Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  Anna started to protest, then realised the fifteen minutes they’d save might make all the difference in saving Mr Cullen’s hand.

  She climbed into the passenger seat of her car and phoned Penny, explaining why Tom was driving her and that he’d be in touch from the Cullens’ house.

  ‘What’s a grain auger?’ Anna asked, when she’d finished her conversation with Penny.

  ‘It’s a long metal spiral thingy inside a metal tube—like a long carpenter’s drill. It works on a motor, and as it turns it lifts grain from one place to another—perhaps from a bin to a silo, or from a silo to a feed drum.’

  ‘Oh!’

  The thought of a man’s hand caught in such a device was horrifying.

  ‘I think you’d be looking at crush injuries, and possibly partial amputation.’

  Anna tried to picture the metal spiral turning within its tube, pulling the man’s hand up with it.

  ‘Crush injuries might be good,’ she said, more to herself than to Tom. ‘At least if it’s wedged tight, it might shut off any damaged blood vessels so there’s less danger of a bad haemorrhage.’

  ‘Except that he’s a farmer and needs two hands, preferably two that work.’

  ‘And with crush injuries, the damage might be irreversible.’ Anna admitted the possibility, her voice husky with concern. Then her mind returned to the problem of the auger.

  ‘Does it have a reverse—this machine? Do you know? Could we make it run backwards and release the hand?’

  ‘I imagine if it does, Kevin will have tried that,’ Tom said, peering ahead to find the turn-off they needed.

  ‘So we’d have to cut the metal sleeve to get his hand out—and somehow do it so we don’t injure him more. Perhaps above or below where it’s caught…’

  Tom glanced towards his passenger. He could only see her profile as she looked out into the night, but he could hear her frown in the worried tone of voice and could almost follow her thought processes as she considered what lay ahead of her. For a city girl, she was remarkably cool in emergencies—and, remembering the foaling, remarkably unfazed by the messy aspects of country life.

  A tiny spark of what-could-be flared briefly in his heart, but his mind reminded him that anyone could handle outback life if they knew it was only for a short time.

  They reached the State Forest sign and he swung in over the grid, slowing down as the road narrowed to little more than a track between the crowding rosewood trees.

  ‘Bloody stupid, that’s what I am.’

  Kevin Cullen greeted them with this growled opinion. He was sitting on a box in an open-fronted shelter, his right arm disappearing up a rusty orange tube.

  ‘If anyone knows not to put his hand near a bloody grain auger, it’s me. Didn’t I see my dad lose his fingers this way? Now I’ve gone and done it!’

  Anna, who’d introduced herself when they’d arrived, was bent over the man, checking the condition of the rest of his body, seemingly oblivious to the man’s grumbling about his own stupidity.

  ‘Do you know what part of your hand is trapped, and where in the machine it’s stuck?’

  Kevin tapped the machine about fifteen centimetres from the bottom.

  ‘The auger picked up four fingers and they’re squashed against the outside tube. They must still be attached to my hand or I’d be able to get the damn thing out. I told Mavis to reverse it but it stopped when I got caught and she couldn’t start it up again. Reckon I burnt the motor out.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ Anna told him. ‘Reversing it might have finished off the job of amputating your fingers.’

  She paused and looked around the shed, her eyes settling on a workbench in one corner.

  ‘Do you have an angle-grinder?’

  ‘What would a pretty thing like you know about angle-grinders?’ Kevin asked, and, though Tom was interested in the answer, he left the pair of them to cross to the bench. There was an angle-grinder, but not a nifty little handyman’s machine. It was so big that putting its blade anywhere near the auger would risk taking off Kevin’s whole hand.

  ‘We’ll have to use it.’

  Anna’s determined decision made him turn. She was right behind him, eyeing the power-tool with professional approval. ‘We’ll cut through the other side from the bottom up past where his hand’s caught then pry the cylinder open.’

  ‘With what?’ Tom demanded, plugging in the lead and following her back towards her patient.

