The Doctor’s Rescue Mission

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘ROBBIE’S taking it hard?’

Grady hadn’t said a word until they had one of the few undamaged four-wheel-drives loaded and were headed south toward the Koori settlement. He produced sandwiches and handed them to her piece by piece as she drove. She knew the way and it seemed suddenly important that she keep the illusion that she was in control. But Grady was glancing across at her as she drove, and she knew that he saw that her knuckles were white on the steering-wheel.

And one sandwich seemed enough to choke her.

‘Morag?’ he prodded gently, and she had to force herself to respond.

What had he asked? Was Robbie taking it hard? Stupid, stupid question.

‘You don’t know how much.’

‘You’ve really dug yourself deep here, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ she said tightly. ‘I haven’t dug myself anywhere. The hole’s been dug for me.’

‘You elected to come.’

‘Yeah,’ she said tightly. ‘I did.’

‘Were you happy here?’ he asked. ‘Before the wave struck.’

‘Of course I was happy. Why wouldn’t I be happy?’

‘You don’t miss Sydney?’

Oh, for heaven’s sake. What a time for an inquisition.

‘Why should I miss Sydney?’ she snapped.

‘I just thought-’

‘Well, don’t think.’ She hesitated. And then thought, No, why not say it? All these things that had built up for so long…

‘Why would I ever want to be somewhere other than here?’ she told him, her anger suddenly threatening almost to overwhelm her. ‘I like there being only three shops on the island. I like always drinking instant coffee and wearing the same clothes everyone else wears, and I like it that everyone on the island knows every single thing about my life. I like having dated the island’s only two eligible men-and deciding they weren’t so eligible after all. I like cooking our own dinner every damned night except once a month when Robbie and I treat ourselves to dinner at the pub where we have a choice of steak and chips, fish and chips or sausages and chips. I like being on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and fifty-two weeks of the year. And I like it that Robbie will have to go to Sydney to board for the last few years of secondary school and he’ll probably never come back and I’ll be stuck here for ever…’

Her voice broke and she dashed an angry hand across her face. Tears? When had she last cried? Before yesterday, she couldn’t remember.

‘So if the island is declared unfit for habitation,’ Grady said cautiously into the stillness, ‘you won’t be too upset?’

She swivelled. They hit a bump on the dirt track and the truck lurched, but she didn’t notice.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The infrastructure’s been smashed. It’ll cost a bomb to fix the power and sewerage and the buildings. It’d be much cheaper for the government to pay for resettlement on the mainland.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘You don’t want to be here.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I think you just did.’

‘Well, I didn’t!’ She was so angry now she was almost spitting. ‘I know. I miss things from the mainland. Of course I do. And I feel trapped. But these people… A tiny group of highlanders settled here two hundred years ago and their descendants still live here. Most of the kids now leave the island when they’re about fourteen to go to secondary school and a lot of them don’t come back. But the ones that do…they come because they want to.’

‘Maybe they feel obligated. Like you.’

‘So you’d say let’s not give them the choice?’

‘If it costs a bomb…maybe not.’

‘And the true islanders?’ she snapped. ‘The Koori? They’ve been here for thousands of years. They keep apart from the rest of the island. They speak their own language. They’re the most extraordinary artists and craftsmen. Magical. But their way of life hasn’t changed in generations. Except that they get emergency health care and inoculations.’

‘Thanks to you, and you don’t want to be here.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You did.’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I said I missed things. I do. Of course I do. But if I truly wanted to leave, you wouldn’t see me for dust.’

‘And if you and I…’

‘What?’ She turned and faced him and the truck hit a stump in the road. The truck jerked sideways and she swore and pulled the car to a halt. Maybe driving when she was white hot with rage wasn’t such a good idea.

‘There’s still something between us, Morag,’ Grady told her. He was watching her face. Carefully. Choosing his words. ‘You know, I haven’t forgotten you. All these years… If you came back…’

It needed only that.

‘You’re saying we could take up where we left off four years ago?’

‘I didn’t realise how much I’d miss you,’ he said softly. ‘Until you left.’

She closed her eyes. After all these years. At such a time…

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘This isn’t the time.’

