Found: A Father For Her Child Part 3

Carrie was torn between the emotional answer and the fiscally responsible answer. She gave herself a mental shake. She wasn't paid to think emotionally. 'Flexible isn't always good for the bottom line.'

h.e.l.l, he despised bottom-line thinking. There was no room for people in bottom-line thinking. 'Wait till you meet her. You'll understand.'

He moved over towards the games area, not wanting to get into a fruitless discussion with a bottom-liner over their obviously different visions. 'As you can see, we have a ping-pong table and a pool table, a small library, a lounge area and a jukebox.'

Carrie nodded, picking up a ball off the pool table as she watched the two teenagers she'd seen earlier battling it out at ping-pong. 'The purpose of these being?'

He eyeballed her. Did he have to explain it? 'Recreation.'

'Is it a medical centre's role to provide recreation?'

Bottom line again? 'This is a drop-in centre, Carrie. It's not just about fixing people's ailments. A large portion of our client base is homeless kids, disaffected youth. If they're in here, listening to music or shooting pool, then they're not out on the streets, shooting drugs.'

Drugs? 'Shouldn't they be at school?'

Charlie snorted. 'Of course they should but guess what? Telling them they should be at school generally doesn't work-their parents have already tried that. Look, we get a lot of community support groups come through the centre every day, talking to the kids that are around, helping them to get their lives together. We can't do that in a sterile judgmental environment. These are kids who have huge trust issues. We have to provide an environment where they don't feel judged, where they feel comfortable, where they feel safe. In fact, if I had my way, we'd be expanding the services we offer here. This area is crying out for a properly resourced centre.'

Carrie replaced the pool ball and pondered his statement for a moment. She felt a needle of guilt p.r.i.c.k her conscience. He was doing what she'd wanted to do in the beginning. The reason she'd become a doctor in the first place. To help people who couldn't afford the luxuries that a lot of people took for granted. Like health care. Having grown up poor, she'd always wanted to give something back. Then a child had died because of her negligence and everything had changed. Practising medicine had no longer been an option.

Charlie watched her wander around the lounge area, absently touching furniture, caressing books. Pinstripes? d.a.m.n it, this was his fault. He'd been sent the usual 'please give reason' letter by the hospital board two months ago. He should have just sent the standard reply, heavy on politics and designed to guilt the suits into backing down.

But this time, with all the uncertainty in his life this past year, he'd been indignant and defiant. He'd not only been scathing of their continual attacks but suggested that they leave him the h.e.l.l alone to do what he did best.

Watching Carrie's bottom sway in her pinstriped skirt as she ran her fingers over the jukebox b.u.t.tons, he wished he hadn't. His recalcitrance had, no doubt, earned him this surprise audit. In short, he had brought this intrusion on himself. Had brought Carrie and her pinstripes on himself.

'We have a small treatment room,' he said, and turned to show her the way. He opened the door, hyper-aware that she was right behind him. 'I do a lot of st.i.tching up in here.'

Carrie looked at the scrupulously clean white room. The rest of the centre was a bit on the dowdy side. The walls were marked, the furniture had seen better days, the lino flooring was scuffed and worn in places. But this room could have done a hospital proud. From the military neatness of the made-up examination bed to the crisp antiseptic smell, it was a credit to the clinic.

'Wow.'

Charlie chuckled. 'This is Angela's baby. She's an ex-army nurse. Vietnam.'

'Do I hear somebody talking about me?'

'No ma'am.' Charlie winked at Carrie. 'Not me.'

Carrie dragged her gaze away from Charlie's face and her mind off the unexpected tightening of her stomach muscles to look at the older woman. She was tall and built like a female Olympic hammer-thrower, with an ample bosom, greying hair and shrewd, a.s.sessing eyes. She looked like someone not to be messed with.

'Angela, this is Carrie.'

Angela sniffed. 'The suit?'

Charlie smiled at his ever-loyal receptionist. 'The suit,' he nodded gravely.

Carrie felt a.s.sessing eyes on her. 'Hey, I'm not the enemy here,' she protested.

'Hmph!' Angela grunted. 'We'll see.'

