Rescue at Cradle Lake

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.’

‘Cardiomyopathy,’ Ginny whispered, dazed. ‘How on earth?’

‘The local police sergeant’s been through the car. There was a full medical history on the back seat. She must have travelled with it accessible-just in case. Plus she travelled with an oxygen supply. Plus enough medication to stock a small dispensary. She was desperately sick.’

‘Then why on earth was she travelling?’

‘Looking for one Richard Viental.’ He hesitated, his eyes meeting hers and holding. ‘Would that be…your Richard?’

‘My Richard?’ Ginny shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You think I do?’ Fergus sounded weary, as if he’d taken in too much information for one man to absorb. As maybe he had. He’d lost a patient under his hands less than an hour ago-a young mother who by rights should have lived for another fifty years. No matter how long you were a doctor-did anyone ever get used to it?

‘This letter was inserted as the first page of the medical history,’ Fergus said, after a break while they all seemed to have trouble keeping breathing. Tony was winding leftover bandage, but after he finished he automatically started rewinding. Without the spool.

Fergus was holding a sheet of notepaper-a letter handwritten in a spidery hand that scrawled off the page.

‘The police sergeant’s read this,’ he said, sounding apologetic and unsure. ‘I’ve read it, too.’ He sighed and looked down at the bed, where the little girl lay huddled in exhausted sleep. ‘It’s addressed to Richard but maybe you should read it as well,’ he suggested.

‘I… Should I phone Richard?’ Ginny whispered, and he shook his head.

‘Just read it.’

Dazed beyond belief, Ginny lifted the paper.

It was addressed to Richard. She shouldn’t read it. But…

She read.

Dear Richard.

I hope you don’t have to read this. I hope I can tell you myself. Please God, I haven’t left it too late. I’ve just kept on hoping, hoping…

By now you might hardly remember me. We were in hospital together, five years ago. You were in for check-ups after your lung transplant, just overnight for tests, and I remember being jealous. I was being assessed for a future heart transplant, and I thought wouldn’t it be great to have it over. Like you had. But then the doctors told me I’d get another couple of years from my old heart. That’s a laugh, isn’t it? A couple of years… Five years and one baby later, it’s still thumping. Just. Which is just as well, as there’s no new heart for me.

Anyway, five years ago we were released from hospital together. We went for a drink and I remember you looked great. I was feeling almost normal, high on the knowledge that I didn’t have to face a transplant quite yet. Women were looking at me with you-and me thinking they looked jealous. Maybe I got a little bit drunk.

Maybe we both did.

The next day I was a bit worried about pregnancy. But I remember you laughing, bitter but laughing all the same, saying, ‘No worries.’ Sterility, you said. No kids ever, you said. I looked it up on the internet later, thinking you’d been lying, but you had grounds for thinking you were right. Ninety-eight per cent sterility, the article I read said for you.

Madison must be the result of the two per cent that got through.

Should I have told you?

Well, maybe I should, but by the time I realised I was pregnant I’d done more research on what I was facing and I guess I was…running? Everyone was saying I should have an abortion-put my health first, they said. I thought if you wanted me to have one as well I couldn’t bear it. And I hardly knew you. You had so many plans-what to do with your new lungs. To tie you down with a sick woman…

No.

You know, maybe I thought that having Madison would kill me and maybe I even welcomed that.

Was that sick? Dumb? Maybe.

Anyway it didn’t work. I made it through the pregnancy. Afterwards, when I realised what a wonderful thing we’d done-how special it is and how wonderful Madison is-I tried to ring you. But-your sister is it?-was at the address you gave me. She said you were back in hospital and there were problems with your transplant.

I hung up without telling her why I was calling. The last thing you needed was a daughter.

My mother said we’d be fine. My mother would always be there for Madison.

Only of course there’s never a happy ending. Mum died last month of cancer and, what with the strain and everything, I had a cardiac arrest. They only just got me back and I’m on oxygen now and I know I’m failing. I shouldn’t drive but…

I rang your apartment again-shades of desperation, huh?-and the caretaker told me you’d moved to the country. To your parents’ farm. He gave me the address and I thought please let you be well, and even if you’re not, you’re at home with your parents, on a farm. A farm! Madison loves animals. Richard, she needs someone so much. I know I should see the social workers again and organise something for her and not hope for everything from you, but the last time I was ill she was in foster-care. It didn’t work. She was so unhappy. I can’t bear it.

