The doctors choice

by Wilde, Hilary

  Clare turned round and smiled shakily. “Let’s forget it, David.”

  “Right. You go and tidy yourself and I’ll make us another cup of tea,” David said cheerfully. “All right?”

  “All right,” Clan_ said, and hurried to the small cloakroom near the office. She stared in dismay at her red cheeks and eyes, her untidy look. Just suppose Sister Madge had been unable to sleep and had come to have a look round the hospital! What would she have said? And thought!

  Over their tea, they talked and laughed, sharing tails of past misadventures in hospital. Clare began to get the picture of David as a dedicated boy, studying hard with a goal ahead of him. It made her feel vagdely ashamed, for she had never had a goal – merely a dream of being loved and loving. It was pleasant sitting there, relaxed, talking to David without the constant interruptions Barry would have made. And then suddenly she caught David stifling a yawn.

  Glancing at her watch, she was horrified. “David, you should be sleeping. You’re sure to have a long day tomorrow.”

  He smiled, standing up. “Maybe I should. All the same, Clare, it isn’t often I get the chance to relax like this.” His hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “Now you’ll be all right?”

  “Quite all right, David. Thanks – for everything.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Think nothing of it. See you tomorrow. Sister Madge will take over quite early, I expect. Joseph is sleeping on the bench on the verandah, if you need him.”

  David was right. Before the first faint streaks of light promised, the dawn, Sister Madge was there. She caught Clare bending over Mrs. Mackenzie, the elderly widow, who was complaining of palpitations and breathlessness, when she heard the unmistakable sound of Sister Madge’s footsteps.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked sharply, her starched uniform rustling.

  . “Nothing, Sister. I was a little worried because—”

  Clare said softly as she straightened.

  Sister Madge brushed her aside as if she were a fly: “It’s not your place to worry. I told you to wake me.”

  “Doctor saw her during the night and—”

  “Then what are you worrying about?” Sister Madge said tartly. “Now exactly what happened during the night?”

  An hour later, Clare found herself in bed. She awoke around midday and wondered where she was for a moment. She could hear a child crying, someone laughing. Quickly she showered, dressed in uniform, and hurried to report.

  Sister Madge was surprised but not pleased. She was bending over a small black child who was crying bitterly as Sister bathed a deep cut in the child’s arm.

  “You should be sleeping,” she said crossly.

  “I never sleep for more than six hours, Sister.”

  “Well—”

  “Have a good sleep?” David said as he walked towards them, his white coat unbuttoned, the stetho-scope tucked into his pocket.

  “I told her she should stay in bed. We want no heroics round here,” Sister Madge said crossly.

  “Heroics?” Clare echoed. She saw the smile David suppressed as he took her arm.

  “Had something to eat? No? Well, come and meet Matron first.”

  He led her out into the scorching sunshine and across to one of the large cottages. “You’ll like Matron,” he said.

  `Matron proved to be a slightly-built woman, with white hair, warm brown eyes, a friendly smile and a firm handshake. She looked pale, and her leg had a cradle over it.

  “We appreciate your help very much, Sister,” she said. “May I call you Clare? Off duty, of course.” Her eyes were twinkling. “Mustn’t disturb poor Sister Madge too much.” She looked at Clare shrewdly.

  “How did you get on last night?”

  Clare coloured. “I was pretty scared, at first,” she admitted.

  Matron nodded. “Nursing is very different out here, my dear. You have to learn to take snap-decisions on which a patient’s life depends. May even have to ride out into the bush and set a broken limb. It’s arduous, demanding, difficult—”

  Clare smiled. “But exciting.”

  Matron threw up her pretty hands in the air, her eyes twinkling. “Exciting, maybe, but there are other aspects. Intense searing heat. Flies. Don’t tell me you find our flies exciting?”

  “I hate them,” Clare admitted, “but I’m getting used to them.”

  Matron chuckled. “You are learning to accept them?

  Good girl. You’ve achieved a lot. Now tell me about England. It must be all of thirty years since I left. Is it true they’ve built skyscrapers near Buckingham Palace?”

