Bushfire Bride

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘HE’S got time,’ Sam said uneasily. He was watching Rachel, watching the stricken look in her eyes. He didn’t understand all of what was going on here but he understood enough. ‘The fire’s coming through fast but there’s no hint of firestorm yet. If he’s sensible…if the wind stays at its current force…’

Only, of course, it didn’t.

Ten minutes after Hugo had left, the wind strengthened from strong to gale force, ripping across the crowded beach with a force that was terrifying. The blast of hot air before the fire was almost overpowering. Rachel was stooped over a stretcher. Bridget McLeod had turned a hundred the week before. The heat was making her badly dehydrated and Rachel was setting up a saline drip. As the searing wind blasted across the beach, the woman pushed her away.

‘There’s others need you more. Leave me be.’

‘There’s no need to be noble,’ Rachel told her, trying not to sound panicky behind her mask. ‘We’re organised for this.’

She finished what she was doing and straightened, trying to see through the swirling smoke. But the townsfolk were prepared. A heat like this couldn’t last. The gale-force wind would blast through with frightening force but, because of the beach, they could survive. After the initial fire front, firefighting operations could begin again.

But for now… The little populace were hauling blankets over their heads, following orders that had been drilled into this fire-prone town since their childhood. Those who couldn’t walk were being carried into the shallows.

‘Toby.’ Rachel turned to find Myra at her side. Myra had Toby in her arms with blankets wedged between them.

‘There’s nothing more you can do, lass. Stay with us during the worst,’ Myra said, and there was no choice. Two firefighters had hold of Bridget’s stretcher and were carrying her into the shallows, the old lady already covered with a soaking blanket. The rest of the stretchers were lined up where the waves broke lightly over patients’ feet. Every patient had an allocated carer, each with sodden blankets.

Toby was whimpering with fear.

The noise from the fire was almost deafening.

‘Take care of Toby,’ Hugo had said.

Hugo.

Oh, God, Hugo…

She couldn’t think of him, now. She mustn’t.

The people of this tiny town were huddled in the shallows. She could scarcely breathe. There was nothing to do except survive.

Somewhere out there was Hugo.

‘If I survive, so must you,’ she whispered to herself as she dropped to her knees in the shallows. Toby crawled from Myra’s arms to hers and clung. They had their blankets right over their heads, a sodden canopy to stop the shower of burning ash falling directly onto them. The fire was a roaring inferno. Despite the pall of smoke she could sense the flames-a wall of fire bursting down from the mountains. The air was being sucked up. The oxygen. It was so hard to breathe…

‘I want my daddy,’ Toby whimpered, and Rachel held him close and whispered into his hair.

‘So do I,’ she murmured. ‘So do I. But Daddy’s gone to see a patient. He’ll be back soon. Please…’

‘Sue-Ellen?’ Hugo was out of the car, holding woollen wadding over his face to augment his mask as he raced toward the burning house. Vision was down to almost nothing-the fire was all around him. The trees overhead were roaring with flames.

It had caught. The back of the house had caught.

On this side of the house at least there was a little shelter. The house itself was stopping the worst of the blast. So far.

Hugo was coughing, retching. Yelling. Thinking fast. Maybe she’d gone to the dam. Maybe. It was the obvious place.

Surely she wouldn’t still be in the house?

‘Sue-Ellen…’

Something hit his legs-something alive. He looked down to see a half-grown collie pup whining in terror. Scratching at the door. Whining again…

Dear God.

The dog’s body language was unmistakable. She was inside.

For something that had threatened for so long, it was over with a speed that was frightening all by itself. One minute the population of Cowral was crouched in the shallows while the fire blasted its way right over their heads. The next the front had moved on. The air was still choked with smoke and debris but the roaring receded. The feeling that the very air required to breathe was being sucked away was replaced by the same choking, thick sensation that had been with them most of the day.

With the passing of the front the wind dropped. The fire had made its own wind. A vortex. That’s what the firefighters had said could happen and now Rachel believed them.

Toby was still cradled in her arms. Myra was beside them, their bodies a threesome of contact with the waves splashing over them in a rhythm that had been crazily undisturbed by the fire.

Rachel pushed back her blanket and peered cautiously out.

Around her everyone was doing the same-a field of grey, sodden ghosts arising from the ashes. Katy and her baby. The ancient Bridget, hauling back her blanket herself and peering out with an interest that belied her hundred years.

