LITMIR.BIZ

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to gather her up in his arms and comfort her, certainly not. He looked away to professionally assess her injury and saw one already bruising big toe. He glanced at her woebegone face then back at her toe.

      Her gaze followed his. ‘It throbs.’

      ‘I imagine it would. I won’t touch it until you get a bit of relief.’ He glanced around the open room towards a doorway that looked like it led to the kitchen. ‘Do you have any ice?’

      She almost smiled and he almost melted. ‘Always.’

      He stood up. Quickly. ‘I’ll grab some from the freezer then.’ Marcus stepped around the ladder and righted it before heading for the kitchen. He couldn’t help a little peek around as he went. The house was very tidy.

      He guessed that was one thing in her favour, though he supposed it could be any of the girls who had the clean fetish. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to stack up good things in Matilda’s favour and refocussed on the task at hand.

      Freezer. He saw the unopened bag of frozen peas and decided it would mould better around her foot. He grabbed a tea towel that was folded on the bench.

      When he crouched back down beside her she looked more composed and he mentally sighed with relief. He mightn’t have coped with her tears. ‘I’ve brought the frozen peas. Less square.’

      She took them and lowered them gingerly onto her bruised toe. They both winced. ‘Ow-w …’ she murmured as the green plastic bag settled around her foot.

      ‘Where would you like to sit? Somewhere comfort able, maybe. With your leg up?’ She couldn’t stay there on the floor, which was cold tiles.

      Her big green eyes, still shiny with unshed tears, so completely captured his attention he wasn’t sure what she was talking about when she answered. ‘Um … I’ll try for the sofa.’

      So far? So far so good? Sofa. Right. Move somewhere more comfortable. What the heck was wrong with him this morning? She lifted the ice and he helped her up and he saw her grit her teeth to take a step.

      This was crazy. ‘Here.’ He picked her up easily in his arms and took the few strides to the three-seater lounge. She felt decidedly pleasant against his chest and it was with strange reluctance that he put her down.

      Not sensible. He knelt down and looked quickly at her toe again as she prepared to replace the ice. The bruising was mainly below the start of the nail and he ran his finger along her slender, cute phalanges. He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. Just bruised.’

      She nodded then looked away from him and he suddenly realised he was still holding her foot. He almost dropped it in his haste to stand up. ‘Well, if nothing else is hurt, I’ll be on my way.’ He unobtrusively wiped his hand on his trousers to rid himself of that warm and tingly feeling.

      Big, solemn eyes looked up at him. ‘Thanks for checking on me.’

      The sooner he got out of here the better. ‘My aunt would kill me if I didn’t.’

      She nodded. ‘Of course. Thanks anyway.’

      Marcus left. Quickly.

      Tilly watched him go, her toe a dull throbbing ache that was being replaced by a dull throbbing ache from the cold peas, but the rest of her was still dazed from being picked up and carried as if she were a baby.

      Scoop and go with no effort at all from him. It had been a very strange feeling to be held against that solid, manly chest and one she would have liked to have savoured for maybe a little while longer just for interest’s sake.

      Only to see why women liked it, of course. She al most got the reason. She could still smell the faint scent of virile man. Maybe guys did have some short-term advantages.

      She glanced around at the flat-headed copper nails that had spilled out of the box and the hammer lying beside them. No more repairs this morning. Her toe was feeling better already and she’d be sensible to keep it up before work that afternoon.

      She needed to remind herself that this guy qualified as an ‘older man’ and he pressed too many of her attraction buttons to be anywhere near safe as a platonic friend.

      CHAPTER THREE

      TILLY‘s toe wasn’t too bad by afternoon, probably that quick packet of peas, because she squeezed into her shoe with only a little tenderness before she caught the bus up the hill to work, rather than walk.

      Tilly, along with the rest of the afternoon staff, had just finished their walk around the ward to meet the patients and for clinical handover when the phone rang.

      Gina picked it up, listened, and then waved. ‘There’s a patient with foetal distress, first baby, coming in by ambulance.’ Gina assessed the staff on duty. ‘Home birth. Probable emergency Caesarean. You take her, Tilly.’

      ‘Yep. Thanks.’ Tilly felt the clutch of sympathy in her stomach and glanced at her watch. ‘How far away?’

      Gina looked at the wall clock. ‘Ten minutes. Josie Meldon’s the mum, from Randwick, and the midwife is Scottish Mary.’

      Tilly was already moving. ‘Who’s the doctor on call?’

      ‘The new consultant.’

      So she’d get to meet the man. ‘I’ll page him and get the papers ready for Theatre.’ More than anyone, Tilly understood the efficiency and reliability of home-birth midwives. And Mary was one of the best.

      Tilly’s mother and grandmother had both been heavily involved in the home-birth movement all their lives and Tilly had been born at home, naturally, as well as growing up holding placards at dozens of home-birth rallies.

      She’d known Mary for years and if Mary said Caesarean, which she hated with a passion, that was what was needed.

      She dialled the pager number for the new consultant then scooped a pile of preprepared theatre papers from the drawer on her way to the filing cabinet.

      The cabinet held all the bookings of pregnant women in their catchment. Eastern Beaches Maternity Wing, or EB as it was known, had great rapport with the local independent midwives and in the last six months since Tilly had graduated she’d made extra efforts to liaise between the two areas of maternity care.

      Tilly’s goal had been to increase the mutual respect between hospital and private midwives, and while not missing, rapport hadn’t flourished either.

      Gina, a progressive manager and long-standing friend of Tilly’s mother, had encouraged her. Now EB had brief admission papers of even the home-birth clients in case of emergencies such as this to streamline unexpected admissions. This benefited everybody, especially the incoming mums.

      As Tilly lifted Josie Meldon’s file the phone rang and Tilly picked it up. ‘Maternity, Tilly. Can I help you?’

      There was a brief pause and Tilly glanced at the light on the phone to check the caller was still on the line. Then a voice. ‘Dr Bennett. You paged?’

      ‘Yes.’ She frowned at the fleeting illusion that she recognised the voice and then shrugged it off. ‘We’ve a woman in need of emergency Caesarean coming in from home. Full-term baby. Foetal distress and her midwife is with her. I’m about to ring Theatre.’

      ‘A failed home birth?’

      The thinly veiled scepticism in the new doctor’s response scratched against Tilly’s nerves like a nail on a blackboard and she wouldn’t have called the words back if she could have.

      ‘Not really the time for labelling, do you think?’

      He ignored that. ‘She hasn’t arrived for assessment yet? Hold the alert to Theatre until I assess her.’

      Tilly frowned fiercely into the phone. ‘That’s your call but I’ll still prepare the theatre notes.’

      Another

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