They walked across the farmyard to where the tanks stood and collected rainwater from the shed roofs. The pump shifted the water from the tanks to the house. No pump, no running water. And the pump was old, way past its use-by date, like everything else in this place.
Sam held the torch steady while Jess gingerly lifted off the cover.
‘Watch out for red-back spiders, Mum. Last time Dad took off the cover there was this huge one underneath, and some eggs.’
‘Oh, good,’ she muttered and kneeled down beside the pump. She was flummoxed, she didn’t know where to start. Darren or her dad always did this sort of stuff. She turned the power switch on and off a couple of times, found a reset button and flicked it, but the pump remained mute, like the inanimate lump of metal it was.
Mikey peered over her shoulder. ‘Any red-backs?’
‘I dunno, mate. Sam, pass me the torch, will you.’
She shone the light all over the pump, hadn’t a clue what she was looking for. Water dripped from the bottom. She didn’t think it was supposed to.
‘Dad would know how to fix it,’ Mikey said, and Jess gritted her teeth.
‘Yeah, but he’s not here, is he, dumb arse?’ Sam said.
‘Sam, don’t call your brother a dumb arse. In fact, don’t call anyone a dumb arse.’ Mikey giggled. She leaned on the pump and pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’ll ask Uncle Jake in the morning. Tonight we’ll have to fill buckets from the tank by the back door. It’s school again tomorrow so we’ll heat water in the kettle for your baths.’
Mikey ran off towards the house. ‘I’ll get buckets,’ he yelled.
‘Slow down or you’ll trip over,’ Jess shouted after him.
‘Mum,’ Sam said as they walked side by side, the torchlight a narrow beam in front of them. ‘Do you think Dad will ever come back? On the phone the other night, when I asked him, he said he didn’t know. If he doesn’t come back, will Uncle Jake come and live here so he can look after the farm?’
Jess put her arm around her son’s shoulders. ‘I don’t know, mate. I didn’t know he was going to go, so I have no idea if he’ll come back.’ She cursed Darren for the millionth time. ‘I know he loves you. You and Mikey. Remember that.’
‘What about Uncle Jake?’
‘He has his own life, Sam. He left the farm twenty years ago because he didn’t want to be a farmer. We’re lucky he’s here now, helping out because Poppa’s sick.’
Sam fell silent and Jess wondered what was going through his head. It broke her heart that he’d been forced to think about these things, things no ten-year-old should have to consider. When her mother had left, she’d only been a year older, and she remembered the pain and confusion.
‘I love you, Sam,’ she said. ‘I promise we’ll manage, one way or another, whether your dad comes back or not.’
He nodded and the torch beam wavered.
‘I reckon the batteries are getting flat, Mum,’ he said.
Another thing to replace and no money to do it with. She’d have to ring Centrelink again, first thing in the morning. She felt sick at the thought.
Laura’s last patient for the day reminded her of her mother.
There was something about the way the woman tilted her head and said hello. When she did, Laura’s heart constricted and her mouth went dry. She sat down and reached for the glass of water on the desk, glancing at the computer screen for the patient’s details. Claudia Samuels. Born the same year as Amelia O’Connor, Laura’s mother.
‘Mrs Samuels, what can I do for you today?’
‘Please call me Claudia,’ she said. Claudia crossed slim, tanned legs and moved her handbag from her lap to the floor.
Laura took a sip of water and it was like she knew, before the patient spoke again, what Claudia was going to tell her.
‘I’m not sure you can do anything. It’s probably just old age catching up with me, but my daughter’s been on my back to see a doctor because I haven’t been feeling myself lately.’
‘In what way, and for how long?’ Laura’s lips felt clumsy as she formed the simple words. Trying not to gulp the water, she concentrated on the feel of the cool liquid as it slid across her tongue and down her throat.
‘I’ve felt off over the last couple of months, I’d say. Hot flushes, and I have this dragging, nagging, lower back pain. I’ve lost a few kilos and I feel so tired all the time.’
