Harry began to reply but Grace had turned back towards the bedroom, fishing her mobile phone out of her pocket as she went.
‘Here,’ she said, offering it to Mrs Aldrich. ‘The phone lines are all down but the cellphones will still work. This one is programmed to reach Harry’s cellphone, the one he’s carrying today. Just press the number 8 and it will ring through to Harry.’
‘Won’t you need the phone?’ Harry demanded, although what he wanted to know was who had the number one to seven positions on Grace’s cellphone.
He knew she didn’t have a mother …
‘I’ve got my radio,’ she reminded him, ‘and just about everyone at the civic centre will be clutching their mobiles so they can report on conditions to their relatives in far-flung places or sell their phone pictures to television stations. I think I’ll manage without one.’
‘Because you’ve no relatives in far-flung places?’ Harry asked, disturbed that the question of family and Grace had never occurred to him before tonight’s revelations.
‘Because I’ll be far too busy to be phoning anyone,’ Grace replied. ‘Come on, we’ve people to evacuate.’
They ran from the house to the car, and he struggled to open the door and let her in, but even if conversation had been possible he wouldn’t have known what to say. In some vague way he sensed that Grace was right about leaving Daisy where she was, but for so long his practical self had ruled his emotional self that it took a little bit of adjusting to accept emotion might have a place even in emergency situations.
Fortunately the next four couples were more easily moved, and by the time they had the last of them settled in the civic centre, everyone had been checked off the evacuation list.
Harry looked around the crowded area. Babies cried, and small children, excited by the different location and the thrill of being awake in the early hours of the morning, ran around excitedly. Somewhere a dog barked, and a cockatoo let out a loud squawk of complaint, but most of the refugee pets were as well behaved as their human owners.
‘At least the majority took note of what we said, about making sure they had animal carriers for their pets as part of their cyclone preparations.’
Grace was by his side and he nodded, acknowledging it had been a good idea. The circular dropped in the letterbox of every dwelling in town had not only been an initiative of the SES, but had been delivered by the volunteers.
‘Where’s Sport?’ she asked, looking at a small kelpie cross who was protesting loudly about his accommodation.
‘He’s at my parents’ place. I couldn’t risk leaving him in the house when I knew I wouldn’t be there.’
‘Bet he’s furious he’s missing all the fuss,’ Grace said, and Harry smiled. He’d rescued the small kelpie pup from the local rubbish dump after a wild thunderstorm. Whether he’d been abandoned because of an injury to one leg, or the injury had happened during the storm, Harry didn’t know. He’d paid to have the leg treated, and when that hadn’t worked, the leg had been amputated. He’d intended giving the dog away, but the fiercely loyal animal had had other ideas, finding his way back to Harry’s no matter where he’d been taken.
In the end, his sheer determination had persuaded Harry to keep him.
‘I need to check on a few people,’ Grace said, and moved into the small corridor between sleeping bags, mattresses and assorted padding brought along by the evacuees.
He watched her bend to speak to a heavily pregnant woman who should probably have been at the hospital rather than here, then, mindful that watching Grace was not his job right now, he walked through to the kitchen area where volunteers were making sandwiches and handing out tea or coffee to anyone who wanted it. He grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich, thinking Grace was probably in need of sustenance as well.
She was at the far end of the hall, talking to one of her SES crew, her arms waving in the air as she explained some detail. And although she was wearing plain cargo trousers and a T-shirt, all Harry could see was a curvy figure in two scraps of blue lace.
Muttering to himself once again, he took his coffee into one of the meeting rooms so he could concentrate on the messages coming through on his radio. Reports told him where power lines were down and where the emergency crews on duty were handling problems. The hour when the radio operator would order everyone into safe shelters, whether at their homes, at the police station or here at the civic centre, was fast approaching. Another report told him the hospital had been switched over to generator power, and even as that message came through the lights went out in the civic centre.