  ‘I don’t know—a jack if necessary. But you two men are the outback guys—you should be able to think of something.’

  Tom wasn’t sure why Anna’s confidence was disconcerting, but realised now wasn’t the time to think about why a woman who looked like her would know about power-tools. Now he had to concentrate on cutting Tom free, and think about how they could pry the metal apart.

  ‘I’ve got a small clamp over there—you can put it in the split and wind it out rather than in,’ Kevin offered, apparently unperturbed by the thought of someone wielding an angle-grinder so close to his injured hand.

  Anna fetched the clamp—more familiarity with tools—then turned her attention to the patient.

  ‘It’s going to hurt like hell the moment Tom releases the pressure. In fact, the vibration of the blade cutting will hurt first. I’m going to give you some morphine and it will make you woozy so Mavis and I will hold you steady. I don’t want you keeling over and putting more stress on your hand.’

  She injected the painkiller then organised Mavis into position. Tom watched with a surprise bordering on disbelief. He knew doctors could cope with most situations—but a city doctor behaving so calmly in this bizarre accident? A city doctor who looked more like a model than a medical expert?

  It was even stranger than her knowledge of power-tools.

  Anna braced herself against her patient, and nodded to Tom to start cutting. Her stomach churned with anxiety and she hoped Kevin couldn’t feel the tremors of fear running through her body. She knew the most important thing in any emergency was to remain calm, so had made a supreme effort to project an unruffled demeanour, as well appear totally confident in her actions and speech.

  Had it worked?

  And would they be able to cut Kevin free?

  She had no idea but knew they had to try.

  The ambulance arrived as Tom was prying the metal cylinder open. Fortunately, Tom had passed out by now, so was unaware of the problems they were having. The ambulance carried small implements modelled on the larger ‘jaws of life’ used to pry open car bodies to release trapped patients. These worked well, and within minutes of the ambulance’s arrival Anna had Tom’s hand resting on a sterile dressing while she examined the damage.

  ‘He needs an expert hand surgeon to put it back together,’ she said, wrapping it loosely. ‘I’ll check if there’s one in Rocky, but otherwise he’ll have to go to Brisbane. Maybe Brisbane would be better anyway, which means a plane retrieval rather than the helicopter.’

  She didn’t realise she was thinking aloud until the ambulance driver offered to get on the radio straight away to organise it.

  Anna nodded, but absent-mindedly. The palm and fingers of Kevin’s hand were badly crushed and it would be a delicate job, piecing together injured nerves and tendons, but right now it was the bleeding that worried her most.

  ‘He’s always been a bleeder,’ Mavis said, picking up on Anna’s anxiety. ‘Not one of those haemophiliacs, but says he’s close, he bleeds that much!’

  Anna nodded. At the moment she was keeping a gentle pressure on his wrist and it was enough to slow the flow, but for transport?

  The ambulance men lifted the supine patient onto a stretcher and Anna, still holding his wrist, turned to Tom.

  ‘I need to go back with him. Do you mind bringing my car back to the hospital?’

  He was over by the bench, where he’d restored the angle-grinder and clamp to their rightful positions.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘You go, I�
��ll stay with Mavis and see what she wants to do.’

  ‘I’ve got no choice,’ Mavis said. ‘I’ve got to stay here. Kevin’ll understand. He knows, with the drought, the animals have to be fed.’

  She sounded brave but despairing, but when Anna turned to her, asking her to pack a small bag for Kevin and to include any medication he was on, she hurried away, no doubt grateful to have something to do to take her mind off her injured husband’s imminent departure.

  Tom joined Anna who was now examining Kevin’s hand again, though this time at the rear of the ambulance.

  ‘The spotlights at the back give better light than we had in the shed,’ she explained, using a probe to pick a grain of wheat from the lacerated palm.

