City Surgeon, Small Town Miracle

CHAPTER EIGHT

FOR a moment nobody moved. It was like some sort of Greek tragedy-players turned to statues where they stood.

Then someone screamed, and Max was gone from Maggie’s side in an instant.

She hardly saw him go. He was simply no longer with her, and by the time she could take in the enormity of what had happened-what was still happening-he was crouching by a body crumpled on the roadway.

Dear God, it was a child.

She dropped her ice cream and her bag and ran.

Triage. Max was with the child. What else?

No one else seemed to have been hit. Or maybe there had.

Yes, there was another. A woman was standing in the middle of the road, behind a stroller, staring numbly at the child who was now more than ten yards away from her.

Maggie’s eyes dropped from her face and saw her arm, which was streaming with blood. Far, far too much blood.

Maggie was with her in a heartbeat, seizing her hand and raising it above her head.

‘Sit,’ she said, and the woman looked wildly toward the child Max was tending.

‘No. I…’

‘Help me,’ Maggie said harshly to a kid standing by-a teenager with green-spiked hair and a T-shirt with a message that was shocking. If she was in the mood to be shocked. She wasn’t.

‘Give me your shirt,’ she said, and to the kid’s enormous credit he peeled it off almost before she’d finished saying the words.

‘Help me sit her down,’ she said, and the kid took the woman’s good hand and Maggie gently pressured the woman to sit. And then, as she sagged, to lie down.

Her arm was gushing, blood pumping out at a rate that was terrifying. Maggie had it still in the air. She grasped one of the kid’s hands and placed it on the woman’s wrist so he was holding her arm up. ‘Hold it high,’ she snapped, ‘Keep it there.’ She was twisting his T-shirt into a tie, twisting, twisting.

‘Grace…’ the woman managed.

‘I’m a doctor,’ Maggie said as she wound the T-shirt round her upper arm. ‘There’s two of us here. Dr Ashton’s looking after Grace while I look after you. I need to stop your arm bleeding before you can go to her.’

It sounded simple. Stop the bleeding. Stopping a gushing artery was an almost impossible ask.

She’d do it. She had the twirled T-shirt right round the woman’s arm now and was twisting it cruelly. The woman cried out in pain.

‘Ambulance!’

To Maggie’s astonishment-and relief-the kid-Spike?-was holding his cellphone with his spare hand, barking orders. The kid looked all of about fifteen, yet he was acting with the responsibility of a trained paramedic. ‘Esplanade, Coogee. Traffic accident. Two hurt, bad. Bleeding all over the place. Get here fast!’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ someone moaned faintly behind them. The kid turned and snapped, ‘Get away from us before you do, then. And give us your cardigan. We need a pillow.’

‘Great,’ she said, as someone else handed over a jacket-not the woman who was threatening to vomit but it didn’t matter who gave it, as long as they had it. ‘Keep that hand raised.’

‘Got it,’ the kid said-and not for the first time Maggie thought how impossible it was to predict from any group of people who could be called on to help.

Who was helping Max?

Did he need her?

She couldn’t look. Not yet.

The bleeding was slowing. Thank God. Heaven only knew how much blood the woman had lost in those first seconds-her arm had been ripped almost from elbow to wrist and spilled blood was impossible to quantify-but the bleeding was easing now to almost nothing.

‘I need another shirt,’ she yelled back into the crowd, and someone handed one over. ‘And a towel.’ She’d dropped hers and there was no time to return to the side of the road to fetch it. But someone handed one over.

In seconds she’d fashioned a pad to fit over the whole wound. She placed it on, then wrapped it tightly with the shirt, using the sleeves to tie and tie again.

She now had a tourniquet and pressure on the wound itself, and Spike was still holding the arm high.

‘Grace,’ the woman moaned again, and finally Maggie let herself glance across to Max.

He was working furiously. Alone. No one had moved to help him. There was a gathering crowd of onlookers but that was all they were. Onlookers.

She had Spike to help her, and the woman’s bleeding was controlled. Triage said she had to move on.

