Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  He went to work but, though he tried to put it all out of his mind, images of Caitlin swam before his eyes, while the feel of her was imprinted on every sensory receptor in every millimetre of his skin.

  What was worse, he realised as he checked Mrs Rennie’s ulcerated leg, now he’d alienated Caitlin he was no longer in a position to provide even minimal protection for her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Rennie, but it’s not getting better. I’d like to admit you to hospital for a few days. I can give you a stronger antibiotic in a drip into your arm and while you’re there the nurses can change the dressing more regularly. If that doesn’t improve it, we might have to think about a skin graft.’

  The elderly woman smiled at him.

  ‘As long as you use someone else’s skin,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want you peeling off any of mine. A bit of your own would do.’

  He dredged a smile from somewhere, knowing how much she enjoyed a little joke.

  ‘You’d take a bit of peeling, Mrs R.,’ he said, helping her to her feet and out the door then giving Margaret, his nurse, instructions for the dressing.

  ‘Melissa, would you phone the hospital and ask them to get a bed ready to admit Mrs Rennie?’

  He looked around the waiting room, seeking the patient’s daughter, Charlene.

  ‘You’re going to put her into hospital?’ Charlene, who’d heard his conversation with Melissa, asked.

  Connor nodded. ‘I can treat it better in there,’ he said.

  ‘You might also be able to make sure she stays off her feet and rests the leg the way you’ve been telling her to. I’ve tried to make her do it, Connor, but she won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Do women ever listen to anyone?’ Connor muttered, and Charlene laughed.

  ‘Only when the advice agrees with what they want to do themselves,’ she told him, then, as her mother came out of the treatment room, she stepped forward to take her arm and lead her gently back out to the car.

  ‘We’ve time to go home and pack some things for her?’ Charlene turned back to ask Connor.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, then he called his next patient.

  ‘He’s just not well,’ Mary Cousins told Connor, ushering four-year-old Sam towards the consulting room. ‘He’s tired, doesn’t want to play…’

  Fear gripped Connor, as strong as a hand around his throat, making it difficult to breathe—to speak.

  He helped Sam onto the examination table and stood beside him, talking to him as he touched and prodded him, gently pressing his palm into the child’s abdomen, feeling him flinch slightly, then easing the lower eyelid down to check his eyes.

  ‘Is it…?’

  Mary couldn’t say the word, but Connor knew and shook his head.

  ‘I won’t know for certain until we’ve run a blood test, but it looks more like hepatitis to me. Have you noticed any change to his urine?’

  Mary frowned, then shook her head.

  ‘He’s at a private age,’ she said, but Sam had evidently followed the conversation.

  ‘My wee’s real dark,’ he said, and Connor smiled.

  ‘I thought it might have been,’ he told the child. ‘Now, we need to know how you got this bug. Have you been out camping lately?’

  Mary was still considering the question when Sam answered again.

  ‘I went camping with Daniel’s family a few weeks ago. It was wicked. We went to a place where there were heaps of big lizards walking all around the camping area.’

  ‘Lake Terrimac,’ Mary said.

  ‘Did you drink water out of the lake?’ Connor asked.

  ‘No, Mr Collins said not to, but the day we went hiking up along the creek, I had a drink out of that.’

  ‘That could be the source of it,’ Connor said to Mary. ‘People camp right along that creek and they aren’t always careful about protecting the environment. If this is hepatitis I’ll have the water out there tested and more signs erected warning people not to drink it without boiling it first.’

  ‘So, what do we do about Sam? Are there tablets?’

  Connor shook his head.

  ‘Just rest and plenty of fluids. I’ll get the test results back in a couple of days. I’ll have Melissa phone you if I need to see you again. It’s most likely hepatitis A which is the most common form and it shouldn’t affect him in any way later on. Hepatitis B is the one you hear more about which has long-term effects.’

  He talked a little longer, and when Mary was satisfied showed her out, the phrase ‘long-term effects’ echoing in his head.

