Читать книгу Greek Doctor: One Magical Christmas - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 6

HEADLIGHTS coming up the drive lit up the room, rousing Neena from the comfortable doze she was enjoying in front of the television. Not a patient—at this time of the night, getting on for midnight, patients would go straight to the hospital.

Unless there was an emergency out at the exploration site! No, they’d have phoned her, not driven in.

She eased herself off the couch, aware these days of the subtle redistribution of her body weight. Tugging her T-shirt down to hide the neat bump of Baby Singh, she made her way to the front door, opening it in time to see a tall, dark-haired man taking the steps two at a time, coming closer and closer to her, looming larger and larger.

A tall, dark-haired stranger.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, checking him out automatically in the light shed by the motion sensors above the door. No visible blood, no limp, no favouring of one or other limb, and gorgeous, just gorgeous—tall, black-haired, chiselled features…

Chiselled features?

Had pregnancy finally turned her brain to mush?

And he hadn’t answered her enquiry. He’d simply reached the top of the steps and stopped, his dark gaze, eyes too shadowed to reveal colour, seemingly fastened on her face.

She was beautiful!

Mak had no idea why this should come as such a surprise to him. After all, Theo had hardly been noted for bedding women who weren’t. Had he, Mak, been thinking maybe Theo had been desperate, out here in the middle of nowhere, and settled for someone available rather than stunning? Was that why he was standing here like a great lummox, staring at the straight, slim figure in shorts and T-shirt—staring at a face of almost luminous beauty?

Except that her left cheek was reddened down one side, as if she’d been sleeping against something hard.

Maybe it was the heat, pressing against him like a warm blanket, that was affecting his brain.

‘Are you ill? Injured?’

Her voice was soft, and concerned, not about the arrival of a stranger on her doorstep at getting on to midnight but about the state of his health.

‘No, but you are Dr Singh?’

‘Yes, and you are?’

He had to get past his surprise at seeing her—had to stop staring at clear olive skin and sloe-shaped dark eyes, framed by lashes long enough to seem false; at a neat pointed chin below lips as red as dark rose petals, the velvety red-black roses his mother grew.

‘Mak Stavrou!’ Right, he was back in control again, and had managed to remember his name, but she was still looking puzzled.

‘Mak Stavrou,’ she repeated, and it was as if no one had ever said his name before, so softly did the syllables fall from her lips.

She was a witch. She had to be. Witches had long black hair that gleamed blue in the veranda light. Witches would be able to handle this heat without showing the slightest sign of wilting.

He wiped sweat off his own brow and felt the dampness of it in his hair.

‘The company doctor—you must have received an email.’

The still functioning part of his brain managed to produce this piece of information, while the straying neurones were still looking around for a black cat or a broomstick parked haphazardly in the corner of the veranda.

‘Company doctor?’ she said, shaking her head in a puzzled manner so the long strands of hair that he now saw had escaped from a plait that hung, schoolgirl fashion, down her back, swayed around her face.

‘Check your emails—there’ll be something there.’

‘Check your emails?’ she repeated, the red lips widening into a smile. ‘Out here we have to take into account the vagaries of the internet, which seem to deem that at least one day in four nothing works. The big mistake most people, me included, made was thinking wireless would be more reliable than dial-up. At least with dial-up we all had phone lines we could use.’

Neena paused then added, ‘Are you really a doctor?’

It was an absurd conversation to be having with a stranger in the middle of the night, and totally inhospitable to have left him standing on her top step, but there was something about the man—his size maybe?— that intimidated her, and she had the weirdest feeling that the best thing she could do was to send him away.

Far away!

Immediately!

‘And what company? Oh, dear, excuse me. The exploratory drilling company, of course. They’re staying on. I’d heard that. And they’ve sent a doctor?’

It still didn’t make a lot of sense and she knew she was probably frowning at the man. She tried again.

‘But shouldn’t you be reporting to the site office—not that it would be open at this hour. Who sent you here?’

He shrugged impossibly broad shoulders and pushed damp twists of black hair off his forehead.

