Bella's Run

by Margareta Osborn

  Bella and Patty could hear the commotion even before they saw the stationary ute. Wendy, standing in the middle of the road, was screaming at Knackers, who was trying to calm her down, his arms waving in futile placatory gestures.

  ‘You selfish bastard!’ Wendy slammed Knackers in the chest with her hands. ‘How could you let this happen?’

  Smack!

  ‘How could you? He’s not even five years old.’

  Smack!

  ‘It’s your fault. ALL YOUR FAULT!’

  Smack!

  ‘I wanted to leave this God-forsaken place. Head home to civilisation. Bring the kids up proper. But no, you had to stay. You and your cattle. This bloody station miles from flaming nowhere. Our kids are ferals, Arthur, FERALS!’

  The last came out as a wail as Wendy slid to the ground face-first.

  Bella, who’d brought their vehicle to a halt, watched through the windscreen, transfixed by the scene of a marriage shattering before her eyes. And Knackers’ real name was Arthur?

  Out on the track, Knackers dropped to his knees and threw his arms around his wife, who’d curled herself almost into the foetal position. The man’s expressions flitted from bewilderment to misery. Then desolation. The couple huddled in the dirt while their son fought for life on the back of the ute.

  Patty whacked Bella’s arm. ‘Come on.’

  Grabbing their hats, the girls jumped out of the ute. Patty raced towards Sheila and Rodney, who were up with Max.

  ‘The cannula from the case, swabs . . . and gloves. Quickly!’ Sheila yelled to Bella, who was still distracted by Knackers and Wendy.

  Bella moved to the first-aid case, flung it open and grabbed what she guessed to be an IV cannula from its resting place snug against the lid. She snagged a few sterile swabs, stuffed rubber gloves into her pocket and then ran over to the group on the ute tray. Handing over her supplies to Patty, Bella saw first-hand the shocking deterioration of Max’s condition. The child was turning blue, his breathing shallow and extraordinarily fast.

  Patty slapped the cannula into Sheila’s outstretched, shaking palm and then grabbed the boy’s wrist. ‘His pulse is weak and rapid, Sheila.’

  ‘He’s got a deviation of his trachea to the right side, so he’s punctured his left lung. If we don’t relieve the pressure he’s going to die.’ Sheila spoke quickly, hands moving to the middle of the boy’s left clavicle and then down two intercostal spaces. She tapped a spot in between the second and third rib and held the cannula ready to insert. ‘We need to pray like hell we hit the pleural cavity we need. And miss the heart.’ She took a deep breath and pushed the cannula into the boy’s side.

  A small spurt of blood then air gushed from the needle end. ‘We need a valve of some sort,’ said Sheila, panicking.

  Patty hesitated a moment, then grabbed her multi-purpose pocket knife from a pouch on her ringer’s belt. She thumbed the scissors-release button, snatched up a rubber glove and cut off a finger. Snipping off the tip, Patty made a rubber sheath, which she then slipped over the end of the cannula. The rubber acted like a valve, air blowing out but not back in. The women looked at each other and then at the child. His colour was improving dramatically. Patty felt for his pulse. It was slowing, but the boy wasn’t showing any signs of regaining consciousness.

  Patty and Sheila were doing what they could. Realising things were going pear-shaped, Bella moved out of their way to let them work, and headed back towards her ute. Rodney had jumped off the tray and was watching helplessly.

  She swung her attention to the couple in the middle of the road. Knackers lay curled over his wife, shielding her, whispering into her ear. It was the first time Bella had ever seen them touch. Initially there appeared to be no response from Wendy, but then she heard a thin voice murmuring back.

  They seemed to be communicating at least. Bella wondered why it took a disaster like this to get a couple talking, touching, loving. Things couldn’t ever get that bad, could they? Would the Andersons be able to get through this, a couple who’d weathered fifteen years and borne four sons? Surely?

  Surely.

  There was movement in the dust, as Knackers picked Wendy up and turned her around. He lifted his wife’s chin and stared into her eyes. And it was then that Bella saw it. She’d been looking in all the wrong places for evidence of the love Knackers had for his woman.

  It was in his eyes.

  They blazed down on his wife with such love and compassion, it moved Bella to tears. With sudden clarity she realised there was another language in life far beyond what she’d ever known. And she couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever be lucky enough to experience it; to be looked upon as if she were the epicentre of the universe, to have all that love from a man, so pure and devout.

  Bella heard the roar of double exhaust stacks and quickly wiped away the tears. Will and Macca pulled in behind her and came from their vehicle at a run.

  ‘What’s going on, Isabella?’ Will asked, grabbing her elbow to catch her attention. His touch seemed to blast an electrical shock through her veins. Bella jerked her arm away, stung. Will looked discomforted, annoyed even.

  Her skin tingled and her elbow burned where Will’s fingers had touched. She looked up past the brim of her hat to where he was looking down at her and she suddenly forgot how to breathe.

  He was totally gorgeous.

  A loud curse came from the girls on the back of the ute.

