Turn Left at Bindi Creek

by Lynne Wilding

  Brooke groaned at what the twins had requested. ‘Very nutritious.’ The little monkeys would have a great time gobbling all the junk food they could while the holiday lasted. ‘Just coffee for me. A cappuccino if they have it, or a long black.’

  Brooke’s gaze shifted to the boys who were jiggling restlessly in their seats as they waited for their chips. They were identical twins, with her brown eyes and Jason’s almost-black hair. Tall for their age and well covered, it was immediately apparent that Adam—whose hair was parted on the left to distinguish him from his brother—was the ringleader and had an impish temperament. Luke was quieter and more solemn. He usually went along with the brother who’d been born three minutes before him, but he had a mercurial temper, like her brother Travis had had, and could be notoriously stubborn on occasions.

  ‘You gonna have tomato sauce with your chips, Lukey?’ It was Adam who asked this very important question.

  ‘Yep,’ Luke nodded. ‘But not all over them. Want the sauce on the side of the plate so I can dip the chips in it.’

  Adam, who had a gargantuan appetite, like his father, gave his mother a pleading look. ‘Mummy, can we have a doughnut too?’

  Brooke appeared to give this question great consideration. ‘If you eat all your chips.’

  ‘I will,’ Adam said confidently.

  ‘Me too,’ Luke copied, with a smile that lit up his little face.

  ‘Here we go.’ Jason had fetched the laden tray and was now doling out the various orders.

  At they ate, idle curiosity made Brooke watch the overalled mechanic turn on his heels and walk briskly towards the café. As he opened the screen door he spoke to the woman behind the counter. ‘Meg, phone Jim at Mandurama. See if he’s got a carby for an ’85 Holden ute and if someone can run it over.’ He looked at the d’Winters family, gave them a slightly harassed smile and said, ‘Hi, folks, enjoying your meal?’ Without waiting or even expecting a reply, he walked back outside again to the ute.

  Brooke grinned at Jason. ‘Country folk, hey! Yep, they are different.’

  ‘Can we have a doughnut now, Mummy?’ Adam showed Brooke his empty plate by way of a reminder.

  ‘Okay. But one of these days, young man, you’re going to burst.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he assured her as the woman behind the counter, hearing the request, brought a plate of doughnuts to the table.

  After they had eaten, Brooke left Jason to pay the bill while she took the boys outside. Over to the left of the service station was a recreation area with swings and a seesaw. The twins made a beeline for it straightaway. Adam commandeered the swing and Luke jumped on the seesaw, requesting his mother to push the other end up and down for him.

  Brooke’s gaze continued to rove about the place. From what she could see of Bindi Creek, and they were at the beginning of the main street, it looked a nice little town. She glimpsed an old two-storey building with a wrought-iron lacework verandah, a group of timber cottages with flourishing gardens and, just beyond the curve in the road, a bridge over the creek. Her gaze moved back to the service station. The two men were standing side by side, talking as the ute’s motor ran in a choking, gurgling fashion. The young boy, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a sleeveless denim jacket, had stopped kicking the ball and was exploring the side of the service station building where oil drums and other paraphernalia were kept in a rather untidy heap. She watched him climb onto one barrel then up onto another, and shook her head. It didn’t look too stable, and if he’d been her charge she wouldn’t have let him. Still, she knew that boys will be boys. They all thought they were indestructible.

  Her brown eyes flashed back to the two men; they weren’t taking any notice. The man in jeans, the one she assumed was Ric, went and sat behind the driver’s wheel to gun the accelerator while the mechanic bent over the engine again. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boy wobble, lose his balance and disappear out of sight. She frowned, even though she had half expected it to happen. When he didn’t get up straightaway she knew something was wrong.

  ‘Boys,’ she addressed the twins, ‘stay here. That boy has fallen. I’m going to see if he’s okay.’ She strode off towards the oil drums. As she got closer she could hear the screams; they were almost drowned out by the noisy engine of the ute. The boy was lying on the ground, moving about and holding his right arm. Bright red blood was everywhere: on his T-shirt and jeans, on the ground, running through the fingers of his left hand as he tried to cover the cut from which blood was spurting like a miniature fountain.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Oh, God!’ Without a second thought Brooke rushed to the boy’s side and knelt on the oil-spattered cement. ‘Let me see,’ she said. ‘I’m a nurse.’

