Czytaj książkę: «The Doctor's Mistress»

CHAPTER ONE

AT THE wheel of the ambulance, Hayley Morris turned out of the station driveway into Halifax Street and activated lights and sirens. Beside her, Bruce McDonald consulted the map.

‘OK, yeah, it’s off Bennett Parade,’ he said. ‘Beach Road.’

He was a very experienced ambulance officer, though not a fully trained level-five paramedic as Hayley now was. Stocky and grizzled, he could lift a heavy, full-grown man as easily as he could gentle his voice to soothe a child.

Hayley nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. ‘I know Beach Road.’

‘They’ve extended it. Maybe this is one of those new houses.’

‘We’ll soon see.’

It was a Thursday in early February and the town was quiet at just after noon. Another turn brought Hayley to the Princes Highway and she headed north, taking advantage of the wide ribbon of traffic-free grey road to bring the vehicle up to a hundred kilometres per hour. She would go even faster once she was out of Arden.

Crossing a long, low bridge over the harbour, just where it merged into the Cammerook River’s tidal mouth, she sped past motionlesss fishermen, a waterfront restaurant, a children’s playground. The houses petered out, and the highway shimmered with mirages in the midday summer heat.

Two minutes later, she had reached the turnoff to Moama. Bennett Parade was quiet, too. Sixty years ago, Moama had simply been the name of a beach. Thirty years ago, it had been a string of rustic holiday homes, most of them made of fibro-cement or weatherboard and set amongst dense and fragrant eucalyptus forest.

Now it was a town in its own right, prices for beachfront property had sky-rocketed and there were some gorgeous new houses looking out along the coastline of white beaches and rocky headlands. In another ten years, Arden and Moama would be seamlessly joined by the mushrooming developments.

The ambulance radio crackled into life, down near Hayley’s left thigh.

‘Informant is a four-year-old child, Car Seven,’ said the dispatcher, Kathy Lowe. ‘Repeating that, four years of age. She’s sounding more and more distressed. Can I give her an update? Her name’s Tori, by the way.’

‘We’re turning into Beach Road now,’ Bruce said. ‘Tell her to listen and she’ll hear us coming. Tell her to open the front door.’

Hayley felt a prickle of apprehension. What was a four-year-old girl doing, reporting her own injury? Who was with her?

Kathy hadn’t been able to get a lot of detail, although she was experienced and adept at talking callers through all sorts of emergencies. A former nurse, she’d recently coached a dad through the delivery of his wife’s baby boy, over the phone, before the ambulance could reach the couple’s isolated property. And she’d once pinpointed the location of two lost and lacerated tourists by correctly identifying the tree into which their car had slid on a muddy side road that they hadn’t been able to name.

This time, Kathy had had to coax an address and other details out of a four-year-old. She was with her grandmother? Why wasn’t Grandma helping to cook that boiled egg? Oh, Grandma was having a little nap? Was that it?

‘She’s crying too much,’ Kathy had said. ‘I can’t get a good fix on what’s wrong. Something about the grandmother. Something about the egg. Sounds like a burn or a scald.’

Hayley hated burns. Hated any injury to a child. Particularly hated it when no one had the presence of mind to plunge the burn immediately into cold running water, but how could you expect a four-year-old to think of that? Or to understand when Kathy had suggested it?

As for the grandmother...

‘It’s number 154—one of the new houses.’ Bruce counted off. ‘OK—146, 148. It’s this one.’ He pointed ahead to a dramatically beautiful architect-designed place, painted cream with purple-blue trim. ‘Gee, look at the views it’s got!’

The driveway climbed steeply upwards from the street, before finishing in a flat apron of paved stone in front of a double garage.

‘I’m going to reverse in,’ Hayley said, silencing the siren.

She passed the driveway, veered out wide into the street, then threw the gearstick into reverse and swung the steering-wheel hard down to the left, accelerating as she did so. The heavy vehicle lumbered backwards up the driveway, its engine loud and strident. Hayley craned in the driver’s seat and managed the manoeuvre without difficulty.

Bruce was out of the car before it had even come to a stop. Hayley followed him through a sunny private courtyard newly planted with salt-tolerant shrubs and flowers and up the stone steps that led to a dramatic front balcony.

