The Homestead Girls

by Fiona McArthur

  Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To the Royal Flying Doctor Service: their incredible flight nurses,

  flying doctors and outreach clinic care providers; the control

  room coordinators, the mechanics and the pilots who get them

  there safely, and to those who raise funds to help support this

  incredible service. You are all heroes.

  PROLOGUE

  Today, Layla had a jellybean up her nose. Last week she’d pushed a pebble in her ear. Dr Billie Green patted the arm of the worried mother because this so reminded her of her own daughter, Mia, as a little girl, when she’d vied for attention in their busy life. But it was pointless to wish that her sixteen-year-old daughter was as adorable as she’d been all those years ago.

  Flipping through the sterile packets of instruments for the long-nosed artery forceps, Billie tried not to wonder just what Mia was up to right at this moment as she tilted this little girl’s face to the light.

  Before her previous patient, Billie had called home and the house phone had rung out. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with her daughter, this was the problem with being a single parent, and the unanswered call meant worrying that maybe Mia was out doing something she shouldn’t be.

  Focus on the job at hand, she reminded herself. ‘Okay, sweetheart. Hold still and I’ll get that yucky thing out of your nose.’

  With one hand on the tiny chin and the other on the instrument, Billie directed the metal forceps towards the offending object, her lips twitching at the sight of the red-bean-smeared nostril. After initial resistance, the jellybean slid out with a final firm tug. Success. Billie’s eyes met those of the mother and they both released pent-up breaths and grinned.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Green.’ The mum scooped up her daughter and hugged her with relief.

  Billie winked at Layla, then she bypassed the lolly jar that she used when she needed to bribe nervous young patients and chose the rabbit hand print. ‘Stamp?’

  ‘Pwease.’

  ‘Good choice. No more nose poking.’ Layla solemnly shook her head and held out her hand for Billie to brand with the bright-coloured bunny outline. They all looked at it—it was pink and perfect, like a tiny tattoo on the white skin.

  Layla’s mum hugged her close once more. ‘Say thank you to Dr Green.’

  ‘Fanks.’

  Billie rubbed the fine strands of blonde hair on her patient’s adorable head. ‘You were such a good girl. If only every little girl could be so easy.’

  Including her daughter. She flicked another look at the clock—nearly eight p.m. She showed them out of her consulting room and there were no more patients waiting. Someone else was, though.

  ‘Dr Green?’ Billie’s pulse rate jumped as the man in the blue uniform straightened off the wall of her office and stepped forward.

  ‘Yes?’

  Gruffly but not unkindly, he said, ‘I’m Sergeant Hill. A word with you in private.’

  ‘Of course. Come in.’ She looked across at the receptionist, who raised her shoulders in a worried shrug. They’d find out soon enough.

  As soon as she’d shut the door she asked, ‘Is my daughter okay?’

  ‘That would be Miss Mia Rose Green?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cold terror flooded her. It was Mia. Now Billie struggled to contain the fear that closed her throat. An accident? Blood, broken bones? Molested? Her father? ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Your daughter’s detained at the police station. Though she’ll be released into your care as soon as you come to collect her.’

  Relief sagged her shoulders until other implications sank in. Trouble, then. Better than physical harm, although she still dreaded the answer to her next question. ‘What’s she done?’

  He sighed and she could tell he hated this. Probably had kids Mia’s age as well. ‘Were you aware it’s high school muck-up tonight?’

  ‘No.’ She hadn’t been or she’d have made sure someone had stayed home with Mia. The local kids had been getting rowdier every year. Last year’s high-school-leaving students had painted the town toilet block iridescent yellow and stuck feathers all over the concrete walls. And the local McDonald’s sign had mysteriously flown to the top of the school auditorium. The authorities still didn’t know how they’d managed to get it there.

  ‘Your daughter was a passenger in a car that we apprehended this evening. The driver and his passengers accosted a security guard, wearing balaclavas to obscure their faces. They were brandishing toy guns.’

  Billie plonked inelegantly into the chair behind her desk. Mia was grounded! And just who had she been riding around with in a car at night? Then the true horror of how she could have been hurt if the security guard had been armed sank in. What if they’d done it to a police car? They could have been shot!

  The policeman went on. ‘Your daughter’s fortunate. No charges will be laid because of her age, but we’ve taken a statement from all of them. The nineteen-year-old driver will appear in court.’

  She’d bet it was that creepy Jensen who’d been turning up late at night wanting to see Mia. ‘Who was driving?’

  The policeman avoided her eyes and she had the feeling he was the kind of man who would want to know who was driving if it had been his teenager in the back seat. ‘I’m not at liberty to say. But you can ask your daughter when you come to the station.’

  My word, she’d ask her daughter when she came to the station. Billie checked the clock on her office wall again. Her evening clinic would finish in three minutes anyway. ‘I’ll follow you in my car.’

  She thought she sounded calm—hopefully the policeman couldn’t see the steam coming out of her ears—but her car keys dug into her palm as she followed him out and closed her office door with a forceful click. She rolled her eyes at the receptionist as she went past but didn’t see her response because she was thinking, How many times have I told you to choose your friends wisely? You wait, Miss Mia, you are in so much trouble. I’m getting you away from here before you make the same mistake I did.

