Christmas Knight

by Meredith Webber

  ‘As Tara’s already minding the baby, I’ll just check the patient with you then go through to the office. Catch up on a bit of paperwork,’ she said, and led the two of them towards the admitting area.

  The patient was, as Narelle had said, not much the worse for wear. Contusions on his face and one arm, and bruises coming out on his skin, but sitting up on the gurney and chatting to the ambulance bearers.

  ‘Gareth Crowe! I might have known!’ Kate said as soon as she saw him. ‘Well, maybe this is good luck. You can meet the man people are always talking about and comparing you to. Gareth, this is Grant Bell.’

  ‘You’re that Grant Bell?’ Narelle said, eyeing Grant even more lasciviously.

  ‘Hey, are you really?’ Gareth asked, putting out his hand then wincing as pain caught him with it half-extended. ‘I thought you might have been made up—you know, like the bogeyman. People have been saying “You’re just another Grant Bell” to me for so long, I’d started to think you were one of those things they have in books—a myth.’

  He studied Grant, taking in the flowered shirt and board shorts, long bare legs and sneakers without socks.

  ‘Did you turn out as bad as people predicted? Are you a beach bum? Did Dr Fenton bring you in to show me how I might end up?’

  He grinned at Grant.

  ‘I’m actually a doctor,’ Grant told him, and Kate guessed he’d been taken aback by Gareth’s questions. ‘I was holidaying at Byron Bay when I heard Katie—Dr Fenton—needed a locum, so all I had with me were beach clothes.’

  ‘You’re a d-doctor?’ Gareth stuttered. ‘Like Dr Fenton? Like Tara wants to be?’

  Kate chuckled at his astonishment.

  ‘Ordinary people, like Grant and me and Tara—though she’s far brighter than Grant and I were at school, so not so ordinary—and even you, do become doctors, you know. It takes a bit of work and study, but most people can make it if they decide it’s what they really want to do.’

  ‘Which is a better reason for going into something like medicine than for the money you can make.’

  Grant’s statement was so un-Grant-like that Kate was temporarily shocked, then she remembered it had been many years since she’d seen him and, however much they might have seemed familiar to each other, she had no idea what kind of man the teenage Grant had grown into.

  Neither had she checked he really was a doctor, but as Vi had brought him back to Testament, and she trusted Vi, who’d run the doctor’s surgery since Dr Darling’s days, Kate had to assume it was OK.

  ‘I’ll leave you to judge what kind of doctor he became,’ she said to Gareth, then, determined not to make a fool of herself by hanging around, she walked through to the office where there was a genuine pile of paperwork awaiting her attention.

  She had just settled behind her desk and was considering where to start when Narelle appeared.

  ‘Grant says can you come,’ she said, and Kate knew from her voice something had gone very wrong.

  ‘Maybe you should have crossed your fingers when you mentioned burr holes,’ Grant said, as he helped a wardsman wheel the gurney towards the theatre. They weren’t running, or in any other way indicating panic, but they moved with swift purpose. ‘Gareth complained briefly of a bad headache then lapsed into unconsciousness again, his systolic pressure’s shot up and heartbeat’s slowed.’

  ‘Dilated pupil?’ Kate asked, knowing a period of unconsciousness followed by a lucid period then a lapse back into coma was usually a sign of an acute epidural haemorrhage.

  ‘Right side. We were about to X-ray his skull for fractures when he deteriorated.’

  Grant kept speaking as they moved, and Kate took in what had already been given to the young man. Her mind raced ahead, working out drugs and dosages—always dicey in the case of brain-injured patients.

  Though once they’d drilled a hole and released the leaking blood which was causing pressure on Gareth’s brain, he should make a full recovery.

  If they were quick enough…

  ‘You’ve done it before?’ she asked Grant, and saw his quick nod.

  ‘Then I’ll do the anaesthetic and Narelle can assist you.’

  She went ahead, entering Theatre through the dressing rooms and hurriedly donning theatre pyjamas over her clothes, exchanging her own sandals for the floppy paper slippers, pulling a cap over her unruly hair and grabbing a mask.

