Harry St Clair: Rogue or Doctor? (12 page)

They slipped in the front door and headed for the recreation room. ‘You make the tea, I’ll grab a box of chocolates from my room.’ Bonnie was gone before he could answer.

Harry turned the lights on in the communal dining room and plugged in the jug. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Every moment he spent with Bonnie made it harder not to pull her into his arms and find that peace he knew was there. The feeling of rightness he hadn’t lost since the magic of Ubud.

It had been like that with Clara too, he reminded himself. He didn’t even want to think about the differences between Clara and Bonnie. He had enough guilt.

There’d been magic with Clara too, and then before
he’d known it he had been set up for heartbreak and disaster. No way was he going back. He had the horrors even imagining Bonnie in danger. And it wasn’t fair for him to not make that fact plain to Bonnie. Tonight.

On her side she’d kept the relaxed rapport from the evening. He could see that when she arrived back clutching an unopened box of chocolates. ‘My friends in Darwin gave me these. I’ll never eat them on my own. Seems right for tonight.’

She ripped open the box. Delightfully exuberant. ‘I had a great time.’ Bonnie popped a white sweet into her mouth and sighed blissfully. She sank back into the chair with her eyes closed.

He reached across and chose a dark nutty one with a twisted curl on top. Serious decision-making while he edged his brain around how he was going to say this. ‘Me too. Considering my behaviour earlier.’

She shrugged that away. ‘You didn’t want to talk about it.’

But he did now. ‘I want to apologise, though.’

She didn’t open her eyes. ‘Okay. Done. Let’s talk about something else.’

He supposed it was her turn to avoid unpleasantness but he needed Bonnie to understand how drawn he was to her, keen to spend time together if she was interested, but no strings and no future.

Not that she’d asked for any, and maybe the clarification was more for him than her, but he needed to say it. That he wasn’t opening himself for that kind of pain again.

The jug boiled and he got up and poured the water in the pot and put the cups on the table. Neither of them
took milk. He’d learned that at least since he’d arrived. He sat down. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t asked Steve what happened to my wife and I. I appreciate that.’

Bonnie sat up and pointedly stared down at the chocolate choice in the box. He wished she’d look at him so he could see what she was thinking. Her posture suggested she didn’t want to hear and he was sorry about that.

After the relaxed evening it was probably a downer but she’d been happy to blast him at the airport and the sting lingered. She’d hear it and then they could both get on with their own lives.

She sighed and when she did look his way her eyes were the windows to the soul he’d expected. She’d accepted the conversation wasn’t going to go away.

‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘So you didn’t meet your wife in Darwin.’ She remembered his earlier statement. Of course she did. He’d bet she remembered a lot of things—some he wasn’t proud of.

‘I met Clara in Alice Springs. She did her training there and I met her again in Katherine when I started working for the RFDS.’

Bonnie so didn’t want to do this now. ‘Small planes make me sick. I could never nurse and fly at the same time.’ It had been a pleasant evening, she’d been proud of herself as she’d made headway with her plans of distancing Harry by being friendly and concentrating on other people. Drinking tea late at night was not good for distance. She should have stayed in her room.

She’d begun to feel queasy just knowing he was going to talk about his loss.

Did he have to ruin a great night? Did she really need
to understand him? She was beginning to think the less she knew of Harry St Clair the better for her own sake, but she doubted she had a choice now he’d started.

Harry poured both teas. ‘I never felt sick, flying. Usually too busy with a patient to think about my stomach.’ His response came out lightly but she could see his mind was elsewhere.

Okay. Stop beating around the bush. Do it. Bonnie just wanted this over with. ‘So how long were you married?’
How long before she died?
she really wanted to ask.

‘A year. But probably came down to a few months by the time you took out the amount of time I was away. We should never have got married, or at least I wasn’t keen on it until I had a less mobile job, but we did and very soon she fell pregnant, though we weren’t planning on that either.’

This was it. The reason he was how he was. Her voice dropped. ‘So what happened, Harry?’

‘Amniotic fluid embolism. Early labour.’

Bonnie felt her heart sink. Not nice at all.

