Читать книгу The Australian's Proposal - Алисон Робертс - Страница 12

HAMISH PULLED UP in front of a small building with a table and three chairs set up outside and a group of people lounging around on logs, chairs, or small patches of grass.

‘Medicine, Wygera-style,’ he said to Kate. ‘If the weather’s good we work outside, although there are perfectly adequate examination, waiting and treatment rooms inside the building.’

He nodded towards a stand of eucalypts some distance away, where more people lay around in the shade.

‘They’re your lot. We come out a couple of times a week, and today’s well-baby day, but if you see anything that worries you, shoot the person over to me. Eye problems are the main worries with the kids, diabetes with the mums. They’ll all have their cards with them—the health worker sees them before we arrive.’

Kate accepted all this information and advice, then, as a young man opened her door with a flourish, she stepped out and looked around her.

The place was nestled in the foothills of the mountains that divided the coastal plain from the cattle country further inland. The ground was bare and rocky, with grass struggling to grow here and there, mainly in the patches of shade.

‘Your bag, ma’am,’ Hamish said, handing her a square suitcase from the back of the station wagon. ‘Scales, swabs, dressings and so on all inside, but Jake here will act as your runner if you need anything else.’

Kate took the bag, but the young man—presumably Jake—who had opened the car door lifted it out of her hand and led her towards the trees, where the shapes became women and children as Kate drew closer. Another table was set out there, with two chairs beside it, but Kate wondered if she might be better sitting on the grass with the women.

‘Sit on the chair, then the women can put babies on your knee,’ Jake told her, while another woman who Jake introduced as Millie got up from the grass and took the second chair.

‘I’m the health worker here,’ she said, unpacking the case and setting up the baby scales. ‘I do the weighing.’

‘Thanks,’ Kate said, but she glanced towards the clinic building. Strange it didn’t have its own scales.

‘People take them to weigh fish and potatoes and bananas, not so good afterwards for babies,’ Millie said, while Kate wondered if people in North Queensland had a special ability to read minds or if she’d always been so easy to read.

Though Hamish was a Scot, not a North Queenslander.

She almost glanced towards him, but remembered Millie and caught herself just in time.

‘I’m Kate,’ she said to the assembled throng, then she took her chair. ‘Now, who’s first?’

Some of the women giggled, and there was general shuffling, but Millie called a name and a pretty girl in blue jeans and a short tight top came forward, a tiny baby in her arms.

Kate looked at the girl’s flat stomach, complete with navel ring, and decided she couldn’t possibly have had a child, but Angela was indeed baby Joseph’s mother.

‘He just needs weighing and I’m worried about this rash,’ she said, putting the baby on the table and whipping off his disposable nappy. ‘See!’

The angry red rash in his groin and across his buttocks would have been hard to miss.

Kate delved into the bag, assuming she’d find a specimen tube and swab. Yes, it was as well equipped for a well-baby clinic as the equipment pack had been for Jack’s retrieval. She wiped a swab across the rash, dropped it into the tube, and screwed the lid shut and completed the label, taking Joseph’s full name from the card.

‘Nappy rash, I told her,’ Millie said. ‘Said to leave off his nappies or use cloth ones on him.’

‘I did leave his nappy off,’ Angela protested, ‘and it didn’t get better, and I tried cloth nappies.’

‘Actually, the latest tests seem to find that disposable nappies are less irritating to the skin than cloth ones,’ Kate said gently, not wanting to put Millie off side, but wanting to get the message across to Angela. ‘Also, if we look at the shiny surface of the rash and the way there are separate spots of it here and there, I think it might be candida—a yeast infection.’

‘Like women get?’ Angela asked, and Kate nodded.

‘A similar thing. It’s caused by yeast from the bowel and by bacteria and is more uncomfortable for poor Joseph than simple nappy rash, but there’s a cream you can use that should clear it up.’

What next? From what she’d seen of the town, it didn’t have a chemist’s shop, so getting Hamish to write a prescription seemed pointless.

