by Karly Lane
‘Maybe. But I wouldn’t ask. Khaleesi is my responsibility. Look, thanks for the other day, but none of this is any of your business.’
‘I’m sorry. I ask too many questions,’ Rilee said with a slight wince. ‘Force of habit. That’s how I get to the bottom of people’s health problems, but sometimes I forget that I do it.’
‘Yeah. I’ll get the rest of the money to you when I can.’ She pushed the pram towards the door and Rilee crossed the room to hold it open for her.
‘It was good to see you, Talissa.’
The young girl looked at her briefly, but didn’t comment.
Rilee sighed as she turned away from the door, feeling a mixture of frustration and helplessness. As a healer she had a natural desire to fix people, but in this case it wasn’t a matter of treating them with a remedy, it was knowing that in order to ‘fix’ them she’d have to change their whole environment. She wasn’t naive enough to believe she could wave a magic wand and change things for Talissa, but putting a face to the problem in this town certainly made it far more personal. Changes had to happen or there would be more Talissas left to believe Pallaburra and fatherless children were the only future they could hope for.
Twenty-seven
Rilee pushed open the café door and prepared to summon a smile for the two women working behind the counter. It was slow progress but she was slowing chipping away at Pru and Shaz’s stand-offish ways.
At first she’d brushed off the idea that the prejudice she sensed from some locals had anything to do with her new surname. It had seemed silly to her that in this day and age there could still be a class division in a town, but the matter of the party invitations had been disturbing proof that this division was firmly in place in Pallaburra. Anyone with links to the Kincaids was friendly enough towards her; it was the people who didn’t run in the same circles that she was finding hard to win over.
‘Morning, Pru,’ she said as she reached the counter and the middle-aged woman looked up.
‘Havin’ your usual today, pet?’ she asked as she finished wrapping a sandwich she’d been making and placed it in the front of the glass counter.
‘Yes, please.’ Surely it had to be a good sign that they knew her usual, she thought. While she had a perfectly acceptable coffee machine in her office, she had to give the café credit—they made coffee so much better than she did. But aside from that, she couldn’t ignore the tiny part of her that refused to give up on trying to win over these women. She’d never felt this need to have people like her before. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was just pure stubbornness, she wasn’t sure, all she knew was she was determined to win Pru and Shaz over…even if that meant buying coffee here every day until it happened.
The door to the kitchen swung open and Shaz came out carrying a divine-smelling parcel of hot chips. Her chubby face would be pretty if only she’d smile a little more often, Rilee thought, not for the first time. Gloom seemed to hang about the young woman like a rain cloud, making her a difficult person to warm to, but Rilee wasn’t giving up.
‘Heard you’re chummy with Talissa Barnett,’ Shaz said after she’d deposited the chips into the heated food warmer awaiting collection.
Rilee wasn’t sure what direction this conversation was headed, but it never ceased to amaze her how eyes were everywhere, watching everything. ‘As chummy as you can get with anyone around here.’
‘Those Barnetts are bad news,’ Shaz continued, seemingly oblivious to Rilee’s light sarcasm.
‘Old Lyle Barnett was a nasty piece of work,’ Pru added with a shake of her head.
‘Is that Talissa’s father?’
‘Grandfather. He’s dead now. Died a few years back,’ Pru said with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘But he made old Dotty and Cheryl’s life a misery.’ At Rilee’s confused look, she clarified patiently, ‘Talissa’s grandmother and mother.’
‘Oh.’
‘No surprise about how Talissa turned out. Poor kid had no chance being born into that family.’
‘Well, it’s not the end of the world just because she had a baby. She can still make something of her life.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Shaz scoffed.
‘She can. In fact, I’m looking into some study options to show her next time I see her.’
‘Waste of time,’ Pru said, shaking her head.
‘Not if she wants it. Not if she has enough people around her to give encouragement.’
‘I heard you were on a bit of a campaign to save the town,’ Pru said, eyeing her curiously.
‘I’m not trying to save anything. I just think there needs to be more incentives for kids around here to do something with their future.’
‘Too late once you’re knocked up,’ Shaz shrugged.
‘Which is why we need to work on getting better access to things like contraception to stop it happening. I was thinking about a public forum, inviting local community leaders together to get some kind of action happening.’
‘You won’t get any help from anyone around here. They’re all too busy being high and mighty to bother working out how to teach kids about safe sex.’
Rilee frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your so-called community leaders are people like old Errol Stetton and they’re all tied up in the church. You won’t get much cooperation out of that lot.’
‘But Errol Stetton is a pharmacist. It’s part of his job to provide health care to his community.’
‘As long as it doesn’t interfere with his own personal beliefs. Which kids having sex does.’
‘He’s always been a judgemental old bastard,’ Shaz interrupted. ‘I had a friend who went in to ask for that morning-after pill you can get now, and he yelled at her in front of other customers, completely humiliated her. Her parents found out she was pregnant before she’d even got home that afternoon.’
