‘Marie?’

‘And her friends. Yes.’

She smiled then, and there were lights behind her grey eyes that were almost magnetic in their appeal. Her smile made a man sort of want to smile back. ‘You like my team?’

‘It’s…different.’

She laughed, a lovely low chuckle. ‘Different is right. An hour ago I was staring into space thinking, How on earth am I going to cope? I needed an emergency team, and I had no one. I thought, This place has no one but retirees. But retirees are people, too, and the health profession’s huge. So I said hands up those with medical skills and suddenly I had an ambulance driver, two orderlies and three trained nurses. I’ve even got a doctor in residence, but he’s ninety-eight and thinks he’s Charles the First so we were holding him in reserve.’

She was fantastic. He grinned at her in delight.

This felt great, he thought suddenly. He’d forgotten medicine could feel like this. Back in Sydney he was part of a huge, impersonal team. His skills made him a troubleshooter, which meant that he was called in when other doctors needed help. He saw little of patients before they were on the operating table.

His staff were hand-picked, cool and clinically professional. But here…

They’d saved a life-what a team!

‘I wouldn’t ask it of these people every day,’ Amy told him, unaware of the route his thoughts were taking. ‘Marie’s had three heart pills this morning to hold her angina at bay. Very few of my people are up to independent living but in an emergency they shine through. And even though Marie’s heart is thumping away like a sledgehammer, there’s no way she’s going for a quiet lie-down now. She’s needed, and if she dies being needed, she won’t begrudge it at all.’

It was great. The whole set-up was great, but something was still worrying him. ‘Where are the rest of your trained staff?’

That set her back. ‘What trained staff?’