In the doorway stood Tori, a pretty child with a high ponytail of fair hair and brown eyes. Her pink cotton dress was wet all down the front and she was shivering and crying.

Shock? Hayley thought at once.

It was a possibility in a child of this age, if that water on her dress had started out scalding hot. The water must have hit...Hayley calculated quickly to give a very rough estimate...as much as eighteen per cent of Tori’s total body area, possibly including a portion of the sensitive genital area. The symptoms she displayed could be the life-threatening medical condition known as shock, or it could be simply the aftermath of the body’s adrenalin reaction.

Ahead of her, Bruce had picked the little girl up.

‘I can feel the heat,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Where’s the kitchen? I’ll get water on it before we ask questions.’

They went into the house, finding their way by instinct. Through a front hallway and a swing door straight ahead there was a large, ultra-modern kitchen and open-plan family room, overlooking a gorgeous rear deck and a gentle slope of garden, its lawn still just a tender new fuzz of green shading the carefully groomed earth.

Hayley overtook Bruce and found an American-style sink sprayer with an extendible hose and squeeze control. ‘First piece of good news,’ she said, pulling it out, turning it on and testing its temperature. It was fresh and cold, and the pressure was good.

‘Look, the stove’s still on,’ Bruce observed. ‘And here are two eggs cracked on the floor. And bread and butter fingers on a plate. You were trying to get some lunch, weren’t you, Tori? Doing a pretty good job.’

A half-empty saucepan of water rested at a precarious angle at the edge of the stainless-steel stove top as well.

‘Here we go, love.’ Bruce sat Tori on the granite counter top and peeled off her dress, and Hayley began to irrigate the area of the burn. On the child’s sandal-clad feet, she noticed two more patches of angry red and realised that there was further burning there as well. There were also some splashes on her thighs. Putting the plug in the sink, she let it partially fill to cover Tori’s feet, then took the sandals off beneath the water, wishing she had two more hands.

‘I know it hurts, sweetheart,’ she said. Mentally, she added another three per cent to her estimate of the total burn area. ‘This cool water will help, OK?’

‘I’m going to see who else is around,’ Bruce said. His voice dropped to an ominous growl. ‘Someone had better be.’

He’d been in the ambulance service here for twenty years, with level four advanced life support qualifications, and he often claimed that nothing could surprise him any more. Plenty could anger him, though. Accidents to children that would have been prevented or made less severe by adequate adult supervision came close to the top of his list.

He handed Hayley a cotton blanket which she draped around Tori’s narrow, shaking shoulders. The scalds needed to cool, but the rest of the child’s body needed warmth. She needed the comfort of a friendly arm, too. Holding her, Hayley felt the spray from the sink hose dampen her white uniform shirt. She would be saturated before this was finished.

Tori’s sobs had begun to subside into convulsive tremors. Her brown eyes were huge and tear-filled and she hadn’t yet said a word.

‘Is it not hurting so much now?’ Hayley asked gently. ‘Feeling a little bit better? We’re here now, and we’re going to look after you.’

She had a four-year-old herself. A boy named Max. Max’s father lived in Melbourne now. Their divorce had been finalised for almost three years. Being on their own together, herself and Max, created a special closeness between mother and child, and Hayley was protective of the time Max spent with Chris. Chris loved his son, but that wasn’t always enough.

Who loves this child? she wondered. Who is going to be devastated about this? Who is going to be guilt-ridden? Who is going to get blamed?

Above the sounds of Tori’s sobs—she still hadn’t spoken—Hayley heard Bruce’s heavy footfalls on the tiles of the front hallway.

‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Anyone here?’

He went to the back door and surveyed the unfinished garden, then headed left along the corridor to the bedrooms.

‘We’re going to take you in the ambulance in a minute,’ Hayley said to the little girl. ‘We’re going to put some wet cloths on your tummy to keep it cool. Do you have a mummy or a daddy coming home soon?’

She was losing faith in the very existence of the grandmother, was beginning to believe that Kathy must have heard wrongly and that the child had been at home alone.