  The boy’s mouth was clamped shut now. He’d stopped screaming, but his face was screwed up with pain.

  As soon as he moved his hand away, blood sprayed out all over her. Shit, it looked like an artery. Maybe he’d severed the brachial artery! Brooke half turned away for a moment to see if she could catch someone’s attention. The twins were still on the swings, Jason was nowhere to be seen, and the two men playing with the ute continued to make so much noise that she knew they wouldn’t hear her shouting to them.

  From out of her trouser pocket Brooke took a small pack of tissues and pressed them over the wound, which looked to be about twelve centimetres long. The flow of blood slowed but didn’t stop. She exerted as much pressure as possible, which made the flow slow some more, but only fractionally. Not good enough. She glanced at the boy and gave him a reassuring smile. ‘It’s going to be all right, we’ve just got to stop the bleeding. What’s your name?’

  ‘N– Nathan Stephanos.’ He sniffed back a tear. ‘Shit, it hurts, lady. Like the devil. I want my dad.’

  ‘Of course you do, and I’ll get him for you,’ she soothed. Noting the whiteness of his skin, she ascertained that he was probably pale from fright, but she was more worried about how much blood he was losing. The small packet of tissues wasn’t long enough to cover the length of the wound. ‘Look, hold your arm up straight for me, will you, Nathan? I need to put pressure on the cut to slow the bleeding.’

  Then, miraculously, the men stopped revving the motor and all was quiet. She twisted her body halfway around one of the oil drums and yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘Hey, over here! Come quick! There’s been an accident!’

  Within seconds the two men were kneeling beside her and Nathan.

  ‘Jesus Christ! What happened, son?’ the man named Ric asked.

  ‘Sir, there’s no time for explanations. I’m Brooke and I have nursing experience. Your boy’s cut through the main artery in his arm. My husband, he’s a doctor, he’s probably still in the café talking to the woman. Get him quick. He’ll know what to do.’

  The mechanic stood up. ‘I’ll go, Ric. You stay with Nathan.’

  When Jason arrived he assessed the problem in a single glance. ‘Brooke, keep the arm elevated and keep pressure on the wound while we carry him into the café. Then I want you to get my bag out of the car.’

  Brooke read the message in Jason’s eyes: he’s losing too much blood and we’ve got to act fast. As she ran to their station wagon she checked on what the twins were doing and waved to them. They had sensed something dramatic was going on and hadn’t moved from the swings or the seesaw.

  Inside the café Jason was talking to the boy’s father. ‘Nathan’s lost a lot of blood already and it looks as if he’s severed the brachial artery, which is the main artery in the arm. The closest hospital—how far away is it?’

  ‘Cowra. Forty to forty-five minutes if you speed all the way.’

  ‘What about an ambulance?’

  ‘The same. It’s got to come from Cowra.’

  Jason took a deep breath. ‘Either way that’s too long, Mr Stephanos. He needs a patch-up job now. Is there a doctor in Bindi Creek?’

  ‘We wish there was. The closest one is in Carcoar,’ interjected Frank, ‘about twenty mi
nutes from here.’

  Too far away. Everything is too far away. Jason looked directly at Ric Stephanos. ‘Your son needs to have that artery stitched straightaway. And I mean straightaway.’

  ‘Can you do it, Doctor?’ Ric asked anxiously.

  ‘I think so, but first I need to check what I have in my medical bag.’ Brooke ran off to fetch it for him.

  Ric was keeping the pressure on the wound and the bleeding had slowed to a trickle, as if turned off by a tap. He looked down at his son, who was lying across two café tables they’d pushed together. The colour had drained completely from his young face. There was blood all over him, soaking into his jacket, jeans and across his white T-shirt. Ric raised his head and his eyes locked with the doctor’s. ‘You’d better do it then.’

