The Doctor & the Runaway Heiress

by Marion Lennox

  ‘But you’ve left her in the back with Amy.’

  ‘Amy needs company and I’m feeling lousy company.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Harry said thoughtfully. ‘So is it a problem that we’re saddled with a young, attractive, competent nurse rather than our dog-smelling Cordelia?’

  ‘Cordelia’s competent,’ he snapped.

  ‘And Pippa’s not?’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘So you’d rather the devil you know.’ Harry nodded. ‘I can see that.’

  No comment.

  Riley was feeling incapable of comment. He sat and glowered and Harry had the sense to leave him alone.

  So what was the problem?

  The problem was that Riley didn’t know what the problem was.

  Pippa was a patient. He thought of her as a patient-only he didn’t.

  She had the same English accent as Marguerite.

  He couldn’t hold an accent over her.

  No, but there were so many conflicting emotions.

  Lucy was coming. His daughter. She’d have this accent as well.

  His hands were hurting. He glanced down and realised he’d clenched his fingers into his palms, tighter than was wise. He needed to lighten up. Before Lucy arrived?

  He hauled out his wallet and glanced at the picture Lucy had sent him when she’d contacted him three months ago. His daughter was beautiful. She was eighteen years old and she was so lovely she took his breath away.

  He’d had nothing to do with her life. He’d been a father for a mere three months.

  Even then… after that one email, sent from an address that had then been deleted, he’d flown to England and confronted Marguerite. Tracking her down had taken time but he’d found her, married to a financier, living in a mansion just off Sloane Square. She was still beautiful, taking supercilious to a new level, and bored by his anger.

  ‘Yes, she is your daughter but purely by genes. She doesn’t want you or need you in her life. If she contacted you it’ll be because she’s vaguely interested in past history, nothing more. I imagine that interest has now been sated. Why would she wish to see you? I don’t wish to see you-I can’t imagine why you’ve come. No, I’m not telling you where she is. Go away, Riley, you have no place in our lives.’

  So tomorrow he was expecting a teenage daughter, coming to stay. And in the back of the plane was a woman called Pippa who was also coming to stay.

  Two women. Identical accents.

  Trouble.

  ‘It must be bad, to look like that,’ Harry said cheerfully, and Riley found his fists clenching again.

  ‘Women,’ he said. ‘Maybe Cordelia’s right. Maybe dogs are the way to go.’

  ‘Women are more fun,’ Harry said.

  ‘You have to be kidding.’

  For the last half-hour she’d been gazing down at a landscape so unfamiliar she might well be on a different planet. She was gazing at vast tracts of red, dusty desert, stunted trees growing along dry river beds, weird, wonderful rock formations, sunlight so intense it took her breath away, a barren yet beautiful landscape that went on for ever.

  Dry Gum Creek was in the middle of… the Outback? There seemed no other way to describe it. Out back of where? Out back of the known world.

  The little plane bumped to a halt. Riley hauled open the passenger door and Pippa gazed around her in wonder.

  Red dust. Gnarled trees and windswept buildings. Dogs barking at their little plane like it was an intruder that had to be seen off. A few buildings that looked like portable classrooms. A slightly more solid building with a sign saying ‘General Store’. A big, old house that looked like it might have once been a stately homestead, but that time was long past. Corrugated-iron huts, scattered far out.

  A couple of the rangy dogs came rushing to greet them. Harry fended them off while Riley swung himself up into the back to help Amy with the baby.

  ‘Welcome to Dry Gum Creek,’ Harry told Pippa. ‘I hope you aren’t expecting swimming pools, shopping malls, gourmet eating.’

  She smiled, feeling pure excitement. ‘I left my credit card at home.’

  A couple of little girls were peering out from the hut nearest the plane. They were eleven or twelve years old, with skins as dark as Amy’s.

  ‘Did Amy come?’ one of them yelled.

  ‘She sure did,’ Riley called. ‘Come and meet your new niece.’

  The girls came flying, all gangly arms and legs, looking as thrilled as if it was Christmas Day.

  Riley handed Riley junior down to Pippa. ‘Don’t let the girls have her unless Amy says so,’ he said in an undertone.

  Amy was enveloped in hugs, and Pippa thought this was almost the reaction of kids welcoming their mother.

