Miracle: Twin Babies. Fiona Lowe

and flicked on the light. Using her pen she outlined the image. ‘Your heart is here and it’s the normal size, and if there was any fluid on your lungs or infection that would show up as white on the film. But your lungs are pretty clear, which is why they look black.’ And you don’t have a tumour, thank goodness.

      ‘But I feel so awful.’ Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes. ‘I’m so grumpy, the kids and Dev are avoiding me and all I want to do is sleep but I keep going hot and cold and my joints ache.’

      ‘Just hot at night?’ Piece by piece she tried to match up the vague symptoms. She rechecked the X-ray but there was no lower lobe consolidation, no sign of pneumonia.

      Melinda wrung her hands. ‘Sometimes during the day too.’

      ‘Are you still menstruating?’ Menopause was unlikely but Kirby had learned the hard way that sometimes the unexpected happened.

      Her patient grimaced. ‘Oh, yes, I’m doing that too well—flooding, in fact.’

      Which led Kirby back to her initial thoughts from Friday. Menstruating women were often anaemic—lacking in iron could make you feel pretty low. But not give you hot flushes. The words nagged at Kirby. Perhaps she needed to run a test for hormone levels and do blood cultures as well.

      She glanced at her watch and picked up the phone to speak to Vicki. ‘The courier should have arrived with the results of your blood test and hopefully the results will say I need to prescribe you my famous orange-juice-and-parsley iron-boosting drink.

      ‘If that’s the case, in two weeks you’ll feel like a new woman and we can discuss your options to reduce your menstrual bleeding.’ She smiled, trying to reassure her patient despite an enveloping sense of gloom that Melinda’s condition would not be that simple and neither would it have such a straightforward solution.

      But she had to be wrong. Right now she didn’t trust her gut at all, given the way her body melted into a mush of pulsating need at one smile from Nick. How could one smile from a man she knew to be a womanising charmer undermine everything she’d learned at the hands of Anthony? Face it, Kirby, he’d said. You can’t give me what I need.

      She knew better than to get involved again—this time she knew in advance what the outcome would be and she wasn’t putting her hand or heart up for another brutal and soul-destroying rejection. No, now she was a lot wiser and she knew better than to let attraction blind her to a handsome man. But her body wasn’t listening to her brain and it betrayed her every time she clapped eyes on Nick. No, she definitely didn’t trust her gut, because right now her radar was really out of whack.

      A knock sounded on the door and Nick walked in, holding a printed piece of white paper with the familiar logo of Barago Hospital’s pathology department. The smile on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes and the lines around his mouth looked strained.

      ‘I brought you this.’ He handed the report to Kirby and immediately turned his attention to Melinda. ‘I’m Nick Dennison. I hope you don’t mind me barging in like this but as I’m working with Dr Atherton I thought I’d introduce myself.’

      Recognition moved across the sick woman’s face. ‘Oh, you’re from the market. When I bought those strawberries from you on Saturday I didn’t realise you were a doctor. Mind you, I didn’t get to taste any of them, the kids ate them all before we got home!’

      Kirby heard the warm burr of his voice reply to Melinda but her whirling brain didn’t decipher the words. At first astonishment that Nick had brought in the report drowned out the conversation then shock rocked through her, muting everything around her, and finally aching despair obliterated all sound. She read the pathology report three times and finally closed her eyes against the words. But they lingered against her retina as if burned there. Melinda had leukaemia.

      Slowly the conversation between Nick and her patient sounded in her ears again and she sucked in a deep breath, turning to face them both. Nick had pulled up a chair, his casual demeanour tinged with an alertness she hadn’t noticed before. She realised he’d read the report and that was why he’d brought it in.

      She shot him an appreciative look—she hated giving out bad news. It wasn’t something a person got better at with practice and it certainly never got easier. ‘Melinda, the results of your blood test are back and I’m afraid it’s not good news.’

      Melinda instantly stiffened, fear clear in her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

      Nothing Kirby could say would soften the truth. ‘Your white blood cells—the ones that fight infection—are abnormal and that means you have a form of leukaemia.’

      Melinda’s hand shot to her mouth before falling back to her lap. ‘You mean cancer of the blood?’

      Kirby nodded slowly. ‘That’s right. We need to get you to Barago hospital this afternoon for a series of tests, including a bone-marrow biopsy so that we can get an accurate diagnosis and start chemotherapy.’

      But Kirby knew Melinda hadn’t heard a word since she’d confirmed leukaemia was cancer.

      The petrified woman started to breath quickly, short, shallow breaths, her hands gripping the sides of the chair.

      Kirby reached for a paper bag but Nick grabbed it first.

      ‘Melinda.’ He squatted down in front of her and took her hand. Looking straight into her eyes, he spoke slowly. ‘I need you to breathe into the paper bag and try to slow your breathing. I’m going to count to help you.’