‘Cream in the bag,’ Millie said to Kate. Millie obviously knew far more about clinic visits than Kate did! ‘This stuff stains his nappies so don’t you be worrying about it,’ Millie continued, addressing Angela this time, while Kate found the cream, one per cent hydrocortisone and three per cent iodochlorhydroxyquin—and, yes, the tube said it could leave a yellow stain.

Millie certainly knew more than Kate did!

‘Spread it thinly over the sore part twice a day,’ Kate told Angela. ‘Like this.’

She used a treated cloth to wipe the little fellow’s nether regions clean and another cloth to dry him off, then smeared a little of the cream over the bright scarlet rash. ‘You really need just a thin smear—putting it on more thickly doesn’t make the slightest difference. If it hasn’t shown signs of improvement, come back …’

There wouldn’t be a well-baby clinic more than once a fortnight but Kate remembered Hamish saying they did clinics, plural, each week.

‘Come back and see whoever comes later in the week,’ she finished, while Angela handed the baby and his card over to Millie for weighing and recording.

‘You give Joseph to his gran and get back to school,’ Millie told Angela when Joseph had his nappy on again and was ready to go.

‘She’s still at school?’ Kate asked Millie, while they waited for the next patient.

‘Last year, university next year. Wants to be a doctor. She’ll do it, too. Her mother’ll go to Townsville with her to mind Joseph while she studies. Girl’s got guts and brains—just stupid in the heart.’

Stupid in the heart! It was such an apt phrase it stayed with Kate as she examined another eight babies and listened to the problems their mothers had. She brought some up to date on their triple antigens, administered Neosporin drops into weeping eyes, gave advice to mothers on weaning, solids, diarrhoea and contraception, Millie letting her know in unsubtle ways whether she agreed or disagreed with the advice dispensed.

‘Lunch and judging time.’

Kate looked around to see Hamish approaching.

Stupid in the heart, Kate reminded herself just in case the reaction inside her had been something other than hunger manifesting itself.

‘Why doesn’t Millie take the well-baby clinic?’ she asked Hamish as they drove further into the town. ‘She knows the people and certainly knows as much if not more than I do.’

‘She says the people take more notice of someone from the hospital. They go to Millie in between our visits then come to see us to confirm what she’s told them.’

‘And that doesn’t drive her wild? That they don’t believe her in the first place?’

Hamish smiled.

‘I think it would take a lot to drive Millie wild. She just accepts that’s the way things are and gets on with her job.’

And that’s a salutary lesson for you, Kate told herself, then she gazed in astonishment at the building in front of her.

‘What is this place?’

‘Local hall. Funded by the federal government and designed in Canberra, which is why the roof is steeply pitched—so snow can slide off it.’

Kate was laughing as she got out of the car into the searing heat of what in North Queensland was considered cool spring weather, but once inside her laughter stopped, though a smile lingered on her lips.

The models, dozens of them, were set out on tables in the middle of the hall.

‘So many? Boy, the people here are really enthusiastic about having a swimming pool.’

‘You’d better believe it! But we’ll eat first. Wygera does the best lunches of all our clinic runs,’ Hamish said, leading her past the tables of exhibits to the back of the hall, where three women waited in a large kitchen.

‘Cold roast beef and salad. That all right?’ asked an older woman Hamish introduced as Mary.

‘Sounds great,’ Kate said, though she felt uncomfortable sitting at the table with Hamish while the women served and fussed over them, offering bread and butter to go with the salad, tea or coffee, then finally producing a luscious-looking trifle, decorated with chocolate curls.

‘I bet the female staff refuse to do more than one Wygera trip a week,’ Kate said, smiling at the women. ‘I’d be the size of a house if I came here more often.’

‘We like visitors, so why not show them how we feel with good food?’ Mary said, then she cleared the table while one of the other women walked back into the hall with Kate.

‘All the plans and models have numbers and the doctors who were here on Sunday, they have a list of the number and the names, so all you have to do is choose one and tell them the number. Dr Cal, he has the list.’

