This was a crisis and he was here.
An Oaklander. Promising to take care.
That was what Nate had promised, she thought, somewhat hysterically. She’d met Nate as a student in London. It had been a desperately hard time for her. Her mother had been ill in hospital and no one knew what the outcome would be. When her mother had finally been released, her great-aunt had taken her back to Yorkshire. ‘You get on with your studies,’ she’d told Jess roughly. ‘Leave your mother to me; what happens happens.’
She’d been eighteen, alone, terrified. She’d thrown herself into her new university life, she’d let her friends take her where they’d willed—and she’d met Nate. He’d gathered her up and told her he’d take care of her. He’d made her forget.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This was different. She knew that. It was also no time to reflect on the past.
She was already moving to help.
She wheeled to the onlookers, thinking fast. ‘Sally, you said you had a vet clinic here?’
‘Jeff comes once a week to do our small stuff,’ Sally managed, her voice faltering. ‘Dressings and stuff. He’s not here today.’
‘But his equipment is?’
‘He has a locked store cupboard,’ one of the research girls ventured. ‘Only Jeff has the key.’
‘Take me to it,’ she said, meeting Ben’s gaze for an instant, an urgent, silent message passing between them. Regardless of Ben’s reassurance, the bright blood on the bedclothes meant there was internal bleeding and the cyanosis of her lips, the blue tinge to her skin meant there was real danger of instant death.
‘I’m not sure if Jeff would…’ the girl ventured.
‘Jeff doesn’t have any say in what we’re doing now,’ she told her. ‘We’ll think about consequences later. Dusty, you can see Marge is sick. She’s having trouble breathing and we need to help her.’ She glanced at the research girls, their name tags, Sarah and Naomi. ‘You guys are working on cassowary breeding programme, right? Would you explain it to Dusty? Naomi, is it okay if Dusty stays with you? Dusty, I’ll be with you as soon as we make Marge feel better.’
And that was a promise, too. As soon as we make Marge feel better… They all heard it and Ben even managed to give her an appreciative nod. But they needed to move fast.
Dusty was looking terrified. They were all looking terrified.
She needed to focus on medicine.
‘In your own time, Doctor,’ Ben said, almost as a joke, but she knew what he was saying. You know what we need and we need it now.
‘Sally, you stay here and give Marge a bit of courage,’ she said. She managed a teasing smile. ‘Ben might be tempted to give Marge an injection and that’s deeply scary. Dianne, you take Pokey outside and give him a cuddle and while you’re doing it call the nearest ambulance service. Say we have a lady with a pulmonary embolism.’
‘They’ll send a chopper,’ Dianne said, her voice trembling. ‘If it’s urgent.’
‘Tell them it’s urgent,’ Ben said, still in that calm voice that said urgent wasn’t necessarily scary. ‘Marge’ll be more comfortable in hospital. She needs full pain relief so make it sound as urgent as you like. Tell them you have a lady in pain from a pulmonary embolism, you have two doctors here and they both say helicopter transfer with all speed.’
Jess opened Jeff’s cupboard by attacking it with an axe.
Sarah had offered to try and unscrew the hinges. Jess, who’d seen the axe by the woodshed, went for what was fastest. While Sarah gasped in horror about what Jeff would say, Jess aimed for the hinges and smashed them to pieces.
The door fell forward, very satisfactorily.
Naomi and Dusty had paused to watch. ‘Wow,’ said Dusty, sounding a bit wobbly. ‘I didn’t know you could chop cupboards.’
‘I didn’t, either,’ Jess said, but she was already in the store, flicking on the lights, searching.
Yes!
An Aladdin’s cave couldn’t offer her any more that these shelves offered. The unknown Jeff was a meticulous, careful vet, and his store reflected it. This was a pharmacy and medical store combined. Each shelf was carefully labelled. Each container was clearly marked.
The storeroom was big enough to hold a small refrigerator. She tugged it open. Drugs.
Morphine. Yes!
Syringes. All sizes.
A variety of stethoscopes.
