little girl on his knee, inspecting her ear. ‘I need to settle Amy in and help Harry with the pump. Is it okay with you to let the girl work?’
‘Are you up to it?’ Riley asked.
‘You’re not asking me to do brain surgery, right?’
He grinned. ‘No brain surgery. We’re doing ears and eyes and hair and an overall check. You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. Joyce and I take every inch of help we can get.’
‘I’d love to help,’ Pippa said simply, and she meant it.
So Riley kept on checking ears, checking eyes, and Pippa took over the rest. She listened to small, sturdy chests. She ran a quick hair check-it seemed lice were endemic but she didn’t find any. She did a fast visual check of each child, checking for things that might go unnoticed and blow up into something major.
The kids were good for Riley but they were like a line of spooked calves as they approached Pippa, ready for flight.
‘Sam Kemenjarra, if you don’t stand still for Nurse Pippa I’ll tell her to put the stethoscope in the ice box before she puts it on your back,’ Riley growled to one small boy. The little boy giggled and subsided and let himself be inspected.
But the line still fidgeted. Pippa was a stranger. These kids didn’t like strangers-she could feel it.
‘Nurse Pippa’s been sick herself,’ Riley said conversationally, to the room in general. He was looking at a small boy’s eyes, taking all the time in the world. No matter how long the line was, she had the feeling this man never rushed. He might rush between patients but not with them. Every patient was special.
He was good, she thought. He was really good.
But then… ‘She went swimming in the dark and nearly drowned,’ Riley said. ‘We had to pull her out of the water with a rope hanging from a helicopter.’
There was a collective gasp. Hey, Pippa thought, astonished. What about patient confidentiality?
But Riley wasn’t thinking about patient confidentiality. He was intent on telling her story-or making her tell it.
‘It was really scary, wasn’t it, Pippa?’
‘I… Yes,’ she conceded. The line of children was suddenly silent, riveted.
‘If I hadn’t swung down on my rope to save you, what would have happened?’
She sighed. What price pride? Why not just go along with it? ‘I would have drowned,’ she conceded. So much for floating into the next bay…
‘And that would have been terrible,’ Riley said, and he wasn’t speaking to her; he was speaking to the kids. ‘Pippa was all alone in the dark. Floating and floating, all by herself, far, far from the land. There was no one to hear her calling for help. That’s what happens when you go swimming in the dark, or even when it’s nearly dark. Waterholes and rivers are really dangerous places after sunset.’
She got it. She was being used as a lesson. Her indignation faded. It seemed this was a great opportunity to give these kids a lesson.
It was also settling them.
‘I thought something might eat my toes,’ she conceded, figuring she might as well add corroborating colour. ‘At night you can’t see what’s under the surface. All sorts of things feed in the water at night.’
‘Crocodiles?’ one little girl asked, breathless.
‘You never know,’ Riley told her. ‘We don’t have crocodiles here,’ he told Pippa, ‘so it’s safe to swim in the waterholes during the day. But at night there’s no saying what sneaks into the water looking for juicy little legs to snack on. And I wouldn’t be here with my rope. It takes two hours for Harry and I to fly here.’
‘But you’d come,’ a little boy said, sounding defiant. ‘If I went swimming at night you’d come with your rope.’
‘It’d take me too long,’ Riley said. ‘Like Pippa, you’d be floating for a long, long time, getting more and more scared. You were really scared, weren’t you, Pippa?’
‘I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life,’ she conceded. ‘I was all alone and I thought I was going to die. It was the scariest thing I can imagine. I know now. To swim at night is stupid.’
There was a moment’s hesitation-a general hush while everyone thought about it. Then: ‘I wouldn’t do it,’ the little boy declared. ‘Only girls would be that stupid.’
‘We would not,’ the girl next to him declared, and punched him, and the thing was settled. Night swimming was off the agenda.
‘And while we’re at it, we should warn Nurse Pippa about bunyips,’ Riley said, still serious, and there was a moment’s pause.
‘Ooh, yes,’ one little girl ventured, casting a cautious glance at Riley. A glance with just a trace of mischief. ‘Bunyips are scary.’
‘Bunyips?’ Pippa said.
‘They’re really, really scary,’ a little boy added. ‘They’re humongous. Bigger’n the helicopter.’
‘And they have yellow eyes.’
‘They sneak around corners.’
‘They come up from holes in the ground.’
‘They eat people.’ It was practically a chorus as the whole line got into the act. ‘Their teeth are bigger’n me.’
‘You couldn’t go night swimming here ’cos you’d get eaten by a bunyip first.’
‘Or dragged down a hole for the little bunyips to eat,’ the child on Riley’s knee said, with ghoulish relish.
‘You… you’re kidding me,’ Pippa said, blanching appropriately.
‘Why, yes,’ Riley said, grinning. ‘Yes, we are.’
The whole room burst out laughing. Pippa got her colour back and giggled with them.
The room settled down to ears and eyes and hair and chests.
Pippa kept chuckling. She worked on beside Riley and it felt fantastic.
She was good. She was seriously good.
Cordelia was dour and taciturn. The kids respected her. They did what she asked but they were a bit frightened of her.
They weren’t frightened of Pippa. They were enjoying her, showing off to her, waiting impatiently for Riley to finish with them so they could speed onto their check with Nurse Pippa.
Pippa. They liked the name. He heard the kids whisper it among themselves. Pippa, Pippa, Pippa. Nurse Pippa, who’d almost drowned.
He’d had no right to tell them the story of Pippa’s near drowning, but the opportunity had been too great to resist. Drownings in the local waterhole were all too common, and nearly all of them happened after dusk. Kids getting into trouble, bigger kids not being able to see. Pippa’s story had made them rethink. He’d told the story to fifteen or so kids, but it’d be spread throughout the community within the hour. Pippa’s ordeal might well save lives.
And it had had another, unexpected advantage. Somehow it had made Pippa seem one of them. She’d been given a story.
He’d brought many medics out here-there was genuine interest within the medical community-but mostly the visitors stood apart, watched, or if he asked them to help, the kids would shy away, frightened of strangers. But Pippa was now the nurse who Doc Riley had saved on a rope.
If Pippa was serious about staying…
She wouldn’t be. She’d stay until she either made it up with her fiance or she had her pride together enough to go home. It wasn’t worth thinking of her long term.
But even if she was only here for a month or two… she’d make a difference.
He watched her as he worked, as she worked, and he was impressed. She was settled into a routine now, tugging up T-shirts, listening to chests, tickling under arms as she finished so the kids were giggling, and the kids waiting in line were waiting for their turn to giggle. She was running her hand through hair, saying, ‘Ooh, I love these curls-you know, if you washed these with shampoo they’d shine and shine. Does Sister Joyce give you shampoo? See how my curls shine? Let’s have a competition: next time I come let’s see who has the shiniest curls. Every time you wash with shampoo they get shinier. No, Elizabeth, oil does not make curls shinier, it makes them slippery, and the dust sticks to it. Ugh.’
