The Family Doctor

by Debra Oswald

  ‘You’re Dr Kaczmarek?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Paula.’

  ‘Carol,’ she said, tapping the name tag on her chest. She was in her forties, experienced, sturdy, unruffled.

  Together, Paula, Carol and the truck driver eased Nicole out of the truck and onto the board. Her face was battered and raw, one eye swollen shut. She looked so limp that for a moment Paula thought she might be dead, but as they moved her, very gently, she moaned with pain and her eyes fluttered open.

  ‘Reckon she might have a broken pelvis but I dunno,’ the truckie said. The guy sounded distressed but determined to hold it together. ‘The little kid flagged me down on the highway, took me up to his mum. I found her outside the house, lying next to the water tank.’

  ‘Was she conscious when you got there?’ Paula asked.

  He nodded. ‘She said her husband drove the car into her.’

  ‘Was there a teenage girl at the house? Did you see a girl there?’

  ‘No.’

  As they lifted Nicole onto a gurney to wheel her into the hospital, she asked, ‘Where’s Jye? Is he okay? Where’s Jye?’

  ‘He’s right here,’ the truck driver assured her. ‘Don’t worry. He’s a brave kid. He’s a hero, this one. He’s right here.’

  Jye clambered forward into the front seat and the driver reached up his arms to lift the boy down from the high cabin of the truck.

  ‘Down you hop, sunshine,’ he said. ‘I rang your nana and pa. They’re coming here to pick you up.’

  The gentleness of the man, the fatherly way he carried the boy—that little moment of kindness almost undid Paula. But then the urgency of what needed to be done took over and she managed to collect herself.

  While Paula and Carol rushed Nicole towards the glass doors, the truck driver handed Jye over to the woman from the front office.

  ‘Grandparents are on their way to pick him up,’ he explained to her, then turned to call out to Paula. ‘Do you need me? Can I do anything?’

  ‘No, we’re right. Grateful for your help,’ Paula called back.

  Nicole could only manage a small voice. ‘Can you thank that guy for me?’

  Paula raised her hand to get the attention of the truck driver. ‘Nicole says thank you.’

  The guy nodded. ‘I hope she’s okay. I’m heading to the police station now. Gotta make sure they find this mongrel.’

  In the treatment area, Paula scrambled to recall all the emergency stuff she hadn’t needed to remember for a long time. Examining Nicole, even without X-rays, it looked pretty certain the truck driver was right about the broken pelvis. Fractured ankle and ribs too.

  ‘I know it hurts, Nicole, but you’re going to be okay,’ Paula said. ‘We need to move you to a bigger hospital. A helicopter will be here very soon.’

  ‘Where’s Jye? My parents here yet?’ Nicole asked. ‘My mum and dad said they’d take him.’

  ‘Don’t worry. They’re on their way. We’ll look after Jye until they get here.’

  Paula was confident—as confident as she could be with her limited trauma experience—that Nicole was not about to crash. The woman was in pain and in shock, but she was conscious, breathing well, and when Paula checked her over, felt her belly, there were no signs of major internal bleeding. The task now was to stabilise her and give her some pain relief for the helicopter journey.

  While the nurse hooked up oxygen by nasal prongs, Paula set up a saline drip and put in a urinary catheter. There was a risk of bladder rupture, given the broken pelvis and the impact of a vehicle on a body.

  ‘I’m going to give you some painkillers now, Nicole,’ Paula explained. ‘Might make you a bit woozy but you’ll be much more comfortable, okay?’

  Once Nicole was less panicky, in less pain, Paula asked her, ‘Do you know where Ruby is? Is she safe?’

  ‘Me and Curtis were arguing. Then he caught Ruby trying to use my phone to dial that number you wrote on the prescription. He took the phone off her, smashed it with a wrench. The two of them got into a big row about the phone. Ruby took off on her bike after that.’

  ‘Where would she go?’

  ‘Ruby’s got her hidey holes for when Curtis gets aggro. She’ll be okay.’

  ‘And after Ruby left … ?’