Oxygen concentrator. An oxygen saturation meter. Tubing. Not the tubing she was used to, set up so she could put in a nasal tube in an instant—in this setting every nasal cavity would be different—but the fittings were there, scissors on the side, tape, everything right where she wanted it. Ready to grab.
Back to Ben.
Please…
‘Mum…’
Dusty. She paused.
‘It’s like Gran,’ Dusty said tremulously, and she stopped to hug him.
‘I hope not,’ she said, knowing honesty was the only way.
‘Fix her,’ Dusty whispered. ‘You and my Uncle Ben.’
The urgent things were done fast, oxygen started, morphine administered, Marge reassured as much as they could. Then there was time to pause.
‘The chopper will be here in fifteen minutes,’ Sally told them tremulously. ‘Can I make…tea?’
‘Would you like one, Marge?’ Ben asked, and the offer settled Marge further. That Ben could focus on anything so mundane as tea…
Marge didn’t want one—every ounce of energy she had was focused on breathing—but the offer was reassuring and she relaxed enough not to react with fear when Ben suggested an examination.
The results were frightening. Marge’s oxygen saturation was down to ninety per cent, and that was after they’d had oxygen flowing for almost five minutes. And when Ben took the stethoscope and listened, his face remained impassive, but Jess knew…
‘Do you mind if Jess listens?’ he asked.
The morphine was starting to take hold. Marge was relaxing more and more. ‘Go right ahead,’ she said, and managed a faint smile as she waved expansively to her chest.
Jess listened—and there it was, the faint but unmistakable sound of lung rasping against ribs. What they suspected was confirmed. The lung was collapsing as the blockage worsened.
Jess handed the stethoscope back to Ben, feeling ill.
The morphine was taking hold now, and the panic had eased from Marge’s face, but she was still fighting to get sufficient oxygen into her damaged lung.
Ben had the nasal tube attached, the flow set to maximum.
‘I’m almost sure it’s a clot,’ Ben told her, setting the stethoscope aside. ‘I’m afraid you do need to go to hospital. They’ll give you a pulmonary angiogram—a type of X-ray—to find out exactly where the clot is. Then they’ll start you on heparin to thin your blood and get you better.’
‘This is the third time…’ Marge whispered.
‘Marge’s had two heart attacks before this,’ Sally told them, her voice unsteady. ‘Each time… We’re so lucky to still have her.’
Jessie’s own heart sank further. Two major infarcts and now this.
What was Marge doing, living in such a remote place? With this medical history she should be living next door to a major hospital.
It was her life. She was living the life she loved.
Sally started fussing round the room, packing. It’d be better if she stayed still, Jess thought. Marge needed comfort rather than fuss.
As for Jess herself, there was little more she could do here. She should go and find Dusty. Reassure him and tell everyone outside what was happening. But as she made to leave, Marge’s hand came out and clutched hers. ‘Please…stay.’
‘You don’t need two doctors,’ she teased. ‘Dr Oaklander’s here.’ She wasn’t pretending she didn’t know who Ben was. It was no longer important.
‘If I had fifty doctors here I’d want them all,’ Marge gasped. ‘And you’re both baby doctors.’
‘Hey, we’re all grown up,’
Ben retorted.
‘I meant obstetricians,’ Marge whispered, and managed another smile.
‘So we’re no use at all,’ Jess agreed, smiling, too. ‘Unless these are labour pains and there’s a baby on the way.’
‘No baby,’ Marge gasped. ‘I’ve had three. Like you, they’re all grown up. And…and you? How many?’
‘Just Dusty.’
‘He’s a nice little boy.’
‘He is.’ Jess glanced at Ben’s face. Ben was holding Marge’s wrist. Not good news?
‘And you?’ Marge asked Ben.
‘No kids.’
‘What a shame.’ She managed a trace of a cheeky grin. ‘Maybe you could share. Dusty looks more like your son than Jess’s…’
And then she stopped. The remaining colour blanched from her face and her gaze moved inward.
‘Oh…’ Her hand faltered to her chest, then dropped to the bedclothes, as if it was simply too heavy to hold up.
