Rescue At Cradle Lake

It worked.

Luckily Oscar had a ramp instead of steps leading to the veranda and the only hard part was keeping the thing from sliding too fast. The dogs watched from a distance, seemingly almost as bemused as Fergus.

Then there was the little matter of getting their makeshift stretcher into the truck, but they did that working as a team, finding wedges and chocks of different sizes in the woodshed, tying the ropes under Oscar’s arms tighter so he couldn’t slip, gradually levering up the end of the door to a new level, chocking, levering again until finally the door reached the height of the floor of the truck.

That was the only time when they needed real strength. There was a moment when they had to take a side apiece and shove.

‘One, two three…’

The door slid in like a dream.

‘This place stinks,’ Oscar said clearly through his mist of alcohol and confusion, and Fergus climbed up beside him to administer oxygen again and tried not to flinch at the by now awful smell in the rear. Oscar was no pristine patient and the ewe’s legacy was disgusting.

But it was Oscar’s ewe. Ginny’s phrase came back to him. She’d just walked out to take in some bucolic air? ‘It’s good bucolic air,’ he told Oscar, trying not to grin. Ginny was still outside the truck, and she, too, was smiling her satisfaction. It had been a neat piece of engineering and they deserved to be pleased with each other. ‘Ms. Viental, wasn’t that what you were stepping out to find this afternoon? There’s lots of it in here. Would you like to ride in the back with our patient while I drive?’

But Ginny was already swinging herself into the driver’s seat, reaching over to the back and holding out her hand for the keys.

‘You’re the doctor,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m just part of the bucolic scenery.’

They made a stop on the way that Fergus hadn’t planned on.

I can’t go straight to the hospital,’ Ginny told him as they left Oscar’s farm behind them. ‘Richard will be worried.’

‘Richard?’

‘I told him I’d be gone for an hour and it’s been two already.’ She was driving more competently than he’d been, steering the truck with a skill that told him she’d spent years coping with eroded country tracks.

Where had she learned ambulance skills? Her farming skills? What else did she have going for her?

Gorgeous figure? Lovely complexion? Good sense of humour?

He had to concentrate on his patient.

Luckily, that wasn’t too difficult. Oscar was rolling from side to side, fighting against the straps, and Fergus was starting to get really concerned. If he had a broken hip he’d be in agony, the way he was moving. OK, he didn’t have a broken hip, but Fergus was starting to worry that the man’s blood alcohol level was dangerously high. He reeked of beer and whisky, and his breathing was getting weaker.

‘We need to get to the hospital fast,’ he told Ginny. ‘Ring Richard from the hospital.’

‘No can do,’ she told him, and turned off the main track onto an even smaller one.

Where was she going? ‘I need ICU facilities,’ he told her. ‘We can’t delay.’

‘I know it’s not optimal care.’ She was intent on the track. ‘But Oscar’s played ducks and drakes with his health for years. If I hadn’t been there today, you wouldn’t have him this close to the hospital now. I’ve sped you up a heap. It’ll take me two minutes to check on Richard, and I am going to check.’

‘Phone him.’

‘Go to hell.’

He sat back on his heels and stared through to the cab. He could see her face in the rear-view mirror. All humour had disappeared and her face was tight with strain.

‘Is Richard your child?’ he asked, confused, and she shook her head.

‘Just concentrate on Oscar,’ she said tightly. ‘Leave Richard to me.’

But somewhere in the haze of alcohol and lack of oxygen Oscar was still hearing. He’d figured what was happening, and he was starting to be scared.

‘You get me to hospital,’ he breathed, shoving the oxygen mask away so he could make himself heard.

‘I’m checking Richard first,’ Ginny flung over her shoulder. ‘He’s just as important as you are.’

‘He should be dead. He damn near all but is.’

There was no response. Ginny’s hands gripped the steering-wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. She kept on driving but Fergus could see what looked like tears…

‘Ginny…’

‘Shut up,’ she snarled. ‘Just shut up and look after Oscar because I’m sure as hell not going to.’

She checked on Richard. Whoever Richard was. Fergus wasn’t allowed to know. They pulled to a halt outside a farmhouse that was even more ramshackle than Oscar’s. Ginny ran inside, yelling at him not to follow, and, as promised, two minutes later she was back in the cab and the truck was heading back out to the main road.

