Charlotte Hawkes - The Army Doc's Baby Secret

‘So you aren’t an army doctor any longer. You quit?’

‘It’s...complicated.’

‘That’s pathetic.’ He snorted, hating the way she was guarded with him even as he understood exactly why she was. ‘Even you can do better than that, Tia.’

She blinked as though she wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Then, abruptly, she straightened her back and tilted her chin into the air. So Tia-like.

‘I’m back because I love lifeboats. You seem to forget that I was volunteering down here ever since I was a young teenager. Long before your seventeen-year-old backside came bouncing into town to become a beach lifeguard. Becoming a volunteer medical officer is only following in my father’s footsteps. It’s how he met my mother—’

She stopped abruptly and he had no idea how he resisted the impulse to go to her.

He knew only too well how Tia’s parents had met. He hadn’t been around at that time but it was well documented in the lifeboat community, and he’d heard the story often enough. Though never from Tia herself.

Her father had been a medical officer, her mother a coxswain. For twenty years they had volunteered alongside each other, right up until the fateful night when Celia Farringdale had been called out to a shout in heavy seas.

A trawler had lost engines several miles out. Celia’s crew had attended, assisting the rescue helicopter to winch to safety all eight men from the stricken vessel, three of whom had been seriously injured. The helicopter had made three trips over several hours, with the lifeboat waiting, protecting, in case they had needed to abandon ship. Just as the last man had been pulled aboard the heli and it had turned for shore, the sea had swelled and crashed causing the lifeboat to roll unpredictably—just as the trawler had been lifted out of the water only to slam down onto the lifeboat’s bow. Instantaneous and fatal. None of the lifeboat crew had survived.

Tia had been fourteen. The year before he’d met her for the first time. A kid who had tried so hard to be strong, and untouched by her past, and invincible.

In many ways seeing her had been like holding a mirror up to his own soul.

Was that why now, with emotions playing across her features however much she tried to fight them, Zeke felt like a heel? Enough to make his determination to take things slowly wane for a moment. Enough to let an altogether more welcome sensation invade his body.

Desire.

When refusing to acknowledge it didn’t work, he imagined crushing it under the unforgiving sole of his boots.

‘I know you have a tie to this place. Your family was part of this community since before you or I were even born,’ he offered by way of apology.

She actually gritted her teeth at him.

‘I’m not trying to play who has the greater claim , Zeke. I’m just saying that...it’s understandable why I want to be here.’

She was holding something back; he knew her well enough to be able to tell. But neither could he deny the point she was making. But whatever else either of them might say was curtailed by the sound of movement outside. Clearly an incident was going down.

‘So that’s why you’re back?’

The hesitation was brief. Blink and you’d miss it.

‘Yes.’

He couldn’t explain why it crept through him as it did.

Was she back for someone else?

But then there was the sound of footsteps and he knew that someone was coming down the corridor. Maybe for Tia.

He’d waited five years for a conversation he’d never been sure would ever take place—and now it was about to be interrupted. Exactly as he’d feared.

Frustration swamped him, making his words harsher, his voice edgier, than he’d intended them to be.

‘I don’t know, Tia. Maybe I thought you’d returned because you’d read about me in the papers and finally remembered that you were still my wife .’

TIA HURRIED DOWN the hallway, the emergency somehow grounding her.

She’d never been so happy for an interruption as she had been when one of the lifeguards had knocked on the door to tell her that they were dragging a struggling dog walker out of the surf and she might be needed.

Technically, she hadn’t started yet but, until they knew what it was or whether the emergency services would need to be called, she could certainly take a look.

The confrontation with Zeke had been harder, so much harder, than she’d imagined it would be. He’d brought her to her knees with just a few curt words. So any further, awkward conversations with Zeke could—mercifully—wait.

Turning the corner, Tia spotted one of the lifeguards guiding a disorientated-looking woman up the steps, a dog leaping around behind them. The woman was moving under her own steam but looked weak.

‘This is Marie,’ the lifeguard was saying as they approached. ‘About forty minutes ago she was walking her dog when it ran into the water a bit too far and got into difficulties. She went into the water to rescue it but got a bit stuck herself so we ran in. We brought her back here for a warm drink and change of clothes and then she seemed okay. Then about five minutes ago, she started to take a turn.’

‘So she wasn’t this disorientated when you pulled her out?’

‘No,’ the lifeguard replied. ‘She complained of feeling faint about ten minutes later but nothing more. This has got progressively worse since she’s been here.’

Tia watched as Zeke moved quickly to the fainting woman’s other side, putting her arm around his shoulders.

‘She’s going to go, Billy,’ he warned. ‘Put your hand under her thigh and we’ll carry her through. Quickly.’

The two men had barely got her to the consulting bed when she stopped breathing.

‘Zeke, get her on the bed and get me a defib. Billy—’ Tia turned to the lifeguard as he was dropping the woman’s rucksack and coat from his shoulder ‘—call treble nine.’

‘Heart attack?’ Zeke asked, yanking the cupboard open and producing the defibrillator that Tia hadn’t yet had a chance to locate.

‘Could be.’ Tia ripped open a mechanical ventilating kit and began to administer oxygen to help the woman start breathing again. ‘But it may be drug related. Her skin is clammy and I don’t like that purple colour.’

‘Look there, it’s like a rash,’ Zeke noted, peering at the woman’s arm.

Tia nodded, but her attention turned straight back to her casualty as she saw the woman begin to blink.

‘Marie? Marie, are you with me? Good girl. Okay, my name is Tia, I’m a doctor. Have you got any medical conditions?’

‘Where’s Badge?’

‘Is Badge your dog?’ Tia guessed, as the woman nodded. ‘Badge is fine, he’s with our lifeguards now, probably being spoiled rotten.’

As she’d hoped, Marie began to relax.

‘So, do you have any medical conditions?’

‘None.’ She shook her head as best she could with the ventilating mask still over her mouth and nose.

‘Has anything like this ever happened to you before?’

Again, Marie shook her head.

‘What about this rash?’ Tia asked, as Zeke gently lifted the woman’s arm to show her.

‘Yeah, I get that on my arms or feet sometimes when I’ve been walking the dog here. It feels itchy and swollen.’

‘When you go in the water?’ Tia asked, her mind racing.

‘I guess. But it goes pretty quickly usually.’

‘Okay, I think we might need to run a few tests. An ambulance should be arriving fairly quickly to get you checked out at hospital.’

‘Badge...?’

‘Is there anyone we can call to get him picked up? He can stay here with us until they get here.’

‘My dad. But you really think I need to go to hospital?’