Rescue at Cradle Lake

‘It didn’t,’ she whispered.

‘There was no way we could get her back,’ Fergus continued, talking almost to himself. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when I put the stethoscope on her chest. I was waiting for her to arrest-I couldn’t believe she hadn’t done so already. Maybe it was just sheer willpower, to make sure her daughter was safe. Once she knew she was here she simply slipped away.’

‘Her daughter was hardly safe,’ Ginny whispered, and unconsciously her hand reached out to touch the little one’s hair. This was…her brother’s child? Her niece?

‘The medical notes are from Sydney Central,’ Fergus was saying. ‘The hospital staff told Sergeant Cross there was no way Judith should be driving. They said she was far too sick. They’ve attempted to organise foster-care for the little girl but it’s been refused. There are any number of their staff deeply concerned for the two of them.’

‘Not enough to follow up.’

‘There’s only so much help you can force anyone to take,’ Fergus said softly. ‘This was Judith’s little girl. She had to sort it out her own way.’

‘She’s sorted it out now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fergus said. ‘Has she?’

‘No.’

‘This Richard. The man the note’s addressed to.’ He hesitated but then asked what he needed to know. ‘He’s your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then would you like to tell me his side of the story? Or what you know of it.’

Ginny took a deep breath. And swallowed.

‘Tell me, Ginny,’ Fergus said, and he took her hand. It was one warm link in a world that had suddenly turned bewilderingly cold.

She had to tell him. She had to say it.

‘Richard has cystic fibrosis,’ she whispered at last. ‘The lung transplant Judith talked about-yeah, it worked, but just for a while. Not for long enough. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re both here. This is where we were kids together. Richard’s come home to die.’

There were medical imperatives to be got through.

Medicine had always been a retreat, Ginny thought as she moved on. Her studies and the resulting medical imperatives had been the means to block off the reality of the outside world for a long time, and they helped her now.

Oscar had to be got to bed.

‘Though the way you have him wedged, he’s safer on his door,’ Tony said admiringly, and Ginny even managed a smile. Oscar was deeply asleep, snoring so loudly the glass Tony had set on the bedside table was vibrating. The Ventolin was taking effect. His breathing was easier and there was no trace of pain on his face as he slept.

‘I guess this gets to be our happy ending for the afternoon,’ Ginny told Tony, trying to make her voice sound normal.

‘We need one.’ Tony looked at her fingers as she tried to adjust the drip rate and suddenly the big nurse was moving to take the equipment away from her. Her fingers were shaking and she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

So much for burying herself in medical imperatives.

‘I can manage here,’ he told her. ‘You’ve done enough, Dr Viental. Go find Dr Reynard.’ Then he smiled, a great footballer’s smile that totally enveloped his face. Pushing her to cheer up. ‘Hey, we’ve gone from a tiny nursing home with no doctors to two doctors on staff. How great is that?’

‘I’m not on staff.’

‘You look like you’re on staff from here,’ he told her. But then his smile died. ‘Ginny, I know about your family. I’m so-’

‘Leave it,’ she said roughly.

‘Go and find Fergus,’ he said gently. ‘Go and do what needs to be done.’

Fergus was making phone calls. Ginny found him in the office marked ‘Medical Director’, though the letters were faded and the ‘D’ looked more like a ‘C’. He was talking to someone about what had just happened.

Ginny entered the room, leaned against the wall and waited for him to finish. She felt drained of all energy. Where to go to from here?

‘I’m not sure whether we need a social worker or not,’ Fergus was saying into the phone. ‘For tonight we’ll keep her in hospital. But there’s family here.’

Family. That would be…her?

Richard was supposed to be the end, she thought. The end of family for ever. How could she keep giving?

She couldn’t.

Fergus replaced the receiver and looked at her. For a moment nothing was said. He simply…looked.

Clear grey eyes, calmly assessing. Maybe seeing more than she wanted him to see.

‘We need to talk to Richard,’ he said. ‘How sick is he?’

‘He’s really sick. We can’t tell him this.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s dying,’ she said desperately. ‘How do you think it’ll make him feel?’

‘If you were dying, would you want to know you had a daughter?’

‘No! It’d complicate my life.’

‘But it’s part of life, and an important part,’ Fergus said gently. ‘Richard’s not dead yet. Is he mentally impaired?’

‘No.’

‘Then he has the right to be treated as alive while he is alive. He has to know.’

‘Oh, God, how can I tell him?’

‘Let me do it for you.’

She stiffened, trying to protect herself with anger. ‘I don’t need you to tell me how to treat my own brother.’

‘I’m not telling you how to treat him. I’m offering to help.’

Anger wasn’t going to work. So what was new? She paused and tried to think what to say.

Nothing came.

Helplessly she crossed to the window, staring down through the bushland to the lake beyond. Most of the buildings in this valley were built to face the lake. The lake itself was teardrop-shaped, a couple of miles across, blue and glistening in the ring of dense bushland around it.

Cradle Lake.

When she had been small, she and her family had spent every summer’s day they could manage on this lake. They’d swum, they’d built moats on the shore, they’d had fun. She had a glistening memory as a six-year-old, of swimming triumphantly from the shore to the buoy marking the start of deep water. It had been her first real swim. She remembered turning to see her father with nine-year-old Richard cheering her on. Her mother, with toddler Chris in the shallows, was clapping and laughing as well, then yelling at them to come and get their picnic tea.

It was her last good memory.

Richard had taken longer than most cystic fibrosis sufferers to get dangerously ill. He’d had bowel problems as a baby, and infection after infection during childhood, but the diagnosis hadn’t been picked up. Chris had become bad first, diagnosed soon after that day at the lake, their local doctor finally coming up with the answer. One sibling sick had meant there was a likelihood more could be. So Richard’s diagnosis had been made as well, and Ginny’s parents had been advised to have no more children.

But, of course, Toby had already been on the way. There had been no going back.

Richard was the last of her family. The end. Finished.

But…

‘This means I’ll have family again,’ she whispered to the lake.

‘You don’t want family?’