The Most Magical Gift of All

by Fiona Lowe

  Greg filled a clean glass with the cold amber fluid. ‘Do you want to order dinner now before the rush?’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll have the blackened kangaroo-fillet with corn-coriander salsa.’

  ‘Good choice. I’ll bring it over to you at that table over there, shall I?’ He inclined his head towards the Scandinavian beauties.

  Holidays mean doing whatever you want, whenever you want. No rules. ‘Why not?’ Jack picked up his beer and slid off the bar stool, making his way over to the table.

  As he neared, the conversational buzz of the bar suddenly dropped to a low hum and the women’s eyes looked beyond him. Wondering what or who had caught their attention, he started to turn when he heard, “Excuse me?”

  Two words spoken in the brisk accent of a British nanny silenced the bar completely. ‘Is Dr Jack Armitage here?’

  Sophie. He’d recognise those clipped vowels anywhere. A rush of desire rocked through him. But, as he spun around, unease instantly returned his blood to his head, along with rational thought and a barrage of questions. Sophie belonged in Barragong, being the town’s doctor. She did not belong here on his holiday. He pushed forward through the crowd.

  Sophie stood in the doorway, her red hair now flaming as the tight curls captured the glint of the early-evening sun reflecting off the ochre soil. Her soft cheeks had an unfamiliar hard edge and her melt-in-your-mouth, milk-chocolate eyes, which had radiated lust and pleasure, now glinted with confusion and determination. ‘Jack!’

  Time wound down to incremental flashes—a child’s voice, Sophie’s arm being jerked forward before falling back by her side, a dash of movement across the floor followed by a thump against his legs. Surprise made him look down; a small black-haired head rested against his thighs. ‘Immy?’ His hand automatically caressed her hair in a loving gesture as his thoughts scrambled to find purchase.

  Imogen belonged in Barragong.

  Sophie belonged in Barragong.

  He glanced to Sophie, taking in her reproving gaze, before returning to Im’s upturned face that held the needy and yet resigned look of a child desperate for love and trying hard to find it.

  A child his mother supported with respite care when Imogen’s mother couldn’t cope or didn’t want to even try.

  A child needing to be cared for. Today. Right now.

  And his mother was in the Pacific, weeks away from Barragong.

  A bolt of iridescent white fury thundered though him. Why now, Kylie? But the question was rhetorical, because the answer wouldn’t change a thing. A little girl needed caring for and he had to find someone to do it. The iron bars of duty clanged loudly as they crashed into place, encasing him like a jail. Barragong had done it again. His long-anticipated holiday had just been seriously derailed but, if he had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t be for very long.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘SOMEBODY told me there is a doctor here?’ A German backpacker arrived, panting, at the door. ‘My girlfriend, she is feeling sick for all of the day. Can you come to her in the hostel?’

  Jack picked up Imogen, hitching her to his hip. ‘Sure, mate, just give us a minute, OK?’ He needed to hear the story behind Sophie’s unexpected arrival with Imogen, even though most of him knew it was probably one-hundred-percent to do with the unreliable Kylie and sadly nothing to do with Im’s father, who’d shot through years ago.

  But the backpacker instead turned to Sophie, his voice suddenly breaking with emotion. ‘Please, she is very sick.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘I’ll come now. Just let me get my bag from the truck.’ She stepped out from under the veranda and marched towards the four-wheel-drive, the gravel crunching loudly under her boots.

  ‘Soph.’ Jack called out to her but Sophie just kept walking, the set of her shoulders clearly saying, I’m busy, don’t mess with me. Well, it was too late for that; he’d messed plenty, but the fact they’d had sex was irrelevant. He wanted answers about Imogen. He strode out and caught her up. ‘Surely we can walk and talk?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘Not in front of—’

  ‘Please can you hurry?’ The German backpacker urged Sophie on.

  ‘Are you a bloody Australian, Jack?’ Imogen asked, pressing in against his shoulder.

  He gave a wry smile, the words going some way to denting his fury with Kylie and the world, reducing it all to a dull roar. ‘Is that what Sophie called me?’

  ‘I thought you were asleep!’ Sophie sounded aghast as she reached the vehicle.