  Brooke returned with Jason’s bag. Jason rummaged around in it, finding a sealed pack of swabs, various threads for ligatures, vials of pethidine, several sterilised dressing sheets and an elasticised bandage roll.

  ‘We can manage, I think,’ Jason decided.

  He gave instructions to Frank and Ric about needing a better light and swabbing down the table with antiseptic—methylated spirits would do. He prepared an injection of the local anaesthetic lignocaine to minimise the boy’s discomfort and then, while the men were attending to their chores, he swabbed away the edges of the wound and put several anaesthetising injections around the skin to dull the pain of suturing.

  ‘Frank, call Cowra hospital. Speak to the registrar. Tell him or her what I’m doing and that someone will bring Nathan in as soon as he can be moved.’

  Brooke, standing on the fringe of the activity, suddenly began to tremble. So much blood. It was on her, too—on her hands and blouse and her trousers, even spattered onto her shoes. Suddenly images came to her…a hospital emergency ward. The clamour, the bright lights. It all materialised before her wide-open eyes. Sick people moaning, relatives, friends looking bewildered but trying to be supportive. Stop…the memories…Stop! She shook her head as if by doing so she could shake the memories of the past away. She couldn’t: doctors in white coats with stethoscopes strung around their necks like proud badges of their office; sisters in casual clothes; sanitised odours dampening down the smell of blood, of sick people, of impending death.

  The trembling intensified when her mother’s battered face swam before her open eyes. And then came Travis. Brooke stared down at Nathan, not seeing his face but that of her brother. She shut her eyes tightly to block out the images, but the memories kept rolling on.

  The next thing she knew she was outside and leaning against the café window. Breathe! She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  ‘Brooke.’

  She turned towards the sound of Jason’s voice, steeling herself against the appeal she knew he would make. Without waiting for him to speak again, she said straight out, ‘I can’t, Jason.’ She held her hands out in front of her, as if to ward him off. ‘Look, I’m shaking. What good would I be to you in such a condition?’

  He took her hands in his and held them firmly. ‘I understand,’ his voice was gentle, ‘and if there were any way around it, I wouldn’t ask. But this is an emergency. Every minute counts. I can’t do it all by myself. I need someone to check blood pressure, to swab and hand me instruments.’ He stared at her. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, please don’t ask me.’

  He tried another approach. ‘How would you feel if it were Luke or Adam lying in there and someone wouldn’t help because they were scared about it rekindling some unhappy memories?’ He stared her down. ‘I don’t think you’d be impressed, do you?’

  ‘That’s an unfair comparison and you know it,’ she retorted heatedly, trying to dredge up anger as a defence.

  ‘Look, it won’t take long. It’ll be over before you know it. Please, Brooke, don’t let me down. If there was another way you know I’d take it, but there isn’t.’

  She looked away, across to the orchard with its spring blossoms. How had they got themselves into this situation? Well, in all honesty it had just happened, as accidents tended to do. Her lucidity under such stress secretly annoyed her. How could she be thinking straight at such a time? Her gaze moved towards the twins. Luke sat on the seesaw, Adam was on one of the swings, pushing it to the limits, up and down, up and down, laughing noisily and urging Luke to join him on the other swing. Emotion swelled inside her as she recalled Jason’s words. What if it were Luke or Adam? A spasm of fear clutched her heart. If anything happened to either one of them she couldn’t bear it.

  Jason let out a sigh of disappointment. ‘Okay, don’t bother. I can’t afford to waste any more time. I’ll manage somehow.’ Then he turned on his heel and walked back towards the door.

  For a couple of seconds she watched his straight, proud body retreat, then…

  ‘No!’ The one-syllable word came out half-strangled. ‘You’re right. A child’s wellbeing is more important than the past. I’ll help.’ Then she remembered the twins. They couldn’t just leave them unattended; they were too little, and too mischievous. ‘The twins—what will we do with them while you do the procedure?’

  Mid-stride he half-turned back to her. ‘I’m sure someone—Frank or the woman from behind the counter—will keep an eye on them for us. Come on.’