‘I’ve got a daddy,’ came a tiny voice at last, still shuddery and squeaky with sobs.

‘Where’s Daddy now, sweetheart?’

‘At work.’

‘Do you know where he works?’

‘At the hospital.’

Bruce came back along the corridor, and entered another room just to the right of the hallway. Its door had been closed. Hayley heard his loud exclamation, and a few moments later his voice on the two-way radio, talking to the dispatch office. His words carried through the hall as far as the kitchen, easily clear enough for her to make out the words.

‘Second car required at 154 Beach Road, Kathy. The grandmother wasn’t taking a nap, Hayley,’ he called, ‘She’s unconscious, and I’m going to check her out.’

‘OK, I’m handling things here,’ she yelled back to him.

It was axiomatic in the ambulance service—never leave the patient. That made things difficult in this case. They weren’t a large station, and only one crew was on station duty during the day. A second on-call crew would have to be brought in, which slowed response time.

Meanwhile, Bruce would already be checking out the most obvious possibilities. An ECG would confirm or rule out a heart problem, while a quick test of the woman’s blood-sugar level would indicate whether this was a diabetic coma.

After a few minutes, Bruce called to her again. ‘It looks like a stroke.’

‘You’re sure?’ Hayley asked. She continued to irrigate Tori’s burned skin.

‘The ECG isn’t right for a heart problem. Her blood sugar’s normal. But she’s still unconscious, just lying here on the couch. That suggests CVA rather than TIA.’

‘Yes, it does.’

She recognised the abbreviations. Cerebral vascular accident and transient ischaemic attack. The latter was sometimes called a mini-stroke, and rapid, complete recovery from this condition was much more common than from a CVA. The blocked blood vessel or leaking blood involved in the more serious event usually caused at least some permanent brain damage.

‘I’ve checked her responses,’ Bruce went on. ‘She’s reacting to pain and light. I’ve covered her and put her on her side, secured her airway. I’m going to keep talking to her, trying to get a response. How’s your little heroine? Hayley, I don’t want to leave until that second car gets here.’

‘No, obviously not,’ Hayley agreed, ‘but it’s difficult. She needs more than what I’m doing now, judging by her skin and her breathing.’

Tori looked clammy and pale, in contrast to her dark hair, and her breathing was too fast and too shallow. Her pulse was thready and rapid as well.

‘Has she said anything?’

‘She managed to tell me her daddy works at the hospital, didn’t you, darling?’

‘I wonder if he’s there now,’ Bruce said. ‘We’ve no idea who he is?’

‘No, but... Well, look at this fabulous house.’

‘Yeah,’ the older man agreed. ‘There are more great views from this room. It limits the options. He’s not the janitor. Doctor? Health Service Manager? I know him, and his kids aren’t this age.’

Hayley was pulling sterile gauze pads from an equipment kit as they batted these questions around. Tori had paled further and was silent now, no longer in tears. Suddenly, her shoulders and stomach heaved, and she leaned forward and vomited.

Hayley took it in her stride, soothing the little girl, holding her shoulders more firmly as two more heaves came and rinsing the mess quickly down the sink when it was done. She gave Tori a glass of water, and the child spat out two or three mouthfuls then drank thirstily. Hayley turned off the sink sprayer and draped the soaked pieces of gauze over the area of the burn.

It was already beginning to blister, suggesting a partial thickness burn. Fortunately, the red area stopped a few centimetres below Tori’s navel and her genital region had been spared.

‘I’m going to get her settled in the ambulance,’ she called to Bruce. ‘When the others get here, we’ll split crews, and Jim can drive me while Paul stays with you.’

She left the front door open and carried Tori to the ambulance, hoping the second car would get there soon. Tori looked tiny on the stretcher in the back of the car. Hayley covered her with a blanket at once. Next she inserted a drip, containing morphine for pain, and was alarmed rather than reassured by Tori’s lack of fight when the sharp prick came. OK, yes, she’d found a nice vein in the back of the child’s hand and the needle had gone in straight away, but she would have expected more of a protest.

She picked up the radio and spoke to the dispatcher. ‘Kathy, is there a second car on its way?’