There was a momentary darkness, which caused the kids to scream with pretend fear, then the generators kicked in and the lights flickered back to life, but that instant of darkness had reminded Harry of the blackout earlier.
Had reminded him of kissing Grace …
‘Boy, this food is good! It’s the roast lamb from the wedding. Apparently, after we left, Mrs P. set the remaining guests to making sandwiches with the leftover food. Some was delivered to the hospital and the rest here.’
Grace was munching on a sandwich as she came up behind Harry. Everything had been OK between them—maybe a trifle strained but still OK—while they’d been caught up in rescuing Troy and getting off the mountain. Then, apart from a slight altercation over sleep, while they’d organised the evacuations. But now, in this lull before the storm—literally—she wasn’t sure just where she stood with Harry.
Knew where she should stand—far, far away.
‘We’ve got about ten of the less injured people from the bus here,’ she said, taking another bite of sandwich and chewing it before getting back to the conversation. ‘Apparently all the belongings we gathered up at the accident site were taken to Reception at the hospital. By now most of the stuff belonging to the hospitalised people will have been matched up to them, so I wondered if we could go over and collect the rest—it must belong to those who are here and I’m sure they’ll all feel better if they have their own belongings with them.’
Harry shook his head, unable to believe he’d forgotten about the stuff he’d packed into the back of his vehicle.
‘It’s not at the hospital, it’s here. I’ll grab an able-bodied male and go get it from the car.’
‘Get two able-bodied men and let them do it. Take a break,’ Grace suggested, but Harry wasn’t listening, already talking to one of the locals who then followed him out of the hall.
Grace followed him to the door, waiting until the two men brought in the luggage and handbags, then she spread it out so people could identify their belongings. The bus passengers, recognising what was going on, moved through the crowded room, then one by one they swooped on personal possessions, every one of them clutching the piece of luggage to their chests, as if they’d found lost treasure.
‘It’s a security thing,’ Grace murmured, thinking how she’d clutched Harry’s dinner jacket—remembering she’d left it in a sodden heap on her living-room floor.
Slowly the pile diminished until all that remained was a new-looking backpack.
‘I wonder if the shoe belongs to that one,’ Harry said, and knelt beside it, opening the fastening at the top and spilling out the contents.
‘Damn it to hell!’ Grace heard him whisper, as he pushed small shorts and T-shirts into one pile and some women’s clothing into another. ‘There is another child!’
‘That’s my dog!’
Max knew he should be pleased he’d finally found Scruffy, but the kid from the bus was clutching the dog against his chest and looked as if he’d never let him go.
All eyes, the kid. Huge eyes Max could see even though it was as dark as dark could be.
The kid was crouched under a tree fern—stupid place to shelter ‘cos the water came straight through the leaves of tree ferns.
‘Come on,’ he told the kid. ‘We’ve got to find the road. Or get back to the bus so we can get out of the rain.’
The kid shook his head and must have squeezed S
cruffy tighter because Scruffy gave a yelp.
‘You can hold the dog,’ Max offered, and watched while the kid considered this. Then he stood up and Max saw his feet. One foot—bare—the other in a sneaker, the bare one cut and scratched and probably bleeding, although it was too dark to see the red of blood.
Everything was black.
‘Hang on,’ he told the kid and he sat down and took off his sneakers, then his socks, then he pulled his sneakers back on over his bare feet. Hard ‘cos they were wet.
‘You have the socks,’ he told the kid. ‘Put both on your foot that’s lost its shoe. I’d give you my shoe but it’d be too big. Go on, sit down and do it. I’ll hold the dog.’
The kid sat and reluctantly gave up his hold on Scruffy, though when Max hugged his pup against his chest Scruffy gave a different yelp.
‘He’s hurt,’ Max whispered, holding the dog more carefully now.
The kid nodded, but he was doing as he was told, pulling on one sock then the other over it.
The dog was shivering so Max tucked him inside his T-shirt, then he reached out and took the kid’s hand.