Rilee stared at Shaz in open-mouthed disbelief. ‘That’s so…’ There were no words for how outrageously inappropriate that was. Not to mention the concern that this girl was under the misconception that the morning-after pill would have worked if she’d already been pregnant. One of the first rules of any health profession was to respect a patient’s privacy. How dare Errol Stetton publicly humiliate someone asking for his help?
Shaz gave an offhand shrug. ‘That’s the way it is. Everyone knows not to go to Stetton’s. So they either have the baby or take matters into their own hands.’
‘You’re not saying girls are aborting their babies…without a doctor?’
‘Some of them get desperate enough to try stupid things they hear about. There was a young girl a while back who heard of kids taking these hormone drugs used to abort pregnancies in livestock. She got hold of something similar and almost killed herself in the process.’
Rilee stared at the women, feeling sick to the stomach. ‘Is this true?’ she demanded, turning to Pru for confirmation.
‘From what I’ve heard,’ she agreed, placing her coffee on the top of the counter.
Rilee couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew that Errol Stetton’s pharmacy presented a barrier to young kids seeking help, but for a pharmacist to abuse a young girl who approached him for a legitimate medication was beyond comprehension. It was a woman’s right to obtain the morning-after pill if she had concerns that there was a risk of ineffective or no contraception used and did not want to risk an unwanted pregnancy. Originally it had only been obtainable through a doctor’s prescription, but once it had become obvious that those most at risk—namely young teenage girls—weren’t accessing the medication, it had been made available without prescription through a pharmacy.
How dare this man deny a woman’s right to have access to something that could prevent so many unwanted pregnancies. This wasn’t the nineteen fifties for goodness sake!
‘Three-fifty, love,’ Pru said, eyeing her curiously, and Rilee realised she was still in a state of shocked disbelief.
‘Sorry.’ She dug through her purse and handed over th
e correct change. ‘Thank you.’
Rilee turned away and headed outside, filled with a whirl of emotions. Anger was the most vocal, followed swiftly by a desire for retribution and a strong urge to do some kind of physical harm, but she managed to get that under control as she opened the door to the pharmacy.
‘Why, hello, dear, how can I—’ Betty started but Rilee cut her off sharply.
‘I’d like to speak with Errol, please.’
‘I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment, perhaps—’
‘I’d like to speak to him right now,’ Rilee insisted, holding the woman’s nervous gaze.
‘I’ll just…’ Her hand fluttered to her throat as she glanced over her shoulder at the rear of the store. ‘See if he…’ She let the sentence fall away when Rilee lifted an eyebrow at her in silent challenge.
As a rule, Rilee wasn’t a confrontational person, but at the moment she was too outraged by what she’d just learned to settle for tiptoeing around.
She heard the murmur of voices from the back in the preparation area, one low and faint, the other loud and abrupt, before Betty reappeared, stepping behind the counter and busily rearranging pamphlets on the counter.
Moments later Errol strode through the doorway, his owlish eyes, magnified behind his thick glasses, fixed upon her in a stern manner. ‘Mrs Kincaid. What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like to clarify something with you. The morning-after pill,’ she said, getting straight to the point, ‘do you supply it to your customers?’
Rilee watched as his eyebrows dipped low towards the bridge of his nose and his thin lips tightened. ‘No, I do not,’ he stated emphatically, and from the corner of her eye Rilee noticed Betty had ceased her rearranging and was staring across at them with her mouth gaping.
‘And why not?’
Errol drew back his head and straightened his bony frame to peer down at her. ‘Because I find it immoral and offensive.’
‘You’re responsible for this community’s wellbeing,’ Rilee told him, her voice rising despite her best intentions to remain calm. ‘You’re supposed to use medication to help them.’
‘And I do so. But I am completely justified in refusing to prescribe anything that goes against my moral judgement.’
‘Withholding any kind of medication that can treat a patient is not only unprofessional, it’s negligent,’ Rilee said, struggling to regain control of her temper.
‘Unprofessional? Negligent?’ he spluttered, his usually pale face turning bright red. ‘How dare you!’
‘How dare you!’ Rilee snapped back. ‘Because of your so-called morals, you’ve condemned God only knows how many young women to unwanted pregnancies, ruining any hopes they may have had for their future.’
‘They made the choice to partake in unprotected sex, therefore they must take responsibility for their actions. I can hardly be blamed for the choices they made.’
‘This is unbelievable,’ Rilee said.
‘And you’re wasting my time,’ he snapped, turning his back on her as he stormed back to his work area.
‘I think you should go now,’ Betty said from behind the counter, twin red spots marking each of her plump cheeks as she glared at Rilee. ‘And don’t think I won’t be mentioning this to Ellen.’
Rilee suppressed the urge to stick her tongue out at the annoying woman and walked out of the shop. Her hands shook as she unlocked the door of her clinic and put the coffee cup down on her desk.
If kids couldn’t or wouldn’t use contraception, for whatever reason, and the only other avenue for protecting themselves from pregnancy was denied them, no wonder the rate of teenage pregnancy in this place was so high. Everything was stacked against them. The remoteness of the town, and the fact it had no medical practitioner of its own, reduced access to appropriate contraception and sexual health education, and now this. Moral objections? That was this idiot’s reason for denying medication, Rilee fumed. How dare he!
