Rescue at Cradle Lake Read online

  ‘I’ll call in the paramedics,’ he snapped.

  ‘Excuse me, but this is the last home and away football match for Cradle Lake this season,’ Ginny snapped back. ‘If by paramedic you mean Ern and Bill, who take it in turns to drive the local ambulance, then you’ll find they refuse absolutely to come until the match-and the post-match celebration-is over. Especially if it’s to come to Oscar.’

  Which was why he had come here in the first place, he thought dourly. The call had come in and there’d been no one willing to take it.

  ‘That leaves you stuck,’ she continued. ‘For a couple of hours at least. Unless you accept help.’

  ‘Fine,’ he conceded, trying not to sound confused. ‘I’ll accept your help. Can you wait outside?’

  ‘Very magnanimous,’ she said, and she grinned.

  His lips twitched despite his confusion. It was a great grin.

  Get on with the job. Ignore gorgeous grins.

  ‘Just go,’ he told her, and she clicked her disreputable boots together and saluted.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  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?’
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  ‘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 question
s?

  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.