  The little girl shrugged as if it was no big deal, which for Im it wouldn’t be. Sadly, she would have heard a lot worse. ‘She said it in the car when we left home and when the kangaroo jumped on the road. She talks funny.’

  Jack nodded, although ‘funny’ wasn’t the word that came to mind. Sexy.

  Let it go, mate. One night only.

  Sophie hauled out the medical backpack followed by a bright-pink backpack and Im’s tatty but much-loved Sheils, the emu. She pushed the child’s belongings into his chest. ‘Here are your things, Imogen. It was nice to meet you, but I have to go and help someone now, and Jack will look after you.’ She shot him a pointed look and walked away with the young German.

  Nice to meet you? He shook his head in disbelief. It was like she was talking to an adult, not a five-year-old girl. Jack watched her go, tamping down his frustration, even though he knew Sophie was right. The patient came first and he couldn’t really talk to her with Imogen present. He sighed, a long, resigned breath. He’d just have to wait.

  He readjusted the little girl onto his hip. The poor kid had black rings under her eyes and looked exhausted, but that was too often the case when her mother was busy chasing the next unobtainable dream rather than looking after the needs of her child. ‘Are you hungry, Im?’

  ‘No.’ Her head dropped to his shoulder and her thumb crept to her mouth.

  He stroked her hair, tucking her head into his neck. The kid needed a bed and a decent sleep. He headed back to the hotel but bypassed the bar and instead walked to his room. Pulling back the sheets, he lowered Imogen into the bed. ‘Now, you and Sheils cuddle up, OK, and have a sleep. When you wake up someone will be here. Me or—’

  ‘Min?’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but Min’s not here. She’s on a big ship, having a holiday.’ He could string Kylie up for doing this to Im.

  Her lids drooped. ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Probably not Sophie. Another grown-up, but I won’t be far away, I promise.’

  Most kids would have kicked up a fuss. Not Im. She just accepted what he said, closed her eyes and snuggled down. Jack’s heart bled that she was so accommodating and that her life was so chaotic. He leaned forward and brushed her forehead with his lips, feeling like he’d been split into two distinct parts that never met—absolute rage towards her unreliable mother and a deep caring for this little girl with a tough life.

  He left a lamp on low and crossed the room to the bathroom. Stripping out of his leathers, he took a shower, letting the warm water stream over his body, removing the traces of the man who’d left Barragong on a motorbike. He rubbed himself dry as the last vestiges of ‘holiday Jack’ got locked down, and he pulled on clean clothes. He rang Reception and one of the young women who’d checked him in promptly offered to sit with Imogen for an hour, giving him some time to find a way through this kerfuffle.

  Sophie bit her lip and re-examined the feverish young woman with heavy-lidded eyes who looked so seriously unwell that all thoughts of Jack and Imogen had got instantly filed under ‘later’ when she’d arrived fifteen minutes ago.

  Her boyfriend, Paul, hovered anxiously, wiping his girlfriend’s brow with a damp cloth.

  ‘How long have you been feeling like this, Lara?’

  She groaned and grabbed a bowl, vomiting into it.

  Paul wrung his hands. ‘She has sore tummy for a long time now.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Since we leave Indonesia. She feel sick some days, and then she is
OK for a few days, and then sick again with diarrhoea.’

  Travelling through Asia meant the chance of picking up something like Giardia or another parasitic infection was high, and Lara’s symptoms right up until now matched that of the more chronic pattern of a parasite. She took Lara’s pulse again: thready and tachycardic. This was an acute case of something. She turned back to Paul. ‘Sick like this?’

  ‘No, no. This only for two days. She vomits for two days and eats nothing. She tell me it is her—’ Paul’s ears pinked up ‘—her woman’s monthly, but she has never been like this before.’

  Sophie nodded, agreeing that severe dehydration and vomiting bile wasn’t usually caused by dysmenorrhoea. She took the bowl from Lara’s hands and helped her lie down again. ‘I need to feel your tummy, OK?’

  Lara seemed barely able to nod.

  She palpated the woman’s abdomen, her fingers hitting a bloated, rigid abdominal wall, and the woman flinched. ‘Lara, have you used your bowels recently?’

