Montana, page 1
Montana
Lyrebird Lake Book 1
Fiona McArthur
Fiona McArthur Author
About the Author
Fiona McArthur has written more than forty-five books and shares her medical knowledge and her love of working with women, families and emergency services in her stories.
In her compassionate, pacy fiction, her love of the travel and the Australian landscape meshes beautifully with warm, funny, multigenerational characters as she highlights challenges for rural and remote families, overseas adventures, and the strength shared between women.
There will be romance. Fiona means to make that gorgeous heroic man earn the right to win his beautiful and strong-willed heroine’s heart because absolutely, happy endings are a must.
Fiona is the author of the non-fiction book Aussie Midwives, and lives on a farm with her husband in northern New South Wales. She was awarded the NSW Excellence in Midwifery Award in 2015. Find her at FionaMcArthurAuthor.com
Also by Fiona McArthur
Author Published
Fiction
Montana Lyrebird Lake Book 1
Misty Lyrebird Lake Book 2
Mia Lyrebird Lake Book 3
Emma Lyrebird Lake Book 4
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Midwife In The Jungle
Midwife On The Orient Express
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Non-Fiction
Don’t Panic Guide To Birth
Breech Birth – A Guide for Parents
Adapted and rewritten 2020
From The Midwife’s Little Miracle first published 2008
Copyright © 2020 by Fiona McArthur
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author at www.fionamcarthurauthor.com except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
While every care has been taken in researching and compiling the medical information in this book, it is not intended to replace or supersede professional medical advice. The author may not be held responsible for any action or any claim howsoever resulting from the use of information in this book or anything contained in it. Readers must obtain their own professional medical advice before relying or otherwise making use of the medical information in this book.
Cover by GlenHolman.com
Created with Vellum
Dedicated:
To midwives, mothers, and writing friends. You have made my life rich in magic moments.
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Special mention to awesome authors Marion Lennox and Bronwyn Jameson who are pillars of wisdom, delight and generosity. And always, to my darling husband, Ian and to you, dear Reader.
Dear Reader
I loved Montana’s story from the first moment I pictured the sunrise scene on the mountain. The idea of Montana and her friends moving to Lyrebird Lake to find their forever homes in each book has been such an ongoing pleasure. Revisiting and expanding these stories has been a joy.
I’ve savoured the wonderful people who inhabit the town and the way it grows, giving me smiles, tears and laugh out loud moments. I hope you, too, grow to cherish the amazing community of Lyrebird Lake and the journeys my caring midwives take to find the happiness they deserve.
Welcome
Fiona McArthur brings you a fabulous new Series…
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The Midwives of LYREBIRD LAKE
Every day brings a miracle...
It’s time for these midwives to become mothers themselves!
In the first book we meet widowed mum Montana Browne in...
* * *
Montana
Book 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Reviews help authors
Also by Fiona McArthur
Misty
Midwife On The Orient Express
Midwife In The Jungle - Excerpt
Links
Chapter 1
Montana
Thank goodness Christmas was gone. New Year’s morning began with the faintest hint of grey shimmer on the horizon and Montana Browne gently stroked her fingers across her swollen stomach.
This would be the last New Year she would spend in the mountain hideaway, before the new owners moved in, but more heart-breaking this was the first New Year’s morning since Duncan had died.
Coffs Harbour was a long way off, holding the real world where she’d worked as a senior midwife in the busy midwifery unit. Somewhere below the white fluffy quilt thrown over the mountains, lay tucked her real house in town, shrouded like the future she couldn’t see but had to have faith in.
In Coffs she had her midwifery friends, Mia and Misty and her life without Duncan.
Here at Eagle’s Nest Retreat though, she was on her own. Sitting high and wild as she overlooked the distant valleys of the New England ranges and all the way to the sea. This was her farewell to the weekend retreat.
Now the sky had lightened enough to illuminate the deep drifts of mist in all the lower valleys across from the house, and she sat symbolically alone, forced to accept the empty seat beside her would always be so. Duncan was gone. Had been gone for eight months now.
The first contraction strained gently, like the tendrils of dewed spider webs that stretched the tops of the stumpy grass, and she nodded when she felt the mysterious child within herald her intentions.
She should have listened to Misty last night when her fey friend had rung to persuade her to head home early.
Montana had agreed with her two best friends that, for her child’s sake, she would be safer to avoid the mountains for the last two weeks of her pregnancy but that didn’t start until a few more days.
It seemed her baby had decided to come even earlier than that, as foreseen by Misty.
