She couldn’t depend on a hospital. She was all this baby had.
She tugged the drawstring from her backpack and tied the umbilicus with care, then hauled the backpack wide and found her own windcheater—a soft, old garment that she loved. It’d do as a blanket.
Once again she checked his breathing, scarcely allowing herself to hope that this frail little scrap of humanity might survive.
But as if he’d read her mind and was determined to prove her wrong, he opened his eyes.
And even CJ was caught.
‘It’s a real baby,’ CJ breathed, awed at this transformation from what must have seemed a lifeless body to a living thing, and Gina could only gaze down at the baby in her arms and agree.
More. There were no words for this moment. For this miracle. She was suddenly holding a little person in her arms. A baby boy. A child who’d one day grow to be a man, because CJ had found him and her lifesaving techniques had blessedly worked.
How could missing a coach possibly compare to this? How could being stuck in this outlandish place possibly matter?
He was so tiny. Four, maybe five pounds? Premature? He had to be. His fingernails had scarcely started to form and he was so small.
His lips were still tinged with blue. Cyanosis? The tips of his fingers were still blue as well, and she started to worry all over again. As he’d started to breathe, his little body had suffused with colour, but now…
She checked his fingers and toes with care, trying not to expose him any more than she had to. It was a hot day, so the wind was warm against the baby’s skin. How long had he been exposed?
Maybe the warm wind had helped save his life.
But there were still those worrying traces of cyanosis. His heart wasn’t working at a hundred per cent.
It wasn’t his breathing, she thought. He was gazing up, wide-eyed, as if wondering where on earth he was, and his breathing seemed to be settling.
So why the skin blueness?
She wanted medical back-up. She wanted it now.
‘How will we get home?’ CJ asked, and she held the baby close and tried to make herself think.
‘We need to find someone to help us.’
‘Everyone’s gone,’ CJ said.
‘Surely not everyone.’
But maybe everyone had. Gina’s heart sank. The rodeo itself had finished almost an hour ago. A group of country and western musicians from down on the coast had booked the coach to transport their gear. They’d played at the closing ceremony, then organised the coach to stay longer, giving them time to pack up.
The timing meant that the crowd had dispersed. The rodeo had taken place miles from the nearest settlement—which itself wasn’t much of a settlement. There’d been mobile food vans and a mobile pub, but they’d gone almost before the last event.
CJ might well be right.
‘Someone must be here,’ she said, trying to sound assured. She tucked the baby underneath her T-shirt, against her skin, hoping the warmth of her skin would do the same job as an incubator. ‘Come on, CJ. Let’s go find someone.’
CJ was looking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to accompany her or not. ‘Is the baby OK?’
‘I think so.’ She hoped so.
‘You’ve got blood on your shirt.’
She had. She grimaced down at her disgusting T-shirt but she wasn’t thinking of her appearance. She was thinking of how much blood the baby had lost.
Why had he bled so much? And newborn babies had so little… He couldn’t afford to have lost this much.
He whimpered a little against her and she felt a tiny surge of reassurance. And something more.
Once upon a time—four and a half years ago—she’d held CJ like this, and she’d made the vows she found were forming again in her heart right now. She’d loved CJ’s daddy so much. Cal had taught her what loving could be, and she’d pass that loving on to CJ.
And even though Cal no longer came into it—even though Cal was no part of her life and had nothing to do with this baby—she found herself voicing those same vows. She’d protect this baby, come what may.
What mother could have left him here? she wondered. How much trouble must a woman be suffering to drag herself away from her newborn child?
She thought of how distressed she’d been when CJ had been born—how much she’d longed for Cal and how impossible it had seemed that she raise her son without him. But the bond to her tiny scrap of a son had been unbreakable, regardless.
He’d been her link to Cal.
She’d thought of Cal so much as her son had been born, and suddenly, achingly, she thought of him now.
But it was crazy. She couldn’t think of Cal. Neither could she think about the coach growing further away by the minute. Her ticket out of here—away from Cal for ever—was gone.
She needed to find help.
‘Come on, CJ. There must be someone still around.’ She cradled the baby with one hand, took CJ’s hand with the other and went to find out.
The rodeo had been held in a natural arena where a ring of hills formed a natural showground. There was scrub and bushland on the hills but the rodeo ground was a huge, dusty area that now looked barren and deserted.
But not everyone had gone. As Gina and CJ crossed the parking lot back into the rodeo grounds, they found one solitary person—an elderly, native Australian. Gina had seen him before, working on the sidelines during the rodeo. Was he some sort of ground manager? He must be. He was staring around at the piles of litter and scratching his head in disgust. As he saw Gina and CJ, he shoved back his hat and smiled, obviously pleased to be distracted from the mess.
‘G’day. Come to help me clean up?’
‘We’ve found a baby,’ Gina told him.
He stared. His smile faded.
‘Um…say again?’
‘Someone has abandoned a baby in the bush. I have him here.’ She motioned to the bulge beneath her stained T-shirt. ‘We need medical help. Fast.’
‘You’ll be kidding me.’
‘I’m not joking.’ She outlined what had happened and the man’s jaw dropped almost to his ankles.
‘You’re saying some woman just dropped her bundle behind the rocks—and left it for dead?’
‘She may have thought he was dead already,’ Gina told him. ‘I had trouble getting him to breathe.’
The man cast an uneasy glance at the bulge under her shirt. He took a step back, as if maybe he was facing a lunatic. ‘So he’s under there? A baby.’
‘He’s under there. Can you take us to the nearest hospital?’
The man stared at her for a moment longer, took another step backward and then motioned uncertainly to an ancient truck parked nearby.
‘There’s no other way of getting out of here than that. How did you get here?’
‘Coach.’
‘The coach has left.’
‘Yes,’ Gina said, trying to hold her impatience in check. ‘Will you take us to the hospital? We need help.’
‘Nearest clinic’s at Gunyamurra, twenty miles from here,’ he told her, still really doubtful. ‘But there’s no one there now. The Wetherbys and the Gunnings—the two families that live near there and the workers