The Practice Baby

by LM Ardor

  A long stretch of main road was visible from the side of the hill. She saw a disturbance in the air, a plume of dust coming up the valley. She prayed it was the police.

  Light was low on this side of the hill. She could see the elongated shadows of the fence in the paddocks between her and the main road. In another half-hour the sun would be gone completely. A night in the bush would be dangerous, Leah would die of her injuries or Adam would finish her off, hide the body in the bush. Please let it be the police.

  She kept running. Her phone buzzed in her bra. Reception. She stopped in a dense thicket of low scrub with saplings above her head and pulled it out. It was slightly damp, perhaps she’d gotten it wet in the stream. Her top was dry, it must just be perspiration. She pressed the button and it woke; she almost cried with relief till she noticed the battery was down to five percent. The video was the last thing she’d taken. She pressed share and then Raj’s email. As she pressed send she caught a sound below her. She froze. It was close, too close. She pressed the phone with its light against her chest. She allowed her eyes to move. She couldn’t see him so he hadn’t seen her, she hoped. Quietly, with her breath held she lowered herself back under the bushes.

  Adam appeared on the kangaroo trail going up to the open grass at the top of the hill. He was just ten metres away. He stopped and scanned. Dee was rigid. His eyes passed straight over her wedged between a boulder and a sarsaparilla vine.

  The sound of sirens was suddenly loud. A police paddy wagon and an ambulance were at the gate off the main road. Adam must be able to see them from where he was. He turned and went back the way he came picking his way carefully on bare feet. Once he was out of sight, Dee considered what to do. She didn’t trust him. He could be waiting down the path. She had to wait till the police were at the creek.

  She shuffled backward towards the gully above the creek. Adam wouldn’t walk there with his tender feet. A large boulder overhung the water. Dee slithered over it and then, in a partially controlled slide, she moved down about five feet. As she stood up she slipped and went down further. She couldn’t get the phone wet. She flailed with her left arm, grabbed a bunch of fern. Her fall slowed. She got her boots into a groove. Her footing held.

  The crossing was thirty metres away. The police and ambulance were at the open back doors of the four-wheel drive. Adam splashed across to them.

  64.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ he called out. The paramedics were intent on their task. They ignored him. This was their turf. They were the experts at on-the-scene resuscitation.

  Adam started to argue with them. A police sergeant came out into the creek to intervene. Dee splashed and stumbled down the creek. They all looked up at her.

  ‘Thank God. Dee, you’re okay,’ said Adam.

  He turned to the policeman and spoke in a low voice. She caught the words ‘careful’ and ‘dangerous’. The sergeant, an older man with a red face, nodded and called to a young constable at the edge of the stream.

  ‘Help the lady out of the water, son; sit her in the van. Careful.’

  The boy in his perfect uniform picked his way over to her and took her filthy arm. Dee realised she was exhausted. As soon as she was at the bank she collapsed flat out on her back. The young man wanted her to move, to get into the car. She pulled out the phone from the bra and handed it to him.

  ‘That’s evidence, keep it safe,’ she said. He took the sweaty phone between two fingers. ‘Careful!’ Dee said more sharply than she intended but he took it to the car and put it in an evidence bag.

  ‘Lock the car,’ she shouted at him. He clicked the key. ‘Now I need to talk to the sergeant.’

  The constable did what she asked. Dee sat up, moved to the edge of the stream and leaned down to wash the mud off her face.

  The young policeman came back with the sergeant and Adam. Dee was sitting with her feet in a pool at the edge of the track. She bent forward to splash the cool clean water over her scratched, filthy face. Her hair was still full of dried mud but she figured it wouldn’t get clean without full immersion. Better dried dirt than wet mud streaming down her face.

  The three men bent over her with concerned looks. The constable had his hand on his gun.

  ‘This man abducted and assaulted the woman in the car. He’s dangerous. You have to protect her from him. If you let him near her he’ll finish her off so she can’t give evidence against him.’

