dreadful problems.
As a good physician he should probe.
No. He wasn’t a good physician. He was a surgeon and he was here as a locum, to focus on superficial problems and refer anything worse to the city.
He needed to think about a fractured hip.
They were bumping over yet another cattle grid. Before them was a ramshackle farmhouse, surrounded by what looked like a graveyard for ancient cars. About six ill-assorted, half-starved dogs were on the veranda, and they came tearing down the ramp baying like the hounds from hell as the vehicle pulled to a stop.
‘I’m a city boy,’ Fergus said nervously, staring out at the snarling mutts, and Ginny grinned, pushed open the door and placed the lamb carefully on her seat behind her. She closed the truck door as the hounds reached her, seemingly ready to tear her to pieces.
‘Sit,’ she roared, in a voice that could have been heard in the next state. They all backed off as if she’d tossed a bucket of cold water over them. Three of the mongrels even sat, and a couple of them wagged their disreputable tails.
She swiped her hands together in a gesture of a job well done and then turned and peeped a smile at him.
‘You can get out now,’ she told him. ‘The dragons have been slain. And we’re quits. You rescued me and I’ve rescued you right back.’
‘Thanks,’ he told her, stepping gingerly out-but all the viciousness of the dogs had been blasted out of them.
But the dogs were the least of his problems. ‘Doc?’ It was a man’s voice, coming from the house, and it was a far cry from the plaintive tone that had brought him here in the first place. ‘Is that the bloody doctor?’ the voice yelled. ‘About bloody time. A man could die…’ The voice broke off in a paroxysm of coughing, as if the yell had been a pent-up surge of fury that had left the caller exhausted.
‘Let’s see the patient,’ Ginny said, heading up the ramp before him.
Who was the doctor here? Feeling more at sea than he’d ever felt in his entire medical training, Fergus was left to follow.
Oscar Bentley was a seriously big man. Huge. He’d inched from overweight to obese many years ago, Fergus thought as a fast visual assessment had him realising the man was in serious trouble.
Maybe that trouble didn’t stem from a broken hip, but he was in trouble nevertheless. He lay like a beached whale, sprawled across the kitchen floor. A half-empty carton of beer lay within reach so he hadn’t been in danger of dying from thirst, but he certainly couldn’t get up. His breathing was rasping, each breath sucked in as if it took a conscious effort to haul in enough air. The indignant roar he’d made as they’d arrived must have been a huge effort.
Ginny reached his patient before him. ‘Hey, Oscar, Doc Reynard tells me you’ve broken your hip.’ She was bending over the huge man, lifting his wrist. ‘What a mess.’
The elderly man’s eyes narrowed. He looked like he’d still like to yell but the effort seemed beyond him. His breathing was dangerously laboured, yet anger seemed tantamount.
‘You’re one of the Viental kids,’ he snarled. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m Ginny,’ she agreed cordially, and to Fergus’s astonishment she was looking at her watch as her fingers rested on the man’s wrist. Did she have medical training?
‘A Viental,’ the farmer gasped, and he groaned as he shifted his vast bulk to look at her more closely. ‘What the hell are you doing on my property? Why aren’t you dead?’
‘I’m helping Doc Reynard. Plus I pulled one of your lambs out of the cattle grid dividing your land from ours.’ Her face hardened a little. ‘I’ve been up on the ridge, looking over the stock you’ve been running on our land. Your ewes have obviously been lambing for weeks and at least six ewes have died during lambing. They’ve been left where they died. No one’s been near them.’
‘Mind your own business,’ he gasped. ‘I didn’t call Doc Reynard for a lecture-and I didn’t call you. I don’t want a Viental anywhere near my property.’
‘You called Doc Reynard to get you on your feet again,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no way he can do that on his own-without a crane, that is.’
‘Let’s check the hip,’ Fergus said uneasily, and she flashed a look of anger back at him.
‘There’s no difference in the length of Oscar’s legs. He has breathing difficulties but that’s because he won’t do anything about his asthma. He’ll have got himself into this state because he couldn’t be bothered fending for himself so he feels like a few days in the hospital. He does it deliberately and he’s been doing it for twenty years.’ She glanced around the kitchen and winced. ‘Though by the look of it, it’s gone beyond the need for a few days in hospital now. Maybe we need to talk about a nursing home.’
She had a point. The place was disgusting. But still…
‘The hip,’ Fergus reiterated, trying again to regain control.
‘Right. The hip.’ She sat back and pressed her fingers lightly on Oscar’s hips. ‘How about that?’ she said softly, while both men stared at her, astounded. ‘No pain?’
‘Aagh!’ Oscar roared, but the roar was a fraction too late.
Enough. He was the doctor and this was his patient. ‘Do you mind moving back?’ he demanded, lifting Ginny’s hands clear. ‘I need to do an examination.’
‘There’s no need. He’ll have stopped taking his asthma medication. Do you want me to get oxygen from your truck?’
‘I was called to a broken hip,’ Fergus said testily. He didn’t have a clue what was happening here-what the dynamics were. Her pressure on the hips without result had been diagnosis enough, but he wasn’t taking chances on a patient-and a situation-that he didn’t know. ‘Let me examine him.’
Almost surprisingly she agreed. ‘I’ll get the oxygen and then I’ll wait outside. I’ll take care of the sheep. Someone’s got to take care of the sheep. Then I’ll come with you to the hospital.’
He frowned. He wasn’t too sure why she intended coming to the hospital. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her. There was something about this woman’s presence that was sending danger signals, thick and fast. ‘You were going to walk home.’
‘He’ll have to go to hospital,’ she said evenly. ‘He’s drunk, his breathing’s unstable, and you won’t be able to prove he hasn’t got a broken hip without X-rays. How are you planning to lift Oscar yourself?’
‘I’ll call in the paramedics,’ he snapped.
‘Excuse me, but this is the last home and away football match for Cradle Lake this season,’ Ginny snapped back. ‘If by paramedic you mean Ern and Bill, who take it in turns to drive the local ambulance, then you’ll find they refuse absolutely to come until the match-and the post-match celebration-is over. Especially if it’s to come to Oscar.’
Which was why he had come here in the first place, he thought dourly. The call had come in and there’d been no one willing to take it.
‘That leaves you stuck,’ she continued. ‘For a couple of hours at least. Unless you accept help.’
‘Fine,’ he conceded, trying not to sound confused. ‘I’ll accept your help. Can you wait outside?’
‘Very magnanimous,’ she said, and she grinned.
His lips twitched despite his confusion. It was a great grin.
Get on with the job. Ignore gorgeous grins.
‘Just go,’ he told her, and she clicked her disreputable boots together and saluted.
‘Yes, sir.’
CHAPTER TWO
SHE went. Fergus did a perfunctory examination and then a more thorough one.
Oscar had no broken hip, but Ginny was right-the man was dead drunk. His blood pressure was up to one ninety on a hundred and ten and his breathing was fast and noisy, even once he was on oxygen. Fergus checked his saturation levels and accepted the inevitable.
