by Fiona Lowe
He threw Poppy a gown. ‘I think you just got a reprieve from filling your fridge but just so we’re clear, this is my emergency and you’re assisting.’
‘Oh, absolutely.’ But deep sapphire blue shards scudded across her enormous baby-blue eyes, making a mockery of her supposed compliance. ‘It’s your emergency right up to the point when you realise he needs surgery and you’re totally out of your depth.’
No one had been that blunt with him in a long time. A noise rumbled up from deep down inside him and for a moment he didn’t recognise the sound. With a shock of surprise he realised that for the first time in months he’d just laughed.
Matt moved into action, work being one of the few things in his life he didn’t question. He called out to the two men, ‘Help me get him onto this trolley.’
They half hauled and half dropped the injured man onto the mattress and as soon as the sides had been pulled up, Matt asked, ‘Do either of you have any injuries or is that your mate’s blood?’
‘We’re OK.’
Matt wasn’t convinced. ‘Sit over there and wait. As soon as we’ve checked out your mate, someone will examine you both. No one is to leave until you’ve been examined, do you understand?’
Both men looked sheepish. ‘Yeah, Doc.’
He pushed the trolley into the resus room. ‘What’s his pulse ox?’
Poppy slid the peg-like device onto the end of the patient’s finger. ‘Eight-five.’ She unravelled green plastic tubing and turned on the oxygen. ‘Mr …?’
‘Daryl Jameson.’ Jen supplied the information.
‘Mr Jameson. I’m Poppy Stanfield, this is Jen Smithers, and on your left is Dr Matt Albright. You’re in good hands. We’re just going to give you some oxygen and help you to sit up.’
Matt tried not to show his surprise that Poppy had failed to mention her qualifications and that unlike many surgeons she was actually quite personable with an awake patient. ‘Daryl, how’s the breathing, mate?’
‘Hurts.’
‘Where does it hurt?’ Poppy adjusted the elastic to hold the nasal prongs in place.
‘It’s me chest and arm that’s killing me.’
‘Do you know what day it is?’ Matt flicked on his penlight.
‘Sunday. I remember everything up to the moment the idiot hit me.’
Matt flashed the light into his patient’s eyes. ‘Pupils equal and reacting.’
Jen tried to ease Daryl’s shirt off but resorted to scissors when Daryl couldn’t move his arm without flinching. The soft material separated, revealing purple bruising all over the thin man’s chest. The nurse gasped.
Matt looked up from the IV he was inserting, hating that he knew exactly what would have caused such trauma. ‘Steel-capped boots. Welcome to the seedier side of Bundallagong, Poppy.’
She attached electrodes to Daryl’s chest, and at the same time Matt knew she was examining the rise and fall of his chest given the complaint about pain on breathing. ‘Sinus tachycardia. Jen, organise for a chest and arm X-ray.’
‘On it.’ The nurse started to manoeuvre the portable X-ray machine into position.
While Poppy wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around their patient’s uninjured arm to enable automatic readings, Matt swung his stethoscope into his ears and listened to Daryl’s breathing. He could hear creps and he palpated a paradoxical movement of the chest wall. ‘Flail chest. I’ll insert prophylactic chest tubes.’
A frown furrowed her smooth, white brow. ‘Good idea but it’s the damage under the fractured ribs that worries me.’
Matt nodded. ‘We’re in agreement, then.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
The words sounded precise and clipped, but her plump, berry-red lips twitched. Like the siren’s call, he felt his gaze tugged towards them again and wondered what they’d feel like to kiss.
The blood-pressure machine beeped loudly, ripping into his traitorous thoughts and grounding him instantly. He pulled his shame-ridden gaze away, reminding himself that he loved Lisa and he had a patient who needed his total concentration. ‘Pressure’s dropping.’
‘He’s bleeding somewhere.’ Poppy’s hands went direct to Daryl’s abdomen, her alabaster fingers, with their neatly trimmed nails devoid of polish, palpating expertly. ‘Any pain here?’