  David made a quiet exit, smiling at Clare as he went.

  Later, she had a meal cooked by the hospital’s housekeeper-cook, a wiry little woman from New South Wales, very deaf but an excellent cook, and then David took her to see the radio station where Hazel Ridden, a dark-haired girl with a friendly smile, showed her round.

  Before David left, he teased her, telling Hazel Ridden that Clare thought they were all wonderful!

  Clare blushed. “Well, I do,” she said, looking up at him. “When I think of how some of the mothers in England rush their children to the doctor with every little cold in the nose and scratch on the knees, I wonder how they would cope out here.”

  “They’d adjust themselves,” David told her. “What about Maggie Pullen, Hazel?”

  “It’s time she came in, Doc. She always leaves it too late.” She turned to Clare. “Maggie is English and married Bill, an Aussie, in England. He got restless, and though they had three children by the time he’d saved the money he needed, they came out here, bought a smallholding about a hundred miles from here and had two more children. Now they’re expecting another – at any moment. Maggie always has trouble and Doc has to fly out to help. It’s not fair on you, Doc, and she knows it. And don’t tell me she hates leaving the children. Plain truth is, she feels Bill needs her, but one of these days you won’t be around when the call comes through—”

  David patted Hazel’s shoulder. “Let’s not start building bridges before we need. How about telling Clare something of what we do?”

  The two girls, left alone, soon made friends. Hazel led her round. “This is the control room which covers roughly one thousand square miles,” she told Clare.

  “The Flying Doctor service has twelve bases, each one overlapping the next so that they serve about two-thirds of Australia. In the old days it was pretty grim.

  No phone, no doctor, no nothing. Sick people had to be taken in by horse, or messages were got through somehow. Roads were only cattle tracks, and often the patient was dead before the doctor knew he was ill. In , a missionary called Flynn was horrified at the conditions. It broke his heart the way the babies died when they need not, the agony some of the sick endured. The first plane gave him an idea, then there was another problem – how to get the message to the doctor. Radio came and that gave him another idea.

  But it wasn’t until that the first Flying Doctor arrived. Someone had the bright idea of inventing a treadle machine radio, and they were available for everyone.”

  She showed big maps on the wall. “This marks where each outpost radio is stationed and gives us the call sign. Some are missions, some cattle stations, mining camps, small homesteads. Even some of the drovers who ride for miles with cattle in search of water or grazing have portable sets.” She paused, amused by Clare’s absorbed look. “You really are impressed, I can see you are!”

  “I’m not being sloppily sentimental,” Clare said slowly, “but when I think of the difference it must have made to these people’s lives – transformed them–when I think of how Val loves the galah session alone—” She looked at Hazel. “I envy you, really I do. You’re a lifeline.”

  Hazel was blushing now. “I never thought of it like that. My husband was badly injured in a fall and can’t work. Doc got me the job. We think a lot of Doc.

  We’re glad he’s getting properly appreciated at last.”

  Clare was puzzled. “At la
st?”

  Over a cup of tea, Hazel explained: “It was in the paper when you arrived. Remember you were interviewed? You didn’t see the paper? You missed something – your photograph with David and Barry. Well, you know all about the incubator he invented? The one he can fly out when a prem baby is born and there’s no electricity? You don’t? Well, Doc is a mighty modest man, he doesn’t talk. He also designed a lighter kind of iron lung for tropical countries. There was lots about it in the paper. It said he had a brilliant future, that he would be renowned throughout the world.”

  “I wish I’d seen it,” Clare said thoughtfully.

  “Lots of people wonder if he’ll leave us,” Hazel continued, filling Clare’s cup again. “It’s not much life for a brilliant man, buried here. In the big cities, he’d have the chance to specialize, even marry. You knew he was engaged? A very beautiful girl, they say, but she wouldn’t live out here—” Hazel waved a hand expressively round the bare room with its lack of luxury.

  “We’re too primitive.”