  That’s what he feared Caitlin O’Shea had had on him! Described it exactly.

  He’d have to think about that situation—try to make amends of some kind—even if only so he could stay at least professionally close to the stubborn wretch while she was here.

  His morning continued, busy enough to keep most thoughts of the shapely blonde at bay, though little things, like the phrase, brought her to mind so easily he wondered if he’d ever get her out of his head.

  Back at the little house, Caitlin had cleaned up the mess in her bedroom, taking the bed cover outside and shaking the fragments off it. Hardest to remove was the dark powder—she assumed fingerprint powder—which covered the doorknob and was brushed around the lock and the jamb.

  Being physically active soothed her anger, and by the time she’d set up her laptop where the PC had been, she was regretting not her decision to stay on in Turalla but the distance it had put between herself and Connor, just when getting closer had seemed such a tiny step away.

  She concentrated on her work, seeking connections, transferring her findings back to a large sheet of paper, where she could use different colours to pick out the familial relationships.

  Red and green were most predominant—Russells and a family called Wetherby, although they seemed to have more daughters than sons so none of the current generation had the Wetherby surname.

  She was thinking about the genetic likelihood of a family producing more daughters than sons when the phone rang.

  ‘Anthea Cummings, Caitlin. I’m sorry it’s short notice, but I’m free this morning if you’ve time to pop out.’

  Delighted at the thought of getting away from the town for a while, Caitlin agreed, checked she had the right directions, then packed up her laptop and papers and headed out of the house.

  Locking it seemed pointless now, though she’d have to decide if she was going to stay in the house or move to a motel. If she decided to stay, she should get a better lock—if only to prove to Connor she wasn’t as careless as he assumed.

  Connor…

  Thoughts of him—of the kisses they’d shared—filtered through her head as she drove out of town. They interrupted when she tried to think of work, and muddled her usually tidy mind.

  Think Wetherbys and Russells—think family ties and DNA and maybe finding one small clue that will help towards ending just one form of childhood leukaemia for ever.

  But Connor kept intruding so she was glad when she finally found the property she was seeking and turned off the main road, bouncing over the grid and down a long tree-lined drive towards the house.

  Anthea Cummings had started on a family tree, and was happy for Caitlin to take a copy of it back to the hospital.

  ‘It gives me a framework to hang the relationships on,’ Caitlin said, when she’d finished asking questions and was leaving the house.

  ‘I just hope it helps,’ Anthea told her. ‘So far, nothing else has given us even a hint of what might have caused the cluster. These things happen—that’s all the city doctors would say.’

  Caitlin smiled at her and shook her head.

  ‘It’s all anyone can say, unfortunately, until we know more about the disease and how it’s transmitted. I’m trying out a theory based more on why than how. Why one child gets it but another doesn’t. Like your family. Lucy’s the youngest of four. The older ones are now unlikely candidates, yet all have varying combinations of your genes and your husband’s.�
��

  ‘So why can’t you use the sisters and brothers of all affected children for a study, instead of doing all this family history stuff?’

  They were standing on the back steps of Anthea’s house, looking out over dusty brown acres where cattle grazed, seemingly content with the dry grass nature had provided for them.

  ‘Do you have a breeding programme for your cattle?’ Caitlin asked her.

  ‘Of course!’ Anthea paused, then nodded. ‘Yes, I understand. It’s not necessarily just Hal’s and my genes that have gone into the kids, it’s all our ancestors’. We’ve a bull here we bred ourselves and his bloodlines go back to Hal’s great-grandfather’s original herd. They proved their toughness in these harsh lands, so we try to keep some of that blood in the stock, although nowadays emphasis is on rapid growth and a low fat to muscle ratio.’

  After a few more minutes of chat, Caitlin said goodbye and left, driving back over one of the low ranges Connor had pointed out the night they’d driven to Mike’s place for dinner.

