The Doctors' Christmas Reunion

by Meredith Webber

  She turned to Andy.

  ‘With Madeleine’s knee flaring up the way it did today, I’m back to thinking lupus so I’ll do all the tests I can, and see if I can get her an appointment with a specialist when she’s in Sydney for the holidays. Speaking of which...’ she turned to Chelsea ‘...do you know when the school holidays begin?’

  ‘Two weeks,’ was Chelsea’s prompt reply. ‘Everyone in the team has been talking about them, where they’re going, what they’re going to do. Some of them have jobs lined up.’

  ‘Then I’d better find a specialist soon, before everything stops for Christmas.’

  Ellie left the room, left also an awareness of Andy’s presence that she hadn’t felt for months. They’d walked together, talked together, in a comfortable way—he’d even put his arm around her shoulders, drawn her close to his side. And whether it was Chelsea’s presence in the house, or some force beyond her understanding, for whatever reason suddenly she could feel the knots of hard, hot resentment she’d felt towards him crumbling inside her.

  Yet what she felt was more than hope.

  Just as they’d fallen in love the first time, surely they could do it again? Could make their way back to each other, to togetherness, slowly and tentatively maybe—but eventually...

  She grabbed the keys for the surgery and made her way down the stairs. Madeleine’s file would have her Sydney address, and Ellie wanted to find her a specialist within reach of her parents’ home, not in some far distant part of the sprawling city.

  But when she unlocked and opened the door, she stepped back in dismay. While half the town had been at the football game, someone from the other half had broken into her surgery.

  Broken glass that lay scattered across Maureen’s desk in front of a window told her how they’d got in, but what had they taken?

  Patient paper files were in locked cabinets, her work computer and Maureen’s, and all the drugs, even non-dangerous ones, were locked in the safe.

  She yelled up the stairs for Andy, although she could tell from the stillness that whoever had done this was long gone. But her knees were shaking, and she wasn’t sure whether she should go in and check the safe or wait for the police.

  ‘Oh, Ellie!’ Andy whispered as he arrived by her side. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

  ‘I think we phone Chris,’ he said, speaking of the sergeant in charge of the local police station. ‘Then wait and go in when he tells us it’s okay.’

  He held her steady with one hand so he could pull out his cellphone and speed-dialled the police station.

  ‘He’ll be here in ten minutes,’ he told Ellie. ‘Do you want to wait here or go up and lie down for a while?’

  ‘I could get you a cup of tea,’ Chelsea suggested from halfway down the stairs where she’d followed Andy.

  Ellie shook her head.

  ‘I’m okay. It was just the shock.’

  She paused, her brain racing.

  ‘Would they have gone upstairs? Should we check there? They wouldn’t need to break in, there’s always one of the doors open.’

  ‘Best go and check,’ Andy said. ‘Chelsea can go with you, though I can’t imagine anyone being so bold. Down here, with the garden all around, someone passing in the street wouldn’t have noticed a stranger in the yard, but upstairs—even going up the steps—someone would have been sure to see them.’

  Ellie knew he was talking to reassure her, but he was probably right. She joined Chelsea and they both went slowly through the house, checking easy-to-steal things like laptops, cellphones and other electronic paraphernalia.

  But nothing appeared to be missing, although checking the drawers in Chelsea’s room revealed just how little clothing the teenager had brought with her.

  ‘This reminds me,’ Ellie said to her as she slid the drawer shut, ‘we should really go down to Croxton and get you some more clothes. It’s the nearest decent-sized town and it’s only about an hour’s drive. What you managed to fit into your backpack won’t last you through summer.’

  ‘I don’t want you having to fuss over me and drive me places,’ Chelsea protested. ‘I’m already so grateful to you both for taking me into your home. I can’t let you do more.’

  ‘Of course you can!’ Ellie told her. ‘But if it will make you feel any better, I love an excuse to go down to Croxton and poke around the shops there.’

