She found Alex outside the Town Hall, pacing back and forth on the footpath. She wondered if he’d been there all the time they’d searched for Jed, the hour spent making sure she was okay at the hospital, finally leaving mother, father and daughter together, the nurses for once ignoring visiting hours and the limited rights of fathers.
Alex ran towards her as Carol unloaded the wheelchair from Joseph’s ute, then helped her into it. Any other day Scarlett would have slid into it herself, using her arms for guidance, but tonight she needed help and let herself take it. She smiled, the same smile that kept coming back, every time she remembered those extraordinary seconds when she first saw a baby’s head emerge and then an entire new person. Her hands had done well today. And then her smile faded as she saw Joseph walk slowly but purposefully into the building, seeking Mah.
‘Where were you?!’ demanded Alex.
‘Delivering a baby. My niece!’ She tried not to sound smug. Which was not hard, as suddenly shock and weariness were taking over from adrenalin.
‘Your sister? Is she all right?’
‘Yes. I delivered a baby, Alex. I actually delivered a baby!’
‘How are they?’
Laughter bubbled up through the grey blanket of tiredness. ‘Mother and daughter doing well. Naturally. I am a brilliant doctor!’ No need to mention that Dr McAlpine had been there too. And anyway, it had been her hands that first held the baby. That red, squirming, scowling speck she could never, ever forget . . .
‘You should have phoned me!’
‘Phones are out, remember.’
‘Then let me know somehow where you were, that you were all right!’
‘By carrier pigeon? They don’t fly in bushfires.’ She saw his expression and stopped joking. ‘Yes. I should have sent a message somehow,’ she said gently. ‘I . . . I didn’t realise how badly you wanted to know.’
‘Didn’t realise? I bludgeon Hannah into driving me all the way down here into a bushfire zone, follow you to a burning set of buildings and you didn’t realise how I feel about you?’
‘No,’ said Scarlett, feeling unbearably weary. ‘I didn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, do you realise now?’ A slight French — or was it Russian? — accent.
‘I think so.’ There were a million things she had to explain. A dozen at least that made this impossible. But she was too tired to even think of them. She found she was crying. ‘I . . . I want to go home. It’ll be smoky, but it’s not too bad. Please, I just want to go home.’
And Alex, wonderful Alex, understood. ‘I’ll get Hannah and the car.’
She followed him into the hall, manoeuvring once again among mattresses, though fewer now, as locals had taken the evacuees to their homes. Hannah was sitting in an ancient chair near the back of the hall, her head resting on the wall, asleep. It was quiet, kids asleep, adults asleep or sitting, dazed, trying to work out what life might be like tomorrow. Hannah woke, blinked, said, ‘You okay?’ then, ‘I’d better have some coffee if you expect me to drive.’
‘It’s only twenty minutes. The road’s clear.’
‘So I don’t have to fight a bushfire or chainsaw a few trees to get there? Good. But I still need coffee.’
Miraculously, Leafsong and Mark were in the hall kitchen. Leafsong hugged her, made a rocking-baby gesture and smiled crookedly and wonderfully, looked at Alex more closely, looked at Scarlett, nodded, then found them cups of coffee — instant — and custard slices with ethereal pastry and soft insides that soothed the smoke-raw throats.
‘Here,’ said Mark, handing her a basket covered with a cloth. Scarlett was wearily certain it would contain dinner, supper, breakfast, whatever they needed, and the contents would not taste of smoke.
And of course Alex and Hannah were coming to Dribble with her. And Alex would see the white plastic chair she had to use to shower safely, the commode toilet, the lever and pulley needed to get her in and out of bed, the house designed so someone in a wheelchair could move around in it. All that and blackened paddocks and skeletons of trees.
She just wanted to be home.