‘No.’ Her eyes flew wide and she stared straight ahead at the road. Carefully she steered back from the verge, keeping careful rein on her fury. ‘No, it’s not.’ Then, very carefully, thinking it through, she said, ‘Grady, when you came here, were you told to start preparing us for full evacuation?’

‘I-’

‘I know it’s early,’ she said. ‘The focus is on searching. But there’s a huge number of troops on the island now, yet the main road’s still blocked. And I was talking to one of the men who’s been working on the gas main. He was telling me that they’d succeeded in blocking it completely. Now, that might just be temporary, for safety…’

‘It is.’

‘So you know that for sure?’ she said carefully. ‘You seem to be taking care of me, but people are deferring to you. You’re some sort of leader in all this. Can you tell me for sure that there are no plans to declare this island unfit for habitation?’

She waited. She kept driving.

There was no answer from beside her.

She’d expected none.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she said grimly. ‘Well, it’s not going to happen. We won’t all leave.’

‘If there are no services…’

‘If there’s no services, most of the townspeople will leave,’ she told him. ‘Of course they will. They have no choice. Even the people like Hubert. I dare say if you removed his pension and took away all support, then maybe he’d be forced to go, too. But not the Kooris.’

‘Do the Koori need our intervention?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Of course they don’t. They don’t want us helping in any way, shape or form. They’ll tell you that over and over. So do you believe them? You’d leave them to fend for themselves.’

‘If that’s what they want.’

‘You don’t know anything about what they want,’ she said dully. ‘You know nothing at all. Just shut up, Grady. Help me if you can, but shut up about the future. I need to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and that’s all I want to do. And as for you and me… Ha!’

He said nothing.

It was like he was stepping on eggshells, he thought. Try as he may, he was about to crush things he had no wish to crush.

And he wasn’t at all sure what it was he was crushing.

He didn’t understand. He knew nothing. That was what she’d accused him of, and she was right. He had no understanding of this small community, of the dynamics that held it together and why its hold on Morag was so strong.

And behind everything… The thought nagged.

There’d been an alternative for Robbie. Robbie had an Uncle Peter and an Aunt Christine and a cousin Lucy, and maybe even still a cousin Hamish. Four years ago Morag had implied there was no one for the boy. That was why he’d let her go.

No. No one let Morag go anywhere, he thought as he watched her heave her gear from the back of the truck and turn to welcome the two old Koori men who’d appeared to greet her as the truck had drawn to a halt. She was her own woman. She did what she wanted.

She hadn’t wanted him.

Of course she had, he told himself. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her, but she’d wanted this community more. And it wasn’t just her wishes that were holding her here. She was tied by the community’s needs.

For Grady, who’d been raised with immense wealth but with no commitment to anyone, this was a concept he found almost impossible to comprehend. Commitment to people. Love, not for just one person but for five hundred…

Hell. He was too confused to think this through any further. All he could do was watch.

The cove where they’d parked the truck was as far from the township as it was possible to be. There were no visible buildings. A band of palms surrounded a broad sweep of beach. Wide strips of rock ribboned the sides of the cove, and even from two hundred yards away he could see white crusting that spoke of generation upon generation of oysters, building on the remains of their past.

The cove itself… It must have been beautiful yesterday, he thought, but the wave had ripped it apart. Some of the smaller palms had been uprooted and a mass of mud, leaf litter and assorted debris coated everything. In the shadows of the palms he could make out the flitting figures of dark-skinned people, fading back behind the trees as if scared of these people appearing from another world.

Morag was ignoring him. She was speaking to the two men, urgently, in a dialect he didn’t recognise. Their language? It must be.

The men were elderly, white-haired, with deep, brown skin that was covered only between their waist and their knees. One of the men had a jagged wound running down the side of his shoulder. He put a hand to it occasionally, as if it hurt.

Morag looked as if she hadn’t noticed.

They spoke for a good five minutes, the old men softly spoken but obviously hugely distressed. As they spoke they paused every so often to glance across at him with a look that said they were deeply distrustful.

Distrustful. Great. He tried very hard to merge into the pile of medical supplies and look harmless.

How did you look harmless?

But finally they broke apart, and Morag led the men across to where Grady stood.

