Page 44 of Stranded with the Surgeon

Oh, God…No!

This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real. The ringing of the telephone, nowthatwas real. Guy pushed back his chair and stood up, pleased to find his legs still working despite the curious numbing effect Jennifer’s statement had induced. His voice was still working too, which seemed surprising, given the tightness in his throat.

‘Guy Knight.’ He listened for few seconds. ‘Calm down, Ellie. What’s happened?’ He listened again. ‘How far apart are the pains? Have you called the ambulance? Okay, I’m on my way.’

It was a relief to push aside what had to be confronted.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he told Jennifer tersely. ‘It’s an emergency.’ He walked swiftly towards the fire to put the guard in place. ‘We’ll talk later.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ Jennifer was following him. The dogs were following her. ‘It’s an emergency. I’m an emergency physician. I might be able to help.’

‘No. I can manage, thanks.’

‘What kind of emergency is it?’ Jennifer was totally ignoring him, pulling on her long black coat.

Guy flicked her a dark glance. ‘Premature delivery,’ he snapped.

‘Oh.’ The significance clearly wasn’t lost on Jennifer. She bit her lip as she offered him a tiny smile. ‘Bit close to home, huh?’

It was that tentative smile that changed things. She understood his shock. Given the kind of control Jennifer liked to exert on her life, she’d probably been just as shocked – if not more so – when she’d discovered she was pregnant. Her life, possibly her whole career, was in for a major shake-up. Maybe she had been as reluctant as he was to renew their acquaintance, but decency had brought her here to tell him the news face to face.

And somewhere deep inside, a totally unexpected seed of something like joy was planted with the knowledge that he was going to become a father. He would have a connection to another human being that meant he wasn’t as totally alone in the world as he had thought.

‘Come on then,’ he growled. ‘We’re wasting time.’

Jennifer had her seatbelt fastened by the time the dogs scrambled into the back seat.

‘What’s the history?’ she queried.

‘Ellie’s thirty-eight and this is her first pregnancy. She’s thirty-five weeks into it. We’ve been keeping a close eye on her because she had a mild to moderate degree of placenta previa.’

‘Was the conception normal?’

Guy snorted. ‘I haven’t gone into the details. She and Phil have been married for fifteen years so I imagine they’ve had a bit of practice.’

Jennifer wasn’t smiling. ‘Being close to forty is quite old for a first baby. I just wondered if they’d had fertility treatment like IVF.’

Guy turned off the shingled lane that led to his cottage and picked up speed on the sealed road. ‘Fair enough. Yes, they’ve been trying for a baby ever since they married. IVF isn’t really an option for people in isolated areas who are struggling to earn a living anyway.’

‘And what’s happening at the moment?’

‘She’s in severe pain and is bleeding.’ Guy pushed his foot down more firmly on the accelerator. ‘The ambulance and the helicopter are both involved with a car-versus-train incident at Kingston. It’ll be at least forty minutes before they can get here.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Not too far, fortunately. We cross the Matukituki river into West Wanaka and then head up the valley. We’ve got a ford and a few farm gates to get through.’

Jennifer needed no prompting to leap out and open the first gate. When she didn’t need to be reminded to close it again, Guy remembered that she was a townie by choice rather than upbringing. He still didn’t expect her reaction when the second gate was blocked by the farm’s largest bull.

The huge animal refused to budge when Jennifer tried to push the gate open. Having been chased by a similar brute when he was ten years old, Guy would never have done what Jennifer did now. With her coat flapping and her skirt hitched up to her thighs, she simply climbed over one end of the gate. Picking up a long branch from beneath the pine trees that flanked the driveway, she marched towards the bull and gave him an almighty whack on the rump.

‘Move it,’ she ordered. ‘We need to get through.’

The bull was as surprised as Guy had been. It skittered clumsily to one side but then seemed to regroup and glared balefully at Jennifer as she opened the gate. Guy drove through as the gap widened, but the bull was moving again and looked as though he might get through before the gate cut off the road to freedom.

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