Hijacked Honeymoon

CHAPTER FOUR

SAM HENRY was in Intensive Care when they arrived. His worry and anger building to a crescendo, Ryan abandoned Abbey in the car and strode down the hospital corridor fast, the night charge sister by his side.

Ryan looked every inch a doctor, Abbey thought as she watched him go, walking as all hospital staff were taught to move in an emergency. Walk fast-never run. Never risk barrelling into patients and making things worse.

There was more than the way he moved that showed the world Ryan was a doctor, though. Ryan Henry exuded authority and competence. The night sister automatically deferred to him when they arrived, without once looking at Abbey for confirmation of his authority.

All Ryan needed was a white coat and stethoscope hanging around his neck and he might have been the doctor in charge here for years.

He was all doctor, and Abbey hardly knew him. This man she had once known almost as well as she’d known herself…

Once, long ago, Abbey had loved Ryan Henry, she thought sadly as she watched him disappear around a turn in the corridor. The boy Abbey knew had loved his father absolutely and would never hurt him.

Where was the boy Abbey had loved now? Had he disappeared for ever?

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The old Ryan was part of her childhood. Nothing more.

Abbey had been abandoned in the car in the casualty entrance and now there was nothing to do but wait. Her leg hurt too much to move unless she had to. She knew if Ryan needed her he’d remember her presence and send someone out to fetch her.

In the end, he didn’t need to. The ward attendant came out to move Ryan’s car-and stopped in astonishment when he saw her.

‘Doc Wittner!’

‘Yeah,’ Abbey gave him a reluctant grin. ‘Hi, Ted. Do you think you could help me inside?’

‘Sure.’ Ted stared down at her, his face creasing in concern. ‘But… I didn’t think you were supposed to be here. Aren’t you supposed to be home in bed? Eileen said you’d been injured.’

‘Just a bruised knee. And I want to know what’s going on inside.’

‘Doc Henry’s looking after his father.’

‘Sam’s OK?’

‘I dunno,’ Ted admitted. ‘All I know is they haven’t called me to shift him to a slab yet so that’s gotta be a good sign.’

Abbey grinned. Ted was a wizened Korean War veteran who’d been a semi-invalid ever since. Lonely and miserable all his life, when Abbey had offered him the job as ward attendant he’d been astounded. ‘Who, me? I couldn’t do anything like that in a pink fit.’ It had taken all Abbey’s skills at persuasion to have him give the job a go.

Since then Ted had been Abbey’s most loyal employee. He lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the hospital and the hospital was now his world. But there were no greys in Ted’s world. There was black and white. Dead or alive.

Sam was alive.

‘You want a trolley?’ Ted asked her dubiously, eyeing her huge white leg, and Abbey shook her head.

‘No, but a wheelchair would be good. And a hand backwards out of this car.’

‘No sooner said than done.’ A minute later Abbey’s wheelchair was spinning down the corridor to Intensive Care.

Sam was definitely still alive.

Ted pushed the ward door open and Abbey looked in with some trepidation, to find Sam Henry looking to see who’d just entered. When Sam saw Abbey his face puckered into a white-faced smile.

‘Hey, Abbey… ’

‘Sam.’ Abbey shoved the wheels of her chair down to push herself over to the bed. She took Sam’s hand in hers. It was clammy and cold but he was alive, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

In the last few years Abbey had leaned heavily on Sam Henry for advice and friendship. In fact, Sam had become almost as important to Abbey as his son had once been.

‘What on earth are you doing to us now?’ she asked gently.

‘Damned heart,’ Sam whispered, ‘but Ryan’s here.’ The old man looked up at Ryan, standing beside his bed, and there was no mistaking the pride and love in his voice.

Abbey looked up too, and saw Ryan’s face set. Ryan had heard it, then. The love and the pride. The ties that went far beyond duty letters. And Abbey saw in his face that Ryan was feeling just dreadful.

The old Ryan wasn’t completely gone.

OK. She’d let Ryan off the hook. Take the blame herself. Let Sam keep on thinking that his son was wonderful.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Abbey squeezed Sam’s hand. ‘Did Ryan tell you it was all my fault he was late? First I smashed my bike into him. Then I demanded he put my dislocated knee back into place, and finally he had to milk my cows. And all the time you were waiting and not knowing he was even in the district. I’m so sorry.’

