Her hand was still inside the crib. It was too easy to move her forefinger within reach of that tiny hand but it was so good to feel the surprising strength with which Lucky gripped her fingertip. For just an instant Emily could recapture the joy she had felt only hours ago, when her finger had last been held just like this.
Joy that Lucky had been found at all after being abandoned on the outskirts of the Gunyamurra rodeo—an event that attracted hundreds of people to an area some three hundred miles west of Crocodile Creek every year. Joy that he’d come through an emergency procedure to correct his congenital heart defect and that they’d found and could treat the inherited blood disorder that could have proved fatal.
Emily had had every intention of burying any personal misery and joining the celebration on the beach when the plan had been mooted that afternoon, but time on her own had made it seem too daunting. She was tired. Physically and emotionally exhausted, in fact. It would hardly add to the spirit of the occasion if she couldn’t control these stupid tears and ended up crying on a friend’s shoulder again or something. She couldn’t face a party. Emily had never felt more miserable in her entire life.
So she had slipped back to the nursery in the hope of recapturing and gaining strength from the joy they all felt concerning Lucky. And she had…for a moment. But suddenly that tiny hand wasn’t just touching her finger. It was touching something so deep inside her the ache was simply unbearable.
And the tears were flowing again.
Not for the baby. History might be repeating itself for Emily Morgan and, yes, she did have to accept the fact that she’d been dumped by her fiancé and partner of nearly two years for another woman, but the infant ghost that had haunted her since she had first set eyes on Lucky was back where it belonged.
Way back—in a past that had no bearing on the present.
This current pain was more selfish. It was about rejection. Grief. The loss of something she had worked hard to try and get right. There was anger in the miserable mix as well. Emily Morgan had failed…again. And to top it off, there was a good dollop of plain, simple loneliness.
Except she wasn’t alone, was she? Not on the surface, anyway. Emily had a lot of friends. Good friends. And one of them was approaching right now in the form of Lucky’s nurse for the evening, Grace.
Emily managed to ease her finger free from the tiny fist without disturbing the baby, who had drifted back to sleep, and she hastily scrubbed the tears from her cheeks with an embarrassed chuckle.
‘Look at me, crying over Lucky. Professional, aren’t I?’
‘There’s been more than one tear shed over this mite.’ Grace smiled. ‘I even caught our medical director blinking pretty hard not very long ago.’ She leaned over the incubator. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? They’re not going to have any trouble finding him a foster-home, that’s for sure.’
‘We’re going to find his real family,’ Emily said firmly.
‘You reckon? They haven’t found any clues yet, have they?’
‘No.’
‘And there were hundreds of people at the rodeo. Bit hard to try and search the whole of north Queensland.’
‘Somebody knows.’ Emily stood up slowly. ‘Maybe they haven’t seen a newspaper yet or heard the news on the radio, and they don’t know he’s alive. When they do, they’ll come and get him.’ She took a last glance at the still sleeping baby. ‘How could they not?’
Grace smiled again, nodding agreement. ‘You going to the party on the beach now?’
‘On my way.’ Emily tried to sound convincing.
Lucky was going to survive. So was she. There was no good reason to avoid the celebration. None at all.
She hadn’t sounded convincing enough, apparently. Grace’s glance was sympathetic. ‘I haven’t had a chance to say anything, Em, but I’m sorry, you know? About Simon going off like that.’
‘I’m practically over it,’ Emily lied. ‘As more than one person has said, Simon Kent was a rat.’
‘He sure was. Charles is furious at the way he just walked out. It’s hardly professional to leave a hospital this size with no cardiology cover. He’s still muttering about suing for breach of contract. Personal concerns, my foot!’
‘It was obviously fate.’ Emily was keen to change the subject. ‘We’ve got a new cardiologist now, by the look of things.’
‘Mmm.’ Grace nudged Emily. ‘Go on, then. One of us should be down there, drinking a toast to the happy couple.’
Emily’s feet dragged.
She was happy for Cal. Of course she was. The group of medics that lived in the rambling old house that had been the original hospital were a family, and Cal Jamieson the best of brothers.
So was Mike, a paramedic and rescue helicopter pilot—another of her male housemates. Charles was more of a father figure but that was probably due to his position as medical director rather than his age. And the fact that he’d been there longer than anyone else. There was also that uncanny ability he had to know just a little too much about whatever was going on in his hospital—thanks largely, Emily suspected, to his skill in travelling silently on those well-oiled wheels. The quick glance she threw over her shoulder was almost automatic. You just never knew whether Charles might be following or what he might see or hear.
There was no sign of their medical director, or the wheelchair he had been confined to since a shooting accident in his teens. Emily hoped that someone had managed to persuade Charles to go down to the beach despite the difficulties presented by sand. He took a keen interest in the lives—and loves—of the people living in the doctors’ house. Not that he’d said anything to Emily about Simon yet, but when he did she knew it would be both comforting and wise.
Maybe Emily had been avoiding talking to Charles because she wouldn’t receive the level of comfort she craved. They had both known that the relationship hadn’t been strong enough to convince Emily to leave Crocodile Creek. And they had both known that Simon wasn’t a ‘stayer’.
Emily had been there for nearly six years now and was almost as good as Charles at picking the ‘stayers’. Cal and Mike were. Simon had never come close but he wasn’t alone in his reaction. The isolation was too much for some to handle. The closeness with which they all lived and worked together stifled others. As an air, sea and outback rescue base for all of far north Queensland, Crocodile Creek was a magnet to young doctors and other medical staff who wanted the drama of the Outback Flying Doctor Service or an escape from an ordinary career or life—for whatever reason.
Escape had brought Emily here but it had been the best move she had ever made. She loved her life. She loved her job and the community. She loved her friends. She just wasn’t quite up to celebrating with them right now. Seeing Cal and Gina together, the way they would be looking and smiling at each other, witnessing that kind of love—it would rub salt into a wound that was surprisingly raw, given the edge of another emotion that Emily had not really admitted to feeling yet.
Relief.
But wasn’t that simply due to the successful battle to save baby Lucky? The strength of that relief, coupled with her weariness, would inevitably lead to a bit of overlap when she thought of Simon, wouldn’t it? So why did she have the nagging suspicion that it was more the shock of how Simon had dumped her than the ending of their relationship that was so upsetting? And, if she felt like that, did that mean she had been expecting it all along and had, therefore, not tried hard enough