  ‘Do you tie off those blood vessels?’ he asked, as the oozing blood obliterated everything.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Anna told him. ‘Not if I can avoid it. The more I fiddle with the things the more chance there is of doing further damage to nerve fibres that run alongside or underneath them. It’s easier to replace blood,’ she added, nodding to the bottle of fluid already hooked up to a vein in Kevin’s good arm. ‘It’s just a matter of controlling the bleeding without compromising blood delivery to the uninjured part of his hand.’

  ‘If there is such a place,’ Tom said, doubtfully eyeing the mangled flesh.

  ‘There is,’ Anna said stoutly. ‘This man’s a farmer and needs both his hands!’

  She rewrapped the injured hand carefully, then stepped back as the ambulance men loaded her patient into the vehicle.

  ‘You go, I’ll bring the bag Mavis is packing,’ Tom said, then he touched her lightly on the shoulder, bringing a wave of awareness washing across her skin. ‘I’ll see you at home.’

  The final words brought another wave, this time along her nerves.

  Her only hope of retaining any sanity lay in avoiding him—at all times, at all costs…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AVOIDING Tom might have become essential now, but right when the excuse of learning her new job would have proved useful, work slackened off. Suddenly, no one was getting ill, or perhaps it was simply that Anna had become familiar with the routine and better at handling the interruptions in her daily schedule.

  As if in celebration of this lull, the news from Brisbane was good. Microsurgeons had pieced together Kevin’s hand and though he was still hospitalised down there and would stay for intensive physiotherapy once the surgical scars healed, the surgeons were optimistic he would regain ninety per cent function.

  Anna had even had time to go out and visit Mavis, wanting to explain in person what was going on and how Kevin was responding to the surgery.

  But even with this and other home visits to patients, Anna now had time on her hands, so when Beryl Martin, the head of the local shire council, asked her to open the Merriwee Art Show the following Saturday night, she agreed.

  ‘The opening is at seven-thirty,’ Beryl explained, capturing Anna in the corridor outside the hospital kitchen. ‘But I’ve asked a few people to an early buffet dinner at my place first, so come along there at six. You remember how to get there?’

  Anna nodded. She’d met Beryl several times, and had been to her house to discuss the arrangement by which the hospital kitchen supplied the meals for the volunteer meals-on-wheels service—one of many services in the town headed by the seemingly tireless and indomitable Beryl.

  ‘So, although opening the local art show might not rate right up there with playing polo against royalty,’ Anna said to Philip when he phoned on Saturday afternoon, ‘at least tonight I’ll meet some of the locals socially, rather than professionally.’

  ‘You’ve not met any of them yet?’ Even over thousands of kilometres of radio waves Philip could sound incredulous. ‘What on earth have you been doing in your spare time?’

  ‘What spare time?’ Anna retorted, but Philip was already telling her about the friends he’d caught up with at the opera in Milan when he’d flown in for business and been fortunate enough to get tickets.

  He’s always fortunate enough to get tickets, Anna thought to herself, then realised that even thinking such a thing was bitchy, so she made up for it with noises of appreciation and amazement as Philip talked on.

  And on!

  It meant she had to rush through her shower, with no time to wash her hair, and she was left with little time after showering to decide what one wore to open an art show in Merriwee.

  She hadn’t realised just what a problem clothes could be until she’d arrived in Merriwee. Warnings of the heat had prompted her to pack miniskirts and skimpy tops, but she’d soon learnt they weren’t the kind of clothes the locals expected their doctor to wear. At work, her white coats were long enough to cover up the fact her skirts were too short, and, in spite of over 40-degree heat, she usually wore jeans when she went uptown.

  But to open an art show?

  ‘Nothing too flashy, I assume,’ she said, staring into the wardrobe though she knew there was nothing even approaching the calf-length linen skirts and shirt-style tops most of the older local women wore.

  ‘But not too dressy. The women here are stylish, but generally conservative where clothes are concerned.’

  The cat, no doubt hearing Anna’s voice and perhaps assuming her company was Tom, appeared and slid into the open wardrobe.