  In the theatre itself, she set up the monitor and found the drugs, catheters and tubing she’d need. Narelle came in with a sealed bundle.

  ‘I’ve seen this burr-hole bundle,’ she said as she unwrapped it to expose the instruments and swabs Grant would need, ‘but never thought I’d see it used here.’

  ‘Did you check the date on it?’ Kate asked, knowing the paper wrappings on the sterile bundle of instruments and swabs could deteriorate, allowing contamination into the bundle.

  ‘It’s current,’ Narelle assured her. ‘All the bundles were changed when Paul arrived—it was one thing he did do.’

  Kate wasn’t surprised by the remark, as she had yet to hear many positive comments about Paul Newberry. Though, now she considered the urgency, the use-by date on the bundle was irrelevant.

  The patient was lifted onto the operating table, and while Narelle and Grant scrubbed Kate readied him for the operation, positioning him on the table with the injured side uppermost, propping his right shoulder on a towel so his head was rotated with the dilated pupil uppermost, draping his body with sterile sheeting and covering all but a small portion of his skull with the green, papery material. She checked the airway Grant must have inserted and made sure its connection to the oxygen supply was clear but out of the way, and that the leads to the monitor were also connected but not about to impair access to the site of the operation.

  Working with deft fingers, she inserted a catheter and taped it to the back of Gareth’s left hand, then glanced at her watch. It had seemed like ages, but only five minutes earlier he had been talking to them.

  She chose an anaesthetising agent which could be easily reversed. Though Gareth was unconscious now, it wouldn’t do to have him coming to as the pressure was released during the operation.

  Grant and Narelle came in, Narelle taking up her position beside the trolley where the instruments were displayed.

  ‘At least we don’t have to shave his head,’ Grant remarked. ‘No way would we have been allowed at school with shaven heads.’

  He was talking as he measured and marked the place where he’d cut, his fingers moving swiftly into position above the lad’s temporal area, above the zygomatic arch and behind the ear. With skilful movements for a man not used to surgery, he sliced through the skin, separated the muscle away from the bone, drilled through the skull to the inner surface and changed the drill for a softer burr.

  There was no chit-chat, no jokes, all of them aware, without the need for words, that Gareth lived or died depending on the speed and success of what they were doing.

  ‘I’ll scoop out a little more soft material then syringe out the blood,’ Grant said, and Kate found herself admiring Narelle’s efficiency and the smooth way she and Grant worked together.

  And wondering why the observation made her feel more grouchy than pleased.

  ‘Suction?’

  Kate watched and waited, and even through the loose-fitting theatre garb saw Grant’s shoulders relax.

  ‘It’s thick, coagulating, nothing fresh and red, so hopefully the little bleeder’s shut itself off and we don’t have to look any further.’

  Kate felt her relief like a physical lightening of weight, though she knew this end stage of the operation was up to her. While Grant patched and stitched the hole he’d made, she had to bring Gareth slowly back to a level just below consciousness, then find a satisfactory means of keeping him sedated enough to make the journey to Craigtown comfortably and with a minimum of distress. Once there, the decision would be made as to whether to keep him in an induced coma for a few days while any swelling in
his brain subsided.

  ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she told Grant. ‘He’ll have to go to Craigtown for scans and observation so I’ll get him ready to transport. His parents are probably here by now, so maybe if you could talk to them? Explain…?’

  He’d pulled off his mask as he walked away from the operating table and he turned to smile at Kate.

  ‘You want me to do the dirty work?’

  ‘I do not!’ she said indignantly, though the smile had sent a quiver across her skin. ‘Anyway, I’d have thought you’d be pleased to see Helen Crowe.’ She paused for a beat then, straight-faced, added, ‘She was Helen Jones—Miss Jones to you and all the rest of the senior maths class.’

  ‘Our Miss J-Jones?’ Grant stuttered, moving his hands in the air to indicate an exaggeratedly hourglass figure.

  ‘The very same,’ Kate assured him, smiling at the expression of horror on his face. ‘She’s Gareth’s stepmother.’

  ‘I’ll do the reversal,’ he offered. ‘Take over from you. After all, you’re the local doctor, you should talk to them.’

