The Doctor & the Runaway Heiress

‘She’s good,’ she said.

‘Who’s good?’

‘Our night swimmer. She’s been up to the kids’ ward in her gorgeous silver and pink dressing gown, and she did the best plea you ever heard. Told them all about Amy having a baby alone. Talk about pathos. She’s borrowed Lacey Sutherland’s spare MP3 player. She conned one of the mums into going home to get speakers. She’s hooked up the internet in the nurses’ station and she’s downloaded stuff so she has Amy’s favourite music playing right now. She also rang the local poster shop. I don’t know what she promised them but the guys were here in minutes. Amy’s now surrounded by posters of her favourite telly stars. Oh, and one of the mums donated a giraffe, almost as tall as Amy. Pippa has Amy so bemused she’s almost forgotten she’s in labour.’

‘She’s a patient herself,’ Riley said, stunned.

‘Try telling her that. Oh, and I managed to ring the number she gave us in England. I had a minute and I couldn’t help myself—she had me fascinated. Her boss says send her back, now. Seems your Pippa left to get married two weeks ago and they miss her. Talk about glowing references. Can we keep her?’

‘I’m not sure how we can.’

‘Just don’t give her clothes,’ Jancey said, grinning. ‘I’m off duty now. We’re two nurses short for night shift but I’ve already stretched my shift to twelve hours. How long have you stretched yours?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Riley said. ‘Okay, Hubert, you’re done. Pharmacy will give you something for the pain. Keep it dry, come back in tomorrow and I’ll dress it again.’

‘You’ll be in tomorrow?’ Hubert asked as Jancey disappeared.

‘Maybe.’

‘You’re supposed to be the flying doc, not the base doc.’

‘Yeah,’ Riley said. ‘Can you ring the union and let them know?’

‘Riley?’

He sighed and straightened. ‘That’d be me.’

‘Amy’s moving into second stage.’ It was Mary, the night nurse who’d just started her shift. ‘Pippa says you need to come straight away.’

She’d been having doubts about the ability of this small hospital to prepare adequately for a teenage birth, but the transition from the cubicle near the nurses’ station to the labour ward was seamless.

A nurse and an orderly pushed Amy’s bed into a labour room that was homey and comforting, but still had everything Pippa was accustomed to seeing. Riley was already waiting.

He smiled down at Amy, and Pippa was starting to know that smile. It said nothing was interfering with what he was doing right now, and his attention was all on Amy.

He hardly acknowledged her. She’d walked beside Amy’s bed simply because Amy had still been clutching her hand. The moment Amy no longer needed her she should back away.

She was in a fully equipped labour ward. A doctor, a nurse, an orderly. She could leave now but Amy was still clinging. Her fear was palpable and at an unobtrusive signal from Riley it was the nurse and the orderly who slipped away.

What was going on?

‘Hey, Ames, they tell me your baby’s really close.’ Riley took Amy’s free hand—and Pippa thought if she was Amy she’d feel better right now.

But maybe that wasn’t sensible. Maybe that was a dose of hormones caused by Riley’s great smile.

‘Don’t tell me you’re an obstetrician, too,’ she said, and then she decided her voice sounded a bit sharp. That was uncalled for. She was, however, seriously thrown. Did this guy ever sleep? Hanging from ropes, rescuing stupid tourists in the middle of the night, sewing on toes. Delivering babies. But …

‘Amy knows I’m not an obstetrician,’ Riley said, still talking to Amy. ‘We have an obstetrician on standby. Dr Louise will be here in a heartbeat if we need her, but Amy has asked if I can deliver her baby.’ He glanced at Pippa then, and his smile finally encompassed her. ‘Amy has need of friends. It seems she’s found you as well as me. I know it’s unfair but are you okay to stay with us for a bit longer?’

‘Of course I can. If I can sit down.’

His smile was a reward all on its own. There was also relief behind his smile, and she thought he’d be feeling the responsibility of being Amy’s sole care person. Plus doctor.

‘Okay, then, Amy,’ he said, taking her hand just as a contraction started. ‘You have me, you have Pippa and you have you. Pippa has her chair. We have our crib all ready. All we need now is one baby to make our team complete. So now you push. Pippa’s your cheerleader and I’ll stand around and catch.’

Then, as the next contraction swelled to its full power, he moved straight back into doctor mode. He was a friend on the surface but underneath he was pure doctor, Pippa thought as she coached Amy with her breathing.

And he was some doctor.

Amy was little more than a child herself. Her pelvis seemed barely mature—if Pippa had to guess she’d have said the girl looked like she’d been badly malnourished. If this was Pippa’s hospital back in the UK, Amy could well have been advised to have had her baby by Caesarean section.

‘C-section’s never been option,’ Riley told her in an undertone as Amy gasped between contractions. How had he guessed what she was thinking? ‘Neither is it going to be. Not if I can help it.’

‘Why?’

‘Amy comes from one of the most barren places in the country,’ he told her. ‘I persuaded her—against her mother’s wishes—to come to the city this time. Next time she may well be on her own in the middle of nowhere. You want to add scar tissue to that mix?’

Amy was pushing away the gas and he took her hand again. ‘Hey, Amy, you’re brilliant, you’re getting so much closer. Let Pippa hold the gas so you can try again. Three deep breaths, here we go. Up the hill, up, up, up, push for all you’re worth, yes, fantastic, breathe out, down the other side. You’ve stretched a little more, a little more. Half a dozen more of those and I reckon this baby will be here.’

It wasn’t quite half a dozen. Amy sobbed and swore and gripped and pushed and screamed …

Pippa held on, encouraging her any way she could, and so did Riley. Two coaches, two lifelines for this slip of a kid with only them between herself and terror.

But finally she did it. Pippa was already emotional, and when finally Amy’s tiny baby girl arrived into the outside world, as Pippa held Amy up so she could see her daughter’s first breath, as Riley held her to show Amy she was perfect, Pippa discovered she was weeping.

Riley slipped the baby onto Amy’s breast and Amy cradled her as if she was the most miraculous thing she’d ever seen. As, of course, she was.

The baby nuzzled, instinctively searching. Pippa guided her a little, helping just enough but not enough to intrude. The baby found what she was looking for and Amy looked down in incredulous wonder.

‘I’m feeding her. I’ve had a baby.’

‘You have a daughter,’ Riley said, smiling and smiling, and Pippa glanced up at him and was astonished to see his eyes weren’t exactly dry either.

Surely a rough Aussie search and rescue doctor …

Just concentrate on your own eyes, she told herself, and sniffed.

‘She’s beautiful,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. She touched the baby’s damp little head with wonder. No matter how many births she’d seen, this never stopped being a miracle. ‘Have you thought about what you might call her?’

And Amy looked up at her as if she was a bit simple—as indeed she felt. Amy had just performed the most amazing, complex, difficult feat a human could ever perform—and Pippa had simply held her hand.

‘I’m calling her Riley, of course,’ Amy whispered, and smiled and smiled. ‘Boy or girl, I decided it months ago. And I’m keeping her,’ she said, a touch defiantly.

Riley smiled. ‘Who’s arguing? It’d take a team stronger than us to get Baby Riley away from her mum right now.’

‘Have you been thinking of adoption?’ Pippa said, because if indeed it was on the table it needed to be raised.

‘Mum said I had to,’ Amy said simply. ‘But Doc Riley said it was up to me. He’ll support me. Won’t you, Doc?’