Casualties?

Sam was beside her, pushing himself out from underneath something that looked like a vast eiderdown. His wife was beside him. Sylvia Nieve still had a head full of hair-rollers and as she pushed back the eiderdown she gave them a cautious pat. Making sure of what was important.

‘Did everyone get to the beach?’ Rachel asked, and the cold feeling of dread in the pit of her heart felt like a lump of lead.

‘Elaine Baxter and Les Harding arrived just as it hit,’ Ian told her. ‘One of the men got bitten by one of Les’s cats. The cats are here in a cage-if someone hasn’t drowned them.’

‘But Hugo…?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t come back. He’ll have been well into the hills when it hit.’

‘Seeing his patient,’ Rachel said swiftly, as Toby turned a fearful face toward Sam. She had to stay calm. Hysterics would help no one. ‘There was a lady who’s ill up in the hills and your daddy has gone to look after her. And I need to go, too. Toby, can you stay with Myra while your daddy and I keep on working? I’ll see anyone here who needs help and then… Sam, how long do you think before we can get through to Sue-Ellen’s place?’

‘I’ll check with the fire chief,’ Sam told her.

‘As soon as it’s safe to move, let me know,’ Rachel told him. She gave Toby a hard hug, as much to reassure herself as to reassure Toby. ‘Hugo might… Hugo might need help.’

‘The chief’ll send a tanker.’

‘I’ll come, too.’

She worked solidly on the beach, coping with breathing difficulties and myriad minor injuries while she waited for the fire chief to declare it safe to travel through the town to Sue-Ellen’s farmlet beyond.

‘I can’t believe how lightly we’ve got off.’ The chief, a grizzled man in his fifties, pushed back his hard hat and wiped his forehead as he surveyed the clearing beach. ‘The storm sucked everything up in its path but we’ve done such a good clearing job around the town that we’ve only lost four houses. And they were holiday accommodation where no one followed orders to clear.’

Once the firestorm had passed, the townsfolk streamed back to their homes in time to put out spot fires and stop the fire from taking hold. Now the main front had reached the point where land became sea. Cowral was still surrounded by a ring of fire but increasingly the town looked safe.

But Hugo…

‘Can we go?’ Rachel finished wrapping a burned arm with a sterile dressing. A burning branch had been flung into the shallows at the height of the fire-it must have been blown for a quarter of a mile-but the child who’d been hit was already aching to get back to the excitement. Rachel clipped the dressing, gave the boy’s parents a rueful grin and turned back to the fire chief.

‘You don’t want to go with us, Doc,’ he told her. ‘I’ve got Gary Lewis on the truck already-he’s been out on the front and when he found out Sue-Ellen didn’t make it to the beach he nearly went berserk. There’s one of you emotionally involved.’

‘And you’re not?’

He met her look square on. And sighed.

‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘Of course I am.’

‘Then what are we arguing over?’ She was dressed in her firefighting gear. Toby was safe with Myra. There was no one else needing urgent treatment. And somewhere out there was Hugo.

She definitely needed to go.

But still the fire chief hesitated. ‘Doc…’

‘What?’

‘You’re not seeing this at its worst,’ he told her. ‘The river’s blocked the worst of the blast here. If we were right before the front…’

She gazed at his grim face and saw the message he was trying not to tell her. ‘You’re telling me there’s little chance Hugo’s survived?’

‘The boys are trying to clear the road now,’ he told her. ‘We’ll let you know.’

‘No.’ She straightened her shoulders in an unconscious brace position. ‘I’m a doctor. He… They may be hurt.’

His eyes met hers. Giving her the truth. ‘To be honest, Doc, the chances are that they’re a lot more than hurt.’

‘I know. But if not… I’m bringing medical supplies and I’m coming.’

Sue-Ellen Lesley lived five minutes’ drive out of town but it took two fire crews half an hour to reach it. Once outside the town boundaries there was thick bush-or what was left of thick bush. Now there was simply smouldering fire.

Eucalypts burned fast. The trees were already starting to smoulder rather than flame and the smell of burning eucalyptus oil was overpowering. Branches had dropped across the road. Trees were down. Every obstacle they reached had to be dealt with slowly-flames put out and the wood cooled enough to shift. Two fire crews worked in tandem, with a water tanker ferrying water as needed.