‘Yes, Car Seven. Car Eleven just called in with a report on their status. It should be with you in a couple of minutes.’

‘OK, thanks.’ She turned back to Tori. ‘What does Daddy do at the hospital, darling?’ she asked. It would help if she could keep Tori alert and reassured.

‘He’s Dr Black,’ came a weak little voice. ‘He makes people better.’

‘Dr Black?’ Hayley echoed. She went cold.

Dear God, it had to be Byron! This was Byron Black’s daughter...

In the distance, the siren of the second car could faintly be heard. Meanwhile, Hayley’s mind raced. She’d seen him, what, twice, in sixteen years? They’d trained together in Arden’s competitive amateur swimming club in their teens. Most people had called him B.J. then, but they probably didn’t any more. She hadn’t used the nickname herself, even back then. She hadn’t felt that it suited him.

He was three years older than she was, but they’d both been backstroke specialists, tackling the sprint distances. This had meant a lot of cheering for each other, a lot of powering alongside each other in the pool and the growth of a friendship. They’d both been keen and competitive, thriving on the atmosphere, and they’d made it to the state championships twice.

Once, they’d even kissed. Lord, she hadn’t relived that delicious memory in years...

Then, when Hayley had been fifteen, Byron had gone off to Sydney to study medicine at Sydney University, and it had seemed as if he’d made a permanent life for himself in the city. He’d been openly competitive in the pool, and he was obviously ambitious about his career. He didn’t come from a professional background. His father worked in a local hardware store, and Byron had had to work hard towards each new goal. In hindsight, she had the impression that he gloried in a challenge, and she couldn’t think of any goal he’d set and failed to meet.

Hayley had run into him once on the beach around Christmas-time about seven years previously, in the company of a pretty, dark-haired woman. ‘This is my wife, Elizabeth,’ he’d said. She had introduced him to Chris that day, and the four of them had talked for a short while.

A couple of years later, they’d bumped into each other in the supermarket and had exchanged two minutes of superficial news. She’d heard a couple of things since. That Elizabeth had died in a plane accident of some kind. That they’d had a little girl.

Tori.

The sirens grew louder and the lower tone of the vehicle’s engine joined the noise as it grew closer. Then the sounds of sirens and engine both died. The second ambulance was here, parked in the street below.

Climbing out the back of her car, Hayley directed Paul Cotter up to the house. ‘Bruce is in the living room with the other patient. First door on the right,’ she told Jim Sheldon. ‘You’re driving this car. Let’s go.’

‘Righto, Hayley.’ Paul hurried up the steps, his black trouser legs a blur, to disappear inside and find Bruce.

Hayley climbed back into the car to Tori.

‘We’re going now,’ she said, gently peeling back the blanket and replacing the gauze, warmed from Tori’s over-heated skin, with freshly soaked pieces. ‘We’re going to see Daddy at the hospital.’

‘Daddy...’ said a tiny voice.

A few weeks ago, Hayley had found out that Byron was coming back to Arden with his little daughter to oversee the accident and emergency department at Arden Hospital and act as Resident Medical Officer. He must have started work there already, judging by what Tori had said. He was replacing an older man who’d retired. But Hayley hadn’t seen him yet because she’d been in Melbourne for the past two weeks, giving Max some time with his dad.

Her heart did a familiar, uncomfortable flip. Chris had been his usual difficult self during her visit. He’d hinted at the possibility that the two of them might get back together. His wistfulness on the issue was a vindication of the way she’d suffered when he’d left, but beyond that... It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that perhaps she’d moved on.

‘You’re my best friend, Hayley,’ he had whispered to her. ‘Maybe that’s what really counts.’

Her reply had been stiff. ‘I’ll always be your friend, Chris.’

He’d been her first and only lover. He’d been her husband for seven years, and he was the father of her child. Aware of all his faults, she still cared for him. It wasn’t a particularly rewarding feeling but, with Max’s needs to consider, was she just being selfish to want more?

She had driven the eight hours back to Arden in a state of unsettled questioning and hadn’t given a further thought to that trivial yet oddly pleasant piece of news, a few weeks earlier, about Byron Black’s imminent return.

