A Proposal Worth Waiting For. Lilian Darcy

voice sounded small and scared.

       Dr Carlisle…

      ‘Dr Carlisle, I think I need to use my inhaler.’ The name jolted Nick out of his negative thoughts. Was Miranda here, then? Was she—hell!—coming on this camp? She must be. Of course there would be medical people accompanying the group. He hadn’t had time to think about it. So this was the day, then, that he…or they…had managed to put off for so long.

      ‘Hey, are you wheezing?’

      And there she was, right in front of him, almost exactly the way Nick remembered her, the way he’d glimpsed her two years ago, before making that very fast and very firm decision to pull back. There she was, stepping into the breach with her cheerful, elfin and slightly mischievous face, her calm, sweet voice, her practical attitude, her slim, almost boyish build and her heart worn carelessly and innocently on her sleeve.

      ‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.

      Ten years. Miranda wasn’t going to count the near-miss from two years ago. Of course he remembered her and knew exactly who she was, exactly where she fitted into his past. She saw it in his face, when he reached out a hand for her to shake. ‘We haven’t…uh…managed to connect since you started treating Josh,’ he said.

      He wore the same aura of cool and rather distant confidence that she recognised, and that she’d only once seen truly and seriously slip. He used his body the same way, too. He never paraded his height or the strength in his shoulders, but, then, a man didn’t need to when he was as tall and strong as Nick. He was imposing without even trying.

      ‘No, we haven’t.’

      On the surface, their words took care of the subject, but she strongly suspected it would come up again.

      Physically, he’d barely changed. His lightly tanned skin had done a little more living, and it showed in the fine creases beginning to form around his eyes and mouth. His body had hardened. She could imagine him running several kilometres a day, or going for gym sessions at six in the morning before starting surgery or hospital rounds.

      ‘Anna has a lot of confidence in you,’ he added, ‘which is great.’

      ‘I’m glad you were able to come at such short notice,’ she told him. And meant it, because ten years was a long time, and this man was a patient’s father now, nothing more. She had to remember that. Had to. Hell, what was the alternative? ‘It’ll be great for Josh to have his dad there.’

      ‘You think?’

      ‘Well, yes.’

      Didn’t he agree? Was that a cynical drawl, or something else? Anna had been very nervous and wound up about the whole thing, which was typical, but her fears did have some basis in reality—at least as far as Josh’s health was concerned. Maybe the man seriously didn’t want to be in for this assignment, and his reluctance and lack of interest would ruin Josh’s whole camp experience.

      But Miranda couldn’t think about that abstract possibility right now. In fact, she couldn’t think about Nick Devlin at all. She had to deal with the concrete reality that Josh’s asthma attack was getting more severe by the second. With a sinking heart, she saw the Allandales arriving with their thirteen-year-old daughter—verging on late, heavily laden with luggage, instantly wanting and expecting her full attention, as they always did.

      Pretending she hadn’t seen them, she bent down to take Josh’s backpack, wanting to pull out his inhaler and spacer. His breathing was getting worse and he looked increasingly distressed as the seconds passed. He was scrabbling at his backpack now, trying to get it open, but the zip seemed to be stuck and he hadn’t considered his father as a possible source of help.

      ‘Give the backpack to me, sweetheart,’ Miranda urged him. ‘Don’t try to do it yourself. You just keep breathing, OK?’

      ‘Dr Carlisle!’ Rick Allandale reached her, his knees roughly at her eye level.

      Cutting off what would probably be a lengthy list of questions, explanations or complaints, none of which she needed now, she told him, ‘Let me tick Lauren’s name off on my list in a minute, Mr Allandale. We’re waiting until everyone’s here before we check in.’

      ‘Do you know his action plan off the top of your head?’ Nick asked in her ear.

      Miranda felt rather than saw him. He’d squatted down to Josh’s level, just as she had done, and his well-muscled upper arm bumped her shoulder while his backside rested on his heels. She caught the faint waft of some very pleasant male grooming product. Aftershave or shampoo, or maybe just plain old soap.

      He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Because I do. You have other people to take care of. Let me handle this.’

      ‘Everyone else can wait,’ she answered, not sure if he understood the urgency. He must surely realise that the attack was being exacerbated by Josh’s mix of anxiety and over-excitement.

      Too aware that he hadn’t moved further away, Miranda uncapped the Ventolin inhaler and attached it to the spacer, helped Josh get the other end of the spacer ready at his lips. ‘OK, ready to breathe out? Now…’

      But Josh couldn’t concentrate and, even with the spacer, he mistimed the dose and took the spacer from his lips too soon. Miranda saw a puff like smoke as most of the drug escaped into the air.

      Lauren Allandale was watching Josh’s struggle for breath and his clumsiness with the inhaler, as were a couple of other kids and a parent or two. The atmosphere was chaotic and claustrophobic. Another big group of tourists had just arrived, ready to check in for their flight, and the tour leader was yelling instructions to them in a language Miranda couldn’t identify. Korean? More stares arrowed in Josh’s direction.

      ‘Please, let me deal with this,’ Nick repeated, needing to lean close to keep a shred of privacy for his son. Miranda felt the warmth of his body, let herself meet his brown gaze for a moment and found it far too familiar. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was motionless, almost forbidding, and yet it stirred her and filled her with memories. Suddenly, as she’d feared all along, ten years wasn’t very much time at all. ‘You have other things to attend to. And he’s my son.’

      ‘You’re confident that you know what to do?’ She felt their fingers touch briefly as he took the inhaler and spacer out of her hands. Should she grab the equipment back?

      ‘For heck’s sake, I’m a doctor!’

      ‘I mean, the exact dosage. The frequency.’

      ‘Yes, I do,’ he told her shortly, shoving the equipment into Josh’s backpack. ‘The very first thing I’m going to do is take him somewhere quiet. We can’t get him focused and relaxed here. I saw signs for a parents’ room.’ He spoke to his son, turning a shoulder to shut Miranda out, whether through hostility or because she just wasn’t important at the moment she didn’t know. ‘Josh, come with me and we’ll get you breathing again, shall we?’ His voice sounded stiff and almost formal. ‘We don’t want you having to go to bed as soon as we get there. We want to get out exploring, right?’

      Josh nodded, but his eyes were still wide with effort and fear. Fear of not being able to breathe? Or of something else?

      ‘When’s the latest we can get back here for check-in?’ Nick asked Miranda. ‘Twelve-forty? Don’t hold the group up, will you?’

      ‘Your baggage…’ she recalled. You couldn’t check in someone else’s bags, neither did Security take an innocent view of luggage left unattended.

      ‘I’ll wait with it,’ said Benita Green, the nurse who had come with the cancer kids’ group.

      Miranda and Nick both nodded at the same time. ‘Thanks.’

      Then Nick scooped up Josh and carried him off, the little backpack with its bright colours and cartoon motif swinging incongruously from one big male shoulder