By the time they reached the tiny farmhouse where Sue-Ellen lived, Rachel was almost ready to scream.

‘You sure you’re not needed back in town?’ The fire chief’s face was grim as they rounded the last corner. Rachel had been working as hard as any of his team, joining the hard manual labour that had been needed to clear the road. She was working as one of his crew but there were personal issues here. He could see it. The set look on her face had him worried.

He was worried anyway. One of his boys was emotionally involved with Sue-Ellen and Gary was making himself sick with worry. And as well as Sue-Ellen… Well, this was Doc McInnes. Hell.

‘If I’m needed, they’ll contact me,’ Rachel told him shortly. ‘Elly knows where I am, and the radio network is still operational. But there’s nothing back in town but heat exhaustion and dehydration, and Elly and Don and David can cope with that.’

‘But-’

‘Don’t fight me on this,’ she told him. ‘We’re wasting time. Just get there.’

And then the farmhouse was in view. Or what was left of the farmhouse.

Nothing.

The tiny farm cottage looked almost as if it had been vaporised-sucked into thin air with only a smouldering slab remaining where the house had once stood. Even the chimney had collapsed in on itself and was now a low mound of crumbling, smoking brick.

Nothing could have survived this.

Hugo…

Rachel caught her breath. There was a car parked beside the wreck. Or what was left of a car.

A big old family sedan.

Hugo’s car.

Rachel was out of the truck before it stopped. Staring.

Her heart was somewhere else. Gone. A lifeless thing with no meaning. There were tears streaming down her face and she didn’t check them. She couldn’t.

Hugo.

And then a shout. From Gary, the giant of a young firefighter who was so worried about Sue-Ellen.

‘Over here. He’s over here. In the dam.’

Gary, who obviously knew the lie of the land, had spared not even a glance for the burnt-out shell of the house where it was obvious nothing could have survived, but he’d moved swiftly toward a bank over to the left. Now he stood on the rise and yelled back to them.

‘They’re over here. They’re in the dam. Doc with about thirty bloody goats and a dog and Sue-Ellen. They’re alive.’

Hugo was alive, but Sue-Ellen barely qualified. He’d heard them come but he could do nothing. The girl in his arms needed all his attention. Her eyes were wide but what she was seeing was invisible to him. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. Her blood pressure was way down and her pulse was thready and weak.

He needed equipment. He needed help.

The grass at the verge of the dam was still smouldering. He couldn’t move.

So he lay, supporting Sue-Ellen, partly submerged in the water. Beside them, her half-grown collie lay and whined and whined, and around them Sue-Ellen’s beloved angora goats shifted in anxiety.

The girl in his arms stirred and seemed to focus. ‘I…can’t…’ she whispered.

‘You don’t need to do anything, Sue-Ellen,’ he told her, trying hard to keep his voice reassuring and steady. ‘You’ve done it all. Your goats are fine. You’ve saved your pup. You’re burned but not too badly. You’ll be OK. People are coming. We’ll both be looked after. Your goats. Your dogs. All of us.’

She was no longer listening. She’d dropped again into unconsciousness.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them Rachel was slithering down the bank toward him.

His Rachel.

‘I haven’t been able to help. I haven’t had anything to work with,’ Hugo told her. The fire crew had laid a thermal blanket over the mud at the side of the dam. Gary-appalled beyond belief-had lifted Sue-Ellen’s limp body from Hugo’s grasp and laid her tenderly on the bank. Someone else had run for Rachel’s equipment. Now they were working fiercely in tandem.

Severe burns. Shock. Smoke inhalation. Why hadn’t they been able to get here earlier? Rachel thought fiercely as she checked blood pressure. Eighty over fifty. Hell.

‘Gary, look after Hugo,’ she ordered. As one of the few professional firefighters, Gary would know basic first aid, but Hugo was having none of it. He brushed Gary aside and reached for the IV equipment.

‘I’m fine. I haven’t been able to help but I can now.’

‘Are your hands burned?’

‘No.’

‘Your voice is rasping.’

‘I’m not burned. It’s just from smoke inhalation.’

‘Well, then…’

‘Leave it.’

She cast a doubtful glance at him but his look was grim and determined. She had the sense to let it be, moving to Sue-Ellen’s mouth, tilting her chin so her jaw dropped open.

