The Bush Doctor's Challenge

by Carol Marinelli

  Smiling bravely, Abby leant forward, squeezing his hand ever tighter. Her voice was so positive, so assured and full of hope, even Abby wondered where it was coming from. ‘You’re doing the right thing and you will see it again, Bill. This isn’t goodbye.’

  Comforted, reassured, his anxious eyes closed for the bliss of sleep as Abby sat dry-eyed beside him, not even attempting small talk with the busy, efficient staff and wishing, wishing more than she ever had before, that someone, anyone, could say the same words to her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘THIS coffee’s disgusting.’

  As Abby walked into the staffroom she looked at the gathered night staff, grabbing a quick drink before the Saturday night shift started and she managed a rueful smile. Gone were her insecurities, the paranoia that the conversation shifted each and every time she entered the room.

  The coffee here was disgusting and, as Kell had pointed out, it really was all that was on the nurses’ minds.

  ‘Then it’s just as well I’ve been shopping,’ Abby said, pulling a massive jar of the most expensive instant out of her bag. She pulled a marker pen off the whiteboard. ‘That should keep the hordes off,’ she said as she placed it on the coffee-table.

  ‘It will, too.’ Jane, the night charge nurse, grinned as she read Abby’s bold writing. ‘“Hands off! Abby Hampton, Consultant.” Present company excepted, I hope?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Abby said as she checked in her pigeonhole and pulled out a few manila envelopes. ‘Finally,’ she groaned, as her new name badge fell into her hands. Clipping it on, the one she’d waited so long for, Abby accepted the trickle of applause that went around the room.

  ‘So it’s finally official,’ Jane cheered. ‘Our Abby really is a consultant.’

  ‘So it says here.’ Peering down at her white coat, the sense of anticlimax surprised even Abby.

  She’d been back a fortnight now. Visited the Opera House, taken a ferry across the harbour and lain on Manly beach, walked around the Botanical Gardens, slipping off her shoes and revelling in the soft damp grass beneath her feet. Been to the theatre, eaten authentic Thai Tom Yum and Japanese Tepanyaki Beef on various nights with the best of them as her colleagues had toasted her success, shopped till she’d dropped and had more than her share of facials and massages.

  Everything she’d missed, everything she’d wanted, there for the taking now.

  And it didn’t mean a thing.

  Only work was her salvation, the one real pleasure she had. Nothing, not even a tourist bus crash, or a child with epiglottitis in the middle of nowhere, quite made up for the thrill of promise that filled city emergency rooms the world over as they prepared for a Saturday night.

  It was either there or it wasn’t.

  You either got it or you didn’t.

  But as she pulled her stethoscope around her neck, clipped her pager in her pocket and walked through the already steaming waiting room, past the ‘Staff Only’ doors and into the pulsing hub of activity on the other side, Abby knew that work alone wasn’t enough.

  That love had won.

  Oh, she wasn’t about to down tools and leave, the drug programme was too precious to abandon at this fragile stage, but, then, so was her relationship with Kell. Abby’s hand dug into her pocket, her fingers closing around the half-finished letter she had written. Hopefully she’d get the time to complete it on her break tonight, that she could somehow translate the jumble of thoughts in her brain into a semblance of a letter. That she was sorry she had left, but not sorry she’d come back. Sorry for the pain she had caused. But could she ask for a favour?

  Was a year too long to ask Kell to wait? A year to get the programme running, a year to see things through…

  ‘We’re down two staff,’ Jane said briskly, handing Abby a mountain of patient files. ‘We’ve only got one nurse really qualified for resus at the moment.’

  ‘What about you?’

  Jane gave small shrug. ‘I’m in charge, so officially I don’t count, but, of course, if something comes in I’ll just have to split myself in two, or three,’ she muttered as the emergency bell went.

  ‘No.’ Abby shook her head firmly. ‘Get me the supervisor on the phone and I’ll have a word.’

  ‘Done,’ Jane barked as she shooed out a couple of drunks who had wandered through. ‘There’s not a nurse on the wards prepared to come down, so they’ve agreed to send an agency nurse.’

  ‘Great,’ Abby muttered.

  ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ Jane grinned. ‘Who knows? The agency might get it right for once and send someone who’s actually done emergency and not a poor woman who’s spent the last decade nursing geriatrics!

  ‘It looks like you’re wanted,’ Jane sighed, relieving Abby of the notes and gesturing towards resus. ‘Roll on seven a.m.’

  ‘Wanted’ was an understatement. A grad nurse was attempting to stop an elderly man strapped to a cardiac monitor from climbing over the cot sides of his gurney as Haley, the sister down for resus, set up a bed and started to pull up drugs.

  ‘What’s coming in?’ Abby asked, getting straight to the point as she pulled on some latex gloves.

  ‘Query heroin overdose,’ Haley said, filling up a syringe from a vial. ‘Security just alerted us. His so-called friends just dumped him in the car park. Uh-oh.’ Jane’s face at the door didn’t bode well.