'OK, moving right along.' Charlie ushered Carrie down the hallway and opened the door. 'Here's the staffroom.' He strode over to a row of grey lockers in the corner. 'You can put your stuff in here.' He tossed her a key. 'Lock up any valuables. Some of the best petty thieves in Brisbane frequent this place.'

'Er, right.'

Carrie looked around the room. It was a little on the used-looking side, as well. The kitchen area had chipped benches, the kettle was ancient and the fridge had long since stopped being white. But it was a decent size with a big table in the middle that sat twelve-perfect for her laptop.

'Toilet through there.'

Carrie followed the direction of his pointing finger. He dropped his hand and strode towards a door in the back wall, which he opened.

'Basketball court out the back.'

'More recreation?'

Charlie laughed. 'More recreation. Every lunch-hour I'm on the court, trying desperately to outplay a bunch of kids twenty years younger than me.'

Really? 'And here I was thinking you didn't have time to scratch yourself.'

Charlie sobered. 'It's all about trust, Carrie. I need these kids to trust me.'

'And basketball achieves this?'

He shrugged. 'Basketball helps.'

The movement of his shoulders drew attention to his shirt. 'I suppose your workclothes do, too?'

'Not many kids around here respond favourably to someone in a suit.'

The hallway door opened abruptly. 'Hey, Charles, my man, only two more weeks and you're back in the game.'

Carrie blinked at the intrusion on their conversation. Two more weeks? Back in what game?

'Oh...sorry, didn't realise you had company.'

Charlie shut his eyes and wished this day was over. At least Joe had the grace to look embarra.s.sed. 'Joe, this is Carrie.'

Carrie glared at him. He held up his hands. 'Dr Carrie Douglas.'

Joe's eyes lit up. 'Carrie. What a lovely name.' He stuck out his hand.

Charlie rolled his eyes. 'The hospital administrator I was telling you about.'

'Ah, the suit,' Joe said as he shook Carrie's hand.

Carrie laughed. She was getting the distinct feeling her arrival had been discussed at length. 'Apparently.'

Charlie was inordinately irritated by Carrie's response to his friend's flirting. Did Joe never turn off?

'Joe works at a posh city law practice but does some pro bono legal work for our clients. He's here most mornings.'

'And most lunch-hours.' Joe winked.

'That's very generous of you,' Carrie said.

Give me a break. 'He plays basketball at lunch,' Charlie said dryly.

'Well, no doubt I'll be seeing you around over the next few weeks,' Carrie said. She placed her briefcase on the table and opened it, removing her laptop. 'I guess I'd better get cracking. The sooner I get this done the sooner I can be out of your hair.'

They left her to it. Charlie was glad to shut the door on her and put some distance between them.

'Man, is she a hottie or what? You see those curves? Move over, Nigella.' Joe clapped his best friend on the back.

'She's a pain in the b.u.t.t, that's what she is.'

Joe laughed. 'Relax, mate. They're never going to shut this place down. The outcry would be huge. No one has the guts.'

Charlie sat behind his desk and sighed. 'She's the woman from last night, Joe. The one I was telling you about.'

'The tie-dye chick?'

Charlie nodded miserably.

Joe stifled a grin. 'Pinstripes, huh?'

Charlie groaned and dropped his head down onto the table, banging his forehead a few times.

'She's a doctor?'

Charlie looked up from his desk. 'Apparently.'

'Hmm, intriguing, as well.'

'Pain in the b.u.t.t,' Charlie said, sitting up, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the headrest as he idly swung the swivel chair back and forth, Joe's laughter all around him. He opened his eyes and looked at his friend. 'Shut the door on your way out.'

Joe laughed again and departed.

Hours later Carrie was deep in figures when the door opened and a group of noisy, grungy-looking teenagers trooped through the room, eyed her suspiciously and continued to the back door and out to the basketball court. Joe winked on his way past.

'Wanna shoot some hoops?'

Carrie looked down at her unsuitable clothes. And her stilettos. 'Ah, thanks, better not stop.'

Charlie came through moments later. He acknowledged her with a quick nod of his head.

'How are we looking?' He opened his locker, reached for his medication bottles and took one tablet from each.

