To the Doctor: A Daughter

by Marion Lennox

  And a few more words besides.

  ‘I don’t swear. I never swear so why am I lying here making my pillow blush?

  ‘It’s Nate. He’s got me so confused I don’t know who I am any more.

  ‘So marry him.

  ‘As if that’d solve anything. As if you could, even if you wanted to. You’ve got rocks in your head, Gemma Campbell. The likes of Nate Ethan aren’t for the likes of you. You’d give him your heart on a plate and he’s already made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t want it. He only wants Gemma the workhorse.’

  Gemma the workhorse turned over and punched her pillow so hard a clump of feathers came sailing out of the lining and landed on her nose. She sneezed, and even smiled.

  But she wasn’t smiling when she finally fell asleep.

  Nate found Gemma in the pool.

  Every morning since Milly had been released from hospital Gemma had taken her into the pool and was patiently teaching her to swim. She’d had five lessons now and it was hard to say who was most pleased-Milly or her proud mother, who was beaming and beaming as she watched the lesson from the poolside.

  As Nate walked into the poolroom Mrs Jefferson bounced up from the bench where she’d been watching. Milly’s mother was practically bursting with excitement.

  ‘She did five strokes on her own. Five strokes! Can you believe that? And two weeks ago we thought we’d lost her.’

  Nate looked in the water and Gemma and Milly were as flushed with triumph as Sandra Jefferson.

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Do you want to see, Dr Ethan?’ Milly called, and without waiting for a response she dived underwater. Her tiny arms splashed the water-six times-and when she surfaced she was beaming with triumph.

  ‘That’s six. That’s six!’

  If I’d told her to try and hold her breath that long to build her lung capacity, she would’ve stared at me blankly, Nate thought. There were miracles happening here.

  ‘Now my lesson’s finished, Cady’s coming in with me,’ Milly told him.

  He knew that. That was why he was here. Mrs McCurdle had been dressing Cady in his swimming trunks when Nate had stopped for an early lunch, and he’d been unable to resist.

  ‘You’ve got your bathers on, too,’ Milly shrieked, pointing at Nate. He was wearing his trunks. ‘Look! Look, Dr Campbell. Dr Ethan’s coming in, too.’

  Gemma looked-and saw.

  She didn’t look exactly delighted, Nate thought. She didn’t look exactly anything.

  Or maybe that wasn’t the truth. Sure, she was wearing an ancient costume which looked like it’d fit a woman twice her size. It was stretched out of shape with age and the colour was indeterminate. But she was flushed with pride and she was smiling at the little girl in the water beside her. And, Nate thought suddenly, she has…something. An indescribable something. Not the stunning good looks of Fiona or Donna but a sort of magnetism…

  He was dreaming.

  Then Cady came bursting through the door, towing Mrs McCurdle behind him. When he saw Milly and Gemma in the water he yipped in excitement.

  ‘Can you cope on your own?’ Nate quizzed Gemma, and she smiled and flushed.

  ‘I… Yes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like some help?’

  There was only one answer to that. ‘I’d love some help.’

  ‘Right.’ And he dived in feeling suddenly, crazily joyful. Like the sun had just come out.

  Because of Milly, he told himself.

  Yeah, right.

  What followed was one very silly, very happy half-hour. Two kids and two adults in the pool, with Mrs McCurdle and Sandra Jefferson watching indulgently from the side.

  ‘You’d think they were children themselves,’ Mrs McCurdle said placidly. ‘Look at the pair of them. There’ll be wedding bells in town soon-you mark my words.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing,’ Sandra told her. ‘It’s obvious they’re in love. It’s just… I wonder if they’ve realised it yet.’

  They hadn’t realised anything of the kind. When the two women disappeared, bearing reluctant children with them, Nate and Gemma were left in the pool together. It was like being in the bath together, Gemma thought. It was too darned intimate for words.

  ‘I should get out. I’m turning into a prune.’

  ‘I’ll bet you’re not.’ He was floating two feet from her nose. ‘You look pretty good from where I’m floating.’