Richard, you’re her father. Please take care of your little girl.

If you get this letter it means…

I can’t bear to think what it means.

Please love her to bits for me.

And thank you for giving me the gift of a daughter.

Yours with love-and with gratitude,

Judith Crammond

Ginny stared at the letter. She stared at it some more and the words blurred before her eyes.

‘This can’t be right,’ she whispered at last, and Fergus hauled up a chair and sat beside her. He flicked a look up at Tony, and Tony gave an imperceptible nod and disappeared.

She was suddenly the patient, Ginny thought. She was about to be counselled.

‘No,’ she said blindly, and Fergus took the letter from her lifeless fingers, folded it carefully and put it on the bedside table.

‘It seems crazy,’ he said softly. ‘But it seems that it’s right. Judith was driving with a car full of medical paraphernalia. How she thought she was going to get here… Our local police sergeant, Ben Cross, has been in to see me. When Ben found the medical notes in the car, he rang the hospital on the letterhead to confirm we had the right woman. He brought the information straight in, thinking it might help.’

‘It didn’t,’ she whispered.

‘There was no way we could get her back,’ Fergus continued, talking almost to himself. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when I put the stethoscope on her chest. I was waiting for her to arrest-I couldn’t believe she hadn’t done so already. Maybe it was just sheer willpower, to make sure her daughter was safe. Once she knew she was here she simply slipped away.’

‘Her daughter was hardly safe,’ Ginny whispered, and unconsciously her hand reached out to touch the little one’s hair. This was…her brother’s child? Her niece?

‘The medical notes are from Sydney Central,’ Fergus was saying. ‘The hospital staff told Sergeant Cross there was no way Judith should be driving. They said she was far too sick. They’ve attempted to organise foster-care for the little girl but it’s been refused. There are any number of their staff deeply concerned for the two of them.’

‘Not enough to follow up.’

‘There’s only so much help you can force anyone to take,’ Fergus said softly. ‘This was Judith’s little girl. She had to sort it out her own way.’

‘She’s sorted it out now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fergus said. ‘Has she?’

‘No.’

‘This Richard. The man the note’s addressed to.’ He hesitated but then asked what he needed to know. ‘He’s your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then would you like to tell me his side of the story? Or what you know of it.’

Ginny took a deep breath. And swallowed.

‘Tell me, Ginny,’ Fergus said, and he took her hand. It was one warm link in a world that had suddenly turned bewilderingly cold.

She had to tell him. She had to say it.

‘Richard has cystic fibrosis,’ she whispered at last. ‘The lung transplant Judith talked about-yeah, it worked, but just for a while. Not for long enough. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re both here. This is where we were kids together. Richard’s come home to die.’

There were medical imperatives to be got through.

Medicine had always been a retreat, Ginny thought as she moved on. Her studies and the resulting medical imperatives had been the means to block off the reality of the outside world for a long time, and they helped her now.

Oscar had to be got to bed.

‘Though the way you have him wedged, he’s safer on his door,’ Tony said admiringly, and Ginny even managed a smile. Oscar was deeply asleep, snoring so loudly the glass Tony had set on the bedside table was vibrating. The Ventolin was taking effect. His breathing was easier and there was no trace of pain on his face as he slept.

‘I guess this gets to be our happy ending for the afternoon,’ Ginny told Tony, trying to make her voice sound normal.

‘We need one.’ Tony looked at her fingers as she tried to adjust the drip rate and suddenly the big nurse was moving to take the equipment away from her. Her fingers were shaking and she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

So much for burying herself in medical imperatives.

‘I can manage here,’ he told her. ‘You’ve done enough, Dr Viental. Go find Dr Reynard.’ Then he smiled, a great footballer’s smile that totally enveloped his face. Pushing her to cheer up. ‘Hey, we’ve gone from a tiny nursing home with no doctors to two doctors on staff. How great is that?’

‘I’m not on staff.’

‘You look like you’re on staff from here,’ he told her. But then his smile died. ‘Ginny, I know about your family. I’m so-’

‘Leave it,’ she said roughly.

‘Go and find Fergus,’ he said gently. ‘Go and do what needs to be done.’

Fergus was making phone calls. Ginny found him in the office marked ‘Medical Director’, though the letters were faded and the ‘D’ looked more like a ‘C’. He was talking to someone about what had just happened.