  Ironbark and wattle grew in profusion, and eucalypts Caitlin didn’t recognise by name. It was here in the timbered country that gold had been found, here that a few miners still eked out a living.

  She peered into the trees and saw thick undergrowth. Yes, it would be easy to lose your way in there. But to fall into a mine shaft? Mine shafts usually had mullock heaps around them—piles of unproductive rock thrown out as the miners dug for gold. You’d have to climb up over the heaps of stone and rubble before you could fall down.

  Wouldn’t you?

  Caitlin shook her head, not familiar enough with mines or mine shafts to really know the answer.

  Why was Angie Robinson’s death niggling in her mind?

  Because she’d been a woman and her death had occurred at a time when people had been in town investigating the cancer cluster?

  Or because of the damage inflicted on her own computer?

  A clearing by the side of the road caught her attention and she slammed on the brakes, juddered to a halt over the rough gravel, then backed up.

  A clearing, and on the far side of it a pile of stones. The mullock heap of a mine shaft?

  Well, it was close enough to the road for her to investigate. Now was the time to dispel her silly fancies.

  She turned off the engine, remembered Melissa’s description of Dr Robinson’s car and removed the keys from the ignition. Not that anything was likely to happen here. The road might be gravel but she’d passed plenty of traffic on it as she’d driven out to Anthea’s.

  She crossed the clearing, keeping a wary eye out for snakes. As she drew closer to her objective, she saw the pile of stones was, in fact, a circle, exactly how she’d imagined a mine-shaft mullock heap would look.

  Treading carefully, she climbed up, then went no further, for the black hole of the shaft yawned up at her.

  Could she slip and fall in there if she moved unwarily?

  She remembered Connor talking about snakes in the shafts and shuddered at the thought but, looking around, she wondered if falling accidentally was likely.

  In fact, she could probably step, with care, right down to the lip of that hole and peer into it without endangering life or limb. And if she were to lose her footing, surely she’d be able to grab at the edge and haul herself back up, or turn her body as she fell, and go across the hole instead of into it.

  ‘Well!’ she muttered to herself. ‘That hasn’t helped you much, but perhaps other mines are wider and deeper.’

  She clambered down to level ground again, another question pounding in her head. Why did you need to look? her brain kept asking. What could you have proved, one way or another?

  It would have been nice to know it could have been an accident.

  The answer came to her as clearly as if someone had spoken it—so precisely, in fact, that she looked around to see if someone had.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ she grumbled. ‘As if you’re not confused enough about Connor, without having Angie Robinson’s ghost haunting you as well.’

  She hurried back to her car—her speed machine—but drove very slowly home. One doctor dying an accidental death was enough for any country town.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CONNOR was waiting for her when Caitlin returned, sitting on the back veranda of the hospital where Nellie often sat.

  He walked across to the car as she pulled up, opening the door for her and holding it.

  She looked up at him, seeing the dark hair, straight nose, lips that could have posed for a Michelangelo sculpture.

  Her stomach knotted with desire while her heart did the tachycardia thing again, but it was her mind that was most befuddled, unable to take in his presence, or work out a reason for it.

  Unless…

  ‘Have you come to yell at me again? To order me home like some eight-year-old barred from school for disciplinary reasons?’

  ‘I didn’t yell at you,’ he said, reaching in to take the laptop she’d picked up off the seat beside her.

  ‘You did so!’ she argued. ‘When the door wasn’t locked. You yelled then.’

  He was so close she could see the movement of muscles beneath his skin as his lips twitched into a very small and, she guessed, reluctant smile.

  ‘You can’t call that a yell,’ he told her, but though the smile widened it didn’t move into his eyes. This obviously wasn’t the end of the war, just a temporary truce. ‘If you want a yell, come into theatre when our flying surgeon, David Ogilvie, is there.’