  ‘Dee, settle down. We’ll get you to help. The paramedics can get you some medication,’ Adam said with a tone of concern. He turned his head to the constable, ‘Tell them to draw up an injection of Midazolam, or whatever sedation they carry. Maximum dose—she’s psychotic and quite large. I’ll give it to her IV. She’ll be calmer and it’s safer for everyone if she’s sedated.’

  ‘This is not how it seems,’ Dee protested as the young man set off towards the stranded car where the ambos were still working on Leah. At least that meant she was alive.

  ‘Constable, stay here,’ the sergeant said. ‘Professor, nothing’s happening till I get a story from this woman and from you. You’re not in charge here.’

  Adam went quiet. His choices were between righteous indignation with threats or flattery and cooperation—the rational alternative to her mad woman covered in mud and detritus. He could still discredit her if Leah died or had amnesia due to the head injury.

  ‘Certainly, Senior Sergeant Windsor. Any assistance I can offer is at your service. This woman has serious psychiatric problems although she can appear to be rational at times. She’s currently under investigation by the Medical Council of NSW for her paranoid accusations about other doctors. Her psychiatrist is Professor Jamison. I might be able to get in touch with him for you. I’ve been trying to help her—I know the history if that’s any use to you.’

  He’d decided on rational. Dee was tempted to point two fingers at her mouth and mime vomiting. No, she couldn’t give them any excuse to sedate her. The sergeant let Adam talk on; his face neutral as he waited for Adam to conclude. Adam had no idea how to talk to people without pompous authority. It usually worked. The sergeant was old school, probably from a farming family; pomposity was the wrong approach.

  ‘Thank you, Professor, will you wait with Constable Martin?’ He pointed to the car. ‘Over there, please.’

  ‘Don’t let him get the near the phone,’ Dee blurted. ‘My phone, I mean. I recorded the attack.’

  ‘First, your name?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘I’m Dee Flanary. I’m a GP in Sydney.’ Dee tried to keep her voice calm as Adam and the constable got closer to the police paddy wagon. ‘Please, the phone is the only evidence. It’s in your car.’

  Sergeant Wilson sighed and called out to his young colleague. ‘Where’s this phone?’

  ‘In the wagon. In an evidence bag.’

  ‘Okay, wait there and keep the car locked.’

  The constable reached his hand towards the door handle.

  ‘With you and the professor on the outside,’ he said with raised eyebrows and a muttered last word that could have been ‘idiot’.

  When he was satisfied the constable understood, he turned back to Dee. ‘Dr Flanary, can you tell me what’s happened here?’

  ‘It’s a complicated story.’ Dee paused to collect her thoughts. She had to get them to look at the video. ‘The main thing is that Adam Fairborn attacked and abducted Leah Dragic and I have a video of it on my phone. If you look at that it will all be clear.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s look at the video.’

  The sergeant took her elbow as they walked to the paddy wagon. Dee resisted the urge to shake his hand off her arm. He meant it kindly but it felt like a restraint.

  ‘Take him back and get his things out of the car,’ he said to the constable. ‘And you keep them, not him. Professor, in this situation the protocol is to treat you both as suspects. You’ll understand the need for proper procedure.’

  A moment of calculation flickered across Adam’s face before h
e said, ‘Of course, that’s what I’d expect.’

  The constable walked down the track. Adam stayed where he was. The sergeant gave him a quizzical look. ‘I’m happy to wait here while he gets the things from the car.’

  ‘I’ll ask you to go with the constable, sir.’ The sergeant’s voice was polite but there was steel underneath.

  Dee started to hope.

  In the car, Dee sat next to the sergeant as he pulled on gloves and removed the phone from its moist clip-lock bag. He pressed the bottom button. There was no response.

  ‘Try the restart button.’ Dee’s heart was racing. She tried to sound calm, rational. ‘The battery was low. Sometimes it turns itself off.’

  The blank black screen persisted. The phone could be flat or dead from moisture. Hopefully the video had gone to Raj’s email. Adam could still get out of this and Dee could be in prison for murder.

  ‘Please, it is there. I sent a copy to a friend, you can ring him—’ She stopped. ‘—when we get to somewhere with reception.’