‘There’s no damage.’ There was damage, Abbey knew. Sam’s voice was a weak whisper, but there was no way he’d conceded anything to his dicky heart in the past. He wasn’t about to start now. ‘I might have known Ryan was needed. He wouldn’t have been late otherwise. My Ryan’s a great boy.’

‘He is, too.’ Abbey ventured a smile up at Ryan and found his face still looked as if it were carved in stone. Pain was washing over her in waves. Soundlessly Ryan held out the ECG reading. Abbey checked it carefully, and nodded.

‘It’s OK, Ryan,’ she told him. ‘Not much different to last time.’ A little worse. Not much.

‘What the hell…?’ Ryan’s voice was full of pent-up emotion. ‘Dad… you’ve got a heart that’s as dicky as this and you haven’t even told me?’

‘Now hardly seems the time to yell at him for being a bad letter-writer,’ Abbey said mildly. She smiled affectionately at Sam. ‘I’ll yell at you in the morning, if you like. For now I’ll ring Janet and let her know you’re OK. She’ll be worried so I’ll thank you kindly to stop scaring her. If Ryan’s done all he needs maybe you should get some sleep.’

‘I don’t need all these wires,’ Sam said fretfully, and Abbey fixed him with a look.

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they keep your son happy,’ Abbey told him. ‘Also they tell us that your heart’s still beating, and if Ted out there doesn’t have positive proof of a beating heart every few minutes or so he has a nice little slab down in the mortuary that’s just your size.’

Silence. Ryan’s eyebrows hit his hairline.

But, to her satisfaction, Sam gave a weak chuckle. ‘You always did have such a persuasive way with you, young Abbey,’ he whispered. ‘OK, then. I’ll wear your dratted wires. Now get off with you and let a man get to sleep.’

‘Do you always gain patient compliance by threatening them with the mortuary?’ Ryan asked as he wheeled Abbey back into the corridor. His voice sounded drained and weary, but also calmer. The electrodes attached to Sam’s chest were giving a cautiously optimistic message. A nurse was sitting beside Sam’s bed and there was every reason to hope he’d live a bit longer. Live to be persuaded to have his by-pass…

‘I use it all the time.’ Abbey chuckled. ‘Works a treat. Especially since Ted started taking guided tours of his underground room.’

‘Ted…’ Ryan frowned. ‘Is that the ghoul I saw, stalking the hospital corridors, as I came in?’

‘If he looked like a ghoul it was definitely Ted.’

Ryan frowned. ‘He looks familiar. Do I… did I know him?’

‘Probably,’ Abbey told him, ‘but I wouldn’t imagine you were on close terms. He’s Ted Hammond.’

The wheelchair came to an abrupt halt. Ryan stared down in incredulity. ‘Abbey, Ted Hammond was a derelict when I was a kid. How-?’

‘He wasn’t a derelict,’ Abbey said. ‘He was just bored and lonely. He was out of work and didn’t know how to fill in his time. Ted came back from the war to find his wife and kids had left him. He had one leg shorter than the other and he had nerve damage. So… he drifted on the streets and he stayed there. Then…’

‘Yeah, tell me what happened then.’ Ryan straightened and started walking again-and Abbey frowned. It was a strange sensation, being wheeled by Ryan Henry.

Concentrate on Ted…

‘Well, a couple of months after the hospital opened we had an awful car crash down near the beach,’ Abbey told him. ‘Ted was first on the scene. When I got there with the ambulance Ted had hauled a couple of kids clear before the car burst into flames. There were a couple of others dead inside. Ted coped-in fact, he coped a lot better than I or the ambulance officers did. And I saw a side that he’d kept hidden for years behind a wall of misery. So I offered him a job.’

‘Abbey, he was a street bum…’

‘No. He was a lonely old man without friends and family and without an aim,’ Abbey said roundly. ‘People like your mother classified him as a bum while he was ill and desperate, and the label just stuck. Ted didn’t drink. He just didn’t know what else to do with himself but sit on park benches and look desolate. And if he looked unkempt it was because he couldn’t see the point of being anything else. He’s not unkempt now.’