‘We were in an outlying area. She should have gone to town at thirty-six weeks, been closer to the hospital. I wasn’t even there till near the end. Didn’t know what was happening. Nobody guessed. Everything should have been fine. No risk factors.’

Ouch. So he had no faith in natural labour. ‘Rare and horrible,’ Bonnie said quietly. ‘We’ve had one in Darwin, though before my time, and I think I read that the incidence as one in about twenty-six thousand. You can’t predict that. And not great odds if they do diagnose it when it happens.’

‘Yeah. Usual diagnoses made at autopsy.’ He grimaced. ‘Clara was a previously healthy woman, healthy pregnancy, but they found her uterus had a small rupture during early labour, must have been congenital, and the amniotic fluid got into her bloodstream, caused an allergic reaction. She collapsed and even though we did an emergency caesarean we couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save my baby, though we tried. That resus nearly killed me. Certainly killed any desire to go back to medicine.’

‘Until now.’

He lifted his head and his eyes narrowed. ‘Who’s fault is that?’

She wasn’t taking the blame. No way. ‘Not mine. Nobody forced you. You’re your own man. But I’m glad you did. And I’m pretty sure Clint and Donna are too.’

His mind was still on Katherine with his own tragedy. No wonder she felt there was a part of him missing half the time. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I came across it again.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ Bonnie didn’t agree. ‘Maybe you’d use what you learnt last time, pick it up way before anyone else, and give mother and child the chance they might not have had with the insight you gained. So that your wife and child’s lives weren’t wasted.’

He turned tortured eyes on her and Bonnie felt the squeeze in her heart that she was kidding herself if she thought she could stay immune to the hurt this man suffered. She was already too involved.

‘It’s the picture, Bonnie.’ The words were barely a whisper. ‘Her face as white as the hospital sheet.’ He shook his head. ‘My baby growing cold. It’s engraved on my soul.’

Bonnie felt her own heart rip. She stood up, moved to his chair and crouched down to put her arm around him. She rested her cheek against his.

‘It’s incredibly sad. And so hard on you. But maybe you should try to see there’s another side of the picture, Harry. Imagine it, because I can. It happened a minute or so later. Clara blowing you a kiss as she floated out the window, to heaven, with her baby. The two of them together, Harry, hand in hand. Sending you love for your pain but themselves at peace. Not bothered by pain or regret or fear.’ She leaned over and kissed his mouth. Willing his pain to ease. ‘There was nothing you could do.’ Quietly and firmly she said the words he must have heard a hundred times before. Maybe this time he could allow himself to believe.

She believed it. It was the kind of image her gran had given her when her mum and dad had died, and the relief had been enormous. And healing. She wanted to share that with this man who’d inched his way into her heart, when a man in her heart was the last thing she wanted.

It was all in his face when he looked at her. Really stared her down while he thought about it, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. His face stayed unreadable, a pain-filled mask she couldn’t see through, the huge wall between them bigger than it had ever been, like the Rock outside her window, but she couldn’t take it back. Because she believed it true with all her heart.

Then he stood up and just walked away. Left her sitting there, staring after him, wondering, hoping, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.

The next morning Bonnie woke early and lay in bed and watched the stars fade outside her window. Her head still spun from Harry’s disclosures the night before and the picture of tragic disaster he’d painted.

It was a good premonition for what was to come.

T
AMEEKA’S
auntie wore a bright red football jumper and orange shorts. A big, rangy woman, she had square, bare feet still dusty from the road and she ushered the sheepish teens into the medical centre with an expansive wave of her hand.

It was late afternoon and Bonnie observed the young pregnant woman’s apprehensive face and looked around for Harry. He was going to blow his top.

Her mind darted for answers as she waved them in. They could get the RFDS aircraft in if the plane wasn’t half a world away, helping someone else, or they could take the ambulance and meet the Alice Springs ambulance two and a half hours up the road.

But getting to a hospital in time was the question. Damn not having a midwifery facility here.

She shook off her wishes and put them aside. ‘Hello, there, you must be Tameeka’s Auntie Dell. She said you’d be with her. I’m Bonnie.’ She smiled at Tameeka and a nervous Bernie. ‘Come through, honey. What happened to Bernie’s cousin’s car?’

