The splitter dug under the door and the corner rose.
‘I’ll keep shoving and you stick in a pole,’ she ordered and he was with her. The fence posts… long cylinders, ready to roll, were lined up, ready to insert under the door.
‘I’ll operate the axe, though,’ he told her, seeing her strain to get the sedge further in. Enough was enough. He had to be stronger than she was.
He had to be something more than she was.
Whoever, whatever, the plan worked. Two minutes later they had three poles under the door. At first push the door started rolling, with Fergus and Ginny carefully manoeuvring it toward the back door.
‘What’s happening?’ Oscar muttered, sluggish and barely conscious.
Fergus was hauling a pole out at the back of the door, to carry it forward so it became the front roller. ‘You’re going for a ride,’ he told him. ‘Courtesy of the most amazing ambulance officer I’ve ever met. And the most amazing trolley.’
It worked.
Luckily Oscar had a ramp instead of steps leading to the veranda and the only hard part was keeping the thing from sliding too fast. The dogs watched from a distance, seemingly almost as bemused as Fergus.
Then there was the little matter of getting their makeshift stretcher into the truck, but they did that working as a team, finding wedges and chocks of different sizes in the woodshed, tying the ropes under Oscar’s arms tighter so he couldn’t slip, gradually levering up the end of the door to a new level, chocking, levering again until finally the door reached the height of the floor of the truck.
That was the only time when they needed real strength. There was a moment when they had to take a side apiece and shove.
‘One, two three…’
The door slid in like a dream.
‘This place stinks,’ Oscar said clearly through his mist of alcohol and confusion, and Fergus climbed up beside him to administer oxygen again and tried not to flinch at the by now awful smell in the rear. Oscar was no pristine patient and the ewe’s legacy was disgusting.
But it was Oscar’s ewe. Ginny’s phrase came back to him. She’d just walked out to take in some bucolic air? ‘It’s good bucolic air,’ he told Oscar, trying not to grin. Ginny was still outside the truck, and she, too, was smiling her satisfaction. It had been a neat piece of engineering and they deserved to be pleased with each other. ‘Ms. Viental, wasn’t that what you were stepping out to find this afternoon? There’s lots of it in here. Would you like to ride in the back with our patient while I drive?’
But Ginny was already swinging herself into the driver’s seat, reaching over to the back and holding out her hand for the keys.
‘You’re the doctor,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m just part of the bucolic scenery.’
They made a stop on the way that Fergus hadn’t planned on.
I can’t go straight to the hospital,’ Ginny told him as they left Oscar’s farm behind them. ‘Richard will be worried.’
‘Richard?’
‘I told him I’d be gone for an hour and it’s been two already.’ She was driving more competently than he’d been, steering the truck with a skill that told him she’d spent years coping with eroded country tracks.
Where had she learned ambulance skills? Her farming skills? What else did she have going for her?
Gorgeous figure? Lovely complexion? Good sense of humour?
He had to concentrate on his patient.
Luckily, that wasn’t too difficult. Oscar was rolling from side to side, fighting against the straps, and Fergus was starting to get really concerned. If he had a broken hip he’d be in agony, the way he was moving. OK, he didn’t have a broken hip, but Fergus was starting to worry that the man’s blood alcohol level was dangerously high. He reeked of beer and whisky, and his breathing was getting weaker.
‘We need to get to the hospital fast,’ he told Ginny. ‘Ring Richard from the hospital.’
‘No can do,’ she told him, and turned off the main track onto an even smaller one.
Where was she going? ‘I need ICU facilities,’ he told her. ‘We can’t delay.’
‘I know it’s not optimal care.’ She was intent on the track. ‘But Oscar’s played ducks and drakes with his health for years. If I hadn’t been there today, you wouldn’t have him this close to the hospital now. I’ve sped you up a heap. It’ll take me two minutes to check on Richard, and I am going to check.’
‘Phone him.’
‘Go to hell.’
He sat back on his heels and stared through to the cab. He could see her face in the rear-view mirror. All humour had disappeared and her face was tight with strain.
‘Is Richard your child?’ he asked, confused, and she shook her head.
‘Just concentrate on Oscar,’ she said tightly. ‘Leave Richard to me.’
But somewhere in the haze of alcohol and lack of oxygen Oscar was still hearing. He’d figured what was happening, and he was starting to be scared.
‘You get me to hospital,’ he breathed, shoving the oxygen mask away so he could make himself heard.
‘I’m checking Richard first,’ Ginny flung over her shoulder. ‘He’s just as important as you are.’
‘He should be dead. He damn near all but is.’
There was no response. Ginny’s hands gripped the steering-wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. She kept on driving but Fergus could see what looked like tears…
‘Ginny…’
‘Shut up,’ she snarled. ‘Just shut up and look after Oscar because I’m sure as hell not going to.’
She checked on Richard. Whoever Richard was. Fergus wasn’t allowed to know. They pulled to a halt outside a farmhouse that was even more ramshackle than Oscar’s. Ginny ran inside, yelling at him not to follow, and, as promised, two minutes later she was back in the cab and the truck was heading back out to the main road.
‘Not dead, then?’ Oscar wheezed, and the look Fergus caught in the rear-view mirror was one of pure murder.
But now wasn’t the time to ask questions, not with Oscar ready to put in his oar and with Ginny’s anger threatening to explode. All he could do was keep a lid on it, keep Oscar alive and leave questions for later.
Would he ask the questions?
He wasn’t here to get involved, he reminded himself.
What was he here for?
To turn off. To find a place where he could immerse himself so totally in his medicine that everything else would be blocked out.
But the pain on Ginny’s face…
It found a reflection in what he’d been through. There was something…
Who was Richard? A husband? An invalid husband?
He wasn’t here to get involved.
‘I hurt,’ the man on the stretcher moaned, and Fergus sighed.
‘Where do you hurt?’
‘I told you-I smashed my hip.’
Yeah, right. ‘I can’t give you morphine until the alcohol wears off. And I need to do X-rays.’
‘Old doc would’a given me a shot by now.’
‘Yeah, he would have shut you up whatever the cost,’ Ginny flung at him over her shoulder. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. Dr Reynard, keep me away from that morphine.’
Cradle Lake Hospital was not exactly the nub of state-of-the-art technology that Fergus was used to.
It had been built fifty or sixty years ago, a pretty little cottage hospital that looked more like a country homestead than a medical facility. Most of the rooms were single, looking out onto the wide verandas that had views down to the lake on one side or up to the vast mountain ranges of the New South Wales snowfields on the
