CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In the family room of Vince Gersbach’s well-appointed home, which stood on the high side of Cowra township, Sharon Dimarco threw down the Sunday paper in disgust. Brooke d’Winters, always Brooke d’Winters! Now she was a hero, a real hero, so the article said. She had saved a man’s life, delivered a baby, not to mention organised and helped the people in the tourist coach after it had crashed. How absolutely sickening. And she was a doctor, a bloody doctor, for God’s sake!
A doctor.
Sharon went into alert mode. She was good at detecting devious behaviour, seeing she was devious herself, and she smelled something. She wasn’t sure what, but if Brooke was on the up and up, how come she, or Jason for that matter, had never mentioned that she was a doctor? Why had it been kept secret from the people of Bindi Creek?
Things didn’t add up. If she was really a doctor, why hadn’t she taken over Jason’s practice after his accident? She continued to ruminate as she stared out the window. Maybe she wasn’t really a doctor, or maybe she had been one but wasn’t any more? Her hazel eyes narrowed like a cat stalking its prey, and if she’d had a tail it would have begun to swish about in anticipation of creating mischief. Surely there was a law preventing a person from operating on people if they weren’t qualified or licensed. There had to be.
She reached for the notepad by the phone, then looked at the newspaper again to scribble the journalist’s name down before picking up the receiver. It hadn’t taken much, just a couple of minutes’ deliberation, to convince herself that it was her civic duty to expose fraudulent behaviour. And she had an inkling that that’s what Dr Brooke d’Winters was guilty of.
Brooke stepped out of the surgery, walked through the waiting room and went back into the house. She had just told John that she had decided to take over Jason’s practice, with the AMA’s blessing and, as such, wouldn’t need him. She had insisted he take a month to find an alternative locum position. He’d told her that, after the article in the Sunday paper, he’d been half-expecting her to make that decision. Still, she hadn’t found asking him to go easy. John was proving a good doctor, and he had begun to develop an easier manner with his patients, which they appreciated.
The one person inordinately pleased with the changes taking place was Jean. Brooke smiled to herself. Dear Jean. What would she have done without her? She had always been supportive, and now she was actively encouraging. Not that Brooke expected for one moment that there wouldn’t be problems as she moved into Jason’s practice. Some patients were bound to be narked by the fact that she’d kept her true profession secret. And, when she gave it some thought, she realised that Wes Sinclair had reacted strangely, too. He’d come from Sindalee soon after hearing about the coach accident and she had told him everything. The consternation on his face had almost been laughable, had he not taken it so seriously. And there would be others in and around Bindi who’d be offended by her secrecy. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped. The die had been cast and now there could be no retreat.
After a quick tidy-up of the house, and with the children at school, she went across to her naturopathy office. She had no appointments till 10.00 a.m., but there was paperwork to take care of. No matter how much she tried to keep up, there was always paperwork.
A knock on the door ten minutes later made her look up. Expecting it to be Craig or Jason, she called for them to come in.
‘Dr d’Winters?’ a woman queried after opening the door. Behind her stood a tall, thin man with long stringy hair. He had a metal suitcase in one hand and a backpack was slung over his shoulder.
‘Umm, yes?’ Brooke answered. She was having difficulty getting used to the title of doctor; it sounded strange to her ears after so long. She glanced at her appointment book, then back at the woman. ‘Do you have an appointment? I’ve got someone coming in twenty minutes.’ She looked at the woman again. There was something vaguely familiar about her.
‘I’m not here to see you professionally, Dr d’Winters. My name’s Tammy Hogan, and this is Mike Stewart.’ The tall man nodded a greeting. ‘We work for the Sunday Telegraph. I wrote the article in last weekend’s Sunday paper on the bushfire and coach accident just over a week ago, and Mike took the pictures. You may remember seeing me at the accident site.’
‘Oh.’ That’s why she had seemed familiar. A sinking sensation grabbed Brooke’s stomach muscles. She had hoped and prayed that interest in her would end with that article. Her prayers had not been answered; she should have known better. She sighed. Nothing was ever easy, was it?