‘Can you tell me your name?’ she asked, and the woman’s pain-filled eyes stared up at her like she didn’t hear.

‘Your name,’ she said again, softly but urgently, and put her hand fleetingly on her cheek. ‘It’s okay. Spike and I have stopped your arm bleeding. You’re going to be okay. But I need your name.’

‘J-Judith.’

‘The little girl-she’s yours?’

‘I…Yes. Thomas is in the stroller. Grace is…Grace is…’

‘Dr Ashton’s looking after Grace,’ Maggie told her. ‘He’s good. He’ll take good care of her. I’ll go now and see how she is.’

‘Thomas…’

‘Thomas is fine.’ She looked around her at the onlookers. Met the eye of an elderly woman who was looking shocked, but was already turning away as if she was about to leave. That was what sensible people did at the scene of an accident. If they couldn’t help, they left.

She wanted sensible.

‘Can you help with the baby in the stroller?’ she called and the woman paused and pointed to herself.

‘Me?’

‘Please. What’s your name?’

‘Mary. I know these people,’ she ventured. ‘They live near me.’

‘Great.’ She motioned her to come close, so Judith could see how comfortingly grandmotherly she looked. ‘Judith, Mary’s one of your neighbours and she’ll be looking after Thomas. Spike here is holding your arm up until the ambulance arrives, so it doesn’t start bleeding again. You’re going to be fine. I need to help Dr Ashton with Grace. If you promise to stay still then there’ll be two doctors looking after Grace.’

‘Go,’ the woman whispered without hesitation. ‘Go.’

He heard her in the background and he blessed her for it. He’d never questioned her competence, but now…She was skilled and she was fast and she was sure. People jumped when she said jump, recognising her natural authority even if she was nine months pregnant, covered with sand and dressed in a bright yellow sarong.

There was so much blood…The woman Maggie was working on must have torn an artery but he couldn’t help her. He had urgent work to do himself.

Vaguely he heard the voices in the background, the woman’s voice naming her children. The blonde-ringletted child under his hands was dressed endearingly in a pink tutu over a bathing costume stained with rainbow ice cream. She was called Grace?

She was conscious. Just. Considering the force with which she’d hit the road, consciousness was a miracle. But like her mother, there was far too much blood. From her leg. Torn femoral artery? It must be.

He’d ripped his shirt-he was getting good at this!-and was twisting a tourniquet. Slowing the bleeding. Her leg was twisted at an appalling angle. There was a gash across her abdomen, bleeding sluggishly, and the bitumen had ripped her skin like sandpaper. Her tutu was bright with blood.

‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ he murmured as he worked, and she gazed up at him in pain and confusion and shock. ‘It’s okay. The car hurt your leg. I’m a doctor and I need to fix it.’

‘M-Mummy…’

And then her eyes rolled back in her head. Her tiny body was suddenly limp.

No!

Blood loss. Haemorrhagic shock.

He dropped the shirt-cum-tourniquet he was working on and moved to cup her face in his hands. Breathed. Hit her chest.

Her leg started spurting blood again.

But suddenly Maggie was beside him, kneeling on the bitumen, taking in the situation in one sweeping glance.

‘I’ll stop the bleeding, you get her breathing,’ she muttered. ‘Go.’

He had help!

It was blood loss-lack of blood pressure-that’d caused her heart to stop. He knew that. He had to get her breathing. But it was no use getting her heart to work again if the blood loss didn’t stop. The task was impossible.

But with Maggie beside him he no longer had to think about the bleeding. He could move to CPR as he’d practised it so many times, at medical school and afterwards.

Breathe, one, two, three…

Breathe, one, two, three…

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ Maggie snapped as she worked, and he glanced across to where a kid with spiked hair was supporting the mother. So did Maggie.

The kid gave Maggie a thumbs-up sign, and she turned back and kept on working.

Breathe, one, two, three…

‘I’m shifting this leg,’ she said. ‘The compound fracture means we’ll never stop the bleeding while the artery’s this exposed.’ But she hadn’t stopped to speak. She was simply doing. She was twisting the shirt-tourniquet one last time, holding it in her teeth-in her teeth!-taking the leg in both hands…

One fast movement and the leg was suddenly in alignment.