  ‘Ambulance Control just radioed through. They’re bringing in a motorcyclist with major head injuries. I’ve paged the trauma team and they’re on the way.’

  ‘How about that extra nurse?’ Abby called to her departing back.

  ‘She’s on her way, too!’

  ‘You, set up for the cyclist,’ Abby ordered Haley, as the orthopaedic registrar flew through the door. ‘I’ll deal with the OD. Hopefully the security officers will stay and help!’

  She wasn’t joking! Making sure she had everything else to hand, Abby rechecked the drug Haley had drawn up, knowing that if this was indeed a heroin overdose, the man being carried in grey and lifeless by Security could very well turn into one angry young man indeed when his overdose was reversed.

  ‘It’s Pete,’ Abby said as the young man was placed on the trolley beside her.

  ‘I really thought he’d turned his life around after the last scare.’

  ‘Ever the optimist,’ Haley sighed as the orthopaedic registrar made his way over.

  ‘My motorcyclist hasn’t arrived yet, how about I lend a hand?’

  He bagged the patient with essential oxygen as Abby struggled to find a vein in Pete’s thin bruised arms. ‘Got one,’ she said finally on her third attempt. ‘And not a moment too soon. It looks like your motorcyclist is here,’ she commented as the blue lights of the ambulance flashed past the window. ‘I’ll be over to help when I can.’ Picking up the syringe, Abby gave a thin smile to the two burly security guards. ‘Ready, guys.’

  The drug worked in seconds.

  The young man, who only seconds before had been deeply unconscious and barely breathing, precariously close to death, suddenly attempted to sit up, cursing and swearing angrily, furious with the world.

  ‘Hi, Pete,’ Abby said in a resigned voice as the vile language continued. ‘So you’ve come back to see us again.’

  Even with their combined strength, the security officers were struggling to hold the young man down, and Abby stood back slightly as she spoke to him. ‘You nearly died, Pete.’

  ‘I’d have been fine.’

  ‘No,’ Abby said sharply. ‘A couple of minutes more and you’d have been brain damaged, and a couple of minutes more than that and you’d have been dead. Now, I want you to calm down, and when you have, you and I are going to have a long talk.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Pete shouted, struggling to sit up. ‘What would you know?’

  ‘Too much,’ Abby said, meeting his eyes full on. ‘I lost a dear friend because of drugs and I lose more patients than I can even bear to think about due to them, so I know plen
ty. Now, like it or not, Pete, I’m on your back, and for once you’re going to listen to me.’

  ‘Get lost,’ Pete sneered.

  ‘Settle down, mate.’

  The calmest, most easygoing of voices, so out of place in an emergency room, suddenly filled the air and Abby stared, just stared at the muscular, tanned forearm that was pushing Pete back down onto the trolley.

  ‘I’d suggest you lie there and do what the doctor says, huh? It can’t hurt to listen.’

  Still her eyes didn’t dare move. Instead, they stayed trained on Kell’s arms, scrutinising every dark hair, the veins on the back of his hand, the neat white nails, terrified that if she moved if she blinked, if she even breathed, he might somehow disappear.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ She finally croaked, confused, overwhelmed but utterly, utterly delighted.

  ‘Didn’t the agency say I was coming?’ Kell winked.

  ‘You’re the agency nurse?’

  ‘A word, Abby, please?’ Jane’s none-too-dulcet tones wouldn’t wait and with a bemused shake of her head Abby made to go, but her legs just wouldn’t move.

  ‘Go,’ Kell said gently. ‘We’ll still be here when you get back, won’t we, Pete?’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Jane grimaced as Abby came over. ‘I never thought he’d just march in.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kelvin. The agency’s really overstretched the mark this time. He’s a bush nurse—a bush nurse!’ Jane repeated, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘I told him there’s no snakes here, young man, and I said he could try and make himself useful tidying the pan room and running a few patients up to the ward.’

  ‘And what did he say?’ Abby asked, a markedly absent smile forming on her lips.

  ‘Well, that’s just it. He just shrugged and carried right on over to resus, I honestly don’t think he’s the full ticket, and he’s certainly not what I ordered from the agency.’

  ‘His name’s Kell, Jane, not Kelvin, and he’s exactly what you ordered.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Abby was smiling now, really smiling as Jane stared at her, bemused. ‘You need to loosen up a bit Jane. He’s everything this department needs.’

  He was, too.

  On they worked, through this busy Saturday night, and nothing, not a single thing, fazed him. Flirting gently with the old ladies, chatting amicably with the drunks, making tea and toast for the down-and-outs one minute, performing cardiac massage on a teenager the next. Even the sex workers who trickled in tired and weary in the small hours of the morning perked up a bit when they saw Kell writing his notes at the nurses’ station.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ Gloria, one of the regular sex workers, asked as Abby finished stitching her hand, gaping in open-mouthed admiration as Kell breezed into the theatre to check a drug with Jane.

  ‘He’s from the bush,’ Jane said once Kell had gone, snipping Abby’s suture, her voice growing more gushing by the minute. ‘And despite my earlier doubts, he’s an absolute treasure.’