‘Nothing is open at this hour. Believe me, I’ve tried to find somewhere. A motel, a pub, a garage—even the police station has a sign on the door telling people what number to phone in an emergency. And it’s not as if it’s that late—I mean, it’s after eleven, but for the pub to be shut on a Friday night! Finally an old man walking a dog told me this was the doctor’s house and I should try here.’

‘It’s the rock eisteddfod,’ Neena explained, then realised from the look of blank incomprehension on his face that it wasn’t an explanation he understood.

‘The Australia-wide high-school competition—singing and dancing. Our high school was in the final in Sydney last week. In fact, they came second, and as most of the parents and supporters weren’t able to travel to Sydney for the final, the school decided to put it on again here—but of course Wymaralong is too small to have a big enough hall, so it’s on tonight down the road in Baranock.’

Disbelief spread across the man’s face.

‘Baranock’s two hundred kilometres away—hardly down the road.’

She had to smile.

‘Two hundred kilometres is nothing. Some of the families with kids in the performance live another hundred kilometres out of town so it’s a six hundred kilometre round trip, but they’re willing to do it to encourage their children to participate in things like this.’

‘You’re not there!’ Mak pointed out, totally unnecessarily, but the smile had disturbed something in his gut, making him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the heat. He hoped it was the heat.

Whatever it was, his comment served to make her smile more widely, lending her face a radiance that shone even in the dim lighting of the front veranda.

‘Someone had to mind the shop and take in stray doctors. So, if you can show me some identification, I will take you in, and tomorrow we can sort out somewhere for you to stay.’

‘Did I hear you say you’re taking in a stranger?’

A rasping voice from just inside the darkened doorway of the old house made Mak look up from the task of riffling through his wallet in search of some ID.

‘Haven’t you learnt your lesson, girl?’

The girl in question had turned towards the doorway, where a small, nuggety man was now visible.

‘I knew you were here to protect me, Ned,’ she said. ‘Come out and meet the new doctor.’

‘New doctors let people know they’re coming and they don’t arrive in the middle of the night,’ the small man said, moving out of the doorway so Mak could see him in the light on the veranda. A tanned, bald head, facial skin as wrinkled as a walnut, pale blue eyes fanned with deep lines from squinting into the sun, now studying Mak with deep suspicion.

‘I’ve explained to Dr Singh there should have been an email, and I wasted an hour trying to find some accommodation in town. Here, my hospital ID from St Christopher’s in Brisbane—I’m on study leave at the moment—and my driver’s licence, medical registration card and somewhere in my luggage, a letter from Hellenic Enterprises, outlining my contract with them.’

The woman reached out a slim hand to take the offered IDs, but it was Ned who asked the question.

‘Which is?’

A demand, aggressive enough for Mak, exhausted after an eleven-hour drive made even more tortuous by having to change a flat tyre, to snap.

‘None of your business, but if you must know, I was about to explain to Dr Singh that the company has asked me to work with her to evaluate the needs of the community as far as medical practitioners and support staff are concerned. The company realises having their crews and now some families of the crews here is putting an extra strain on the town’s medical resources and the powers that be at Hellenic are willing to fund another doctor and possibly another trained nursing sister, should that be advisable.’

‘Realising it a bit late,’ Ned growled. ‘Those lads have been out there a full year.’

‘But more are coming, Ned, and we will need to expand the medical service.’ The woman spoke gently but firmly to the old man then turned to Mak. ‘We’re hardly showing you the famed country hospitality, putting you through the third degree out here on the steps. Come inside. You’re right about there being no one in town tonight, but even if there had been, there are no rooms to be had at the pub or in either of the motels.’

She paused and grinned at him. ‘Kind of significant, isn’t it—coming on to Christmas and no room at the inn? But in Wymaralong it’s been like that all year. The crews from the exploration teams and the travellers that service the machinery have taken every spare bed in town. You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow Ned can phone around to see if someone would be willing to take you in as a boarder.’

‘Which you are obviously not,’ Mak said, following her across the veranda and into a wide and blessedly cool hallway, rooms opening off it on both sides.

She turned, and fine dark eyebrows rose while the skin on her forehead wrinkled into a tiny frown.

‘Obviously not what?’

‘Willing to take me in as a boarder.’

