The country practice, p.31
The Country Practice, page 31
‘His body temp’s low from being out all night, his left ankle could be broken and he has lots of scratches and bruises, but otherwise he seems okay. He’s confused, of course, and part of that’s from the hypothermia and dehydration, and I reckon he’s probably got one hell of a hangover. I’m getting some fluid into him and that’ll make him feel a lot better.’
‘Will he need to be flown out?’
‘I don’t know.’ Meghan looked at Harry, his eyes closed, blankets tucked up under his chin. ‘I’ll do a complete assessment when we get to the hospital, take bloods to check his electrolytes. We’ll just need to find someone to take the blood to Port Augusta. And I’ll ring the Royal Adelaide Hospital, talk to the A&E registrar. Whatever happens, I’ll stay until I know he’s okay.’
Julia’s sigh was huge. ‘Meghan, how will I ever thank you?’
‘You don’t have to, Julia.’
After Julia had disconnected, Meghan took her patient’s blood pressure. Everything was stable, although his BP remained low. She was so glad she’d been there for Julia and Harry. The paramedics and nurses would have managed without her, but throw a doctor into the mix and the patient’s chances increased exponentially.
So where did that leave Magpie Creek when she drove away tomorrow?
Sean had made up his mind. He wasn’t leaving the hospital until Meghan was ready to go. He arrived after lunch, after his chores at the CFS shed were done – gear stowed, reports seen to, and a debrief with the blokes finished. The hospital had kindly supplied coffee and sandwiches. He’d been back at the hospital half an hour and he wasn’t budging. Knowing her, she’d try to see other patients or something equally ridiculous.
As far as Sean was concerned, Harry Pritchard was one very lucky bloke. He’d got away with a mess of cuts and abrasions and a sprained ankle. The man should buy a lottery ticket.
From where Sean was sitting in the visitors’ waiting area, a row of uncomfortable plastic chairs opposite the nurses’ station, he had a good view of the doors to A&E. Meghan wouldn’t get past without him knowing. Julia was chatting to one of the nurses while she waited to go back in to see Harry. She could only be described as buoyant with relief. He’d lost count of the number of times she’d thanked him for helping find her husband.
Julia plonked herself down in one of the chairs beside him. ‘I’m just waiting until they finish cleaning Harry up and then we’ll settle him into the special-care room here. Meghan says he should stay in hospital for a few days, and have a nurse with him all the time to start with. At least until she gets back some of the blood results.’
Sean nodded. Julia’s smile spread from one side of her face to the other, and some of the sparkle had returned to her blue eyes. But he couldn’t help but wonder how she really felt – whether it had gone through her mind at all over the last few hours that her husband’s life had been saved so she could watch him slowly disappear into dementia. Cruel, he thought. Life could be downright cruel.
‘It’s all right, Sean,’ she said gently, as if she’d read his mind. ‘Harry might be down but he’s not out completely.’ She touched his arm. ‘When I thought he might not come home at all, I realised I wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. I know the days ahead will be hard, but I signed up for better or for worse and I believe that we still have some good times left.’
Sean didn’t know what to say. As his mate’s mother, and a local nurse, Julia had always been on the periphery of his life but he’d never realised what a remarkable woman she was.
‘That sounds pretty courageous to me, Julia. I reckon in your position I might have been secretly relieved when he didn’t come home, knowing what was ahead.’
Julia pinned him with a steady gaze. ‘No, Sean, if the chips were down you wouldn’t have quit. You didn’t quit when Amy died and Kate left. And I can’t say that the thought didn’t occur to me – how much easier it’d be for me, and perhaps for Harry, if he had died out there.’
Sean shifted in his seat. ‘I did drop the ball there for a bit after Amy died.’
‘Yeah, but you picked it up again and got on with it.’
‘Up to a point.’
She leaned forward earnestly and he couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to. ‘Sean, there are so many things in life we have no control over, but there’s no point in having regrets, and letting them sour the rest of your life. One thing I know for sure – we need to make the most of what we’re dealt. And not let life’s opportunities pass us by because of stuff we can’t change.’