  ‘That’ll be right,’ Gloria muttered. ‘They don’t make men like that in the city.’ Sitting up, she straightened her red boob tube and patted her curls. ‘I could give him my card on the way out.’ With a saucy wink she fished in her purse. ‘I might even offer him a discount.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, Gloria.’ A distinctly proprietorial note came to Abby’s voice as she pulled off her gloves and tossed them in the bin.

  ‘What are you getting so uppity about?’ Jane teased goodnaturedly as a wide grin split Gloria’s face.

  ‘I’d say your doctor is in love, Sister.’ Gloria laughed, stepping down off the trolley and attempting to straighten her inch of skirt. ‘And if she’s got any sense, she’d better do something about it!’

  Abby found Kell in the staffroom, boots on the table, lounging on the sofa as if he came here every night.

  ‘They really weren’t talking about you, Abby,’ he said with a smile as she came in. ‘This coffee is seriously bad.’

  ‘There’s a jar of decent stuff in the kitchen.’

  ‘I saw, but it also said it was the property of Abby Hampton and hands off.’

  ‘Since when did that stop you?’

  The joking was over now, the small talk had run out and Abby stood utterly still as he came over and put his arms around her, burying his head in her hair, breathing in the sweet smell as if it was the life force he depended upon.

  ‘God, I’ve missed you. Don’t ever, ever leave me like that again.’

  ‘Oh, Kell.’ She held him, held him so close, his skin, his smell, everything she missed, everything she needed. ‘I just couldn’t see how—’

  ‘Hey.’ He pulled her chin up gently. ‘No getting upset. I’m here, aren’t I? And Jane’s already offered me a whole fortnight of shifts.’

  ‘Don’t, Kell.’ She shook her head fiercely, determined to get in first, to counter his temporary solution with a permanent one. ‘You told me the first night we met you could never leave Tennengarrah, and I can’t be cross at you because I felt the same. You’ll end up resenting me—’

  ‘Abby.’ His voice broke in, that lazy, lazy smile halting her in her tracks. ‘That was the first night I met you—before I’d held you, tasted you, made love to you. You can’t hold me accountable for what I said then.’

  ‘You love it there, Kell. I can’t ask you to leave.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ Kell pointed out. ‘I’ve made that choice all by myself. You running away like that has taken me to hell and back, but in other ways it’s been exactly what I needed. Tennengarrah’s got its charms and I love it, yes, but without you, Abby, it just felt empty. Maybe I needed that time without you to realise that I could leave, to see what really mattered to me.’ He let his words sink in, staring down at her with love blazing from his eyes as his voice imbued her with long-forgotten hope. ‘You know when they say, “Love will find a way.” Have you ever stopped to think what that means?’

  ‘It’s all I’ve thought about,’ she admitted, one shaking hand retrieving the letter, watching his face for a reaction as he read it, watching the wonder in his eyes when he finally looked up.

  ‘You’d give it all up for me?’

  She nodded slowly but with absolute certainty. ‘You don’t have to leave, Kell. All I’m asking is that you wait a year for me.’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes shot up at his answer, confusion turning to wonder as Kell carried on talking. ‘We don’t have to wait, Abby. I’m not letting you out of my sight ever again. I’m coming to live here, with no hang-ups, no resentment, because, quite simply, I love you. You’re a consultant, for heaven’s sake, a consultant with a crazy dream about saving the world, and the most amazing part of it is that I’m starting to think you could do it.’

  ‘I’m hardly going to save the world,’ Abby countered. ‘This programme will barely scratch the surface.’

  ‘It’s a start, though,’ Kell said gently. ‘And who knows where it will lead? This is where you belong, Abby. I’m not going to punish you for that. I just want to be with you.’

  Hope flared deep inside and she waited, waited for it to be doused, for the ifs or buts that would surely come, a demand, a condition, a time span that would surely render the problem insurmountable. But black eyes just kept on smiling, and those strong arms moved around her as he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the ring she’d been so scared to glimpse.

  ‘It’s an Argyle diamond,’ Kell said as she stared in wonder at the massive pink diamond glinting back at her, set high on a delicate gold band. ‘I know you’re probably not one for pink, but I saw the stone and I just fell in love with it—rare and unique like you, and from the heart of Australia like me.’ He slipped it onto her shaking hand as she stared at it in bemused wonder.

  ‘Are you sure, Kell, I mean, really sure? This is such a huge step, Tennengarrah’s in your blood…’ The last question slipped out of her mouth, needing to be voiced and, more importantly, needing to be a
nswered.

  ‘Tennengarrah’s in my blood,’ he interrupted, then planted the softest, gentlest of kisses on her mouth before he finished, before it was Kell’s turn to put the world to rights…

  ‘But you, Abby, you’re in my heart.’

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  IMPRINT: Medical

  ISBN: 9781489222848

  TITLE: THE BUSH DOCTOR’S CHALLENGE

  First Australian Publication 2016

  Copyright © 2003 Carol Marinelli

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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