‘No, she’s not!’ Ned snapped, following behind Mak, right on his heels, ready, no doubt, to brain him with an umbrella from the stand inside the door if he made a wrong move.

The woman’s lips moved but if it was a smile, it was a wry one.

‘You can have a bed for the night,’ she repeated. ‘Tomorrow we’ll talk.’

Then she waved her hand to the left, ushering Mak into a big living room, comfortably furnished with padded cane chairs, their upholstery faded but looking homely rather than shabby. Low bookshelves lined one wall, and an old upright piano stood in a corner, its top holding a clutter of framed photographs, while set in front of every chair was a solid footrest, as if the room had been furnished with comfort as its primary concern.

And the air in here, too, was cool, although Mak couldn’t hear the hum of an air-conditioner.

‘Have a seat,’ his hostess offered. ‘Have you eaten anything recently? Ned could make you toast, or an omelette, or there’s some leftover meatloaf. Dr Stavrou might like that in a sandwich, Ned. And tea or coffee, or perhaps a cold drink.’

Mak looked from the woman to Ned, who was still watching Mak, like a guard dog that hadn’t let down its guard for one instant.

‘A cup of tea and some toast would be great and the meatloaf sounds inviting, but you don’t have to wait on me. If you lead me to the kitchen and show me where things are, I could help myself.’

‘Not in my kitchen, you can’t. Not while I’m here,’ Ned growled—guard dog again—before disappearing further down the hall.

Now her visitor was sitting in her living room, Neena stopped staring at him and recalled her manners.

‘I’m Neena Singh,’ she said, introducing herself as if there was nothing strange in this near-midnight meeting, although suspicion was now stirring in her tired brain. She recalled something the man had said earlier. ‘If you’re on study leave, why are you here? Surely you’re not studying the problems of isolated medical practitioners.’

‘No, but it’s not that far off my course. I’m finishing a master’s degree, and my area of interest is in improving the medical aid offered by the first response team in emergency situations. I imagine in emergency situations out here you’re the first response—you and the ambos. In major situations the flying doctor comes in, but you’d be first response.’

She couldn’t argue, thinking of the number of times she’d arrived at the scene of a motor vehicle or farm accident and wished for more hands, more skilled help, more equipment and even better skills herself. Anything to keep the victims alive until they could be properly stabilised and treated.

‘Do you work in the emergency field?’

The stranger nodded.

‘ER at St Christopher’s.’

‘And the company plan is what? For you to work with me to gauge the workload in town or will you work solely with the work crew out on the site?’

‘Not much point in working out on site when I need to find out how the additional population—now the men are here permanently they’ll have family joining them—affects the medical services of the town,’ he said, looking up at her so she saw his eyes weren’t the dark brown she’d expected but a greenish hazel—unusual eyes and in some way uncannily familiar.

Like Theo’s?

Futile but familiar anger tightened her shoulder-blades, and the suspicion she’d felt earlier strengthened. She tried to shrug off the anger and the suspicion. The man’s name was Greek, so maybe there was a part of Greece where people had dark hazel eyes…

He was still talking—explaining something—but she’d lost the thread of the conversation, wanting only to escape his presence—to get out of the room and shake herself free of tormenting memories.

And to think rationally and clearly about the implications of the man’s arrival in town!

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have offered earlier. You might want to use the bathroom, freshen up. It’s across the passage, turn left then first door on the right.’

Getting rid of him, if only for a short time, would be nearly as good as escaping herself, but he didn’t move.

‘Thanks, but I did avail myself of the facilities at the service station. The rest rooms weren’t locked—they even had a shower in there, so I took advantage of that as well.’

‘Most outback service stations provide showers—for the truckies,’ Neena said, imparting the information like a tour guide. If escaping the man’s presence wasn’t possible, then neutral—tour-guide—conversation was the next best thing. Later she could think about personal issues. ‘This is sheep and cattle country and the animals are trucked to market, plus, of course, all our consumer goods have to be trucked in.’

‘And products for the farmers—stuff like fencing wire,’ Mak offered helpfully, wondering why the woman was so ill at ease in her own home. Or did she know who he was? That he was family? Unlikely Theo would have mentioned him. ‘I have an Uncle Mak who disapproves of me’ was hardly the kind of conversation that would lure a woman into bed.