‘I checked,’ Hugo said briefly. ‘There’s no obvious burns to her mouth. The pharynx isn’t swollen.’

‘Lucky.’ Rachel placed a stethoscope on Sue-Ellen’s chest while Hugo accepted the bag of saline from Gary and swabbed the girl’s bare arm. IV access would have to be ante-cubital-through the elbow-because of deep burns on her hands. She was still deeply unconscious.

‘Oh, God, she’s dying,’ the young firefighter whispered, and Rachel found time to glance up at him.

‘You sound like you love her,’ she said gently, and the young giant nodded. They were working together to rip away clothing and place the bags of saline.

‘We used to go out with each other. When she was diagnosed with schizophrenia she called it off. Said it was unfair to me. I came around last night to see if she needed help and she told me to clear off. But she didn’t want me to. I could tell. And then today I was caught out with the fire truck and couldn’t check. Hell. I didn’t know… I didn’t know…’

He hadn’t known how much he loved her, Rachel thought, with the sudden insight of someone who’d been down just that road.

‘She’ll be right,’ she said gently. ‘Gary, can you find us more blankets from the truck? I know it’s crazy but the water will have chilled her and we need her warm. You’ll find the sheets I brought-they look like a cross between plastic and tin foil. And I have sheets of clingwrap. I want them, too.’

The firefighter nodded, grateful to do anything. Anything! He disappeared at a run.

‘We need to contact air ambulance services,’ Hugo said in a voice that was growing more ragged by the minute.

‘I already have.’ It was the fire chief, appearing over the dam bank with his radio receiver still in his hand. ‘One of the state’s medical evacuation helicopters is available. Apparently our firestorm has upgraded us. Cowral’s become a priority and the chopper will be here in twenty minutes.’

‘If we can keep her alive,’ Hugo muttered, and Rachel shook her head.

‘There’s no doubt.’ She had an oxygen mask on the girl’s face and already Sue-Ellen’s complexion was deepening under the grime to something that looked more healthy. As if on cue, the girl stirred and moaned.

‘Morphine,’ Rachel murmured, reaching behind her for her bag, but it was Hugo who administered it. He was shocked and battered but he was working on autopilot.

‘Let me go. Let me go…’ It was a thready whisper but she was starting to fight them.

‘Haloperidol?’ Rachel queried, and Hugo nodded. If Sue-Ellen was schizophrenic then the whole combination of events might well be enough to push her over the edge. Sedation was imperative.

The fluids were flowing freely now. Rachel took another blood-pressure reading and breathed a bit more easily.

‘A hundred and ten, seventy. See, Hugo? We’ll do it.’

‘You’ll do it,’ he muttered. ‘I couldn’t do it without you. Hell, Rachel, I had nothing.’

‘Because your car went up in flames,’ she said brusquely. ‘It could be said you had an excuse. I don’t think the medical board is going to strike you off for losing your doctor’s bag. And you did save the patient.’

Gary arrived back, sliding down the bank with a bunch of blankets. He looked worried sick.

‘Let’s find the extent of these burns,’ Hugo said. He was starting to sound in control a bit-just a little. He lifted Sue-Ellen’s palms and grimaced. Rule of palm… Take the area of a size of a palm print and measure how many palm prints were burned on the girl’s body. Twenty? Thirty? They were looking at something like thirty per cent burns.

‘We need that fluid coming in fast.’

‘We have it,’ Rachel replied.

‘Have we got dressing packs?’

‘We have everything we need.’ She’d carried her bag with her, and she flipped it open. As Hugo started gently separating burned fingers-imperative in these first few minutes-she started sorting, handing Hugo sachets of specially formulated gel to soak the burns, then gauze to place over them before they wrapped the whole area in clingwrap. It was imperative to get the area sterile and air-free.

At what cost came the time spent in the dam? What infections were in the ash-and mud-laden water? But at least it meant she had a chance.

And a chance was what she most needed. As Gary stooped over Sue-Ellen and her eyes fluttered open and found Gary…as Gary lifted her hand to his face and held…just held, Rachel thought Sue-Ellen had everything she needed right here. Right now.

She was injured almost to death.

But she had her love and one look at Gary told her that it would take more than schizophrenia or bushfires to part them again.

And all of a sudden Rachel was blinking back tears. Of…envy?