The A&E doors opened and Sean’s frustrated hiss was audible when the enrolled nurse came out.
Julia regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, what are you still doing here?’
‘I’m waiting for Meghan. Someone needs to make sure she goes home, gets fed and gets some sleep before she collapses in a heap.’
‘And that someone’s you?’
‘Why not? I’ve had some lunch, and I got a couple of hours of sleep earlier. And I’ve been meaning to say to you, Julia. If you need Col more often while Harry’s out of commission, I can spare him.’
Julia pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I can’t pay him any more days than I already do. We’re surviving on my wages and the overdraft as it is.’
‘I’ll pay him.’
‘You’re so like your father, Sean. That’s the sort of thing he would have said. And thank you, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer, but no. I’ll put the farm on the market as soon as I can. None of the kids want it and I’m not going to bankrupt us out of nostalgia and misplaced pride. I just hope we can sell the damn thing. That’s what we were arguing about before Harry took off.’
‘You do what you have to, but the offer’s there.’
The A&E doors moved and then slapped shut again. Julia glanced at Sean. ‘I won’t pretend I haven’t noticed lately the way you look at Meghan, and the way she looks at you. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, and I don’t want to know, but don’t you dare go breaking her heart. She’s too precious to us.’
‘She is,’ he said, and the full impact of her leaving suddenly hit him. It was like a blow to the solar plexus – there was no way he wanted her to go. She was so very precious. She’d bowled into his life and he didn’t want her to walk away from it. He stood up feeling winded. He scratched his head, his heart pounding. Could he do whatever he needed to do to keep her here? Even if that meant marrying her? Kids? He wasn’t sure he could do that again. And then the A&E doors burst open and she was striding across the corridor towards them.
‘You can go in if you like, Julia. He’s getting feistier by the minute!’ Her eyes widened when she saw Sean. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’
‘Not until you’re ready. There’s no-one who needs to see you at the medical centre, and there won’t be for the rest of the day, Annie Kemp has seen to that. As soon as you’re finished here I’m taking you home to bed.’
Julia made a strangled sound and Meghan’s face turned as red as an overripe tomato. Sean grinned. But before Meghan could close her gaping mouth, the RN shoved open the A&E doors and said in a quietly desperate voice, ‘Meghan, we need you in here. Now!’
The blood drained from Julia’s face. She swayed on her feet. Meghan’s empty stomach burnt as she eased Julia into the nearest chair.
‘Sean, make sure she’s okay,’ she implored and dashed after the RN. ‘As soon as I know what’s going on, I’ll tell you.’
The doors whooshed shut behind her. With a sense of deja vu, Meghan took in the fibrillating rhythm on the cardiac monitor, Harry’s prone form on the emergency room bed, and the nurse kneeling on the bed beside him about to begin cardiac compressions. Hadn’t she been presented with something like this on her first day in Magpie Creek? Only this time Meghan knew the patient.
The RN ripped open the packet of defib pads. ‘I was set to do his obs again. Ronnie was restocking the IV trolley. I started to tell Harry what I was going to do when his eyes rolled back in his head.’
Meghan grabbed the bag and mask from the emergency trolley, and didn’t stop to wonder what had gone wrong – Harry had been doing so well after his ordeal. Obviously his heart had other ideas.
Meghan cleared his airway and began squeezing breath into Harry’s motionless lungs.
Defibrillator pads in place, Meghan handed the airway management over to the RN and asked them to stand clear as she shocked Harry. Nothing. They went through the routine again . . . two minutes of CPR and another shock followed by a milligram of adrenaline. And again.
The nurse nearly tumbled off the bed when Meghan shouted ‘Yes!’ after their patient reverted to sinus rhythm following the second dose of adrenaline and fifth shock. Meghan wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, slick with sweat, her eyes never leaving the cardiac monitor. Harry would make it this time. She hadn’t considered the thought of him not pulling through. She’d never be able to look Julia in the eye again if she didn’t give it all she had.