‘Yes, it did sound pathetic, didn’t it?’ Neena said, a slight smile playing at the corners of her lips. ‘But I’d lost track of the conversation. I was dozing in front of the TV when you arrived and my mind was still halfasleep. I gather you want to work with me, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s fantastic because I can learn from you. You’ve no idea how often I wish I had more skills in first response stuff. Oh, I get by, but there are so many new ideas that it’s hard to keep up.’

Mak wished they’d kept talking about trucking. Neena’s honest admission that she hadn’t been listening to his conversation, followed by such an enthusiastic acceptance of his presence made him feel tainted and uneasy—unclean, really, for all he’d showered. And when she’d smiled—well, almost smiled—his gut had tightened uncomfortably, but he was fairly sure he could put that aside as a normal reaction to such a beautiful woman. It was the deception bothering him the most, but he could hardly announce now that he was really here to suss her out.

‘I’ve made you toasted sandwiches with the meatloaf.’

Ned marched in, bearing a tray which he set down on a small table beside Mak’s chair. ‘And there’s a pot of tea, but don’t you go thinking you can have a cup, Miss Neena. You’re sleeping bad enough as it is. I’ll make you a warm milk if you want something.’

Mak smiled as Neena hid a grimace.

‘No, thank you, Ned. I drank some milk earlier, as you very well know, and how can I have a cup of tea when you’ve only put out one cup?’

‘You’d drink it from the pot if you got desperate enough,’ Ned muttered as he made his way out of the room, pausing in the doorway to add, ‘I’ve put clean sheets on the bed in the back room.’

A quick frown flitted across Neena’s smooth brow.

‘Does the back room have rats and cockroaches or is it just as far away from your room as it can possibly be?’ Mak asked, and won another smile from his hostess.

‘It’s certainly not the best spare room in the house,’ she admitted. ‘And Ned does get over-protective. But I don’t think there are rats or cockroaches.’

‘Even if there were, I doubt it would worry me,’ Mak said. ‘It’s a long drive and I’m tired enough to sleep on a barbed-wire fence. In fact, if it’s okay with you, I might take my tray through and have the snack there. That way we can both get to bed.’

She turned away but not before he saw a blush rise in her cheeks. Surely not because he’d mentioned both of them getting to bed—it was hardly suggestive, the way he’d said it…

‘Through here,’ she was saying, and, tray in hand, he followed her, noting the bathroom she’d talked about earlier on the right then another two doors before they reached the end of the passage and the back room.

‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured as she opened the door and looked in, then turned back and ran her gaze over him from head to toe. ‘I’d forgotten about the bed in here. You’ll never fit.’

And over her shoulder Mak saw what she meant for Ned had put sheets onto a rather small—perhaps child size—single bed, and even from the doorway, Mak could feel the heat emanating from the room.

‘I heard him say he’d sleep on a barbed-wire fence,’ the gravelly voice reminded them, and looking through a French door on the other side of the room, Mak saw Ned standing on the veranda.

On guard?

‘Well, he can’t sleep here. Honestly, Ned, sometimes I wonder if your main aim in life is to frustrate me. Come this way,’ Neena added to Mak. ‘There’s a double bed that should take your height, if you sleep crossways, in the next bedroom, and that bedroom has an air vent as well. I’ll get some sheets.’

She opened another door.

‘I’ll have it made up by the time you get your gear out of the car, and as far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to stay here. This is the doctor’s house after all.’

She was doing it to get her own back on Ned, Mak realised that immediately. He also realised it would give him an ideal opportunity to really get to know her!

So why did he feel uneasy?

Because of the deceit? Or because on first impression this woman was nothing like the manipulative gold-digger he’d envisioned?

‘You don’t have to put me up.’ It was a token protest, brought on by the uneasiness, but she waved it away.

‘Of course I don’t, but sometimes I get very tired of being bossed around by every single person in this town. Sometimes I’d like to be allowed to make my own decisions. Now, get your things—you know where the bathroom is. I’ll put some fresh towels in there.’

