.

  ‘I’m far too old to do the mingling thing any more,’ she told him. ‘For a start, it’s as if they speak a foreign language and this habit young people have developed of throwing the word like into every sentence makes me want to bang my head against a wall.’

  She leant down to pick up the water bottle and had another drink while she settled not her thoughts but her feelings. Surely if she could si
t here and carry on a sensible conversation with Cam, her skin would stop sending messages about how close he was.

  ‘It’s not that I’m not used to it but on the whole teenagers who come as patients are on their best behaviour, speaking the language their parents speak, not teenage-speak, while as for noise levels—I mean we’re, what, five hundred metres away from the stage and even here the ground seems to shake with the thrum of the deep bass notes. Closer to it, inside the fenced area, I needed ear plugs.’

  She was giving herself a metaphorical pat on the back for the sensible conversation when Cam moved, just slightly, but enough for his thigh to rest against hers as they sat together on the couch. Just the touch of a thigh, and sensible was destroyed, her mind considering the ridiculous suggestions her body was making.

  A brief affair—surely that would be okay? A fling—that’s all it would be. He was moving on, so nothing serious, and wasn’t it okay to enjoy physical pleasure just for its own sake?

  The worst of it was that, as her thigh positively revelled in the closeness of his, her mind didn’t seem to be coming up with any answers. It certainly wasn’t pouring cold water on the ideas her body was suggesting.

  Or even lukewarm water.

  Not a murmur from the common sense on which she prided herself.

  She moved her thigh—that was commonsense, wasn’t it?

  Unfortunately, Cam turned at the same time, and his hand fell onto her knee, a casual gesture, no pressure, but she felt the imprint of his fingers searing like a brand into her skin. A momentary regret that she wasn’t in her usual cargo shorts was swamped when his fingers did exert pressure, and he nodded towards the gate of the chill-out zone where three young men were trying to control their obviously drunk and loudly obnoxious friend.

  ‘Do we take drunks?’ Cam asked, standing up and moving in front of Jo in case the young man lurched towards her.

  ‘Mildly drunk, yes,’ Jo told him, moving out of his protective shadow, ‘but guys like that we give to Mike and his boys. They let them dry out in one of their cells where they can’t do any harm to themselves or others.’

  She nodded towards the young policeman, in casual dress but still on duty in the zone. He was on his mobile, obviously calling for a car. Once the call was finished, the policeman herded the young men out of the zone to wait by the road, his grip on the drunk man not particularly gentle but definitely effective.

  Cam was about to ask if someone kept an eye on the drunks in the cells when a cry from the beach told him there was more trouble.

  ‘Help, please help!’

  A woman’s voice, high, hysterical.

  Jo moved with him but his longer strides ate up the distance across the sand to where a group of young people huddled around a supine form. One of the young men was on his knees, pressing at the unconscious woman’s chest, and although his compressions might not have been copybook, Cam congratulated the boy on his fast action as he explained who he was and knelt to take over.

  Within seconds Jo was there as well.

  ‘No pulse yet,’ she said, her fingers beneath the young woman’s chin. ‘I’ll count and do the breaths,’ she told him, and so they worked together. In between breaths, Jo pressed a button on her mobile then handed it to one of the onlookers.

  ‘That will ring through to the ambulance station. Please tell them we need them on the beach just north of the band area.’

  And with that taken care of with her usual efficiency, she told the youth beside her to take over the counting, breathed three times into their patient’s mouth, and this time as she looked up she began to ask questions.

  ‘What happened?’

  There was a group shuffle in reply, then one of the young women spoke up.

  ‘We were only paddling on the edge, going in up to our knees.’

  ‘Great timing—dusk and dawn are the very best times to get taken by a shark, but as she’s still here, that couldn’t have happened, so what did?’

  ‘She just dived under a wave and didn’t come up.’

  The voice was familiar and now Cam looked up, then back down at their patient.

  ‘You’re the girl who was at the zone earlier,’ he said to the explainer. ‘And this is your friend—the one you were supposed to take back to wherever you’re staying.’

  The young woman hung her head, but the second friend now stepped forward.

  ‘We did go back to our motel,’ she protested. ‘We even got ready for bed, that’s why we’re in different clothes, then Jodie … ‘ she indicated her friend on the sand ‘ … said she felt better and what she really wanted was a walk on the beach in the moonlight and we didn’t know she’d go diving in like that.’

  ‘Pulse,’ Jo said, just as two ambos arrived, a folded stretcher held under the arm of the leader.

