Midwife in a Million. Fiona McArthur

whistled through his teeth. ‘Now that’s one lucky man.’

      Kate smiled grimly. ‘Tell me about it.’

      No. He wanted her to tell him about what had happened ten years ago. Why she’d changed so dramatically. Why she’d broken her promise and said she didn’t love him. Sent the ring back.

      Had her father made her? Had Rory’s own parents had something to do with it? Now there was only Kate to ask.

      Why had Lyle Onslow victimised Rory’s father? Why fire him for no reason, stop his mother working anywhere on the station until they’d had to leave? Had the old man really been so afraid that Kate could love someone socially inferior like Rory?

      Rory opened his mouth and then closed it. He sighed. ‘I’ll top up the diesel with the jerrycans while it’s not raining.’ He walked away.

      It wasn’t what he’d been going to say. Kate knew that. That was the problem. They’d always had an intuition about what the other was thinking and it seemed she hadn’t lost hers either. She gazed out over the plains with the serpentine swathe of the river and the thick dark clouds almost obscuring the base of the ranges they’d watched that evening.

      The day she’d become a woman. A day that would affect her for ever. And Rory didn’t know. Would he understand? Would he hate her? Blame her? Feel sorry for her?

      ‘You right to go?’

      ‘Absolutely ready to go,’ she said, and they both knew that was exactly what she was thinking.

      Lucy had dropped into an uneasy doze and didn’t wake when the truck started again. Kate watched her patient’s flushed cheeks and a tiny niggle of fresh worry teased at her brain, pushing away thoughts of Rory.

      ‘It was a beautiful sunset that day.’ Rory’s voice was quiet and she knew it wasn’t only the sunset he was saying had been beautiful for them.

      Not now. Not with the memories so fresh in her mind. She felt the tears sting and she waited for them to form but of course it didn’t happen. She couldn’t go there.

      Thinking about that time of her life would open up all the wounds and grief and anger she’d bottled up for so long and she wasn’t sure what would ensue if she let them out. She was used to being frozen now. It was safe.

      Her glance rested on the young girl opposite her. With Lucy so sick, now was the time to be focused on her patient.

      ‘I don’t remember.’ She met his eyes briefly in the mirror and shrugged before she busied herself with writing down Lucy’s observations.

      Rory didn’t comment but, strangely, not once in the next hour did she feel his glance in the mirror as she had since Jabiru Township.

      When Lucy moaned softly in her sleep Kate narrowed her gaze on the bulge of Lucy’s stomach. She eased her hand down to gently rest on the top of Lucy’s uterus through the sheet. As she’d suspected, Lucy’s belly was firm and contracted beneath her fingers but, thankfully, after only seconds, the tightness loosened and her uterus relaxed.

      It was probably a Braxton Hicks contraction and not the real thing, Kate reassured herself, but the fact that Lucy had felt it even when half asleep was a worry.

      Kate glanced at her watch to note the exact time. She hoped Lucy didn’t take up regular moaning because then she’d have to start thinking the unthinkable.

      Please. She didn’t want a premature baby born hours away from hospital in the back of an ambulance truck.

      Closer to Derby might be okay. For about half an hour even the tiniest babies usually managed with warmth from the mum, and she could offer oxygen, but longer than that they had a tendency to crash. The risks increased dramatically for breathing difficulties, let alone all the other things that could go wrong.

      She’d never enjoyed her stints in the special care nursery, no doubt because it had been too close to her own skeletons in the closet, and she knew premature babies became ill from lots of things. She knew that sometimes they didn’t make it.

      Like hers. Like the child she’d never even seen, for all those reasons she’d never been given, and the memories she didn’t have that she’d blocked out successfully until now, until Rory had returned and allowed them to crowd her mind again.

      Kate chewed her lip. ‘How long do you think the trip’s going to take?’ She had a fair idea of the answer; she just needed to ask it out loud and to share the anxiety that was building as she jammed the untimely images from the past back into their hidden cave.

      ‘Five hundred kilometres to go, at say fifty an hour is ten hours plus stops and moments of unusual interest. We’ve done two.’ Rory looked up for the first time in a long time and caught her eye in the rear-vision mirror. ‘I can shorten it by an hour but the ride will be rougher. Getting nervous, Kate?’

      Understatement. Not about the labour—just the baby. ‘Maybe we should have stayed at the clinic and had Lucy’s baby there. At least we’d have electricity and more hands.’

      ‘But they said ship her out.’

      ‘I know. The problem is there’s a real risk if Lucy’s blood pressure continues to climb.’

      Not to mention the haemorrhage risk, Kate thought, but didn’t say it out loud in case Lucy woke up. Already placental vessels would be damaged and weakening from the constant high pressure of blood. If one of the vessels burst it would pour blood between the placenta and the uterus, then mother and baby would be in big trouble. Like Kate had been. She’d have to watch Lucy for pain that didn’t come and go.

      ‘I think she’s starting to contract,’ she said quietly to Rory. ‘Still irregularly, but the Nifedipine doesn’t seem to be holding her.’

      Rory frowned. ‘Are you saying nature wants that baby out and she might go into labour?’

      ‘Most likely. I’m all for that.’ Kate grimaced. ‘Just not on the road.’

      Rory looked up at her again through the mirror and, while his face remained serious, his sincerity shone through. ‘That’s why you’re with her. I’ve got faith in you. And I bet Lucy does too. Everything will be fine.’

      It was a platitude. An attempt to ease her strain. He was a very experienced paramedic and ambulance officer, a professional at calming people in stressful and extreme situations.

      And it was the phrase he’d said to her many times over the years in her hours of need.

       That first day at school…As the boss’s daughter, she’d been left alone and lonely until big Rory McIver from Year Two took her hand and showed her where she could sit. ‘Everything will be fine,’ he said and something in his eyes and the caring tone of his voice allowed her to believe him.

       That week her mother and stillborn baby brother died…When everyone else avoided her, not knowing what to say. When her father banned her from a final farewell at the funeral and Rory sought her out and held her and helped her make a special garden with a wooden cross where she would go to talk to her mother that no one else knew about. ‘Everything will be fine,’ he said.

       Rory, listening the hundreds of times she was upset by her father’s uncompromising stand on her behaviour and mixing with the hired help. He was always able to reassure her. Big things became manageable when she told Rory.