‘Have you been trying to lose weight?’
‘Not at all! For once in my life.’
Laura looked at Claudia and saw her mother. Spinning back through time she shifted in the chair and tried to breathe into the band of anxiety tightening around her chest. It was over two years ago but it seemed like only yesterday her mother had been saying the same things to her . . .
Claudia coughed politely. ‘Are you all right, Doctor O’Connor?’ she said with genuine concern.
Laura snapped back to the present. She blinked. This woman wasn’t her mother. She was her patient. There was no reason it should be the same in any way.
‘Yes, I’m fine. It’s been a busy day. Mondays always are. Now, you said you hadn’t been trying to lose weight but you had lost weight regardless, and you feel tired.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, Claudia, we’ll start with the obvious and work our way through.’ Laura reached for the blood pressure cuff. The tightness in her chest had eased. ‘If there is something wrong, we’ll find it. I won’t leave one stone unturned until we do.’
Claudia’s expression lightened. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
Laura had promised Claudia Samuels she’d contact her when the results for the tests came in. The health centre was deserted, everyone had left except her, and the only sounds were the hum of the air conditioner and the rattle of the drug fridge in the treatment room. She tapped her fingers on the desk as she waited for the file to open on the computer.
Then her eyes were scanning rapidly. Blood rushed in her ears. As she scrolled down the columns, she saw the asterisks and notations against several of the figures indicating they were outside the normal range. A lot outside the normal range. Laura’s head pounded. She looked at the results again, at the notes that went with them, and the report from the emergency pelvic ultrasound. Then she rang her patient.
Forty-five minutes later Laura lifted her arms above her head and stretched. The air-conditioning, on a timer, had turned itself off and the room was stifling. She needed to go home. A specialist’s referral letter for Claudia Samuels, with a Post-it note saying the patient would pick it up tomorrow, sat on the desk in front of her.
A door slammed. She jumped up, then stood stock-still, listening, heart about to burst out of her chest. Kaylene should have locked the doors on her way out. Footsteps. Laura swallowed, her throat as dry as sandpaper. There were drugs on the premises. Her consulting door was three-quarters shut. She opened her mouth, about to call out and ask who was there, when the door burst open and her knees buckled.
Milt Burns stalked into her consulting room. Where the hell had he come from?
‘How dare you!’ he spat, a piece of paper flapping in his hand.
‘Excuse me?’ she said, bracing herself on the edge of the desk. ‘How dare I what?’
‘How dare you go behind my back ordering unnecessary tests for one of my patients,’ he snarled, his face an unhealthy shade of purple. He threw the slip of paper and it fluttered across her desk and onto the floor.
Bending to retrieve it she quickly scanned the pathology report, a picture coming to mind of the thin, unwell woman, reluctant to have another blood test. Laura had seen her the day Milt had been away. She tapped the paper with her finger and let the anger swell inside her. She’d had a crap day, she was tired, heartsore and she had just given a patient some not-so-good news.
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘There was certainly something going on with her. All that weight loss. At least we know now and can start treatment. She’ll need a referral t
o an endocrinologist.’
‘I’ve been seeing that woman most of her adult life,’ he blustered. ‘I’ve delivered her babies, taken her husband’s gallbladder out, buried her father and, to this very day, I take care of her demented mother in the nursing home.’
Laura drew herself up to her full height, stabbed a finger at him and said, ‘And your point is?’ She launched in. ‘I saw the patient. She was unwell. I assessed her. I read her case notes and path reports and in my professional opinion she needed more tests, so I took blood and sent it off.’
He swore and told her to bloody well butt out of his patients’ business.
‘And just how do I determine which patients are yours and which are mine, Milt? To my mind, if I see them here or at the hospital, they are in my care. That makes them my patients for the duration and I’ll treat them accordingly. I treated Jason Coombes accordingly, but you put your ego ahead of good practice and subsequently threatened his life.’