  Bella forced her mind back to Will’s question. ‘There was an accident. Motorbike went into a drain with two little boys on it. One’s not too good. The girls are working on him. Those two are the parents. I don’t think there’s much we can do. The ambulance is coming. I didn’t want to get in the way.’

  A distant whisper of sound from a screaming siren made them all look in the direction of the station gateway, still miles off to the south.

  ‘There it is,’ said Will, eyes far-seeing, laughter lines creased with concentration. Dust clouds billowed as the back end of a white-and-red vehicle bumped through a creek wash-out, a flicker of red, blue and a glinting sunlit flash. The muted wail of the siren came again, carried by the slight afternoon breeze.

  Bella moved.

  Sliding around the ute door, she strode over to Knackers and Wendy slouched in the dirt. Wendy was once again burrowed into the bulldust, her back the only thing Bella could see. She reminded Bella of an echidna trying to dig its way from harm, or maybe a freshwater tortoise seeking refuge inside its shell. Knackers was looking across at the ute where Sheila and Patty were still working over Max. He was trying to force Wendy to get up.

  Crouching down beside him, Bella murmured, ‘Knackers, mate, I’ll help you with Wends. You need to get to Max. The ambo’s here. It’s going to be okay.’ She nodded towards the ambulance still in the distance, crossing her toes in her boots for the second time that day.

  Knackers grunted and jumped to his feet. Together they lifted his wife. Wendy had lost use of her lower limbs and was keening to herself. Staggering under the woman’s weight, Bella heaved her into her husband’s embrace and Wendy buried her face into Knackers’ wide chest. Holding his wife under one arm, Knackers turned and half-carried her towards their son.

  He leaned over the ute’s tailgate, tears pouring from his eyes as he grasped hold of Max’s grubby little hand and squeezed it murmuring, ‘Hang on, you little bastard, hang on, me boy . . . Christ, I love you, you little villain.’ He snorted back tears and phlegm.

  The big man’s arms around his wife were shaking. Bella put her hand on Knackers’ shoulder and gave a squeeze, trying to force into the gesture all the comfort she could.

  ‘The ambulance is coming, girls,’ she called.

  ‘Thank God!’ Sheila was puffing with exertion and stress, sweat dripping off her face. ‘His heart’s still beating and he’s breathing a lot better now, but we need to get his right side up a bit. We don’t want him to obstruct, and we have to look after his head injury.’

  ‘What head inju
ry?’ Knackers’ voice was hoarse.

  ‘He’s still unconscious. We think he may have a serious head injury. Possibly a fractured skull,’ said Sheila before glancing at her hands, checking the cannula.

  ‘Sheila, would you like me to take over?’ Bella asked, shocked at the older woman’s state.

  ‘No, the ambulance will be here in a minute, they can have him. Don’t want to hand over now. Silly too.’

  Bella threw a quick glance at Patty, who was shifting the child slightly onto his side. Patty gave a small shake of her head. So Bella just stood with her hand on Knackers’ shaking shoulder, and watched.

  She became aware of quiet murmuring behind her; the sound of a few backslaps and subdued male voices. Before she could turn and see what was going on, the siren wasn’t a whisper on the breeze anymore; the bright lights weren’t glints of the sun. Clad in its white-and-red armour, the ambulance was right on top of them and Bella thanked almighty God.

  Chapter 4

  The ambulance drove off slowly. The paramedics had stabilised Max, sedated Wendy and loaded Knackers on board along with a woebegone Rohan, who’d been hiding in the back seat of the ute. Standing in the middle of the track, the two girls and Sheila watched the vehicle until the swirling ochre dust obscured it.

  ‘I hope he can hang on until they reach the hospital,’ said Sheila, slumping forward with exhaustion. She stood back up, stretching.

  Bella threw her arms around the older woman, giving her a hug. ‘You did good, Sheila. Without you and Patty, he wouldn’t have lasted this long.’ Bella drew Patty into the little circle for a group hug.

  Sheila was the first to break away. ‘One of us best follow them in the HiLux and be there for Knackers and Wendy.’

  Patty put her arm around her. ‘How about I go, Sheila? You’re exhausted, and if you head home you can help Bella sort out the other boys.’

  Sheila nodded, too tired and wrung out to disagree.

  Macca appeared from behind, where the boys had been quietly talking. Chewing on his toothpick, he threw an arm around Patty’s shoulders. ‘I’ll go with you, Patty, make sure you behave yourself with those dashing doctors at the hospital.’

  Patty whacked Macca across the chest and flashed a tired grin. ‘Didn’t recognise you for a minute back there on the track, Macca. It’s that ten-gallon hat you’re wearing. Obviously when you cross the Victorian border you toss your Cattleman Akubra in the Murray River and buy a Queensland Bronco instead. It suits your ugly mug, you big boofhead.’

  Macca smiled, his big face lighting up. ‘You like it?’ He doffed his hat and sketched a bow.

  ‘You behave yourself with those nurses, Macca – and with Patty. We all know what you’re like with the ladies, ay.’ Rodney sounded cynical.