Tammy, a short redhead, whose clothes had the appearance of having been slept in, sat in one of the chairs. She pulled out a notepad. ‘I’d like a personal interview, at a time convenient, of course, to confirm a few details for next Sunday’s follow-up article. We had a tip from an anonymous source about your past, and I’ve managed to dig up certain facts to do with your career, Doctor.’ Through tortoiseshell glasses, she studied Brooke analytically. ‘I need to confirm several pieces of information: that your name was originally Brodie Haskins, and that more than fourteen years ago you were involved in a coroner’s enquiry regarding the death of a patient named,’ she looked down at her notes, ‘Thomas Peard.’
‘I see.’ Brooke sighed and put her pen down. She tried hard to contain the queasy feeling in her stomach, but it would not be contained. It was going to start all over again and there was nothing she could do about it. Fatalistically she thought, you can run away from things for a long time, but eventually it all catches up with you…Of course, if she wanted to, she could tell the journalist to go take a running jump, and she gave some consideration to doing that, but she realised it wouldn’t stop the woman from writing her piece. If Brooke didn’t tell her the story, who knew what would end up in the paper?
She made a point of studying her appointment book. There were bookings till 12.30. ‘All right. I’ll meet you at the pub down the road, The Imperial, in the beer garden at 12.45.’ She chose not to invite them into her home. She didn’t want them to see Jason and be tempted to take photographs of him. What had happened to him and how he was now had no bearing on her past. She’d rather the journalist focus on her than on him. Thank goodness she’d already taken the precaution of telling the children everything so some kid at school couldn’t taunt them with a distorted version.
‘Oh, hell. What can we do around here till then?’ Ms Hogan asked in a bored voice.
Brooke would like to have told her that she couldn’t care less what she did, but she didn’t. She did not intend to make it easy for the woman to assassinate her character. Instead, she said with a benign smile, ‘Bindi Creek is a pleasant little town. There’s a charming tea shop down the road—they do lovely Devonshire teas—and there’s a nice reserve down by the creek.’ She glanced at the photographer. ‘The weeping willows are particularly good this year. You could get some nice shots of the creek and the bridge too.’
After they’d left, Brooke rang Jean. ‘She’s here, a journalist from one of the Sunday papers. I told you they would ferret around.’ She frowned as she remembered something. ‘She said they’d had a tip-off, but I can’t work out from whom. Could you bring those papers of Jason’s over? I might need them to back up certain facts.’
Trailing stray sheep that had wandered from the flock and shepherding them back to the main herd kept Wes busy physically but not mentally. He could see Drew doing a good job on the other side of the hill, bringing in five or six strays, while his stockman, Albie Connors, down south of the mob, had a dozen that had become lost in scrubby bush.
So Brooke was a doctor! He had read the exposé in last Sunday’s paper, a follow-up article to the one the week before, and she had told him so herself. The news kept buzzing around in his head, like the lyrics of a song he couldn’t get out of his thoughts. A doctor. A professional. Christ, a part of him still couldn’t believe it, even though he didn’t doubt that it was true.
It changed things—changed how he thought ab
out her, especially now that she intended to take over Jason’s practice. All along, through the years he’d know her, there hadn’t been a hint that she was medically qualified—not even from his best friend. Damn and double damn. Was he so easy to dupe? He grunted disconsolately. Claudia had thought so.
Funny. As he used Fantasy Lane, his stock horse, to manoeuvre two pregnant ewes towards the flock, he recapped the years that Brooke and Jason had been at Bindi Creek. That business about Brooke doing naturopathy, the time it had taken to become qualified…why hadn’t she and Jason just set up joint practices in Bindi Creek? Last week a lot of what she’d told him hadn’t made sense, but then on reading the follow-up article, seeing in black and white what had happened in Hobart, he now understood. She wouldn’t have declared her profession if it hadn’t been for the coach accident and, now that the facts were out in the open, she might as well take over Jason’s practice. It made professional and financial sense.
Once again he pondered what the journalist had written. It had been an honest, no-nonsense and nonjudgmental article. Poor Brooke, she must have suffered for years because of that man’s death.
