Harry St Clair: Rogue or Doctor? (9 page)

‘I think I will.’ The little lady straightened her shoulders. ‘How would I get there?’

Bonnie glanced at her watch. ‘It’s five hours by car but I’ve heard they’ve a scheduled bus that leaves from the mall.’

Iris swivelled her head and glared at Bonnie. ‘What about an ambulance?’

Bonnie clamped down on her lips again. ‘I’m afraid I’m the one who drives the ambulance and I have to be available here.’

The little lady visibly deflated and Bonnie wanted to pat her shoulder. Instead she soothed her. ‘I swallowed a fly once and, apart from the thought, it didn’t hurt me at all. I’m sure you’ll be fine. But I’ll check your blood pressure and get someone to help you back to your room so you can lie down until you feel better.’

Poor, unfortunate Iris nodded and sniffed and allowed
Bonnie to fit the cuff and inflate it, but she wasn’t happy.

When she’d finished, Bonnie patted Iris’s arm. ‘Your blood pressure’s a bit low, so make sure you drink lots of fluids. It will go lower if you get dehydrated. Are you on any medications?’

‘Won’t take them.’ Iris sighed. All of a sudden Iris seemed to shrink into the chair in front of her eyes and Bonnie felt her heart contract.

‘I’m sorry.’ Iris sniffed. ‘I’ve been rude and ungrateful. I think I panicked a little.’ She brushed her silver hair out of her eyes and sat up a little straighter. ‘I used to be fearless you know, but after I lost my family, it seemed my nerves went at the same time.’

She sighed again. ‘I always wanted to see the Rock but it’s not as much fun as I thought, on my own.’ She rolled her shoulders and gathered her bag, then gingerly stood up.

Bonnie came around to stand next to her. She didn’t know why she did it but she held open her arms and to her relief the little lady crept in for a brief hug. ‘Iris, I believe you used to be fearless, you’re still quite frightening when you want to be.’ They smiled at each other. ‘But I think you’ll feel better soon.’

When she pulled back Iris smiled tremulously, and Bonnie could feel a little lump in her own throat. Iris needed companionship. Everyone did.

‘I did hear the Sounds Of Silence Dinner is a wonderful place to meet fellow travellers,’ Bonnie said. ‘Please think about it for tonight. I promise you’ll enjoy it. Even on your own.’

Bonnie followed Iris out into the waiting room and
she was glad to see that, during the morning, between the efforts of Steve, Vicki and herself, all the chairs had finally become empty. ‘Can you get someone to help Iris to her room for a lie-down, please, Vicki?’

‘Of course.’ She helped Iris to a waiting-room chair. ‘And I’ll make you a cup of tea while we wait.’ She turned back to Bonnie. ‘Can you see Steve, please, Sister? He has some news.’

When Bonnie entered the office Steve sat relaxed at the computer and sent a big grin Bonnie’s way when she entered. ‘We have a doc. He arrives this afternoon, the one I’d hoped for. Initially he cancelled but he’s changed his mind.’

‘That’s great news.’ Someone else to help with the ambulance, she thought thankfully. ‘You know him?’

‘He’s a good friend, we grew up together, been out of circulation for a while. Lost his wife and child in a disastrous birth on his watch and he threw in the towel.’

Bonnie’s palpitations hit her out of nowhere and her hand came up to her chest. She tried to keep her face from freezing and almost achieved it. She licked her lips to ask the question but Steve went on.

‘Harry was always great at getting to the root of a problem, mandatory around here when there’s only us and disaster. Especially with our Aboriginal patients. Except with himself, I guess. He’s been keeping to himself for a while now. But I think we’re all like that when things go wrong.’

This could not be happening. ‘That would be Harry St Clair?’ Well, she’d told him to break out. She just hadn’t planned on it being so soon and close. ‘I thought he was in Bali.’

Steve glanced up. ‘That’s right. Inherited a house there. We’d been corresponding for weeks since the last guy dropped out. A friend met up with him for me a couple of days ago in a last-ditch attempt. Thought I’d lost. But he rang last night.’ Steve grinned at her. ‘So you know him too. That’s great.’

‘Great,’ Bonnie echoed, and she wondered if her face was as white as it felt.

Now it wasn’t just an event to try to forget. There’d be the constant reminder of how stupid she’d been. It was a full-blown disaster and she could kill him for doing this to her.