Milt’s face went from puce to pale in a matter of seconds and he shrank before her very eyes.
‘Forgive me,’ she gasped, her hand going to her mouth. ‘I should never have said that.’
But her words were out there. They seemed to hang in the airless room.
‘No, no, I’m the one who should apologise. I did exactly that. I put my ego ahead of good practice.’
Laura’s eyes widened. Milt’s shoulders slumped and he looked like a defeated old man. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She rasped her tongue over dry lips and tried again. ‘Why are you at the health centre, anyway?’
‘We got back from the city a while ago. I wanted to go through a few things before tomorrow. It seems to take me twice as long to get half as much done these days.’ He made a hollow, joyless sound.
‘I suppose you’ll be moving on soon, returning to your practice in Adelaide,’ he said.
Laura was taken aback by Milt’s adroit shift from a patient’s pathology results to her practice in Adelaide. She hadn’t given the place a serious thought for weeks. Was he building up to giving her the sack because she’d interfered with his patients? She reached for the glass on the desk but it was empty, not even a sip of water left to moisten her dry mouth.
‘I have no immediate plans to leave,’ she said. ‘Unless . . .’ she added when the silence began to echo.
‘Right.’ And with that he turned and left her room, leaving her more bewildered than before.
She sank into her chair. She dropped her head into her hands, and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
When she walked out to the car park fifteen minutes later, the streetlights were on and there was no sign of Milt’s Holden Statesman. Laura felt like she’d been run over by a truck. She’d seen patients nonstop since arriving at the health centre that morning and the day before had been the same. She’d missed lunch today to stitch a lacerated arm at the hospital, and then, to top it all off, had copped Milt Burns’s tirade. And of course she couldn’t forget Claudia Samuels.
Jake looked up from his laptop to find Laura silhouetted in the kitchen doorway. It was Tuesday night, late, the kitchen was cast in shadows and there was not a breath of breeze through the open window. The smell of garlic, tomatoes and melted cheese lingered from the frozen dinner he’d zapped earlier.
‘Laura?’ Her name came out as a question. His chair scraped across the vinyl as he rose. She didn’t budge from the doorway. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing. Everything. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I had a shit of a day. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Milt Burns showed up and tore a strip off me for correctly diagnosing one of his patients.’ She frowned. ‘I, um, well, I said some not too complimentary things about him. I thought he was going to give me the sack, but then he just walked out.’
‘You need a hug?’
‘Yep.’
In three strides he crossed the room and gently pulled her into his arms. She sank into him, her arms slid around his waist as she burrowed her head against his shoulder, and it felt so right. He rested his cheek against her hair, absorbing the smell and feel of her and willing his body not to rise to the occasion and disgrace him.
He smoothed his hand up and down her back. Slowly she eased herself away from him with a flicker of a smile.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
She went to the sink, filled the kettle and began the tea-making ritual. He leaned against the kitchen bench and watched her, not having the heart to tell her the last thing he felt like was tea. A good single malt, or two, might go some way to hitting the spot, numb the ache that got worse every time he looked at her, touched her.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What if he had sacked you?’
He couldn’t see her expression but he saw her hands tremble as she poured boiling water into the pot. ‘I’ve never been sacked before. Just given leave —’ She paused but not before Jake heard the self-recrimination in her tone. When she finally turned towards him her eyes were glassy with tears.
‘Hey,’ he said and reached for her. He pulled her close again, wrapping his arms around her, but she stood rigid against him. When she didn’t relax he let her go again and it left him feeling frustrated, useless in the face of her distress.
‘Wanna talk about it?’ he said gently.
Indecision flitted across her face.
‘I thought I was going to have another anxiety attack yesterday. I haven’t had one for months.’ He raised his eyebrows and her focus flicked to a spot somewhere over his shoulder. ‘It’s why I’m on leave, I had a serious meltdown at work,’ she said, and he could hear how hard it was for her to talk about it. ‘And then the patient yesterday, she was so much like my mother,’ she whispered. ‘This evening her blood results came —’ She gave a choked sob. ‘I’m not sure I can do this, Jake. I thought I could. I thought I was ready, but now I don’t know.’