  ‘She could just as well be their mother,’ Riley told her, hauling equipment from the plane, and once again she was struck with this man’s ability to read her thoughts. It was entirely disconcerting. ‘They’d be lost without her.’

  ‘Are you coming home?’ one of the kids asked Amy. Amy shook her head. She disentangled herself from them a little and took her baby from Pippa.

  ‘Nope. I gotta stay with Sister Joyce for a week. Then I’m gonna have one of the huts by the school. Me and Baby Riley will live there.’

  ‘Will Jason live with you?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Pippa saw Amy’s face tense. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s got a job,’ the oldest girl said, sounding awed. ‘He’s out mustering cattle. He said to tell you.’

  ‘Wow,’ Amy breathed. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Mum says it’s stupid,’ the little girl said. ‘She says he can live off the pension.’

  ‘It’s not stupid.’ Amy looked back to Riley for reassurance and Riley was right beside her, his hand under her arm. Amy was sixteen years old. She’d given birth four days ago, and her confidence would be a fragile shell.

  ‘We’re taking Amy to Sister Joyce now,’ Riley told the little girls. ‘She’ll stay there until she’s strong enough to look after herself.’

  ‘We’ll look after her,’ the oldest of the little girls said, and squared her shoulders. ‘We’re good at looking after people. Amy’s taught us.’

  ‘And Jason’ll help,’ Amy told her. ‘I know he will. Like Doc Riley.’ With Riley supporting her, her confidence came surging back and she peeped an impudent, teasing smile at Pippa. ‘My Jason’s got a job. How cool’s that? My Jason’s gorgeous. Even more gorgeous than Doc Riley. Though I bet you don’t think so.’

  What?

  That was a weird statement, Pippa thought. Totally in appropriate.

  So why was she trying really hard not to blush?

  Pippa had been expecting a hospital but it wasn’t a hospital at all. It seemed little more than a big, decrepit house with huge bedrooms. The woman in charge was an elderly, dour Scot with a voice like she was permanently attached to a megaphone. Sister Joyce. She introduced her to some of her residents while Riley started his clinic.

  Harry, it seemed, was needed elsewhere. The water pump was playing up. While Harry was here, Joyce decreed, he might as well be useful, and Pippa got the feeling Joyce would be as bossy as she needed to get what she wanted for her residents.

  Maybe she needed to be bossy. It seemed Joyce took care of sixteen patients on her own, and even though the place wasn’t a hospital, the residents were certainly in need of care.

  ‘We’re not defined as a hospital,’ Joyce told her. ‘We’re not even a nursing home because we can’t meet the staffing ratio. A lot of our population is nomadic. Every time we try and take a census so I can get funding, everyone seems to go walkabout, so this is a sort of a boarding house with hospital facilities.’

  ‘With you on duty all the time?’

  Joyce gave a wintry smile. ‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. I’m no saint. This place suits me. I can’t stand bureaucracy. I train our local girls to help me and I do very well. Amy’s been the best. I have hopes she’ll come back to work, baby or not. And we
have Doc Riley. The man’s a godsend. Sensible. Intelligent. He doesn’t shove medical platitudes down people’s throats. We’ve had medical professionals come out here with their lectures and charts of the five food groups, holding up pictures of lettuce. Lettuce! Our kids get two apples a day at school, they take home more, but even apples cost a fortune by the time we fly them in. Lettuce!’ She snorted her disgust. ‘You want to see what Riley’s doing?’

  ‘I… Yes, please.’ They’d moved out on the veranda where half a dozen old men were sitting in the sun, gazing at the horizon. ‘Are these guys patients?’

  ‘Diabetics,’ Joyce said. ‘You look closely at their feet and you’ll see. And half of them are blind. Diabetes is a curse out here. An appalling diet when they were young, a bit of alcohol thrown in for good measure, eye infections untreated, you name it. Most of these guys are in their fifties or sixties but they look much older. Riley’s doing his best to see this doesn’t happen to the next generation.’

  He was. Joyce ushered her into a room at the end of the veranda. Riley was seated beside a desk. A dark, buxom woman who Joyce introduced as the local school teacher was shepherding a queue of kids past him.