Bernie shrugged. ‘He went on walkabout two days ago and he’s not back yet.’

Bonnie glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘So what time did the pains start, Tameeka?’

‘Not long ago.’ The young girl wouldn’t meet Bonnie’s eyes, which wasn’t that unusual, but Bonnie had her suspicions when the next contraction rolled around very firmly within the minute and lasted a good sixty seconds.

‘I told her she ‘ad to come.’ Auntie Dell was born to be an authority figure and probably had a dozen nieces she’d be shepherding into labour. ‘You’re that nurse who picked up little Leila, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Are you Shay’s auntie too?’ Bonnie smiled. She turned back to help Tameeka sit down. ‘Thanks for bringing her in.’

It was a shame Tameeka hadn’t seen her aunt a little earlier, Bonnie thought ruefully. That would have been good. But it didn’t really matter when her labour had started. The past was the past, and it was what happened now that counted.

She had the sudden notion that concept should apply to Harry too, but she’d hear enough from him in a minute without pre-empting him.

‘It’s all good. You’re here now. Do you mind if I have a feel of your tummy and listen to that gorgeous baby of yours, please, Tameeka?’

Tameeka lay down on the examination couch and Bonnie met her eyes before she attempted to feel. ‘Okay if I feel the way baby is lying?’ Tameeka nodded and Bonnie gently palpated the mound of ebony skin as she felt for the baby’s back, bottom and head. She smiled. ‘Your baby seems to know the way out. He or she’s pointing the right way.’

Bonnie placed the nozzle of the little handheld foetal heart monitor on Tameeka’s stomach and the sound of a baby’s heartbeat filled the air.

‘Love the sound of them babies.’ Auntie Dell smiled beatifically. Bonnie nodded in agreement as she counted the beats.

‘What if it’s too late to go?’ Bernie asked the question but it was there too, in Tameeka’s eyes as plain as day.

Auntie Dell huffed, ‘You’d be in trouble, bro.’

Bonnie softened the rebuke. ‘Babies decide when and where they come. But we might get Tameeka to Alice Springs in time yet. At least she won’t be sitting there by herself, waiting. It looks like it’s going to happen today and I’m sure Bernie can miss one day off work.’

‘Too right. I’m not leaving her.’

‘I’m not leavin’ either.’ Auntie Dell planted her hands on her hips. Bonnie smiled to herself. She wasn’t going to take on forcing Auntie Dell to stay behind so it was going to be tight in the ambulance if they had to drive.

‘Who’s not leaving?’ Harry arrived with a measured tread and Bonnie’s antenna picked up the underlying pressure in his voice. At least the face he showed the young couple was non-judgemental and she allowed herself to relax a little. Of course he’d be fine. Except Tameeka was in labour a long way from a hospital.

Tameeka’s abdomen grew tight and she rolled her eyes as another strong contraction informed everyone it meant business.

‘How long’s this been going on?’ Now Harry’s eyes held a tiny hint of accusation when he looked at Bonnie. He’d have loved to blame her, she could see that. She
guessed it helped to blame someone and she was the logical choice. Men!

‘Not long. They’ve just arrived.’ Bonnie’s calmness eased the tension that had begun to tighten the room and Harry looked at the young couple.

Bonnie could almost see Harry’s mind sorting options. He shot a look at Bonnie. ‘Have you examined her yet?’

‘Just felt her tummy. Head down, well engaged.’

He nodded. ‘Tameeka, I’d like Bonnie to feel how far along in your labour you are. We have to tell the Flying Doctors when we ring them. Is that okay?’

Tameeka nodded and Bernie gulped and eyed the door. Bonnie could see he’d decided to leave this bit of women’s business to the women and followed Harry out.

Bonnie heard him mutter to Harry as they shut the door. ‘She said them pains didn’t hurt too much and I thought it was them Baxtin Icks, practice pain things.’

The three women smiled at each other at the thought processes of men as Tameeka slipped her underwear off.

Bonnie folded the sheet back from the bottom of the bed. Tameeka closed her eyes and nodded for Bonnie to go ahead.

