A Baby for the Flying Doctor Read Free Page A

couldn’t concentrate. She was restless now and there was nowhere to prowl in the small cabin.
    She’d met Professor Fitzwilliam… and he’d invited her to call him Gil. Honestly, she was behaving like a schoolgirl meeting a film star for the first time. Awe-struck and completely irrational. She needed help. Back-up. She reached for her mobile phone and was pleased to discover there was coverage. She pressed the buttons for the pre-set number.
    ‘Dr Clarkson.’
    ‘Melissa? It’s Phemie.’
    ‘Bored already? Didn’t we just put you on the train about an hour ago?’ her good friend Melissa Clarkson asked. Melissa was an OB/GYN working at the clinic and hospital in the small outback town of Didjabrindagrogalon which covered the district and community Phemie and her colleagues serviced through the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The two women had been friends since Melissa had come to search for her brother, Dex, but had instead fallen in love with her brother’s best friend, Joss. Now happily married, Melissa was well and truly settled in the outbackand this only served to strengthen the friendship they shared.
    ‘He’s here.’
    ‘Who’s where?’
    ‘Gil…uh, I mean Professor Fitzwilliam.’
    ‘He’s on the train?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Going to the conference in Sydney?’
    ‘Yes. I guess so.’
    ‘Why is he on the train? I know he had a two-day stopover in Perth because Dex went and caught up with him there. I wonder why he didn’t fly to Sydney?’
    ‘Dex knows him? Like as a friend?’ Phemie asked with mounting incredulity.
    Melissa chuckled. ‘Yes. The two of them worked together years ago on the Pacific island of Tarparnii. From what Dex said, Gil was quite involved with Pacific Medical Aid for a while.’
    ‘Why didn’t Dex tell me he knew Gil…uh, I mean Professor Fitzwilliam?’ Phemie closed her eyes, unable to believe she was already starting to think of him in a more personal way. That wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. She had no room in her life for any new…people. She was full to bursting and Gil, uh, Professor Fitzwilliam would just have to remain on the outer rim.
    ‘You know Dex. He’s hardly the name-dropping type. Besides, he’s been too busy falling in love with Iris. You should see the two of them. Ugh. I hope Joss and I didn’t look that gushy when we first got together.’
    Iris was the new paediatrician who had come to Didja for only six months but now that she and Dex had sorted out their differences and also because Iris had recently become guardian to the most gorgeous baby girl, the Didja clinic had scored itself a permanent paediatrician. Phemie sighed, thinking how nice it was that her friends were all finding their perfect mates, and that deepgnawing sensation of loneliness she worked hard to ignore started to raise its ugly head again.
    ‘You did. Trust me. It was nauseating,’ Phemie teased, needing to get her thoughts back on track.
    ‘Oh. Well. Can’t be helped,’ Melissa brushed Phemie’s teasing aside. ‘So, tell me, why is it a big deal that Gil’s on the train?’
    ‘He asked me if I wanted to join him for a cup of tea,’ she murmured.
    ‘What? The fiend. How dare he? Oh, the impertinence of the English,’ Melissa joked. ‘Tea! Who would have thought?’
    Phemie chuckled, already starting to feel less rattled. ‘Stop.’
    ‘So when are you joining him for this tea-drinking ritual? In the dead of night? Early morning? Oh, I know—at afternoon teatime? Seems perfect for the tea-drinking to be performed.’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Phemie shook her head. ‘It was just sort of an open-ended invitation. I don’t know what to do. Do I accept? Do I ignore it?’
    ‘He’s rattled you,’ Melissa stated. ‘The unrattleable Phemie has been rattled.’
    ‘Well…I…I…er…’
    ‘You’re stammering. You never stammer. Not unless you’re well and truly rattled. Good grief, Pheme. What happened when you two met?’
    ‘We sort of…bumped into