  ‘Oh, he got really wild then. I made a run for the ute with Jye but Curtis got there first. Drove it straight at me.’

  ‘And he pinned you against the tank?’

  Nicole nodded, then her face contorted into tears. ‘At least he didn’t hurt Jye.’

  She let her head flop away sideways, drowsy from the pain medication or simply not wanting to talk anymore.

  When they heard the thoomp-thoomp of the helicopter blades outside, Nicole panicked, terrified about going in a helicopter. Paula held her hand, reassuring her, as they wheeled her out to the landing area on the grass behind the hospital building.

  Paula did the handover to the helicopter paramedics. Swamped by the noise of the rotors, she mouthed, ‘You’ll be okay,’ to Nicole.

  The chopper lifted off the grass pad and swooped away towards the Sydney hospital that would stitch Nicole Wigney together.

  Walking back inside the hospital building, Paula could see Carol was now down at the reception area talking to a man and woman in their sixties—Nicole’s parents. Jye was leaning into his grandmother’s hip, as she rubbed her hand along his neck and shoulders with a regular soothing rhythm. The boy obviously loved his nana, felt safe with her.

  Carol was filling the parents in on Nicole’s condition, using calm gestures and the occasional reassuring touch on the arm. As the doctor, Paula should also discuss things with the family members, so she quickly turned to the sink in the treatment area and splashed her face with water, hoping to settle herself enough to speak coherently to Nicole’s parents. But by the time she straightened up and shook the water out of her eyes, Jye and his grandparents had gone.

  ‘Well, that’s something at least,’ said Carol, as she headed back towards Paula. ‘The grandparents are nice. At least the kid’s got that going for him. Poor little bugger. Imagine seeing your dad ram a car into your mum and leave her there on the ground, smashed up. Far out.’

  As Paula helped Carol tidy up the treatment area, her hands were shaking. Clumsy, she kept dropping gear on the floor, and when she stooped to pick things up, she stumbled, feeling faint. Carol looked at her, smiling but frowning at the same time—Are you okay?

  Paula was already strung so taut that when the main door opened with a loud thwack, she jerked around anxiously.

  It was Ruby, out of breath, looking for someone in the reception area.

  Paula hurried towards her. ‘Ruby! Are you alright?’

  ‘People down the road reckon they saw some guy carry my mum to a truck. Where is she?’

  ‘Your mum’s okay. She was hurt, but she’ll be okay.’

  As Paula told Ruby what had happened, the girl shook her head, as if trying to shake what she was hearing out of her ears.

  ‘It’s my fault. I should’ve stayed at the house,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Ruby.’

  Ruby shook her head even more vehemently. ‘It’s my fault. I pissed off. Should never’ve left. Is my brother alright? Where’s my brother?’

  ‘Your grandparents just picked him up.’

  Ruby exhaled a shuddery breath with relief. Then she spun around and headed out the doors to the patch of concrete where she’d left her dirt bike.

  Paula ran outside after her. ‘Ruby, hold on.’

  ‘Going to find my brother.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ruby shouted over her shoulder at Paula, then revved up the dirt bike and swerved out onto the road.

  Paula stayed in the car park, moving from foot to foot. She’d failed that girl. She’d failed Nicole. Maybe the whole world had failed them, but that didn’t lift any of the responsibility off Paula.

  Standing there, she realised her hands were
shaking, sweat trickling down her back and chest, heart still racing from the surges of adrenaline that had been hitting her from the moment the phone woke her. Her legs suddenly felt boneless, as if they might give way under her.

  She couldn’t go back inside. Probably there was official stuff still to do, paperwork she needed to fill out, but she couldn’t face it. Her bag and her phone were inside the hospital but her car keys were still in her jeans pocket, so she walked away from the hospital building straight to her car.

  The adrenaline in her body was now converting into a pure, undiluted rage—a fierce metabolic process that tore away any threads holding her within normal bounds.

  She headed south on the highway, driving too fast, towards the Upper Pinch Road house. She had no idea where Curtis Wigney was, had no viable hope of finding him. All she had was the certainty that if she saw that man, she would steer her car straight at him, ramming his body against a wall or a tree, so he could never hurt Nicole again and never have a chance to hurt those children.