  ‘My nose isn’t wrinkled. But you should see my toes.’

  For answer he duck-dived-straight underneath her. She felt his hand on her toe and yelped and splashed for the poolside.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said, surfacing with laughter. ‘You’re not wrinkled. Ticklish, though-definitely ticklish.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’m away.’ He was, too. A whole six feet. ‘Seriously, Gemma-’

  ‘You’re not serious. You’re never serious.’

  ‘I am now. And what you’re doing for Milly…it’s a minor miracle.’

  ‘She’s responding better than I’d hoped.’

  ‘You’re building her lung capacity almost while we watch.’

  ‘I hope it helps.’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’

  There was silence then. There seemed nothing left to say. He should get out, Nate thought. This had been a spur-of-the-moment decision-to take a swim-and he had patients waiting. So did Gemma.

  But neither of them moved-yet.

  ‘You haven’t reconsidered…?’

  And that broke the silence in no uncertain terms.

  ‘No, I have not!’ It was a snap and Nate grimaced. He should learn when to shut up.

  ‘It’s just…it’s going so well.’

  ‘Yes, it is. So why mess it up with talk of marriage?’

  Why indeed? Nate hardly knew.

  ‘I only thought-’

  ‘Well, don’t think. Thinking’s dangerous. I never do it unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

  ‘So how do you operate?’ he asked, fascinated. ‘Without thinking?’

  ‘I operate on gut instinct. Take Milly. It was a gut feeling that swimming would be good.’

  ‘Gut feeling backed up with ten years of solid medical training.’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘And what does your gut say about us?’

  ‘My gut says your idea is crazy.’

  ‘My gut says it’d work.’

  ‘Well, there you go, then,’ she said equitably. ‘We have incompatible guts. What better reason for refusing a marriage proposal?’

  ‘Gemma…’

  ‘Knock it off, Nate,’ she said. ‘We have work to do. Stop wasting time.’ And she put her head down and stroked out for the steps, strong and sure, leaving him to watch her with ever-increasing confusion.

  They had more work to do than they bargained for. At five that afternoon, just as the lines in the surgery were starting to thin, there was a call from the local police.

  ‘There’s been a plane crash,’ Nate told Gemma, putting his head around her consulting-room door as she wrote a script for Ruby Sawyer, an old lady with Parkinson’s disease and an avid interest in the new doctor. ‘It’s just been rung in. The local police sergeant is on his way there now. All he knows is that it came down in a paddock near Millhouse’s dairy. It might be a false alarm-nothing but a forced landing-but there might be work for both of us. If Graham takes over here, can you come?’

  Could she come? A plane crash… ‘Of course.’ She grimaced apologetically at Ruby-whose expression said she’d love to come, too-and was out of her chair before Nate could close the door. She caught him as he was climbing into his car.

  ‘What sort of plane?

  He cast her a look that said he’d expected her to follow in her own car-not be ready in time to come with him. But he was glad that she had. This sounded as if it could be a nightmare. ‘It’s a light plane. Bob, our local police sergeant reckons it might be a Cessna.
He got a call from a farmer’s wife a mile away saying she saw it come in low and then heard a crash.’

  ‘If she heard a crash from a mile away… Dear God…’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll be pretty.’

  It wasn’t.

  During the last two weeks Gemma hadn’t once regretted leaving her life in the big city. She regretted it now. Nate pulled up at the gate leading to the dairy. Gemma gazed in horror at the wreck of the plane and thought longingly of all the medical services she’d left behind at Sydney Central.

  Where were the fire engines? The ambulances? The paramedics? Where were the cranes and the specialist tow trucks? Where was…everybody?

  There was one lone man-the local police sergeant, by the look of his uniform-spraying the smouldering ruin with a fire extinguisher far too small for the job.

  Where was the cavalry?

  ‘Hell, if it goes up in smoke…’ Nate said grimly, and hauled an extinguisher from the back seat. ‘Bring my bag, Gemma.’ And he was off at a run, leaving Gemma to follow.