Silence.

Oh, dear. Abbey bit her lip. She’d just criticised Ryan’s mother-again. She and Ryan were doomed not to be friends any more, Abbey thought miserably. Then she looked up as the night sister approached.

‘Sister?’

‘I was just wondering,’ the nurse said, and smiled shyly up at Ryan. ‘Dr Henry, are you going home?’

‘I thought I’d check our jellyfish victim once more, then take Dr Wittner home and go on to sleep at my father’s,’ Ryan said brusquely, still mulling over Abbey’s words. He motioned to the phone on his belt. ‘Call me if you need me.’

The nurse hesitated. ‘But…’

‘Ryan, when I have someone in hospital with heart problems I don’t go home,’ Abbey interjected. ‘And the jellyfish toxin is still a risk, despite the antivenom. So, as you’re now doctor in lieu of me…’

‘Abbey…’

‘Ryan, I don’t know whether you realise what you’ve let yourself in for here,’ Abbey told him. ‘You’re it. There’s no resident or intern backing you up. If your father goes into cardiac arrest then there’s only you.’

Ryan frowned. Sleep at the hospital? He’d never thought of doing that.

But if he didn’t? If his father went into cardiac arrest? Trained nurses could start emergency procedures but…

Abbey was right. To drive the five minutes to take Abbey home was one thing. To be fifteen minutes out of range at his father’s house…

He hardly had a choice here. But if he had to stay at the hospital for the entire week… well, Felicity would not be pleased.

‘What do you do with your little boy when you need to stay here?’ he asked, and Abbey shrugged.

‘If I can, I bring Jack with me and settle him into the children’s ward. That’s possible if I have warning but Janet copes if there’s not time to bring him. She can’t bath him, but she can do most other things. He helps her by climbing in and out of his own cot now.’

‘But you milk.’

Abbey smiled. ‘Yeah. I dash home and milk with the mobile phone beside me and I dash back if needed. The locals are accustomed to the smell of cow dung mixed with antibiotic, and the cows have learned to be a bit negotiable in their milking times.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Ryan said faintly. ‘Abbey, what sort of life is that for a…?’ He had been going to say a girl. And then Ryan looked down at Abbey’s work-worn hands and corrected himself. ‘For a woman?’

‘It’s my life.’ Abbey sighed and smiled again. ‘Well, maybe it’s not for a while. It’s now your life for a week-or at least the medical part is. After that, though, then it’ll be my life ever after. I don’t ask for anything more. Now… If you would, I would like you to take me home.’

‘Abbey…’ Ryan looked down at the white-faced girl in the wheelchair. She was still dressed in the stained shorts and T-shirt she’d worn all day. She looked weary beyond belief, in pain and looking to a future that held nothing but hard work.

And something twisted inside Ryan that hadn’t been twisted in a long time. Something deep and strong and urgent.

It was only that he felt sorry for her, he told himself harshly, but he found his hand wandering to touch Abbey’s dusky curls.

‘You’re hurting.’

‘Just take me home, Ryan,’ Abbey said. ‘Ted can’t drive or I’d ask him to take me.’

‘Stay here,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘You should be in hospital yourself.’ Ryan let his fingers drift though her curls. Absently. Almost as if he wasn’t noticing what he was doing. But he was noticing. He was very definitely noticing. The touch was doing strange things to his insides.

‘And where would that leave Jack and Janet?’ Abbey demanded, ignoring the feel of Ryan’s fingers. Or trying to ignore them. ‘I have to milk in the morning.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘You can’t.’

‘If you can do it,’ Ryan said gently, ‘so can I. You just said that your life is mine for a week. That includes your cows.’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘It is.’

‘Ryan…’

‘Look, I’m a country boy from way back,’ Ryan told her, exasperated. ‘I can milk a cow and I have your medical training. This is my honeymoon you’re supposed to be on, Dr Wittner. I don’t offer every girl a honeymoon. So I suggest you just take yourself to bed and get on with it.’

If only she could.

Abbey looked up into Ryan’s face and thought of the impossibility of doing what he’d suggested. Taking a honeymoon.

Taking a holiday.

‘Work never stops,’ she said wearily. ‘Never. Don’t you know that, Ryan Henry?’