She whirled away, opening a cupboard near the back room, pulling out sheets and towels.

‘Leave the sheets on the bed, I’ll make it up,’ Mak told her, and she silenced him with a glare.

‘Don’t you start,’ she warned, marching back down the hall, slipping past him into the bedroom.

Mak set the tray down and left her to it, wondering just why the town would be so protective of her. Okay, so it was hard to get doctors to serve in country towns and the further outback you went the harder it became, but…

Maybe it was her pregnancy.

The phone was ringing as he re-entered the house, silenced when Neena must have answered it. He heard her say, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and the click of a receiver being returned to its cradle.

‘Bed’s made,’ she said, passing him in the passage. ‘Towels in the bathroom.’

And she kept walking.

Dumping his bag, Mak followed her.

‘You’re going out on a call,’ he said as his long strides caught up.

She nodded but her pace didn’t slacken as she crossed the veranda and ran lightly down the steps—running when being back out in the hot night air immediately sapped his energy.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, determined to get used to whatever the climate threw at him. ‘It’s what I’m here for, to see how you work.’

‘You’ve been driving all day and you’re tired,’ she said, opening the door of a big four-wheel-drive that stood just off the main circular driveway. Then she turned to look at him. ‘But it’s probably your kind of thing and I could certainly use some help. An accident at the drilling site. The ambulance was out of town but it’s on its way.’

Mak didn’t answer, instead striding around the car and climbing in the passenger side, relieved to find she’d already started the engine and had the air-con roaring.

‘Motor vehicle?’ he asked, and as Neena reversed the car competently onto the drive, she shook her head.

‘I don’t know how much you know about it, but if you’re employed by Hellenic Enterprises presumably you know they’ve gone past the initial exploratory drilling stage and are setting up an experimental geothermal power station. Basically they pump water down into the bowels of the earth onto shattered hot rocks, and the heat of the rocks turns the water to steam, which comes up through different pipes and is harnessed and used to make electricity.’

Her explanation had holes in it but as a basic description of a scientific process it wasn’t too bad.

‘And what’s happened?’

‘A seam on a pipe burst and steam escaped. Two men badly burned, others less seriously.’

‘Steam burns—bad business,’ Mak said, wishing he had the facilities of St Christopher’s burns unit here.

‘The flying doctor’s on the way. We stabilise them as best we can and they’ll fly them to somewhere with a burns unit.’

‘So, it’s a first response situation,’ he said, turning to look at her. She was studying the road ahead, concentrating on the thin strip of bitumen, so all he could see was a clean, perfect profile—high forehead, straight nose, the flare of lips, the delicately pointed chin.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Most of our emergencies are. We stabilise people and send them on—some, if they’re locals, come back so we know about the eventual outcome but many of them, travellers passing through, are never seen again.’

‘Most emergency medicine is like that—I rarely see anything of the patients I treat once they’ve left the ER. Rarely hear how they’ve fared, for that matter.’

‘And does that bother you?’

She glanced his way and he sensed she was really interested in his reply, an interest that intrigued him.

‘Why do you ask?’

She smiled.

‘I suppose because I know most of my patients so well. The local ones are part of my life and I’m part of theirs so we work together to get the best outcomes for them. I can’t imagine a scenario where I don’t know what happens next.’

The words rang true, and Mak wondered if a woman who could be so involved in her patients’ lives could also be the manipulative female he suspected she was.

Of course she could be. All human beings were multi-faceted.

‘I suppose part of the fascination of medicine is that it offers so many different opportunities in its practice,’ he said, although the way she’d spoken made him wonder about what had happened to some of the patients he’d treated. Just a few who’d made a big impression on him, or those who had been tricky cases…

‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re here for this job,’ she continued. ‘You probably have far more experience with burns than I do.’

Her gratitude made his gut squirm and her frank admission about her capabilities didn’t fit with the picture he’d built up in his mind. Served him right for pre-judging?

He turned his mind from the puzzle this beautiful woman presented to the task ahead of them.

‘Were the pipes in an enclosed space?’

She glanced his way again.

‘I haven’t been out there for a couple of weeks so I don’t know what’s been going on, but originally all the piping was exposed—right out in the open.’

