‘The team who were with Barry when he died…they’re still out there. They’re due to come in at two. I’d like to see them all. There’ll be real trauma. None of them would come off duty until their shift changed but I said I’d be available.’
‘And you want teams to be briefed?’
‘Last year in bushfire season I had a volunteer go home after suffering smoke inhalation. He didn’t tell anyone he was having trouble breathing, then started coughing uncontrollably. By the time I saw him it was almost too late. I want the dangers spelled out to everyone, whether they’ve heard it five times or not. I want them to know to keep fluids on board. The professionals-even the well-trained volunteers-have been augmented now by helpers who mean well but haven’t got two clues as to personal safety. They’re working in teams but they get good ideas and go off by themselves. The guy this morning… He’s in his sixties and he runs-ran-the local hardware store. He thought he knew it all. The fire chief has taken it hard. He’s taken the volunteers through the safety drill but I want the medical bits spelled out in words of one syllable. I don’t want any more deaths.’
‘I can do that.’
‘Make it sound dire,’ Hugo told her. ‘There’s no second chances out there.’
‘I can do dire.’ She nodded. There was no laughter between them now. There was only medical need.
Which was how, half an hour later, overalled and booted and wearing her hard hat for heaven’s sake- ‘We wear them all the time when we’re on duty,’ she’d been told. ‘It’s a habit that makes sense not to break.’ -Rachel found herself lecturing to a group of people who looked as out of place as she was.
Hugo was with the team of firefighters who’d lost their friend. She was with everyone else. Trying to sound knowledgeable. And authoritative.
She did. It was amazing what you could do when needs must.
‘You stay hydrated,’ she ordered. ‘You carry water all the time. You never remove your hard hat. Ever. You keep your protective clothing on no matter how hot you get. You feel unwell for any reason, you get back here. For
‘She’s amazing,’ one of the firefighters told Hugo.
Miriam was one of the semi-trained volunteers. She’d been on the front line with Barry and she was suffering a nasty burn on her hand as well as shock from that morning’s trauma. Hugo had what he needed to treat her on the spot but, having cleaned and dressed her burn, he was sending the woman home. Now they stood together in the clearing, watching Rachel assessing her firefighters thirty feet away. Each catching their breath before they moved on.
‘She is amazing,’ Hugo agreed. They could hear her voice, raised in authority. ‘Bossy!’
‘You’d think she’d been trained to do it.’
‘Be bossy?’ Hugo smiled. ‘Maybe she has.’
‘I wish I’d been a bit bossy,’ Miriam said, and there was a load of bitterness and regret in her voice. ‘Barry knew what we were told to do. We were just mopping up after backburning. If anything gets away, call for help, we were told, but when it flared he started fighting like a madman. The rest of us were retreating and he took it as a personal challenge. Then it was all around him. If I’d been a bit bossier…’
‘Barry wouldn’t have taken it from you,’ Hugo said gently. Miriam was usually a clerk in the shire offices. She was so out of place here it was almost ridiculous. ‘He’d never take orders from someone without authority.’
‘He’d have taken orders from your Rachel,’ Miriam told him. ‘You just have to hear her. She seems…in charge.’
She did.
But what had Miriam said? ‘Your Rachel…’
His Rachel. The words were unnerving. Miriam had meant them to denote that he and Rachel were a team but, looking across and seeing Rachel, it seemed almost more than that. She was listening to an elderly man who was telling her exactly why he should be allowed to fight the fires. Sam Nieve. Hell. It was obvious to anyone the man couldn’t firefight. Hugo half rose to intervene but he didn’t need to. He couldn’t hear what she was telling him, but the man’s shoulders didn’t sag. Instead, his chest puffed out, he removed his helmet and he departed with an air of increased importance. His little car took off in the direction of the town and Hugo gave a sigh of relief.
Sam had a heart condition. He was the last person they’d want on the fire line but he was almost as stubborn as Barry. How had she convinced him?
If anyone could, Rachel could, he thought. The lady was amazing.
His Rachel?
No. The lady was married. The lady was…taken.
They worked solidly for three hours, but then it was time to return to the town. Hugo had patients in hospital and he had a clinic to run. He needed to return. The teams had changed over, the off-duty firefighters had gone back to the town to sleep and the on-duty members were lined up against the fire front.
The doctors would be needed again at change-over-or earlier if emergencies arose-but maybe because of the work they’d done, there’d be less chance of an emergency.
They could only hope.
‘You did really well,’ he told Rachel as they drove homeward, and she flushed.
‘If we’re forming an admiration society, can we make it mutual?’
‘Nope. What did you tell Sam to make him give up his plans to fight fires?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I used you.’
He raised his brows and grinned. ‘You used me?’
‘I told him you’d lost two patients in two days and there wasn’t room in the funeral parlour for a third. I also told him if you lost someone else you’d be in for a breakdown and it’d be on his head if the town lost its doctor.’
‘Gee, thanks very much,’ he said faintly, but she hadn’t finished yet.
‘I told him brute strength wasn’t all that was needed here. I told him that if the fire worsened, it was really important that everyone’s roof is clear and they have their hoses ready. There are lots of people who are just blind when it comes to this type of thing.’ She grinned, ignoring the fact that his brows had hit his hairline. ‘I suspect, in fact, that Mr Nieve’s own personal gutters around his roof are not as clean as they should be. I seemed to hit a nerve. Anyway, I suggested he contact the local school and borrow a few of the older kids and do a house-to-house check.’
Hugo whistled, seemingly totally astonished. ‘Well done, you.’
‘It’s true,’ she said gently.
‘What’s true?’
‘You really don’t want any more deaths.’
‘What do you think?’
She looked at him, considering. ‘I’m all for them,’ she said at last, teasing for a smile. ‘More deaths mean fewer patients and patients mess up your consulting rooms faster than anything I know.’
He laughed with her, but there wasn’t a true smile behind his eyes.
‘The two deaths…’ she probed gently, and waited. He needed to talk, she suspected. There wouldn’t be a lot of professional support in this one-doctor town.
And it seemed like it was professional support he was uncomfortable with.
She didn’t let him off the hook. She waited and finally he shrugged and started to speak.
‘Last night’s death was expected,’ he told her. ‘It was Annie’s time, but I was fond of her for all that.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Annie started making me chocolate cakes when Beth died and we’ve had a weekly chocolate cake ever since. And Barry…Barry was a pompous little prig who didn’t deserve what happened to him. He has a sweet little wife and a couple of obnoxious kids who’ll miss him for ever.’