‘She was in the house.’

Hugo was sitting in the mud on the dam bank, his head in his hands. Behind them the whirr of the helicopter was fading into the distance.

They’d lifted Sue-Ellen from the dam bank, warmed her shocked body, covered her burns with antiseptic gel and the thin plastic burn wrap and continued her on intravenous fluids. They’d given her as much morphine as they could. Then they’d loaded her into the medical evacuation helicopter where a team of skilled medicos were waiting to take her to Sydney.

Gary had gone, too. It hadn’t been discussed.

She had every chance of survival, Rachel thought as she watched the chopper disappear into the distance. Although the burns to her legs and hands were too extensive to be treated in a small country hospital, they shouldn’t be extensive enough to be life-threatening. Not with the prompt treatment she’d had and the fact that in an hour she’d be in the best burns unit in the state.

And the schizophrenia? With love and devotion she had a good chance of a stable life. Gary wasn’t about to be pushed aside again, for however noble a motive, Rachel thought.

And here… Already the goats were emerging from the water, starting to forage over burned ground. Amazingly, they even looked as if they were finding things to eat.

The goats might be back to business as usual but Hugo wasn’t. He was sitting on the dam bank, looking sick. Rachel sat down beside him, hauled Pudge, Sue-Ellen’s pup, up onto her knee and held the shaking dog. With her free hand she took Hugo’s and held that, too. Tight.

‘Hugo…’

He looked dreadful. While they’d worked over Sue-Ellen he’d been efficient, doctor in medical mode, but as the chopper left the fight seem to have drained out of him.

‘Hugo,’ she whispered again, and he stirred, as if trying to rouse himself from a dreadful dream.

‘The house had started to burn before I reached her,’ he said at last, wearily, as if hardly conscious that Rachel was beside him. ‘She must have gone back in. I yelled out and I could hear her inside the house, screaming for Pudge. Screaming. But Pudge was outside. The pup came to greet me as I pulled up, desperate. As if he knew his mistress was inside.’

‘So you went in.’

‘Of course.’ He winced and Rachel looked down at the hand she was holding. There were blisters there. Burns. He’d been wearing protective clothing and that was intact, but there were spot burns on his hands and on his face.

He’d been through hell.

She pulled back on her hand, afraid she was hurting him, but his grip tightened.

‘But you found her,’ she said softly, and he nodded.

‘I found her in the back bedroom and the curtains were burning. The window had exploded inward. And she had bare feet. Bare feet!’

‘Hugo-’

‘I should have come last night. I should have thought of Sue-Ellen then.’ He groaned. ‘Hell, I should have-’

‘You’re one man,’ she said gently.

‘I went to the beach.’

‘There was no danger last night. And other people checked. Gary loved her and he checked. She sent him away. There was nothing else you could do. You know that.’

‘But today-’

‘Today you came. You came in time. They’re saying on the beach that Sue-Ellen refused to evacuate. Do you think she would have evacuated if you’d ordered her to? You’re not omnipotent, Hugo. You’re human. You’re a doctor and a really fine one at that, but you’re still human.’ She took his palms into her hands and looked down. He was burned but not too badly. Still… Her face twisted. Dear God, he’d come so close. ‘You’re a lovely, lovely man,’ she whispered. ‘The best… Oh, God, Hugo if I’d lost you…’

He wasn’t hearing. He was still with Sue-Ellen.

‘I thought she was stable,’ he said bleakly. ‘Sensible. Last time I saw her… I was out here three days ago when the fires first threatened. She talked about evacuation plans. So why didn’t I check?’

‘Because you can’t be everything to everyone,’ she said softly. Then, because she couldn’t bear to watch the pain in his eyes any more, she took his face in her hands and kissed him-softly, on each eyelid in turn. ‘Sue-Ellen made her own decision not to leave her animals. That’s her responsibility. Back at the beach… Sam called her a schizo-a mental case-and if that’s the way you regarded her then, yes, you were responsible for her because she wasn’t responsible for herself. You should have locked her up and taken total control. But you said she was a person capable of her own decisions.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘But nothing.’ Rachel’s voice was urgent now. She could see the self-loathing in Hugo’s eyes and she wasn’t having any of it. He was hurt, this man. She could put bandages on his hands but it wasn’t enough. What hurt more than a heart?