He’d walked downhill from the bus, so it and the road must be uphill.
‘Let’s go, kid,’ he said, hoping he sounded brave and sensible. Sensible was good, he knew, because Mum always kissed him when she said he’d been sensible.
And brave was good. All the knights he read about were brave.
He didn’t feel brave. What he felt was wet and cold and scared …
CHAPTER SEVEN
GRACE watched as Harry reached for his cellphone and dialled a number, then shook his head in disgust and slammed the offending machine back into his pocket.
Whoever he was phoning must be out of range.
Now he pulled his radio out and began speaking into it, calling to someone, waiting for a reply, calling someone to come in.
Urgently!
Harry put the radio away and began repacking the clothing into the backpack, folding small T-shirts with extraordinary care. Grace watched him work, but as he pulled the cord tight and did up the catch on the top, she could no longer ignore the anguish on his face.
She knelt beside him and took the capable hands, which had trembled as he’d folded clothes, into hers.
‘Are there kids out there? Do you know that for sure?’
He nodded.
‘Georgie’s Max we know for sure, and now this.’
He pulled the little sneaker from his pocket, poking the tip of his finger in and out of the hole that made up the eye of the fish painted on it.
‘Two kids.’
Despair broke both the words.
‘We can go back,’ Grace suggested, urgency heating her voice. ‘Go and look for them.’
‘I can’t go, and logically nor can you. You’re a team captain—this cyclone will pass and we’ll both be flat out sorting the damage and running rescue missions.’
He took a deep breath, then eased his captured hand away from hers.
‘Georgie’s gone to look—she and Alistair. We’ll just have to hope they’re in time.’
In time—what a dreadful phrase.
But the second child?
‘If there’s a second child unaccounted for, why has no one mentioned it? Why has no one said my child’s missing?’
One possible answer struck her with the force of a blow.
‘The woman who died? Oh, Harry, what if it’s her child?’
‘That’s what I’ve been thinking,’ Harry said bleakly, ‘although there’s a woman at the hospital who’s in an induced coma at the moment, so maybe the child belongs to her. And the woman who died had a boyfriend—surely he’d have mentioned a child.’
Grace tried to replay the rescue scene in her mind—a badly injured woman had been rescued early in the proceedings. Susie’s sister, who’d acted as a bridesmaid at the wedding, had been looking after her.
‘Let’s hope it’s her and that she lives and that Georgie finds both kids,’ Grace said, although this seemed to be asking an awful lot.
Worry niggled at her mind—two children lost in the bush in a cyclone?
Worry was pointless, especially now with Willie so close. There were things she had to do. She looked around at the people settling down to sleep, at the two paramedics and four SES volunteers, not sleeping, watchful.
‘Everything’s under control here. If you wouldn’t mind giving me a lift, I’ll go back to Mrs Aldrich’s place and sit out the blow with her.’
‘Sit out the blow?’ Harry echoed. ‘It’s obvious you’ve never been in a cyclone. The whole house could go, Grace.’
‘So I can give her a hand to get under the bed. I had a look at that bed. It’s an old-fashioned one, with solid timber posts on the corners and solid beams joining them. Safe as houses—safer, in fact, than some of the houses in this town.’
‘And you talk about me taking risks?’ Harry muttered, but as he, too, had been worried about Daisy Aldrich—in between worrying about two children—maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Only …
‘You stay here, I’ll go and sit with her,’ he said and knew it was a mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth.
‘We’ve already been through the hero thing a couple of times tonight! But not this time, Harry. Mrs Aldrich is my responsibility—’
The ringing was barely audible in the general hubbub of the room. Harry pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and checked the screen.
‘Your number,’ he said to Grace as he lifted the little phone to his ear and said a tentative hello.
‘Harry, Daisy Aldrich. Karen from next door is here and she’s having her baby and it’s early and she can’t get hold of Georgie who’s not at the hospital or at home so can Grace come?’