  Chelsea chuckled, but the sound of a vehicle pulling up had them both heading out onto the veranda.

  ‘That’s Chris—he’s in charge, and the lad with him is—’

  ‘Zeke!’ Chelsea finished for her. ‘He looked after me on the train and made sure no one bothered me. He’s new in town, too, and he’s staying in a hotel while he waits for a flat that will be empty when the school year ends. One of the teachers is leaving and Zeke’s made arrangements to take it over.’

  ‘You know more about what’s going on in this town than I do,’ Ellie told her. ‘Shall we go down to hear what they say?’

  There’d been a touch of hero-worship in Chelsea’s tone as she’d spoken of Zeke, so it wouldn’t do her any harm to meet up with him again.

  And Ellie would check him out as well. He’d be nineteen or twenty if he was fresh out of the academy, and Chelsea wasn’t always going to be pregnant, although she might always be in love with the boyfriend, Alex...

  Ellie closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of the word ‘always’ and how she’d automatically attached it to love.

  Because for her that’s how it had seemed...

  Chris greeted her with a smile and introduced Zeke, who immediately introduced Chelsea to his boss.

  ‘It has happened before, in your parents’ time, Andy,’ Chris said. ‘You’d think they’d learn there’s nothing here to steal, although maybe someone in every generation has to have a go.’

  He paused, then shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Come and see,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of glass. Are you both wearing something on your feet?’

  Ellie looked down at her own and Chelsea’s sandals and nodded.

  They checked the window first. It was easy to see what had happened. It had been broken by a brick or rock, then a big enough hole bashed in it for the culprit to put his arm through and unlock the other side.

  Smears of blood on the broken glass still in the window suggested whoever had done it hadn’t left unscathed.

  As Chris led the way to the back storeroom, where things like paper towels and first-aid supplies were stored, Ellie stayed by the window, seeing where quite a lot of blood had pooled.

  Anxious now, she followed the men and the blood spots on the floor, arriving in time to see Chris studying the big old safe in the corner of the room. Sooty black marks were all over the door.

  ‘Kids, I reckon,’ Chris said. ‘Saw a movie where safe-crackers used a blowtorch to open an old safe and they’ve bought one of those little burners that some people use in the kitchen, or to solder maybe a broken link of a chain. All it had the power to do was make a mess, but it does point to it being someone quite young. I think even teenagers would know better.’

  ‘Do you take fingerprints?’ Ellie asked, although she was still thinking about the blood. ‘Of young kids, I mean? Are you allowed to?’

  Chris smiled at her. ‘Young Zeke here, who’s not long out of college, can probably quote the entire passage from the rule book on this, but, yes, we can take a child’s fingerprints if we take him or her into custody and have both the child and the responsible adult’s consent. There are rules about how long fingerprints, particularly of minors, are allowed to be kept, so we don’t have file-drawers or even many digital records full of young offenders’ fingerprints.’

  ‘So, will you take fingerprints here?’ Ellie asked, diverted from the blood by the working of the law.

  ‘We will, and then we�
�ll round up half a dozen young hooligans and give them a scare.’

  ‘You might not need fingerprints to find our offender,’ Ellie said. ‘There was blood on the glass and it led into the storeroom, and look...’

  She bent to pull a roll of blood-soaked cotton wool out from behind a cupboard.

  ‘I’d say he’s cut himself quite seriously. Wrapped the wound in his T-shirt so there’s not much blood at the scene, but there’s the occasional drip and now this.’

  Andy reached her first, and felt the squelch of blood in the wool.

  ‘He’s bleeding badly,’ he said. ‘We need to find him.’

  Chris reacted first to the urgency in Andy’s voice.

  ‘Zeke, get on to the local radio station and ask if they can put out a call for someone who suffered an injury that caused a lot of bleeding today. Tell them to get up to the hospital to be checked out. Ask parents to check their children to make sure they’re not hiding an injury. Then get on to regional TV and see if they can do a similar flash notice across the bottom of their screens.’