‘Sue-Ellen knew the dangers. Sam and Gary both said she’d been warned. She chose to stay.’

‘She was ill.’

‘Would you have locked her in a mental institution?’

‘No, but-’

‘But nothing. Sue-Ellen lived independently and she was hurt, making that life for herself. I won’t have you blaming yourself, Dr McInnes.’

He looked up at her, and the beginning of an exhausted smile crossed his face. Just a trace.

‘Bossy, aren’t we?’

‘It’s what I do best,’ she said softly, and smiled back at him.

Hugo gazed up at her. Really looked. His burned hand came up and brushed the curls from her face. They were tumbling every which way from under her hard hat.

She’d be smoke-grimed, she thought-black with soot and sand and smoke. But Hugo’s eyes were holding her and his fingers traced her cheekbone gently-a feather touch.

‘You’re so beautiful.’

‘Beautiful and bossy?’ she asked in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.

‘That’s the one. Rachel…’

‘What?’

‘I need to kiss you,’ he told her.

And what was a girl to say to a request like that?

She kissed him.

More than that, she gave her heart. Right there and then.

Or maybe it had been given in those awful moments on the beach, under the sodden blanket with the fire roaring overhead, thinking that somewhere out here was Hugo. Her love…

Her love.

There was another love. Craig. That hadn’t disappeared-it never could. There was still commitment, still pain, but it didn’t stop this flowering that was happening within her right now.

Dottie had said it was time she moved on. Put Craig behind her. But it wasn’t like that. She hadn’t been able to put Craig behind her for eight long years.

And she couldn’t now. She didn’t need to.

Because Craig was still with her. Craig was a part of who she was, a part of her loving. She held Hugo’s dear, scorched face in her hands and she kissed him with all the love in her heart and she knew that this was no betrayal.

This was an extension of loving. A wealth of love. Broadening, expanding her heart, to take in Toby and Cowral and Penelope and Digger and Sue-Ellen and maybe a few crazy goats clustered around and a confused pup called Pudge.

And Hugo.

She kissed him and found herself melting. Not just her lips. Her whole life, melting away and reforming. Regrouping. Stronger, richer, deeper.

Love…

He tasted of fire. He tasted of heat and want and aching need.

He tasted of… Hugo.

Her fingers held him, curled into his hair, clinging, letting his mouth devour her, knowing that for him this kiss was as affirmation of life as well as love.

Knowing for him this was the only way to move forward.

Through love.

Love was…here. Love was now.

Love was Hugo.

There was no time for each other. Not now.

They held each other for as long as they could, desperately taking what they most needed from this precious contact. But, of course, there was more needed of them this day than the care of Sue-Ellen.

The fire chief stood behind them and coughed and waited. He’d given them space. He was a wise man and he’d seen their need. He’d directed his team away from them as the chopper left and had given them as much time as he could, but needs were breaking through.

‘Doc…’ He coughed a couple of times and tried again. ‘Doc…’

They broke apart. Sort of. Battered and filthy, they sat in the mud and looked up at him, and the fire chief gave them a grin which said the incongruous picture they made was hardly lost on him.

‘Geez, whatever turns you on, Doc,’ he said to Hugo. ‘Me, I like my missus in a sexy negligee but if you like ’em covered with soot-well, each to his own. But kinky is what I call it.’

Rachel blushed. She blushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes and she tried to haul away, but Hugo was having none of it. His hand tightened around her waist and he grinned.

‘Sexiest lady I know.’

‘Isn’t she just.’ The fire-chief’s grin broadened. ‘We’ll have her up on our calendar next year, hard hat included. Look, I’m sorry to disturb you…’

‘You’d think we could have a bit of privacy,’ Hugo complained. He seemed suddenly almost jovial. ‘We’ve searched so hard to find it. And here we are with only thirty goats, one dog and twenty odd firefighters as an audience.’ His smile faded, just a bit, but it didn’t leave his eyes completely. ‘Don’t tell me. Problems?’

‘No major ones.’ The chief wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and something suspiciously like moisture smeared his cheek. ‘We’ve been so bloody lucky. It’s amazing. But…’

‘But?’

‘One of the teams down at the river are saying some of the guys are suffering from smoke inhalation. And the publican’s wife…she tried to hook up the hose as the first of the heavy smoke hit the town but she was working blind and she fell over the tap. She sounds like she’s broken her toe.’