Kate turned around, thinking she might co-opt Hamish into helping her, but he was still in the kitchen, talking to Mary.

So she pulled her little notebook and pen out of her pocket and did an initial survey of the entries.

Round and round she went, slowly eliminating designs, until finally one was left. It had bits of dying bushes where trees would be planted, and tiny plastic animals sliding down plastic rulers to show waterslides. Scraps of drinking straws indicated where water would stream out from spa jets and what looked suspiciously like a hospital kidney dish represented the main pool.

‘This is it,’ she said to Hamish, who, with the other women, had now joined her in the hall and were eagerly awaiting the decision.

‘But that’s Shane’s,’ Hamish said, apparently recognising the model he’d brought into the hall earlier.

‘Does that disqualify it in some way?’ Kate asked.

‘No, no, of course not,’ Hamish said quickly, then he smiled. ‘In fact, I think it’s great. Poor kid’s been sick as a dog since his appendix op, and this will cheer him right up.’

He turned to the three women.

‘Will you keep it quiet or should we announce it straight away?’

‘People will know straight away whether you tell or not,’ Mary said. ‘People always know things.’

This was no more relevant to her situation than the ‘stupid hearts’ comment had been, Kate told herself, yet ‘people know things’ joined the ‘stupid in the heart’ phrase in her head, as if both were philosophical concepts of prime importance in her life.

You do not know you’re attracted to Hamish—you just think you could be, she reminded herself. But the phrase refused to budge.

‘This afternoon we work together, usually doing a bit of minor surgery in the clinic itself. Some days there’s a long list and other times we get an early mark.’

Hamish explained this as he carried Shane’s model out to the station wagon. They would take it back to Crocodile Creek and pass it on to the architect, hoping he would at least follow the concept of this winning design.

Still in colleague mode, Kate registered, which was good—at least one of them would be totally focussed on work!

But Kate’s mind found focus soon enough. Their first patient was a middle-aged man, Pete, with a fish hook caught in his wrist. As he peeled off a grubby bandage, Kate could see the angry red line that indicated infection running up his arm from the wound.

‘You did the right thing, cutting off the barbed end and trying to pull it back through,’ Hamish said, as he injected a local anaesthetic around the injured part. ‘But slashing at yourself with razor blades to try to cut it out wasn’t the brightest follow-up treatment.’

‘M’mate did that,’ Pete told them. ‘We were up the river in the boat, and we’d had a few tinnies, and he thought he’d get it out.’

Now the wound was cleaned, Kate could see the slashes across the man’s wrist, making it look like a particularly inept suicide attempt.

Or was it, and the fish hook just an excuse?

She glanced at Hamish, who was now probing the wounds carefully and competently, talking quietly to Pete about fish and fishing.

He was obviously a doctor who saw his patient as a person first while his easy camaraderie with the women at lunchtime had suggested they saw him as a friend.

‘Ah, I can see it now. Forceps, Kate.’

Recalled to duty, Kate passed the implement but, try as he might, Hamish couldn’t pull the hook free.

‘I’ll have to cut down to it,’ he said, and Kate produced a packaged scalpel for him, carefully peeling off the protective covering and passing it to him.

‘Soluble sutures for inside and some tough thread for the skin—these guys don’t treat their wounds with any consideration,’ Hamish told her, as he cut into the man’s wrist. ‘And check Pete’s card for his tetanus status.’

Kate found the sutures Hamish would need, prepared a tetanus injection and another of penicillin, certain Pete would need an antibiotic boost even if Hamish gave him tablets. Another check of his card showed he’d had penicillin before so they had no need to worry about allergies.

But it was the need for his last dose of penicillin that drew Kate’s attention. A fish hook in his foot?

‘Was Pete plain unlucky or are fish hooks particularly aggressive up here in North Queensland?’ she asked Hamish as, three hours later, they drove away from Wygera. ‘He had one in his foot only six months ago.’

Hamish turned to smile at her.

