Bushfire Bride

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Indulge me with something I’ve always wanted to do,’ she told them. ‘I’m a country girl from way back. Once upon a time I even drove my dad’s truck at hay-carting so I have my heavy vehicle licence. So all you have to do is say yes. Let me drive your fire engine.’

  Which was how Dr Rachel Harper, MD, dressed in glorious Crimplene and Doris Keen’s sandals, with gravel in her knees, nothing in her stomach and dog hair all over her, got to drive the Cowral Bay fire truck with a bunch of ten disgustingly dirty and slightly injured firefighters and one potential Australian champion Afghan in the back.

  You told me to have a weekend to remember, she silently told her absent mother-in-law as they headed for the hospital. Well, Dottie, I’m doing just that.

  Hugo wasn’t at the hospital, and Rachel was aware of a stab of disappointment. But at least the nurses knew her from that afternoon when she’d helped with Kim. They greeted her as a friend, and the orderly took over Penelope’s care as if she was no trouble at all.

  ‘You’ve come to help, miss,’ he told her as the firefighters milled around the emergency room, and it was obvious to everyone that Rachel needed to turn into a doctor again. ‘You’re very welcome. I’ll give your dog some dinner, shall I?’

  Dinner… Yes!

  ‘Actually, I-’

  But dinner wasn’t her destiny. ‘It’s great that you’re here.’ David, the ginger-haired nurse who’d helped with Kim, was looking more flustered than he had that afternoon. ‘One of our old farmers had a stroke an hour ago. Dr McInnes had to go out there in a hurry and here’s all these guys needing checking. Can I give you a hand and we’ll see what we can do together?’

  She worked for an hour. It was solid medicine but straightforward, washing out eyes, checking bruises and cleaning scratches. One of the women was suffering slightly from smoke inhalation and Rachel decreed that she be admitted, but the oxygen alleviated the symptoms almost immediately. Great. She worked steadily through on. Minor stuff.

  Except the man who’d been driving the truck. He had a sliver of something nasty in his eye as well as a cut that was deep enough to need stitching. But it was the eye she was worried about.

  Rachel shoved her rumbling stomach aside and focused.

  She dropped in fluorescein-a yellow stain-and examined the eye through the ophthalmoscope. And worried.

  ‘Can we X-ray?’ she asked David.

  ‘Sure.’

  The X-ray came back-still worrying. She pinned it against the light and fretted some more as the door opened behind her.

  ‘Problem?’

  She turned and it was Hugo. For a moment-for just a moment-it was as much as she could do not to fall into his arms with relief. She’d pushed hunger and exhaustion and shock away but the events of the day were catching up with her. She was really close to breaking point.

  Falling into a colleague’s arms wasn’t exactly professional. She got a grip. Sort of. Mental slap around the ears. She hauled herself into as much of a medical mode as she could muster.

  ‘There’s a foreign body just at the edge of the cornea,’ she told him, turning back to the light-box and attempting to concentrate on the image. ‘There was fuel in metal drums that exploded while they were trying to save a shed. This looks like a sliver of metal, embedded in the cornea but not penetrating. His sight’s blurred but maybe that’s just the reaction to the pain and a bit of debris that’s on the surface. The eye won’t stop watering. There’s a couple of nasty lacerations around the eye itself that’ll need stitching but it’s the metal I’m worried about. It’s very near the optic nerve. If he moves while I’m trying to manoeuvre it out… Well, I don’t think I can cope with this under local anaesthetic.’

  Hugo nodded. He crossed to stand beside her and they stared at the screen together.

  ‘It’s not touching anything crucial. I think we could do it.’ He stared at it a bit longer. ‘Maybe you’re right, though. It’s going to be fiddly.’

  ‘But under a local anaesthetic?’

  ‘I’d rather not.’ He looked down at her and smiled. ‘Like you, ophthalmology isn’t my speciality. It looks straightforward enough as long as he doesn’t move, but there’s a bit of repair work to do and I’m not super-confident. Eyes aren’t my area of expertise and if I have to fiddle and curse I’d prefer that the patient was sedated while I did it.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’ She looked at the X-ray some more and even managed a shaky smile. ‘We couldn’t evacuate him to the city?’