Not that Max had time to care.

Breathe, one, two, three…

Please.

Breathe, one, two, three…

And the little girl’s chest heaved. Heaved again, all by itself.

‘Dear God,’ Maggie whispered, and Max was saying it too, over and over in his head.

Please, please, please…

The child was breathing.

The bleeding was slowing again now, but not because of death. Not!

‘The ambulance,’ Maggie whispered, and he heard it then, the scream of the siren above the traffic. Help was on its way. Plasma. IV fluids for both mother and daughter. If they could get them on board before the little girl’s heart shut down again, she stood a chance.

And then the professionals were there. There were suddenly four skilled paramedics, assessing in an instant what Max and Maggie were doing, skilled hands taking over, smoothly, efficiently.

IV lines were going in. Oxygen masks. Pain relief.

Stabilisation, stretcher boards, transfer.

Curt questions, to the point, to each of them. Who was involved? The blood…was any of it Maggie’s? Max’s? Spike’s?

The baby in the stroller…Identification?

‘I know who they are,’ Mary said. The elderly lady had lifted the toddler from the pram and was cuddling him. ‘If you want, I’ll come to the hospital and hold the baby until someone can come for him. I can give you details.’

‘And you?’ The ambulance officer turned to Maggie. ‘Do you need help?’

‘I’m f-fine,’ she managed, knowing she didn’t look fine. Nine months pregnant, soaked in blood, shocked.

‘I’ll look after her,’ Max said, and his arm came round her waist and she let herself lean into him.

‘I feel funny,’ Spike said suddenly, and there was another moment of drama where the paramedic moved fast before the kid’s knees buckled under him.

‘He’s a hero,’ Maggie said shakily as they loaded Spike, too, into the ambulance and the paramedic looked at her and then at Max.

‘It seems we have a surfeit,’ he said dryly. ‘We were lucky to get here as fast as we did-the power’s off all over the city and the traffic’s crazy. But in the meantime you guys seem to have saved a couple of lives.’

And then they were gone.

The police were taking statements and were collecting fragments of broken glass for forensics. Someone had started cleaning blood from the road.

In a few minutes all evidence of the accident would have disappeared. The stone had been tossed into the lake, it had splashed, the ripples were moving outward and in minutes life would be smooth again. Only Maggie didn’t look the least bit smooth.

‘Maggie, you know we agreed that shower wasn’t a good idea?’ Max murmured, and she looked up him and he saw her react to what he must look like. Which was a reflection of what she looked like.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, version two.

‘I’m not sure they’ll even let us into the apartment block now,’ she muttered, and her voice was shaky.

‘You should have gone with the ambulance.’

‘Why? My voice always shakes after drama. I’m fine.’ She shook her head. ‘Of all the criminal…’

‘Don’t think about it. Come and get clean.’

‘You’ll talk your way past my concierge?’

‘I’ll do whatever I must to get this off us,’ he muttered grimly. ‘But we did good, Maggie.’

‘We did, didn’t we?’ she said-and burst into tears.

She sobbed. She sobbed all the way back to the apartment, while Max told a stunned concierge what had happened. The power was out and the reception area was dim. ‘There’s been power outages a couple of times already this week,’ a shocked concierge told them as he ushered them toward the stairs. ‘That’ll be what happened with the traffic lights.’

Maggie was no longer listening. She was simply limp.

What was wrong with her? She’d done her share of stints in emergency rooms. She was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. What was she doing, collapsing like a sodden rag?

But collapse she had. She couldn’t stop shaking. If Max hadn’t been holding her up she’d simply have sat where she was and not moved until morning.

Her tears had stopped-finally-but the numbness was ongoing. She made no protest as Max propelled her into her apartment, into the bathroom and straight into the shower. Then, as she stood limply under the warm water, sagging against the far wall, he swore, pulled his shoes off and came into the shower with her. He tugged her close and held her while the water ran and ran, and the red slowly turned to pink and then slowly turned clear.