Daryl barely managed a negative movement of his head.
‘No guarding. It’s not his abdomen.’ Poppy’s frown deepened, making a sharp V between her expressive black brows. ‘His O2 sats aren’t improving. What about a haemothorax?’
‘If he does have that, it’s not massive because there’s no mediastinal shift or tracheal deviation.’
But the blood-pressure machine kept beeping out its worrying sound as Daryl’s heart rate soared and his conscious state started to fade. Matt stared at the green lines racing across the screen. PQRST waves scrawled the heartbeat but he thought he saw something unusual. He hit the printout button and studied the paper strips, detecting a change in the ST segment. Combining it with Poppy’s musings, he had a sudden idea. ‘Check his jugular vein.’
Matt shoved his stethoscope back in his ears and listened carefully to Daryl’s heart beat. Instead of a loud and clear lub-dub, the sound was muffled.
‘Cardiac tamponade.’
They spoke in unison, their thoughts and words meshing together for the very first time. ‘He’s bleeding into the pericardial sac.’
Poppy ran the ultrasound doppler over his chest, locating the heart. ‘There you go.’ She pointed to the dark shadow around the heart that squeezed the vital muscle.
Matt snapped on gloves and primed a syringe, knowing exactly what he had to do. Under ultrasound guidance, he withdrew the fluid from around the heart. ‘Hopefully that will stabilise him until you work your magic.’
Her teeth scraped quickly over her bottom lip; the slightest of hesitations. ‘A pericardial sac repair without the back-up of bypass isn’t quite what I’d expected.’
He understood her concerns and he had some of his own. ‘The anaesthetic will stretch me too.’
‘It’s going to be touch and go.’
‘I know.’ He met her direct and steady gaze, one devoid of any grandstanding or combative qualities, and wondered not for the first time about the many facets of Ms Poppy Stanfield.
CHAPTER THREE
IT HAD been a hell of a piece of theatre. Matt couldn’t help but be impressed by Poppy’s expertise. Except for requests for unanticipated instruments, she’d been virtually silent throughout, but it hadn’t been an icy silence that had put the staff on tenterhooks; the case had done that on its own. Given the complexity of the surgery, she’d done the repair in a remarkably short space of time, giving Daryl the best chance of survival. It had been a lesson to Matt that she knew her stuff and did it well. Although many visiting surgeons had her air of authority, not all of them had the skills to match.
It had been one of the most challenging anaesthetics he’d ever given due to the patient being haemodynamically unstable, and maintaining his pressure had been a constant battle. Thankfully, Daryl had survived the emergency surgery and was now ventilated and on his way to Perth.
Once the flying doctor’s plane had taken off and the night shift had arrived, Matt no longer had a reason to stay at the hospital. As he took the long way home it occurred to him that even Poppy had left the hospital before him, finally taking with her those bright red cases that matched her lips.
Again, shame washed through him. He hated it that he kept thinking about her bee-stung lips. He didn’t want to because they belonged to a woman who was so different in every way from his wife that it didn’t warrant thinking about. When he thought of Lisa the words ‘fair, soft and gentle’ came to mind. Poppy Stanfield wouldn’t understand the description.
He pulled into his carport and as he reluctantly walked towards the dark and empty house, memories of past homecomings assailed him.
‘Tough case, honey?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, you’re home now.’ Lisa leaned in to kiss him. ‘Annie’s already in bed and our room is deliciously cool.’
His key hit the lock and the door swung open, releasing trapped and cloying heat, which carried silence with it in stark contrast to the past. God, he hated coming back to this house now.
Yeah, well, you hated not living in it.
He dropped his keys in a dish he’d brought home from the Pacific and which now sat permanently on the hall table, and thought about the months he’d stayed away from Bundallagong. Being back hurt as much as being away.
He turned the air-conditioner onto high, poured himself iced water and briefly contemplated going to bed. Picking up the remote, he turned on the television, rationalising that if he was going to stare at the ceiling he’d be better off staring at a screen. He flicked through the channels, unable to settle on watching anything that involved a story and eventually stared mindlessly at motor racing, the noise of the vehicles slowly lulling him into a soporific stupor.