However, the revelations had succeeded in doing one thing: completely confusing him. Damn and double damn; he didn’t need this. He’d thought he knew her so well. Now he wasn’t so sure. It was true that he had loved her for a very long time, admired her enormously for being a wonderful wife and mother. But now he saw her through different eyes—he couldn’t help it. She was still the woman he loved, the wife and mother he admired, but now she had a career. Would that change the way he felt about her?
He shifted restlessly in the saddle. Christ, he didn’t know. Did you stop loving someone, or did your feelings change, because that person wasn’t quite the person you’d thought they were? Hell, he didn’t know the answer to that either. The medical thing was a complication, though. It had caught him completely off guard and unsettled him.
What if she became another Claudia—involved with her career, in building up the practice, to the detriment of her family? Somehow he didn’t think he’d be able to cop that.
‘What do you mean there won’t be a police investigation?’ Sharon’s tone was shrill with disappointment as she stared at her father. ‘The woman’s phoney, I know she is. Look at the article, what Tammy Hogan said about her. She was responsible for a man’s death before, and now, after not practising for God knows how long, she does a procedure on another man. Dennis O’Toole could have died; he was lucky not to. It doesn’t seem right. And she wasn’t even legally licensed at the time.’
‘Sharon,’ Vince interjected. His voice was patient, even though they’d already gone over it twice before. ‘Brooke wasn’t found guilty of misconduct in Hobart and now she is licensed to practise, even though she hasn’t. Tammy Hogan said that in her article, and the Medical Board of New South Wales also said they didn’t have a problem with what she did. They were happy to approve her license. And you also rang Constable Roth at Carcoar. He told you she had no legal case to answer to, so that’s that.’
That wasn’t that as far as Sharon Dimarco was concerned. There had to be something she could do to get the woman out of Bindi Creek, out of Cowra and out of her life. Only then would she stand a real chance with Wes. ‘Well, I think she should be run out of town. It’s disgraceful how she’s hoodwinked people. I was talking to old Mr Winkleton in town the other day. He was shocked by it all and won’t be attending her surgery. You’ll see,’ she prophesied, ‘a lot of Jason’s patients will go elsewhere rather than let her touch them.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Hugh piped up. ‘She’s proved that she’s competent. The woman saved my life,’ he said raising his eyebrows, ‘but you seem to have conveniently forgotten that. I for one will attend her surgery when the need arises.’ Then he added, looking his daughter straight in the eyes, ‘And I’ll be encouraging other people to do the same.’
‘But Dad…’ Oh, what was the use? Even her own father was against her. And from the long-suffering expression on Vince’s face, it looked like he was too. Well, to hell with them both. There was more than one way to undermine a person’s character. It would have been easier if the police had done the work for her, but she could do it, by sniping away every opportunity she got. Eventually the ripple of discontent would become a wave that, with luck, would see the d’Winters leaving for good. Then she could get Wes’s undivided attention.
‘I’m going for a ride,’ she said, ‘over to Sindalee.’ Sharon deliberately didn’t ask Vince to come, even though she knew he enjoyed a visit to Sindalee. She didn’t think much of his horsemanship, and there was rough terrain between Minta Downs and Wes’s property. Besides, she wanted time alone, to think and to work out a strategy. Wes might be feeling confused by the revelations about Brooke, too, so now was a good time to remind him subtlely about Claudia and her obsession with her career. Who could say with any certainty that Brooke wouldn’t be of the same ilk?
Dr John Honeywell found another locum position within two weeks, after which Brooke began work at the surgery. And after just a few weeks of working, it was as if she’d never been away from medicine. She had been right, though, when she had foretold that things wouldn’t be easy. A ground swell of resistance was slowly growing, and quite a few of Jason’s patients didn’t attend what was now her surgery. Conversely, many made a point of coming. Angie and Ric Stephanos with their baby, Deanna, were her first patients. Then came Reverend Dupayne and his asthmatic daughter, Kitty, as well as Jill from the supermarket and a scattering of others around town.