Bonnie pulled on her gloves and stared at the wall opposite as she concentrated on what she could feel. ‘Okay. I can touch your baby’s head a little way inside but not too far. The bottom of your uterus is very thin, pointing to the front, and opened enough for two finger widths. So that’s nearly three centimetres dilated. The baby has his or her chin well tucked in so that’s good.’

Bonnie stood back and removed her gloves. ‘Your baby’s head is right down so when you get a contraction it leans on the opening and makes the cervix a little bit wider each time. That’s why the more regular the contractions, the quicker your labour.’

‘What about them waters?’ Auntie Dell had her hands on her hips again.

Bonnie turned back. She was getting to that but she had an idea Tameeka had a little more trouble following what she was talking about than Auntie Dell. She smiled at the older lady. ‘The bag of waters is still there and Tameeka will probably still have a few hours of labour before her baby is born. Maybe enough to get to Alice Springs.’

Bonnie listened again briefly with the foetal heart Doppler to check the baby didn’t mind somebody touching his or her head and then stepped back to wash her hands.

When she came back to the bed Auntie Dell had helped Tameeka up and to dress again. Bonnie looked at both of them. ‘Any questions?’

‘Can I stay here and have my baby with my auntie?’

Bonnie would have loved that but it wasn’t an option they had with no backup. ‘Unfortunately not. But we can try really hard to keep your auntie and Bernie with you until you have your baby.’

In the end, despite Harry’s phone calls, the RFDS were away in Kakadu and Harry decided they’d use the road ambulance. He wasn’t keen on the presence of Auntie Dell and refused to see the problem.

‘There’s not much room in an ambulance and she’s
a big lady.’ It seemed he wanted to be obtuse today and Bonnie was fast losing patience. ‘I don’t see how she can come,’ he said.

They were outside the room and talking in low voices as they waited for Steve to bring the ambulance round. Bonnie almost laughed out loud. Fat chance of Auntie Dell staying behind.

‘I’m interested, Harry. What do you need room for? Tameeka’s a healthy woman, early in active labour, doing what she’s designed to do. If you’re sure we can’t have her baby here, with the option of transfer out afterwards if anything isn’t going smoothly, then you must be happy if we deliver this baby in the vehicle. In that case, we’ll pull over anyway and can open the back door and let Dell out.’

Harry’s eyes flared. ‘We’re not delivering this baby in the ambulance. She should have gone to Alice Springs two days ago.’

‘She wasn’t in labour then. And you couldn’t predict this.’ Bonnie’s voice was very quiet and very calm. ‘And there’s not a lot we can do about that now, Doctor.’ She didn’t look at him or he’d have known she was ready to throw something at him for the misplaced tension in his face. She knew that he had issues but at the moment that was just tough.

‘I’ll get the ambulance if you want to ring Alice Springs and arrange for someone to meet us halfway.’

Harry wasn’t finished. ‘This is a prime example of you providing another episode I don’t want to be a part of.’

‘Whoa there, cowboy.’ Bonnie didn’t fancy the sound of that. ‘Like what, Harry?’ She felt like poking him in
the chest but restrained herself. One of them needed to. ‘What else have I forced you into? A brief fling in Bali? I didn’t see you running away. In fact, I’d say you did the chasing. And I certainly didn’t force you to come here and confront maternal medicine. But you are here so confront it.’

He didn’t like that. ‘We don’t have time for this.’

‘No, we don’t, but you started it, and I’ll be finished before Steve gets here so you can darned well listen.’ She brushed the hair out of her eyes and fixed her eyes on his.

‘You can’t go on like this, Harry. Fear doesn’t have a part of caring for pregnant women.’

He lifted his head. ‘And we should have shipped her out because I’m not sure I can lose that factor.’

Stubborn, more than anything, she thought. ‘Or maybe you don’t want to because that would mean you’re moving on? Why is it so hard to let go of the fear and guilt, Harry?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not fear, it’s caution.’

She felt like saying that was piffle. But she didn’t. She really couldn’t be bothered getting childish. ‘Caution is fine, but we’re guardians who stand at the side of nature, not the directors. Women have been doing this longer than we’ve been interfering.’