‘Marge!’ Sally dropped the overnight case she was packing; was back at the bed in an instant.
‘I’m cold,’ Marge whispered. ‘So cold…’
And then suddenly…nothing.
They might both be obstetricians but their general training was solid and they knew exactly what to do. They moved swiftly, smoothly into cardio pulmonary resuscitation. They had no defibrillator but they had everything else.
Sometimes everything wasn’t enough.
CPR was supposed to be the miracle cure-all. Jess remembered her distress as a first-year intern when CPR had failed.
‘When the blockage is complete, there’s nothing anyone can do,’ her registrar had told her gently. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. We’re only doctors. Miracles aren’t stored in our doctors’ bags.’
There was no miracle here.
The helicopter arrived with paramedics. They took over with practised expertise, with all the right equipment, but they produced no miracle either.
No trace of a heartbeat. Nothing.
She was seventy-eight years old, Sally whispered in answer to one of the paramedic’s questions, and Jess thought of Marge yesterday, as they closed her eyes, as they removed equipment, as they let death take its peaceful course. She thought of Marge on the ferry, sitting in the sun, feeding her baby wombat, surrounded by her friends, doing the work she loved. The grief around them was real and dreadful, but it’d be something, she thought, to be grieved for as Marge was grieved for. To die as Marge had died.
Sally was telling them all, desperate to talk. Marge had three children. Seven grandchildren. She had colleagues, friends, a host of animals whose care would be less because this gentle lady was no more.
Dianne came in and sobbed. The paramedics took over, quietly competent.
Sally and Dianne hugged each other.
Dusty was in the corridor, trembling with shock. Jess went out and hugged him, and as she held him she glanced back into the room and saw Ben hugging Sally and Dianne.
A tiny part of her thought, An Oaklander…hugging?
But that was it. The paramedics were in control.
There was nothing left for Ben and Jess to do but to take a white-faced, silent Dusty and leave.
‘Why couldn’t you make her better?’
It was the first time Dusty had spoken. Shock seemed to have held him rigid.
Jess and Ben and Dusty were walking back to the resort. It was only a half-hour walk. Sally was in no state to drive, and by mutual silent consent they’d decided a walk was fine.
They’d all stayed silent. The shock. Did you ever get used to it?
Not in ten years’ medicine, Jess thought. Maybe never.
Why couldn’t they make her better? Oh, she wished…
‘We did all we could,’ Jess told him. ‘We were lucky we had equipment. Ben made the pain stop, he helped her breathe, but sometimes everything we do isn’t enough. She had a blood clot that stopped her heart beating. It’s sad but that’s the way it is.’
‘Like Gran,’ Dusty whispered, choking back tears, and Jess thought her mother’s death was too close; too raw. Dusty missed her so much, and for this to happen…
‘You could die, too,’ Dusty whispered, and his hand clutched hers convulsively.
Uh-oh. This was the terror of an intelligent only child of a single mother. The terror of a child realising life was fraught.
‘I’m young,’ Jess said, but thought she didn’t feel young. She stooped and hugged him. ‘It’s okay, Dusty, I’m not going anywhere.’
‘My dad died.’
‘I don’t take risks.’
‘But…anything could happen,’ Dusty said wildly. ‘Like in the buggy this morning. Crashing. Anything. And then there’d be nothing. Nothing and nothing.’ He was verging on hysterical. ‘And then…then there’d only be Dr Oaklander, and he doesn’t even know who we are.’
‘Dusty…’
‘And you aren’t going to tell him. And I don’t even know if he likes me. And it’s really scary and I don’t want anyone else to die and I want to go home…’
The last was a terrified wail. Jess plonked down on the sand and tugged him close, cradled him hard against her, knowing she could only wait until the paroxysm of grief and fear and shock wore off. Dusty had hardly cried when her mother had died. He was making up for it now.
She held him close. Simply held.
Ben squatted down on the sand beside her.
Said nothing.
He had patience. Ben seemed to know Dusty needed this, needed to sob, needed simply to be held. He waited, as she did, for the paroxysms to pass.