He was back on the beach again, with dry heat warming his skin and coconut palms swaying in the breeze, a peaceful idyll that promised so much. Set back from the sand line was a grass hut, its roof thatched with dried sugarcane leaves, and he strode towards it quickly, anticipation humming through his veins. His family was waiting for him. He stepped up onto the lanai but instead of cane chairs there was a stretcher. Bewildered, he stepped over it and walked into the fale, expecting to see the daybed, but instead he was in an operating theatre that looked like a set from MASH, with patients lined up row upon row, some with sheets pulled over their heads. Voices shouted but he didn’t recognise the words, and he turned back, wanting to run, but the lanai had vanished, leaving splintered timber as the only evidence of its existence.
Deafening noise roared and his arms came up to protect his head and then his eyes were suddenly open and the television was blaring out so loudly the walls vibrated. He must have rolled on the remote, taking the volume to full blast, and he quickly pumped it back to a bearable level, but the ringing in his ears took a moment to fade. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the buzzing, and thought perhaps bed was a better option than the couch—not that he wanted to sleep because the dreams would terrorise him.
As he swung his feet to the floor, a woman’s scream curdled his blood. He quickly shoved his feet into his shoes, grabbed a torch and ran outside.
He heard a wire door slam and he moved his torch round to the house on his left, the house owned by the hospital. With a start he saw a tall, barefoot woman dressed in a long T-shirt standing on the steps, her arms wrapped tightly around her.
He jogged over as the outside lamp cast her in a pool of yellow light. ‘Poppy? What the hell happened? Are you all right?’
She shuddered, her height seeming slightly diminished. She swallowed and it was if she had to force her throat to work. ‘Mice.’
He knew his expression would be incredulous. The woman who’d stormed into his department with an approach similar to a man marking his territory had been reduced to a trembling mess by a mouse. For months he hadn’t been able to laugh and now he had to try hard not to. ‘You’re scared of a mouse or two?’
Her head flew up and a flash of the ‘take no prisoners’ woman he’d met nine hours ago surfaced. ‘Not generally, no. But I opened the wardrobe to hang up my clothes and mice streamed out, scurrying over my feet, into my case and …’ She took a steadying breath. ‘I defy anyone, male or female, not to let out a yell of surprise when confronted by fifty of them.’
His mouth curved upwards, surprising muscles stiff from lack of use. ‘That has to be an exaggeration of about forty-eight. Are they in the kitchen too?’
‘I don’t know!’ Her voice snapped. ‘I didn’t stop to enquire if they’d taken over in there as well.’
Don’t get involved. But he couldn’t resist a dig. ‘I did suggest you settle in to the house earlier in the day.’
Her chin shot up and she gave him a withering look. ‘I am not exaggerating, and if that is the extent of your useful advice then I suggest you shut up now and leave.’
She crossed her arms and he suddenly noticed she had breasts. Small but round and … He hauled his gaze away. ‘It’s been a few months since anyone’s lived here, although I would have thought someone would’ve checked out the house before you arrived. Who did you talk to in Administration?’
She stepped back inside, her gaze darting left and right and her long legs moving gingerly. ‘No one.’
He followed. ‘No one?’ Usually Julie was very efficient.
‘Me coming up here was—’ She stopped abruptly for a moment. ‘I rushed up here because the town was desperate. The fax telling you I was coming probably only arrived a few hours before me.’
They’d been desperate for weeks so her hasty arrival without the usual planning didn’t make a lot of sense and he was about to ask her about it when a mouse raced out from under the couch.
Poppy leapt into the air, her long T-shirt rising up to expose creamy white thighs.
Matt tried not to look and instead marched like a foot soldier on patrol, punching open the kitchen door. Every surface was covered in mouse scats.
He heard Poppy’s shocked gasp from the doorway but by the time he’d turned, her face was the usual mask of control, although she had a slight tremble about her.