‘It does, Abbey,’ he said gently. ‘It must.’

Only it didn’t. It hadn’t even now. Before Ryan finished speaking there was an urgent screech of brakes outside the casualty entrance. Three seconds later the glass doors opened and a young man burst in. He looked wildly around, dishevelled and frantic, and his eyes focussed on Ryan.

‘Quick. Oh, please, come quick. Tessa’s having a baby.’

She’ll have to go to Cairns.’

‘Nonsense.’

Outside the labour ward Ryan and Abbey were neck deep in argument. Inside, Tessa Ludlow was neck deep in labour.

‘Hell, Abbey, I can’t deliver her here.’

‘She’ll deliver herself, then. For heaven’s sake, Ryan, all you have to do is go in there, check dilatation, check the foetal heart and stand around to catch. In fact, Sister’s probably done all the busy work for you while you’re hanging around here, procrastinating.’

Ryan raked his fingers through his hair. It was true. He was procrastinating. With good reason!

‘Abbey, I’m a surgeon. An orthopaedic surgeon. How many babies do you think I’ve delivered?’

‘They don’t let you through medical school unless you’ve delivered a few,’ Abbey said firmly. ‘Unless US training is very different to what it is here.’

‘But that was years ago. I haven’t delivered a baby since.’

‘It’s what you said about milking-it’s like riding a bicycle,’ Abbey said promptly. ‘Once learned, never forgotten. Nothing’s changed. Unless I’m very much mistaken, babies still come out just the same way they did a hundred years ago. Ryan, get in there and deliver that baby.’

‘But I’m not even registered here.’ Ryan gave a sound that was practically a moan. ‘Abbey, if something goes wrong I can get sued for millions.’

‘You know, if something does go wrong and you’re standing out here in the corridor, arguing about money, then you could be sued for even more!’

‘Abbey…’

Abbey sighed. And took a deep breath. ‘What is it? You want me to deliver the baby, Ryan? Is that what you’re saying? Your offer was for the easy stuff only? Well, I guess I can reach the bed from the wheelchair if I really try. Maybe if you hold me up under my arms… ’

Ryan glared.

‘Go on, Ryan.’ Abbey managed a smile. ‘You remember that day you wanted your tooth to come out so you could spend your tooth-fairy money at the fête the next day? It was wobbly-but only just.’

‘What on earth…?’

‘You showed determination then.’

‘Abbey, I must have been all of ten years old.’

‘No difference,’ Abbey said blithely. ‘You tied yourself up with string and then made me slam the door. And you didn’t even yell. Come on, Ryan, that’s the stuff you’re made of. Where’s your determination now?’

The labour ward door opened. The night sister stood, gazing from one doctor to the other in exasperation.

‘Have you two sorted out who’s delivering this baby yet?’ she asked sternly. ‘Because if you don’t figure it out soon I’m going to get all the credit. And that’d never do, now would it, Doctors?’

She winked at Abbey.

Ryan gave another groan, rolled up his sleeves-both metaphorically and physically-and went to deliver a baby.

In fact, it wasn’t as easy as Abbey had foreseen.

Second stage took far too long. It was a first-time birth. The young mother was exhausted and frightened and it took all Ryan’s bedside skills to calm her. Ryan finally effected a safe delivery, but only after applying forceps.

Funny that he remembered how. Abbey was right. It was like riding a bicycle.

Or like loving Abbey.

The thought flashed into Ryan’s mind as he stared down at the red and yowling infant in his hands, and he found himself smiling at the thought. Abbey had bullied him into delivering this baby and, to his astonishment, he’d found the experience deeply satisfying. Tessa and her husband were gazing at him as if he’d just personally produced their miracle, and the baby was warm and healthy and full of new life in his hands.

How many times in the past had Abbey bullied him into doing something he’d loved once he’d tried? ‘Come on, Ryan. Take your shoes off. You can’t catch crabs properly unless your toes ooze mud…’

Ryan inserted a few neat stitches in Tessa’s perineum, checked his baby over thoroughly-odd how it felt like his-and, with a chest expanded a few inches from an hour ago, went to find Abbey.

She was curled up on a couch in the waiting room in Casualty, and she was fast asleep.