  ‘I think she is too sick to concentrate on English.’ Paul translated into German and Lara’s hands fluttered around her face in embarrassment as she replied. ‘She says she has had diarrhoea very badly today.’

  Sophie patted her patient’s hand. There was nothing worse than being a million miles away from everything that was familiar and being desperately ill. She wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around Lara’s arm and listened to the whoosh and thrub of the blood pounding against the arteries. She checked it a second time, hoping she’d missed the systolic reading the first time. She hadn’t. It was far too low.

  High fever, low blood-pressure and a bloated and rigid abdominal wall. As she placed her stethoscope onto Lara’s abdomen, she heard a knock on the door.

  Paul opened it and she heard Jack’s melodic voice introducing himself.

  Her heart skipped a beat and she immediately shut out the sound of his voice and concentrated on Lara’s bowel sounds, or lack of bowel sounds; the normal gurgle she expected to hear was absent.

  As she pulled the stethoscope out of her ears, she smelt Jack’s clean, fresh scent of soap and sunshine before she heard his softly spoken words stroking her behind her ear.

  ‘Sophie.’

  The deep timbre of his voice sent a tingle racing through her, fleetingly touching every part of her before diving deep and settling in to vibrate her core. She swung the stethoscope around her neck, steadying herself before she glanced up into intense and serious mauve eyes that shimmered with traces of blue. Her stomach jolted.

  She’d stared deeply into those eyes a few hours ago and lost herself in their sizzling thrill and passion, but now only the colour was familiar, the gaze being only professional and remote. It wasn’t just the gaze that was different. Everything else about him had utterly changed—how he held himself, how he dressed. The bad boy was no longer. Gone was the close-fitting white T-shirt and the glorious black-leather trousers. In their place he wore a short-sleeved, blue-and-white, broad-striped shirt and navy-blue knee-length shorts, held against his hips by a plain leather belt with a simple silver buckle. His hair, which had struck her as unusually neat when he’d worn leathers, now perfectly suited the crisp and pressed image of a country doctor who took life seriously. Very seriously.

  Like Simon: the sort of man she avoided at all costs.

  She bit her lip again. It was like staring at a stranger, and deep down inside her something battled hard not to shed a tear of loss.

  ‘Imogen’s being cared for by the receptionist so I’m here to give you a hand.’ His tone was all business, as if they were colleagues who’d just met.

  She huffed out a breath. Technically, she supposed they had just met. She matched his businesslike tone. ‘I need the defibrillator from the truck.’

  ‘Right. Done.’ Jack gave her a curt nod, one that said he understood the urgency, and stepped out of the room.

  ‘What is wrong?’

  Paul must have caught the worried glance she’d given Jack. Sophie wasn’t totally certain about her diagnosis, but what Lara needed right now was standard emergency treatment: airway; breathing; circulation. ‘Lara’s very dehydrated and needs fluids.’

  She quickly found the tourniquet, a litre of Hartmann’s electrolyte solution and an IV pack inside the emergency medical-kit, and primed the tubing. She handed the bag to Paul. ‘Find something to hang that off, or stand there and hold it high.’

  ‘I will be the pole.’ Despite his palpable fear, he nobly raised his arm, holding it above his head so the fluid could flow as soon as the valve was opened.

  It took her three attempts to find a vein, her fingers probing desperately for one that hadn’t collapsed, and she’d only just slid the cannula into Lara’s leg when Jack returned with the requested machine.

  He gently placed the dots on the half-conscious woman’s chest. ‘She’s dehydrated, so ectopic beats are expected with gastro.’

  Sophie watched his long, deft fingers connecting the electrodes and tried valiantly to block out the image of those wondrous hands caressing her body to fever pitch, and how their touch had separated her body and mind in a spiral of bone melting bliss. This was the exact reason why a girl wasn’t supposed to re-meet a casual lover. Sophie leaned in and said, sotto voce, ‘I’m expecting arrhythmias.’

  His brows shot to his hairline as he stared at the small screen of the defibrillator. ‘What’s your diagnosis? Obviously more than gastro.’

