Marion Lennox - Bushfire Bride

‘She woke a couple of hours back,’ Hugo told her. ‘But she went back to sleep almost immediately.’

Her body would be so shocked that she’d sleep for days, Rachel thought, and she was sleeping soundly now. Kim’s mother was by her side, sitting holding her hand. Doing nothing. She was simply watching.

It was enough.

‘Kim shows every sign that she’ll be fine,’ Hugo told the woman as Rachel watched from the doorway. He lifted the base of Kim’s bedsheet to reveal two sets of very pink toes. ‘Her circulation’s almost back to normal. She’s on maximum intravenous antibiotics. Her obs are great. She looks as if she’s going to have very little permanent damage. We’ll do more nerve tests in the morning but she wiggled everything when she woke and had full sensation. Your husband was watching. Did he tell you?’

‘He did.’ Mrs Sanderson’s face creased in fierce concentration. Concentrating on control. ‘I was home getting some things for her when she woke.’ Her fragile control broke and her voice choked on a sob. ‘I shouldn’t have left…’

‘Kim needed her things.’

‘I mean… I shouldn’t have left her at the showgrounds. She wanted to show Knickers. If I’d thought the Jeffreys could be stupid enough to let their dog off the lead… I just didn’t realise…how easy it is to lose someone. We came so close.’

‘But not close enough,’ Hugo said gently, his hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘She’ll be fine.’ He smiled down into her tearful face. ‘Tell me how Knickers is.’

It was the right thing to ask. It made the terror recede. The woman gulped and gave him a watery smile. ‘Knickers is good.’ She took a big breath and searched for calm. She’d been to the brink, Rachel realised. This day would live with her for ever. ‘The vet says he’ll be OK, though my husband is saying it’ll cost more to have Knickers fixed than Kim. We can’t claim a cocker spaniel’s expenses through medical insurance.’

Hugo grinned. ‘See? I’m cheap at half the price.’ He smiled, a comfort smile Rachel was starting to recognise. ‘Now, what about you going home and getting some rest? We’ve sedated Kim fairly heavily so I’d be surprised if she woke before morning.’

‘I might just watch for a little more,’ the woman whispered. ‘If it’s OK. I just want to watch…’

She just wanted to watch her breathing, Rachel thought. She knew. To sit there and watch a chest rise and fall…

She bit her lip and Hugo turned and saw.

He thought it was the hunger, though. He must do. There was surely no other reason for it. She could see she had him confused and she fought to remove her expression. The stillness of her face…

‘I need to take our Dr Harper for a feed,’ he told Mrs Sanderson. ‘We’ll leave you to your vigil. But don’t exhaust yourself. Kim will need you in the morning, if only to prevent all her friends from visiting in the first five minutes. Keep up your strength.’

‘I will.’ The woman smiled through tears. ‘Thank you both. We were so lucky…’

‘We were really lucky,’ Hugo said as they headed out to the parking lot together. ‘We were hugely lucky to have you here to help us. We still are.’

Rachel said nothing at all.

The local hall was where the action was. It was set a block back from the main street, but even so Rachel wondered how she could have missed it when she and Penelope had walked into town. Hugo turned the corner and bright lights shone out through open doors. Even at midnight there were dozens of cars parked outside and people were spilling out onto the pavement.

‘So this is Cowral Bay’s night life,’ she said faintly, and Hugo grinned.

‘It doesn’t get any better than this. Come and meet Cowral. Oh, and I’d take a deep breath if I were you. I suspect you’ve been voted an honorary local now, like it or not.’

She had. From the moment she walked in the door she was welcomed as a friend. A lifesaver. She’d treated the firemen and she’d treated Kim.

Now she could tell why the pavilion had been locked and darkened-why the town itself had seemed abandoned. Everyone was here. Doris Keen was busy making sandwiches but when she saw Rachel she dropped what she was doing and came forward, her arms outstretched.

‘Oh, my dear, we were that worried. We didn’t know where you’d got to. We assumed you’d gone home but then Charlie found your husband’s car and it was still locked. We searched, but then the fire brigade boys came in and they said you’d gone back to the hospital and you’ve been working so hard…’

Everyone was assuming Michael was her husband, Rachel thought. She’d been with him. She wore a wedding ring.

It didn’t matter. Let them.

She tried to think of Michael with some degree of caring. Had he managed to save Hubert Witherspoon? She didn’t know and she didn’t much mind. For a moment she almost felt it in her to be sorry for him. He’d left and he’d missed out on…this. This hubbub of caring.

Penelope.

The dog flashed back into her mind and she gave a guilty start. Her dog… Michael’s dog was back at the hospital. She half turned, but Hugo was before her.

‘Our hospital orderly has taken Penelope home for the night,’ he told her. ‘Jake’s wife has a poodle. We figured they’d get on fine.’

What was it with this man? He had the ability to read what she was thinking almost as she thought it. The feeling was really, really unnerving.

‘This lady’s a real champion,’ someone said behind her, and she recognised one of the men who’d been on the fire truck. There were scores of firefighters here. This must be their refuelling station before they went back to the fire or turned in for the night.

‘She’s a hungry real champion,’ Hugo said from behind her. His hand was on her shoulder and for some reason it was a huge support. His warmth gave her shaking legs strength. Somehow his presence made this welcome feel real-as if she was part of all this.

But it wasn’t real, she told herself a little bit desperately. It was an illusion. She was most definitely not a part of this. She cast Hugo an unsure glance and pulled away from under his hand.

But then she missed it when he released her. She missed…the contact? The link?

What?

‘Daddy!’ a voice yelled out from the other side of the hall and a tousle-headed, pyjama-clad Toby came bounding through the crowd of locals to greet him. Hugo reached out and caught him, swinging him high in the air.

‘Tobes. Why aren’t you in bed?’

‘Mrs Partridge made me have an afternoon sleep,’ Toby said, with all the indignation of a small man whose person has been significantly violated. ‘She said we’d all had a nasty shock and she needed a lie-down, too. So I went to sleep. And now I’m wide awake and Mrs Partridge’s helping me make lamingtons for the firefighters to eat tomorrow. Can we stay for a while, Daddy?’

‘Yes, we can,’ he told him, hugging him close. ‘Far be it from me to interfere with lamington-making. And we need to wait for Dr Harper to be fed.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re taking her home to stay with us.’

To stay with them? He had to be kidding.

He wasn’t. ‘There’s nowhere else.’

Full to the brim of Irish stew, fresh bread rolls and Toby’s magnificent lamingtons, Rachel was tucked into Hugo’s capacious car with as much room for argument as if she’d been a parcel.

‘But why?’

‘You’ve already discovered the motel’s full. There’s a couple of beds at the hospital but we need them. While this fire’s burning I want all resources left free for emergencies. Toby and I have a big house at the rear of the hospital and there’s two spare bedrooms.’