‘Our cardiologist has just left,’ he said abruptly, and she nodded. But the way he’d spoken… It brought her to the third factor.
Despite the fact that it was sensible for her to go with him to Crocodile Creek-despite the fact that medical imperative decreed that she go-she didn’t want to get in the helicopter with him. It had been a mistake to come. To drag out the moment…
This baby needed a cardiologist if he was to survive. He needed her.
She had no choice, she told herself fiercely. Focus on medicine. Ignore the personal. The personal was all just too hard.
‘We need to think about the mother,’ she managed, and Cal nodded in agreement. They’d always been apt to follow the same train of thought and it was happening all over again.
‘We do.’ He turned away to where Pete was kneeling a few yards away in the dust. Pete had obviously decided that his best role was in keeping CJ occupied and they were etching huge drawings of kangaroos in the dust. ‘Pete, have you no idea where this baby could possibly have come from?’
‘There’s been three or four hundred people through here over the last couple of days,’ Pete said, looking up from his kangaroo and shaking his head as he thought it through. ‘It could be anyone’s kid.’
‘This baby was born here only hours ago. Did you see anyone who was obviously pregnant?’
‘Dorothy Curtin’s got a bulge bigger’n a walrus but she and Max took off with the kids at lunch time.’
‘There’s no way Dorothy would abandon one of hers. But anyone else? Maybe someone who’s in trouble. A kid? Maybe someone who’s not a local?’
‘There were a few out-of-towners on the coach. But I dunno.’ He scratched his head a bit and thought about it. ‘I dunno.’
‘I didn’t see any pregnant women on the bus,’ Gina told them.
‘I’ll need to get the police involved.’ Cal looked uncertainly across at Gina and then he seemed to make a decision. ‘I want the mother found. But we need to take Gina-this lady-back to Crocodile Creek with us,’ he told Pete. ‘Will you stay on and show the police where the baby was found?’