A broken toe…

‘Is that all?’ Hugo asked in voice that was none too steady.

‘That’s all, Doc,’ the chief told him. ‘For now. You guys might have time to continue this…discussion later if you need to. But for now I’m afraid Cowral wants you both to be doctors.’

Hugo smiled and turned back to Rachel. To his love. ‘Can we be doctors for a bit?’ Hugo asked her. He held Rachel close and the expression in his eyes told her all she ever needed to know about this man. There was no need for anything else. Just Hugo. His feel. His touch. His eyes.

And the way he looked at her.

‘What do you think, my love?’ he whispered. ‘Can we be doctors for a bit?’

‘As long as we stay being more than just doctors underneath,’ she answered, her eyes smiling and holding and loving. ‘As long as we stay just as we are.’ And then her smile broke into a chuckle of love and laughter and joy. ‘Only maybe a little bit cleaner.’

They worked then, through the rest of that long, long day. Because, of course, it wasn’t just firefighters with smoke inhalation and Maddie Forsyth’s broken toe. The town was in firefighting mode. There were minor burns everywhere. Exhaustion. Dehydration. Stress.

Hugo and Rachel worked together and separately. They saw an endless stream of patients, one after another. The little hospital was a clearing-house through which most of the town’s population passed at some time during the day.

Toby was there from time to time, brought in by Myra just to see that Daddy and Rachel were still there. Still fine.

Toby and Myra came with three dogs. Because of course they couldn’t leave the shaky Pudge at the farm. Hugo had scooped him up and carried him into town beneath his fire-crew jacket and had handed him over to Myra to fuss over. Amazingly, the two big dogs seemed to sense the little dog’s distress and now Pudge was the centre of a two-dog, housekeeper and small boy circle of protection. By his second visit into the hospital the puppy’s tail was starting to wag again.

‘I’ll telephone Melbourne and tell them to pass the news on to Sue-Ellen,’ Hugo told Rachel as Myra herded her charges outdoors again. ‘It’ll do her more good than medicine.’

In the middle of all this…he could find time to think laterally about Sue-Ellen. That was what country practice was all about, Rachel thought as she returned to washing ash out of a firefighter’s eyes. Country practice was medicine from textbooks-plus the rest.

It was healing-just for her.

They worked far into the night. The townsfolk had gone home from the beach. The wind died, and about ten o’clock the hoped-for change blew through softly from the south. The air temperature dropped to almost cool and there was a spattering of blessed rain.

But still they worked. A team had been organised to go from house to house, checking, not for spot fires now but on people’s health. The elderly and those at risk had had a day where they’d been tested to the limit. They could go home now and maybe collapse with exhaustion, stress, smoke inhalation, minor injuries…

So everyone was checked. Cowral looked after its own. And as each problem was reported, it was passed on to the medical team.

At two a.m. Rachel finally arrived back in the kitchen of the doctors’ residence. Myra had taken Toby and all three dogs out to her place for the night. There were casseroles sitting on the kitchen table-of course-but Rachel was beyond eating. She sat and stared at nothing. At nothing at all.

And fifteen minutes later Hugo walked in.

He was as exhausted as she was. He appeared at the screen door and his face was grey with fatigue. She rose and looked at him. Just…looked. And what passed between them…

It was a vow. It was confirmation of all they had come through that day.

It was the start of their life together.

‘Rachel,’ he said at last, and it was as if it was a blessing.

‘Hugo,’ she whispered, and walked straight into his arms.

There was no time then for anything but love.

There was no time for talking. No time for anything but filling this aching, searing need. Holding. Finding their rightful place.

They showered together because to do otherwise was to waste time. Their filthy clothes were shed together-clothes that on any day but this one would have had both doctors struck off the medical register as disgraces to the medical profession. But no one had minded their clothes. They’d been doctors first and foremost. They’d seen to the town’s medical needs.

But now…the need was past. The town’s needs.

There was time now for their own needs.

Time to become lovers.

There was no hesitation. No questions. There were only answers.

Their bodies met in joyful wonder. They washed each other under the stream of warm water, soaping, smiling, learning each other’s bodies in this, the most intimate act of cleaning. Soaping off the layers of grime to reveal bodies that were already known and loved.

