LITMIR.BIZ

      What had she promised?

       Argh!

      If there was one thing Rachel Tilding had learned in her twenty-eight years it was not to get involved.

      Eight years ago she’d applied for the Roger Lavery Scholarship because it was the only one which offered to pay her entire way through medical school. Her education was sketchy, to say the least. She’d officially left school at fifteen. Since then she’d worked where she could, odds and sods for years, before ending up on night shift in a metal fabrication factory. She’d couch-surfed with anyone who’d put up with her, all the time saving, doing whatever she could to get the marks and the money to enter medical school. The day she’d heard she’d won the scholarship she’d been so tired she’d wept over the assembly line all night.

      But then, thanks to the scholarship, things had eased. She’d been able to find somewhere permanent to live. She’d had security and a future, which was more than she’d ever dreamed of. The only cost to her was a contract at the end of her internship to work for two years in this end-of-the-earth place.

      ‘Two years?’ She thought of one of the other students on her med course, of his appalled reaction when she’d told him her plans. ‘Shallow Bay? A tin-pot hospital with no specialists, in the middle of the National Park, cut off by bushfires in summer, floods in winter? I’m guessing you’ll be married with babies by the end of the two years because there’ll be nothing else to do.’

      ‘I’m not into families.’ She’d snapped it before she could stop herself, almost a fear response.

      ‘You will be if you go there,’ her fellow student had said. ‘My uncle’s a county doctor, on call twenty-four-seven. His wife and kids hardly see him, but he says they’re the only thing that keeps him sane.’

      A family? Keeping her sane? As if.

      And now she’d offered to be part of one.

      But it was only for a couple of days. She could do this. After what she’d been through, she knew she could pretty much do anything she needed.

      But this was what someone else needed. Tom.

      A stepfather. A man who’d left his kids with someone totally irresponsible.

      So why had she made the offer? It wasn’t her fault the kid had hurt his hand. She didn’t get involved—she never had. And yet here she was, two minutes after arriving at Shallow Bay, putting her hand up to move in with a house full of kids. It was so unlike her it left her stunned.

      Was it the thought of kids being left with a stepfather? After all this time, the word still made her feel sick to the stomach.

      She was overreacting, she knew she was. Cinderella’s stepmother… Her own stepfather… They’d given the roles such a bad name.

      One was a fairy story, she told herself, but her own…

      Get over it.

      Luckily she had medicine to distract her. It was a relief to move back into treating doctor mode. She was using local anaesthetic. Kit was awake and terrified, so she needed Tom to be Kit’s support person.

      Roscoe had set up a screen so Kit couldn’t see her work. Tom could see over the screen but she had to block both Tom and Kit out. It was only Kit’s hand that mattered.

      The anaesthetic block was cutting off sensation and Tom was keeping the little boy still. Conscious all the time of doing no more damage, she started removing slivers of glass. Left in situ, they could move during the flight and cause more damage.

      There was enough damage already. He must have dragged his hand backward as he’d felt it cut. The glass had sliced from palm down to wrist and then across as he’d jerked back out of the shattered window.

      She was focusing fiercely. Broken glass was appallingly difficult to clear from wounds, as its transparency made it notoriously hard to see. Roscoe was in the background, handing her what she needed, but Tom was right there. One of his hands was under Kit’s head, cradling like a pillow. The other was on Kit’s elbow, stopping it moving.

      Despite her concentration on the wound, she couldn’t quite block out his presence. He was holding the little boy still but hugging him at the same time.

      ‘This is going to be an amazing scar,’ he was telling Kit. ‘You’ll need to make up a great story to go with it. Maybe we could get Dr Tilding to make marks that look like crocodile teeth to go with it. Then we could tell everyone that instead of staying with your grandparents last year you went croc hunting. Maybe one attacked Henry and you fought it off with your bare hands. I think it was a whopper, twenty feet long with teeth the size of my hedge-cutters. But you fought and fought and finally it held up its hands—paws?—what do crocodiles have? Anyway, your crocodile surrendered. And you told him it’d be okay as long as he said sorry and let you have a ride on his back.’

      And to Rachel’s astonishment the little boy managed a weak chuckle. ‘That’s silly,’ he quavered. ‘Kids don’t ride crocodiles.’

      ‘I bet superheroes do,’ Tom said. ‘This scar looks like a superhero scar. Does it look like a superhero scar to you, Dr Tilding?’

      She’d just fielded a sliver of glass. She held it still for a moment in her forceps, making sure her grip was secure before she tried to shift it, then transferred it to the kidney dish.

      ‘It’ll definitely be a superhero scar,’ she agreed. ‘You might need to buy a new T-shirt, Kit. One with Batman on the front?’

      ‘Batman?’ Kit said, with a brief return of spirit. With scorn to match. ‘Batman’s old.’ And then his face crumpled as he recalled another grief. ‘My meerkat T-shirt… It’s all bloody.’

      ‘We’ll try and fix it,’ Tom told him, but even Rachel could hear the doubt. And Roscoe grimaced behind him. To get monitors on the little boy’s chest they’d simply sliced the T-shirt away, not only to get fast access but also to check there were no other lacerations underneath. The T-shirt was now a mangled mess.

      But

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