  She knew how pathetic she must sound. The policeman just sat there. Adam was on his way back in his perfect black shoes. His legs must be wet but somehow he looked dry. The constable was sopping wet to the knees.

  Dee shivered. There were only two seats in the front of the car. Where were they going to ride? They couldn’t put her in the back of the van with Adam for the ride back to Moruya. She would be dead by the time they arrived.

  ‘You can’t let him near me.’ She shivered involuntarily and felt tears well up in her eyes.

  The adrenaline was gone and she thought about all that had happened. What had she done? Leah was unconscious, possibly fatally injured or permanently brain damaged. Dee was terrified of what Adam could do if they were together in the back of the paddy wagon.

  The older policeman looked at her and put his hand over hers on her knee. ‘It’s okay, you can ride up here. Until we get this sorted out, though, both of you will have to be in handcuffs.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Dee said with relief. ‘Adam is ruthless and now he’s in a corner, more dangerous than you can imagine. Please, I need to know. Is Leah okay?’

  ‘The paramedics have stabilised her. She’s not conscious at the moment. They’re worried about internal injuries.’

  ‘Tell them she’s had punches to the ribs over both her spleen and her liver and a major blow to the head.’

  She wanted to tell him the story of multiple suspicious deaths—there was no doubt in her mind that they were murders—in Adam’s past but she couldn’t afford to come across as a crazy with paranoid obsessions about Adam. Better to stick to the current situation.

  Adam and the constable were a couple of metres from the police wagon. Dee shivered more; her teeth chattered. Was it possible to be retrospectively traumatised? This man, this serial killer, had once been her lover. To be near him was to be in a twisted parallel universe where horror came with a smile and perfect white teeth.

  ‘Where will the constable ride? You can’t put him in with Adam, please—if he got the gun or got the handcuffs around his neck.’ Dee knew her voice was shaky and that was fine. It got the message across.

  ‘Dr Flanary, I think you’ve been watching too many movies.’ Dee started to protest but he held up a hand. ‘Stay calm, there’s a squad car coming from Batemans Bay. They’ll be here soon. You can ride with them and the professor will be in the back, on his own, with us.’

  ‘And the video?’

  ‘When I have everyone safe and secure.’

  65.

  The paramedics overtook the two police vehicles with the ambulance’s siren blazing not far from the last gate.

  ‘Don’t die.’ Dee prayed. She was a non-believer but when the universe threw too much all at once she indulged her need to believe there was an omnipotent being in charge. But if there was someone in charge why hadn’t He helped Tom? The force of good wishes wouldn’t save Tom’s girlfriend either. Leah was tough. That and chance were all that worked. Dee would bet on Leah’s survival.

  The police station at Moruya was an original stone house from the 1800s surrounded by wide verandas. Inside it was a hodgepodge of small rooms painted institutional colours. Most of the walls were covered with notices, faded and curled with age.

  The constable gave her a blanket and sat her in a windowless room on her own. There were three chairs, a table and a plastic bottle of water. The door was locked. She was still filthy. No shower was allowed till the crime scene investigation officers from Batemans Bay arrived to deal with her.

  Dee was exhausted and lay her head on the table in front of her. It seemed a short time till the door opened. She might have fallen asleep.

  The sergeant came in and sat opposite her at the table. ‘Good news, Dr Flanary. We have the video. Professor Fairborn is under arrest.’

  Dee’s relief was quickly followed by fear. Why hadn’t he mentioned Leah? Did that mean there was no good news about her?

  ‘And Leah?’ Dee held her breath for the answer.

  ‘I understand she’s partially conscious.’

  ‘Ahhh’ the sound was involuntary. Tears started to gather in her eyes. The sergeant looked down at Dee’s hands. They were trembling.

  ‘It’s okay, you’re safe now. Can we get you a tea? Milk?’ Dee nodded. ‘Sugar?’ Dee shook her head for no.

  A young policewoman she hadn’t seen before came in with tea and a sliced egg sandwich on white bread. It was the most delicious thing Dee had ever eaten.