And when they did, when Dusty lay limp and exhausted in her arms, when Jess thought she should struggle to her feet, somehow get him back to the resort, Ben touched Dusty lightly on the hand. A feather touch, ready to withdraw at need.
‘Dusty?’ His voice was calm but compelling, and Dusty took a ragged breath and swivelled in Jess’s arms to look at him.
‘Dusty, your gran and Marge were both old,’ he said, softly yet surely. ‘Marge’s children are all a lot older than your mum and me. They have children of their own. So I’m guessing that’ll be what happens with you and your mum. You’ll grow up and when you’re as old as I am or older you might get married. You might have a whole lot of kids who’ll grow up and be teenagers. Then you’ll grow bald and start playing golf and having little naps after dinner. And your mum will get white hair like Marge and she’ll be a grandma. And she’ll say how can a son of mine be bald? And she’ll boss your kids. Then one day in the far, far distant future, when you’re almost old yourself and so bald you have to shine your head with furniture polish, it might be your mum’s turn to die. But right now she looks very, very healthy. I suspect she’ll be bossing you around for a very long time to come.’
There was enough in that to give Dusty pause. Bald… The concept drew him from the thought of death, just a little. Old. Bald. Involuntarily his hand crept to his hair. Just checking.
Ben smiled.
But Dusty had coped with the idea of another death besides Marge and his gran.
‘But my dad…’
‘He died young,’ Ben conceded. ‘Accidents happen. Not very often, not if we’re careful.’ He hesitated, looked at Jess, looked at Dusty.
‘But am I right in thinking your dad wasn’t careful?’ he said, slowly, as if thinking it through as he spoke. ‘Am I right in thinking your dad went too fast on a Jet Ski, and crashed? Am I right in thinking your father was my brother? That you’re Nate Oaklander’s son?’
Dusty stared at him, unable to speak.
Jess couldn’t speak either. Too much had happened. Too much was happening.
But there was nothing to do but answer.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, finally. ‘I’m sorry. We should have told you. But, yes, Dusty is your brother’s son.’
CHAPTER FIVE
TO SAY he was flabbergasted was an understatement. Ben knelt in the warm morning sunshine and let her words sink in.
&
nbsp; He was looking at Nate’s son.
His nephew.
It was Nate who was looking back at him. Nate at eight years old. His brother.
His guess had seemed a wild hunch, crazy, but now… Now…
‘What kind of a stunt is this?’ It was almost an explosion, impossible to repress.
‘It’s not a stunt.’ Jessie’s face closed in swift anger. ‘I wish it was.’
‘We were keeping it secret until we were sure it was you,’ Dusty said, looking miserable—or even more miserable than he already was. ‘Mum said you’d be crabby.’ His pale face contorted in pain. The shock of another death like his grand mother’s… His lovely morning ended… It was all too much. ‘Mum thought you’d be angry and now you are.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ben said blankly.
‘Dusty wanted to see you,’ Jess said, carefully, as if each word was loaded. ‘We found you on the internet, as guest speaker at this conference. The conference looked interesting, we needed a holiday so it seemed a good chance.’
‘To see me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He sounded furious. Echoes of his father.
‘Cos we thought you’d be like my grandpa,’ Dusty whispered, his voice muffled as Jess held him close. ‘Mum says Grandpa was cross. And now… Mum’s right, you do sound cross and I don’t know why. I don’t know…’ His voice broke and he dissolved again.
She had to focus on him.
Life had been hard for Dusty since her mum had died, Jess thought, hugging him close. Dusty had faced grief, moving house, babysitters, child care. He’d been stoic.
He wasn’t stoic now. He was shattered and all she could do was hold him. There was no room for her to worry about the reaction of the man beside her.
Explanations were needed—she knew that—but for now all Dusty needed was to be held. He didn’t need the distraction of an uncle. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this,’ she managed. ‘We’re not here to ask anything of you. We don’t want anything. And now I think we need to be by ourselves.’
Dynamite Doc or Christmas Dad? Page 5