Ryan stared down at Abbey for a long, long moment.

The same Abbey. She looked a real waif here. Dirty, bedraggled and her leg in the huge white dressing…

His mother had called her trash.

Abbey was no such thing.

Abbey was some lady, Ryan conceded, staring down at her in wonder. She was a lady with iron determination and courage to match her heart. A friend to be proud of.

What would his life have been if he’d stayed at Sapphire Cove? Ryan found himself wondering. In the background he heard his newly delivered baby start to cry. A nurse moved swiftly down the corridor. There were coos and chuckles and a low conversation between die young father and the nurse.

They all knew each other here.

This hospital was about as different from the hospital where Ryan worked as he could possibly get.

He’d go crazy working for a week here, he told himself. No research. No colleagues, bouncing ideas off each other. No social life outside the hospital. No concerts, art galleries or restaurants. How could Abbey stand it?

He looked down at the sleeping girl on the couch and a shaft of pain shot through him-a pain so fierce he almost staggered. A pain of sheer, absolute want. He wanted to gather her to him. Protect her from the pain he saw on her face. Take a load off her shoulders that seemed too heavy for any woman to bear.

It wasn’t on. This was crazy thinking. Ryan wasn’t about to walk away from a fantastic career and lifestyle just because he was being sentimental about an old friend.

There was a soft step behind him. Ryan turned to see Ted lurking in the doorway. Ghoul-like.

‘She looks at death’s door,’ Ted said with a certain amount of relish. ‘You’re not going to take her home now, are you, Doc?’

‘She’ll fight me if I don’t.’

‘Seems to me there’s not a lot of fight left in her,’ Ted said morosely. ‘Now, if I was a young fella I’d just gather her up and take her to bed.’ Then he coloured. ‘I mean… put her to bed, like…’

Ryan smiled.

He turned to look down at Abbey and his smile faded. A sudden image of what that might be like pierced his senses. To take Abbey to bed…

No way. That was the last thing he needed. The last thing Abbey needed. He was an engaged man. Abbey had responsibilities.

Bed, pure and simple-bed in the old-fashioned sense-was what this lady needed. With a wrench, Ryan forced his mind to practicalities.

‘Will Janet cope if Abbey doesn’t come home?’ he asked dubiously.

‘I’ve already rung Janet,’ Ted told him. ‘When I found our Doc Wittner asleep, like. She won’t worry. Janet’s a good ‘un.’

‘But the baby… And I’ve told her I’ll do the milking but she’ll panic…’

‘Janet says young Jack’s asleep. Janet can cope with the little ‘un’s breakfast, and the milking don’t need to get done again till morning,’ Ted told him. ‘And I’ve got ideas about that. So let’s worry about the morning in the morning. Sister’s got a bed made up in Room Four for Doc Wittner and one in Room Seven for you. So go tuck her in and then hit the sack yourself.’ He eyed Ryan shrewdly. ‘Looks to me you need a bit of shut-eye almost as much as Doc Wittner.’

He did, Ryan acknowledged.

The pressures of the day were crowding in, threatening to overwhelm him. With the time change in international travel, he’d missed two nights’ sleep. He’d hit Abbey’s bicycle and hurt Abbey. He’d coped with his father’s heart attack. He’d delivered a baby.

It was time to call it quits and do as he was told. But first…

He nodded acknowledgement to Ted, and stooped to lift Abbey into his arms. She was feather-light-far too slim for a woman of her age. He half expected her to wake when he lifted her, but the after-effects of the morphine and shock from the accident were taking their toll. There was no argument from Abbey. She sighed in her sleep and nestled easily into his arms, her breasts moulding themselves against his chest as if she were meant to lie there. As if she were part of him…

Ryan strode down the corridor with his sleeping burden, knowing that things were changing inside him that he had no idea how to set right again.

Worry about it in the morning, he told himself firmly. These feelings… the feel of Abbey against him… the trace of perfume in her hair… the way her breasts curved in against him as she lay in his arms in total trust… What he was feeling was just a result of a crazy two days.

He had to sleep. In the morning he could go back to being Ryan Henry, hugely successful orthopaedic surgeon and future husband to Felicity, all over again.

In the morning…