  Sergeant Wilson took her statement of what happened. The crime scene investigators took specimens of her DNA, photographs of numerous cuts and scratches and then gave her paper overalls to put on when, eventually, they said she could have a shower.

  Dee stood up and had to grab onto the table until she stabilised her legs.

  ‘This way,’ the female officer said and took her elbow.

  The station was bigger than Dee had realised. The main room had an observation desk opposite a row of three reinforced-glass cubicles with blue steel frames and heavy-duty bolt and padlock closures.

  The middle one held Adam. He sat upright on a stainless steel bench. His eyes stared into the middle distance as though he were deep in important thoughts. He ignored Dee’s presence.

  Dee moved her arm away from the officer and stood up straight. She paused to look at Adam as a prisoner. He was still dressed in black and somehow his clothes were largely free of dirt. His nose was grossly swollen and a square of gauze was stuck to his chin with dried blood.

  ‘What’s happening with him?’ Dee asked.

  ‘Nothing, until his solicitor flies in from Sydney—by helicopter apparently.’

  ‘What about his face, doesn’t he need treatment?’

  ‘Said he “doesn’t want amateurs” to touch him. Says he’ll wait until he’s back in Sydney for a plastic surgeon. We’ve explained that could be a long time. I don’t think the reality of his situation has sunk in.’

  Dee was aware the strength had come back to her legs. Her hands were steady again. The image of Adam’s broken face, the tiny cell and his ridiculous attempt at dignity would keep her strong.

  66.

  Dee was woken by a knock. It was daylight. Half asleep, she wrapped herself in a towel and opened the door to see Rob and a scrum of media, cameras and microphones. Shouts of ‘Dee’ and ‘Doctor’, ‘over here’ and ‘how are you’ drowned out Rob. She pulled him inside.

  ‘Oh Dee, Dee, how are you?’ Rob said as he put his arms around her. ‘Everyone’s been frantic, you could have been killed.’

  She shrugged him off. ‘Any chance of a coffee? I need to pee.’

  She emerged from the bathroom dressed in the paper jumpsuit to an instant coffee and a worried-looking Rob.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You’re the top news story everywhere.’

  He turned on the TV to show a photo of her in filthy, torn clothes and hair full of mud and twigs from outside the police station.
The photo was blurry and fortunately didn’t show her face clearly. A second later they saw Rob knocking on the door then Dee, dressed only in a towel, pull him inside. Some reporter was ‘Live from Moruya’ outside the motel.

  Dee switched off the TV. Rob put the Daily Telegraph on the coffee table. The whole front page was occupied by the headline ‘Plucky Mum of Three Fights Off Gene Genius’ and the awful photo of her.

  ‘Put that away. Let’s get out of here. Did you bring clothes?’

  This needed to be over. The rest of her life was waiting.

  *

  Joe drove them back to Dee’s hire car at the pub. He managed to lose the press.

  Dee ignored Rob’s protests and drove them home. He was a hopeless driver. It was sweet of him to come down but his concern, his attempts to protect her, were oppressive.

  It was good to have time alone together to talk though. There was an idea she had been mulling over for some time. The drive home was the perfect opportunity to put the proposal to him. He said he’d have to ask Stephanie but it was an ideal solution for all of them. She knew they would agree.

  67.

  Once Adam’s bail was formally refused, the reporters decamped from outside the Glasshouse and the surgery. Dee’s life was normal again. Normal apart from spending part of every consultation on her adventure. Dee’s hero status and the terrible photo of her outside Moruya police station were revived each time the case came up for mention in the courts.

  Leah was in long-term rehab for her damaged legs. Her brain had escaped major injury.

  Skye avoided any mention of Tom or what had happened to Leah, and Dee couldn’t bring herself to ask how she was coping. At least she was kept busy with Charlie.

  Glen was Glen. He had apologised and thanked Dee for not having him charged. His promise to ‘stay away from the heavy stuff’ sounded as though he would try. He appeared to care for Skye, and was able to tolerate Charlie. Those things were important. Perhaps when the insurance money came through life would be easier for them.