His hands were smoothing the soap over her skin and it was the most erotic of sensations. She had the flannel and was rubbing his back, but her body was falling forward, leaning into him, letting her mouth touch his…

Tasting. Wanting.

Needing!

The need was mutual. All-exclusive.

It was as if this man and this woman had been meant for each other-destined-from the beginning of time.

And then they were together in Hugo’s big bed, dry and warmed but still naked, gloriously naked. Skin against skin, holding, holding, narrowing the gap, merging…

Man and woman becoming one.

It had been so long.

Had it ever been this good? Rachel didn’t know. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t compare. What had been between Rachel and Craig was another time. Another life. It had been precious-was still precious-but it was a thing apart.

This was now. This man, her beloved Hugo, holding her as if he loved her.

He did love her. She knew it and she gloried in it.

Craig would not gainsay her this love. Because she loved Craig she knew, with a surety that was a part of her own heart, that she had his blessing. She could feel it.

Her body was doubly blessed.

Dear heaven, the feel of Hugo. The wonder. His big hands were holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the world. His warmth, the smell of him, the taste…

The way her body moulded around him. Opened. Welcomed. He came into her, and their mutual need was overwhelming. The wonder…

The joy.

They slept. How could they not sleep after this day? Their exhaustion was absolute. Sated with loving, they slept entwined, and Rachel fell into a sleep as deep as she’d ever been in.

Ever since the accident-ever since that dreadful day-her sleep had been troubled, disturbed, as if she’d had to stay awake for the next disaster. There would be another disaster. Her world had been pulled from under her feet and she couldn’t trust.

She couldn’t sleep.

But now…in this man’s arms, she slept. Let tomorrow bring what it may. For now there was only this man and his arms and his body and his love.

And Hugo?

It had never been like this with Beth. He’d drifted into marriage with Beth as he’d nearly drifted into marriage with her sister. Stupid. Stupid, stupid.

Yet how could he have known it had been stupid? He’d never known it could be like this. He woke about dawn and his fingers twined gently through Rachel’s tumbled curls. How could he have suspected there was loving like this in the world?

This wonderful woman. This…blessing.

She stirred in sleep, her eyes half opened and she smiled at him. His heart twisted inside him and he gathered her to him with such tenderness. The most precious thing…

Rachel.

Her eyes closed and she snuggled into him. Her breasts moulded to him. He felt desire stir, but exhaustion was still there. Desire could wait, he thought with a growing joy. It could wait an hour or two. There was all the time in the world. This was his Rachel. Rachel…

Murmuring her name into her hair, he drifted back to sleep.

The phone woke them.

It was late. At least eight. The sun was streaming across the brocade quilt. He’d get rid of it, Hugo thought, and then joyously, yes! He’d get rid of every piece of brocade in the house.

This day was the first day of the rest of his life. His life with Rachel.

She was waking beside him, her eyes fluttering open, smiling, reaching up to touch his unshaven chin.

The phone was ringing.

Rachel.

Medical imperative. Answer the phone. He smiled back at her and then answered the phone.

A woman’s voice, urgent with need.

‘Is Rachel there? Dr Harper? She’s not answering her cellphone. I need to speak to her.’

‘Sure.’ He heard the fear and reacted. His eyes sent Rachel an urgent message and handed her the phone.

Rachel took the receiver and listened.

‘Dottie.’

She was suddenly wide awake, pushing herself up in bed, oblivious of the fact that she was naked. A sunbeam was streaming across her creamy breasts.

Dear God, she was beautiful!

But her voice sounded concerned.

‘No, Dottie, we’re fine. I’m sorry. I should have rung you last night. I might have known you’d see it on the news reports. No. The town’s been left basically intact. We’re safe.’

‘No.’

‘No.’

Then her voice softened with dread. ‘But he can’t… Dottie, he was stable…’

She listened some more and then put her lips tightly together. Her eyes closed as if in pain.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she whispered. ‘Of course. Just as soon as I can get there.’

The line went dead. Hugo lifted the receiver from Rachel’s suddenly limp grasp and laid it back on the cradle. Then he turned and took her hands in his.

‘What is it, Rachel?’

She opened her eyes and stared at him but she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing something a long way away. In the far, far distance.

‘It’s Craig,’ she whispered.

‘Craig?’

‘My husband. He’s dying.’