‘Dr Reece, this is Yndilla and Nargal. Yndilla, Nargal, this is Dr Reece.’ She was speaking slowly, giving the men time to understand a language they were clearly not comfortable with. ‘We want to start work now,’ she told the men. ‘Will you bring us those you believe we can help?’ She hesitated. ‘But, please…remember that wounds from coral or oyster shells get infected fast, and remember that we can help stop that infection.’ Then, as their expressions again became uncertain, she reverted again to their language.

Once again, Grady could do nothing but wait.

Finally the two white heads inclined ever so slightly. It seemed permission had been given.

‘What’s happening?’ Grady asked, as the men disappeared into the shadows to talk to their people.

‘They’ve lost seven of their own,’ she told him, gazing after the elders with a worried look. ‘A lot of the kids ran to the beach when the water was sucked out, and they were hit hard. But most of them survived. These people live in the water. They knew enough to let themselves be washed out and then swim in after the first rush. The deaths will have been caused by injury. Two elderly men. One woman, two babies and two little girls.’

He winced. And then he moved to organisational mode. This was, after all, work he was trained for. ‘OK. We need to transport the bodies to town. Can I call someone?’

She shook her head. ‘They’re already buried.’

‘But the coroner-’

‘The coroner accepts the judgment of the tribe elders,’ she told him. ‘So do I. Yndilla and Nargal have agreed to let us see the urgent medical cases, and for that I’m grateful.’

‘Yndilla has a gash that needs stitching.’

‘No.’ Once more she shook her head. ‘He won’t let us stitch it. He says he hit it on a rock, and he’s cleaned it.’

‘It’ll scar.’

She smiled. ‘Yeah. Right. Did you see his chest?’

He had. The old man’s chest was crossed with scars that were obviously part of some tribal ritual, and there was no doubt that the scars were worn with pride. A slash across the old man’s shoulder was hardly likely to have him cringe with self-consciousness.

She was still smiling and the corners of his mouth curved involuntarily in response. He liked it when she smiled, he thought. He…

He nothing.

Hell. Back to work.

‘What else?’

‘There’s a couple of suspected fractures that probably need setting,’ she told him. ‘Kids. We’re permitted to give pain relief while we set them.’

‘But X-rays…’

‘No X-rays unless there’s a real call for it.’

‘Like if we think it’s broken?’

‘No. These people live rough. There are fractures all the time. They won’t tolerate me taking kids into hospital for a greenstick fracture.’

He stared. ‘Hell, Morag…’

‘We do what we can,’ she said simply. Then she shrugged. ‘I know you don’t like it but it’s the way it is. If there’s a major problem, if it’s clear that a leg’s going to end up shorter than the other or not heal at all, then I’ll push hard, and because they know I don’t push unless it’s imperative, usually they’ll agree. But it needs huge persuasion, Grady, so I don’t try unless I think it’s really, really dire.’ She hesitated, giving him a searching glance. ‘So…can you start on the fractures? The elders will stay with you all the time. They have a little English if you speak slowly, and they’ll translate as best they can.’

‘And you?’

‘There’s an old lady I need to see. She’s with the women.’ She hesitated. ‘Just don’t ask me about her, Grady. Can I leave you to the rest?’

‘Sure.’

‘Right.’ But still she hesitated. ‘Grady…please, remember that these people don’t want intervention. No dressings unless they’re really necessary. Same with stitches. Stitches get infected. Scars will become part of the legend of this tsunami. They’ll be shown with pride to grandchildren. So we’re not interested in cosmetic results, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Fine,’ she said, and cast him an uncertain smile. Then a woman called out from the shadows. Morag hesitated, but there was nothing left to say. She was being forced to trust him, he thought, watching her face, and he knew that it was a weird sensation.

He watched in silence as she collected her doctor’s bag and strode into a mass of palms at the back of the clearing. Leaving him with the shadows fading in and out of the cover of the palms.

Leaving him…confused.

There wasn’t time for confusion, however. He had things to do.

Nargal emerged first from the backdrop of palms. The old man had a child by his side, a little girl of about six or seven. She was holding one arm with the other, and was big-eyed with pain and fear.

Nargal looked almost as terrified.

Morag had persuaded these people to trust him, he thought, and suddenly the responsibility of what he was facing seemed enormous. One bad move and these people would disappear into their shadows, he knew, and then…and then there’d only be Morag who’d be allowed near.

She was desperately alone. This was all he could do for her.