  Kate chuckled.

  ‘You’re what, nearly thirty-one, and still afraid of your old maths teacher?’

  ‘You may laugh,’ Grant said grimly. ‘But there wasn’t a boy in high school who didn’t lust after that woman, but she could cut off your legs and shrivel your—well, you know what she could shrivel, with one glance. Then she’d complete the annihilation by doubling the maths homework.’

  He paused then added, ‘Actually, it’s a wonder we didn’t all end up sexually impaired for life.’

  ‘One assumes you didn’t?’ Narelle said cheekily, returning to the theatre in time to catch the tail end of the conversation. ‘Helen and Peter Crowe are outside and would like to see you, Grant.’

  Kate watched him go—watched them go—and once again felt a totally inappropriate niggle of what could only be described as pique.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ she warned, as she concentrated on Gareth and getting him ready for the two-hour trip to Craigtown.

  ‘Are your weekends always this busy?’ Grant asked, when, with Gareth despatched to the bigger town, they walked back to the house. ‘We’ve barely had time to say hello, let alone go through your working hours and discuss what you want me to do.’

  Katie failed to answer and, sensing her distraction, he turned to study her more closely as they walked under the light at the boundary between the house and the hospital.

  ‘Why the frown?’

  She heard him that time, spinning towards him with a hint of panic in her lovely eyes.

  ‘Was I frowning? Did you ask something? I’m sorry.’

  She pushed her hair around a bit on her head, obviously trying to remove the bits that fell forward over her face but not succeeding.

  ‘Honestly, Grant,’ she admitted, ‘this motherhood thing is so weird. It’s as if the body takes over from the mind in the decision-making process.’

  ‘Not only in motherhood situations,’ Grant interrupted, thinking of times, even between the two of them, when that had happened.

  ‘I’m not talking about sex,’ she snapped. ‘I’m talking about everyday life, here. I mean, I should have been thinking about Gareth or whatever you were asking me but, no, my breasts are aching and I’m hoping Tara hasn’t fed the baby because my body obviously thinks it’s time to feed her, and I’m trying to remember when I last fed her, and if a feed’s due. It’s pathetic! My life is dominated by my mammary glands.’

  ‘Not so pathetic if you think of the number of young men who failed maths as they went through Testament High, because their brains were reduced to mush by Helen Crowe’s bounteous breasts. Perhaps, while you’re in this situation, we could do a paper on it—the correlation between breasts and brain function from both male and female perspectives.’

  They’d reached the kitchen and walked in to find Tara sitting, feet up on a chair, a book propped in front of her, while the baby slept peacefully in her arms.

  ‘She’s been fed!’ Katie said, in such tragic tones Grant had to laugh.

  ‘No, actually, she hasn’t,’ Tara responded. ‘She had a little cry so I picked her up, changed her and carried her out to heat the milk, and by the time I got here she was asleep again.’ She grinned at the pair of them and added, ‘Let sleeping babies lie—isn’t that the rule?’

  ‘Most definitely,’ Katie agreed, but Grant saw the way her eyes went to the sleeping infant, scanning, checking, emitting uncertainty and love in equal measure.

  Not unlike what he was feeling towards Katie herself, though the love was certainly a nostalgic emotion—like an emotional hangover—inextricably linked to childhood and adolescence.

  Then, because his mind seemed inclined to debate this issue, he focussed on the baby.

  ‘Do you like Sophie as a name for her?’ he asked Tara, and was pleased to see the studious young woman put down her book and earnestly consider the small face.

  ‘Nah! She’s way too pretty for a Sophie. Sophies are elegant—attractive, rather than pretty. And I reckon, though she’s just about perfect now, the little scrap’ll probably end up with that wild, untamed sort of look Kate has—too elemental for a Sophie.’

  The statement drew protest from Katie, but Grant found himself considering it.

  Elemental! That was the word he’d been looking for when he’d been thinking of Katie’s fire and passion. Katie’s beauty burned from within—

  ‘I don’t know where you two get off with naming my baby!’

  Her protest cut into his thoughts.

  ‘Well, you’re not doing much about it,’ Grant reminded her.