And now, here she was, on her second shift back, sitting in the back of Car Seven with Byron’s injured daughter. Dear God, he would be racked over this.

The driver’s door of the car slammed shut and Jim started the engine. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘Pretty shocked.’

‘And the other patient?’

‘Bruce didn’t have chance to give me much of a report. He’s pretty sure it’s a stroke. They’ll just have to see how it resolves once she’s admitted. She must be in her sixties.’ She would have liked to have said more, to tell Jim, She must be either Byron Black’s mother or his mother-in-law. How’s he going to feel?

But Tori needed her attention. It wasn’t the time for gossip and conjecture with Jim.

‘We’re on our way now, sweetheart,’ she said, taking the child’s soft little hand. ‘It won’t be long. I’m going to get Mr Sheldon to talk to the hospital and tell your daddy that you’re coming.’

But Tori didn’t speak. She had her eyes closed now. Hayley left her hand where it was.

‘Jim, I’ve worked out who she is,’ Hayley told him briefly and quietly, twisting towards the front of the vehicle. ‘Can you contact the hospital and make sure Dr Black is available in A and E?’

Jim whistled. ‘His daughter? The new guy? I handed over to him last week, another CVA. He seemed good—thorough, focused, not too arrogant—but he’s going to be a mess today.’

He was.

Hayley glimpsed him standing in the ambulance bay as they pulled in. He hadn’t changed much since the last time she’d seen him. He still had the broad shoulders of a swimmer, still wore his thick, soft hair short so that it would stand up in dark spikes when he towelled it dry...or when he ran his fingers through it in agitation, as he was doing now.

He had brown eyes. They weren’t puppy brown like Chris’s, however, but tiger brown with a glint of gold, an altogether more dangerous colour. He had a long straight nose, a wide, serious mouth and a broad forehead. Each of those features was stiff with tension now. They appeared to be etched more strongly than usual, as if the sculptor who’d made him—and any sculptor would be proud to have made a human form like Byron Black’s—had dug his tools in extra deep, manipulating them with force.

There had always been an aura around Byron, something that hinted at the capacity for deep-running passion and the capacity to contain that passion carefully inside him. Today it looked as if the passion was threatening to break free.

A nurse and an orderly appeared with a stretcher and a drip stand. Hayley opened the back of the car, unlocked the ambulance stretcher from its metal track and slid it out, extending the wheels down to ground level as she did so. Tori was light and little and easy to shift from one stretcher to the other.

‘Tori! Victoria!’ Byron said hoarsely, curving his long body over her.

He was in the way of the drip line, but Hayley managed to snake it around him. As she did so, the sensitive inner skin of her forearm brushed across the top of that dark, spiky head and his hair was as silky and clean as she remembered. With the hairs of her arm still standing on end, she passed the plastic bag of fluid across to the nurse, who hung it on her stand.

An orderly began to wheel the stretcher inside. Byron was still leaning over it, his long, strong legs working instinctively to keep up as they rumbled from concrete slab to vinyl flooring, through a set of automatic doors.

‘Daddy...’ came a little voice, fuzzy from the effect of the morphine. ‘Grandma wouldn’t wake up from her sleep.’

He went white, straightened like a released catapult and turned to Hayley, blind and helpless. Didn’t even recognise her. She wasn’t surprised. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘What on earth happened?’

‘She has a partial thickness burn over twelve to fifteen per cent of her body.’ Hayley kept her voice calm and impersonal. He needed a clear report, not a lot of words wasted in sympathy. Not yet. ‘No facial or genital involvement. The other patient in the house with her appears to have had a CVA and she’s coming in a second vehicle. The other crew will be able to give you a better report on her status...’

‘A CVA? That’s my mother...’ Byron was paler than ever now. ‘Dear God, and the two of them were alone!’

They could all hear the sirens of the second ambulance now. Byron clearly didn’t know which way to turn next, his usual control and authority momentarily deserting him. His eyes looked wild, his lips were white, his fists were balled hard. Hayley ached with sympathy for him.

‘Tori must have been terrified,’ he whispered.