  ‘It’s a very small sliver. It’s not penetrating. Evacuating means bringing a helicopter from the city and visibility is making things dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, but-’

  ‘But we do have two doctors,’ he went on inexorably. ‘Even if one of them looks like she just came out of a welfare shop.’

  ‘From a home for battered women actually,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’ve had one offer to take me there in a squad car already tonight.’

  ‘Have you?’ The ready laughter she was starting to know flashed into his eyes. ‘The fire guys tell me they nearly ran you down.’

  ‘Yeah, but then they let me drive their fire engine,’ she told him. ‘Which was really cool.’

  The deep smile lurking in the back of his eyes strengthened into the beginnings of something that looked like pure admiration. And surprise. She flushed but his eyes were sliding down to her legs, breaking the moment. He’d seen her bloodstained knee. ‘That graze wants washing.’

  ‘And we all need dinner and a sleep and it’s not going to happen,’ she told him, still strangely flushed. What was it with this man that had the capacity to unsettle her? She had to move on. ‘Our firefighter has an empty stomach which means he’s ready for anaesthesia now,’ she told him. ‘His eye isn’t going to get better on its own. If we’re going to operate there isn’t a better time than now. Is there?’

  ‘Nope.’ He sighed. ‘I guess not. Lead on, Dr Harper. Do you want to operate or do you want to do the anaesthetic?’

  ‘I’m choosing anaesthetics,’ she told him. ‘Two anaesthetics in one day! I think I’m starting to specialise.’

  It took longer than they had thought it would.

  By the time they finished and the firefighter was recovering in the ward, neatly stitched, foreign body removed and intravenous antibiotics preventing complications, Rachel was swaying on her feet. She hadn’t felt it at all while she’d been in Theatre-adrenaline again, she supposed-but when she emerged she sagged. Her stocks of adrenaline must be at an all-time low. She crossed to the sinks and held on, and if she hadn’t held on she would have sunk to the floor.

  It’d pass. She’d worked exhausted in the past. After nights on duty when Craig-

  No. Don’t go there.

  In a minute she’d start considering the complications surrounding her but for now…

  For now she held on.

  ‘Hey.’ Hugo had hauled off his gown and was watching her, his eyes narrowing in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

  She thought about it. OK? People kept asking her that and the concept was ludicrous. ‘If you’re offering to take me back to my women’s refuge, the answer is yes.’

  ‘Women’s refuge…’

  ‘Any sort of refuge,’ she muttered. ‘As long as it serves dinner. Bread and dripping would be fine. Come to think about it, bread and dripping would be fantastic.’

  ‘You’re hungry.’

  ‘You stole my hamburger-remember?’

  ‘So I did.’ He was looking at her as if she’d just landed from outer space. ‘That was-what-eight hours ago?’

  ‘It feels more. And I didn’t eat it then. Penelope finished it for me. Someone took her off to feed her when I arrived. I bet she’s had a really good meal. Doggos or something. Something really delicious.’

  ‘What did you do between operating on Kim and now?’ he asked and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘I walked. I walked in these really stupid sandals which, by the way, are about ten sizes too big
. I walked back to the pavilion to find Michael hadn’t left me the keys to his car. I brought his stupid dog from the pavilion and I walked into town searching for a café to discover the whole place has shut. It’s like a ghost town. I walked back to the motel to discover the place has been booked out by the Boys’ Own Fire Brigade and their restaurant doesn’t serve meals. And their candy-vending machine is broken. I walked back to the showgrounds to discover the gates had been locked. I started to walk back here but the fire engine nearly ran me down. I came in here, I washed out a few eyes, I sewed up a gashed leg and now I’ve operated on an eye. So… I think maybe I’ve reached my limit. I’m wearing Doris Keen’s Crimplene, my feet hurt, my stomach’s empty, I don’t even have a dog box to sleep in and I’m very, very close to hysterics.’ She eyed him with caution. ‘And if you dare to even twitch the sides of your mouth with the suggestion of laughter, Dr McInnes, I intend to lie down on the floor and give way to a full-scale tantrum. They’ll hear me back in Sydney.’