  “She couldn’t have loved him,” Clare said.

  “Well, can’t say I blame her. Not much fun being married to a doc who’s always away or being called out.

  I’d hate it, wouldn’t you?”

  Clare began to speak, but stopped in time, cautioned by the gleam of curiosity in Hazel’s eyes. Living out here was as bad as, if not worse than, living in the goldfish bowl of the hospital. Nothing was sacred or private. Here, it might even get discussed on the air!

  How awful if word got around that she would like to marry a doctor!

  “A doctor’s wife has to make a terrible lot of adjustments,” she said slowly. “It can’t be an easy life. Could be very lonely, too.” She stood up. “Thanks for the tea, Hazel. I’d better get back to hospital in case I’m needed.”

  Hazel walked to the door with her. “Pop in any time, it’s nice to have a chat.” She paused. “I’ll be telling the Johnsons I met you when we’re on the air. Want to send your love?”

  “Yes, give my love to—” She paused. Barry had wanted her to be careful in case someone guessed their “secret”. “Yes, give my love to – to everyone.”

  “I will, too.”

  The scorching, blasting heat hit Clare as she hurried down the path to the hospital. She was already hot and sticky, longing for a shower. She put up her hand to slap the fly on her nose and bumped into someone, who steadied her.

  “Hey, nearly bowled me over!” a masculine voice said.

  Startled, she looked up at a man with very broad shoulders, smooth brown hair and friendly eyes.

  “Hey, I guess you’re our new nurse. I’m Simon Trenchard.”

  “I’m relieving, Mr. Trenchard,” Clare said politely.

  “I’m Clare Butler, and I’m staying with the Johnsons.”

  “Oh, that girl! I’ve heard of you.” He smiled at her.

  “I’m a neighbour of the Johnsons. Sort of.” His eyes twinkled. “I live just about eighty miles away from them, that’s all.”

  Politely, she laughed. “That’s all?”

  They were walking towards the hospital. “Know if the Doc is in?” he asked.

  She looked at him. He wore a very expensive-looking grey tropical suit. She decided she liked him. He was friendly without being effusive. “He was an hour ago,”

  she said.

  They talked of Barry and the Johnsons. He said he somewhere or other.

  Sister Madge was at her desk. She looked up, dis-must try to visit them, but he was always rushing pleased. “I’ve been trying to contact you, Nurse.”

  “I was in the radio-room. Doctor Johnson knew—”

  Sister Madge was not listening. She was on her feet, turning away, speaking curtly over her shoulder.

  “Emergency operation immediately. Doctor’s waiting.

  Mrs. Mackenzie’s collapsed, so I’m busy. Get moving.”

  Clare hurried away, completely forgetting the man by her side. David was scrubbing up, wearing a string vest tucked into green shorts. Joseph was there too.

  “Look smart, Clare,” David said curtly. “I haven’t too much time.”

  She did work fast, going into the washroom to scrub up, slip on the sterile Overall and green turban, and fasten the mask round her face, letting it dangle. When she went back, Joseph had everything ready — the instrument tray, the dirty basket. And a trolley was pushed through the swinging doors which Joseph went to meet. David, his hands held out stiffly before him, was waiting, looking a stranger with the green cap on his dark hair, the green mask accentuating the grey eyes.

  Joseph lifted the boy on the trolley and laid him on the operating table and Clare moved in to help. The lad was about fifteen, his face grey, his mouth drawn as if in pain.

  “It’s all right, Ken lad,” David was saying.

  Joseph took his place behind the anaesthetizing machine and they went into action: It was a ruptured appendix. No time to lose. Clare had worked in the theatre in the Queen Anne’s Hospital in London, but that was a totally different procedure from this. The big teaching hospital had a large staff, there had been visiting surgeons watching, the gallery crowded with students. Here there were just the three of them, grouped round the unconscious boy.