Harry mumbled something incoherent, tried to pull the oxygen mask off his face. They sat him up and the nurses began his observations and a twelve-lead ECG. Meghan rang the A&E registrar to update him on her deteriorating patient and she was put through to the cardiac registrar on call. They sent through a copy of Harry’s ECG. Fifty minutes later the retrieval team was in the air. Harry was holding his own, although his blood pressure remained low enough for concern. Something was going on but all she could do with the resources she had was follow the cardiac registrar’s instructions and keep Harry stable until the team arrived.
A thoughtful person had left a coffee and several packets of sweet biscuits on the bench. Meghan’s stomach was growling and she felt hollow and light-headed – it was hours since she’d eaten toast at Julia’s. She gulped down the biscuits and went out to brief Julia.
‘He’s had a cardiac arrest,’ Meghan said, sitting down beside Julia. Sean, who had been pacing up and down the corridor, came back to sit on the other side of Julia.
Julia nodded, her nose red from blowing, her eyes puffy and tear-ravaged. ‘Is he all right now?’
‘For the moment. RFDS are on their way. We haven’t got an ETA yet.’
Julia swiped at her nose with a wad of soggy tissues. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know for certain yet. I suspect Harry’s electrolytes are all over the place. Clearly his ordeal has taken a worse toll on his body than we initially suspected. But without any results for the blood tests . . .’ She gave a weary sigh and massaged the knots in her neck. Julia knew Tim Dewhurst had agreed to detour to Port Augusta on his way to Adelaide and drop off the blood specimens, but he’d barely be there yet so there’d be no results.
Julia took Meghan’s hand. ‘You’ve done all you could. And don’t you dare try and tell me the nurses could have managed this on their own.’
Sean looked at Meghan. ‘She’s right, Meghan, and you know it.’
Meghan stood up, her hand resting on Julia’s shoulder. ‘You go in and see Harry now, if you like,’ she said, ushering her towards the A&E entrance. She turned back to Sean. ‘Go home. I can’t leave until Harry’s been retrieved.’
‘I’ll wait.’ His expression was mutinous as he stood up.
The RN came to the doors and Julia went in with her, leaving Meghan alone in the hospital corridor with Sean.
She folded her arms, met his stare head on. ‘Sean, I know you’re trying to make me feel guilty about leaving. But you know there are other places that need doctors, and I can’t be in all of them at once.’
‘No-one’s asking you to be. We’re just asking you to stay here. You know Harry would probably have died if you hadn’t been here.’
‘That’s not fair, Sean.’
His mouth turned down at the corners, and his broad shoulders lifted a fraction.
‘Please go home. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be. The dogs will be hungry, and you look wrecked.’
‘All right, but I’ll come back.’ He rummaged in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a set of car keys that looked remarkably like her own.
‘Col brought your car back. He used it to pick Julia up. Didn’t think you’d mind. Car’s out front.’
‘Oh, right, thanks,’ she said and slipped the keys into her pocket. In her rush this morning, she’d left the keys in the car ignition out there on the road to the Pritchards’ farm. Meghan looked over her shoulder at the A&E doors. ‘I’d better go back in.’
In a nanosecond he’d narrowed the gap between them: he reached out and tucked a recalcitrant tangle of hair behind her ear. His fingertips lingered by her cheek. ‘You look wrecked yourself,’ he said, his voice husky.
She gave her head a small shake. ‘I’m okay. I just had a coffee and some biscuits. Please don’t come back, Sean.’ Please don’t make this any harder than it already is. ‘You need to sleep. When I finish here I’ll be turning off my phone so if anything happens in the night, they’ll have to deal with it.’
‘Call me before you turn your phone off. And make sure you have something decent to eat.’
As she pushed her way back into A&E she smiled. Funny, only a month or so ago Meghan had been the one giving Sean dietary advice.
On Monday morning Meghan tapped out a text message to Sean. She was all right and Annie Kemp was filling in for Julia. When they’d talked the evening before – her voice thick with fatigue – Meghan hadn’t known what would happen at the medical centre with Julia in Adelaide with Harry. The retrieval team had assessed Harry at the hospital and inserted a central line, and with the right drugs and more fluid on board his blood pressure had improved and he’d maintained his oxygen saturations. Louisa had arrived just as they were ready to transport Harry to the airstrip. She drove Julia back to Adelaide via home, to pack a bag and feed the dogs and chooks.