H
ARRY
could feel the tension mount as the arid red landscape burned into his brain.

Memories of another flight, no premonition, the faces of those who waited for him, a tragedy that might never have happened if he’d ensured his wife had gone to the larger town when he’d said she should.

If he hadn’t let himself be swayed by her wish to stay home a little longer.

Bonnie was right. He needed to face life and stop hiding from the past, though the pictures that clawed at him still scratched at his soul, though, just maybe, they seemed a little softer to him than before.

When they landed at Uluru Airport, the dry heat hit him like a hot newspaper in the face as he stepped off the plane, baked and arid—and he savoured the lack of humidity, so different from Bali.

It wasn’t so bad being back—so far.

Steve waved from the gate and Harry lifted his hand in reply. Well, he’d have to perform now he was here. He’d hit the books since he’d booked his flight, hoping study would boost his confidence, maybe banish his
ghosts, and he just had to trust it would all came back to him when that first obstetric crisis happened.

He really had no issues with emergency medicine—it was the babies and their mothers he didn’t trust. No doubt Bonnie would be a whiz but he’d come to the conclusion she actually attracted maternal disasters, like a shiny lure on a fishing line.

He’d have none of that, thanks very much.

‘So you made it.’ Steve rubbed his hands together and Harry had to smile at his friend’s enthusiasm.

‘You don’t have to baby me, Steve. I’ll stay the month.’

Steve grabbed Harry’s overnight case. ‘Still got the old pack, I see. Vicki said hi. She’s holding the fort with Bonnie.’

Harry kept his face impassive, he hoped, and it must have worked, because Steve went on, ‘Our nurse. She said she’s met you?’

Had he forgotten anything about her? He doubted it. ‘Bonnie McKenzie. Tall, too thin, green eyes?’

‘Don’t know about the eyes …’ Steve slanted him a glance ‘… but that’s the one.’

Harry could see some serious questions and answers coming and tried diversion. ‘So where’s your car? I have to pick up the other box of stuff. I brought you some beer.’

‘Cheers for that.’ Steve rubbed his hands. ‘Never enough beer in the desert. So when did you meet Bonnie?’

‘Bali.’ Nothing more. Hopefully they could leave it at that.

Bonnie was in the middle of suturing a triangular laceration on a young man’s hand. She’d recognised the boy from the motorbike that first sunset.

‘So, you came off your bike, Bernie?’

‘Nah.’ He grinned. ‘Thumped a garbage bin ‘cause my girlfriend got mad at me.’

Bonnie looked again and saw the way the scrape went from knuckle to knuckle and pictured it. Dumb kid. ‘Make you feel better?’

A flash of white teeth in his ebony face. ‘Yeah. Took me mind off me troubles.’

‘What about the garbage bin?’

‘Yeah. Came off better’n me.’

Bonnie shook her head. ‘Men are strange.’

Harry walked in just as she said it. She glanced at him without a smile and tried to keep her face as neutral as possible. Not much else she could do. He looked disgustingly handsome and embarrassingly familiar.

Steve followed him in, beaming. ‘Bonnie, Harry’s here. You two know each other.’ Steve was happy. Obviously. He had his doctor and it was his friend as well. His world was good. ‘I’m off to find Vicki to let her know we’re back.’

Bonnie had no one but herself to blame for Harry deciding to come out of his shell in her direction. And she needed to remember it was a good thing for him to have made that choice. But he’d sucked her in once and she wasn’t falling for his new pack of lies.

‘Hello, Bonnie.’ Harry smiled that killer smile and she fought to hide her body’s instinctive reaction that, no matter what her brain said, decreed it was physically good to see him.

‘Harry.’ She nodded briefly and glanced at a point on the wall past his head. ‘Australia not big enough for the two of us?’

‘Seems not.’ Out of the corner of her eye she could see he did look ridiculously glad to see her. Did he have short-term memory loss or something? They’d left a long way from being on best terms and she wasn’t pretending they hadn’t. Obviously she seriously didn’t understand men so she looked back at Bernie’s hand in front of her.

Unfortunately she could feel the warmth of just being in the same room as Harry seep into her like warm rays at sunrise creeping up a wall.

He stepped closer and peered down at her neat work. ‘So you suture great as well,’ he said.