  She brought up the rear but not at a run. She didn’t hurry. She’d learned in her time as an emergency intern that if things weren’t staring her in the face as immediately life-threatening then it was worth taking the time to do an overall assessment. Triage had been drilled into her as a medical student-the sorting of priorities.

  Preventing a fire must be the first priority but there wasn’t another fire extinguisher. Which left her free to take stock.

  The plane looked as if it had been crop-dusting. A bright sign was still decipherable on its crumpled side. BUZZEM WEEDS. The sign looked absurdly incongruous where it was.

  It had crashed right into the dairy, smashing the whole structure. The plane itself was lying upside down on the sheets of galvanised iron that had once been the dairy roof.

  Why had it crashed? Surely it hadn’t been heading straight for the dairy. She looked further back from where it must have approached.

  And there it was. The reason the plane had crashed. Three hundred yards from the dairy was a row of power lines. Or what had been a row of power lines. The plane had dropped too close to the wires, a pole had been hauled down and the cables were now trailing uselessly on the ground between pole and dairy.

  Power lines…

  She shouted to Nate, putting all the force she had into her yell. He turned and she pointed to the cables. She didn’t know where they ended or whether they were still live.

  Nate recognised her fear at a glance. He grabbed the policeman, signalling to the wires, and they moved away. There was one thing she could do. She lifted her cellphone and dialed the emergency number.

  ‘There’s a plane crash two miles north of Terama on the Black Hill road. I need the power cut. Now.’

  They could do it, she thought. One central switch could well stop a further disaster.

  But…

  The operator was inept. ‘I’m not sure…’ She sounded flustered. ‘It’s after five… I’ll have to try and find their emergency number.’

  ‘Do it.’

  But the need was now, not after the operator had located some vaguely contactable repairman. The cables were strewn right into the crash site.

  She couldn’t trust them. One step wrong and they’d be fried. So…

  ‘Turn the damned power off,’ she told herself as she slammed shut her phone. ‘How?

  ‘Learn by experience,’ she told herself grimly. ‘The hard way.’ She looked around and found a tree branch-a piece of cypress about eight feet long-and walked toward the power lines like someone would have walked toward a cobra.

  At least the wood was dry. If it had been raining the thing would have been impossible, but her branch seemed shrivelled and well dead. She knew enough to figure there shouldn’t be any moisture to conduct electricity.

  ‘Gemma…’ Nate yelled across at her and she waved as she heard the alarm in his voice. He’d seen what she was doing.

  ‘I’m just checking the lines.’

  ‘Don’t-’

  But he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t leave what he was doing. There were flames flickering at the edges of the crashed aircraft and if the fire hit fuel…

  Would two extinguishers be enough?

  The responsibility for the power lines was all Gemma’s.

  And somehow she did it. Walking carefully, approaching from behind and pushing the tangle of cables out of the way with her branch, she finally reached the pole. There were switches. About ten of the things…

  She didn’t trust that the pole itself wasn’t live. Thinking fast, she tugged off her shoe. It had a rubber sole-surely she should be safe if she kept that between herself and any electricity source. Slipping her hand into its depths she leaned forward and flicked switches. One after another she switched, until all were in the ‘up’ position.

  Gloriously, they had notations emblazoned on the plastic surface.

  ON. And OFF. And now every single one of them was pointing to OFF.

  She’d done it.

  They’d still be unwise to trust them if they didn’t have to-to stand on the cables-but she could hope now that they could approach the wreckage with safety. It was a calculated risk but worth it if there were lives to save.

  Were there?

  Gemma turned back to assess the damage.

  The plane had smashed squarely into the dairy. There were forty or so cows lined up ready to be let in the gate. Milking hadn’t started yet so there were no cows in the bales-or what had been cow-bales. The bales were crushed under the collapsed roof and the cows were huddled by the gates to the yard, an uneasy, restless herd.

  So what was there?