Carrie took off her gla.s.ses and rubbed her eyes, opening them to find him dishing out tablets. She watched him go to the sink, pour a gla.s.s of water, put the tablets in his mouth and drink the entire contents of the gla.s.s. 'Too early to tell,' she said, her curiosity well and truly piqued. Were they vitamins? He looked like he took care of himself. 'It'll take me a fortnight at least to wade through everything.'

Two weeks? h.e.l.l! He had to put up with her pinstriped suits for a fortnight? As Joe kept reminding him, he only had fourteen days to go on his enforced celibacy-and she was going to be here for every one of them? 'That long?'

She nodded. 'I've been allocated a month.'

A month!

'It'll be faster if I get that paperwork sooner rather than later.'

'I'll have it on your desk by the morning,' Charlie said as he departed to join the others. Even if he had to stay all night.

Carrie switched her laptop off at five o'clock. She should make it home by five-thirty, in time to get Dana's tea. She felt a pang of regret that she couldn't be home more for her little girl. But, like it or not, she was a single mother with no support from Dana's father. Susie, her live-in nanny, was a G.o.dsend. Dana adored her and Carrie had no idea what she'd do without her.

The ebb and flow of human traffic that had swirled around all day seemed to have diminished, she noticed as she walked down the hallway. The jukebox was now silent and she realised as she quietly hummed a song that it had been played so often it had worked its way into her subconscious.

'I'm off,' she said, stopping at Charlie's open door out of courtesy.

'Good for you. I'll be here all night, getting that paperwork together.'

Did he want her to feel sorry for him? A job he'd had a week to do? 'That would be most helpful. Thank you.'

'Doc!'

The voice was so loud, so unexpected that Carrie visibly startled. She turned to the source of the noise and watched a young man stride into the clinic, carrying another man like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder and a bawling toddler on the opposite hip.

Charlie was up and out of his chair and brushing past a still startled Carrie in a matter of seconds. 'What is it, Donny?' he asked, opening the door of the treatment room. 'He's not a regular. Do you know him?'

Donny nodded. 'His name's Rick. He uses smack. He had a needle hanging out of his arm when I found him.' Donny laid the unconscious man on the examination table.

'Carrie, take the baby,' Charlie said, raising his voice to be heard over the distressed child as he pulled on some gloves and placed an oxygen saturation probe on Rick's finger.

'Whose is it?' she asked. Please, please, please, don't let this poor frightened child belong to the person lying still and cyanotic on the bed.

'She's my niece,' Donny said, and handed her over gratefully, looking more at home with a nearly dead drug user than the pretty little girl with pink ribbons in her hair. 'I'd just taken her to the park when we came across him. I couldn't just leave him.'

Carrie automatically rocked the child. 'What's her name?'

'Tilly.'

'It's OK, Tilly, you're safe now, it's OK,' Carrie whispered, cradling her close and talking gently as she watched the emergency unfold.

'He's barely breathing. He's got a pulse. I'll try oxygenating him first but he might need Narcan.' Charlie grabbed the bag-mask apparatus that was permanently set up, turned on the wall oxygen supply and placed the mask over the man's face.

Carrie felt sick and her heart thundered as she stared at the dusky colour of the stranger's lips visible through the clear plastic of the mask. Large raw sores, bleeding and cracked, blemished the corners.

Rick was frighteningly still. He looked malnourished and unkempt, his hair dirty, his skin pasty. Faint yellowy bruises followed the bluey-green tracks of his knotted, abused veins. He looked like death.

Carrie felt her adrenaline surge as the desperate urgency of a life in the balance played out before her. She recognised Charlie's professional jaw hold as he a.s.sisted the struggling respirations of his patient but the direness of the situation was freaking her out. She'd been here before. Seen lips that colour before. She shut out the image and drew in a shaky breath, she had to get out. 'I'll take her outside.'

But the little girl protested more loudly and cried out hysterically for her uncle so Carrie stayed where she was, rooted to the spot, not wanting to watch but unable to look away. The child settled again. 'Poor darling, it's OK. I'm not going to take you away from your Uncle Donny.'

The little one whimpered and hung onto Carrie's neck for dear life. Her hiccoughy breaths were warm against Carrie's neck and she squeezed the little girl closer.