Rescue at Cradle Lake

CHAPTER TWO

SHE went. Fergus did a perfunctory examination and then a more thorough one.

Oscar had no broken hip, but Ginny was right-the man was dead drunk. His blood pressure was up to one ninety on a hundred and ten and his breathing was fast and noisy, even once he was on oxygen. Fergus checked his saturation levels and accepted the inevitable.

‘I gotta go to hospital, don’t I, Doc?’ Oscar demanded, with what was evident satisfaction. His breathing was becoming more shallow now and Fergus wondered whether he’d drunk a lot fast just as they’d arrived-just to make sure. ‘I told you I got a broken hip.’

‘You don’t appear to have broken anything,’ Fergus told him. ‘But, yes, you need to come to hospital.’ He gazed around the kitchen and grimaced. ‘Maybe we need to think about some sort of permanent care,’ he suggested. ‘Unless there’s anyone who can stay with you.’

‘That’s not me,’ Ginny said through the screen door. ‘Or anyone in this district. This isn’t exactly Mr Popular here. What’s the prognosis?’

‘Mr Bentley needs help with his breathing,’ Fergus said, trying not to sound like he was talking through gritted teeth. He knew by now that the diagnosis she’d made had been spot on. ‘He’s not safe to leave alone. The ambulance will have to come out to collect him.’

‘I told you-they won’t come for at least a couple of hours.’

‘Will you stay with Mr Bentley until they come?’ he asked, without much hope, and she shook her head.

‘Nope. I’m needed elsewhere and I can’t stand Mr Bentley.’

‘I can’t stand you either, miss,’ the farmer snapped. ‘You and your whore of a mother. You and your family deserved everything you got.’

Ginny had opened the screen door and stepped inside, but Oscar’s words stopped her. She flinched, recoiling as if she had been struck. Her colour faded and she leaned back against the kitchen bench as if she suddenly needed support.

‘No family ever deserved what happened to us,’ she whispered, and she turned to Fergus as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the man on the floor. She swallowed, evidently trying hard to move on from his vicious words. ‘Obese patients like him are the pits,’ she said, ‘and if you leave him alone he’ll stay alive just long enough to sue. More’s the pity. So you need to take him to hospital. If neither of us want to sit here for a couple of hours, that means we use the back of your truck. I got the ewe out.’

‘You got the ewe out,’ he said blankly, and she managed a weak smile.

‘That would be the sheep, city boy. The one that was…well, making herself at home in the back of your Land Cruiser. I put the ewe and her baby in the home paddock.’ She glared down at Oscar with disdain. ‘I put hay in there, too, and I filled the trough,’ she said. ‘Much to the relief of the rest of the stock. You’re so off our property. I’d rather let the place go to ruin than let you agist on our place again. The dogs are starving. The sheep are fly-blown and miserable, and there’s a horse locked up…’ She broke off and Fergus saw real distress on her face. ‘I’ll get the RSPCA out here straight away,’ she whispered, ‘and I hope you end up in jail. You deserve to be there. Not hospital.’

Whew. ‘Ginny, can we keep to the matter at hand?’ Fergus said, trying to keep control in a situation that was spiralling. ‘We can’t take Mr Bentley in the truck.’

‘Sure we can,’ Ginny said, making an obvious effort to shove distress aside. ‘I’ve washed it out-sort of. A nice amniotic smell never hurt anyone. Maybe we could be super-nice and find a mattress. The back of the Land Cruiser is long enough to make an ambulance.’

‘But lifting-’

‘A stretcher won’t do it,’ she agreed. ‘We’d break both our backs. Hang on for a bit and I’ll find a door and some fence posts. And a mattress. Be right back.’

And she was gone, slipping through to the living room and the bedrooms beyond.

‘You gonna let her just walk though my house?’ Oscar roared-or tried to roar, but the drink and the asthma were taking their toll and he was losing his bluster. His roar was cut off in mid-tirade and the last words were said as a gasp.

‘I’m not sure what else to do,’ Fergus admitted. ‘She’s in control and we’re not. So you concentrate on your breathing and we’ll let Ginny sort us both out.’

His opinions were consolidated five minutes later while he watched, as Ginny attacked the kitchen door. She’d found a mattress and had it lying on the floor beside Oscar. She’d also found three cylindrical fence posts, each about three feet long, and now she was unscrewing door hinges.