  ONE

  A month later and twelve hundred kilometres away on a drought-stricken sheep-and-cattle station in far western New South Wales, Soretta Byrnes scanned the distance through her kitchen window. The paddock stretched away down the hill: the greenish blue of the saltbush, red dirt, and maroon rocks poking through the cracked soil and dust. She wanted to throw on her boots and head out again, check the ewe she was worried about, just potter around on the quad with the dogs before it got dark to make sure the troughs were still filling with bore water. But she needed to make tea.

  It was days like this that she missed Gran the most. It was as if the house had lost its heart. Oh she used the cedar oil, kept the floorboards shiny, did it for the comfort of hearing Gran’s gentle voice in her head saying, Just fifteen minutes a day and your house is a home. But a house wasn’t a home without people, and hopefully the horizon would yield a small dust ball, two quad bikes and her grandfather before sunset. It was a long way home from their joint boundary with the next-door station in the dark.

  Peripherally she heard the creak, creak, of the windmill as it pumped water from the hard ground, but this afternoon her skin prickled w
ith premonition instead of the subtle calming effect the pump’s cadence usually had on her. Even the grand old homestead, a home she and her grandfather both had rattled around in since her grandmother had died, felt claustrophobic.

  It was her twenty-second birthday today. ‘Lucky I’m not precious,’ she murmured and swiped a date out of the packet in the door of the fridge. Maybe she could make scones and put a candle on top?

  Grandad might like that and she was almost at the sing-and-dance stage of trying to cheer him up. Maybe she had it wrong and he’d remember it was her birthday, breeze in and say, ‘Pretty yourself up, sweetheart, I’m taking you all the way into town for dinner.’ Highly unlikely. Not that she blamed him.

  In the last eighteen months they hadn’t seen any decent rain, the dams were dry for the first time in years, and her grandad’s dream of climbing out of spiralling debt had shrivelled into dust, along with the grass in the home paddock and the weaker sheep. Mustering feral goats was the only thing keeping them going.

  She had this mounting dread he’d do something silly like put the place on the market if the rain didn’t come soon. The spectre of depression, an evilly charismatic black wraith, had touched other drought-stricken families, and, for the first time, she worried about her own grandfather.

  Lately he barely spoke to her.

  Soretta glared at the empty fridge until the roar of a quadbike coming up the track lifted her head and she moved to the creaking screen door to step out onto the verandah.

  The one backpacker who hadn’t abandoned them had been known to be a little reckless, but there was something unsettling about the speed of this approach and the hairs on the back of her neck waved again uneasily.

  Klaus jumped from the quad almost before it stopped. ‘Boss down. Hit an anthill on the quad bike. He landed on a mulga root. Lots of blood.’

  She clamped down on the gory picture that sprang immediately to her mind. ‘Where?’

  ‘Next-door boundary. We use that holding yard for this muster. Near airstrip. Phone smashed. You get the flying doctor.’ Klaus’s usual florid face was pale and sickly with shock and stress.

  This was bad. Soretta felt the panic flutter in her throat and she squashed it down, too. It would have taken forty minutes for Klaus to get to her. Her grandad had been alone that long. ‘Go back to him. I’ll bring the utility.’

  Klaus nodded, jumped back onto the bike and roared away.

  Soretta jerked open the screen door and sprinted up the hallway to the phone on the wall. Her grandad was injured. Klaus’s words were screaming like neon lights in her head: hitting the ground at speed, speared by a mulga root, lots of blood. Even Grandad wasn’t invincible. He’d be all right. He’d better be all right. He was all she had in the world.

  Daphne Prince glanced out the window of the office as the aircraft lifted off with the flight crew from the next shift, and narrowed her eyes as it disappeared into the sunset. Another night on call for any emergencies until they came back, but that was okay. The control room at Broken Hill would phone her at home until seven the next morning. She loved her job, was falling in love with the country even though she’d been a city girl her entire life, and she was fiercely proud of the whole Flying Doctor Service she’d joined. For one thing, having to deal with emergency medical situations with very little help had certainly brought her out of her shell.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s any more of that coconut slice?’ Rex was holding his hand out dolefully like Oliver Twist. ‘Please, ma’am, is there more?’

  ‘Nope. I think you’ve eaten it all, Rex.’ She grinned at the hopeful expression on the pilot’s face. Just looking at him made her feel warm inside. She had no expectations, but passing time with the delightful Rex was no hardship. Besides, she had nothing else to go home for.

  At least she’d found a job she loved. She might be vertically challenged or suffering from duck’s disease, as her ex-husband had told everyone—even here she had the nickname, Legs—but it was useful being small when you were crawling around inside a tiny aircraft for most of your working day.

  Tonight was a shame, though. She’d been looking forward to meeting the new female doctor and now it was likely she’d be called out. The doctor and her daughter would have arrived by now to share the other side of the duplex Daphne lived in. It would be good to have another woman around here. There was more than enough testosterone with the boss, Rex, and the other nurses and pilots all being male.