Another glance then her attention switched back to the road. ‘You’re thinking inhalation injuries? Even outside, if they were close to the pipe when the accident happened…’

She paused, frowning as she thought, then asked, ‘Would obvious facial burns always be indicative of inhalation injuries?’

She had a quick mind, something he usually admired—and enjoyed—in a woman, but in this woman?

‘Yes, it should give us an indication. If there are signs of facial involvement—maybe even if there aren’t—we should intubate them. If there’s internal tissue damage that causes swelling—’

‘Intubating later might be impossible,’ Neena finished for him, happy to be talking medicine, although distinctly unhappy about this man’s sudden intrusion into her life.

Was he simply who he said he was—someone sent by the company to assess the strain the additional population was putting on medical services? Or had Theo’s mother, the coldly formal Helen Cassimatis of the emails and letters, sent him?

He was quiet now. Maybe, like her, he didn’t want to get too far ahead of himself before he saw the patients.

She risked a glance at him, pleased he was looking out the window into the darkness through which they passed.

A very good-looking man, but…

Greek name, Greek company…

Not that Neena hadn’t expected it. Theo’s complaints about his stifling family, while probably exaggerated, had suggested nothing less, and she’d doubted Theo’s mother wouldn’t do something to follow up the outrageous offers she’d made!

First there’d been an offer of financial help, followed closely by the suggestion that Neena move to the city so she could have the best medical attention. Then a letter just to let Neena know ‘the family’ had accommodation she could have rent-free in Brisbane so she wouldn’t have to work.

And all so ‘the family’ could get their hands on Neena’s child! The same ‘family’ that had produced Theo—charming, intelligent, handsome and smart, and so cosseted and spoiled, so used to getting his own way, he’d taken Neena’s panicky, and admittedly last-minute no as a tease and had forced her.

The squelchy feeling in her stomach wasn’t as bad as it used to be, but she still couldn’t think of that night without feeling a slight nausea. She breathed deeply, in and out, and concentrated on the road ahead.

They’d left the silent, deserted town well behind them and she pushed the memories equally far away.

The road was dead straight, a single-lane strip of bitumen that in daylight stretched to the horizon. Now, at night, a cluster of lights marked the site of the geothermal experimental station.

‘Is there an airstrip at the site?’ Mak asked. ‘Can the flying doctors land there?’

Neena shook her head.

‘At first it was just a couple of exploratory crews out here, drilling down to work out how far they needed to go to get to the hot rocks. When they found them closer to the surface than they’d expected…’

She stopped and turned briefly towards him.

‘I suppose you know the rocks can be anything from two to ten kilometres beneath the surface of the earth and apparently when you’re drilling and pumping water and steam every metre makes a difference?’

‘I know a bit about the process—I’m interested in all alternate power sources and geo-thermal in Australia makes a lot of sense. But you’re saying that for exploratory purposes there was no need for an airstrip? Because the crews moved around?’

She nodded and Mak saw the frown he’d glimpsed earlier pucker her brow.

‘And now?’

Glancing his way again, she shrugged.

‘I think they should have a strip. The land’s as flat as a table top so it wouldn’t cost much to ‘doze one, and although I wouldn’t for the world wish accidents on any of the workers, they do happen and in cases like this we could airlift the injured men straight out rather than having to bring them into town and then airlift them. Every time they’re moved, we put them more at risk of infection.’

‘Well, now the company is bringing in more men to build their experimental power plant, maybe they will put in a strip.’

The lights were getting closer—and brighter—glowing in the blackness of the night.

‘If it’s not already planned, you could put it in your suggestions,’ Neena told him, concentrating on how useful this stranger could be rather than the weird sensations he was causing in her intestines.

Or wondering whether the real reason he was here was to take her baby from her—to absorb her child—into the conglomerate that was ‘the family’.

Theo’s family.

‘Suggestions?’ he said, sounding so vague, anger surged inside her.

‘Isn’t that the job you were sent for?’

The words grated from her throat as she pulled up outside the camp office, noticing in her rear-vision mirror the flashing lights of the ambulance approaching in the distance. Slipping out of the vehicle, she grabbed her bag from the back seat and hurried into the well-lit but warm cabin.