  She took a corner so fast on the loose gravel of Lower Pinch Road that the back wheels spun out, taking her into the ditch. She righted the car, took a breath and steered back onto the road. The compulsion to speed made no sense—the police would most likely find Curtis Wigney before she did anyway. But Paula needed to use this ferocious energy before it burned itself out and left her with nothing but her own useless fucking failure.

  She roared up the driveway to the Wigney house. No sign of his vehicle. No sign of him.

  She saw the welt of churned-up dirt that ran from the driveway to the base of the concrete water tank. That was where Wigney had accelerated to slam the bull bar of his ute into a woman, smashing her pelvis. It was really only by chance that Nicole hadn’t been killed. It was only the difference of a few centimetres that the initial impact and the pressure of being pinned there hadn’t pounded her internal organs to a pulpy mess.

  Nicole’s sandals were lying on the grass by the tank and Paula thought about the child seeing his mother lying there before he ran through the bush to the highway to flag down a passing truck.

  Paula swung herself back behind the wheel of her car with the conviction that it was her responsibility to stop that man ever hurting anyone again and with the absurd belief that the intensity of her purpose would be enough to find him.

  When she reached the highway, she turned south towards the town with the wrecker’s yard Wigney had talked about. It was the only other place she could think of to look.

  At the speed she was driving, she chewed up the kilometres rapidly, reaching the outskirts of the next town, passing a roadside pub. A second after she sped past, her brain processed what she’d just seen: Curtis Wigney’s ute in the hotel car park. Paula swung her car into a U-turn.

  Pulling into the car park, she was sure. The dusty green ute, a brawny steroidal thing—it was Wigney’s. That dickhead was in the pub enjoying a cold beer.

  As she walked from her car to the entrance, Paula regretted not having her medical bag or a weapon or any means of neutralising the man. The only ‘weapon’ she had was her vehicle, and she pictured ramming him with her car, pinning his body against the side of his own ute. That would require luring him outside and she had no plan for achieving that. She had no coherent plan at all.

  Inside, the front bar was unexpectedly dim—one of those places with dark panelling and windows shuttered against the day outside. Coming straight in from the bright sunlight, Paula took a moment to adjust her eyes to the gloomy interior. The pub was almost empty, with a woman serving behind the bar and two patrons, one standing at the counter, the other on his phone in the corner.

  She took a few steps further into the room and saw that the man at the bar was mid-forties, short, solid, with a shaved, bullety head. Another step closer and she saw the neck tattoo. It was Curtis Wigney.

  Paula’s heart rate hadn’t slowed to normal since the hospital call, and the blood pounding in her head didn’t allow for doubt or hesitation. She lifted one of the pub chairs. The chair—metal frame with a chunky wooden back and seat—was heavier than it looked, but she knew she had enough power in her arms. Whatever metabolic process had happened in her body, it was giving her the strength she needed.

  ‘Wigney!’ she shouted and hoisted the chair up to shoulder height.

  Just as she swung it at him, he half turned towards her, so it collected him on the side of his face. Paula felt the jarring through the metal frame and felt the crunch of his jaw breaking.

  As Wigney crumpled to the floor, the guy in the corner dropped his phone and dashed across the room.

  ‘What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?’ he yelled.

  Paula went to swing at Wigney again. The other guy reached out his arm to stop her and the chair smashed into his hand. Paula felt the juddering sensations of bones breaking, in the guy’s wrist or hand or both.

  She dropped the chair, heaving for breath. She scrunched her eyes shut for a moment to squeeze out the sweat and when she opened them again, she saw the face of the man on the floor. It wasn’t Curtis Wigney. This guy’s neck tattoo was an eagle, with no flames, no fist. She’d got it wrong.

  Paula took a step back. ‘I’m sorry.’

  By now the bartender had run around to help the injured man. Paula could hear all three of them firing questions at her but she couldn’t decipher anything they said. She couldn’t trust her eyes or her ears or her judgement about anything.