  The Mica Ridge base didn’t take calls twenty-four hours a day, they were coordinated from Broken Hill, but Daphne and Rex were on call until the team came back. With Morgan here as senior doctor, the base had an extra person during office hours, and with the new doctor his load would be lightened, too. Maybe Daphne wouldn’t be needed tonight and as soon as the others returned she’d be able to relax.

  The phone rang and Daphne scooped it up. Heard a strangled, ‘Come on!’ on the other end and instantly recognised the stress of an emergency.

  She heard a deep breath as the caller collected herself. ‘Daphne. Thank God. It’s Soretta Byrnes from Blue Hills Station.’

  Daphne switched the phone to loudspeaker so Rex could hear and prepare as she listened and wrote swiftly. Seventy-year-old male. Impact off high-speed quad bike. Lord she hated those quad bikes, Daphne thought.

  Impaled by mulga root. Daphne winced. Abdominal wound. Extent not seen by caller. Back paddock Blue Hills Station. Closest airstrip adjoining station. Large blood loss. She looked over at Rex who stood to study the map.

  ‘I’ll switch the phone through to Morgan and let him know we’re out,’ Rex said. ‘Just over ninety k. Landing in forty minutes.’

  Daphne relayed that. ‘Don’t move him without a spine board. We’ll move him when we get there. Can you try to meet us at the airstrip with the utility and we’ll transfer the gear to him?’ The caller agreed and hung up and Daphne scooted out from behind the desk. They’d need extra fluids, pain relief if he was well enough, extra sponges for a pressure bandage, and battery packs for basic life support equipment. Rex was gone and pre-flight checks would be well under way by the time she scooped her essentials and headed out the door to the plane. This was always the hardest part. Trying to imagine scenarios, pre-empt disaster, prepare for every eventuality when, really, you couldn’t.

  She walked as fast as due care would allow; Morgan would skin her alive if she slipped and fell because she was hurrying too much. By the time she’d stowed her extra gear, Rex was pulling the door shut behind her and she held her breath as he squeezed past into the cockpit. Best part of the day really, Rex squeezing past. She smiled to herself then switched back into rescue mode.

  Listening to the whirr of the engines as they began to warm, she willed Soretta to stay calm. And willed Soretta’s grandfather to stay alive because if he did his part, they’d do theirs.

  Soretta wasn’t going to move him, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop and she decided if they were very careful they could put him on the board that stayed strapped to the back of the ute for emergencies like this. If she didn’t move him, it could be too late by the time the plane arrived. It was an agonisingly long time later that she and Klaus finally had her grandfather in the back of the utility. They were nearly there now, but her grandfather’s white face glistened with shock and pain as they bounced as gently as Klaus could navigate the potholes, over the rough track to the airstrip on the neighbour’s property.

  Soretta’s face felt tight, petrified like the piece of mulga that had caused such damage, as she settled the blanket around her grand­father’s bony shoulders and tried to keep from crying.

  One of the hardest things she’d ever done was shift her grandad onto the stretcher board and she hoped she’d done the right thing. His pale face, the beads of sweat as he’d tried to hold back the groans of agony, and the way the bleeding had continued to seep around the wad of dressing she’d held had warned her there was no other option. ‘Hang in there, Grandad.’

 
‘Sorry, hon.’

  His voice was so damn thready. ‘Don’t you dare die!’ She heard the squeak in her tone as she fought down the panic.

  The drone of a plane caught her attention, and she held her breathe as she watched it and prayed like she’d never prayed before. Mentally, she hurried it onto the ground and willed the door to open. Soretta sucked in a breath as her head began to swim. It was okay, she chanted to herself. They’d be able to get him to help before it was too late.

  ‘You were a beautiful baby.’ Her grandfather’s hoarse whisper held a smile. ‘Now you look like your grandmother. Even more beautiful.’

  No! That sounded way too much like goodbye. ‘Save your strength,’ she said, fiercely. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  And then they were coming around the end of the airstrip as the plane taxied towards them. She turned to her grandfather to tell him but his eyes were closed. For a horrific moment she thought he was gone, but then she saw his chest rise as he drew another ragged breath.

  Klaus jolted the utility to a stop, but her grandad was unconscious and didn’t notice. Soretta willed him to stay with her.

  The hatch of the plane lowered, the steps followed, and then there was Daphne. Calm, kind and brilliantly efficient as she hopped down onto the ground and sprinted with her kit across to them. Soretta had never been so glad to see someone in her life.

  Soretta eased back as Daphne skidded to a halt beside them. She saw the flight nurse’s quick assessing glance that, despite its speed, seemed to encompass her granddad from head to foot. How did she do that?

  ‘I had to move him.’

  ‘I think you did. You did the right thing.’ Daphne gently lifted Soretta’s hand and the wadded dressing she held clamped against him. She sucked air in through her teeth at the jagged, seeping wound. ‘Good job,’ she said.

  Soretta didn’t know if she was talking to her or her grandfather but the relief of handing over responsibility made her head swim again.