by Margaret Way
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Steffi and Matt were buckled into their seats in the state-of-the-art Pilatus PC-12. As Matt had predicted, they were alone, other than their pilot, Ryan Fitzpatrick. Beside them there were two stretchers and one empty seat, all interchangeable depending on need.
“When you said small, you meant pretty jolly tiny, didn’t you?”
“Has that ‘maybe’ become a definite ‘yes’? You’re worried?” “No.”
“You’re as stubborn as your sister. How about I fill you in on our schedule, as much as we have one. That’ll help you forget all your worries. The clinic in Ceduna is pretty new on our list. It’s been going for about two months and today we’re conducting a child and infant health clinic.”
“Why is a clinic needed there? I thought Ceduna had its own GP and hospital?”
“It does. But the GP gets pretty snowed under and there’s been a big publicity campaign on immunisation recently. Once the campaign stops most people forget about how important immunisation is, and if it’s difficult to see a health professional they just let it go. We need to catch the parents while it’s fresh in their minds.”
“Is that all we’re doing today, immunisations?”
“No. All the other regular paediatric assessments, too. Age-related health checks, for babies and pre-schoolers, eye and chest exams, and there are usually a few mums who want to be seen as well. Often they’ve driven in from one hundred kilometres or more away and they’re not going to make that trip twice for a medical check so we see them, too.”
Steffi glanced out of the window as she listened to Matt, and the view momentarily stunned her. They were nearing Ceduna now and on their left was the start of the Great Australian Bight. Massive cliffs dropped away to the ocean in one bay and then wide, white sandy beaches stretched for miles in the next. The water was bright blue close to shore, darkening to black as it deepened. The contrast of colours between the red desert sands on their right and the white beach sands on their left was startling.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
Steffi turned to him, her face alight with pleasure. “I’ve never flown over this part of the country before. It’s so beautiful.”
For a brief moment Matt wished he were a man who was comfortable with expressing his feelings. Steffi’s eyes were the same blue as the sea and as breath-taking, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything before the chance was gone.
“Starting our descent now.” Ryan’s voice came through the intercom and Matt and Steffi were thrust back into work mode.
They were met at the airport by the president of the local branch of the Country Women’s Association who drove them to the hospital.
Matt commented, “That’s one bonus about Ceduna. Apart from the incredible scenery, we actually have a well set-up facility. Some of the clinics operate out of the local hall but, even then, the CWA do a fantastic job. There’re always toys for the kids and lunch is provided for us.”
From the minute the clinic started at ten o’clock until the lunch-break at midday, they scarcely drew breath. The appointment schedule was kept running relatively smoothly by one of the hospital admin staff, but the minute Steffi said goodbye to one patient there was another waiting to take her place.
When she wasn’t doing immunisations and weighing and measuring children, she was assisting Matt when he was treating any of the mothers. Some wanted cervical screening examinations and others simply needed skin checks for any suspicious moles or blemishes. Skin cancer was a very real danger in the outback.
Lunch was only a quick break but the hospital kitchen had prepared a delicious assortment of sandwiches, cakes and fresh fruit.
“I could get used to this,” Steffi said as she made her selection.
“They like to keep us well fed and I’m certainly not complaining,” Matt said as he piled his plate high with food. Steffi wondered where it all went. He didn’t have an ounce of excess flesh on his frame. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’d love a cup of tea and a huge glass of water. I haven’t talked so much in a long time. I’m parched.”
“So many of our patients live in such isolation that we’re the only people they’ll see for weeks at a time. They need the social contact from us as much as they need our expertise.” The corners of his eyes creased up as he smiled, lines running around his mouth, too, all telling a story about him. And most of all telling her he was real. Genuine. “Drinks coming up.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SHORTLY after taking off from Ceduna airport, Matt’s attention was caught when Ryan’s voice came through the intercom system. “Matt, we’re being diverted. Fractured leg at Buckleboo Station—Don Douglas.”
Matt headed for the cockpit and slipped on the headphones before Ryan told Sheila to continue.
“He’s on his own at the property. He was fixing one of the cars and the jack collapsed and broke his leg. There’s an airstrip on the property. Co-ordinates 32°S, 136°?.”
Ryan checked the global positioning system. “We’re about due north of Wudinna at the moment so our ETA would be about ten minutes. What condition is the airstrip in?”
“Good, apparently, but it’s about one and a half k’s from the house so Matt will have to make his own way there.”
“OK. I’ll let you know when we’re about to land. Over and out.”
Matt made his way back to Steffi and explained the situation. “Happy to give me a hand? It’s just like A and E work, only out in the bush. It does happen sometimes that we get diverted if we’re closer than the on-call team.”
“What should I expect?”
“Don reckons he’s fractured his leg. Didn’t say whether it was upper or lower, but either way we’ll need to stabilise him and then evacuate. Usual nursing procedure—obs, fluid, pain relief. The drawback is he’s on his own at the station and it’s a bit of a hike from the airstrip.”
“Can Ryan radio the base and ask Sheila to let Mum and Dad know I’ll be late back?”
