battling the effects of being born prematurity or worse.’
‘Please God.’ His friend shuddered. ‘You’ll be able to use your extra paediatric skills here, don’t you worry.’ He looked innocent. ‘How are you with fractures from tree falls?’
Jace felt the uplift of his spirits. Ben always had known the right thing to say. ‘Reckon I can handle that.’
‘Welcome to Wirralong.’
*
Maeve
Maeve McGill woke to the sound of birdsong and the munch of … maybe a goat? … eating grass outside her window? She hoped it was grass and not the one flowering bush she was sweating on to flower. Lacey had exaggerated the flowers.
Though, it could be a brush-tailed rock-wallaby. Nobody could stop the wallabies from going through the fence or bouncing over it. She’d thought she’d shut the gate into the paddock yesterday afternoon, hence the goat query, but she was still learning to be a farmer.
She dragged her head from the most comfortable pillow in the world and peered blearily through the curtain-free window. Who needed curtains when you had no neighbours? No two-legged ones anyway. Except for the birds. And wallabies.
‘Yep.’ A wallaby. She plopped back and sighed happily. She’d smiled so much since she’d come here—away from Perth—that she knew she’d done the right thing. ‘Good morning, Skippy,’ she said to the ceiling, though she was talking to the grass-chomper outside.
On her farm. Her own farm. Maeve’s Farm. Albeit a dry, dusty, boulder-strewn red-earth-and-rock kind of farm—it had some grass—and one hundred acres of her land!
And the house was cute too. An A-frame with a loft for visitors, a wide verandah that went all the way around from front to back and one-stepped down into the dusty yard.
She had Lacey to connect with, and had met Holly and Ben at afternoon tea. She liked the pregnant doctor and her husband even more since she’d met them in the flesh.
Ben was going to find her a nice quiet horse to learn to ride on. She’d keep it in the tiny barn at night and put it out in the paddock each day.
Then she’d get a dog.
Having already met Ben would make it easier for her first day at work today, and there was a new doctor coming. It was a shame Ben was going on paternity leave soon, but not surprising with four children already.
It would be awesome to be the antenatal midwife for Lacey, and pregnant Holly, even if they were both going to the base hospital to birth.
The new guy was a friend of Ben’s and a paediatric consultant. A big come down to county GP, but great news because she knew how fast sick kids could go down and apparently this small town was filling up with little kids.
The alarm on her phone began its morning serenade, which she’d changed to an Aussie kid’s nursery song, ‘Home Among the Gum Trees.’ It made her smile.
*
Two hours later Maeve drove down the small town’s main road, admiring the row of one- and two-storey, elderly store fronts on each side of the wide street. She turned the corner and drove back along the rear of the buildings, until she came to the behind-surgery car park and pulled in.
Two minutes later she pushed the handle to the Wirralong Family Doctors Surgery and the door swung silently onto a hallway, which ran past three small rooms, and led to the waiting area with pale green chairs and a blue water cooler.
Like the rest of the town, the medical centre looked freshly painted and shiny, and she remembered Lacey had said Wirralong was still crowing about winning the Tidy Town of the Year award last year.
She’d never lived in a lauded ‘tidy town’ before, but felt the tug of new resident pride.
An older, white-haired receptionist glanced up with a smile, which widened when she noted Maeve’s blue trousers and pale lilac shirt. ‘You must be the new midwife.’
‘Maeve McGill.’
‘Imelda Miles, dear. Welcome.’
‘Thank you, Imelda.’ Imelda hadn’t been there last week when Lacey had shown her around. The woman stood up, and halleluiah, she wasn’t much taller than Maeve. Which was almost a win. In Maeve’s experience almost everyone who had reached adulthood felt taller than she was. Not that she had an issue with it. Nooooo.
‘Follow me. There’s a cupboard under the sink in the kitchen where we put our bags. Then I’ll let Ben know you’re here.’
She clucked. ‘Actually, Holly’s unwell this morning, and Ben won’t be in. He said to give Jace a call when you arrived.’
Maeve frowned and