‘Pete’s mad keen on fishing. He took me out once, but once was enough. I know the boat we were in was bigger than the crocodiles I kept seeing lazing on the bank, but not by much. In fact, it got flimsier and flimsier the longer we stayed out, especially when some of the crocs got off the bank and started swimming towards us.’

‘Real crocodiles?’

Kate knew it had been a stupid question as soon as she’d asked it, but she’d just blurted the words out.

‘Too, too real,’ Hamish said, ‘although before that day I thought Crocodile Creek was just a name. You know, like Snake Gully. Maybe someone once saw a snake there, but it doesn’t mean there are dozens of the things in the gully.’

‘But there are dozens of crocodiles in the creek?’

Kate looked nervously out the car window. How far from creeks did crocodiles travel? And hadn’t she heard they could run faster than a horse?

Could a horse run faster than a car?

‘Hey, we’re safe,’ Hamish said gently, slowing the car and resting his hand on her shoulder.

‘I know that!’ Kate snapped. Now she compared the two experiences, thinking of crocodiles in a creek not far from where she’d sat and looked at babies was freaking her out far more than the man with the gun had.

Then she’d been able to snuggle close to Hamish for protection. Now she’d look stupid if she straddled the gear lever to get close to him, which, from other points of view, would not be a good idea anyway.

‘I can see why they need a swimming pool. I wouldn’t want to swim in a creek with crocodiles.’

Somehow talk of swimming pools and crocodiles kept them going for most of the journey, though tension built inside Kate until she wondered if she’d burst with it.

But when Hamish pulled off the road into a parking area that gave a view over the town and the cove and the sea beyond it, she guessed she wasn’t the only one feeling the crackling in the air between them. He was just better at hiding it.

He turned towards her, his eyes looking black in the shadowy car.

‘Is it the wrong time and the wrong place, Kate?’

He kissed her gently, but even a gentle kiss fired her heartbeats.

‘Can you deny there’s something special between us? Can you deny you feel what I feel when we’re together—deny there’s magic in our kisses?’

Kate tried, she really did, but she couldn’t, and in the end she had to shake her head.

‘But it’s not about magic, Hamish, it’s about trust.’

He kissed her again.

‘I know that, which is why we don’t need to hurry things—don’t need to put the pressure of a three-week time limit on getting to know each other. I know you want to find your father, but there’s every chance, particularly if we involve people from the hospital, you can do that in a few days. Then why don’t you come to Scotland with me? No pressure or promises. Just come, to see how things might work out.’

The strength of his hands, and the warmth they generated, seeped deep into Kate’s body, but it was all too soon, and taking warmth from someone else was far too dangerous.

‘I don’t think so, Hamish,’ she said quietly, and sat back in her seat.

At least now crocodiles weren’t the main worry in her mind.

Hamish paused for a few seconds, then reversed out of their parking space and pulled out onto the highway, starting up a conversation about the necessity to watch out for kangaroos on the roads around dawn and dusk.

It was, she was learning, typical of this kind, caring, empathetic man—not play-acting at being a colleague but genuinely trying to set her at ease.

She was beginning to admire Colleague Hamish.

Back at the hospital, they unpacked the car then, as Hamish went to report to Charles, she walked through to the ICU to visit Jack.

Jack was lying with his eyes closed, and though he opened them when Kate said hello, his eyelids soon drooped, but the smile on his face, even as he slept, told Kate all she needed to know.

She dropped into the chair beside Megan, who was anchored to the bed by Jack’s hand clasping both of hers.

‘Are you OK?’

Megan nodded, a tremulous smile on her lips.

‘Dad came to see him,’ she whispered to Kate, ‘before they transferred him to Townsville for his bypass. He told Jack he’d better hurry and get better, because he was needed out at Cooper’s Crossing.’

Megan’s smile improved as she added proudly, ‘That’s our place. Dad wants him there, but not right away. Dad and Charles have been talking. They think Jack and I should get agriculture training—they say we should spend a few years at university so we’re sure we know what we’re doing. Charles says there’s enough money to fund it and that there’s child care at university.’