  ‘He’s doing ear and eye checks,’ Joyce told her. ‘I do them but I miss things. There’s seven steps to go through for each child to make sure they have healthy eyes. He also checks ears. These people are tough and self-sufficient-they have to be-but that causes problems, too. Many of these kids don’t even tell their mums when their ears hurt. Infections go unnoticed. In this environment risks are everywhere. So we back each other up. Riley swears he won’t let a kid go blind or deaf on his watch.’

  ‘How long’s he been doing this?’

  ‘Six years now. He came to do an occasional clinic, then helped me set this place up. There was such a need.’

  ‘How can you operate a hospital without a doctor?’

  ‘We can’t,’ Joyce said bluntly, while they watched Riley joke with a smart-mouthed small boy. ‘But we don’t have a choice. We’re three hundred miles from the next settlement and most of the older people won’t go to the city for treatment even if it’s the difference between life and death. I do what I can and Doc Riley is a plane ride away.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘He’s nearly as stupid as me,’ Joyce said dryly. ‘I need him, he comes. So… You’re a qualified nurse. English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t hold that against you. Coral said you’re here to watch. Sounds boring. Want to help?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You can speed things up,’ Joyce said. ‘Tell her, Riley,’ she said, raising her voice so Riley could hear. He had a little girl on his knee, inspecting her ear. ‘I need to settle Amy in and help Harry with the pump. Is it okay with you to let the girl work?’

  ‘Are you up to it?’ Riley asked.

  ‘You’re not asking me to do brain surgery, right?’

  He grinned. ‘No brain surgery. We’re doing ears and eyes and hair and an overall check. You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. Joyce and I take every inch of help we can get.’

  ‘I’d love to help,’ Pippa said simply, and she meant it.

  So Riley kept on checking ears, checking eyes, and Pippa took over the rest. She listened to small, sturdy chests. She ran a quick hair check-it seemed lice were endemic but she didn’t find any. She did a fast visual check of each child, checking for things that might go unnoticed and blow up into something major.

  The kids were good for Riley but they were like a line of spooked calves as they approached Pippa, ready for flight.

  ‘Sam Kemenjarra, if you don’t stand still for Nurse Pippa I’ll tell her to put the stethoscope in the ice box before she puts it on your back,’ Riley growled to one small boy. The little boy giggled and subsided and let himself be inspected.

  But the line still fidgeted. Pippa was a stranger. These kids didn’t like strangers-she could feel it.

  ‘Nurse Pippa’s been sick herself,’ Riley said conversationally, to the room in general. He was looking at a small boy’s eyes, taking all the time in the world. No matter how long the line was, she had the feeling this man never rushed. He might rush between patients but not with them. Every patient was special.

  He was good, she thought. He was really good.

  But then… ‘She went swimming in the dark and nearly drowned,’ Riley said. ‘We had to pull her out of the water with a rope hanging from a helicopter.’

  There was a collective gasp. Hey, Pippa thought, astonished. What about patient confidentiality?

  But Riley wasn’t thinking about patient confidentiality. He was intent on telling her story-or making her tell it.

  ‘It was really scary, wasn’t it, Pippa?’

  ‘I… Yes,’ she conceded. The line of children was suddenly silent, riveted.

  ‘If I hadn’t swung down on my rope to save you, what would have happened?’

  She sighed. What price pride? Why not just go along with it? ‘I would have drowned,’ she conceded. So much for floating into the next bay…

  ‘And that would have been terrible,’ Riley said, and he wasn’t speaking to her; he was speaking to the kids. ‘Pippa was all alone in the dark. Floating and floating, all by herself, far, far from the land. There was no one to hear her calling for help. That’s what happens when you go swimming in the dark, or even when it’s nearly dark. Waterholes and rivers are really dangerous places after sunset.’

  She got it. She was being used as a lesson. Her indignation faded. It seemed this was a great opportunity to give these kids a lesson.

  It was also settling them.

  ‘I thought something might eat my toes,’ she conceded, figuring she might as well add corroborating colour. ‘At night you can’t see what’s under the surface. All sorts of things feed in the water at night.’

  ‘Crocodiles?’ one little girl asked, breathless.