Meghan finished typing and pressed send. It was gutless of her not to ring him but the closer it was to her leaving, the harder it was to talk to him.
The first patient was waiting when Annie put a call from Julia through to the consulting room. Meghan had been staring at her mobile phone, willing Sean to text her back.
‘How’s Harry?’
‘Stable. Nothing more they can tell me until they do more tests.’ Julia cleared her throat and Meghan sensed she had something more to add.
‘They asked me if I thought he was trying to kill himself.’
Meghan stopped doodling. ‘Did they? What do you think?’
‘I don’t know, Meghan. He hates what’s happening to him. I hid the keys to the gun cabinet about six weeks ago.’
Meghan didn’t know what to say. ‘What are you going to do, Julia?’
‘Sell the farm. I talked to Wendy Welles and she said I can take all the leave I have owing, try and sort things out. We’ll move into Magpie Creek, of course, closer to the support services.’
What support services? Meghan thought. If there wasn’t a doctor, the other health services would struggle.
‘I’ll look after him for as long as I can.’
‘What if you don’t sell the farm straight away?’
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. One of our neighbours might be interested, but with the drought, it’s anyone’s guess.’
‘Julia, we’ll keep in touch, won’t we?’ Meghan’s voice caught in her throat. ‘I promise I’ll visit as soon as I get the chance. And if there’s anything I can do, just ask. You’ve got all my contact details.’
‘Of course we’ll keep in touch, and I know you’ll be back sometime. You take care, girl, and look after that dog. And thank you from the bottom of my heart. Harry would have died if you hadn’t been there.’
The day passed in a blur of hay fever, skin rashes, back pain, anxiety attacks, earache and constipation. Annie Kemp was no Julia Pritchard but they got through without any major hitches. Meghan felt as if she’d had her emotions on hold and she’d only be able to let them go when Magpie Creek was behind her. If she could ever put Magpie Creek behind her.
Sean was at the gate by the house when she drove into Ashdale at four o’clock. He must have been listening out for her. It was hot, the dust hanging in the air behind the car. Her heart turned over when she saw him. He looked so good in his faded jeans and washed-out T-shirt, sexy feet shoved into thongs. She took a deep breath. Back to the plan – grab Lucky and go. If she could avoid it, she wouldn’t go into the house at all. She’d told her parents she’d be in Adelaide about eight.
She parked behind his ute and as she climbed out of the car he peered in the window at her luggage.
‘The last patient didn’t show,’ she said, ‘so we packed up and went.’ She looked around for the dog.
‘He’s in the pen. His stuff’s inside.’ He turned and walked up the path towards the house, looking around when she didn’t follow. ‘Are you coming in to get his gear? Have a cup of tea before you go? You’ve got a long drive in front of you.’
She followed him into the cool kitchen. ‘Thanks, but I won’t bother with tea. I’ll just get his stuff and go. You’re right, I have got a long drive.’
He put the kettle down and leaned against the cupboard. She felt his eyes on her as she picked up the dog’s bowls off the floor.
‘His bed got a bit wrecked – the other dogs reckoned it was theirs as well.’
She tried to smile but couldn’t. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll get him another one.’ She began packing his belongings into a plastic bag. Her heart felt like a stone.
‘You were amazing, with Harry and Julia. She’ll miss you. As a doctor, and a person, you’ve got a lot to offer a town like Magpie Creek. We’re all sorry to see you go.’
Meghan searched around for the lead. Sean picked it up off the cupboard and handed it to her.
‘Like I said before, everyone wants you to stay.’
She spun around to face him, her eyes flashing. ‘Maybe they do, and maybe they also respect the fact I have my own plans.’ She put her hands on her hips, tilted her head sideways. ‘And what about you, Sean Ashby? Do you want me to stay?’
