Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

He was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. She might be moving on, but he hadn’t yet. How could he?

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The harsh words were like a blow and she found herself physically flinching.

But she had to move past this. The baby’s life was too important to waste time on non-essentials.

‘I’ve been at the rodeo,’ she told him. Somehow. It was almost impossible to make her voice work at all, but when she managed it came out expressionless. Businesslike. ‘I found a baby,’ she managed.

‘You found a baby.’ Shock was still the overriding emotion.

‘It’s wrapped in a windcheater, under her T-shirt.’ Pete had moved into helpful mode now. He was looking from Gina to Cal and back again, as if he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t moving. As indeed they must. ‘She says some woman must have dropped it in the bush.’

‘What—?’

‘I need oxygen,’ Gina told him, hauling herself even more into medical mode and willing Cal to follow. ‘Cal, the baby needs urgent help if he’s to survive. He’s badly cyanosed. His breathing is way too shallow—he’s tiring while I watch.’

She still hadn’t pulled the baby from under her T-shirt so he was just a bulge under her bloodstained clothing. No wonder she didn’t have Cal’s belief. She must look crazy. ‘He’s only hours old. He’s lost blood. He’s prem, I think, and he’s not perfusing as he should. Blue lips, blue fingernails. Heartbeat seems far too rapid. Do you have equipment?’

She watched as Cal caught himself. As he finally managed to flick an internal switch.

‘A baby.’ His eyes dropped to the bulge and his deep eyes widened. He was taking in the whole scene, and it wasn’t pretty. ‘Not yours?’

‘Not mine.’A little blood could go a long way and she was aware that she looked so gory she might well be a mother who’d given birth only hours before. And maybe she looked shocked and pale to go with it.

‘I need oxygen, and I need it fast.’

‘We have an incubator on board. Everything we need.’The pilot of the chopper—a guy in a flight suit—was coming toward them now, carrying more equipment.

Medical mode won.

‘Let’s move.’

They moved.

The next ten minutes were spent working as once they’d worked together long ago. The pilot—a youngish guy Cal referred to as Mike—was a paramedic and he was good, but with a baby this tiny they needed every ounce of skill they all possessed.

She and Cal were still a team, Gina thought fleetingly as she searched for and found a tiny vein for the intravenous drip. Newborn babies had such a tiny amount of blood that even a small loss could be catastrophic. He had to have replacement fluid. Meanwhile, Cal had a paediatric mask over the tiny face, using the attached bag to assist breathing. His breathing slowed almost at once. From an abandoned baby with nothing, this little one was suddenly being attached to every conceivable piece of medical technology they could use.

Maybe he’d need them all. Because when Cal hooked him to the heart monitor and she watched his heart rate, she winced.

‘There’s something going on,’ she murmured. ‘That heartbeat’s too fast and with this level of cyanosis…’

‘You’re thinking maybe pulmonary stenosis?’

‘Maybe. Or something worse, God forbid. We need an echocardiogram.’

‘Yeah.’ He cast her a doubtful look. ‘We’ve done all we can here. We need to get him back to the base.’

She hesitated. Yes. They needed to get the baby to help. But…where did that leave her?

For the first time since she’d found the baby, there was a tiny sliver of time to consider. The baby was being warmed and he was hooked to oxygen and an intravenous drip. He was as stable as she could make him—for now. Somehow she made herself block out the fact that Cal was watching her as she forced herself to think through what should happen next.

Should she stay involved?

Now was the time to step back—if she could.

There were three factors coming into play here.

First, she badly needed transport. Once she reached Crocodile Creek, she could get a coach to the outside world. Maybe she could even still catch her flight home.

Secondly, more importantly, this baby needed her. Or he needed someone with specialist training.

‘Is there a cardiologist at Crocodile Creek?’ she asked, and Cal shook his head. He was thinking exactly what she was thinking. She knew it.

‘Our cardiologist has just left,’ he said abruptly, and she nodded. But the way he’d spoken…It brought her to the third factor.

Despite the fact that it was sensible for her to go with him to Crocodile Creek—despite the fact that medical imperative decreed that she go—she didn’t want to get in the helicopter with him. It had been a mistake to come. To drag out the moment…

This baby needed a cardiologist if he was to survive. He needed her.

She had no choice, she told herself fiercely. Focus on medicine. Ignore the personal. The personal was all just too hard.

‘We need to think about the mother,’ she managed, and Cal nodded in agreement. They’d always been apt to follow the same train of thought and it was happening all over again.

‘We do.’ He turned away to where Pete was kneeling a few yards away in the dust. Pete had obviously decided that his best role was in keeping CJ occupied and they were etching huge drawings of kangaroos in the dust. ‘Pete, have you no idea where this baby could possibly have come from?’

‘There’s been three or four hundred people through here over the last couple of days,’ Pete said, looking up from his kangaroo and shaking his head as he thought it through. ‘It could be anyone’s kid.’

‘This baby was born here only hours ago. Did you see anyone who was obviously pregnant?’

‘Dorothy Curtin’s got a bulge bigger’n a walrus but she and Max took off with the kids at lunch time.’

‘There’s no way Dorothy would abandon one of hers. But anyone else? Maybe someone who’s in trouble. A kid? Maybe someone who’s not a local?’

‘There were a few out-of-towners on the coach. But I dunno.’ He scratched his head a bit and thought about it. ‘I dunno.’

‘I didn’t see any pregnant women on the bus,’Gina told them.

‘I’ll need to get the police involved.’ Cal looked uncertainly across at Gina and then he seemed to make a decision. ‘I want the mother found. But we need to take Gina—this lady—back to Crocodile Creek with us,’ he told Pete. ‘Will you stay on and show the police where the baby was found?’

‘Sure thing,’ Pete said. ‘I gotta clean up anyway.’

‘I’ll show you exactly where I found her,’ Gina told him, and then hesitated, thinking it through. ‘Cal, we need to check the birth site anyway. We might have a girl somewhere who’s in real trouble.’

‘We might at that,’ Cal said grimly—and then added, more enigmatically, ‘And that’s only the start of it.’ He motioned to Mike. ‘Mike, you go with Gina. I’ll stay with the baby.’

Mike nodded. Until then the paramedic had worked almost silently alongside them, but he was obviously aware of undercurrents. He looked at Gina now, a long, assessing glance, and then he looked across to where CJ was intent on his drawing.