Max had ripped off the remains of his ruined shirt along with his shoes. He was wearing chinos and nothing else. She was wearing her sarong. It might be clean but it still felt bloody. Ugh. She didn’t want it on. She hauled it free and the water turned red again with the movement.

There was a crimson smear on her bikini top. She tugged at the strap and Max hesitated, then helped her unfasten it.

Then, as the shaking continued, as her bikini top fell to the floor, he swore and tugged her in hard against him.

What was she doing? She didn’t care. She didn’t have the energy to care. She let herself be pressed to Max’s bare chest, skin against skin.

She needed the contact so much. She needed him.

And something else.

She wanted to be beautiful for him, she thought through a haze of shock and tears. It was a silly, dumb thing to think but think it she did.

She wanted him.

‘Maggie…’

His voice was unsteady.

‘S-sorry,’ she whispered, trying to get her voice under control. Trying to figure out what on earth she was thinking. ‘I’m sorry. I…It’s just…It must be being nine months pregnant. Hormones or something. I’m not…It’s not exactly medical treatment you’re giving me here.’

‘I’m trying hard to feel like your treating doctor,’ he said, and she felt a fierce stab of denial. No.

‘You don’t feel like my treating doctor,’ she whispered.

The warm water was running over them. There was no light apart from the filtered daylight from the window in the bedroom beyond. She felt like she was in a warm, sheltering cave, held by her man.

She was so close…

Closer than she’d felt to William?

That was an impossible question, and the truth was she didn’t know. But it didn’t seem to matter.

Up until now, grief had been with her every time she thought of him. Now, shocked out of any trace of a comfort zone, thrown into such intimacy with this new man in her life, it seemed that William had become a memory that couldn’t be betrayed, a gentle ghost taking his rightful place in her life, watching her move on.

And with the thought-move on-came knowledge of where her heart was taking her, and the surge of self-knowledge made her gasp.

She made to pull away but Max was holding her against his chest. Against his heart.

Her bump was in the way. Apart from her tiny bikini bottom she was totally naked, but she was still huge. But Max was holding her as if he loved her; as if this child she was carrying was his.

No. He didn’t want this. How could he?

‘You don’t want this,’ she whispered.

‘Want what, Maggie?’

What did she want?

She knew exactly what she wanted. The unsayable. But she had to figure another answer.

‘You don’t want a pregnant woman stark naked against you.’

‘I don’t believe you’re quite stark naked.’

‘I might as well be. And I’m so…so…’

‘Beautiful,’ he said softly. And then as she looked up at him in confusion, he added, almost ruefully, ‘Pregnancy’s beautiful. I’ve seen this before, Maggie. I’m a doctor, remember.’

That got to her. No way was she going down that route. She pulled back from him, swiped water out of her eyes, tried to look up at him with determination. ‘You’re not my doctor.’

‘You needed someone. You sobbed.’

‘I didn’t need a doctor,’ she managed. ‘I needed someone who knew what I was feeling. Didn’t you feel like sobbing, too?’

He wasn’t answering. He was fighting to act as if this was professional care.

She didn’t want to be treated with professional care.

Why had she let herself sob on him? What sort of a baby was she?

Enough. She hauled open the shower and grabbed a towel. It was big but not big enough. Beautiful? Ha! Winding the towel round her as best she could, she backed into the bedroom, leaving Max looking after her.

Still not answering.

She’d fallen in love, she admitted as she towelled herself dry with grim intensity. With someone who saw her as a patient.

So get dressed. Get this finished with. Fast.

How had that happened?

Maggie had been covered with blood and she’d been distressed. She’d needed to get her clothes off. It was natural that he’d help her.

So? He was a doctor helping a heavily pregnant woman in distress. He should feel professionally detached.

He felt no such thing.

She’d asked him if he felt like sobbing. The answer to that was easy. The way he’d felt…sobbing didn’t come close.

But what he was feeling was nuts. To look at a nine-months-pregnant woman and ache to take her to him…

It was inappropriate. It was mixed up with his memories of Alice.