‘From my perspective I can’t trust things not to go wrong. You can’t deny the mortality rate has fallen since we did start to interfere.’

‘We’re not talking penicillin here, Harry.’ Bonnie sighed. ‘The last thing Tameeka needs is a harbinger of doom draped around her neck.’ She breathed out heavily
and then glanced at the closed door to the consulting room.

‘Doom happened to me. I can’t forget that.’

‘You told me you did everything possible. What makes you think I don’t understand? It’s not a new thing to lose a patient when the incident is greater than the resources. You were there and the resources weren’t. Even in a major centre most mothers still die with what your wife had.’

‘If they say I was negligent, I think I’ll believe them.’

‘I’m tempted to say “so what”? You hid away in Bali believing that anyway. Even when you did make a token return to medicine here in Ayers Rock you have so many rules and safeguards it’s an escape anyway.’ She shook her head and glanced at her watch. ‘I can’t help your insecurities but negative, fearful people should not be around birthing women. Now I’m busy. Let’s get this girl to Alice Springs.’

Half an hour later they were thirty miles out of the township as Bonnie drove into the magnificence of the fading light. The sun had finished posing to the masses and it wasn’t a great time to be on the road with the wildlife coming out to feed at dusk but Harry obviously thought it more dangerous to have a normal birth than risk hitting a roo. Bonnie ground her teeth and concentrated on the road.

Harry was in the back, which was lucky for him because Bonnie had a mind to tell him a few more home truths. She had Bernie up front with her and she didn’t want the poor guy to feel her frustration. He’d already
backed down when Auntie Dell had said she’d get in the back.

The next half an hour saw two near misses of kangaroos and a lucky wombat, and Tameeka’s noisy breathing from the back sounded like a freight train. Serves you right, Harry, Bonnie thought grimly. We could have been in a nice pleasant room back at the medical centre with electric lights and equipment if we needed it.

At the end of yet another half-hour, outside the vehicle the light was restricted to the circular areas the headlights provided and the stars above. They still had an hour before they’d meet up with the other ambulance, and to make matters worse now a road train was bearing down on them from behind. Bonnie pulled over on a wide patch of dirt outside a rest area to let the monster truck go past.

‘Bonnie?’ Harry questioned from the back.

‘I’m just letting the truck past.’

Then Tameeka’s shaky voice. ‘I gotta pee.’

Well, you can’t wait another two hours, Bonnie thought silently, with a twitch of her lips. ‘I’ll just pull into this parking area.’ Bonnie drove the few metres and reversed the vehicle so the back door was away from the road then turned the engine and headlights off. She jumped out and went around the back.

The night was quiet as the road train’s engines faded into the distance and when she stepped away from the vehicle’s cabin light the stars were brilliant and provided an amazing amount of gentle glow in the night sky.

Bernie was beside her and he lifted the back door up for her. Auntie Dell squeezed herself out like toothpaste
from a tube and shook herself to stretch the bits that had been cramped in the back.

Then Harry helped Tameeka out and she leaned against Bernie when she could stand up. ‘My back is killin’ me when I lie down.’

‘I know, sweetheart.’ Bonnie looked around for some privacy for Tameeka. ‘Come this way. I’ve got a torch in case we need it but there’s some close scrub here, where you can go.’

‘I don’t need to do a wee,’ Tameeka whispered. ‘I just wanted to stop ‘cause my back was killin’ me.’

‘That’s okay.’ Bonnie had her suspicions about the pressure the girl was getting now and wouldn’t be surprised if this was it. ‘You may as well go while you’re here.’

Bonnie turned round to give her some privacy and she could see Harry walking up and down beside the truck like an expectant father.

Tameeka groaned and when Bonnie turned round she was on all fours with her head down.

As soon as the pain eased, Bonnie helped her up. ‘You push a little then, honey?’

‘Mmm-hmm. And all that water came out. It’s still comin’ out. Don’t make me get in that truck.’

‘Let’s just get back to the light.’ This was it. Bonnie shrugged fatalistically. So be it.