Elly noticed the child’s breathing was laboured and her lips were tinged with blue. Millie was one sick baby.
‘I’m going to send off some throat swabs from John and Millie and although we won’t know definitively until the results are in, I have a strong suspicion that they both have whooping cough.’
A stunned expression froze Rachel’s face. ‘But that’s a kid’s disease from a hundred years ago. I thought we’d cured it?’
John sucked in a sharp intake of breath as his wife gasped. ‘I thought the cough had to sound like a whoop?’
Elly shook her head in answer to both questions. ‘Unfortunately, it’s still alive and kicking, and adults and young babies don’t tend to have the whooping sound.’
Rachel’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, God, I thought it was just a cold.’
‘I want to admit you and Millie into hospital for observation and treatment.’ She wrapped up the baby and handed her back to her mother. ‘John, I’m going to give you antibiotics so you’re no longer infectious, but I have to ask you to stay in isolation at home for three weeks.’
John’s hand immediately touched Rachel’s shoulder, his face grey with despair. ‘Oh, love, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, John.’ Elly quickly tried to reassure them all. ‘Whooping cough has sporadic outbreaks and is always out in the community. It’s just unfortunate that Millie’s too young to have had all her immunisations. I need to treat everyone in the household and anyone else you’ve been in close contact with.’
John’s wife emitted a wail. ‘We were at the christening party on Sunday and we all cuddled the other three babies who were baptised with Millie.’
Elly pulled out a sheet of paper, trying to work out the best way to tackle the fact she had a possible epidemic of whooping cough on her hands. ‘OK, I need you to write me a list of everyone you know you’ve been in close contact with, especially young children and anyone who might not have been immunised against whooping cough.’
Her head raced as she jotted down all the things she had to do, which included notifying the health department and filling in all the paperwork that a communicable disease generated. The phone interrupted her thoughts.
‘Elly.’ Sandy’s usually calm voice sounded stressed. ‘Karen Jennings has just arrived with her baby, who’s having trouble breathing.’
Elly closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She was just one doctor and she had two sick babies and a growing queue of patients with similar symptoms to John. The babies needed close observation and she needed to treat everyone else as well as set up a vaccination clinic. Help from the health department in Hobart was hours away.
Gabe.
No, there has to be another way.
But she knew that was just wishful thinking. The people of Midden Cove needed another doctor as soon as possible and Gabe fitted that criteria. The fact he was her ex-lover and had pulverised her heart was totally irrelevant.
It had to be.
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHOOPING cough?’ Gabe quickly absorbed Elly’s news, having rushed to the hospital after hearing her tense and stressed voice on the phone. He gave silent thanks that his children were all old enough to have been fully immunised, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to help.
‘Yes, whooping cough and at least four babies have been exposed to it.’ Elly tucked back the few strands of hair that he was learning always fell forward against her cheek. Hair that his fingers itched to brush back so he could feel the silken strands caressing his skin, just like they had in his dream last night.
From the moment he’d dropped her home from the hospital, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. Thinking about them as a couple. They’d been separated now for longer than they’d been together and when they’d parted he’d made the decision not to ever think back. There’d been no point; at first because he’d been too angry and hurt at her uncompromising position and abrupt departure, and then when his life had spiralled so far out of control with Jenna, thinking back and wishing for what might have been with Elly would have been a one-way ticket to despair. Elly hadn’t trusted him enough or loved him enough to stay, and Jenna had burned him so badly that the thought of any relationship had him ducking for cover. Yet last night he’d relived most of his time with Elly, in all its Technicolor glory, and he’d woken with an unfamiliar ache under his ribs that just wouldn’t shift. But right now she wasn’t looking at him like he’d been featuring in any of her dreams, although perhaps he’d made an appearance in her nightmares.
‘You should immunise your parents too even though they’re probably not mixing with kids, unless your brother or your sister’s had a child?’
The green in her eyes shimmered with barely concealed hurt; the main reason they’d separated. You have to tell her about the children.
But sick patients came first. The appropriate time for that story had to be finessed to avoid inflicting any more pain because he could still hear her departing words when she’d left. I want children now, Gabe, and it’s breaking my heart to love you.
He used every strand of concentration he had to return his focus to the present because the past was full of traps. ‘No, Vanessa’s still in Sydney, slaying corporate dragons, and Aaron’s still Aaron.’ He thought of his younger brother, whose easygoing lifestyle no longer mirrored his own, and immediately switched the conversation back to the job at hand, which, although dire, was in many ways safer. ‘Do you want a consult on the babies or shall I start with the backlog of walk-ins?’
‘I’d appreciate the consult, thanks.’
She smiled, her face lighting up with gratitude, and unexpected sadness throbbed inside him as he realised that was all it was. Yesterday he’d thought he’d seen desire flare in her eyes but perhaps that had just been wishful thinking. He’d been doing quite a bit of that in the last sixteen hours, which made no sense because he couldn’t turn back time, couldn’t change how they’d hurt each other or erase what had happened to him in the intervening two years. All he knew was that he was a completely different person from the man he’d been when he’d loved Elly. It stood to reason Elly had changed too.
She started walking. ‘It’s a bit of a rabbit warren to the children’s ward so follow me.’
The Midden Cove hospital sat high on the hill, its position garnering five-star views out across the Pacific Ocean. Like many Australian country hospitals, it had been built with money raised after the First World War specifically to care for returned servicemen. The position and spacious grounds would have been part of the plan because back in 1919 the healing qualities of sea-air had been as close to antibiotics as medicine got. Given the rising number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it was frightening to think that some things had come full circle.
As Gabe crossed the large built-in veranda, a shiver ran across his skin, which was crazy as it was a warm day.
Elly shot him an understanding look. ‘Often at three a.m. I think I can hear the ghosts of patients past lying in their old iron beds out here.’
He tried to shrug off the feeling. ‘You always did have an overactive imagination.’
She raised a questioning brow. ‘Oh, right, and you don’t? I saw you rub your arm.’
She’d always been incredibly observant and never missed much. Which is why you have to tell her about the kids sooner than later. He pulled open the door clearly labelled ‘Children’s Ward’ and ushered her inside. ‘Ironically, today we’ve gone back in time, dealing with an age-old illness.’
‘At least we’ve got antibiotics.’
‘True, but we both know how serious an illness this is for children under six months so we’re almost as impotent as medicos were before 1945.’