‘Not dead, then?’ Oscar wheezed, and the look Fergus caught in the rear-view mirror was one of pure murder.

But now wasn’t the time to ask questions, not with Oscar ready to put in his oar and with Ginny’s anger threatening to explode. All he could do was keep a lid on it, keep Oscar alive and leave questions for later.

Would he ask the questions?

He wasn’t here to get involved, he reminded himself.

What was he here for?

To turn off. To find a place where he could immerse himself so totally in his medicine that everything else would be blocked out.

But the pain on Ginny’s face…

It found a reflection in what he’d been through. There was something…

Who was Richard? A husband? An invalid husband?

He wasn’t here to get involved.

‘I hurt,’ the man on the stretcher moaned, and Fergus sighed.

‘Where do you hurt?’

‘I told you—I smashed my hip.’

Yeah, right. ‘I can’t give you morphine until the alcohol wears off. And I need to do X-rays.’

‘Old doc would’a given me a shot by now.’

‘Yeah, he would have shut you up whatever the cost,’ Ginny flung at him over her shoulder. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. Dr Reynard, keep me away from that morphine.’

Cradle Lake Hospital was not exactly the nub of state-of-the-art technology that Fergus was used to.

It had been built fifty or sixty years ago, a pretty little cottage hospital that looked more like a country homestead than a medical facility. Most of the rooms were single, looking out onto the wide verandas that had views down to the lake on one side or up to the vast mountain ranges of the New South Wales snowfields on the other.

It was a great spot for a hospital. Unfortunately, it had been five years since Cradle Lake had been able to attract a doctor, and in those years the place had become little more than a nursing home. Old people came here to die. Patients needing doctors on call were transferred to somewhere with more facilities.

Nevertheless, Fergus had been stunned by the level of care displayed by what seemed an extraordinarily talented pool of local nurses. Being the only hospital for a hundred miles, the local nurses were called on for everything from snakebite to road trauma. They dealt with medicine at the coalface, and from what he’d learned in his two days here, by the time emergency cases were passed over to specialist care, the emergency would often be over.

Miriam, the nurse whose job it was to do home visits and who’d welcomed him with open arms, was waiting as they drove into the entrance to Emergency. A middle-aged farmer’s widow, she was as competent as she was matter of fact. Now she came out from the hospital entrance looking worried, and as he emerged from the back of the truck she looked even more worried.

‘Where have you been? I should have come with you. Oscar should be in a nursing home. He’s not fit to be alone, but I was sure he was putting it on. I would have left him until morning, but you insisted…’

He had insisted. Fergus had been in the call room when Oscar had phoned. Miriam had been inclined to be indignant and let him wait, but Fergus had decided to go anyway.

‘He didn’t really break a hip, did he?’ she demanded, and as Fergus pulled the door of the van wider and she saw their improvised stretcher, she gasped. ‘You’ve brought him in. How—?’

‘On a door,’ Fergus said, grinning. ‘And you’re right, he’s not fit to be alone. We need to look at a long-term nursing-home option—especially if by going home he gets to be in charge of animals again. Meanwhile, Miriam, we need a proper trolley to get him out of the truck. We need one strong enough to slide Oscar and a door onto. We’ll not move him again without a hydraulic lift.’

‘Who…?’ Miriam asked, and, as if in response to the unfinished question, Ginny jumped out of the cab. Miriam’s jaw dropped.

‘Ginny,’ she gasped. ‘Ginny Viental.’

‘Hi,’ Ginny said, smiling. ‘It’s Mrs Paterson, isn’t it? I remember you. Can you look after Dr Reynard now? I’m going home.’

‘Wait and I’ll drive you,’ Fergus said, still trying to sound as if he was in control, but Ginny shook her head and he knew that control was an illusion.

‘I still haven’t finished my walk, and Richard’s OK for a bit longer. I’ll enjoy the hike.’

And then she hesitated.

Until now the valley had been blanketed with the hush of a lazy country Saturday afternoon. Everyone was at the football, watching the football on the telly or starting the hike to bring the cows in for evening milking.

