to the oxygen cylinder?’ he asked Luci as he covered Nadine with a blanket. The little boy was his priority now and there was nothing else he could do for Nadine until the ambulance arrived. If he could manage to hold the two bassinettes together he would be able to fashion a makeshift oxygen tent, which would be better than nothing in the short term. Taking the little boy from Lucy he placed him in a bassinette alongside his sister. He emptied the second bassinette and inverted it over the first. He grabbed a roll of medical tape and ran it around the edges of the cribs, taping them together. There was an opening where the sides had been cut down that would allow the carbon monoxide to escape. The ‘tent’ would be less efficient than he would like but it would be good enough.
Luci had connected the tubing to the oxygen cylinder. She passed the end to him and he slid it into the bassinette, taping it in place too.
‘Run it at eight litres per minute,’ he said as Heather came back into the room.
‘The ambulance is five minutes away,’ she told them, and Seb thought that was the best sentence he’d ever heard. He could handle five more minutes.
He left Luci to keep an eye on the babies as he spoke to Nadine. ‘Your babies are okay. Your daughter is doing well, your little boy is having a little bit of difficulty breathing so we need to give him some oxygen, but the ambulance is almost here and will transfer them to Dubbo hospital.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’ll go too.’
‘Byron?’
‘I’ve put him on the school bus with your other kids,’ Heather said as she returned to the room with the ambulance officers in tow. ‘Will there be someone home in Frog Hollow to take care of them?’
Nadine nodded. ‘My husband is there and my sister will give him a hand.’
The next fifteen minutes passed in a flurry of activity as the ambos stabilised the babies and Seb gave Nadine an oxytocin injection and delivered the placentas.
Somehow they got the whole family into the back of the ambulance and Seb breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the back doors and watched the ambulance take off.
When he went back into the community health clinic Heather was rescheduling the rest of the day’s appointments. She was proving to be worth her weight in gold today.
He left her to it and went to help Luci tidy up the makeshift delivery suite.
She was stripping the bed and had her back to him but he saw her lift her arm and wipe her hand across her face and he realised she was crying. Were they happy or sad tears? Her shoulders were shaking and as he got closer he could hear her sobs. It sounded like her heart was breaking.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Luci, what’s the matter?’
She turned around but she was crying so hard she couldn’t talk. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly until her tears eased but didn’t stop completely. He brushed her hair from her forehead and kissed her gently. ‘What is it, Luce? Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I can’t do this any more,’ she sobbed.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘Deliver babies. It’s one of the reasons l left Vickers Hill, seeing other women holding their newborn babies. I can’t do it.’
He frowned. ‘You’ll get your turn,’ he told her. ‘We’ve talked about this.’
But Luci was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain it to me, then.’
‘Not here. I need to go home.’
‘Home?’ he asked. ‘To Vickers Hill?’
She shook her head and gulped air as she tried to get her emotions under control. ‘No. Back to the motel.’
He was happy to call it quits. It was almost the end of the day and hopefully Heather had managed to reschedule the remaining appointments. Rarely was anything so urgent with community health that it couldn’t be pushed back. He would start earlier tomorrow if necessary, before they headed back to Sydney. Right now Luci was his priority.
He had bundled her into the car and driven her back to the motel and now she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were red but she had stopped crying. He boiled the kettle to make tea, wondering if he should call room service for something stronger, but decided to wait.
He handed her a cup of green tea. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I don’t like delivering babies.’
He frowned. ‘What’s not to like? I agree, sometimes things can get a bit difficult but we had a really good outcome today, all things considered.’
‘I know and I’m happy for Nadine but I find it soul destroying. It just reminds me that the thing I want most in my life isn’t a possibility.’
‘What are you talking about? We’ve had this conversation...you’re young, you’ve got time.’
‘It’s not time I need,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘There are some things I love about small country towns and there are things I can live without. Like delivering babies. That’s part of the reason I wanted to get out of there. I don’t want to deliver other people’s babies. Not when I can’t have my own.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t have kids.’
He wasn’t sure if he was following the conversation properly. ‘But you told me you and your ex-husband were planning on starting a family.’
‘We were trying to get pregnant. It didn’t happen.’
‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t have them. It just means it hadn’t happened yet.’
‘We tried for eighteen months. Nothing.’
‘It still doesn’t mean the problem lies with you.’
‘I’m pretty sure it does. Ben has remarried and is expecting a baby with his new wife.’
Wow. He hadn’t seen that coming.
‘Why haven’t you told me this before?’ he asked.
‘Because it was irrelevant to you.’
He was momentarily affronted until he realised she was right. Their relationship had no strings attached.
But that didn’t change the fact that Luci was upset and his natural instinct was to try to fix things. Although this could be a slight problem. He might be out of his depth.
‘I guess it’s not,’ he agreed. ‘You’ve spoken about wanting to have kids but you never mentioned you couldn’t.’ He was surprised at how hurt he felt that she hadn’t confided in him but he wasn’t stupid enough not to realise that he hadn’t confided in her either. There was plenty of information he had kept to himself so why should he be upset to find
