Kirsten, finding his closeness was doing funny things to the nerve endings in her skin, pushed her chair back from the desk.
‘Yes, I know, and I’m very grateful,’ she said, hoping she sounded suitably humble. ‘But there’s something else I wanted to ask you. About what you said the other day. About strategies. And planning. And learning the enemy’s weaknesses.’
‘That’s three somethings,’ he told her, but she guessed, from the intent look on his face, that she had his attention.
‘So far we’ve been fighting the hospital closure a bit at a time, but you’re right. We need a plan. Need to be organised. How do we do it?’ she asked. ‘Where do we start?’
His dark brows tugged together as he frowned down at her from his superior perch on the desk.
‘I don’t know much about the dynamics of small towns.
Or things like how big a population the pen-pushers in this state require before they agree a hospital is viable. Is distance from a major centre taken into account? So many questions and considerations. I don’t see how I could help you.’
‘You know about plans,’ Kirsten told him, refusing to allow a little initial disappointment to put her off. ‘About strategies. We need a strategy.’
She looked earnestly, and appealingly, up into his face, hoping he wouldn’t remember how rude she’d been to him on previous occasions.
The frown vanished as he smiled at her.
‘I’ll have to think about this,’ he teased. ‘Especially about the change in attitude from Murrawarra’s doctor. Going from being the bad guy to the good guy so suddenly is disconcerting to say the least.’
Of course he’d remembered. She bit her lip to stop a cutting retort, and shrugged his remark away.
‘Things have been a bit fraught,’ she said, as casually as she could.
But the devil wouldn’t let the matter rest. The glint of mischief in his eyes told Kirsten that much.
‘I figured that,’ he said smoothly. ‘But it was self-inflicted, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if you’d gone along with the official evacuation—’
‘I knew you’d bring that up again!’ Kirsten fumed, giving up all pretence at being nice. ‘You just had to say “I told you so”, didn’t you?’
And once again his laughter rang through her room.
‘I wondered how long it would take you to crack,’ he teased. ‘Boy! You had a go at me about a change of clothes improving my temper—perhaps it’s time you slipped into something more comfortable.’
Kirsten knew he hadn’t meant it the way the phrase was usually used, but it struck her that way and she felt the heat of total embarrassment wash up into her cheeks.
Harry saw her eyes darken and her cheeks turn pink, and realised what he’d inadvertently said. He was sorry he’d embarrassed her, but had no idea how to extricate himself from the mess he’d made of what had been a teasing conversation.
‘I’ll think about strategies and plans,’ he said, standing up because his body was reacting to his earlier words and her scarlet cheeks, regretting he had to somehow retract them. It seemed to think Dr McPherson in something more comfortable would be most appealing. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He walked towards the door then remembered what he’d come to ask and spun back.
‘How’s Mr Graham?’ he asked. ‘Did the night on the respirator help him? Did the intermittent therapy improve his condition? Could I—?’
He stopped, his body’s confusion forgotten as mental confusion took over. He hadn’t intended asking if he could visit the old man, although he wanted to talk to him, to learn more about him.
‘Could you what?’ Kirsten seemed to have recovered from her confusion, and was now eyeing him assessingly.
Would she find the question odd? Wonder about his motives?
‘Pop in and see him some time,’ Harry managed to say, then, in the hope it would make his request sound even more casual, he added, ‘Anthony was saying his grandfather enjoys male company.’
‘I’m still putting him on the machine four-hourly—that’s at four and again at eight. Any other time, if he’s awake, yes, I’m sure he’d welcome company.’
She sounded distracted and he hoped it was because she was thinking of her patient’s health, not his reasons for wanting to visit. Although he knew eventually, if he decided—no, before he decided—he’d have to discuss it with her.
Kirsten watched the door close behind her disturbing visitor. If she wanted his help, working out a plan to keep the hospital open, she’d have to stop reacting to every casual comment he made and, if possible, stop her body going haywire whenever he settled close to her.
The rest of the day passed without interruption. In fact, it was so quiet that in the late afternoon, when the rain eased off and a weak sunshine struggled through the clouds, she found the children and suggested they all take a walk downtown to see where the water was and how the men were faring on the levee bank.
‘Mum says it’s much higher out at home,’ Libby told her as they made their way down the hill. ‘She’s moved all the chickens into the house in case it comes up that high, but in all Grandad’s records it’s never gone into the hen-house.’
‘I hope Bessie’s all right, and Suds and Soapy,’ Meg added, mentioning the family cat and the two dogs who’d remained at the farm.
‘They’ll be all right,’ Anthony said. ‘Suds and Soapy, they can swim better than I can, and Bessie can climb on the roof if it comes too close.’
‘But Mum couldn’t climb on the roof,’ Libby, who was the worrier of the family, put in.
‘We’ll get her out if it looks as if it will go into the house,’ Kirsten assured her. ‘And we should know that today or at the latest tomorrow. The men can tell how high it will go from how fast it’s rising and how high it was at the towns upstream.’
‘Will she be able to bring the pets?’ Anthony asked. ‘And the chickens?’