  Brooke watched with admiration as Jason ordered Frank to reposition the light above them, the café attendant to watch over the twins, and then for her, Brooke, to set out what he would need: swabs, antiseptic, different threads for internal and external sutures and a make-do aluminium food tray for used items. She was also ordered to watch for any significant changes in Nathan’s blood pressure or breathing.

  Frank mentioned that there was a park just down the street and suggested his café attendant, Anne, take the twins there. Brooke felt guilty about bribing the boys with an ice-cream to go with the middle-aged woman, but it was better for them to be as far away from the drama as possible.

  The cut was deep and long, running down Nathan’s right arm. In seconds Jason had peeled back layers of tissue and muscle, tying then stitching back together the ruptured artery, which had been cut almost completely in half. Then came the slow task of tying off the artery, swabbing and putting a sterile dressing on, and more external sutures to seal the wound until the hospital could deal with it properly in a sterile environment.

  Brooke was aware of Ric hovering in the background, acting as a gofer, doing whatever Jason or Brooke asked him to do.

  As Jason began the external sutures, a woman appeared at the flyscreen door of the café.

  ‘Hello, Frank, Ric. What’s up?’ Her matter-of-fact question echoed through the café. ‘I was going for a walk up to the highway when I met Anne at the park. She said there was a bit of a panic up here.’

  ‘Jean King, she’s a retired bush nurse,’ Frank explained to the d’Winters in a low voice so that Jean couldn’t hear him.

  ‘Come in, Ms King, by all means, but not too close,’ Jason said in a distracted tone. ‘There’s enough bacteria in the air to give this lad a good infection without inviting in a lot more.’

  ‘I just came to see if I could help,’ Jean retorted, bristling. She stood as tall as her one hundred and sixty-two centimetres allowed, and brushed a strand of greying hair impatiently from her forehead. But then, succumbing to a sense of curiosity, which was part and parcel of her nature, she craned her neck forward to see what was going on. Some kind of operation. She, a nurse with years of experience in the bush, could tell that much. The man had a competent look about him and the woman assisting—she was pretty in a skinny kind of way—seemed to know what she was doing too.

  ‘Jean, thanks for coming.’ Frank tried to soothe the woman’s ruffled feathers. ‘Young Nathan had a fall and slashed his arm open. Fortunately for him, Dr d’Winters was in the café. He examined him and decided that an emergency procedure was necessary.’

  ‘How’s Nathan’s blood pressure, Brooke?’ Jason cut in.

  ‘Low, J
ason. Sixty-five over ninety but steady. Breathing is regular.’

  Jean sniffed and then said in a forthright way, ‘Maybe young Nathan could do with a blanket. Frank usually keeps one in the back room for when he has a nap on slow days.’

  Brooke looked at the middle-aged woman and smiled. ‘What a good idea, Ms King. I’d appreciate it if you could get it.’

  Since Jason had begun the procedure, she had had no time for memories. There had been too much to concentrate on, and anyway, she had become interested in what he was doing. He really was a good all-round doctor: a capable diagnostician as well as a competent surgeon. A flush of pride swept through her as she reflected on this while they tidied Nathan up. He’d been a brave kid, really. No tears, no complaining. Very stoic. He was going to have a very sore arm for several weeks but that was infinitely better than the alternative—one that didn’t work properly, or worse.

  As Jason stripped off his gloves, he glanced across at Brooke and saw her flushed face and the affection in her eyes. ‘Well done,’ he said simply, and then, to himself: thank God. He didn’t know how he would have coped without her help. She had an instinctive ability to know what he needed almost before he did, a wonderful attribute for a medical professional. His ongoing hope was that one day she would get over the past and go back to her profession again, rather than going on with the naturopathy thing, as she planned to do once the twins went to school.

  ‘I want you to take him to Cowra hospital straightaway,’ said Jason to Ric, who was hovering close to his son’s side. ‘They know he’s coming. They will keep him overnight for observation and medication as needed, and they’ll decide whether or not he needs reconstructive surgery.’

  ‘Thanks, Doc. I will.’ Ric held out his hand towards Jason. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Doctor. You saved my boy’s life.’ He pulled a business card out of the back pocket of his jeans. ‘This is where you should send the bill. I have a property about fifteen kilometres from here, in the foothills.’