Ginny entered the room, leaned against the wall and waited for him to finish. She felt drained of all energy. Where to go to from here?

‘I’m not sure whether we need a social worker or not,’ Fergus was saying into the phone. ‘For tonight we’ll keep her in hospital. But there’s family here.’

Family. That would be…her?

Richard was supposed to be the end, she thought. The end of family for ever. How could she keep giving?

She couldn’t.

Fergus replaced the receiver and looked at her. For a moment nothing was said. He simply…looked.

Clear grey eyes, calmly assessing. Maybe seeing more than she wanted him to see.

‘We need to talk to Richard,’ he said. ‘How sick is he?’

‘He’s really sick. We can’t tell him this.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s dying,’ she said desperately. ‘How do you think it’ll make him feel?’

‘If you were dying, would you want to know you had a daughter?’

‘No! It’d complicate my life.’

‘But it’s part of life, and an important part,’ Fergus said gently. ‘Richard’s not dead yet. Is he mentally impaired?’

‘No.’

‘Then he has the right to be treated as alive while he is alive. He has to know.’

‘Oh, God, how can I tell him?’

‘Let me do it for you.’

She stiffened, trying to protect herself with anger. ‘I don’t need you to tell me how to treat my own brother.’

‘I’m not telling you how to treat him. I’m offering to help.’

Anger wasn’t going to work. So what was new? She paused and tried to think what to say.

Nothing came.

Helplessly she crossed to the window, staring down through the bushland to the lake beyond. Most of the buildings in this valley were built to face the lake. The lake itself was teardrop-shaped, a couple of miles across, blue and glistening in the ring of dense bushland around it.

Cradle Lake.

When she had been small, she and her family had spent every summer’s day they could manage on this lake. They’d swum, they’d built moats on the shore, they’d had fun. She had a glistening memory as a six-year-old, of swimming triumphantly from the shore to the buoy marking the start of deep water. It had been her first real swim. She remembered turning to see her father with nine-year-old Richard cheering her on. Her mother, with toddler Chris in the shallows, was clapping and laughing as well, then yelling at them to come and get their picnic tea.

It was her last good memory.

Richard had taken longer than most cystic fibrosis sufferers to get dangerously ill. He’d had bowel problems as a baby, and infection after infection during childhood, but the diagnosis hadn’t been picked up. Chris had become bad first, diagnosed soon after that day at the lake, their local doctor finally coming up with the answer. One sibling sick had meant there was a likelihood more could be. So Richard’s diagnosis had been made as well, and Ginny’s parents had been advised to have no more children.

But, of course, Toby had already been on the way. There had been no going back.

Richard was the last of her family. The end. Finished.

But…

‘This means I’ll have family again,’ she whispered to the lake.

‘You don’t want family?’

‘I’ve had family. Parents. Three brothers.’

‘And?’

‘Chris died when he was eight. Toby died when he was ten. My father disappeared. After Chris’s death, when it seemed Toby would soon follow, he simply walked out and never came back. Then after Toby’s death my mother drank herself into oblivion.’

His face didn’t change. ‘Leaving you.’

‘To what was left of my family,’ she whispered. ‘But that’s finished and now you’ll make me take on Madison.’

‘No one’s making you take on anyone.’

‘Are you kidding?’ She whirled on him, furious. ‘You’ve seen her. She’s Richard’s daughter. She even looks like us. When I saw her… She looks familiar and it’s how they all looked. My little brothers. Chris and then Toby. Do you know what sort of a childhood I had? I was six when it all started to fall apart and I’ve nursed them all since. And now… You’ll tell Richard he has a daughter and he’ll accept her-of course he’ll accept her-and of course he won’t ask me to take her on. He knows how much it’ll hurt. But he doesn’t have to ask. He’ll just look at her and it’ll be done.’

‘Maybe it’s already done,’ he said gently. ‘Maybe it was done from the time she was conceived. You just didn’t know about it until now.’

‘Have you any idea how much it hurts?’ Her voice cracked on a sob. She swallowed it and made herself continue. ‘You sit there and you have no idea…no idea at all. What you’re asking me to do.’

‘Ginny, she’s not your daughter.’ He hadn’t moved. It was like he was locked into position. ‘You can arrange foster-care or adoption for her after Richard dies, or there might be other family on Judith’s side who you can give her to.’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘You can, Ginny,’ he said softly. ‘It’s possible to walk away.’