  The paramedics took over, while Jo put her arms around the two friends, asking them to come back to the zone, telling them they needed a hot drink, but probably, Cam guessed, so they could get details about the patient.

  ‘Is it like this every night?’ he asked Jo, when a second wave of volunteers arrived at one in the morning to take over from the early shift.

  ‘Most nights,’ Jo told him. ‘Although by the end of the five days they’re here they’re getting pretty tired and not as many go raging on the beach.’

  She was outside the zone, leaning against the fence, looking as if she was too tired to even make it to her car. The frilly dress was still wet from where she’d held and comforted the young woman who’d pulled her friend from the water, and it clung to her body, provoking thoughts Cam was far too tired to do anything about.

  ‘Come on, I’ll drive you home,’ he suggested. He put his arm around her shoulders and tucked her close. ‘I was here quite early so I found a parking spot right behind the zone. Don’t argue. I can run you back down in the morning to get your car, or in the afternoon, or whenever you like.’

  Jo melted against him.

  He was so solid, so comforting that for a fleeting moment she wondered how it would feel to let go of all the burdens she carried—let Cam carry them. No, that wouldn’t be fair as he had burdens of his own—but maybe let him share them.

  As if he’d want them.

  Want her.

  He walked her to the van, unlocked the passenger door, opened it for her then, to her surprise, lifted her as easily as she could lift a child, and deposited her on the seat. She was still getting over her sheer astonishment at this behaviour when he leaned in to do up her seat belt—somehow she was sitting in the middle of the bench—and with that task completed, he dropped a quick kiss on her lips.

  Aren’t we even going to talk about this? she wondered. He’s just going to put me where he wants me, kiss me on the lips and …

  And what?

  What did it mean?

  It wasn’t as if it had been a passionate kiss. In fact, if anything, it had been a casual peck, nothing more, which still didn’t explain his easing her into the middle seat.

  Where her thigh was again, now he was behind the wheel, pressed to his.

  It took the drive home—not a long drive but long enough—for her to get this far in her thought processes, but when he stopped, not in the carport but just off the road above the drive where they could look out over the town and the moonstruck ocean, she finally regained enough equilibrium to speak.

  ‘And what was that about?’ she asked. Unfortunately, by now he’d looped his arm around her shoulder and drawn her right up against her body.

  ‘What was what about?’

  Oh, he was smooth, this man—rich, dark-chocolate images tumbled through her head.

  ‘That kiss!’ she muttered crossly, furious with herself for letting him … not exactly manipulate her but make her think things she hadn’t ever thought before.

  He turned her towards him.

  ‘That wasn’t a kiss,’ he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice, although she was desperately trying to look out to sea—to look anyw
here rather than at his face—

  ‘This is a kiss.’

  His mouth closed on hers, his lips moulding themselves to hers. There was strength in his lips, or maybe not strength but sureness, as if they knew exactly how to kiss her to draw out the response they wanted.

  Not that lips could make decisions. This fuzzy thought flitted by as Jo found herself losing any vestige of control she might have had over the kissing situation. Her lips were kissing him back. They were pressing so hard against his she could feel his teeth, and now his tongue traced the outline of her mouth, a subtle manoeuvre that she soon realised was a prelude to invasion.

  Warm and sweet! Cam knew she’d taste like this and he revelled in it, thinking nectar, bees—no bees were wrong. The buzzing was in his head—maybe in his body—definitely in his blood …

  He deepened the kiss, letting his lips speak without words, drawing a response that added to his excitement because it told him she wanted this as much as he did.

  Inexplicable attraction but lack of explanation made it no less real.

  Thrumming now, his blood, taking up the beat of the music they’d heard earlier, slow and heavy, his body all but erupting into flames with his need for her.

  ‘We can’t do this.’

  The whispered words lacked so much conviction he had to laugh.

  ‘No?’ he whispered back, his hand finding her breast beneath the frilly dress, cupping it, thumb and forefinger teasing at her nipple.

  ‘No,’ she answered, and gave lie to the answer by pressing closer to him, so he could feel the reverberations from the kiss quivering in her body, her nipples pebbling beneath his questing fingers.

  Her reactions heightened his need and he shifted in his seat, common sense dictating they go inside to finish off what they—or he—had started, but in moving he might lose her. Besides, he wasn’t done with kissing yet, particularly as he’d discovered that kissing Jo banished all the darkness from inside his head, leaving it clear and light and filled with …