‘We’ll be right there,’ Harry promised, closing his phone and motioning to Grace.
‘You win,’ he said. ‘We need a nurse. Daisy’s next-door neighbour is having a baby.’
‘Karen? I saw her last week when she came for a check-up. She’s not due for three or four weeks.’
‘Tell the baby that,’ Harry said, leading the way out of the hall.
Daisy was in her kitchen, boiling water on a small gas burner when Grace and Harry arrived.
‘I don’t know why people boil water,’ she said, waving her hand towards the simmering liquid. ‘No one ever did anything with boiling water when I was having my babies.’
A cry from the back of the house reminded them of why they were there.
‘We dragged a mattress into the bathroom and she’s lying on that. She’d never have got under the bed, the size she is.’
Grace was already hurrying in the direction of the cry. Another battery lantern was barely bright enough to light the room, but Grace could see the shadowy shape that was Karen, hunched up on the mattress which had been placed between the wall and an old-fashioned, claw-footed bath.
Fluid made dark smears across the mattress, but before Grace could check if it was water from the birth sac or blood, Karen cried out again, helplessly clutching the edge of the bath, her body contorting with pain.
‘It hurts too much,’ she said. ‘Make it stop. Please, make it stop.’
Grace knelt beside her, sliding her hand around to rest on Karen’s stomach, feeling the rigidity there.
‘How long have you been having contractions?’ she asked Karen as the stomach muscles relaxed.
‘This morning,’ the girl sobbed, ‘but I thought they were those pretend ones with the silly name. The baby’s not due for three weeks. And everyone was telling me first babies are always late so they had to be the pretend contractions.’
‘Have you timed them at all?’ Grace asked, trying to unlock Karen’s death grip on the bath so she could lay the young woman down to examine her.
‘No!’ Karen roared, crunching over in pain again. ‘You time them!’
She puffed and panted, occasionally throwing out combinations of swear words Grace had never heard before.
Grace pulled a towel off the towel rail, then looked around to see Harry and Mrs Aldrich peering in through the door.
‘Could you find something soft to wrap the baby in? And some spare towels would be good. And scissors, if you have them,’ she said, then looked at Harry.
‘How long do we have before Willie arrives?’
‘Three quarters of an hour, according to the latest alert. He’s also been upgraded—definitely a category five now.’
He looked around at the walls and ceiling of the bathroom.
‘This room’s too big for safety—the load-bearing walls are too far apart—although the bath looks solid enough.’
But Grace’s attention was back on Karen, who with a final shriek of pain had delivered a tiny baby boy.
He was blue, but as Grace cleared mucous from his mouth and nose, he gave a cry and soon the bluish skin turned a beautiful rosy pink.
‘You little beauty,’ Grace whispered to him, holding him gently in the towel.
Mrs Aldrich returned with the scissors, more towels and a soft, well-worn but spotlessly clean teatowel.
‘That’s the softest I’ve got,’ she said, peering into the room then giving a cry of surprise when she saw the baby. ‘It’s the way of the world—one dies and another takes his place,’ she said quietly, then she padded away, no doubt to sit beside her Bill.
‘I’ll call him William Harry,’ Karen said, as Grace wrapped the baby in the teatowel and handed him to Karen, suggesting she hold him to her breast. But Karen didn’t hear, her eyes feasting on the little mortal in her arms, her attention so focussed on his tiny form Grace had to blink away a tear. ‘William after Bill, who was always kind to me, and Harry after Harry because he was here.’
Grace looked up at Harry who was pale and tense, shaking his head as if he didn’t want a baby named after him. But even as Grace wondered about this reaction she became aware of the roaring noise outside the house and understood his lack of emotion. Another William—Willie—was nearly on them.
She turned her attention back to Karen, massaging her stomach to help her through the final stage of labour, then cutting and knotting the cord and cleaning both mother and child.
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 43