She finished up the last stitch and tied it off. ‘No one else to do it at some of the places I’ve been.’ She peeled a dressing and sealed it into place. ‘Try and keep it dry, Bernie. Come back in five days. I’ll have another look and take the stitches out.’ She winked at the boy and smiled. ‘That okay with you?’

‘Yep, missus.’ Bernie picked up his cowboy hat and jammed it on his head. ‘I’m gonna go see that girl of mine.’

‘Just remember you have to look after her. She’s feeling big and clumsy. Tell her she looks beautiful to you.’

Bernie grinned. ‘’Course she’s beautiful.’ He winked. ‘And so are you.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Bonnie accepted that with a grain of salt. ‘And take it easy on that bike of yours. I don’t want to have to scrape you off the road.’

Bernie bolted out and Harry laughed. ‘You’ve made a conquest.’ He looked her up and down with serious warmth in his eyes. ‘Another one.’

Bonnie washed her hands and dried them for longer than she probably needed to. Anything to hold off the moment when she had to look at him again. ‘So what made you decide to take this job in the end?’

‘Someone told me I should try medicine again. So I’m here to see what happens.’

She let him have an exaggerated sigh. She was tired of holding it back. ‘I wasn’t thinking about a place next to me.’

He raised his brows. ‘You have a problem with me being here?’

‘Yes would be the short answer.’ Did she regret he was there? My word, she did. Even more so because he looked so darned good and her shoulders itched with memory of the weight of Harry’s arm around them. ‘I might have made a few different decisions if I’d known we’d be working together so soon.’ Like backing off straight after Jimbaran.

The silence lengthened while they both thought about that until finally Harry stated the obvious. ‘I’m only here four weeks.’

‘I know. I’ve mentioned that to myself a couple of times already today,’ she said dryly. She steeled herself and met his eyes. ‘I won’t trust you again, Harry. You’re not on a good wicket here.’

She wasn’t sure what reaction she expected from him but his sympathetic look made her eyes prickle.

‘Of course I understand that, Bonnie. What we shared
in Bali was based on my deceit, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe one day you’ll see how that came about. But for now, what happened in Bali is left in Bali. I got it.’

All very well to say that now. But the reasons she’d given for allowing herself to sleep with this man came back and bit her. There hadn’t been any good enough reasons. Even kissing and hand-holding would have made her skin heat with embarrassment. Let alone the fact that she knew every inch of his gorgeous body intimately.

This was ghastly.

So much for holiday flirtations not coming back to haunt you. She’d been such a fool and the heat still crept up her neck as she narrowed her eyes at him, trying to see if he meant it. She’d constantly underestimated his ability to con her. ‘Okay.’ Reluctantly her hand went out. ‘Strictly platonic.’

‘To platonicness.’ Not a real word, so not a real vow, and a flippant comment that reminded her she was taking this more seriously than he was. What a surprise.

But when he took her fingers in his and gave them a quick shake, even with that fleeting contact, she knew anything to do with this man would have feelings and emotions attached to it.

Bonnie pulled away and turned her back. Damn. Damn and triple damn.

The rest of the day Harry spent with Steve and Vicki. Thankfully. It was good they worked out rosters, talked work, and despite Vicki’s updates to Bonnie it seemed a
lot of time was spent laughing over old times and Bonnie didn’t feel excluded. Really. Honest.

By the end of the day Bonnie was drooping, exhausted, more from the nervous energy expended over coping with Harry’s presence than the inconsistent workload. She could have done with a much busier workday to keep her mind occupied. Instead she’d been shoring up on her reasons not to fall under the spell Harry seemed to be able to weave over everyone. But not her. Certainly not her. She’d learnt her lesson.

There was a sticky moment when she remembered Harry’s room was next door to hers but she didn’t see him when she went to bed that night. He was still out with Steve and Vicki. By the time she’d reconciled herself to that it was after eleven and she was so exhausted she fell into a deep sleep when her head finally relaxed into the pillow.

When she woke in the morning, heavy-eyed and claustrophobic, she decided to return to the Rock for another dose of calmness.

Unfortunately when she pulled up Harry was just ahead of her and he saw her before she could turn around and drive away.

It was too late to avoid him now he’d stopped and was obviously waiting for her to catch up, and reluctantly she followed his footsteps in the red sand until she was standing beside him.

‘Pleased I’m here, I see?’ He didn’t seem too perturbed and she wasn’t in the mood to lie.

‘No.’

He grinned at her. ‘As soon as your plane left I missed your complimentary ways, you know that.’

