He was surely real. He was surely a baby. He was incredibly tiny-more, he was incredibly beautiful. His crumpled little face was now becoming the flushed crimson of most newborns. His eyes were wide, dazed and unfocussed.

And he moved. It was a slight movement, but he definitely moved. He whimpered a little and a hand-a hand the size of a man’s fingernail-broke free from his makeshift blanket.

Gina didn’t say anything. She tucked the little hand back into the warmth of her windcheater, and she waited for this man to make his decision. She needed his help so much.

And it seemed that she had it. The man stared down and his face twisted into an expression she could scarcely read,

‘Will you look at that?’ he whispered. ‘He’s just like mine were at that age.’ He stared down at the baby for a moment longer and then he looked up at Gina. His old eyes met hers and held.

‘You really found him?’

‘We found him. We’re tourists on the coach but we found him just as the coach was leaving. I’ve been trying to get him to breathe. So far, so good, but if he’s to live we need your help. We need outside help. Fast.’

‘I’m moving,’ he told her, and he turned and started to stride swiftly across the dusty arena to his truck.

He took three long strides-and then he started to run.

‘Mommy,’ CJ said, in the tone of a patient man whose patience was being tested to the limit.

‘Yes?’

‘I still need to go to the toilet.’

‘Cal?’

He jumped. Cal had been placing a scalpel in the steriliser, but Charles’s voice from right behind him startled him into dropping it. He swore, then stooped to retrieve it with a sigh. ‘Will you cut that out?’ he demanded of his boss. ‘Quit oiling that damned wheelchair so we have a chance.’

Charles grinned. Charles Wetherby was the medical director of Crocodile Creek Medical Centre. He’d been confined to a wheelchair since a shooting accident when he’d been eighteen, but his paraplegia didn’t stop him being a fine doctor and a medical director who missed nothing. Charles knew his silent approaches startled his staff but he didn’t mind. It never hurt his young doctors to believe their medical director might be right beside them at any time.