  As Zeke hurried away, Chris sighed.

  ‘Short of door-knocking the entire town, I don’t see what else we can do.’

  He thought for a few minutes, then added, ‘Mind you, there are a few places I can door-knock.’

  ‘You know the young rascals in town, then?’ Ellie asked, and Chris nodded.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to Andy about them. Can you take a few younger ones into your soccer teams?’

  ‘As many as you like,’ Andy assured him. ‘It would be good to have a team at every age level.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you five for free,’ Chris joked. ‘When should they turn up for practice?’

  * * *

  Andy thought for a moment.

  ‘Tuesday afternoon. They can meet the older group and learn from them. Eventually we’ll have separate sessions for the younger ones, but we can only do that if Ellie and I can work out a good job-sharing system.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll manage that, no problem,’ Chris assured him. ‘The way you two work so there’s always someone on call for the hospital has impressed everyone in town. Not that your parents didn’t do a good job, Andy, but the hospital had more staff then, and always two doctors.’

  ‘Cloning one or other of us might help,’ Ellie whispered, but Andy knew Chris was right. They would work it out. Even when their relationship had been at its worst, they’d managed their job-sharing efficiently and well, as if, in their work life, nothing had changed.

  And thinking of work... ‘I should get up to the hospital to wait for whoever was bleeding to come in. If it’s a child, the parents might have bandaged the wound tightly enough to slow the blood flow, and not realised it’s probably serious.’

  ‘Or not reported it in case the child ended up in trouble,’ Chris grumbled.

  ‘I’ll clean up here, then join you in case I’m needed,’ Ellie offered.

  Chelsea stepped forward.

  ‘No, you go with Andy, I’ll clean up here.’

  ‘And I’ll stay to help, if you can spare me, boss,’ Zeke offered.

  ‘Go for it,’ Chris said, ‘but both of you wear thick gloves—you can grab a couple of pairs from the car, Zeke—and get some more clothes and be very careful. That glass is old and extremely sharp. I don’t want either of you joining the injured list.’

  Ellie touched Andy lightly on the arm.

  ‘I’ll have a quick shower and then head to the hospital,’ she said. ‘I want to change my shoes because there’s sure to be little bits of glass in the soles and I don’t want to spread them wherever I walk.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Andy said, smiling down at the practical, sensible woman he couldn’t help loving in spite of all that lay between them. ‘I’ll change mine, too, then when I’ve got time I’ll attack them with a wire brush. Yours and Chelsea’s, too. Best to leave them on the veranda.’

  His chest tightened, and inwardly he cursed himself that all he’d managed by way of conversation was safe glass removal from the soles of shoes.

  There was so much he’d wanted to say, especially when she’d been holding his arm and looking up at him with a slight smile hovering around her lips.

  Kissing her, which was what he really wanted to do, was impossible with everyone around, but even that desire had been absent for so long it had startled him.

  ‘I’ll see you upstairs,’ he said, hoping his hurried exit didn’t look as desperate as it felt.

  She followed him up—had his thoughts drawn her to follow him?—and he held her arm to steady her as she slipped off her sandals.

  And as she leaned into him, what else could he do but hold her, and kiss her, just as he’d envisaged it down in her surgery.

  ‘Well, that was unexpected,’ she said, her eyes dancing as she stepped, barefoot, away from her sandals. ‘Something to do with the young love downstairs?’

  ‘Young love downstairs?’

  Had the kiss addled his brain?

  ‘Didn’t you see the way Chelsea blushed when Zeke got out of the car? There’s a little bit of hero-worship going on there.’

  ‘Nonsense, she only met him on the train.’

  Ellie smiled.

  ‘And you’d only met me that day in the refectory when you inveigled me into that corridor near the fire doors and kissed me almost senseless.’

  ‘But I’d been looking at you all day in lectures.’

  ‘As if that was an excuse,’ Ellie teased, and for all the pain and anguish in between, the memory was enough to make him kiss her again, moving within seconds from a slow, exploratory kiss towards passion.