‘We covered them with clean sheets like you said, turned off the air-con and gave them a small dose of morphine,’ an anxious-looking man told them as they walked in. He was hovering between two desks on which the injured men had been laid. ‘We’ve a stretcher in the medical room but the light’s better in here.’

Neena had set her bag down on the floor and opened it. Mak knelt beside her, silently congratulating her forethought. Burns victims lost heat rapidly, and with shock a likely side-effect of the trauma, they needed to be kept warm.

‘One each?’ he suggested as she handed him a suction device and an endotracheal tube.

‘Suction, intubate then fluid.’ She was muttering more to herself than to Mak.

‘Large-bore catheters in both arms,’ he said.

Although her confirming nod and quiet ‘We need to allow good fluid access’ told him she was thinking along the same lines as he was.

The ambulance attendants arrived as they worked, took in the situation at a glance and opened up the big bag they were carrying.

‘We’ve a burns kit with treated gauze. Want us to cover the wounds?’

To cover or not to cover? It was a question that had tormented Neena in the burns cases she’d handled previously. She turned to Mak, knowing he’d have more experience.

‘You’re flying them out to a specialist unit,’ he said, ‘but you’ve two transfers before they leave here and another when they get to the city—opportunities each time for contamination. Let’s cover.’ He was competently siting a large-bore catheter in his patient’s arm as he spoke. ‘You’ve Ringer’s in your bag?’

Neena nodded, concentrating on getting the catheter sited in her own patient’s arm.

‘That’s the plane,’ one of the ambos said, as a roaring overhead shook the shed that served as an office at the work site. ‘They said they’d buzz us as they came in.’

‘Okay, let’s move them,’ Neena suggested, as she attached tubing and a bag of fluid to the second catheter on her patient, adjusted the flow, then grabbed a transfer form to complete before the injured men left the site, noting down exactly what treatment they’d been given. ‘You guys take them straight to the airfield. Dr Stavrou and I will see the other injured men.’

‘Dr Stavrou?’ one of the ambos queried, as the other helped Mak lift his patient onto a stretcher.

‘Mak Stavrou, meet Pete and Paul, two of our crew of four local ambos,’ Neena said, then she stood aside as Pete and Paul lifted her patient.

‘He your replacement while you take maternity leave?’ Paul asked, wheeling the patient towards the door.

Neena shook her head.

‘I’ll explain some other time, but for now, would you leave your burns kit here? I’ll bring it back to town.’

Time enough for the townsfolk to learn why Mak Stavrou was here. And for him to learn the town’s reaction! Not everyone was happy with the exploration crews, or the experimental power plant, but he’d find that out soon enough.

And no one in the town would be happy if they knew the suspicions she had about his visit! This was a town that protected its own, and Neena was definitely its own.

She hid a sigh bred from the frustration she often felt over this protective attitude, but they meant well, her town’s people…

‘Let’s go see the others who were hurt,’ she said to Mak, who was talking to the foreman.

‘They’re in the mess cabin, I’ll take you over,’ the foreman said, as Mak lifted the burns bag from her grasp, his fingers brushing hers in the exchange. ‘They’re not badly hurt,’ the man continued, while Neena trailed behind the two men, telling herself she couldn’t possibly have felt a reaction when the stranger’s skin had brushed hers.

She was worried about the injured men, and uptight because she’d had this Mak Stavrou foisted on her. The twinge had been nothing more than tension.

‘Some of the steam was still leaking from the pipes when they went over to drag their mates away but I’d say they’re only superficial burns,’ the foreman explained.

They were superficial burns, soon treated and dressed.

‘Leave the dressings in place until Monday then come into town and we’ll check the wounds and dress them again if necessary,’ Mak told the three men.

They all agreed and thanked him, while Neena smiled to herself. In this case, Mak was the person with the most experience, but as far as these rough outback labourers were concerned, it was as natural to them as breathing to consider the male of the species as the main authority—the chief!

‘Best if you’re a boy,’ she muttered, patting the bump as she made her way back to her vehicle. ‘Life’s a lot easier for men.’