  ‘Don’t take up residence in there,’ Anna warned, but the movement of the animal had shifted things slightly and she noticed a green linen shift she’d bought while staying with friends in Melbourne.

  She pulled it out and slipped it on, smiling because it was a dress that, right from the first time she’d seen it, she’d liked for its elegant simplicity. Best of all, it came down to her knees—not calf-length, but better than mid-thigh!

  Brushing her hair back, she used clips to hold it behind her ears, an easy way to make it look as if she’d made an effort with it. Though now, of course, she needed earrings.

  She flicked through the mess in her jewellery case, glad Philip, who was always telling her she should take better care of the jewels he gave her, wasn’t here to see the disorder. Not that she could wear anything Philip had given her to open an art show in Merriwee. A big diamond on an engagement ring was one thing—diamond drop earrings that reached to her shoulders were quite another.

  Fishing around, she found the tiny diamond studs her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday and, removing the plain gold studs she usually wore, she slid the diamond ones into her ears.

  ‘A bit of make-up and we’re done,’ she told Cassie, who had finished exploring the wardrobe and was now sitting on the bed. But when Anna whirled in front of the cat for final approval, all she got was the narrow-eyed stare.

  ‘Well, rats to you!’ Anna said, and walked out of the room, though she soon returned, searching through her usual handbag for her mobile and transferring it to the small green bag she was carrying tonight. Peter was on call, but she didn’t like being completely out of touch.

  She reached Beryl’s place only slightly late, then was made later by having to circle the block in search of a parking space. Parking problems in Merriwee? Had Beryl invited the entire town to dinner before the show?

  Huffing from her fast walk, Anna climbed the front steps to the wide veranda of the high-set house. Social chat and laughter, loud above music, masked Anna’s knock, but someone passing across the long hallway that led to the back of the house took pity on her and ushered her inside.

  ‘You can’t stand on ceremony out here,’ the middle-aged man said. ‘Just knock and walk right in. That’s the rule in most of the places in Merriwee, and on the country properties, too. Out on a property, the missus might be teaching her kids and have School of the Air going. She can’t be getting up to the door every time someone knocks, now, can she?’

  The stranger had his hand on Anna’s back, guiding her forward in a way that was becoming familiar. Though not as familiar as the first face she saw. Inevitable, really, as he sto
od head and shoulders above the two women to whom he was talking.

  Tom was wearing a blue shirt again, but tonight the sleeves were rolled down, cuffs and collar buttoned and a neatly knotted but conservatively striped tie had been added to what was almost a uniform for him. Yet, even with the tie, he still looked every bit an outdoorsman, a man who’d be as much at home in the vast paddocks of the outback as the cattlemen he served.

  ‘Ah, there’s your man, he’ll take care of you now,’ Anna’s guide announced, steering her towards Tom. ‘Beryl’s somewhere around. She’ll catch up with you.’

  The good Samaritan beat a hasty retreat, and the two women who’d been with Tom also disappeared, leaving her alone with the man she most wanted to avoid.

  And her reaction to being alone with him reminded her of why avoidance was a necessity. Though still in the middle of a noisy gathering, they could have been on a desert island for all the impact the fellow guests were having on Anna. Her entire body was alert to Tom’s presence, as if being near him was akin to being plugged into a high-voltage power line. It hummed and shivered, while her mind, maybe shocked by the power surge, went totally blank.

  ‘They’re being kind. Giving us time to greet each other in relative privacy,’ Tom explained. His large hand touched her lightly on the arm, and his blue eyes seemed to be photographing her.

  The touch helped, earthing her energised body, but still no words would come and all she could do was look up into his face, absorbing the rugged lines of nose, cheekbones, chin, and catching a glimpse of a strange light in the mesmerising blue eyes.

  ‘You look very beautiful,’ he said quietly, and Anna felt the kind of blush she’d thought she’d left behind in adolescence climb up her neck and into her cheeks.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ she said, stumbling over the words in her haste to appear cool and in control while her body, thrumming with the charge, was anything but cool, and her mind far from in control.