  ‘I’ve never thought being a surgeon gave a person the right to be rude in any way, let alone yell,’ Caitlin said, as Connor straightened, allowing her to breathe almost normally again. She was talking about the flying surgeon but thinking about Connor’s behaviour.

  Wondering why there was a truce, and if it was genuine or simply a ploy to lull her into a false sense of security so he could attack again from another direction.

  After all, this was the man who, only this morning, had gone behind her back to her boss…

  ‘Me neither,’ he was saying as he headed, with the laptop, towards the house. He turned to see if she’d got out of the car before adding, ‘I’ve been waiting for you, to let you in. I put a new lock on your door.’

  Caitlin restrained herself, with difficulty, from executing a little dance step. Surely putting a new lock on her door meant he’d given in about her staying and they could be friends again.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said demurely, and refrained from telling him she’d intended doing it herself.

  She even smiled, hoping to tempt him into a proper one this time, but he’d already disappeared inside the house. All she could do was follow, though she felt a diffidence about being with him in that enclosed space, where the differences between them might be too hard to avoid.

  But perhaps, now they’d both cooled down, they could discuss these differences like reasonable adults.

  She might even be able to get him to see her point…

  The loud ringing of the phone forced her to stop dithering, and she walked in to find Connor had put her laptop on the bench, with two new keys beside it, and now looked as if he was on the point of leaving.

  ‘The keys are there,’ he said, and departed.

  Caitlin snatched up the phone, furious with the caller who’d interrupted at such a critical moment.

  It was Sue.

  ‘I wondered if you’d join us for dinner at the golf club tonight,’ Sue said, and Caitlin remembered that’s what she and Connor had been discussing when they’d discovered the unlocked door.

  ‘Do come,’ Sue pressed, taking her silence for doubt. ‘I’d love to talk to you again, and I know your time here is limited.’

  Had Connor put Sue up to this—knowing that if he’d asked, she wouldn’t have gone?

  ‘You are still there?’ Sue demanded.

  ‘Yes, I’m here. I was thinking,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘It wasn’t that hard a question,’ Sue teased. ‘And the chef up t
here is fantastic. Young and self-taught but with grand ambitions to go a long way in chefery or whatever it’s called.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ Caitlin found herself saying. ‘What time, and where’s the golf club?’

  ‘I’ll get Mike to pick you up. I’m playing so he’ll feed the kids and hand them over to the sitter. We can drop you home as well.’

  Caitlin thanked Sue and hung up but the bitter taste of disappointment lingered on her lips. She realised she’d been assuming—or at least hoping—Connor would be there, but Sue wouldn’t be offering a lift home if that was the case…

  She fixed herself a sandwich for lunch, then wondered why she’d bothered. Had anyone ever considered a diet based on a disastrous love life? She’d walked out on breakfast, now couldn’t eat her lunch. Not that where she’d reached with Connor could be considered a ‘love life’. It had just come closer than anything she’d experienced lately.

  ‘Get real!’ she muttered to herself, opening her laptop and setting the notes she’d made at Anthea’s beside it.

  The data from Anthea’s family tree was easier to enter. Once that was done, she transferred new information from the computer to her paper representations. Blue threads, yellow threads, some pink and purple even, but still red and green predominated. If she had Harry Jackson’s father’s details…

  Anne Jackson’s shadowy figure on the hospital veranda late at night…

  No, she wasn’t going to think about the Jacksons. What she needed was the Neil child—he was the only one about whom she had nothing. She’d visit Granny, see what she knew, then tomorrow she’d go out and visit the Neils.

  Mrs Neil might be the silent type, but she wasn’t frightening in any way. In fact, she was, if what Caitlin had heard was right, more likely to be frightened. Ezra Neil evoked fear in strangers who barely knew him—did his wife also fear him?

  Realising she’d probably never know the answer, Caitlin banished thoughts of Ezra from her mind. With any luck, he’d be preaching somewhere in town in the morning and Mrs Neil would be on her own.