The Doctor & the Runaway Heiress. Marion Lennox

I could free up a nurse for Olive,’ she said. ‘I’m juggling too many balls here, Riley, so cut me some slack. Putting Amy in the labour ward now will scare her and she’ll be alone most of the time. Putting her in with mums who already have their babies isn’t going to work either. The obs cubicle is close to the nurses’ station, and I’m hoping your lady will be nice to her. I’ve put them both on fifteen-minute obs and that’s the best I can do. Meanwhile, we have Troy Haddon in Emergency—he’s been playing with those Styrofoam balls you put in beanbags. He and his mate were squirting them out their noses to see who could make them go furthest, and one’s gone up instead of out. Can you deal with it?’

      ‘Sure,’ Riley said, resigned. So much for sleep.

      Pippa woke and someone was sobbing in the next bed. Really sobbing. Fear, loneliness and hopelessness were wrapped in the one heart-rending sound.

      She turned, cautiously, to see. Right now caution seemed the way to go. The world still seemed vaguely dangerous.

      When she’d gone to sleep the bed next to her had been empty. Now she had a neighbour.

      The girl was young. Very young. Sixteen, maybe? She was so dark her eyes practically disappeared in her face. Her face was swollen; desperate. Terrified.

      Last night’s drama disappeared. Pippa was out of bed in an instant.

      ‘Hey.’ She touched the girl on the hand, and then on the face as she didn’t react. ‘What’s wrong? Can I call the nurse for you?’

      The girl turned to her with a look of such despair that Pippa’s heart twisted.

      ‘It hurts,’ the girl whispered. ‘Oh, it hurts. I want to go home.’ She sobbed and rolled onto her back.

      She was very pregnant.

       Very pregnant.

      As Pippa watched she saw the girl’s belly tighten in a contraction. Instinctively she took the girl’s hand and held, hard. The girl moaned, a long, low moan that contained despair as well as pain, and she clutched Pippa’s hand like it was a lifeline.

      Pippa hit the bell. This kid needed help. A midwife. A support team. She looked more closely at the girl’s tear-drenched face and thought she was sixteen, seventeen at most.

      She needed her mum.

      The nurses’ station seemed deserted. Pippa, however, knew the drill.

      Hospital bells were designed to only ring once, and light a signal at the nurses’ station, so pushing it again would achieve nothing. Unless …

      She checked behind the bed, found the master switch, flicked it off and on again—and pushed the bell again.

      Another satisfactory peal.

      And another.

      Three minutes later someone finally appeared. Dr Riley Chase. Looking harassed.

      ‘She needs help,’ Pippa said before Riley could get a word in, and Riley looked at the kid in the bed and looked at Pippa. Assessing them both before answering.

      ‘You should be in bed.’

      ‘She needs a midwife,’ Pippa snapped. ‘A support person. She shouldn’t be alone.’

      ‘I know.’ He raked long fingers though his already rumpled hair, took a deep breath and focused. He glanced down the corridor as if he was hoping someone else would appear.

      No one did.

      He stepped into the cubicle.

      Once again, as soon as he entered, she had the impression that he had all the time in the world. He’d crossed over from the outside world, and now he was totally in this one—only this time he was focused solely on the girl in labour.

      The contraction was over. The girl was burrowed into the pillows, whimpering.

      ‘Hey, Amy, I’m so sorry we’ve had to leave you alone,’ he told her, touching her tear-drenched face with gentle fingers. ‘It’s hard to do this and it’s even harder to do it alone. I did warn you. This is why I wanted you to stay in Sydney. But now you’re here, we just have to get through it. And we will.’

      Pippa backed away as he took both Amy’s hands in his and held. It was like he was imparting strength—and Pippa remembered how he’d felt holding her last night and thought there was no one she’d rather have hold her. The guy exuded strength.

      But maybe strength was the wrong word. Trust? More. It was a combination so powerful that she wasn’t the least bit surprised that Amy stopped whimpering and met his gaze directly. Amy trusted him, she thought. For a teenager in such trouble …

      ‘I want to go home,’ Amy whimpered.

      ‘I know you do. If I were you, I’d be on the first bus out of here,’ Riley told her. ‘But there’s the little problem of your baby. He wants out.’

      ‘It hurts. I want my mum.’

      ‘I wish your mum could be here,’ he said.

      ‘Mum thought it was stupid to come.’

      ‘So she did.’ Riley’s face set a little and Pippa guessed there’d been conflict. ‘So now you’re doing this on your own. But you can do it, Amy.’

      ‘I can’t.’

      ‘Can I check and see how your baby’s doing?’

      Pippa didn’t need prompting to leave them to it. She scooted back to her bed and Riley gave her a smile of thanks as he hauled the dividing curtain closed.

      ‘You’ve been getting to know your neighbour,’ he said to Amy. ‘Have you two been introduced?’

      Pippa was back in bed with the covers up, a curtain between them.

      ‘No,’ Amy whispered.

      ‘Pippa, your neighbour is Amy. Amy, your neighbour is Pippa. Pippa went for a swim after dark last night and came close to being shark meat.’

      ‘Why’d you go for a swim at dark?’ Despite her pain, Amy’s attention was caught—maybe that’s what Riley intended.

      ‘I was getting over guy problems,’ Pippa confessed. She was speaking to a closed curtain, and it didn’t seem to matter what she admitted now. And she might be able to help, she thought. If admitting stupidity could keep Amy’s attention from fear, from loneliness, from pain, then pride was a small price to pay.

      ‘You got guy problems?’ Amy’s voice was a bit muffled.

      ‘I was about to be married. I caught him sleeping with one of my bridesmaids.’

      ‘Yikes.’ Amy was having a reasonable break from contractions now, settling as the pain eased and she wasn’t alone any more. ‘You clobber him?’

      ‘I should have,’ Pippa said. ‘Instead I went swimming, got caught in the undertow and got saved by Dr Chase.’

      ‘That’s me,’ Riley said modestly. ‘Saving maidens is what I do. Amy, you’re doing really well. You’re almost four centimetres dilated, which means the baby’s really pushing. I can give you something for the pain if you like …’

      ‘I don’t want injections.’ It was a terrified gasp.

      ‘Then you need to practise the breathing we taught you. Can you—?’

      But he couldn’t finish. Jancey’s head appeared round the door, looking close to panic.

      ‘Hubert Trotter’s just come in,’ she said. ‘He’s almost chopped his big toe off with an axe and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig. Riley, you need to come.’

      ‘Give me strength,’ Riley said, and rose. ‘Can you stay with Amy?’

      ‘Dotty Simond’s asthma …’ she said.

      Riley