Back in the tiny mountain house, Montana dialled Misty’s number on the landline. Her friend might remind her of the foolishness of coming here but it would be good to share her news. And safer if things became interesting.
The phone rang three times. Then clicked. ‘Hi. This is Misty. I’m out. Leave a message.’
Montana sighed. ‘Misty. It’s me. I’m leaving now, it’s five-thirty, and I’m in early labour. Just letting you know I’m on the way in.’
She closed the house, gathered her shawl and water bottle in one hand and grasped the rail on the stairs with the other to make her way slowly down to her vehicle.
To climb into the four-wheel drive proved much more difficult than she’d expected and she chewed her lip as she started the vehicle.
The chug from the diesel engine scared a flock of lorikeets into flight, a little like the flutter of apprehension she fought down while she waited for the engine to warm up. Two more waves of discomfort came and went in that time.
‘We will be fine,’ she murmured to the child within. ‘Your mother is a midwife but I would prefer you wait!’ How ironic was that.
As the contractions grew closer and fiercer a tiny frown puckered her forehead. It might not be as easy as she’d thought to drive the vehicle in early labour.
After thirty minutes of careful navigation down the misty mountain, sweat beaded her forehead, and Montana’s breath fogged the windscreen with the force of the contractions. Though still focussed on what lay around the next corner, she found it more difficult to divide her thoughts between road and birth.
The dirt track twisted and turned like the journey her baby would make within her. On an outflung clearing overlooking more mist-covered valleys she had to pull over to rest and shore up her reserves.
A pale grey wallaby and her pint-sized joey stood at the edge of the clearing. Their dark pointy faces twitched with fascination at her arrival but they didn’t hop away.
Montana’s labour gathered force and she glanced with despair at the distance to the valley floor. It was impossible to descend the mountain safely when she couldn’t concentrate on the road.
Suddenly the tension drained from her shoulders and she slumped back - letting her hands fall from the wheel she’d been gripping so tightly.
So be it. She could do this. Or Misty would find her message and come.
When the vice across her belly eased she slid from the front seat and spread a rug on the damp grass. Her shawl and water beside her, she eased down to sit with her arms behind to watch the deepening of the horizon. Montana breathed out and released the tension of the drive.
Pre-dawn colours graduated from coral to pink to cerise as the sun threatened to rise through the cloud below.
When the next surge had dissolved she sighed and gazed skywards. Maybe he was looking down.
‘You should be here, Duncan.’ A single tear held the cold emptiness of her loss, a chill that pierced so keenly. Less than a year. A whole pregnancy since she’d seen him.
She felt the whisper of cool breeze brush the dampness on her cheek. Gossamer soft and with a hint of warmth sh
I am here, the wind whispered.
You are safe.
I love you.
Her shoulders eased and she gave in to the nuances of her body’s prompting. In her mind it was as if she watched the descent of her baby, could squeeze her husband’s hand. The waves of Mother Nature at her most powerful changed in tempo and direction and strength and suddenly the urge was upon her to ease her baby out into the world.
The sun cascaded through the clouds as the gush of water burst and flowed from within. She reached down and her baby’s head glistened round and hard and hot in her hands, and then the next urge was upon her. Her baby’s head rotated towards her leg, the released shoulder slid down, and then the other. Montana gasped, and breathed, and opened her mouth to moan softly as her body drove itself through the task at hand.
In long, slow seconds, her baby’s body eased into the world, until, in a waterfall rush, legs and feet were followed by the tangle of cord and water. All into the fresh broken sunlight and the softly warming world.
The unmistakable sound of a newborn’s first cry startled the birds as Montana reached down and gathered her daughter to her, forgetting the cord that joined them, and she laughed at the tug that reminded her that all umbilical cords were not long.
Suddenly she felt empty. Her baby was born. No longer a part of her.
A daughter. Duncan’s daughter. She turned, not expecting to see him yet so grateful she had imagined him in her time of greatest need.
The clearing was empty save for the mother wallaby and her skittish joey, and like the last of the night tendrils they too disappeared silently as the fog rolled away.
She shivered. She’d have to move. They both needed to stay warm until she could drive.
Chapter 2
Andy
Another hairpin bend. Andy Buchanan couldn’t believe he was driving his sister’s vehicle on this crazy mountain road, in early morning fog, looking for Misty’s widowed friend. Odd way to spend his first holiday in three years.
He’d suggested an ambulance on the phone, but his sister had vetoed that idea. ‘Montana said she’s in early labour. And you’re a doctor. And you work in rescue in Lyrebird Lake. It’s right up your alley.’
