Meredith Webber - Childrens Doctor, Meant-to-Be Wife (Mills & Boon Medical Romance)

CHAPTER ONE

I T WAS , Beth decided as she helped other camp volunteers assemble the children for the night spotlighting tour in the rainforest, the best of all possible jobs. True, she was missing out on the gala evening that followed the official opening of the newly rebuilt and extended Wallaby Island Medical Centre, but to share the joy of a night drive in the rainforest with these kids meant so much more to her than dressing up and dancing.

With the extension of the Wallaby Island Medical Centre and the appointment of a permanent doctorher very own selfto staff it, Crocodile Creek Kids Camp had also been expanded, so now they could take up to twenty children at a time, providing a fun holiday with tons of different experiences for children who couldnt normally enjoy camp life. This week, the camp was playing host to children with respiratory problems and to a group of children in remission from cancer.

No, Sam, Ill drive today with Ally in the front. You take care of Danny in the back. Remember hes not feeling very well so dont tease him.

She settled the three children she was responsible for this evening into one of the little electric carts that were the only mode of transport on the island, and guided the cart into line behind the slightly larger one that Pat, the ranger, would be driving. He had seven children on board with another volunteer, and he also had the spotlight.

Pat checked his passengers then wandered back to Beths cart.

Youre a glutton for punishment, arent you? he said. Someone was telling me youd just come off duty and youre volunteering for this job. Should be at the party, shouldnt you?

He was just making conversation, Beth knew, but he was a nice guy and deserved an honest answer.

Im far happier out playing with the kids than partying, she told him. And remember, this is an adventure for me, too. I havent been in the rainforest at night.

Got your light?

Beth held up the big torch hed given her earlier.

Now, your job is to shine it on the animal, so the kids see all of it. My light will hold the eyes and keep it still.

I think I can manage that, Beth told him, although Sam was already asking if he could hold the torch and she knew theyd have a battle of wills about torch-holding before the evening finished. Sam might be slight for his eight years, but he had the fighting qualities of a wild tiger.

Pat returned to his cart and they drove off into the rainforest, taking the track that led to the resort on the other end of the island for about five minutes, before turning off towards the rugged mountain that stood sentinel over the rainforest.

The little carts rolled quietly along, the whirr of their wheels the only sounds, then Pat stopped and doused his headlights, Beth pulling up behind him.

Now, remember we have to be very quiet or the animals will run away, Beth whispered to her charges as Pat turned on the big light and began to play it among the palms and ferns that crowded the side of the track.

There, he said quietly, and the children oohed as the light picked up wide-open, yellow-green eyes. Beth shone her torch to the side of the eyes and nearly dropped the light. They were looking at a snake. A beautiful snake admittedly but still a snake.

Diamond patterns marked its skin, and though it was coiled around a tree branch, Beth guessed it had to be at least eight feet long.

She wasnt very good with snakes, so the torch shook in her hands while her feet lifted involuntarily off the floor of the cart. Ally, perhaps feeling the same atavistic fear, slid onto her knee.

Fortunately Pats light moved on, finding now, fortunately on the other side of the track, a tiny sugar glider, its huge eyes wide in the light, its furry body still.

There followed a chorus of Ahh! and Look!

How could children keep quiet at the wonder of it, especially when the little animal suddenly moved its legs so the wing-like membrane between them spread and it glided like a bird from one branch to another?

Next the light was low, catching an earthbound animal, sitting up on its haunches as it chewed a nut.

A white-tailed marsupial rat, Pat said quietly, while Beths torch picked out the animals body and then the white tail.

The childrens hushed voices startled the little animal, sending him scuttling into the undergrowth, so Pat changed lights, holding up another torch and shining ultraviolet light around until it picked up a huge, saucer-shaped fungus, the light making it glow with a ghostly phosphorescence so the children oohed and ahhed again in the wonder of it.

They moved on, Sam listing on his fingers how many animals hed seen, soon needing Dannys fingers as well.

Youll be onto toes before long, Beth said to him, when Pat showed them the emerald-green eyes of a spider in his web.

This is so exciting, Sam whispered back. Isnt it, Danny?

But Danny, Beth realised, was tiring quickly and, with a couple of children already in the hospital with some mystery illness, she decided shed take him back to camp. Ally, too, had probably had enough.