‘How the hell would you know?’

‘I’ve watched it done. It’s possible to stay detached.’

‘Yeah, and go crazy.’

‘You need to keep things in perspective.’

‘There’s no perspective,’ she flung at him. ‘I don’t want this.’

‘So walk away now.’ He was watching her dispassionately, his voice curiously calm. ‘This is Richard’s daughter. Not yours. He may be dying but he has the right to sort things out. He has no right to include you in those plans.’

‘As if he couldn’t. As soon as he knows of her existence, then she’s part of my family. Part of my responsibility. He mustn’t… He mustn’t.’

‘You’re suggesting we don’t tell him?’ He rose, circling the desk to join her at the window.

‘I don’t know what to suggest,’ she said, and her voice was dull, bleak and accepting already that what she wanted had little to do with the way things would pan out. ‘I can’t do this. I’ve had enough.’

‘You’re tired of caring?’

‘I want out. I don’t want to love anything, anyone, ever again.’ Her voice trailed off and she lifted her hands to her face, hiding…hiding from what?

There was no place to hide. She knew it and so did Fergus.

He took her hands in his, drawing them down, gripping them with a warmth and strength that said he knew what she was going through. That he understood.

Which was an illusion. No one knew what she was going through. She didn’t understand it herself.

‘You just do what comes next,’ he said softly, drawing her in and hugging her. She felt herself be drawn. She had no strength to fight him.

She’d been fighting to be solitary for so long-to stay aloof. Richard’s death was to be the final step in her path to independence.

She didn’t need this man to hug her. She didn’t need anyone.

But she didn’t fight him. For this moment she needed him too much. Human contact. That was all it was, she thought fiercely. Warmth and strength and reassurance. It was an illusion, she knew, but for now…

For now she let herself be held. She let her body melt against his, letting him take a weight that had suddenly seemed unbearable. He was strong and firm and warm. His lips were touching her hair.

She should pull away, but she couldn’t. For now she needed this too much.

No one had held her like this. Not ever, she thought. Or maybe…maybe when she had been tiny, when she’d still been a child, when she hadn’t had the weight of the family firmly on her shoulders.

Had her parents ever held her like this? They must have, but that had been so long ago that she’d forgotten.

‘I don’t do…relationships,’ she muttered, and his hands shifted so he was holding her by the waist.

‘Good. Neither do I.’

‘You’re holding me.’

‘It’s a medical massage,’ he said, and she heard a lazy smile in his voice. ‘When all else fails-hug.’

She liked it, she decided. In times of crisis-hug?

Who was she kidding? You needed someone to be permanent to hug, and people weren’t permanent. You needed to let yourself close to find that degree of security but with that closeness came…peril.

If she lost anyone else…

‘Don’t do it,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not getting close to you, Fergus Reynard.’

‘I think you already are,’ he said, chuckling and holding her closer. ‘But I know what you mean. You needn’t worry. This is for now, because I suspect it’s what we both need. But it’s only for now. I’m here for twelve weeks and then I’m out of here.’

‘Why did you come?’

‘Maybe I knew how much I was needed,’ he told her, but she could tell by the tone in his voice that it was much more than that.

‘You’re running,’ she said, and he shook his head and put her away from him. She looked into his face and what she saw there…

This was no young medic taking a locum job to save for the next overseas jaunt, she thought. There was a recognition here…

Theirs was a shared journey, she realised bleakly. She didn’t know the details but she knew she was right, and she also knew… What he said was the truth. He could hold her as much as she needed but there was no fear of further commitment. She’d built her fences and so had he.

Two levels of razor wire around their hearts. Maybe his was impervious. She’d thought hers was, too, but out there…

Out there in the ward was a little girl called Madison, and the only way for her to survive was for Ginny’s barriers to come down.

No. There must be some other way.

‘Madison will sleep for hours,’ Fergus said softly into her hair. ‘Miriam and Tony will care for her. Oscar’s stable and there are no other patients in this place except nursing-home residents. Can I take you home to meet Richard?’

‘I need to tell him…’

‘We need to tell him nothing,’ Fergus said. ‘Judith has written to him. We give him the letter and we help him sort out what he wants done.’

‘Dear God…’

‘There’s no way through this but through this,’ Fergus told her. ‘Let’s do it.’