  ‘You should be going,’ Ellie whispered, but she didn’t move out of his arms. In fact, this time it was she who kissed him.

  ‘I’ve missed this so much,’ she murmured against his lips. ‘How could we have let it all happen? Was my mentioning another IVF a kind of last straw for you?’

  He held her closer, trying desperately to find the words he needed, but none seemed right, so he kissed her again.

  That seemed right...

  Until Chelsea appeared with a dustpan and brush, and wolf-whistled as she passed them.

  ‘Cheeky brat!’ Andy muttered, while Ellie laughed, but Andy’s mind as he strode the couple of blocks through town was on Ellie more than the patient, who might or might not turn up.

  He took a deep breath and refocussed on the patient.

  What if he wasn’t a local?

  Could it be someone who’d come to the soccer but slipped away from his family or mates?

  Could he have had a mate with him?

  Might there be two patients?

  An ambulance screaming into the hospital entrance ahead of Andy, suggested a lot of his questions had been answered.

  ‘He’s suffering from shock from a massive haemorrhage from an arm wound. The babysitter bandaged it and didn’t realise it was still bleeding until the kid passed out.’

  The ambo who’d leapt out on Andy’s side filled him in as he hurried to the back doors, where his partner was already wheeling out the patient.

  The lad lying on the stretcher couldn’t have been more than ten, and looked more like a ghost than a living being.

  Andy didn’t hesitate, hauling off his shoes as he walked through the doors and dropping them in a bin, grabbing the first nurse he encountered.

  ‘Get on to my wife and tell her we need her ASAP,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the number on the list above the triage desk.’

  The stretcher was now through the door, and he helped steer it towards one of two resus rooms.

  The ambulance monitor showed him the child’s blood pressure was dangerously low, while his pulse was racing as his heart tried desperately to keep what little blood there was in his body pumping around the m
ajor organs.

  ‘We put in a fluid line and have been giving him FFP, but we don’t carry full blood,’ the senior ambo told Andy.

  ‘Neither do we—it just doesn’t keep well—but we do have an O Group donor. And hopefully she’s on her way here.’

  Ellie walked in at that moment.

  ‘Blood?’ she guessed, and he nodded.

  ‘I have to find the wound and do what I can to stem the flow,’ he explained, ‘so could you find one of the nurses with training to take yours? Just one bag to start off with, and stay lying down when it’s filled. No heroics, understand?’

  Ellie grinned at him, and walked out.

  Andy released the tourniquet the ambulance men had put on the lad’s upper right arm, and sighed when he saw the gash about five centimetres above the thumb and the spurt of blood when he released the pressure. The cut had gone deep enough to catch the radial artery.

  He put a new pressure pad on it and wrapped it tightly, retightening the tourniquet while he found what he’d need for the repair.

  In a child, the blood vessels were tiny, and in the city the repair would be a job for a micro-surgeon, but out here you did what you could. Particularly when there was no time to wait for the flying ambulance or even the flying doctor service.

  Not that they’d have a micro-surgeon on board...

  But in truth he liked the challenge to his skills that working in a fairly remote country hospital provided.

  By the time he returned, the boy had been cleaned up and dressed in a hospital gown, ready to be transferred to their small operating theatre. In there, Andy had already set up the instruments he’d need, including the extremely expensive magnifying glasses most small hospitals didn’t carry.

  They’d been a present from Ellie when they’d moved up here.

  Just in case, she’d said, and he’d had to use them several times, repairing delicate tissue.

  And far from resting for a few minutes after donating her blood, it was Ellie who met him in Theatre, carrying the bag of blood she’d just had drained from her.

  Back in the city, blood of the same type was mixed so recipients and donors rarely knew each other, but out here where fresh blood could take four hours to reach a patient if it had to be flown from the nearest city, having an O group donor—the universal group that mixed with all other blood—on hand was priceless and often could be life-saving.