‘Do you mind letting me in on the plan?’ Fergus asked, but Oscar chose that moment to retch and he had to focus on keeping the airway clear.

‘He took this too far,’ Ginny said briefly, glancing across at their patient with active dislike. ‘If you hadn’t been available he’d have risked dying. He’s played this too many times for the locals to take any notice.’

Fergus sighed. Doctors were trained to save lives, no matter how obnoxious those lives were, but it didn’t always feel good. Now he thought longingly about his beautifully equipped city hospital and his wonderfully trained nursing staff who’d cope with the messy bits that he was forced to cope with himself now. Back in Sydney, if a patient retched he’d step back and hand over to the nurses.

‘I’m good at woodwork,’ he told Ginny without much hope, and she smiled.

‘Not in a million years, mate,’ she told him. ‘I’m on door duty. You’re on patient duty.’

Finally the last screw holding the door to the hinge was released. The door fell forward and Ginny grunted in satisfaction as she took its weight.

‘Great. I was afraid it’d be solid. This is light enough to give us a bit more leverage.’

‘So now what?’

‘Let’s get it under him,’ she told him. ‘Is his airway clear?’

‘As good as I can get.’ Oscar was drifting into alcoholic sleep, which at least meant that they could work without abuse.

‘We’ll leave the oxygen on till the last moment,’ Ginny told him. ‘He’ll have to be unhooked for a bit while we load him into the truck. But we’ll work fast.’

‘Are you medical?’ he asked, bemused, but she wasn’t listening. She was sliding the door toward him, signalling him to shove the other end as close as he could to Oscar.

Then she hauled the mattress on top.

‘Put this pillow between his hips in case he really has got a broken bone,’ she ordered, and he stopped wondering whether she had a medical background. He was sure.

‘Now.’ Fergus was on one side of Oscar. Ginny was on the other with the door-cum-stretcher between Ginny and Oscar. ‘Roll him sideways as far as you can toward you,’ she said. ‘One hand on his shoulder, the other just above his hip. Don’t try and lift-you’re just rolling. And I’ll shove.’

‘Where did you learn to do this?’

‘I had a different childhood,’ she said. ‘I played doctors a lot, and moving patients was my specialty. Shut up and roll.’

So he rolled and she shoved and a moment later their patient was three-quarters on the door.

‘Great,’ she muttered, completely intent on the job at hand. ‘Now we slide. You do the shoulders, I’ll do the pelvis. Let’s keep those hips in a straight line.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he uttered under his breath, but he didn’t say it. Where did her knowledge come from? Even with knowledge, Oscar was huge. How could she do it?

She did it. Fergus was getting more and more gobsmacked by the minute. Her strength was amazing.

They now had their patient fully on the door.

‘Now we tie him on,’ she said, producing something that looked like frayed hay bands. ‘I’m not going to all this trouble to let him roll off.’

So they tied, sliding the ropes under the door and fastening them across his legs, hips and stomach. Oscar grunted a few times but he seemed to be intent now on his breathing-which was just as well. They completed six ties before Ginny declared them ready.

‘You’re not proposing to lift this,’ Fergus muttered, knowing that lifting only one end was beyond him.

‘Trust a man to think of brawn when there’s brains at hand,’ she told him. She disappeared briefly outside and came back carrying something that looked dangerously like an axe.

‘Hey! I’m not sure about operating here and axes aren’t my tool of choice,’ Fergus told her, startled, and she grinned.

‘This is a splitter for chopping wood. Or it’s a really neat wedge.’ She laid it sideways so the edge of the splitter lay under a corner of the door. She put her weight behind the handle and tugged it in a quarter-circle.

The splitter dug under the door and the corner rose.

‘I’ll keep shoving and you stick in a pole,’ she ordered and he was with her. The fence posts… long cylinders, ready to roll, were lined up, ready to insert under the door.

‘I’ll operate the axe, though,’ he told her, seeing her strain to get the sedge further in. Enough was enough. He had to be stronger than she was.

He had to be something more than she was.

Whoever, whatever, the plan worked. Two minutes later they had three poles under the door. At first push the door started rolling, with Fergus and Ginny carefully manoeuvring it toward the back door.

‘What’s happening?’ Oscar muttered, sluggish and barely conscious.

Fergus was hauling a pole out at the back of the door, to carry it forward so it became the front roller. ‘You’re going for a ride,’ he told him. ‘Courtesy of the most amazing ambulance officer I’ve ever met. And the most amazing trolley.’

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.