The army was now officially in charge of the locals’ safety and Kirsten wasn’t sure how Harry would feel, ferrying a stranded woman, with one cat, two dogs and multitudinous chickens, back to the town.
‘The water won’t go right over the house,’ she said, ‘so the chickens could sit on the roof if they had to.’
This seemed to satisfy the children, who switched the conversation to how long they might be able to skip school, given that the school buildings were already partially submerged and doubtless would take some renovating once the flood receded.
They had reached a point on the road just above where the main street had been and were looking towards the school when Meg grasped her arm.
‘There’s someone in the water,’ Meg said. ‘Over by the school. Look! Look!’
Meg’s cry was drowned out by a loud shout from the other side of the main street.
Kirsten looked, and as more and more voices were raised in panic and alarm and a carrying voice began yelling orders, she realised what had happened. A section of the levee bank had given way and, whether by sheer bad luck or because the men were working there, the rush of water had carried a number of the workers into the floods.
‘Stay right here,’ she said to the children. ‘Libby, you’re in charge.’
She left them and raced in the direction the flow of water was taking. A couple of men had already grabbed onto the tops of trees or parts of buildings and were clinging tight to their makeshift anchors, but Kirsten had seen that first body float past, carried so limply in the swirling water that she knew the person must either be dead or unconscious.
Working out where it would come closest to shore, she stayed on dry land for as long as possible, only diving in when houses blocked her way and diverted the soldier—she could make out his fatigues—away from her.
Behind her she could hear the splutter of a boat engine kicking to life and she knew the other men would soon be plucked from their perilous perches. But if they got to this man too late—or hadn’t missed him yet…
Her arms cut thro
ugh the water, while debris bashed against her body. He was close—so close—but the water swept him on. Taking a last look in his direction, and a lungful of air, she stuck her head down and put on a mammoth spurt, not stopping until she felt cloth and softness and knew she’d reached him.
She lowered her feet, hoping she might find something solid underneath her, but they were well down the main street now, the tops of telegraph poles mocking her as she was swept past.
She grasped the man under the arms and dragged him under to turn his body so when they both surfaced he was face up. It was Lt Ross, his face ashen white, except for a bloody gash across his right temple. Pedalling her legs furiously to stay afloat, she turned his head and forced three quick breaths into his lungs. Impossible to tell if he was breathing on his own, but she couldn’t take the chance he wasn’t.
Clutching him to her, she peered ahead, working out where the next telegraph pole was—and how close the water would carry them to it.
She could hear shouts behind her, men calling to each other—or to their rescuers—but right now she had to keep getting air into the lieutenant’s lungs. The pole came closer, the crossbars on it less than a foot above flood level. She flung out her free hand and felt it smack against the bar, then she curled her arm around it and clung tight. Wires ripped from their moorings by floating debris now whipped against their bodies, but she ignored them and held on.
‘Now all I have to do is get you over it,’ she told her unconscious patient. ‘Hang on!’
Propping him against the pole, she once again went under water, needing the buoyancy to help her lift his weight. She braced her feet against the pole, her shoulders under James’s chest, and heaved, sending her limp burden catapulting over the crossbar.
It must have been the jolting of his diaphragm against the bar that cleared his lungs because, as Kirsten emerged from the water, she heard a cough and saw her rescued soldier bring up a gallon or so of flood water and what was probably the remnants of his lunch.
She hauled her upper body over the bar to join him, and held him when feebly protesting movements threatened to tip him off.
‘Stay still,’ she told him. ‘Someone will come. I thought you were dead, you know. You scared me silly.’
He groaned and retched weakly, then muttered something about feeling like death, but Kirsten could see his chest moving and knew he was breathing and right now that was all she cared about. She held onto him, keeping him pinned to the bar while the waters tugged at their legs and sucked at their lower bodies, tempting them to slide back in.
The soldiers would have had a roll call by now. They’d have missed Lt Ross. Soon someone would come.
Kirsten told herself that when the sound of the boat engine grew more distant rather than closer.
‘They’re ferrying the other people they’ve rescued back to dry ground,’ she told James as she wriggled around so she could press a balled-up handkerchief over the bleeding cut.
She listened for the motors to start up again—for the boat that was coming closer.
Couldn’t hear it.
‘Soon. They’ll come soon.’ She said it out loud this time to reassure herself, but it was another half-hour before she heard the roar of an outboard. A half-hour in which her arms had gone numb, and James had lost consciousness a couple of times.
‘Determined to make a nuisance of yourself, Doctor?’
Kirsten was so relieved to see the aluminium dinghy coming towards them that she ignored the jibe.
‘He’s fading in and out of consciousness. If you try to get close upstream you could wedge us both against the pole, so could you come around downstream of us, then I’ll let him drop and you can grab him?’ she said, and gained momentary satisfaction from the sudden shock on Harry’s face.
‘He’s unconscious. You’ve rescued him, not he you?’
‘What did you think I was doing?’ Grouchiness at the disbelief in his tone swallowed the satisfaction. ‘Taking a swim? Trying out for the Olympics?’