  The sweat poured down her face and into her eyes as Clare tried to work swiftly, handing David the different instruments he demanded curtly, helping him apply the artery forceps, handing the swabs. It was almost unbearably hot, but there was not time to mop David’s face down which the sweat was running. The only noise was that of the anaesthetizing machine and the shallow fast breathing of the patient and the noisy crash of instruments as David tossed them into the dirty pan.

  Joseph was bent over the boy’s head, his face intent.

  It seemed to take an endless time, and there was one frightening moment when the boy seemed to stop breathing. Joseph said something softly, David worked with efficient speed and the danger passed. At last it was over and David straightened his back and flexed his shoulder muscles. He smiled at them.

  “Thanks. Like to tidy up for me, Joseph?”

  Clare saw the pleasure on the Aborigine’s face as he moved into action, and as she handed him the sutures, she watched him work with the expertness and joy of an enthusiast. They worked well together, and finally it was over, Joseph ripping off his gloves and mask, wheeling the boy out of the theatre.

  David was coming out of the shower-room, his hair, streaming with water as he shook himself. He had changed into cool white shorts and shirt.

  “Joseph can clear up, Clare,” he said. “I must see Mrs. Mackenzie. Sister is with, her, but I think it was mental rather than physical — a sympathetic reflex when she heard young Ken was ill.”

  Alone, Clare began to tidy up. She had made up her mind. When her six months with the Johnsons came to an end, she would find out how she could become a Sister in one of these outback hospitals. It would be a life of challenge, always something to learn. And one day, maybe, she would come to Baroona to work and she and David would be partners — partners in their different careers which were yet so alike.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALTHOUGH she had been told to get some sleep before taking over for the night, Clare was restless, thinking of her decision. In the end she sat up and wrote to her parents, telling them of it, begging them to come out to Australia before they returned to England. She dozed restlessly, but finally gave up and went to the radio-room to ask Hazel where she could get a stamp.

  She found Hazel on the air. Hazel looked up.

  “Clare, get Doc quick sharp. Urgent!”

  Clare ran to the hospital and found David with Mrs.

  Mackenzie.

  “Hazel wants you urgently, Doctor,” she said.

  The elderly woman with the curly white hair and shadowed frightened eyes clung to his hand. “So do I—” she said desperately.

  “I’ll be back,” David promised. “Talk to Nurse Butler. She may know Battle, where you were born,” he add
ed, gently disengaging himself and hurrying away.

  Clare straightened the bedclothes. “Battle – in Sus-sex? I went to Battle Abbey once. Wasn’t that where King Harold was shot by an arrow in his eye?”

  Reluctantly Mrs. Mackenzie smiled. “Yes. I lived within a stone’s throw of the Abbey.”

  “You haven’t been to England lately?”

  “Not for fifty years,” Mrs. Mackenzie said slowly.

  “I’ve often thought of it, but—” Her face was suddenly afraid as she clutched Clare’s arm. “I’ve left it too late, haven’t I? David’s too kind to tell me, but I’m not going to get better, am I?”

  Clare held the thin hand tightly as she looked down.

  “Mrs. Mackenzie,” she said gently, “naturally Doctor doesn’t discuss things with me, but I think what worries him most is your outlook.”

  “My outlook?” Mrs.. Mackenzie was startled.

  Clare nodded. “He always sounds optimistic about you, but he considers a patient’s complete recovery depends a great deal on the state of her mind. If you could be convinced you’re going to get well, it would help you.”

  “It would? Then I’m doing my best to dig my own grave, eh?”

  Clare smiled. “I wouldn’t say that!”

  “But it’s true, eh? I fret and think and fear–”

  The swing doors opened and Sister Madge came bearing down on them. “Nurse, Mrs Mackenzie needs rest, and you’re not on duty,” she. snapped.

  “Don’t blame Nurse,” Mrs. Mackenzie said. “I’m feeling very hungry, Sister. Could I have something to eat?”

  Sister Madge stared at her. ‘Rather a quick recovery,” she commented.

  Mrs. Mackenzie was smiling. “Is it? I must build up my strength, Sister, for I’ve a lot of things to do.”