She paused and her smile, if possible, grew even more radiant.

‘University, Kate! Can you imagine? Then we’ll come home and with water we’ll make Cooper’s Crossing viable again. It’ll be as good as Wetherby, good enough to support two families—the Ransomes and the Coopers. Together.’

As Megan’s expression suggested this was the most wonderful of ideas, Kate gave her a hug and told her how happy she was, hiding her own reservations about this happy-ever-after-ending until she’d left the ICU.

Charles and Hamish were talking outside the ED and though she didn’t want to interrupt—and certainly didn’t want to get entangled with Hamish again, as colleague or kisser—she did want to know if Harry was proceeding with his enquiries.

She hesitated, and Charles saw her and settled her indecision.

‘We were just talking about you,’ he called to her.

‘Surely I haven’t been here long enough to be in trouble,’ she said lightly, smiling at Charles.

‘Far from it,’ Charles assured her. ‘No, we were talking about Jack. Harry really needs to see him and, for Jack’s sake, the sooner the mess with his mates Todd and Digger is sorted out, the better. Emily says, providing there’s no setback, we can move him out of ICU tomorrow, and once he’s on a ward it will be hard to keep Harry away from him.’

‘You’ll stay with him when Harry interviews him?’ Kate asked anxiously.

Charles looked at a point somewhere over her head.

‘That’s actually why we were talking about you. I know you were employed to work the ED here, but I wondered if you’d mind working the men’s ward for the next few days. I don’t want to seem as if I’m standing guard over the lad, it will make him look bad, but I’d like to think he has someone he knows and trusts hovering around. I’ll tell Harry he’s still sufficiently ill that I want a nurse with him while he’s interviewed. Would you do it?’

‘Of course,’ Kate said. ‘Do I see Jill? She’ll need to change someone else’s shift as well as mine.’

‘I’ll fix it up with Jill. What were you working tomorrow?’

‘Early shift,’ Kate told him. ‘Six to three.’

Charles smiled at her.

‘Well, isn’t this your lucky day? We’ll transfer Jack in the morning, and he’ll need to rest after the move, so I won’t let Harry near him until the afternoon. If you could do the afternoon shift, midday to nine, that should cover the time Harry’s likely to be there, and if you’re already on the ward, it won’t look as if we’ve brought in someone especially to be with Jack.’

Kate smiled at Charles’s obvious satisfaction with this plan. In fact, it pleased her as well. She’d have the morning free to explore the town and, once she’d found out how shopping and cooking rosters worked in the house, maybe shop as well.

She nodded to the two men and walked away, her thoughts veering between Hamish, who’d been silent throughout her talk to Charles, and Jack—was he well enough for Harry to question him?

‘Are you happy taking on the role of protector?’ Hamish fell in beside her. ‘Do you feel you’d be able to stop Harry’s questioning if you felt it necessary?’

Kate stopped and turned towards him.

‘Medical question?’ she asked, feeling warmth within, although he wasn’t touching her.

‘Medical question,’ he confirmed, though the look in his eyes suggested he was feeling things not entirely medical.

‘You bet your life I’d stop the questioning if I felt it was affecting his recovery in any way.’

‘Mama bear protecting her cub?’ Hamish teased, and Kate had to agree.

‘I’m probably the very worst person to have there, because I do feel over-protective about Jack, but the slightest sign he might be tiring and Harry will be out of there.’

Hamish smiled at her.

‘Word gets around the hospital quickly. When I hear Harry’s arrived I might drop by, in case you need moral support.’

‘And you’re not over-protective?’

Hamish shrugged in a way that suggested agreement, leaving Kate to wonder if it was Jack or her that Hamish was protecting.

They walked out into the scented garden that drew Kate like a magnet, together only as colleagues, she was sure.

Its potent spell filled her head with pleasure, so worries over Kissing Hamish and Colleague Hamish were banished to the far reaches of her brain, and even her concern for Jack lost its hard, knobbly edges of doubt and dread.