‘Don’t tease me, Harry. My sense of humour is AWOL at the moment.’

‘Okay. Let’s enjoy the view.’ He looked up at the monolith in front of them and raised his brows. The rock face above was in shadow still, and the darker areas seemed to have a life, a past life, and eons of stories to tell. ‘Wow. Impressive.’

She glanced around and walked across until she could rest her hand on the granules of rock on the wall. She sighed. Cool and calm and having collected so much wisdom and experience. She could feel peace seep into her. ‘Very.’ He was right. She was there for healing, not for argument. And she guessed he was too. They did have to work together.

A peaceful walk sounded good. She buried her misgivings, tucked her hand in her jeans out of the way so she didn’t swing her fingers into his, and set off.

A couple of hundred metres away, in the still coolness of the early morning, a toddler in a tracksuit wandered away from the visitor centre. She drifted further from her mum and her aunties and her grandmas cooking breakfast for the tourists to come, drifting across the sand like a floating grass seed, tiny footprints in the sand, a trail of flower imprints as she dawdled slowly, drawn towards the great monolith.

‘Leila?’ Her mother’s voice also drifted towards the rock, and the little girl hesitated at the sound, but then a bird landed in front of her and she tottered after it.

When she came to the rock base a pool beckoned. The pool smiled at her and rippled with intriguing shifts of shadow and floating leaves and Leila reached down to capture a tiny twig that floated at the edge.

Bonnie and Harry nearly stumbled over the little girl as she peered into the grass beside one of the pools filled by last night’s rain, and the memories of Bali slammed into both of them in the same instant. Not this time.

Bonnie’s fingers reached down swiftly and gathered a handful of fabric from the little girl’s jacket as a lifeline, and Harry was right beside her as they tried carefully not to startle the child or communicate the fear that had grabbed them both. Their eyes met. There was no way this poppet was falling in with them there.

Harry glanced around for the mother and suddenly in the still air she could hear a woman’s frantic call. ‘Leila?’

‘Pretty,’ said the little girl as she pointed to a lizard.

‘Yes, it is pretty,’ Bonnie said as she held out her hand. ‘But you need to bring Mummy when you come here.’ The little girl put her fingers in Bonnie’s.

‘Let’s find Mummy, Leila.’ Bonnie stood up and lifted the child into her arms as Harry cupped his hands over his mouth.

‘She’s here,’ Harry called out. Their eyes met, and she knew they were both thinking of another little girl. She looked away as sudden tears stung her eyes at the memory of near tragedy. That was the only reason for the tears.

‘She’s fine,’ Harry called out. ‘On the path beside the base. With the nurse.’

Leila’s mother burst from the bushes, her brow beaded with perspiration and the stress of dread, and Bonnie passed the little girl into her arms.

‘She was sitting beside the rock pool,’ Harry said.

The mother looked at both of them with such relief in her face Bonnie felt tears sting her eyes again. She could only imagine a mother’s fear.

‘Thank you. I don’t know how she got out but I’ll work it out before tomorrow.’ The woman clutched Leila to her chest. ‘Don’t do that, baby. You frightened Mumma.’ The woman looked at Bonnie again. ‘She slipped away while we made breakfast.’

Bonnie nodded. ‘They’re so quick, I know. She was watching the lizard over there, I think.’

‘So close to the pool.’ The mother shuddered. They all saw the lizard trundle off and Leila’s mum smiled at the reptile as if it was a friend. ‘That ngiyari can drink with his feet, you know. Water moves from his feet to his mouth along grooves in his skin. Very clever lizard. But my baby should not be here.’ The mother squeezed her daughter and the little girl wriggled with delight. ‘Thank you, both. Again.’

Bonnie glanced up at the sky and guessed sunrise would have taken place on the other side of the Rock by now. They’d have to go soon. ‘I’m Bonnie, the new nurse and midwife at the clinic, and this is Dr St Clair. Maybe we’ll meet again.’

‘I’m Shay. We’ll see you soon. My baby’s due for her needles.’

Bonnie grinned. ‘I’ll be gentle.’

When the mother had gone Bonnie and Harry walked another fifteen minutes around the base and tried to regain the peace of the Rock but it was gone. Lost in the memory of another child who’d nearly drowned and the lies of the man beside her, all Bonnie could think of
was the way Harry had almost left her to cope on her own. How he’d lied.