The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Read Online Free PDF Page A

at her.
    ‘So you don’t know anything about the hospital?’ he asked.
    ‘Not a thing, except its reputation is excellent. Apparently the boss, Charles Wetherby, insists on hiring top-class staff and only buying the best equipment, so it has a name for being far in advance of most country hospitals.’
    But her words failed to reassure Jack, who had not only closed his eyes but had now folded his lips into a straight line of worry.
    Seeking to divert him, she pulled out the pad of assessment forms.
    ‘You must be tired, but before you drop off to sleep, how about we fill this out. There aren’t many questions.’
    Jack opened his eyes and looked directly at her.
    ‘I should have died,’ he said, then he closed his eyes again and turned his head away, making it unmistakably clear that the conversation was over.
    ‘Full name?’ Kate asked hopefully. ‘Address? Come on, Jack, we have to do this.’
    But the young man had removed himself from her—not physically, but mentally—cutting the link she’d thought she’d forged when they’d played their ‘whose life sucks the most’ game earlier.
    She lifted his wrist and checked his pulse then wrote the time and the rate on the form. She filled in all the other parts she could, remembering Jack’s initial respiration rate, systolic blood pressure—she’d taken that herself before Hamish had started the second drip—and pulse, writing times and numbers, wondering about all the unanswered questions at the top of the form.
    ‘Asleep?’
    Hamish’s quiet question preceded him into the light. She stood up, careful not to disturb their patient, and moved a little away.
    ‘He wasn’t—just closed his eyes to avoid answering me—but I think he’s genuinely asleep now. I’ve just checked him. His pulse is steadier but his systolic blood pressure hasn’t changed as much as I’d have thought it would, considering the fluid we’re giving him. Do you think there could be internal bleeding somewhere?’
    ‘It’s likely, and though I’ve sutured part of the wound and put a pressure pad on it, I’d say it’s still bleeding.’
    ‘That’s more than a guess, isn’t it?’ Kate looked up at the man who sounded so concerned. They’d moved out of the lamplight, but a full moon had risen and was shedding soft, silvery light into the gorge.
    ‘It’s a long story but we’ve time ahead of us. If you dig into the equipment backpack you’ll find a space blanket to wrap around Jack—there should be a couple of inflatable pillows in there as well. Put one under his feet and one behind his head and cover him with the blanket while I get a cuppa going and find something for us to eat.’
    ‘And then you’ll tell me?’
    Hamish smiled, but it was a grim effort.
    ‘I’ll tell you what I’m guessing.’
    Kate cupped her hands around the now empty mug and looked out at the broad leaves of the cabbage palms that filled the gorge. Hamish’s story of a newborn baby found at a rodeo, the dramatic efforts that had saved his life, the finding of his dangerously ill mother, and the fight to save
her
life, was the stuff of television medicine, while feuding neighbours and heart attacks turned it into soap opera.
    Maybe she’d got it wrong.
    She turned to Hamish, sitting solidly beside her at the entrance to the cave.
    ‘So you think Jack is Charles Wetherby’s nephew, sacked from the family property, run by Charles’s brother Philip, for consorting with the Cooper girl, daughter of the Wetherbys’ sworn enemies who live next door. And you’ve put all this together because his wound is bleeding and you think he has von Willebrand’s disease.’
    ‘Lucky—the baby—has von Willebrand’s disease and it runs through the Wetherby family,’ Hamish said patiently. ‘Originally, back when Lucky was found, Charles had no idea his nephew had been working at Wetherby Downs, because Charles and Philip rarely spoke to each other. But since Jim Cooper was admitted to hospital