  She backed out of the pub. ‘I got it wrong. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  Paula had almost no awareness of the drive back to town and to the medical practice. The whole journey happened in one of her blank fogs, a dissociative state that made it possible for her to function, but by the time she pulled up in the side parking area, her mind was sharply clear about what she had to do.

  The place was deserted. She unlocked the door into the surgery but couldn’t find the key to the drugs cabinet. She wedged the sturdy steel arm of a desk lamp into the cabinet handle, then picked up a heavy resin paperweight emblazoned with a drug company logo. After slamming the paperweight onto the metal rod a couple of times, she managed to lever the lock open. There was a sizeable supply of Schedule 8 drugs inside—plenty for her needs.

  TWENTY-TWO

  IN THAT PHONE CALL, ROHAN HADN’T MENTIONED EXACTLY where on the coast Paula was working. Anita contemplated calling back to ask, but she didn’t want to compromise him.

  Instead, she tried the old-fashioned plodding method she’d learned as a cadet journalist: hit the phone book. She made a list of medical practices in every town along the coast south of Sydney. Given it was Sunday, many of them were closed, with recorded messages. If she reached a practice with a person on the end of the line, she would claim to be a colleague of Dr Kaczmarek, urgently needing to make contact about a patient, but she had no luck. She tried looking up medical practice websites with smiling photos of their GPs but found no sign of Paula. If she were new on the staff, she probably wouldn’t be on an ‘Our Team’ page yet.

  Finally, in desperation, Anita looked up a website with doctor reviews and ratings and typed in Paula Kaczmarek. Thank God for the odd surname and thank God for Paula being such a fucking good doctor. There was one posting from two days ago:

  Dr Kaczmarek is lovely, so it’s a shame she’ll be leaving us next week! Any chance we can persuade her to stay?

  Under the post was a link to the medical centre, with the address.

  Anita hurried downstairs to her car. Heading to that medical centre was the only move she could think of for now.

  As she drove, she yanked her mobile out of her pocket and slid it into the holder mounted on the dashboard. Every time the phone dinged with a message, she was hopeful then disappointed. Paula obviously wasn’t picking up or returning calls.

  The next time the phone rang, it was Rohan.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘In my car. Going south. See if I can find Paula.’
<
br />   ‘Listen, I’m not sure that’s the best idea.’ Rohan was using his serious police officer voice. ‘That bloke Paula asked me about—the local cops are out searching for him right now.’

  ‘Because of Paula?’

  ‘Because he drove his vehicle into his wife, smashed her up badly. Attempted murder.’

  Anita saw her own hands clenched so tightly on the steering wheel, it felt like she could snap it into pieces.

  ‘Does Paula know about the attempted murder?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. She treated the woman, got her into the medical chopper.’

  ‘So do you know where Paula is now?’ Anita asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘No. The local guys haven’t managed to make contact with her.’ Rohan shifted his tone, sounding really anxious now. ‘Look, Anita, the cops down there will find this man. And Paula will show up eventually.’

  ‘I hope so. But I still need to—’

  Rohan cut in, ‘Please. Hold on. This guy is dangerous. Wait until I get more information and I can—’

  ‘Sorry. I understand what you’re saying but I can’t wait. Call me if you know anything.’

  A patient had once described the calm he’d felt in the moment immediately after he made the decision to kill himself. Paula never thought she would find herself in that same kind of moment—not even after Remy died, not even after Stacey and the kids were killed.

  As she drew up a lethal quantity of morphine into the syringe, she didn’t feel calm so much as resigned and very, very tired. All that angry fuel in her body had burned away, leaving only the shame.

  She’d exploited her privilege as a doctor to kill two human beings. Even if some good had come from those deaths, her actions were unforgivable. She had now assaulted two blameless people and then fled without helping them. She’d let down Ruby and Nicole. She’d failed to keep Stacey and Cameron and Poppy safe. Of course, it was self-important and ludicrous to think she had the power to protect any of them from danger. And there were so many other women, so many other children out there at risk, and there was nothing she could do for them either. The despair of knowing that was stirred in with the shame, all of it dragging her further down.