Jake itched to reach out to her but she was lost in her own private hell. Like an automaton she poured tea, added milk to hers, then picked up the mug and cradled it with both hands, staring into the steaming brew.
‘Maybe he should have sacked me.’
‘Will you listen to yourself, Laura? I’ve never heard such crap in my whole life. So he tore a strip off you? It sounds like you gave back as good as you got.’
She gave a tired lift of her shoulders. His tea cooled on the kitchen bench as he watched her absently drink hers. When she’d finished, she rinsed the cup and reached for his, and noticed he hadn’t touched it.
‘Sorry,’ she said with a twist of her lips as she tipped the tea down the sink. ‘I just assumed you’d want tea.’
‘I’ve made the old man so many cups of tea I’m about over the bloody stuff.’
‘How is he?’
He heaved a heavy sigh, let her change the subject. ‘In a lot of pain, I think, but he keeps it to himself. I hope he’s well enough to make the trip out to the farm for his birthday. Jess has her heart set on it. It’ll be the last time and all that, and I don’t think he’ll make Christmas. Oh, yeah, she asked me to invite you to the birthday bash, if you’re free.’
‘I’d like that very much. As long as I’m not intruding.’
Jake rolled his eyes. ‘I won’t even dignify that with a response, Laura.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll come. Do you want me to ring Jess, or will you tell her?’
‘I’ll tell her.’
Laura glanced at his laptop on the kitchen table. ‘How come you’re still up at this hour? Couldn’t you sleep either?’
‘No.’
She tipped her head to one side and gave him a professional once-over. Her blue eyes had lost some of their bleakness.
‘If you’re having trouble sleeping, why don’t you see Milt Burns and get a script for some sleeping pills? Something mild that doesn’t knock you out, that way you can hear your dad if he calls out. It might help get you through.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said, uncomfortable now
under her steady scrutiny. She was one of the reasons he couldn’t sleep. ‘We were talking about you, remember?’
She reached across the space between them and put her hand on his arm. ‘Jake, you can’t work all day at the farm and care for your dying father without eventually falling in a heap yourself. You’ll be no good to anyone.’
He got it. She wasn’t going to say any more about why she couldn’t sleep. He went to the kitchen table, stabbed at the computer keyboard to shut it down. And damnit, he knew she was right. He closed the lid on the laptop. He was wrecked. Darren the loser had left Jess to manage the farm and the finances, both of which were in chaos, on her own. The farm was on the verge of bankruptcy. Plus she had the kids to think about. He was trying to work out how she’d manage when he wasn’t there, and he was trying to look after the old man but he was dying before his very eyes. He shoved the laptop into its bag, while Laura stood across the table from him, watching him.
‘Have you talked to him yet, sorted out your differences? Time’s running out.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘Jake,’ she started. ‘You need to sleep. Do you want me to ask Milt to write you a script? I could write you one, but I’d rather not, seeing as you’re not my patient.’
Emotion roiled around inside him. Anger, guilt, frustration, fear.
‘Laura,’ he said, ‘I’m not Doctor Burns’s patient either and I don’t need any fucking sleeping pills.’ He saw her recoil, but he ploughed on. ‘If I wanted pills, the old man has a whole fucking pharmacy I could choose from. What I need right now is —’ He stopped.
Just in time.
‘What?’ she said.
He bit down until his teeth ached.
‘Jake?’
Her voice was soft, insistent and oh so sexy.
‘You.’ He looked straight at her. ‘You. You must have realised by now, I want you so much it hurts.’
She took a step towards him.
He laughed with self-derision, then softened it with a small smile. ‘But I wouldn’t do that to you, Laura. I won’t inflict my screwed-up self on you.’
The Doctor Calling Page 22