“Sure thing.” He straightened up to head back to the cockpit but stopped as he realised she wasn’t looking too ecstatic about the change of plans, although she seemed to be doing her best not to show she was apprehensive. “It’ll be fine, Steffi. No need to worry.”
There wasn’t much more he could do, he was needed to act as copilot to Ryan for landing, but he walked away with the uneasy feeling that he’d like to have made her troubles disappear. Which just wasn’t possible. At the end of the day, no one could do that for another person.
Within a short while, they were flying over the property. Ryan made one pass low over the airstrip while Matt kept his eyes peeled for anything untoward. “It’s a bit hard to tell what’s what with all these daisies growing everywhere. I think Don needs to graze some of his sheep on the strip.”
“I don’t need to remind you, Matt, sheep and airstrips are a dangerous combination.”
Matt chuckled. Not so long ago Ryan had tangled with an errant sheep on a landing strip, wiping out one side of his plane in the process. “I can’t see anything too large poking through the flowers. And no woolly animals.”
“OK. Let’s give it a whirl.” Ryan touched down without incident but pulled the plane up as quickly as possible, not wanting to give disaster more time than necessary to strike his precious aircraft.
Matt jumped out as soon as the plane had stopped and took off across the paddock, heading west towards the house. He carried a sphygmomanometer and some pressure bandages with him, the bare essentials, planning on returning for his team and full supplies. His long legs soon had him looking like a speck in the distance but it was a seemingly interminable eighteen and a half minutes before he reappeared driving a beaten-up farm truck. Steffi had checked her watch every thirty seconds in between trying to remember what equipment Matt had asked for and finding where it was stored in the aircraft. Ryan had kept busy checking over every inch of the airstrip, wanting to ensure it would be safe to take off a
gain.
They both looked at the truck in disbelief when Matt pulled up alongside the plane. The driver’s side door was missing, it had no windscreen and the back of the truck was a flatbed fitted with a huge stock crate.
“Is that the best you could do?” Steffi asked. She couldn’t imagine riding in such a rough vehicle, let alone transporting an injured person in it.
“Come on, Stef, you’ve seen Matt’s car. He’s only comfortable with cars that should have been retired years ago. We’ll get to the house and there’ll be a brand-new ute sitting there with the keys in it and Matt will have chosen this one on purpose.”
“Ha. Ha. This was all there was, if you don’t count the car that Don was working on, which is now leaking oil all over the ground. I’ve come to collect the equipment. You’re more than welcome to walk back if you don’t want to share my wheels.”
“Since you put it that way …” Ryan started to stack things into the back of the truck as Matt handed them to him, the medical kit and bags of fluid followed by an inflatable mattress and leg splint.
“Hop in front, Steffi,” Ryan instructed as he jumped into the back.
Matt drove quickly over the rough dirt road back to the house.
“Don’s inside. He’s fractured his right femur, but otherwise seemed pretty right,” he said as he leapt out of the cab, grabbing the medical kit before heading for the house. “Bring the fluid.”
Inside, Matt took charge. “Don, this is Steffi Harrison, she’s a nurse. This big bloke over here is Ryan Fitzpatrick, he’s our pilot and part-time orderly. Take his obs again for me, please, Steffi. His BP was 105 over 70 before, pulse 140.”
Steffi knew Matt would have checked Don’s vital signs initially to ensure he wasn’t bleeding internally before returning to the plane. She repeated the obs as Matt inserted a bung into the back of Don’s hand and set up an IV line to run fluids.
“Ryan, can you fold the vacuum mattress out and inflate it using the foot pump?”
“Pulse 130, BP 110 over 70.”
“Right. Don, I’m going to pop this splint on to your leg to help keep it still while we’re transferring you, and I’ll give you something for the pain.” Matt slid the rubber splint under Don’s leg from heel to groin, fastening it at the front. “Steffi, can you inflate it for me? Just squeeze this pump until the splint is firm around Don’s leg.” He handed the small hand valve to Steffi and rummaged through the medical kit for the morphine, drawing up the correct dose and administering it through Don’s IV line.
“OK, how are we doing?”
“Mattress is done.”
“I’m done, too.”
“Don, we’re going to get you out to the plane now as gently as we can. Steffi, while Ryan and I lift, can you slide the mattress under him?”
She nodded.
“Ryan, I’ll take Don’s legs, you take his trunk. On the count of three.” Matt looked at both his coworkers, both in half-kneeling positions on either side of their patient, and they nodded their agreement. “One, two, three.”
Matt and Ryan lifted Don off the floor and Steffi slid the mattress under him from the other side. As soon as it was in position the men lowered Don onto the makeshift stretcher.
“Ryan and I will take the top and bottom, you stay alongside to steady it, Steffi.”
Together they somehow managed to load Don into the back of the truck. It wasn’t the most hygienic ambulance but it would do the job. Steffi was grateful the fracture hadn’t been a compound one. He would undoubtedly have picked up an infection in these conditions if he’d had an open wound.
Steffi and Ryan collected the equipment and, with Matt taking the open-air seat this time, Ryan drove slowly back to the airstrip, trying not to jolt their patient around unnecessarily.
