LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER TWO

      SO FIVE minutes later he turned into the farm gate—and found himself staring at a graveyard. A tractor graveyard.

      The driveway from the road to the house was a long avenue of gumtrees, and underneath their canopies old tractors were lined up like sentinels. There were tractors from every era, looking like they dated from the Dark Ages.

      ‘Wow,’ he breathed, and involuntarily slowed to take a better look. Some of the tractors looked like they could be driven right now if he had the right crank and didn’t mind using it. Some were a wheel or two short of perfect. Some were simply skeletons, a piece of superstructure, like a body without limbs.

      ‘William likes tractors?’ he ventured.

      ‘Gran and Angus like tractors. Gran bought her first one when she was fifteen. I believe she swapped her party dress for it. The tractor didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now, but she still thinks it was a bargain.

      ‘She sounds a character.’

      ‘You could say that,’ she said morosely. ‘Or pig stubborn, depending on how you look at it.’

      He glanced into the rear-view mirror, and saw a wash of bleakness cross her face—desolation that could have nothing to do with the accident. And her expression caught something deep within him. For a fraction of a second he had an almost irresistible urge to stop the car so he could touch her; comfort her. It took strength to keep his hands on the steering-wheel, to keep on driving.

      He did not do personal involvement, he told himself fiercely, confused by his totally inappropriate reaction. This woman was married and pregnant and he hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Alice died. Had he hit his head in the crash? Was he out of his mind?

      They’d reached the end of the driveway now, and he pulled up beside an old estate wagon with its bonnet up. The car with the damaged radiator hose. He focussed on that. Something practical and something that didn’t make his heart twist.

      ‘So that’s your wagon. Is there something else you can use to drive to hospital?’

      ‘What’s wrong with tractors?’ she demanded, and he caught a glimmer of a rueful smile in the rear-view mirror. Once again, he had that kick of emotional reaction. This lady had courage and humour. And something more.

      ‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, seemingly unaware of the effect her smile had on him. ‘Thanks for driving me home. I’ll give you my licence details, and our insurance companies can take it from here.’

      So that was that. He was dismissed. He could retreat back to Sydney. Which was what, until an hour ago, he’d been desperate to do.

      It seemed to Max that Yandilagong was about as far from civilisation as it was possible to get without launching himself off the New South Wales coast and swimming for New Zealand. Not for the first time, he wondered what he’d been thinking to let his friends—a cohort of career-oriented medicos—talk him into coming.

      ‘It’ll be fun,’ they’d told him. ‘Music festivals are all the rage and this one has a great line-up.’

      Since he’d moved to Australia he’d been asked to many hospital social events, but each time he’d refused. Since Alice’s death he’d immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. Now his surgical list was growing to the point where the pressure had become ridiculous. More and more patients were queuing, and his teaching commitments were increasing exponentially.

      Last week, working out in the hospital gym in the small hours, trying to get himself so physically tired that sleep would come, he’d realised he was reaching breaking point.

      So he’d accepted, but what neither he nor his colleagues had realised was that the festival was a family event. There were mums, dads and kids, young women holding babies, grandmas bossing grandkids, dads teaching kids to dance. His friends, men and women who were truly married to their career paths, were appalled.

      ‘We’re so lucky not to be stuck with that,’ they’d declared more than once. ‘Hicksville. Familyville. Who’d want it?’

      He didn’t, of course he didn’t, so why had it hurt to hear them say it?

      Then this afternoon they’d announced they were bored with music and children, so they’d organised a tour of a local winery. He’d spent a couple of hours listening to his friends gravely pontificate about ash and oak and hints of elderberry, and how wonderful it was to be away from the sound of children, and how the advertisers should be sued for not letting ticket buyers know how many children’s events there’d be.

      And then his anaesthetist had rung from Sydney. A woman was being flown in from outback New South Wales with complications from a hysterectomy. When was he coming back?

      His registrar could cope. He knew he could, but the choice was suddenly obvious. He’d left feeling nothing but relief. For six years he’d been alone and that was the way he liked it.

      He wanted to be alone now. But instead he was parked in a tractor graveyard while a seven-months-pregnant woman was struggling to get out of his car.

      Wishes aside, he couldn’t leave her. Not before he’d handed her over to someone responsible.

      ‘Who’s here?’

      ‘Gran.’

      ‘But she’s ill.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So where’s William?’ he asked, knowing it was a loaded question but hoping there’d be a solid answer.

      ‘William was my husband,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s dead.’

      ‘Dead.’ He felt like he’d been punched. Dead. Hence the bleakness. Hell.

      ‘Not recently. You don’t need to say you’re sorry.’

      Recent enough, he thought, looking at her very pregnant tummy. Alice had been dead for six years yet still…

      Well, there was a crazy thing to think. Make this all about you, he told himself. Or not.

      ‘So who’s Angus?’

      ‘William’s uncle.’

      ‘How old?’

      ‘Sixty.’

      This was better. ‘He’ll look after you?’

      ‘He’ll enjoy the challenge of getting the calves up to the house. Bonnie’s his dog. Any minute now he’ll be here to demand what I’ve done with her. So thank you, Dr Ashton. I’ll be right from here.’

      He was dismissed.

      For the last forty-eight hours all he’d wanted to do was get out of Yandilagong. He still did.

      But he needed to see how competent this Angus person was, and how forceful. For all Maggie was struggling to pull herself from the car, she was looking paler and paler.

      Placental bleeding?

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