But the hush was broken now by a siren. It started low, a soft rise and fall from the far side of the lake, but it was unmistakable.

‘The boys are bringing someone in.’ Miriam stared out over the valley as if she was trying to see what was happening. ‘There was no callout through here and they haven’t radioed in. That means they’re both busy. It must be an emergency from the football.’

They regrouped, all of them. A medical team facing a medical crisis. Fergus glanced at Ginny and saw her reacting the same way he was.

‘Let’s get Oscar stabilised,’ Fergus snapped. ‘Miriam, fetch a trolley. Ginny, go to Oscar’s feet. Move.’

Ginny moved. Miriam moved too and no city hospital could have done it faster. They shoved the door onto a stainless-steel trolley and almost in the same motion they were wheeling it inside. They set Oscar beside a bed in a single ward but there was no time to move him into the bed. Not until they knew what the incoming emergency was.

‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered, but Fergus was intent on setting up an IV line.

‘All in good time,’ he muttered. ‘You’re safe where you are. I need a 5 mil syringe…’

He glanced up, expecting Miriam, but it was Ginny, not Miriam, who was handing him what he needed. While he worked, she was setting up a cardiac monitor and checking the oxygen flow. She’d followed him in behind the trolley and she’d started working without questioning him.

‘Miriam’s calling in reinforcements,’ Ginny told him. ‘As she’s the only nurse on duty, she might need help. The ambulance boys aren’t answering the radio, which makes her think things might be dire.’

‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered again.

‘As soon as we can,’ Fergus told him. ‘You just lie there and sober up.’

‘I’ll stay with him until we’re sure the oxygen rate’s optimal,’ Ginny offered, and Fergus hesitated. The siren was so close now that the ambulance would be there in seconds.

But was she qualified? As what?

And there was no love lost between Ginny and Oscar.

‘You won’t murder him?’ he asked, and he was only half joking.

‘We’ve both taken the Hippocratic oath,’ Ginny murmured. ‘More’s the pity.’

His eyebrows took a hike. ‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Only for now,’ she said, and her tone was a warning. ‘Only when I have to be, so don’t get any ideas about weekends off. Now go. Leave Oscar to me and I’ll do my best to keep him breathing.’

A doctor?

Fergus made his way swiftly back to Emergency, his mind racing.

Suddenly he felt a whole lot better about what he was facing.

He hadn’t thought this through. When Molly had died he’d simply taken the coward’s way out. He hadn’t been able to stay at his big teaching hospital any more. Everywhere he’d looked there had been memories. And people’s eyes… Every time they’d come toward him they’d clapped him on the shoulder or taken his hand and pressed it in gentle empathy. That last day had been unbearable. He’d been performing a simple catheter insertion and the nurse assisting had suddenly choked on a sob and left, leaving the patient sure that there was a disaster his medical team wasn’t telling him about—and leaving Fergus sure that he had to leave.

Some of his workmates had been better, he acknowledged. They’d been matter-of-fact, trying not to talk about it—moving on. But the way they’d spoken to him had still been different. He couldn’t bear them not talking about it as much as he couldn’t bear them talking about it and in the end he hadn’t known which he’d hated more.

‘Have a break,’ his father told him. Jack Reynard was senior cardiologist at the hospital. His father had been caring, but from a distance, all the time Molly had been ill—and after she’d died he’d hardly been able to face Fergus. ‘Go lie on the beach for a month or two.’

The thought of lying on any beach without Molly was unbearable but so was staying where he was. So he’d come here. It was only now, hearing the siren, thinking about how truly alone he was, that he wondered how qualified he was to take care of a rural community.

But now he had back-up. Ginny. Whatever her story was.

His strides lengthened. He could cope with whatever it was, he decided. As long as he had another doctor behind him.

Was she nuts, telling him she was a doctor?

Now was hardly the time for recriminations, Ginny decided. There was work to be done and it had to be done fast. The siren meant there was trouble coming and now she’d admitted she had medical training she knew she could be called on to help.

Ginny adjusted Oscar’s drip, checked his obs and made him as comfortable as she could without trying to move him. It took two people to use the hydraulic lift, and there weren’t two people available. There might not be any people if this was a true emergency on its way here, she thought.