  ‘I’m not…’ His mouth definitely twitched but it was hauled back under control fast. ‘I’m not laughing.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m definitely not.’ He bit his lip, pushed the laughter resolutely to the backburner and eyed her with a certain amount of caution. ‘OK. It appears you need some help. Where shall we start?’

  ‘Food,’ she told him.

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Let’s go, then.’ He smiled. ‘It fits with what I need to do,’ he told her. ‘I’m hungry, too.’

  ‘You haven’t had dinner?’

  ‘One of my very elderly patients had a stroke. I’ve been out there with her. She died an hour ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he told her. ‘Annie was a ninety-six-year-old farmer. She’s run her own farm since her husband walked out on her sixty years ago. She didn’t miss him a bit. She’s had a great life; she was healthy and happily living in her own home until the end, and I wish all endings could be as happy.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  It was a happy ending. But his words had caught her unawares, twisting her thoughts back to where her thoughts always ended.

  Craig…

  She swallowed. She looked down at her hands and found her hands had clenched into fists. Craig…

  For some stupid reason her eyes were filling with tears.

  Which was ridiculous. Surely she should be used to this by now. It was just that she’d never been away. For eight years…

  Food. She needed food. That’s why she was reacting like this. Hugo was watching her with concern and she blinked and sniffed and got on with it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she told him. ‘I was just…reacting to the day or something. Did you say you knew where we can find some food?’

  He was still watching her, still with that look that said he saw far more than she wanted him to, but he accepted that she needed to move on.

  ‘We’ll give you a few biscuits and cheese to keep the wolf from the door while I wash your knee first,’ he told her. ‘I need a medico with two good legs-not with one infected. Then we find Toby. Toby’s down at the town hall, and that’s where the food is. There’s a fire effort happening in town and the locals are either out on the front or working to support them. Even at this late hour there’ll be food. So we’ll collect Toby and feed you. Two birds with one stone.’

  She blinked back the last of her emotion and managed a grin.

  ‘Lead on, then,’ she told him. ‘Two birds, did you say? I’ll eat them both.’

  That he’d noticed the embedded gravel in her knee amazed her. The Crimplene was flapping around her calves and her knees were hardly exposed. Maybe one of the firefighters had told him.

  Or maybe he’d just…noticed? He was that sort of a doctor, she decided as he carefully scrubbed the surface and then checked that each particle of gravel had been removed.

  It’d be hard to do it herself. But it was also hard to sit still and watch his bent head as he concentrated on what he was doing. His fingers were the fingers of a surgeon, she decided. He was skilled and careful and…kind?

  He unnerved her. She didn’t understand the emotions he engendered and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ she murmured as he put a dressing in place over the damaged skin.

  He smiled up at her. ‘Think nothing of it, ma’am. I owe you one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I disparaged your dog.’

  ‘Penelope’s Michael’s dog,’ she said before she could help herself, and he gave a rueful little smile.

  ‘So she is. But isn’t there something in the wedding vows that says with all your worldly goods? Doesn’t that include Afghan hounds?’

  Hugo still thought she was married to Michael. She stared down at the band of gold on her left hand and gave a twisted smile. Married. To Michael. Ha!

  But it wasn’t the time or the place to disillusion him. What was the point?

  Besides, biscuits and cheese weren’t nearly enough.

  ‘We need to move on,’ she murmured, and he cast her a look that was curiously questioning. And curiously understanding.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and he let his fingers stay on the dressing on her knee for just a fraction of a moment longer than he had to. Long enough to impart…what? Comfort? Understanding? She didn’t know.

  ‘Fine,’ he told her. ‘Let’s move on.’

  They checked on Kim first. Rachel’s stomach couldn’t get any louder than it already was, and when Hugo suggested it she agreed. There were some things still more important than food, and seeing Kim safely asleep was one of them.