Then Harry was there beside her, his strong arms holding her pinned against the bar while he somehow manoeuvred James’s limp body off and into the boat.
‘Now you, sunshine!’ he said, but once again reaction set in and Kirsten began to shake so badly she’d have fallen into the water if Harry hadn’t held her safe. She turned and clung to him, although in some deep recess of her mind she knew that was stupid. It meant he was holding the weight of both of them above water.
But he didn’t try to ease her off or dump her unceremoniously over the bar, as she had done to James. He tightened his arm around her and let his body feed its warmth into hers until the shivering lessened slightly.
‘We’ll have to travel together,’ he said to the men in the boat. ‘Take Lt Ross back to dry land and hand him over to the medics then come straight back for us.’
‘Why did you send them away?’ Kirsten asked him, her teeth chattering so badly she could barely get the words out.
‘Because you’re holding on to me and we wouldn’t both fit in the boat. I couldn’t work out how to get you in without me going too, and probably capsizing it.’
He didn’t like her holding onto him, Kirsten decided, but, try as she may, she couldn’t let go.
In the end he peeled her hands off him, but only while he passed her down into the boat. Then he dropped in himself, got settled on the seat and wrapped her in a blanket, before holding her tight again, apparently unconcerned by what his soldiers thought of such behaviour.
‘Body heat’s the best way of warming someone,’ he said when she made a feeble effort to move away. ‘I’m sure one of the men cuddled James as they ferried him back ashore.’
Kirsten blinked the water from her eyes and looked at her rescuer. He was studying her as if trying to understand her better.
‘You’ve got to stop getting involved in these rescue missions,’ he scolded gently.
‘I didn’t know if you’d seen him go into the water. Actually, it was Meg who spotted him, and he wasn’t struggling—swimming—making any attempt to save himself.’
‘So you plunged in,’ Harry said, and Kirsten imagined she could hear a little admiration as well as censure in his voice. ‘Lucky for you both that the children were with you. Ross must have come down with a message. He wasn’t part of the detail so he wasn’t missed. It was only the children saying you were in the water that made me take the boat out again to look.’
The engine noise stopped suddenly so Harry’s final words were unnecessarily loud. As a cheer went up from the shore Kirsten pushed herself away from his warm body and belatedly ran a hand through her hair, wondering if she looked as wet and bedraggled as she felt.
‘Like something the cat dragged in,’ Harry told her, reading her thoughts and confirming her fears. ‘Get in the Land Rover and I’ll have someone drive you up the hill. You’re the one who needs a change of clothes today.’
Kirsten looked around. The three children were clustered near the vehicles, perhaps told by Harry to wait right there.
‘Where’s James?’ she asked, and saw Harry’s dark eyes darken slightly before thick lashes concealed his expression.
Should she have called the youngster Lt Ross?
‘The ambulance will have taken him. The medics will contact you if they feel he needs more attention than they can provide, although if there’s the slightest risk of complications I want him flown out.’
Kirsten allowed herself to be helped from the dinghy, then she crossed, still wrapped in the army blanket, towards the children.
‘Come on, kids. Back up the hill.’
They climbed into the Land Rover without argument, perhaps sobered by what had happened. A soldier, no doubt under orders from his major, got behind the wheel and they set off up the road between abandoned houses.
But as they travelled the short distance back to the old convent, she thought about James and complications. About cracked skulls and meningitis and the myriad bacteria he might have
picked up from the water he’d swallowed.
Should she on this occasion call in the helicopter herself? Get the lieutenant flown straight out to Vereton or wherever the army wanted him admitted?
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIRSTEN arrived back at the hospital to find that Lt Ross had not only been admitted, but was hooked up to a drip and was already breathing a high concentration of oxygen.
‘Mary and I will X-ray him while you dry out,’ Ken told Kirsten, who stood in the passage with muddy water pooling around her feet.
‘I’ll be right down,’ she promised, and dashed into her room for clean clothes, then headed for the bathroom.
What she wanted was a long soak in a bath, or at least ten minutes thawing out under steaming hot water in the shower. What she got was a quick splash, in and out, time to wash her hair and remove the more obvious patches of sticky mud.
She knew Ken would have tested James’s reflexes, would have used the Glasgow coma scale and the DERM mnemonic to assess his condition, but because it was James—or perhaps because it was a soldier—Kirsten was still anxious.
‘There’s a hairline lineal fracture, not displaced, on the temporal bone,’ Ken told her, meeting her outside the room he’d allotted to James. ‘I’d say that whatever hit him and caused the flesh wound either knocked him into something hard, or he was bounced against something as he was swept away.’
Ken’s hesitancy told her there was more.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘He’s conscious, answering questions, responding to physical and oral stimuli. Pupils constricting to light, respiration good. He feels sick, which is natural considering the amount of water he probably swallowed, but he can’t remember anything about the accident—’
‘That’s not unusual,’ Kirsten said.
‘Or who he is,’ Ken finished.
‘Oh!’
They’d come to the crux of the matter.
‘Temporal lobe injury can lead to temporary amnesia,’ she reminded Ken. ‘Hopefully, that’s all it is.’
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