other.
It was a great spot for a hospital. Unfortunately, it had been five years since Cradle Lake had been able to attract a doctor, and in those years the place had become little more than a nursing home. Old people came here to die. Patients needing doctors on call were transferred to somewhere with more facilities.
Nevertheless, Fergus had been stunned by the level of care displayed by what seemed an extraordinarily talented pool of local nurses. Being the only hospital for a hundred miles, the local nurses were called on for everything from snakebite to road trauma. They dealt with medicine at the coalface, and from what he’d learned in his two days here, by the time emergency cases were passed over to specialist care, the emergency would often be over.
Miriam, the nurse whose job it was to do home visits and who’d welcomed him with open arms, was waiting as they drove into the entrance to Emergency. A middle-aged farmer’s widow, she was as competent as she was matter of fact. Now she came out from the hospital entrance looking worried, and as he emerged from the back of the truck she looked even more worried.
‘Where have you been? I should have come with you. Oscar should be in a nursing home. He’s not fit to be alone, but I was sure he was putting it on. I would have left him until morning, but you insisted…’
He had insisted. Fergus had been in the call room when Oscar had phoned. Miriam had been inclined to be indignant and let him wait, but Fergus had decided to go anyway.
‘He didn’t really break a hip, did he?’ she demanded, and as Fergus pulled the door of the van wider and she saw their improvised stretcher, she gasped. ‘You’ve brought him in. How-?’
‘On a door,’ Fergus said, grinning. ‘And you’re right, he’s not fit to be alone. We need to look at a long-term nursing-home option-especially if by going home he gets to be in charge of animals again. Meanwhile, Miriam, we need a proper trolley to get him out of the truck. We need one strong enough to slide Oscar and a door onto. We’ll not move him again without a hydraulic lift.’
‘Who…?’ Miriam asked, and, as if in response to the unfinished question, Ginny jumped out of the cab. Miriam’s jaw dropped.
‘Ginny,’ she gasped. ‘Ginny Viental.’
‘Hi,’ Ginny said, smiling. ‘It’s Mrs Paterson, isn’t it? I remember you. Can you look after Dr Reynard now? I’m going home.’
‘Wait and I’ll drive you,’ Fergus said, still trying to sound as if he was in control, but Ginny shook her head and he knew that control was an illusion.
‘I still haven’t finished my walk, and Richard’s OK for a bit longer. I’ll enjoy the hike.’
And then she hesitated.
Until now the valley had been blanketed with the hush of a lazy country Saturday afternoon. Everyone was at the football, watching the football on the telly or starting the hike to bring the cows in for evening milking.
But the hush was broken now by a siren. It started low, a soft rise and fall from the far side of the lake, but it was unmistakable.
‘The boys are bringing someone in.’ Miriam stared out over the valley as if she was trying to see what was happening. ‘There was no callout through here and they haven’t radioed in. That means they’re both busy. It must be an emergency from the football.’
They regrouped, all of them. A medical team facing a medical crisis. Fergus glanced at Ginny and saw her reacting the same way he was.
‘Let’s get Oscar stabilised,’ Fergus snapped. ‘Miriam, fetch a trolley. Ginny, go to Oscar’s feet. Move.’
Ginny moved. Miriam moved too and no city hospital could have done it faster. They shoved the door onto a stainless-steel trolley and almost in the same motion they were wheeling it inside. They set Oscar beside a bed in a single ward but there was no time to move him into the bed. Not until they knew what the incoming emergency was.
‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered, but Fergus was intent on setting up an IV line.
‘All in good time,’ he muttered. ‘You’re safe where you are. I need a 5 mil syringe…’
He glanced up, expecting Miriam, but it was Ginny, not Miriam, who was handing him what he needed. While he worked, she was setting up a cardiac monitor and checking the oxygen flow. She’d followed him in behind the trolley and she’d started working without questioning him.
‘Miriam’s calling in reinforcements,’ Ginny told him. ‘As she’s the only nurse on duty, she might need help. The ambulance boys aren’t answering the radio, which makes her think things might be dire.’
‘Get me into bed,’ Oscar muttered again.
‘As soon as we can,’ Fergus told him. ‘You just lie there and sober up.’
‘I’ll stay with him until we’re sure the oxygen rate’s optimal,’ Ginny offered, and Fergus hesitated. The siren was so close now that the ambulance would be there in seconds.
But was she qualified? As what?
And there was no love lost between Ginny and Oscar.
‘You won’t murder him?’ he asked, and he was only half joking.
‘We’ve both taken the Hippocratic oath,’ Ginny murmured. ‘More’s the pity.’
His eyebrows took a hike. ‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Only for now,’ she said, and her tone was a warning. ‘Only when I have to be, so don’t get any ideas about weekends off. Now go. Leave Oscar to me and I’ll do my best to keep him breathing.’
A doctor?
Fergus made his way swiftly back to Emergency, his mind racing.
Suddenly he felt a whole lot better about what he was facing.
He hadn’t thought this through. When Molly had died he’d simply taken the coward’s way out. He hadn’t been able to stay at his big teaching hospital any more. Everywhere he’d looked there had been memories. And people’s eyes… Every time they’d come toward him they’d clapped him on the shoulder or taken his hand and pressed it in gentle empathy. That last day had been unbearable. He’d been performing a simple catheter insertion and the nurse assisting had suddenly choked on a sob and left, leaving the patient sure that there was a disaster his medical team wasn’t telling him about-and leaving Fergus sure that he had to leave.
Some of his workmates had been better, he acknowledged. They’d been matter-of-fact, trying not to talk about it-moving on. But the way they’d spoken to him had still been different. He couldn’t bear them not talking about it as much as he couldn’t bear them talking about it and in the end he hadn’t known which he’d hated more.
‘Have a break,’ his father told him. Jack Reynard was senior cardiologist at the hospital. His father had been caring, but from a distance, all the time Molly had been ill-and after she’d died he’d hardly been able to face Fergus. ‘Go lie on the beach for a month or two.’
The thought of lying on any beach without Molly was unbearable but so was staying where he was. So he’d come here. It was only now, hearing the siren, thinking about how truly alone he was, that he wondered how qualified he was to take care of a rural community.
But now he had back-up. Ginny. Whatever her story was.
His strides lengthened. He could cope with whatever it was, he decided. As long as he had another doctor behind him.
Was she nuts, telling him she was a doctor?
Now was hardly the time for recriminations, Ginny decided. There was work to be done and it had to be done fast. The siren meant there was trouble coming and now she’d admitted she had medical training she knew she could be called on to help.
Ginny adjusted Oscar’s drip, checked his obs and made him as comfortable as she could without trying to move him. It took two people to use the hydraulic lift, and there weren’t two people available. There might not be any people if this was a true emergency on its way here, she thought.
She might be needed but she was concerned about leaving Oscar. The huge man was dead drunk and he could roll off the trolley. If she was called away…
‘OK, Viental, do something,’ she muttered.
She propped him up on pillows so he was half-sitting. There was no moan as she hauled him up-she’d given the broken hip cursory credence and she gave it even less credence now. He was showing little sign of pain. He’d be