Brooke heard via the country grapevine that Sharon Dimarco was mounting a smear campaign. It appeared that, to some extent, it was proving successful. However, she could do little actively to combat what Sharon was doing. She had to wait it out, let people form their own opinions and make their own decisions. Funnily enough, Hugh Thurtell was one of her staunchest and most vocal allies, which was amusing because it must have irritated Sharon immensely. He had even gone so far as to write a letter to the Cowra Guardian, reminding people about the d’Winters family and what they had done for the town of Bindi Creek.
Brooke persevered. She did what she was good at doing—looking after sick people—and, eventually, many of those who had resisted heard that she was a competent and caring doctor and came back to the fold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On the eleventh floor of a Buenos Aires building on the Torres de Catalinas Norte, a man sat at a mahogany desk, which overlooked the moorings of the Puerto Madeiro Yacht Club and the Rio de La Plata. Of average height and build, with silver hair and beard, he was poring over preliminary drilling reports from his company’s latest venture in Venezuela.
Satisfied with what he read, he set the reports aside to reach for the large box his secretary had put on top of his in-tray. The box contained copies of every major Australian newspaper for one week and, from the postmarked date, it was almost two months old. Royce Lansing liked to keep abreast of what was happening in Australia, even though his business interests had focused solely on South America for the past twelve years.
His office walls formed a gallery of images from the various places he’d called home over the last twenty-five years: Bougainville, Borneo, Texas, Alaska, Venezuela and now Buenos Aires. On his desk sat a picture of his family: Eva, his Swedish-American wife (now ex-wife), and daughters Sophie and Elise.
He began to go through the newspapers. He liked to browse and wasn’t always interested in articles that strictly pertained to business. Growing up in a small Queensland town, he liked to know what was happening in both the small as well as the large towns of the country of his birth. He hadn’t visited down under for at least five years, mainly because his parents had passed on and his brother and two sisters were scattered all over the continent.
An hour and a half later he was still only halfway through the pile when he came across a headline: DOCTOR AND NURSE SAVE LIVES AS BUSHFIRE THREATENS BUS ACCIDENT VICTIMS. He read the arti
cle word by word, then read it again to be sure he hadn’t imagined the name that jumped out at him like a flashing neon sign: nurse Jean King. Was it his Jean?
There was a photo. He picked up the magnifying glass on his desk to see the subjects more clearly. Two women stood in the foreground. One had short dark hair, was petite and slim and in her late thirties. The other woman was middle-aged, taller, with a full figure. A group of people stood behind them, sporting bandaged arms and heads, and in the background was the overturned bus. Yes, it was her, he was sure. Though she was plumper, she’d hardly changed. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and shook his head. How bloody amazing. Then he sat back in his seat and scratched his beard thoughtfully.
God, how long had it been? He tried to remember. Twenty-four—no, almost twenty-six years! He closed his eyes and could immediately see her as she had looked the last time they’d been together. Jean had just come off duty and was still in her nurse’s uniform. Her hair, a light brown, had curled up because of the humidity. Halls Creek could be a bastard of a place in terms of weather. He remembered what had first attracted him to her. Oddly, it had not been solely her trim figure or her nice hazel eyes. It had been her forthright attitude and strong personality that had made her stand out. Jean had called a spade a spade and didn’t take any nonsense from anyone who tried to dish it up to her. She could be a tough customer when she chose to be, but not with him. A nostalgic smile flicked across his mouth. Never with him.
What had happened to her all those years ago? Where had she gone? There were times when he’d thought he never should have left Australia, for by doing so he had lost her. He had tried to find her on his return from Borneo; however, after two years the trail was long dead. She seemed to have vanished without a trace. In those days he hadn’t had the money to employ a private detective to find her, so after a while he had given up and moved on to Alaska, seeking that elusive strike, the one that would make him rich and successful. Now he was both of those things, thanks to the diamond mine he and his partner had found in Venezuela. That had been the beginning, and now the Cordova & Lansing Mining Corporation had controlling interests in several mining ventures throughout South America.
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