At the airstrip Don was transferred to the plane’s stretcher and lifted into the aircraft by the mechanical hoist. The morphine had given him some relief and he was half-asleep now. Matt checked his obs again as Ryan prepared for take-off and Steffi collapsed into her seat.
“Are you OK?” Matt reached across, touching her hand for a brief moment.
“That was incredible.” Her heart was racing. Adrenalin from the retrieval or was it because of Matt? “You were incredible.”
“You weren’t too bad yourself.”
“I’m a mess. I was a bundle of nerves and all I had to do was hold this and count that. You were so in control.”
“This type of thing is my favourite part of the job.”
“Tell me what you like about it.” Steffi knew she had a captive audience for the next hour, barring any further problems with their patient who was now asleep. It might be her chance to find out more about this man who had her tied up in emotional knots.
At the request, Matt settled back in his seat, a grin on his face, as if just thinking about his job was enough to set everything right in his world. “I love the unexpected nature of the work, the fact that I have to think on my feet and I come across all sorts of things I’ve never seen in a textbook and am never likely to. I love that I have to make quick decisions, quick but well-informed ones.”
“Don’t you find it stressful?”
A little crease appeared between his eyes as he thought about her question. “I’ve never felt stressed. Even the smallest thing I can do is better than nothing. It’s challenging. And rewarding.”
“Lauren loves it, too. I don’t think I could handle the responsibility of things being completely in my hands.”
“It’s not so different to the responsibility of being a single parent. You make decisions affecting Jess every day and you do that on your own.”
“But hopefully not decisions that might mean the difference between life and death.”
“Maybe not. But they’re big decisions all the same and you learn to make them and you make them to the best of your ability.”
“Mmm.” Her abilities had been less than terrific lately but she didn’t want to discuss her failings right now. She ignored a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t confided in Matt about her panic attacks and that now might be the perfect time. But he seemed to have such a high opinion of how she coped with motherhood, with her work, and she knew she wanted to bask in the glow of his good opinion for a while longer. Beside, he’d never said much about himself, and now was also a perfect opportunity for that. She wanted to talk about him for a change. Gorgeous, heart-melting him. Mentally, she ground her heel into the last of her guilt over not confiding in him, letting him think the best of her, at least for now. “How long have you worked with the AAS?”
“A bit over three years now.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I grew up in the country.”
“Really?” No one had mentioned that to her. “Where?”
“Not far from here. But I went to boarding school in Adelaide when I was twelve. I decided when I was about fifteen I wanted to be a doctor and I’ve never wavered from that.”
“Did you know then that you wanted to join the AAS?”
“Not specifically, but once I started university most branches of medicine didn’t appeal to me. I think perhaps I wasn’t really cut out for those that the ‘old school,’ for want of a better term, hold in high regard. Being a specialist in the city wasn’t my idea of medicine but I loved the AAS from day one of my first placement. I like the autonomy and remoteness and I don’t miss out on ‘real’ medicine.”
“You seemed so comfortable out there, even though I wouldn’t have thought it a relaxed situation.” She was a bit envious of how calm he’d been. Emergency medicine had never been her thing, even before her panic disorder had set in.
“You grew up here, too—you know how relaxed the lifestyle is.”
“I’m not talking about the lifestyle, I’m talking about your work.”
“All part of the same thing. I love getting out on the plane and I’ll do it until the day I retire. Can’t think of anything worse than to be stuck indoors in a hospital or gen
eral practice.”
“But you do hospital work, too.”
“I do hospital work because it’s part of my job description, but I really would rather not have to.”
“That’s where we differ, then. I like to know what I’m going to be dealing with. And I like to know where I’m going to be working. I need a familiar environment.”
“Maybe it’s because you’ve had to provide for someone else. You’ve always had Jess’s well-being to consider.”
Would she, could she, have been more adaptable, spontaneous, under different circumstances? She doubted it. She shook her head. “I think I was like that anyway. Why, do you think you’d change if you had someone else to consider?”
“As long as I knew I could provide for them, I know I’d always prefer to stay out of mainstream work. That’s just who I am.” He glanced out of the window, then at his watch. “We’re nearly home now. How about that swim we’ve talked about? I could use a refreshing dip once Don is sorted at the hospital.”
Steffi had so many more questions for him but he suddenly seemed to have run out of answers. He certainly did a very neat change of topic and she let it go. She knew far more about him now than she had before this flight. She’d have to be content with that. “Can I take a rain-check? I’d love to say yes but I really need to get home to Jess.” “Saturday?”
“That would be perfect.”
Once their plane landed at Port Cadney airport Matt was swept up in a bustle of activity revolving around transferring Don to the ambulance and sorting out the equipment, supplies and paperwork. She had no chance to do more than wave goodbye from a distance, but her heart soared as he caught her eye and grinned at her before turning back to his patient. Saturday would come soon enough. She could wait.
“Jess, hurry up, we’re going to be late.”
“But I can’t find my pink hat.”
“Leave it, I’ve already got your green one.”
“But I need my pink one!”
Steffi gritted her teeth and sprinted into Jess’s room, jumping over piles of discarded clothes and lifting item after item in search of the hat.