He watched the man and the child walk falteringly across the clearing and he made no move toward them. As they came close he squatted so he was at eye level with the child. He didn’t smile, but kept his eyes focused on her arm.

‘Is it broken?’ he asked, and the old man grunted assent from above.

‘She said…it cracked.’

‘I can help with the pain. If you’ll allow.’

The old man spoke to the child in murmured dialect and the child listened. She hadn’t taken her eyes from Grady.

‘I need to give an injection,’ Grady said softly, and the man interpreted to the child.

The little girl whimpered and backed away a little, but she didn’t run.

‘The injection will hurt a little,’ Grady said. ‘But then it won’t hurt while I examine the arm. I can make sure the arm is straight and I can wrap it tightly so it won’t hurt as much while it heals.’

More interpretation. He repeated himself a couple of times, a word at a time. And then he waited.

Silence.

He was very aware of the shadows. Scores of people watching from the shadows.

He waited, as if he had all the time in the world.

He waited.

Then there was a frightened whisper from the child to the old man and a one-syllable response, before the old man again addressed Reece.

‘She wants that you are friend of Dr Morag. I told her yes.’

Grady nodded gravely. ‘Thank you.’

‘You can give her…injection,’ the old man said. ‘She knows a friend of Morag will not harm her.’

It went against everything Grady had ever been taught. To not X-ray…

He gave an injection of morphine and gently felt the fracture site. Then he held the child’s arms out, measuring reach. He carefully tested each finger, each part of the arm, searching for nerve damage, searching for any sign that the bone had splintered.

It seemed OK. It was probably a greenstick fracture, but not to take an X-ray…

He had no choice.

He splinted the arm still and carefully strapped the arm to keep it immobile.

A cast would be better, but he couldn’t apply plaster here. Besides, the arm was badly scratched and he was acutely aware of Morag’s warning about infection. If there was infection under a cast and there weren’t constant checks, she could well lose the arm.

Enough. He fashioned a sling and finally dared a smile at the little girl.

‘You’re very brave.’

The old man translated and the little girl’s face broke into a grin. And what a grin! It was like the sun had suddenly come out.

‘Than’ you,’ she whispered and Grady felt his gut give a solid wrench-a wrench he hadn’t known he was capable of feeling.

‘You’re welcome.’ He smiled at her, and then looked up to find his interpreter was also smiling. ‘She must keep this on for six weeks. I’ll come and check it.’

‘Six weeks?’ the old man repeated, and Grady nodded.

‘She will keep it with care. But…Morag will check it. Not you.’

Right. Of course. This was Morag’s place.

Not his.

After that he saw an ankle that he hoped-where was the X-ray?-was just sprained. Then there were two nasty cuts that needed careful cleaning and debridement. Amazingly, he was able to convince the children to accept tetanus shots and an initial shot of antibiotics. They’d need a ten-day course, but he left it to Morag to explain about the medication. Hell, if he explained it wrong…

He didn’t stitch either of the cuts. He pulled them together with steri-strips as best he could, and told his interpreter that the strips could come off after a week. He hoped like hell that Morag would approve.

‘How’s it going?’ She was suddenly behind him and he almost jumped. She was like a cat, moving among her own with a sureness that had him disconcerted.

‘Fine,’ he managed. ‘Can you explain a course of antibiotics for these kids?’

‘I can do that. One of the women’s very good at dispensing medication. Nargal will explain it for me.’

‘Nargal can’t do it himself?’

‘The tablets are food. That’s women’s work. Asking Nargal to make sure a child has a tablet twice a day would de-mean him.’

‘I see.’ He adjusted the dressing and smiled a farewell to the little boy, and looked uncertainly at Morag. He felt all of about six, asking, ‘Please miss, have I done OK?’

‘I had to use dressings,’ he confessed.

‘Sure you did,’ she said, and then grinned. ‘Heck, you look like I’m about to slap you.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Argrel-the little boy with the first cut you treated-came to show his mother his bandage while I was with the women. He said the big doctor-I guess that’s you-said he couldn’t get it wet for three days. He explained to his mother that he wasn’t allowed to get it dirty and in three days he could take the dressing off and he’d have a wonderful man scar.’ Her smile widened. ‘You certainly know the way to a small boy’s heart.’

‘Promising him scars.’

‘Out here they’re better than a jelly bean.’

