‘You have to be kidding.’
For the last half-hour she’d been gazing down at a landscape so unfamiliar she might well be on a different planet. She was gazing at vast tracts of red, dusty desert, stunted trees growing along dry river beds, weird, wonderful rock formations, sunlight so intense it took her breath away, a barren yet beautiful landscape that went on for ever.
Dry Gum Creek was in the middle of… the Outback? There seemed no other way to describe it. Out back of where? Out back of the known world.
The little plane bumped to a halt. Riley hauled open the passenger door and Pippa gazed around her in wonder.
Red dust. Gnarled trees and windswept buildings. Dogs barking at their little plane like it was an intruder that had to be seen off. A few buildings that looked like portable classrooms. A slightly more solid building with a sign saying ‘General Store’. A big, old house that looked like it might have once been a stately homestead, but that time was long past. Corrugated-iron huts, scattered far out.
A couple of the rangy dogs came rushing to greet them. Harry fended them off while Riley swung himself up into the back to help Amy with the baby.
‘Welcome to Dry Gum Creek,’ Harry told Pippa. ‘I hope you aren’t expecting swimming pools, shopping malls, gourmet eating.’
She smiled, feeling pure excitement. ‘I left my credit card at home.’
A couple of little girls were peering out from the hut nearest the plane. They were eleven or twelve years old, with skins as dark as Amy’s.
‘Did Amy come?’ one of them yelled.
‘She sure did,’ Riley called. ‘Come and meet your new niece.’
The girls came flying, all gangly arms and legs, looking as thrilled as if it was Christmas Day.
Riley handed Riley junior down to Pippa. ‘Don’t let the girls have her unless Amy says so,’ he said in an undertone.
Amy was enveloped in hugs, and Pippa thought this was almost the reaction of kids welcoming their mother.
‘She could just as well be their mother,’ Riley told her, hauling equipment from the plane, and once again she was struck with this man’s ability to read her thoughts. It was entirely disconcerting. ‘They’d be lost without her.’
‘Are you coming home?’ one of the kids asked Amy. Amy shook her head. She disentangled herself from them a little and took her baby from Pippa.
‘Nope. I gotta stay with Sister Joyce for a week. Then I’m gonna have one of the huts by the school. Me and Baby Riley will live there.’
‘Will Jason live with you?’
‘Dunno.’ Pippa saw Amy’s face tense. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s got a job,’ the oldest girl said, sounding awed. ‘He’s out mustering cattle. He said to tell you.’
‘Wow,’ Amy breathed. ‘Wow.’
‘Mum says it’s stupid,’ the little girl said. ‘She says he can live off the pension.’
‘It’s not stupid.’ Amy looked back to Riley for reassurance and Riley was right beside her, his hand under her arm. Amy was sixteen years old. She’d given birth four days ago, and her confidence would be a fragile shell.
‘We’re taking Amy to Sister Joyce now,’ Riley told the little girls. ‘She’ll stay there until she’s strong enough to look after herself.’
‘We’ll look after her,’ the oldest of the little girls said, and squared her shoulders. ‘We’re good at looking after people. Amy’s taught us.’
‘And Jason’ll help,’ Amy told her. ‘I know he will. Like Doc Riley.’ With Riley supporting her, her confidence came surging back and she peeped an impudent, teasing smile at Pippa. ‘My Jason’s got a job. How cool’s that? My Jason’s gorgeous. Even more gorgeous than Doc Riley. Though I bet you don’t think so.’
What?
That was a weird statement, Pippa thought. Totally in appropriate.
So why was she trying really hard not to blush?
Pippa had been expecting a hospital but it wasn’t a hospital at all. It seemed little more than a big, decrepit house with huge bedrooms. The woman in charge was an elderly, dour Scot with a voice like she was permanently attached to a megaphone. Sister Joyce. She introduced her to some of her residents while Riley started his clinic.
Harry, it seemed, was needed elsewhere. The water pump was playing up. While Harry was here, Joyce decreed, he might as well be useful, and Pippa got the feeling Joyce would be as bossy as she needed to get what she wanted for her residents.
Maybe she needed to be bossy. It seemed Joyce took care of sixteen patients on her own, and even though the place wasn’t a hospital, the residents were certainly in need of care.
‘We’re not defined as a hospital,’ Joyce told her. ‘We’re not even a nursing home because we can’t meet the staffing ratio. A lot of our population is nomadic. Every time we try and take a census so I can get funding, everyone seems to go walkabout, so this is a sort of a boarding house with hospital facilities.’
‘With you on duty all the time?’
Joyce gave a wintry smile. ‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. I’m no saint. This place suits me. I can’t stand bureaucracy. I train our local girls to help me and I do very well. Amy’s been the best. I have hopes she’ll come back to work, baby or not. And we have Doc Riley. The man’s a godsend. Sensible. Intelligent. He doesn’t shove medical platitudes down people’s throats. We’ve had medical professionals come out here with their lectures and charts of the five food groups, holding up pictures of lettuce. Lettuce! Our kids get two apples a day at school, they take home more, but even apples cost a fortune by the time we fly them in. Lettuce!’ She snorted her disgust. ‘You want to see what Riley’s doing?’
‘I… Yes, please.’ They’d moved out on the veranda where half a dozen old men were sitting in the sun, gazing at the horizon. ‘Are these guys patients?’
‘Diabetics,’ Joyce said. ‘You look closely at their feet and you’ll see. And half of them are blind. Diabetes is a curse out here. An appalling diet when they were young, a bit of alcohol thrown in for good measure, eye infections untreated, you name it. Most of these guys are in their fifties or sixties but they look much older. Riley’s doing his best to see this doesn’t happen to the next generation.’
He was. Joyce ushered her into a room at the end of the veranda. Riley was seated beside a desk. A dark, buxom woman who Joyce introduced as the local school teacher was shepherding a queue of kids past him.
‘He’s doing ear and eye checks,’ Joyce told her. ‘I do them but I miss things. There’s seven steps to go through for each child to make sure they have healthy eyes. He also checks ears. These people are tough and self- sufficient-they have to be-but that causes problems, too. Many of these kids don’t even tell their mums when their ears hurt. Infections go unnoticed. In this environment risks are everywhere. So we back each other up. Riley swears he won’t let a kid go blind or deaf on his watch.’
‘How long’s he been doing this?’
‘Six years now. He came to do an occasional clinic, then helped me set this place up. There was such a need.’
‘How can you operate a hospital without a doctor?’
‘We can’t,’ Joyce said bluntly, while they watched Riley joke with a smart-mouthed small boy. ‘But we don’t have a choice. We’re three hundred miles from the next settlement and most of the older people won’t go to the city for treatment even if it’s the difference between life and death. I do what I can and Doc Riley is a plane ride away.’
‘Always?’
‘He’s nearly as stupid as me,’ Joyce said dryly. ‘I need him, he comes. So… You’re a qualified nurse. English?’
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t hold that against you. Coral said you’re here to watch. Sounds boring. Want to help?’
‘Please.’
‘You can speed things up,’ Joyce said. ‘Tell her, Riley,’ she said, raising her voice so Riley could hear. He had a