She might be needed but she was concerned about leaving Oscar. The huge man was dead drunk and he could roll off the trolley. If she was called away….

‘OK, Viental, do something,’ she muttered.

She propped him up on pillows so he was half-sitting. There was no moan as she hauled him up—she’d given the broken hip cursory credence and she gave it even less credence now. He was showing little sign of pain. He’d be safer sitting up if he were to vomit, and X-rays of a possible broken hip would have to wait.

Then she stood back and looked at the bed. The bed had rails, ready to be raised at will. Oscar needed those rails to be safe.

‘Right, let’s get you organised,’ she muttered.

The trolley was resting against the bed, but it couldn’t reach the wall at the bedhead because of the bedside table. She could do better than that.

In seconds she was under the bed, grabbing the bedside table and hauling it under. She pushed the head of the trolley hard against the wall at the end of the room, then shoved the trolley sideways till it was against the wall. Which left a foot between bed and trolley.

What was happening outside? Don’t ask, she told herself. Get Oscar safe first. She flipped the bed rails up and shoved the bed sideways, securing her patient with the wall on one side of him and the railed bed on the other.

Oscar was now as safe as she could make him, apart from his breathing. But even there… What else could she do? His oxygen was up to maximum. His airway was clear.

He needed supervision, but if there was a greater need and Fergus needed her as a doctor…

‘What happens if I want to get out?’ Oscar mumbled, but he was so close to sleep she could hardly hear him.

‘You’re welcome to try,’ she told him. ‘But I suspect you’re trapped. Just like I am.’

‘Ginny…’ It was a call from the corridor, urgent. Miriam’s face appeared round the door. ‘Fergus needs you,’ she snapped, and disappeared.

‘I need to go,’ she told Oscar. ‘Stay breathing. That’s an order.’

‘I need a doctor.’

‘You’ve had one,’ she told him. ‘Relax and let yourself go to sleep.’

‘Get lost,’ he snapped, and added another word for good measure.

She turned away but she couldn’t help but grin. That last expletive had been strong and sure, reassuring her more than anything else that the man might very well survive.

She was right back into medical mode now, almost as if she’d never been away. In truth, the adrenalin surge was there, as it always was in these situations. She’d missed it.

Maybe she could work a little with Fergus.

What sort of man was he?

‘Dangerous,’ she muttered as she pushed open the swing doors to Emergency, though she wasn’t sure why she thought it. But that was her overriding sensation. She’d looked up from the cattle grid as she’d tried to hold onto the lamb, and she’d been caught. Fergus was tall, big-boned and a bit…weathered? He had deep brown hair, crinkly, a little bit too long. It needed a comb. Maybe he raked it with his fingers, she thought inconsequentially. That was what it looked like. His lazy grey eyes held laughter and a certain innate gentleness. He wasn’t much older than she was.

He seemed nice.

Definitely dangerous, and she didn’t have time in her life for dangerous.

She didn’t have any inclination to go down that road. Ever.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT was the last chance Ginny had time to think of the personal for hours.

The moment she opened the doors to Emergency she could see why the ambulance boys hadn’t had time to radio in. A woman was lying on the trolley and one glance showed Ginny that they were in trouble. She seemed to be unconscious, limp and flaccid, with each breath shallow and rasping. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, Ginny guessed, simply dressed in faded jeans, white T-shirt and pink sandals. Long blonde hair lay limply around a pallid face and even from the door Ginny could tell that here was a woman who was fighting for her life.

Or maybe here was a woman who’d come to the end.

‘Mummy…’

Ginny glanced across to the main entrance to see a little girl being carried in. Four years old, maybe? She looked a waif of a child, tear-streaked and desperate. Her blonde hair, shoulder length, was tied back with a red ribbon with blue elephants on it, but the ribbon was grubby and the curls hadn’t been brushed for days. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and nothing else.

But it was her feet that caught Ginny’s attention. She was barefoot, and her soles seemed to be a mass of lacerations. There was blood on her ankles.

Triage.

Fergus was working over the mother, and he had Miriam and an ambulance officer helping him. The guy holding the child seemed helpless.

Ginny moved at once to the child.

‘Mummy,’ the little one screamed, every fibre of her body straining toward her mother’s trolley.

‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy,’ Ginny told her, but the child was past listening. The ambulance officer was looking to Ginny, desperate to hand over responsibility.

‘Give her to me.’ Ginny sat on the examination couch and gathered the little girl into her arms.

Miriam was hauling the crash cart toward the trolley and Ginny thought, Uh-oh.

Should she swap places with Miriam? She watched for a minute as the child fought her hold. Miriam looked competent and swift. There was already a cardiac monitor set up. The woman’s breathing seemed to be pausing. She was suddenly so limp that Ginny thought, Oh no.

But Fergus was shaking his head at Miriam, signifying the paddles weren’t needed. There must be a heartbeat but the expression on Fergus’s face as he looked at the monitor…

Ginny knew what that look meant. She’d worked for three years in ER in a major teaching hospital and she knew it all too well.

Triage. The child’s feet were bleeding—badly—and her terror was palpable. Unless Fergus said otherwise, Ginny was needed where she was.

‘You’ve cut your feet,’ she told the little girl, making her voice sound astonished. She was trying to haul the child’s attention from her mother to her feet. ‘Goodness, what have you been doing?’

‘I want Mummy,’ the little girl sobbed, and Ginny’s heart twisted. But this was hopeless. Fergus needed all his concentration if he was to get a good result, and there was no way the little girl could go to her mother.

So make a break and make it fast.

‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy and I’m looking after you,’ she told the little one, forcing her voice to sound authoritative, hugging her close but standing and moving toward the door. ‘We need to get bandages for your feet before you can come back and see Mummy.’

‘Mummy.’ The child’s voice was a terrified scream.

Fergus looked up and met her eyes. He gave an imperceptible shake of his head.

Get her out of here, his body language said. Please.

‘Let’s go,’ Ginny said. ‘Bring what I need for stitching and dressing,’ she told the nearest of the ambulance boys. ‘Now.’

It took almost an hour to get the little girl’s feet dressed. She sobbed and sobbed and in the end Ginny administered a sedative and then simply sat and hugged her close until the child’s sobs subsided. Finally she collapsed into exhausted sleep and Ginny was able to lay her down on the bed in an empty ward and take care of the worst of the damage.

Some time while she’d hugged, the ambulance officer who’d brought her the dressings she’d needed had disappeared. Soon after he had been replaced by a young male nurse who’d introduced himself as Tony. Tony wasn’t what Ginny was accustomed to in a nurse. Under his obviously hastily donned theatre gown, he was dressed in football gear—filthy shorts, a black and orange jersey, muddy socks and muddy knees. The six-foot-three footballer looked a mile away from a competent nurse, but his concern was genuine and when she started work she couldn’t have asked for anyone better.

He helped clean the gravel from the worst of the cuts. It was painstaking work. Many of the stones were deeply embedded and when the feet were fully cleaned there were two cuts that needed stitches.

‘Do we have any idea what happened?’ Ginny asked as she stitched. Until the child had drifted into exhausted sleep she’d spoken only to her, but now there was space and time to talk to Tony.

‘My beeper went off just at the final siren,’ Tony told her. ‘The groundskeeper gave me a ride in and he told me what he knows. The mother seems to have collapsed at the wheel of her car, half a mile or so from the football ground. Any houses close by would be empty. Everyone’s at the footy. Maybe the mother told the kid to get help or maybe the kid figured that the source of noise was the only place to come. But they’ve just resurfaced the road. Gravel over bitumen. By the look of her feet, I’d reckon she must have run the whole way in bare feet.’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Ginny agreed, wincing in sympathy as she applied another piece of dressing over the stitched lacerations. ‘Of all the brave…’ She swallowed and looked down to the tear-stained little face. ‘Do we know what’s wrong with the mother?’

‘Cardiomyopathy.’ Fergus’s frame was suddenly filling the open door, his face as bleak as death. ‘And we’ve lost her.’

‘Lost…’ Ginny stared at him in consternation. She’d known. She’d seen it in the woman’s face. ‘But…’

‘She went into cardiac arrest just as you left,’ he said, and then, interpreting her distress, he put a hand out as if to ward off recriminations. ‘There was nothing you could have done to help. Believe me, I’d have called you back if there was. We’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong and now we know.’