  ‘She woke a couple of hours back,’ Hugo told her. ‘But she went back to sleep almost immediately.’

  Her body would be so shocked that she’d sleep for days, Rachel thought, and she was sleeping soundly now. Kim’s mother was by her side, sitting holding her hand. Doing nothing. She was simply watching.

  It was enough.

  ‘Kim shows every sign that she’ll be fine,’ Hugo told the woman as Rachel watched from the doorway. He lifted the base of Kim’s bedsheet to reveal two sets of very pink toes. ‘Her circulation’s almost back to normal. She’s on maximum intravenous antibiotics. Her obs are great. She looks as if she’s going to have very little permanent damage. We’ll do more nerve tests in the morning but she wiggled everything when she woke and had full sensation. Your husband was watching. Did he tell you?’

  ‘He did.’ Mrs Sanderson’s face creased in fierce concentration. Concentrating on control. ‘I was home getting some things for her when she woke.’ Her fragile control broke and her voice choked on a sob. ‘I shouldn’t have left…’

  ‘Kim needed her things.’

  ‘I mean… I shouldn’t have left her at the showgrounds. She wanted to show Knickers. If I’d thought the Jeffreys could be stupid enough to let their dog off the lead… I just didn’t realise…how easy it is to lose someone. We came so close.’

  ‘But not close enough,’ Hugo said gently, his hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘She’ll be fine.’ He smiled down into her tearful face. ‘Tell me how Knickers is.’

  It was the right thing to ask. It made the terror recede. The woman gulped and gave him a watery smile. ‘Knickers is good.’ She took a big breath and searched for calm. She’d been to the brink, Rachel realised. This day would live with her for ever. ‘The vet says he’ll be OK, though my husband is saying it’ll cost more to have Knickers fixed than Kim. We can’t claim a cocker spaniel’s expenses through medical insurance.’

  Hugo grinned. ‘See? I’m cheap at half the price.’ He smiled, a comfort smile Rachel was starting to recognise. ‘Now, what about you going home and getting some rest? We’ve sedated Kim fairly heavily so I’d be surprised if she woke before morning.’

  ‘I might just watch for a little more,’ the woman whispered. ‘If it’s OK. I just want to watch…’

  She just wanted
to watch her breathing, Rachel thought. She knew. To sit there and watch a chest rise and fall…

  She bit her lip and Hugo turned and saw.

  He thought it was the hunger, though. He must do. There was surely no other reason for it. She could see she had him confused and she fought to remove her expression. The stillness of her face…

  ‘I need to take our Dr Harper for a feed,’ he told Mrs Sanderson. ‘We’ll leave you to your vigil. But don’t exhaust yourself. Kim will need you in the morning, if only to prevent all her friends from visiting in the first five minutes. Keep up your strength.’

  ‘I will.’ The woman smiled through tears. ‘Thank you both. We were so lucky…’

  ‘We were really lucky,’ Hugo said as they headed out to the parking lot together. ‘We were hugely lucky to have you here to help us. We still are.’

  Rachel said nothing at all.

  The local hall was where the action was. It was set a block back from the main street, but even so Rachel wondered how she could have missed it when she and Penelope had walked into town. Hugo turned the corner and bright lights shone out through open doors. Even at midnight there were dozens of cars parked outside and people were spilling out onto the pavement.

  ‘So this is Cowral Bay’s night life,’ she said faintly, and Hugo grinned.

  ‘It doesn’t get any better than this. Come and meet Cowral. Oh, and I’d take a deep breath if I were you. I suspect you’ve been voted an honorary local now, like it or not.’

  She had. From the moment she walked in the door she was welcomed as a friend. A lifesaver. She’d treated the firemen and she’d treated Kim.

  Now she could tell why the pavilion had been locked and darkened-why the town itself had seemed abandoned. Everyone was here. Doris Keen was busy making sandwiches but when she saw Rachel she dropped what she was doing and came forward, her arms outstretched.