She’d been thwarted by Ellen’s influence on this last time, after the principal had politely but firmly ended any hope of a school-based program, but not this time. She’d bypass local organisations and look further afield for help. She wasn’t sure where yet, but the time had come to take action.
Twenty-eight
Rilee spent the rest of the day on the phone and online, desperate to find someone who could help her. During her research she came across a program located in Tamworth. It was a service designed to provide assistance to young people and their families in relation to mental and physical health, work and study support, and alcohol and other drug use. Rilee reached for the phone and called the number on their web page, eager to speak to someone who might be able to give her some advice.
An hour later she hung up the phone and looked at the notes she’d been taking while she spoke to Teal, a caseworker at the centre, ideas flying about in her head at the possibilities available for Pallaburra.
The service had had Pallaburra in its sights for a while, as well as several other outlying towns with similar issues, and Rilee was encouraged that while it felt to her as though no one really cared about the youth out here, this service was at least aware of their situation. While the ball was not exactly rolling, she certainly had quite a few avenues to explore to initiate something and she was beyond excited by the prospect.
Rilee called Shae and told her about the encounter with Errol—she was rather surprised the news hadn’t reach Thumb Creek yet—and the resulting call to the Tamworth youth program.
‘Basically they’re looking at setting up some kind of outreach community centre where a counsellor and doctor would be available once a fortnight for appointments. Kids would also have access to computers for online consultations and help. Shae, this is exactly what Pallaburra needs.’
‘How come I’ve never heard of them before?’ Shae said, sounding blown away by the news.
‘They’ve only been set up in Tamworth for a few months.’
‘So what’s the next step? What are they planning to do?’
‘At this stage not a great deal. Teal’s taking it up with his area manager and having a meeting to see what resources they can offer us, but he did warn that it might take a while. There’s a huge demand for their services.’
‘I guess we’re at the bottom of a long list of towns with the same problems,’ Shae sighed. ‘Still, at least this is something positive. Hey, while I’ve got you here,’ Shae said, ‘you’re not the only one who’s been busy. You are now on social media,’ she announced proudly. ‘I’m going to email through the links and give you the passwords so you can manage the pages.’
‘Social media?’ Rilee sighed. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, Miss Anti-Social Media. Now you’re a business owner, you need to be out there on Facebook and Twitter. Trust me on this.’
‘Why don’t you keep the passwords and tweep or cheep or whatever for me?’
‘That would be tweet, and actually that might not be such a bad idea for now,’ Shae said dryly. ‘But don’t think you’re getting out of it. Set aside a day next week so we can go through it together.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Rilee replied and Shae scoffed at her distinct lack of sincerity.
The door opened a little while later and Rilee looked up and smiled as a somewhat frazzled-looking woman came into the surgery. Her frizzy red hair sprang from her head, clearly defying any efforts by brush or comb. She was dressed in a faded flannelette shirt and pair of old jeans that were tucked into large black gumboots.
Rilee greeted the woman, who stood on the other side of the counter eyeing her strangely. ‘Is there something wrong?’ Rilee asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious.
‘It’s just that you look so…normal.’
Rilee was too surprised to laugh, but after a moment managed to gather her composure and smile. ‘What were you expecting?’ Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to ask.
‘I don’t know…maybe a few warts and hairy armpits.’
Rilee did l
augh then, although she wasn’t altogether sure the woman was joking. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint.’
‘Nah, it’s a relief actually.’
‘I’m Rilee. How can I help you today?’
‘It’s not actually me,’ the woman hedged. ‘It’s Harry. He doesn’t have much longer, you see.’
Rilee heard the woman’s voice quiver slightly and nodded encouragingly for her to continue.
‘It’s just that…he’s in so much pain. I know I should have helped him…you know…end it, everyone keeps telling me to, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.’
Rilee stared at the woman and tried to keep the alarm from her face. Was she trying to ask for something that would help end a man’s life?
‘Then I heard about you and I thought, maybe as a last resort…maybe you had something that might help?’
Rilee brushed aside the last resort comment. She was used to people consulting her profession only after exhausting conventional medical avenues. It didn’t really bother her; after all, natural medicine and modern western medicine were supposed to work hand in hand. It just frustrated her that sometimes people wasted so much time before they tried naturopathy. ‘It would help if I knew what was wrong with Harry.’
‘It’s his lungs. He can’t breathe.’
‘I’d have to give Harry an examination before I could see if there’s anything I can do. Do you think he’d come in?’
‘Oh, I expect he’ll be okay with you. He usually doesn’t much like strangers, but he’s that weak now, I’m sure he wouldn’t bite.’
Rilee raised her eyebrows at that; maybe Harry was suffering from dementia and had bouts of violence. ‘When do you think you could bring him in?’
‘I’ll go get him. He’s just outside in the car,’ the woman said, heading for the door.
Rilee would have preferred to get a bit more background information from his carer before she examined Harry if he was that near the end of his life; however, seeing as he was here now, she was just going to have to make the best of it.