They were smiling at each other-like fools. Which was really stupid.

‘What next?’ he asked.

‘I’m finished.’

‘Finished?’ He frowned. ‘Two lacerations, a broken arm and a sprained ankle?’

‘I’ve strapped two fractures.’

‘Nothing else?’

She hesitated. ‘They did lose some of their people. There’s nothing we can do there.’

‘But there’s no serious injuries.’

‘Once again, not…not that we can do anything about.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Two of the old people are badly injured,’ she told him. ‘One of the elderly men has a compressed skull fracture. He’s deeply unconscious and his breathing’s starting to weaken already. And there’s an old woman with a fractured hip.’

He stared. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said simply. She was collecting gear and tossing it into the back of the truck. Then she relented. ‘No. I have been allowed to do something. I’ve left enough painkillers so Zai will drift toward death in peace.’

‘For a broken hip?’ he asked incredulously. ‘We can take her back. Set it. And the compressed fracture-we could alleviate pressure-’

‘You know as well as I do that if there’s been pressure on the brain for twenty-four hours, the damage will be irreversible. And Zai…yeah, you’re right, we could operate. But that means a trip to Sydney. She’d be in hospital for weeks, facing rehabilitation. She can’t do that.’

‘How fragile is she?’

‘Not very.’

‘Then why can’t she do it?’

‘She’d die,’ Morag said simply. ‘You put Zai in a Western hospital ward and she’d die of shock and terror.’

‘So she’ll die anyway?’

‘Yes,’ she said flatly. Dully. ‘Of course she will. She knows that. But at least she’ll die out here, surrounded by her people and the way of life that’s been hers for ever. It’s the way she wants it, Grady, and I’m not about to argue.’

‘You can’t just-’

But he wasn’t allowed to continue. ‘Yes, I can,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I can. These people have a way of life that I respect, and that way of life has nothing to do with the customs we hold dear. If this island’s deemed uninhabitable…’

‘They’ll be resettled. Maybe they’d be better off on the mainland.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not? At least they’d have medical facilities.’

‘They have medical facilities now,’ she said in a savage undertone that was laced with pain. It hadn’t been easy, he guessed. To walk away from a patient she could have helped. ‘They have me. I’ve worked so hard to get their trust, and I’m succeeding. OK, it’s a tiny bit at a time, but I’m allowed to help the children. They call me now if a mother gets into major trouble during childbirth, and that’s a huge concession. Even though I’ve no specific obstetric training, I can often help. And I’m certainly better than nothing.’

She gazed up at him, her eyes troubled, trying to make him see. ‘They can’t be isolated from our world for ever,’ she admitted. ‘But they can be assimilated ever so carefully, ever so gently, so they can preserve the values and traditions they value while taking the best of ours.’

‘But to leave her to die… Morag, surely you don’t believe-’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Leave me be!’ He was suddenly aware that there were tears welling up in her eyes and she swiped them away with an angry gasp. ‘Do you think I like not being allowed to treat Zai? Don’t you think I mind that an old lady I’ve known and respected since my father brought me out here twenty years ago is dying out there among the palms? And do you think I haven’t thought these issues through again and again? Of course I have. But you…you’re going to hold a public meeting in the next few days. I know you are. Marcus told me that’s what the plan is. Give us a day or so to appreciate how deeply we’re in trouble, and then you and the rest of the bureaucrats you work with are going to say close down that island, take these people to the mainland-they’ll be better off. As if you know anything at all…’

She broke off. She gave an angry sniff and then another, but as he made a move to touch her she backed away as if his touch would burn.

‘Don’t touch me. We have to get back to town.’

‘Morag-’

‘Just…leave it. I’ve just said goodbye to two people I love. Leave me alone to get over it. You wouldn’t know what that’s like, Grady Reece. You fly to the rescue, you do your dramatic thing and then you leave everyone else to pick up the pieces.’

‘Morag…’

She gulped. ‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ she managed. ‘That’s not fair. You’ve been…you’ve been an enormous help and I’m incredibly grateful. But can you imagine what sort of lives these people will lead if they’re transplanted to the mainland? Can you?’ She shook her head. ‘No. I’m sorry. You can’t have thought… And why would you? This isn’t your business, Grady. Just leave me be to come to terms with it.’