left?’
‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘We both need some time. I still need to talk to Jess, and I’m hoping Mike might change his mind once he’s had a chance to think it over, but if he doesn’t then I will make my choice.’
Joe couldn’t imagine Mike backing down. He was a surgeon and had the ego to go with his profession. Joe didn’t think he was madly in love with Kitty and he imagined Mike would see the surrogacy as an assault to his masculinity. He thought Kitty was going to be disappointed if she expected Mike to change his opinion.
‘What can I do?’ Joe asked. He would do anything for her. Always had. Always would.
‘I need a place to stay,’ she told him. ‘If I stay at Mike’s it will give him an opportunity to try to talk me out of this. I need a bit of space while I work out how to handle this, and I can’t stay with Jess. If she knew what had happened tonight she’d try and talk me out of my decision as well, and I’m doing this for me as much as for her and Cam. Can I stay at your place? On the couch would be fine, I don’t want to cramp your style.’
‘Of course.’ If all she needed from him was a place to stay while she got things sorted then that’s what he would give her. And if it meant Kitty went ahead with the idea and Mike ended the relationship Joe wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t like the sound of that. ‘And just for the record, I think it’s a fantastic gesture,’ he added. He would be as supportive as possible of this exercise.
‘Thank you. I knew you’d understand.’
Her brown eyes were still shiny with tears but at least they weren’t spilling over her cheeks any more, although she still looked as if she needed a hug. He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace. He wrapped his arms around her, closed his eyes briefly and inhaled the familiar vanilla scent of her shampoo as he comforted her.
He hated seeing her upset and he would go to just about any lengths to protect her. He had friends, lots of them, but none of his friendships enjoyed the same closeness that he and Kitty shared. Both of them found something in their relationship that they didn’t get from anyone else. That sense of being understood without the need for explanation. He wasn’t close to his family and avoided serious romantic relationships, but his relationship with Kitty was proof that he was capable of sustaining a meaningful connection.
It proved to him that he wasn’t a complete emotional failure. That he could love someone and maintain a long-term relationship, even if it was platonic. He didn’t doubt he wasn’t cut out for marriage and commitment. He had no evidence that long-term monogamy was for him. His parents certainly hadn’t subscribed to that ideology, they’d had five marriages between them, and Joe himself knew he grew bored and irritated if any of his romantic relationships stretched past a few months.
Some of his friends were convinced that he just hadn’t met the perfect girl but Joe wasn’t sure she existed. Even perfection had a use-by date in his opinion. From what he’d seen, marriages ended in one of three ways—divorce, death or disinterest—and he didn’t see the point. But in the absence of other relationships his connection with Kitty became even more important, and he would do whatever was necessary to maintain it. He intended to always be there for her in a way that others hadn’t been.
‘But if you’re going to do this,’ he told her, ‘then you need a long-term plan. You need to make some decisions about the next few months, not just about tonight.’
‘I know,’ she sighed, ‘but right now, tonight is all I can manage.’
‘HOLY CRAP!’
Kitty was signing notes at the nurses’ station in the emergency department when the ED clerk’s exclamation interrupted her concentration. She looked up and saw Lisa’s eyes fixed on the wall-mounted television screen.
In the centre of the screen was a burning bus.
Orange flames leapt into the air from the rear and thick black smoke billowed around the vehicle and over several cars that had stopped haphazardly around it. In the background, Kitty could see a sandstone pylon and the heavy iron framework of the Harbour Bridge.
The time was fixed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Eight thirty-four a.m. Morning rush hour. This was happening in the middle of her city, a few kilometres from her hospital, and the images were being broadcast live from one of the news helicopters.
Kitty’s heart was racing. What was going on? Was it a bomb? In the middle of Sydney?
The volume was muted on the television but Kitty could read the words scrolling across the screen under the picture.
Bus goes up in flames.
Harbour Bridge closed.
Morning traffic disrupted.
Use alternative route.
Traffic had come to a standstill but there was no mention of what had caused the bus to catch fire.
Kitty couldn’t tear her eyes from the fiery disaster that was unfolding on the screen in front of her as the helicopter camera zoomed in on the chaos. People were out of their cars, doors left hanging open as they ran. Some ran towards the burning bus, others away. Kitty could see a man with a fire extinguisher aimed futilely at the flames as people stumbled from the bus. He was joined by another half-dozen men, all wearing hi-visibility vests and hard hats, and a couple were carrying additional fire extinguishers, but from what Kitty could see the extra hands were having no impact on the fire.
The live feed widened to show the emergency vehicles, the ambulances and fire engines, their red and blue lights absorbed by the thick cloud of black smoke as they weaved their way through the stationary cars on the bridge.
The images from the helicopter cut out and were replaced by a reporter standing on the bridge, a microphone held up to her mouth and the burning bus behind her. How the hell had she got through the traffic and the chaos? Sitting on the ground around her were several people who looked dazed and shocked. Some were coughing and Kitty wondered if they were passengers from the bus.
Lisa grabbed the remote and pressed a button, increasing the volume until they could hear the reporter’s commentary.
‘...on the Harbour Bridge, where a city-bound commuter bus has gone up in flames near the northern end. Witnesses say twenty to thirty passengers have been evacuated but there may still be people trapped inside the bus...’
Kitty didn’t want to see the reporter. She wanted the camera to go back to the accident—she was looking for Joe. But the reporter continued to talk.
‘There is no word yet on what caused the fire. Commuters say there was a loud explosion, and you can see behind me that the windows of the bus have all been blown out.’
The camera panned to the bus, zooming in on the accident, and Kitty searched the scene.
‘The heat is intense, the sky is thick with black smoke and there is a terrible odour in the air. Paramedics are treating victims for smoke inhalation as firefighters try to get the blaze under control.’
Kitty’s eyes flicked from one paramedic to another, from one blue uniform to the