‘I think she wasn’t, Byron, not until she burned herself,’ she reassured him, using his first name without even thinking about it. ‘She was trying to make boiled eggs for lunch. She thought your mother was just having a little sleep on the couch.’

‘All right, yes. I guess that’s how she would intepret it, yes.’ His vision cleared suddenly, emphasising the golden glints in the depths of his eyes. ‘Hayley! Hayley Kennett! I’m sorry, I’ve only just...’ He gripped her arm.

‘It’s OK.’

She returned his gesture, squeezing the muscular forearm she’d seen so many times, tanned and dripping wet, at swim practice. With an arm like that, it felt as if he should be the strong one but, of course, he wasn’t today, not after what had happened. She didn’t waste time reminding him that she was Hayley Morris now. She hadn’t gone back to her maiden name after the divorce.

‘We don’t know how long she spent trying to rouse her grandmother,’ she said instead, as they covered the final few metres before entering the paediatric section of the emergency department. ‘Perhaps no time at all. She does seem to have taken the ‘‘nap’’ at face value. Her dress was wet all down the front, and there are burns on her thighs and feet, suggesting that she tipped boiling water over herself when she was trying to get the eggs out of the saucepan. We found the eggs broken on the floor.’

‘Mum’s all right?’

He stood back for a moment as they transferred Tori from ambulance stretcher to emergency department bed. Its fresh starched white linens were stretched smoothly across a firm mattress, and it was surrounded by equipment and supplies whose intimidating effect could only be partially offset by pictures of dinosaurs, landscapes and fairies on the walls.

‘She’s in the care of our second crew.’ Hayley repeated herself patiently. ‘Bruce McDonald is with her. He ruled out a heart problem and diabetes, secured her airway and was trying to stimulate her into waking up when I left. I can’t say any more than that yet.’

‘This is a nightmare!’ Byron muttered helplessly.

Then he turned to the A and E nurse, and was suddenly in complete control. Only on the surface, Hayley suspected. Only because he had to be.

‘Get whoever’s on call to come in now,’ he said. ‘We need a second doctor. Tori, Daddy’s here, sweetheart. OK, we need her on monitors. Hayley, how fast are you running that drip? You have her on morphine, right? How much? Tori, you’re fine, now. You were scared, weren’t you, and you were brave and just brilliant to phone the emergency number like that, and remember our new address. I’m so proud of you. Daddy’s going to have a look at your tummy and your feet now, OK?’

Hayley answered his questions, darting her responses into his uninterrupted flow of words. After recognising her, he hadn’t looked at her again. He had pulled a chair up beside Tori’s bed and hadn’t looked away from his daughter since he’d released that brief, almost painful squeeze on Hayley’s arm.

She stepped back with a reluctance that surprised her. Her role in this was over, apart from writing up her reports, but she didn’t feel ready to let go. She wanted to look after Byron, which was strange when they’d had so little contact over the years. He was so big and capable, so determined, strong-willed and confident. It was unsettling, heart-rending, to see him this vulnerable.

She wanted to make promises and assurances to him that she had no right to make. Things like, It wasn’t your fault. They’re both going to be all right. Don’t knock yourself out.

But she was just a casual friend from years ago, someone he’d yelled encouragement to and slapped on the back in congratulation. Someone he’d kissed just once, in the corner on a couch in the dark at a party.

It had lasted for, oh, at least an hour—a first, wonderful taste of the primal intimacy that a man and a woman could find together. Then a couple of days later he’d turned up at her front door to say something awkward about his imminent move to Sydney and not wanting to get involved in a relationship at the moment.

To tell the truth, she’d been relieved to hear it. At fifteen, just a girl, not a woman, she hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship with a university-aged boyfriend who already seemed to know exactly what he wanted out of life. For a few months she’d had romantic dreams about meeting up with him again when she was a mature adult—say, seventeen or eighteen—but then those dreams had drifted into insignificance, as a young girl’s dreams so often did, and at nineteen she’d met Chris.

The automatic doors opened again as Bruce and Paul wheeled Mrs Black into A and E. A second nurse came forward to take formal charge of the new patient. As Hayley sat at the desk at the A and E nurses’ station, she heard Bruce giving a more detailed rundown on Mrs Black’s condition.