He didn’t know her, he thought bleakly. He had no idea what was happening behind that blank mask. She’d walked away from him five years ago and he hadn’t seen her since. His only phone call had elicited a brutal response.
‘I’m married, Cal. My husband needs me. Absolutely. I can’t talk to you any more.’
Married. Married.
He needed to concentrate on his job. His fingers were lying lightly against the baby’s neck, monitoring his vital signs by touch as well as by sight, but there was still time and still room for him to look at her again. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring down at her hands. She was wearing a plain gold wedding ring. Her fingers had clenched to white.
Why had she come?
Questions. There were questions everywhere. But for now only one mattered, he told himself.
Would this little one live?
He dragged his eyes away from Gina, back to the baby.
Needful or not, he’d continue to monitor him by sight, he decided. And by every other sense—because there was no way he could bear to look at Gina.
And he hardly dared to as much as glance at the little boy sitting next to Mike in the copilot’s seat.
Questions. Too many questions.
They scared him to death.
CJ was fantastic.
Over and over Gina how thought how lucky she’d been to have a little boy who demanded so little. CJ lived in his own small world, where his imagination ran riot. His requirements from his mother were for security and for hugs and for the basic necessities of life, but as long as those were provided whenever required, he was prepared to accept the assorted childminders he’d met in his short life. He even welcomed them as a wider audience for his incredible stories.
Now, as the helicopter landed at Crocodile Creek and the baby was wheeled into the hospital, as the emergency team sprang into action, Cal motioned to one of the nurses to take care of him.
‘Gina’s a doctor,’ he said briefly—brusquely. ‘She’s a cardiologist, right when we need one most. We need her help with the baby. Grace, can you find someone to take care of Gina’s little boy?’
‘Sure.’ Grace, a young nurse with a wide smile, held out her hand to CJ and beamed a welcome. ‘I hear you guys have been out at the rodeo. Did you see many horses?’
‘I saw lots of horses,’ CJ told her, ready to be friendly.
‘Will you tell me about them while we find you some juice and some cake? Come to the kitchen. Mrs Grubb is making chocolate cake and she loves hearing about horses. If we’re lucky, I think there might even be an icing bowl to lick.’
CJ was sold. He cast an enquiring glance at his mother for approval, then tucked his hand into Grace’s and disappeared cakewards.
‘He’s a great kid,’ Mike said as the paramedic wheeled the trolley through into Paediatrics, and Gina gave him a glance that she hoped was grateful.
She looked back at Cal. There was no gratitude there. His face was set and stern.
Maybe she should have phoned him four years ago.
Or not.
Maybe she shouldn’t be here now.
If she hadn’t been here now, this baby would be dead.
‘We need an echocardiogram,’ Cal said. He hadn’t paused as they moved through the hospital. He was intent only on the baby. Or he acted as if he was intent only on the baby.
‘You said you don’t have a cardiologist? No one with cardiology training?’
‘No.’
‘A paediatrician?’
‘Hamish is on leave. We’re trying to contact him now.’
‘We’re dead short of doctors,’ Mike said, and smiled, but then his smile faded a little. ‘There’s been a couple of…disasters. Just lucky you’re here, huh?’
‘I guess,’ she said dubiously, and cast an uncertain look at Cal. His face said there was no luck about it.
But she couldn’t look at his face. She needed to focus. This baby needed skills that she possessed.
He certainly did.
When the results of the echocardiograph were in front of her she felt her heart sink. Any thoughts she had of flying out of this place tonight were completely gone.
‘It’s pulmonary stenosis.’
With the stethoscope she’d been able to hear the characteristic heart murmur at the left upper chest. That and the fast heart rate had made her fairly sure what was causing the cyanosis. And now… Her fears were confirmed. There was a huge pressure difference between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery. Blood flowing in one direction and unable to escape fast enough in the other. Recipe for catastrophe.
‘We can’t risk transfer to Brisbane,’ Cal said slowly—reluctantly. ‘We’ll lose him.’
‘What’s happening?’ Mike asked. He’d come in and watched as they worked, but he’d been on the sidelines. Another nurse was there now—a woman in her thirties who’d been introduced as Jill Shaw, the director of nursing. Jill was wheeling the baby back under the nursery lights, with instructions to keep warming, keep monitoring breathing, while the three of them were left staring at the results.
‘We operate,’ Gina said, staring down at her fingers as if there were some sort of easy answer to be read there. There wasn’t. They really needed a paediatric cardiologist, but the nearest available would be in Brisbane and to transfer the baby…
They would have had to if she hadn’t been here. They’d have been forced to. Cal was an excellent general surgeon, she thought, and his additional physician training made him a wonderful all-rounder in this place where multi-skills were vital. She knew that. Cal’s skills were one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place.
But the operation for pulmonary stenosis on such a tiny child…
The heart valve they’d be working on—the pulmonary valve—was thin, even in adults. Composed of three coverlets, like leaflets, it opened in the direction of the blood flow. With pulmonary stenosis those leaflets were blocked or malformed in some way. In the baby’s case it was a major blockage. His heart was being forced to work far too hard to force blood through.
What she needed to do was to perform a balloon pulmonary valvuloplasty—a tricky manoeuvre even in adults—forcing the valve to open. With babies this size…
She’d normally advise waiting, she thought bleakly. She’d normally advise keeping him on oxygen. She’d try and get him fitter, older. She’d operate at a few weeks.
To operate on such a newborn…
But this was no minor blockage.
‘Do you have the equipment?’ she asked. ‘I’d need to monitor catheters by fluoroscopy.’
‘I’d imagine we have all you need,’ Cal told her. ‘Simon, the cardiologist who’s just left, had the place well set up for heart surgery.’
Gina nodded. She’d worked with this service before, and she’d expected this answer.
Many of the population around Crocodile Creek would be indigenous Australians, and she knew from experience how reluctant they were to leave their people. For a tribal elder to come to Crocodile Creek for an operation would be hugely stressful, but here at least here they could still be surrounded by their own. To be flown to Brisbane, where there was no one of their tribe and