Alison Roberts - The Australian's Proposal

Once again Kate was struck by the warmth and camaraderie between these colleagues and housemates—and once again it emphasised her aloneness.

Or was it the news that Hamish was leaving so soon causing the empty feeling inside her?

Not possible.

She was still debating this when Brian appeared, a plate of food in one hand, cutlery poking out of his pocket and dragging a chair behind him.

‘Thought I’d lost you,’ he said to Kate, pulling his chair into position between her and Gina. ‘Great moon, huh? Maybe we can take a walk up onto the headland when we’ve finished eating. I often take a walk after dinner. Helps me sleep.’

‘I doubt Kate needs a walk to help her sleep,’ Hamish said, before Kate could think of a reply. ‘We had precious little last night and today she’s spent most of her time with Jack.’

Kate looked at Hamish, who appeared to be glaring at Brian, although with Hamish’s rather severe features it was hard to tell. But, glaring or not, he was going back to Scotland in a couple of weeks so he couldn’t possibly be warning Brian away for his own sake.

Did he not like Brian?

Or was he just genuinely interested in her need for sleep?

Whatever! She felt uncomfortable allowing him to take over her decision-making.

‘I’d like a walk after dinner,’ she said, more to the table in general than to Brian.

‘Oh, good, we’ll all go,’ Gina said.

Which was how Kate’s first evening in Crocodile Creek ended in a moonlit walk over the headland above the house with Brian and Hamish, Cal and Gina, Susie, Marcia, Mike, and Georgie, CJ and Max, while a lolloping, lovable, dopey dog called Rudolph gambolled along beside them.

‘WHAT DO YOU mean he’s gone into shock? What kind of shock? Septic from the infection? Hypovolaemic from the blood loss? He’s in hospital—how could they let him go into shock?’

Kate was vaguely aware she was shooting the messenger, but Hamish was right there in front of her, so why not vent her anxiety and distress on him? He was big enough to take it.

She had clambered out of bed while he was explaining why he’d woken her for a second time, and was now pulling a pair of sweats over her skimpy pyjama pants. Thrusting her feet into her sandals, she hurried towards the door.

Hamish didn’t move.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ she urged.

‘You’re going like that?’

She glanced down at the amiable hippo on the T-shirt top of her pyjamas.

‘I’m decent, Jack’s very ill, why not?’

‘No reason,’ Hamish said, but he shook his head in a bemused manner and followed her through the quiet house.

Were all the occupants over at the hospital, or were some people actually getting some sleep?

As they walked through the garden, an imminent dawn ghosting the foliage into strange shapes and patterns, Hamish explained. The operation to remove the bullet, with the guidance of the surgeon in Brisbane, had apparently gone well, and no replacement devices had been required. Jack had made the transition to the recovery room safely. Even there, Emily had been pleased with his responses as he’d come out of the anaesthetic, then they’d transferred him to the ICU for monitoring, and everything had gone haywire, his blood pressure dropping, pulse rate rising and his mental state confused and lethargic.

He wanted to die, he kept repeating weakly, then closing his eyes in response to any comment or question.

Desperate with concern—had he made the wrong decision doing the op here?—Charles had paged Hamish, asking him to wake Kate in the hope she might be able to rouse the young man.

‘The ICU is through here,’ Hamish said, guiding Kate with a hand on her elbow to an area she hadn’t explored with Brian.

Talk about state of the art. Many city hospitals Kate had seen would have been pleased to have such a set-up. Five rooms, all monitored from a central desk, but only one of them occupied. Behind the desk, a nurse and Emily frowned at the monitor.

Jack’s was the room crowded with people in spite of ICU protocols that discouraged such practices.

‘Kate!’ Charles greeted her with relief. ‘I’m sorry, but we thought if you could speak to him—rouse him. Alix is running new blood tests but as yet we can’t find any physical reason for his sudden collapse.’

‘He’s been through a lot,’ Kate reminded him, slipping past the man in the wheelchair to reach the side of Jack’s bed and take one limp hand in both of hers.

‘Hey, Jack, it’s me, Kate. Sorry I was a bit late getting here, but you were ages in Theatre and a girl has to sleep some time.’

She was keeping it light, as she had earlier, but although Jack acknowledged her arrival by opening his eyes, that was all the response she got.

Cal, who’d been standing at the foot of the bed with his arm around Gina, nodded tiredly at Kate, then led Gina away. Jill, who looked as if she hadn’t slept for days, also departed, her shoulders slumped as if Jack’s failure to respond was somehow her fault.

Kate continued to talk, while Charles sat beside her, watching the screen for any kind of response from his nephew.

Nothing—well, not nothing, but the changes were all negative. They were looking on while a healthy young man died for no apparent reason.

Hamish stood outside the room, watching through the window, seeing the urgency in Kate’s pose as she bent over the bed, trying to force a reaction of any kind from Jack.

Apparently deciding there was nothing he could do, Charles left the room, wheeling to a stop beside Hamish so he, too, could watch through the window.

‘I tried to phone his mother, but got an answering-machine. Philip thinks she might be skiing in New Zealand. Even if we ask the police over there to track the family down, it could be days before she gets here.’

The anguish in Charles’s voice told Hamish far more than the words. The man was blaming himself for insisting the lad stayed here in Crocodile Creek.

‘You did all you could,’ Hamish assured him. ‘His whole blood clotting time was within acceptable limits, we had the desmopressin on hand for Lucky, so you were able to infuse that into him before the op. They couldn’t have done any more in a major city hospital, and shifting him again might have provoked this problem earlier.’

But Charles refused to be comforted.

‘I shouldn’t have assumed my way was the best way,’ he said bitterly. ‘Damn it all, Hamish. There’s far too much bad blood in this family already, without me having more of it on my hands.’

‘You’ve already done what you can to get Jim and Honey Cooper back on their feet and to end the feud between the Coopers and the Wetherbys,’ he reminded Charles.

‘Sure!’ Charles growled. ‘I patch things up just fine then let the father of their grandchild die. It’ll start all over again!’

‘Not if Kate has any say in it,’ Hamish said, nodding to where Kate was ordering the young man to live.

Standing helplessly beside the bed, her gaze snapping from Jack to the monitor and back again, Kate thought about the story Hamish had told her. A family feud that had torn this modern-day Romeo from his Juliet.

His Juliet! His girlfriend! The baby! She swung around to see Hamish talking to Charles outside the window.

Leaving Jack’s side, she headed out the door.

‘Megan? Where’s Megan? Is she still in the hospital? Or in town? Can we get her here? She’s the one person to whom he might respond.’

Hamish, who’d heard Jack’s insistence that Megan was the only girl for him, caught on fastest.

‘She’s living at Christina’s house. I’ll go there now.’

But Charles held him back.

‘You think he cares about her? According to Jim, he hasn’t seen her for six months.’