  She couldn’t see. There were smouldering ruins-the dairy had collapsed in on itself and, apart from that one garish painted panel, the plane was just about unrecognisable.

  No one could have survived that crash.

  Or could they? Was anyone underneath?

  She grabbed Nate’s bag and took it over to where the two men were still spraying foam.

  ‘Don’t we have a fire service?’

  ‘The brigade should be here any minute,’ the policeman told her. ‘Damned fire brigade… They have their practice every Friday night and I always say if you have to have a fire then don’t have it on a Friday night.’

  He glanced at the smouldering ruin and swore. ‘Hell.’

  ‘Who’s in there?’ Nate asked, his face as grim as the policeman’s.

  ‘It’ll be Hector Blainey,’ the policeman said, his face as grim as death. ‘It’s his plane. He’s not walking out of this.’

  ‘No.’ Nate edged nearer, keeping an eye on the cable.

  ‘I think the electricity’s off,’ Gemma said. ‘I switched off everything I could see.’

  If it wasn’t dead the whole site would be live. They had to take the chance. ‘I’ll go in,’ Nate said, edging over the mound of rubble toward the plane.

  ‘Damn it, Doc… Wait for the brigade.’

  ‘What will they do that I can’t? It seems solid enough.’

  It seemed no such thing. The pile of rubble looked as if it could come down any minute.

  But Nate didn’t stop. Carefully he picked his way across the mass of shattered bricks and mortar to the edge of the plane. He hauled away a section of what had once been the dairy roof and then ripped off the garish panel. What he saw there made him recoil.

  ‘Hell.’

  There was no need to ask what had caused his revulsion. For the pilot death must have been instantaneous.

  ‘One?’ Gemma asked, feeling as sick as Nate looked, and he nodded.

  ‘I can only see the one-and it’s Hec. He wouldn’t have had any passengers if he was crop-dusting.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have been crop-dusting so low,’ the policeman muttered, staring around him. ‘What the hell was he doing, coming in so low over a dairy? He must have known the yard would be full. He’ll have known he stood every chance of spooking the cows.’

  �
�Which is probably just why he’ll have done it,’ Nate said, still staring around at the mess of what had once been the dairy. ‘Hector and Ian Millhouse-the farmer who owns this dairy,’ he explained for Gemma’s benefit, ‘have a long-standing feud. A boundary dispute.’

  ‘Seems a damned high price to pay for a fight over a bit of fence,’ the policeman muttered, and Gemma could only agree.

  ‘So where’s Ian?’ Nate’s voice was still grim. He stood looking around him. ‘If the cows are lined up for milking, he’ll be here. Where…?’

  And then he heard it. A faint moan coming from beneath the rubble where he was standing. Nate shifted sideways and stared down.

  ‘Damn. He’s beneath the plane. Give us a hand.’

  The fire brigade arrived then-finally-with five volunteers on board. After confirming that Gemma had indeed turned the electricity off, one man took over playing water over the site-cooling everything down. Then they started hauling away bricks, the timber that had been the walls, sheets of galvanised iron still hot to touch…

  Until the path to the iron under the plane was clear.

  One of the men had a flashlight. He directed the beam underneath the iron in the direction the sound had come from, shining it in under the mess of roofing iron.

  And then he whistled. ‘Got him.’

  They could see him. But they couldn’t reach him.

  The roofing iron formed a plate over the rubble that had been the dairy, and almost the full weight of the plane was holding it down.

  They could see Ian’s arm and part of his head-one side of his face. He was eight or ten feet under the iron, the iron seemed to be almost resting on top of him and he looked firmly trapped.

  Hell!

  It was hell. He was so far in-and he was almost directly underneath the plane. It was a wonder he was alive at all. ‘Ian, can you hear me?’ Nate called, and there was another groan in response. And then…

  ‘Doc…’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me.’ Nate’s voice was grim. ‘What’s going on, Ian? Are you stuck?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a ruddy big sheet of iron holding me. And I can’t…I can’t feel my legs. Can’t move them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to. With this mess around the wisest course is to keep still.’