Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

‘No. Gina, I’m sorry about last night.’

‘Good.’

‘I pushed you for my own ends.’

‘So you did.’

‘And I never meant that I didn’t want CJ to have been born. Of course I didn’t.’

‘Fine.’ She glowered. It seemed to be becoming a permanent state.

‘But it would be good for CJ to be raised where I could have some access.’

‘So move to the States.’

‘My base is here.’

‘No,’ she said, and her anger faded a bit as she turned to face him square on. ‘You don’t have a base.’

‘I’ve been here for four years.’

‘Yes, but you don’t love anyone here.’

‘That’s irrelevant.’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Gina…’

‘You don’t need any of these people,’ she said. She’d gone to bed last night thinking of Cal, thinking of what was happening with him, and this discussion seemed an extension of that. It might be intrusive—none of her business—but him pushing her last night seemed to have removed the barriers to telling things how they were. ‘Cal, you’re spending your whole life patching people up, picking up the pieces, in medicine and in your personal life. Like with me. I came out here five years ago desperately unhappy and you picked up the pieces and you patched me up and I fell deeply in love with you. But then you don’t take the next step. You never admit you need anyone else. Is there anyone here you need? Really, Cal?’

‘I…’

‘Of course there’s not,’ she said, almost cordially. ‘Because of what happened with your family, you’ve never let yourself need anyone again.’

‘What is this?’ he demanded, startled. ‘Psychology by Dr Lopez?’

‘I know. It’s none of my business,’she told him, gentling. ‘But it’s why I have to go home. Because I’ve admitted that I need people. I need my family and my friends.’ More, she thought, and the idea that swept across her heart was so strong that she knew it for absolute truth. She needed Cal. But she wouldn’t say that. She’d said it years ago, and where had that got her?

‘For me to calmly go and live in Townsville would hurt,’ she told him. ‘Sure, I’d have a great job…’

‘You’d meet people.’

‘So I would,’ she told him. ‘But not the people I love.’

‘You’d learn…’

‘You really don’t understand the need thing, do you, Cal?’ she said sadly. ‘I need my friends and I need my family and I’m not too scared to admit it.’

‘You’re saying I am?’

‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said wearily. ‘But Townsville’s not going to happen.’ She regrouped. Sort of. ‘And Rudolph’s not going to happen either,’ she told him, ‘so stop encouraging CJ.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Just stop it,’ she said. She closed her eyes for a moment, still trying for the regroup. ‘The baby. Lucky. How is he?’

‘He’s still holding his own,’ Cal told her. They’d both moved back into the shade of the veranda—in this climate you moved into the shade as if a magnet was pulling you. ‘There doesn’t seem any sign of infection. His heartbeat’s settling and steady.’

‘I’ll do another echocardiogram now.’

‘We thought you’d say that, so we waited for you to wake up.’

‘You should have—’

‘There was no need,’ he said gently, and she flushed. She hated it when he was gentle. She hated it when he was…how she loved him. ‘What about the bleeding?’

‘The results of yesterday’s blood tests should be in soon,’ he told her. ‘Alix, our pathologist, is working on them now.’

‘I haven’t used any clot-breaking medication,’ she said. ‘Usually after a procedure for pulmonary stenosis I’d prescribe a blood thinner but I’ve held off. There’s a fair risk of blood clots in infants this tiny, but if he’s a bleeder…’

‘Hamish concurs,’ he told her. ‘He’s saying von Willebrand’s is a strong possibility.’

She nodded, flinching inside as she thought through the consequences.

Von Willebrand’s was a treatable condition. A similar disorder to haemophilia, any cut or major bruising could be life-threatening, but treated it was far less dangerous. In fact, given this baby’s condition, it was a bonus in that it made it less likely that Lucky would get a clot.

But it left an even deeper sense of unease about the mother. A woman, or more likely a girl, who’d had no medical help during a birth, who had possibly told no one about the birth, who was on her own.

Was she right in her surmise that the girl wasn’t a bleeder? If she’d haemorrhaged afterwards…

‘Has there been any news about the mother?’

‘Nothing,’ Cal told her, and she could see by his face that he was following her train of thought and was as worried as she was. ‘The police and a couple of local trackers have been right through the bushland round the rodeo area. They’re sure that she’s no longer in the area. She must have come by car and left by car.’

‘Or by bus.’

‘Or bus.’

‘And maybe she has von Willebrand’s disease. Maybe she’s a bleeder.’

‘She or the father,’ Cal said.

‘I’m not worrying about the father right now,’ Gina told him. ‘I’m worrying too much about the mother. To give birth in such a place, to leave thinking your baby was dead…What she must be going through.’

They fell silent. Each knew what the other was thinking. Suicide was a very real possibility. If only they knew where she was. Who she was.

‘There’s no matching prenatal mothers in our records at all,’ Cal told her. ‘No clues.’