‘Morag, the injuries we’ve got are substantial. The worst have been evacuated but we’ve got twenty beds filled. Sadly, the injured people are mostly those who were in the worst places, and because it was a Sunday they tended to be in family groups. So we have injured people where there’s often a matching death. We’ll bring in trained counsellors, but these people need to talk straight away and you’re their family doctor. We’ve decided that unless there’s further immediate trauma, your most urgent need is to check the lists, get yourself up to speed, then go from bed to bed and talk people through what’s happened. As you have been on the way here. These people need you, Morag, and that need is more for talk than for action.’
She nodded. She’d expected no less.
It was odd, she thought dully. Four years ago she’d wanted desperately to be a surgeon. She hadn’t wanted one bit of personal medicine. The sooner patients were anaesthetised and she could concentrate on technical skills rather than interpersonal stuff, the better she’d liked it.
But now… Interpersonal stuff was medicine just as surely as surgery. She knew what Grady was asking was just as necessary as hands-on trauma stuff, and every bit as important. Maybe even more so.
‘Check injuries yourself as you go,’ Grady was saying. ‘Yesterday was chaos. Look for things that may have been missed. There are still people coming in. My team and I can cope with front-line stuff, but you need to do the personal. Can you do that?’
‘Of course I can.’
‘Good.’ He hesitated and then shook his head. ‘No. I’m sorry. Of course it’s not good. But it’s what you’re here for, Morag. Four years ago it was your decision to be a part of this. For now I’m afraid you have to live with it.’
She did. And maybe she needed to start thinking for herself. ‘I need to go out to the Koori settlement before I do anything else,’ she told him. ‘They’ll need me.’
‘Jaqui’s gone out there now.’
She frowned. That was a waste. If they’d asked her… ‘They won’t let her help.’
‘Why not?’
‘They hardly let me.’
‘She’ll be able to give us an overview at least,’ Grady told her. ‘Surely. But you’re needed here. With only three doctors I can’t afford for you both to be there, and she’s already gone. She’s good, Morag. I think you’ll find she can help. You work here for this morning and if there’s a need you can go out there yourself this afternoon.’
‘There will be a need.’
‘There’s need here, Morag. There’s need everywhere.’
‘Grady, I need to prioritise. The Kooris-’
But Angie Salmon had been standing in the shadows, waiting for them to finish. As Morag caught her eye, the woman stepped forward. She looked distraught to the point of despair.
‘Morag,’ she faltered. ‘I just wanted… I just… I didn’t sleep and the kids are hysterical and Don’s blaming himself and all he can do is cry and… I need…’
Priorities. How could she choose?
She just had to trust that Jaqui could pull off a miracle out in the Koori settlement.
She had to trust in Grady.
So for the rest of the morning she moved from one personal tragedy to the next. Listening.
She listened to Angie, then tucked her firmly into bed and gave her something to make her sleep. ‘You’re no use to anyone if you collapse,’ she told her. ‘Get yourself strong. Others are looking after your kids. I’ll see Don and we’ll work something out so you can both have time out.’
It was no solution-there
Grady and his team worked a surgery, assessing, treating, assigning beds, organising evacuations. The rest was left to Morag. It was too much for one doctor to handle, but she was the only one who could do it.
And it was mind-numbing work. Dreadful. They didn’t teach you this at medical school, Morag thought as she cradled old Hazel Cartwright against her breast and listened to her sobs. Elias Cartwright had been slightly demented and hugely demanding. When the wave had hit, Hazel had been out walking, taking a breather from her heavy role of carer. The wave had killed Elias instantly. Even though Hazel had expected her husband’s death any time these past ten years, shock had her in a grief as deep as that felt by Angie.
There was little Morag could do but listen to Hazel. There was little she could do for anyone but listen.
Over and over she heard the stories. Where people had been. How they’d felt as the wave had hit. How they couldn’t do anything. The feeling of sheer absolute helplessness, of lives suddenly out of control in the face of this catastrophe.
That was the deepest feeling. Being out of control.
Like Hazel… Death in bed at the end of a long life, death by misadventure, even death by disease-these things could be explained. Somehow. But to have the island decimated like this…to lose faith in their very foundations…
All Morag could do was listen.
But sometimes there were practicalities. Sometimes there was pain she could alleviate.
Like thirteen-year-old Lucy, huddled in bed, miserable and alone and frantically fearful because both her parents had been airlifted to Sydney and her brother was missing. She’d been treated for gravel rash-she’d been swept along a road in the same motion as being dumped by a wave, only this time the beach had been the gravel road outside her home. Her parents had been badly injured, and Lucy had been the one to run for help, so her injuries had been only cursorily inspected by one of the nurses in the first hours when Morag had been so occupied. She needed to be reassessed now.
She didn’t want to be reassessed. Morag reached her bed and the teenager’s face closed, almost in anger. But as she turned away from Morag, she winced.
The gravel rash was on her left. She’d turned to her right. What was wrong with her right side?
Morag put her hand on the girl’s left shoulder and let it lie. Softly. As if she had all the time in the world.
‘Your arm’s hurting?’
‘No.’
‘I think it is.’
‘Everything hurts.’
They should have evacuated Lucy as well, Morag thought, but even if she had gone to Sydney, her parents were in no condition to comfort her. And someone had thought, What if Hamish was found, injured?
But it wasn’t fair on Lucy. She should be with her parents.
‘Where’s your grandmother?’ she asked. May wasn’t on any list. Was the sprightly elderly lady out looking for her grandson?
‘She came in before,’ Lucy muttered. ‘I told her to go away.’
‘To look for Hamish?’
‘Hamish is dead.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Yeah, we do,’ Lucy spat. ‘Where else would he be?’
Morag closed her eyes. Deep breath.
‘Your grandma will need you as much as you need her,’ she said, but had a fierce head-shake in return.
‘I don’t want anyone.’
‘Lucy?’
‘What?’
‘Let me see your arm.’
‘My arm doesn’t matter. I want to know what’s happened to my parents.’
Before she saw each patient, Morag did her homework, finding out as much as she could about what had happened to each of their families and discovering, if she could, the extent of the damage to their homes. She’d treated Peter and Christine last night and she’d read the report on the family house. Plus, she’d checked. So now she was able to give as much reassurance as there was to give.
‘I radioed Sydney fifteen minutes ago,’ she told her. ‘Your dad has a fractured thigh and the doctors in Sydney are operating on him right now. Your mum hurt one of her legs as well. It’s a simple fracture that only needs a plaster, but she also hit her head. That’s why she was drifting in and out of consciousness when you last saw her.