‘Just fabulous. This really is the icing on the cake of a stellar few days, and yet the poets wax lyrical about the bush.’
A startling fragility hovered around her eyes despite her sarcasm and he had an unexpected moment of feeling sorry for her. He shrugged it away. ‘Living with a few creepy-crawlies is all part of the Bundallagong allure.’
‘Not from where I’m standing it isn’t. I think we have definition conflict on the word “few”.’
Again he found himself wanting to smile yet at the same time a feeling of extreme restlessness dragged at him. He flung open cupboards and found mice squeaking and scurrying everywhere amidst bags of pasta, cereal, oats and biscuits, all of which had been chewed and their contents scattered. He slammed the doors shut. ‘OK, you were right. It’s a plague and with this many mice it probably means you don’t have a python.’
Her eyes widened like the ongoing expanse of Outback sky and her hands flew to her hips. ‘No snake? And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Hell, and they give surgeons a bad rap about their bedside manner.’
This time the urge to smile won. ‘Actually, a python would have meant fewer mice. I haven’t seen an infestation like this in years. Your predecessor must have left food and I guess the cleaners figured it was non-perishable and left it for the next occupant. Thing is, time marched on and the mice moved in. Julie can get the exterminator to come in the morning.’
‘The morning.’ The words came out as a choked wail loaded with realisation. Another mouse shot past her and she stiffened for a second before hastily retreating to the lounge room.
Matt crossed the kitchen and leaned against the architrave, watching her. She had her back to him and was standing on tiptoe, reducing her contact with the floor to the bare minimum. One hand tugged at the base of the T-shirt in an attempt to make it longer, and the other pressed her mobile phone to her ear as she spoke briskly.
‘Yes, I need the number for motels in Bundallagong. I don’t have a pen so can you put me through direct?’
He thought about the suit she’d worn when they’d met and how it had been followed by surgical scrubs. Both garments had given her a unisex look, but the baggy shirt she wore now hid little. Poppy Stanfield might sound like a general but she had the seductive curves of a woman.
Heat hit him, making him hard, followed immediately by a torrent of gut-wrenching guilt. He loved Lisa. No woman could match her but for some reason his body had disconnected from his brain and was busy having a lust-fest. He hated it and every part of him wanted to get the hell out of the house and away from Poppy Stanfield and that damn T-shirt. But he co
uldn’t leave, not until he knew she was settled in a motel. So he moved instead, putting distance between them by crossing the room and tugging his gaze away from the sweet curve of her behind that swelled out the T so beautifully that his palm itched.
He stared at the blank walls and then at the couch with a ferocious intensity he’d never before given to decor. He noticed a significant-size hole in the material covering the couch and realised the inside was probably full of rodents too. It would take days before baits and traps took effect, making the house liveable again.
He started making plans in his head to keep his mind off those long, shapely legs. As soon as he knew which motel she’d got a room at, he’d set the GPS in the hospital vehicle for her so she wouldn’t get lost at this late hour. There’d be no point driving her because she’d need the car to get to and from the hospital.
Yeah, that, and you don’t want to be in a car alone with her.
Poppy’s voice suddenly went silent and the next moment, with a frustrated yell, she hurled her phone with a great deal of feeling onto the soft cushions of the couch. It was her first display of ‘surgical temper’.
The outburst—so very different from Lisa’s quiet approach—made him feel less guilty about getting hard, and yet it was so full of energy and life that it swirled around him, both pulling him in and pushing him away. After months of not feeling anything this maelstrom of emotions confused and scared him, and when he spoke, the words shot out harsh and loud. ‘No instruments to throw?’
She didn’t even raise a killing look. ‘I have never thrown anything in Theatre, although I did train with a master thrower and once had to dodge a chair.’ She plonked herself down hard on the couch, threw her head back and closed her eyes. ‘This is a nightmare.’
Grey shadows hovered under her eyes and she looked exhausted.
‘Actually, it’s probably not a good idea to sit on that.’ He pointed to the gnawed hole.