  ‘I am so!’ she snorted, but far too quickly for him to believe it.

  ‘OK, tell us what you’re thinking. Share a little.’

  Kate saw the challenge—and amusement—in Grant’s eyes, and though she longed to reel off any number of suitable names, for some reason the only female name that came immediately to mind was Hortense, and neither Grant nor Tara would believe she was seriously considering it.

  She leaned over to pick up the baby, willing her to wake and demand her supper, but, of course, lacking any sense of timing—a failing she’d already lectured the baby on today—the wee thing slept on.

  ‘My grandmother’s name was Rose so I thought that might fit in somewhere,’ she said, when she realised the silence in the kitchen had been caused by her failure to reply. ‘Rose, Lily, Ruby, Sapphire—they’re all coming back into fashion at the moment.’

  Grant’s expression of disbelief was so comical, she’d probably have laughed if she hadn’t been feeling so confused about so many things—him being here now taking over from baby names in the prime position of concern.

  ‘You can’t call a baby any of those names,’ he protested. ‘Not if she’s going to live in the country where people still think names like Linda are New Age. I bet Tara’s mother felt very brave choosing Tara and I’m sure when Gareth’s mother named him Gareth, the entire town blamed the fact that she was an in-comer—a city girl with city ways. Who was she, by the way, and what happened to her?’

  ‘She was another teacher, and you’re right about the city ways. She hated the country and left her husband with Gareth when he was only young.’ Tara supplied the information then frowned at Grant.

  ‘Why did you think of Gareth?’ she demanded. ‘Do you know him?’

  Kate saw the flush on the girl’s cheeks and remembered Gareth mentioning Tara’s name. Was a romance budding between the high school’s best achiever and the local bad boy?

  Again?

  She set aside the thought, wondering how much she could tell Tara about the accident, but before she could decide, Grant had taken over. He’d slipped into a chair opposite Tara and was explaining the accident, and when he grabbed the whiteboard Kate kept to jot down messages to herself, and began to draw a skull, Kate realised Tara was just as interested in the mechanics of the operation as she was in Gareth’s well-being.


  ‘I’ll feed Hortense,’ she murmured, but neither of them heard, and, as she walked through to her bedroom, she wondered if she’d have been the same—back then. Though she’d been two years behind Grant at school, and medicine hadn’t always been her goal.

  But the young Kate—or Katie as she had been then—and the teenage Grant accompanied her, like friendly ghosts, to the bedroom, and, as the baby began to suckle and her stomach muscles tightened in response, she couldn’t help but think of that other summer.

  ‘Coming swimming, Katie?’ he’d asked, and his voice, so familiar though he’d only started phoning her regularly since the holidays had begun, had made her stomach cramp and tighten, while her heart had flip-flopped in her chest like a just-landed fish.

  ‘I’ll have to ask Mum,’ she’d said, knowing she’d tell her mother it was Sally on the phone. Her mother wouldn’t have stopped her seeing Grant—it was just that the shift in their relationship had been too new, too delicate and fragile, to be shared.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll ride out,’ she’d said, returning to the phone once the lie had been accepted and permission given.

  ‘See you soon,’ he’d said, and she’d known he’d ride to meet her, then they’d turn off near the boundary to his parents’ property, seeking a secluded stretch of the river where the banks were steep so the cattle rarely strayed.

  ‘It wasn’t that the cattle were a problem,’ Kate told the baby. ‘Only the people who might be looking for them and inadvertently find us.’

  Not that they’d planned to go beyond the kissing—not that day, or really any other day in the near future.

  ‘The kissing was mind-blowing enough,’ Kate said, burping the baby before shifting her to the other side. ‘The shift from friends to more than friends was really weird. It just happened those holidays and, boy, did it happen. Talk about passion!’

  The memory brought a warmth she hadn’t felt for ages, but the baby had fallen asleep and needed to be changed again before she was settled for the night—or whatever part of it she might happen to sleep.

  ‘It must have been the heat—or only having swimsuits on,’ she told the sleeping infant, while her body, so long dormant, now rippled with sensations that had nothing to do with breastfeeding.