  Sophie tugged on a curl. ‘It’s a confusing picture. She’s got a fever, guarded abdomen, is vomiting bile and has no bowel sounds, but earlier today she had uncontrollable diarrhoea. Added into that mix, she’s been travelling in Asia, but I’m now thinking that could be a red herring.’

  Jack remained silent but his forehead creased into a deep frown as he ran the symptoms through his head. Sophie saw the moment he came to her conclusion. ‘The diarrhoea aside, it sounds like a bowel obstruction and peritonitis.’

  ‘Exactly, so I’ll stabilise and evacuate. But Barragong is two hours by road.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘This young woman needs to go to Flinders Medical Centre asap.’

  Sophie had no idea where that was, so she delegated according to knowledge. Jack knew exactly who to ring.

  ‘Can you organise that while I insert a naso-gastric tube, put in a second line and start her on broad-spectrum antibiotics?’

  He gave her a grim nod and turned to Paul. ‘Lara’s very ill, mate, and we’re going to evacuate her by plane to Adelaide.’

  Paul paled under his tan. ‘I must go with her.’

  ‘Of course. There’s usually room on the plane for one relative.’ Jack clapped his hand onto the young man’s shoulders. ‘Keep holding those IV bags up and I’ll ring the flying doctors. Back soon.’

  As Sophie pulled the trocar out of an IV cannula and connected up the second drip, she wished she had access to a lab so she knew exactly where Lara’s blood chemistry was at, but given the runs of arrhythmias it was seriously out of whack. Balancing the correct amount of potassium without under-administering or over-administering was like tip-toeing through a minefield so she had to depend on the amount in the Hartmanns to do the job. ‘Lara, I have to slide this tube into your nose and down your throat. Try and breathe long, deep breaths for me.’

  Lara’s eyes fluttered, and Sophie’s breath stalled as her gaze swung to the ECG reading, but the expected run of arrhythmias was thankfully absent. Lara’s barely rouse-able state was currently due to the high fever and the suspected mess of bowel contents in her peritoneum. Not that it made it any less of a concern; Lara was desperately ill and needed surgery sooner rather than later.

  ‘We’re in luck.’ Jack burst into the room all energy and organisation. ‘There’s a crew just finished a clinic at Mootabrook Station so they’re diverting to us.’

  Half an hour later, Sophie watched her very first flying-doctor’s plane with its distinctive blue-and-red stripes take off into a dusky, red-streaked, outback sky. She
’d been both amazed and relieved at the set-up of the plane as an airborne intensive-care unit; hopefully they’d get Lara to Adelaide before she deteriorated any more. ‘How long does it ta—?’ She turned towards Jack but her question died on her lips. He was no longer standing next her. In fact, he was fast disappearing back towards the hotel, plumes of red dust rising from his heels. What on earth?

  She rubbed her temples, the long, long day catching up with her; it was hard to believe she’d only got off the bus nine hours ago. Thankfully her job here was done. She’d delivered the little girl to Jack, and Imogen was now his responsibility. Sophie could return to Barragong. Alone.

  Blessedly alone.

  She absently scratched her arm, recalling the trip with Imogen who’d constantly asked her questions and had wanted her to hold conversations with the toy emu that looked like it needed a jolly good wash. Just shut up, Sophie, you’re not Mum.

  She shut out her younger sister’s voice. Sophie knew that she and kids didn’t match, and the journey with Imogen had stressed her more than dealing with casualties of war, so she was glad she didn’t have to do a repeat performance. The thought of returning to the lovely homestead and having it all to herself wrapped around her like a warm blanket on a cold night.

  As for leaving Jack behind, well he’d made that unexpectedly easy. Not one trace of the man she’d been so inextricably drawn to existed any more. She ached for the loss of all that wicked charm.

  A jet of anger spouted up, fizzing in her veins. OK, so it was pretty uncomfortable meeting up again so soon after completely uninhibited sex, especially as they’d never planned to meet again—but it wasn’t like she’d come chasing after him. She’d been forced to find him because of the child, and she had no intention of hanging around and intruding on his holiday. Her being here certainly didn’t warrant rude avoidance tactics like this or a complete personality change.

  It was like a stranger had moved right in.