‘I’m a GP, not an obstetrician,’ he’d said, but refusing to help was never an option. Someone had to find the labouring woman on the mountainside and his sister had been called in to work.
‘You have your diploma. A GP/OB. I feel she’s fine but she needs support. Take my emergency birth pack. It even has baby wraps. I don’t finish until seven and I’m stuck in labour ward or I’d go.’
Misty had ‘feelings’.
Premonitions that always came true.
Like the one that had told her to check her message bank even though she was on night shift at work. His sister’s friend sounded as otherworldly as his sister. Who thought driving down a mountain road this late in a first pregnancy was a good idea?
He peered through the fog as he crawled around a bend and hoped not to meet any other vehicles - barring the one driven by this Montana he’d heard about for so long.
Every now and then a break in the fog showed a vista stretching all the way down to the ocean. Rolling valleys with pockets of mist, the rising sun dusting it all with gold brilliance as the fog began to break up. Incredible. He had no idea the views would be accessible from the road. Which meant, of course, cliffs where a car could drop off the edge and never be found.
Would a woman in the throes of labour veer off the road?
He never used to be a cynic but losing his darling Jess to cancer three years ago had devastated his world and left him with less optimism. He especially didn’t want to deal with an obstetric emergency on a deserted mountain road.
He needed to stop thinking like that.
Montana would be fine.
If only he could find her.
Another bend and another outflung clearing. His breath hissed out. A Landcruiser, blue, parked at an angle, matching the description his sister had given him. He pulled over next to it and straightened his shoulders. Dread pooled in his stomach.
And she’d stopped because…?
Shaking off the dread, he opened his door and walked toward the vehicle picking up speed as he noticed a pale, dark-haired woman in the passenger side. If he wasn’t mistaken she hugged a small wrapped bundle in her arms.
Good grief.
She wound down the window and he saw her shiver as if the last of the warmth in the cabin had escaped.
‘You must be Montana?’ He had to bend down quite a bit to her level and she smiled a little tiredly at him. Soft, rain-cloud grey eyes like velvet. Dark hair tied back. Tiredness under her eyes in a grey smudge. She had a right to be tired. He couldn’t believe she’d birthed here.
Alone.
On a freakin’ mountain.
‘Yes, I’m Montana. I gather Misty sent you?’
He nodded. ‘I’m Andy, her brother. She’s on duty, in the labour ward. Couldn’t get away.’ He looked across at the top of her baby’s head snuggled into her chest. With blankets over both it made a fair mountain of cloth, yet he still felt the need to ask. ‘Are you warm enough?’
‘Yes. Except for my feet.’
He couldn’t believe her absolute tranquillity. Not all he could expect from a woman who had just given birth. Without support. He tried to see the baby’s face. ‘And who is this?’
She shifted a fold of blanket so he could see a tiny wrinkled face and then Montana smiled. He felt the impact of that smile, that curve of her lips and the adoration of her baby in her grey eyes, sending unexpected warmth right down to his hiking boots. Somewhere inside him a cold clump of ice shifted in his chest like a kicked coal from an outback campfire. A fire someone had thought dead.
‘This is my daughter, Dawn.’ The serenity in her voice wrapped around him like the fog he’d just driven through to get here. Except not cool, not cool at all. She’d come to terms with the unexpected events, he thought with a flash of insight, and so must he. She was alive and the baby had mewled. He leaned forward to see more.
‘Hello, Dawn.’ He noted the thatch of dark hair against Montana, the healthy pink baby cheeks, and the baby snuffled as if in answer. Dawn? ‘I think I can guess what time she arrived.’
His smile faded and his training reminded him this woman had been without assistance at a critical time. He framed the question as delicately as he could. ‘Any problems you need help with?’
‘No, thank you.’ She glanced at him and he heard the humour behind her voice when she spoke. ‘Third stage complete and I’m not bleeding or seem to be damaged. My baby has fed.’
How could she be amused? She should be hysterical. He didn’t like the way he was so conscious of his sister’s friend. He didn’t look at other women; he’d loved his wife. Andy corrected himself. He still loved his wife. Maybe it was empathy. Of course. He remembered now – she was a widow. He understood and felt for her recent loss.
They were on the side of a mountain, for heaven’s sake, and she’d just had a baby. Alone. He felt sorry for her. That was it.
He concentrated on the things he was good at. Practical things. Things that didn’t include analysing his emotions. ‘Right, then. Let’s get you out of here.’ He glanced around to decide where to reverse the vehicle.