  ‘You never know,’ Riley told her. ‘We don’t have crocodiles here,’ he told Pippa, ‘so it’s safe to swim in the waterholes during the day. But at night there’s no saying what sneaks into the water looking for juicy little legs to snack on. And I wouldn’t be here with my rope. It takes two hours for Harry and I to fly here.’

  ‘But you’d come,’ a little boy said, sounding defiant. ‘If I went swimming at night you’d come with your rope.’

  ‘It’d take me too long,’ Riley said. ‘Like Pippa, you’d be floating for a long, long time, getting more and more scared. You were really scared, weren’t you, Pippa?’

  ‘I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life,’ she conceded. ‘I was all alone and I thought I was going to die. It was the scariest thing I can imagine. I know now. To swim at night is stupid.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation-a general hush while everyone thought about it. Then: ‘I wouldn’t do it,’ the little boy declared. ‘Only girls would be that stupid.’

  ‘We would not,’ the girl next to him declared, and punched him, and the thing was settled. Night swimming was off the agenda.

  ‘And while we’re at it, we should warn Nurse Pippa about bunyips,’ Riley said, still serious, and there was a moment’s pause.

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ one little girl ventured, casting a cautious glance at Riley. A glance with just a trace of mischief. ‘Bunyips are scary.’

  ‘Bunyips?’ Pippa said.

  ‘They’re really, really scary,’ a little boy added. ‘They’re humongous. Bigger’n the helicopter.’

  ‘And they have yellow eyes.’

  ‘They sneak around corners.’

  ‘They come up from holes in the ground.’

  ‘They eat people.’ It was practically a chorus as the whole line got into the act. ‘Their teeth are bigger’n me.’

  ‘You couldn’t go night swimming here ’cos you’d get eaten by a bunyip first.’

  ‘Or dragged down a hole for the little bunyips to eat,’ the child on Riley’s knee said, with ghoulish relish.
/>   ‘You… you’re kidding me,’ Pippa said, blanching appropriately.

  ‘Why, yes,’ Riley said, grinning. ‘Yes, we are.’

  The whole room burst out laughing. Pippa got her colour back and giggled with them.

  The room settled down to ears and eyes and hair and chests.

  Pippa kept chuckling. She worked on beside Riley and it felt fantastic.

  She was good. She was seriously good.

  Cordelia was dour and taciturn. The kids respected her. They did what she asked but they were a bit frightened of her.

  They weren’t frightened of Pippa. They were enjoying her, showing off to her, waiting impatiently for Riley to finish with them so they could speed onto their check with Nurse Pippa.

  Pippa. They liked the name. He heard the kids whisper it among themselves. Pippa, Pippa, Pippa. Nurse Pippa, who’d almost drowned.

  He’d had no right to tell them the story of Pippa’s near drowning, but the opportunity had been too great to resist. Drownings in the local waterhole were all too common, and nearly all of them happened after dusk. Kids getting into trouble, bigger kids not being able to see. Pippa’s story had made them rethink. He’d told the story to fifteen or so kids, but it’d be spread throughout the community within the hour. Pippa’s ordeal might well save lives.

  And it had had another, unexpected advantage. Somehow it had made Pippa seem one of them. She’d been given a story.

  He’d brought many medics out here-there was genuine interest within the medical community-but mostly the visitors stood apart, watched, or if he asked them to help, the kids would shy away, frightened of strangers. But Pippa was now the nurse who Doc Riley had saved on a rope.

  If Pippa was serious about staying…

  She wouldn’t be. She’d stay until she either made it up with her fiancé or she had her pride together enough to go home. It wasn’t worth thinking of her long term.

  But even if she was only here for a month or two… she’d make a difference.

  He watched her as he worked, as she worked, and he was impressed. She was settled into a routine now, tugging up T-shirts, listening to chests, tickling under arms as she finished so the kids were giggling, and the kids waiting in line were waiting for their turn to giggle. She was running her hand through hair, saying, ‘Ooh, I love these curls-you know, if you washed these with shampoo they’d shine and shine. Does Sister Joyce give you shampoo? See how my curls shine? Let’s have a competition: next time I come let’s see who has the shiniest curls. Every time you wash with shampoo they get shinier. No, Elizabeth, oil does not make curls shinier, it makes them slippery, and the dust sticks to it. Ugh.’