If she wasn’t pregnant, would he still feel this desire?

He needed to get away, he thought, until after Maggie’s baby was born. Until he could see how much he wanted Maggie for herself.

He suspected it was a lot.

So don’t rush it, he told himself harshly. Leave her until you can see the whole picture. Get the emotion of pregnancy out of it.

Meanwhile, she didn’t need him.

But, damn it, he wanted her to need him.

There wasn’t even a light in this apartment. There’d been a couple of weeks of rolling power cuts-apparently there was a major problem with the city grid. If he wasn’t here she’d be by herself in the dark.

Maybe she had enough resourcefulness to buy herself a candle?

Of course she did, he thought, hauling off his soaking chinos and wrapping himself in a towel. It might be seductive to think of himself as a white knight on a charger, but she didn’t want that.

And maybe playing the protector now might mess with things later.

How much later?

Later she’d have a baby and a farm and friends. She still wouldn’t need him.

He came out of the bathroom and she was at the apartment door. Thanking the concierge. Not being needy at all.

‘They’ll get him home. Great.’

She turned and he copped another blast of how gorgeous she was. Her hair was still wet, her flaming curls clinging to her lovely face. She was standing in bare feet, wearing maternity smock and jeans, lit by the afternoon sun from the outside window. And as he watched her, the tangle of emotions surrounding him fell away. Hunger hit him with such force that he almost took her in his arms right then.

But she was holding out gym pants, measuring them for length. The gym pants acted like a shield, giving him pause.

Somehow sense prevailed. Just.

‘I’ve found you some clothes,’ she said, cutting across his thoughts with such brisk efficiency that he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Don-the concierge-has loaned you his gym gear. You need to bring it back tomorrow. Clean.’

‘Um…thanks,’ he said. Resourceful? Yes, she was. Clinging? No.

‘You can hardly drive home in your towel,’ she explained, quite kindly. ‘We both need to get a bit of dignity back here.’

‘We do.’

‘Right, then,’ she said, and waited-politely-for him to disappear back into the bathroom. To get into another man’s gym gear and leave.

What else was a man to do?

Take her in his arms and kiss her senseless?

Let himself fall into that abyss?

He was so close-but not close enough. For as she turned away, he saw her put a hand to her back and wince. Backache in advanced pregnancy was common, but with that tiny gesture the pain he’d felt on losing Alice came flooding back. Maggie was beautiful, brave, intelligent-and vulnerable and pregnant and alive. How would he feel if he took her to him, if he loved her with all his heart and then…and then…?

No.

And she’d turned away. She was being sensible for them both.

By the time he was dressed in Don’s classy gym gear he was almost thinking clearly, but still he didn’t want to leave her. What had happened seemed too big. Outside, the sun had gone behind clouds and the apartment was gloomy.

‘Do you have candles?’ he asked, and she looked at him like he wasn’t very bright.

‘Of course I have candles. I have enough to light the whole apartment. We had power cuts for a while last night, too, if you remember, and the night before that. Did the lights go off where you were?’

‘No.’ But maybe they had. The hospital had its own generator and by the time he’d left work-at midnight-the power had been on again.

Work. That was the way to go, he thought. Get back to work and get a grip on your emotions. But to leave her here alone seemed wrong.

But maybe there was an alternative.

‘I do need to go back to work,’ he told her. ‘But I also want to check on Judith and Grace. The ambulance was taking them to Sydney South. Would you like to come with me? I can put you in a cab to come home afterwards.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, picking up her purse.

Just like that. ‘Yes?’

‘I’d decided I’d go before you offered,’ she admitted. ‘I know I should be professionally detached, but you’re looking at a woman who’s so undetached she just sobbed her naked heart out on your manly chest. And you know something? I might have sobbed even if it wasn’t manly so let’s not get too personal here. So, yes, please, Dr Ashton, I need to find out how they are.’

‘You should rest,’ he said, belatedly.

‘So I should,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m never going to rest until I know.’

‘Maggie…’

‘No more sobbing,’ she promised. ‘No more chests. Just two doctors checking on two patients. Let’s go.’