New Doc in Town

Jo lifted the youth’s wrist automatically and though she was looking for a pulse she had to push aside a metal bracelet. Remembering the rider’s swerve earlier, she checked it.

‘He’s a diabetic,’ she said to Cam. ‘Maybe he was feeling light-headed when he nearly ran into me. He might have been pulling over to take in some carbs when he passed out.’

‘His pulse is racing, and he’s pale and very sweaty—I’d say you’ve got it in one, Dr Harris,’ Cam agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you have a syringe of glucogen on you?’

‘I’d have tablets in my bag in the car, but he should have something on him.’ She began to search the patient’s pockets, pulling out a sleeve of glucose tablets.

Perhaps because she’d been poking at him, their patient stirred.

‘That’s a bit of luck! I’ve seen before how blood glucose can rise back to pre-unconsciousness levels,’ Cam said, as he helped the young man into a sitting position and asked him if he was able to take the tablets, but Jo had already sent one of the audience to the closest café for some orange juice.

Their patient nodded, muttering to himself about stupidity and not stopping earlier.

The juice arrived and Cam supported him, holding the bottle for the shaky young patient.

‘This will be easier to get into you than the tablets,’ he said, ‘but even though you’re conscious you should take a trip up to the hospital and get checked out.’ He nodded towards the ambulance that had just pulled up. ‘Here’s your lift.’

‘But the moped?’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Jo told him. ‘I can put it in the back of my vehicle and take it back to the hire people and explain.’

Cam stood back to let the ambulance attendants ready their patient for transport, and looked at Jo, eyebrows raised.

‘You’ll put it in the car?’

He was smiling as he said it, and all kinds of physical symptoms started up again—ripples, flickers, flutters, her skin feeling as if a million tiny sparks were going off inside it.

‘Someone would help!’ she retorted, trying really hard not to sound defensive but losing the battle.

His smile broadened and now her reactions were all internal—a squeezing in her chest, accelerated heartbeat while her lungs suddenly needed all of her attention to make them work.

How could this be happening to her?

And why?

Wasn’t she perfectly happy with her life?

Well, she was worried about the refuge, but apart from that …

CHAPTER THREE

JO WATCHED the patient being loaded into the ambulance, then turned and spoke to the young policeman who’d arrived, introducing him to Cam, who explained what he’d seen of the incident. While some of the onlookers who’d been closer to the scene gave their versions of what had happened and the shopkeeper began cleaning up the glass, Cam had set the moped upright, and was looking at it, obviously checking for damage.

‘I’ll handle that, mate,’ a voice said, and Jo turned to see that the man who hired out the little motor scooters had arrived with his ute, having heard of the accident on whatever grapevine was in operation this Sunday.

‘So, hospital?’ Cam asked, once again taking Jo’s arm, and although she knew full well it was only to guide her across the street—a street she’d crossed without guidance for a couple of decades—the stirrings in her body magnified and all she wanted to do was get away from him for a short time, give her body a good talking to and move on without all this physical disturbance before it drove her mad.

‘I guess so,’ she muttered, with so much reluctance Cam halted on the kerb to look at her.

‘You’ve changed your mind about visiting the hospital?’

Was her expression such a giveaway that he added a second question?

‘Or changed your mind about employing me?’

Cam watched the woman as he spoke. He was teasing her—well, he was almost certain he was teasing her. It was just that for a moment he thought he’d read regret in her expression.

But he hadn’t started work so surely she couldn’t be regretting hiring him already.

As if he could read the face of a woman he barely knew! Yes, he could guess at his sisters’ emotions, but he’d never really been able to tell what his ex-fiancée was thinking just from looking at her face.

‘Why would you think that!’ the woman he’d questioned demanded, stepping off the kerb so he was forced to move if he wanted to keep hold of her arm. ‘I was thinking of the kid—the diabetic. It’s one of the worries when the schoolies are here, that any kid who is a diabetic can drink too much, or play too hard, and not take in enough fluids. I haven’t had an instance here, but that lad made me think.’

That was a very obvious evasion, Cam guessed, but he didn’t say so. Whatever Jo had been thinking about was her business, not his, although he did hope she wasn’t regretting hiring him before he’d even started work.

And it was probably best not to consider that hope too closely—could it be more than the surf that made him want to stay on here?

It couldn’t be the woman—they’d barely met …

And it certainly wasn’t the accommodation!

Although thinking about waking in the rose bower did make him smile: waking up in the flat would certainly be a far cry from a desert camouflage tent.

But even as he smiled he wondered if he shouldn’t leave right now, before he got as entangled as the roses in the bower. It wouldn’t be fair to any woman to be lumbered with him the way his mind was—the nightmares, the flashbacks, the doubts that racked him.

Jo beeped the car unlocked, then looked at Cam in vague surprise as opened her door and held it.

‘Not used to gentlemen in Crystal Cove?’ he asked, discovering that teasing her was fun, particularly as a delicate rose colour seeped into her cheeks when he did it.

Jo refused to answer him. Okay, so he was a tease. She could handle that. She just had to get used to it and to take everything he said with the proverbial grain of salt. And she had to learn not to react.

Not to react to anything to do with the man.

Already she was regretting suggesting she show him around.

She pulled into the hospital car park, enjoying, as she always did, the old building with its wide, sheltered verandas and its view over the beach and the water beyond.

Today must have been ‘putting up the decorations’ day for the veranda railing was garlanded with greenery while red and green wreaths hung in all the windows.

‘Great hospital!’ Cam said.

‘It’s a triumph of local support over bureaucracy,’ she told him. ‘The government wanted to close it some years ago and the local people fought to keep it. We’ve even got a maternity ward, if you can call one birthing suite and a couple of other rooms a ward. It’s so good for the local women to be able to have their babies here, and although we don’t have a specialist obstetrician we’ve got a wonderful head midwife, and Tom’s passionate about his obstetrics work.’

‘I vaguely remember him being keen on it during our training,’ Cam said, while Jo hurried out of the car before he could open her door and stand near her again.

She really needed to get away—needed some time and space to sort out all the strange stirrings going on in her body, not to mention the fact that her mind kept enjoying conversations with her new employee. It was almost as if it had been starved of stimulation and was now being refreshed.

Impossible.