  The familiarity of his tone caught Bella’s attention. ‘You lot know each other?’ Six degrees of separation was alive and well in the outback. Someone always knew someone else – everywhere.

  Rodney was shuffling his feet. ‘Yeah, me, Macca and Willy boy here studied together at ag college in Geelong.’

  ‘Mmm. Right. I reckon there’d be more partying than studying with you lot,’ said Bella with a wry smile. ‘We’d best get moving. Sheila looks all done in.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘I’ll jump in with you, Will. Rodney, can you give Sheila a lift home?’

  As everyone started to move in the direction of their ride, Bella gave Patty a quick hug. ‘You take care, okay? Macca, you’d better drive, and make sure she has a rest on the way into town. I reckon she’s going to need it so she can deal with what’s going to be waiting at that hospital.’

  Macca moved up beside Patty, slung his arm around her and led her off, whispering something which sent Patty into whoops of tired laughter.

  Bella heard Patty say, ‘Bossy? You call that bossy? You haven’t seen nothin’, mate. You should try and live with her.’ Bella lost Macca’s reply as the pair jumped into the girls’ borrowed ute. Pulling away, they headed towards the station gateway and town.

  Rodney and Sheila were already in their vehicle and moving off back towards Sheila’s house. Sheila yelled to Bella from the open passenger-side window, ‘I’ll sort out the other two boys. If they’re still at the quarters kitchen give us a yell. I’ll send someone over to pick them up.’

  ‘Righto.’

  And with that, Bella and Will were left standing, silent and alone, looking anywhere but at each other.

  ‘So . . .’ said Bella at last, chancing a look Will’s way. ‘What are you blokes doing here anyway?’ She could see the beginnings of a grin, and his dimples made her catch her breath again. She was a sucker for dimples on a bloke, and these were rippers: gorgeous, deep-set, one on either side of his mouth.

  She took in his tanned and rugged face, his molasses eyes so liquid she just wanted to roll in the sweetness of them. Standing a few inches above her five-foot-seven, he wasn’t overly tall, but the muscled breadth of his shoulders within his chambray shirt and the curl of sun-bleached hair peeping from above the blue singlet spoke of a man used to working outdoors.

  Bella’s heart was thumping so loudly she was sure the whole world could hear it –and she was certain it wasn’t just leftover adrenaline from dealing with the accident.

  Where had she been living for the past twenty-two years? William O’Hara was Patty’s brother. He was pretty much a neighbour. Why hadn’t she noticed him before? The answer came to mind instantly: he’d always been so much older. A blurry figure in the background, off doing ‘big brother’ stuff, at ag college and hanging out with older mates. Sure, sometimes he’d been working at Tindarra while she and Patty had been tearing around having fun, but she’d seen him as a grown-up. He’d never registered on her radar. He was far too old for her. Heck, at twenty-eight he was ancient, gorgeous or not.

  ‘So,’ she repeated. ‘What are you and Macca doing here?’

  She knew she sounded belligerent but couldn’t help herself. First she had missed out on mustering and had to cook. Then there was the accident. And now this. Her body was instinctively responding to Will, leaning like a drunken fence post seeking firmer ground. Where the hell had her free will departed to in the last half-hour? HE. WAS. TOO. OLD. Plus she didn’t need serious man complications. And a bloke like this would mean serious.

  ‘We’ve been up around Mount Isa for a bit, checking out some trucking work for Macca’s old man, your Uncle Bryce. I’m surprised your mum didn’t tell you.’

  Bella was surprised too, mentally cursing her mother for forgetting to share that piece of information. Forewarned was forearmed, or something like that anyway.

  ‘The drought is pretty bad at home and there wasn’t much doing. I’ve sold most of my stock and the lucerne isn’t ready to cut yet. Dad’s irrigating my place as well as his own while I’m away. He’s growing a bit of lucerne now too.’ Will paused and raised an eyebrow. ‘You knew that when my Uncle Bill died, I took over his property next door to Dad’s place at Tindarra?’

  Bella nodded. She’d heard that from Aunty Maggie, who also lived at Tindarra, next door to Will and Patty’s parents. Bella might’ve grown up on her family’s dairy farm at Narree a couple of hours away but her aunt always kept her informed of the goings on up in those mountains. A lifetime of weekends and school holidays staying with Aunty Maggie, and roaming the surrounding hills with Patty, had given Bella a sense of place and home at both Tindarra and Narree.

  Will went on: ‘Macca and I wanted to have a look at a few properties up around Isa while we were there, to see something different. Was good to get away for a bit. We’re on our way home now and thought we’d look you two up.’

  Come to think of it, Bella vaguely remembered Patty saying something about her brother being away for a while. She’d thought he was in the Territory, though, and hadn’t realised her cousin was with him.

  ‘It was quicker coming home through Charters Towers, rather than going down the coast. So here we are. Scenery’s a whole lot better too.�
�� His grin was wicked. His eyes caressing her body without touching, burning without flame, making her flush with heat.

  Will wasn’t sure when or how that pigtailed, skinny runt of a kid had turned into this luscious, sexy creature standing before him. Tumbling ringlets of white-gold peeked from beneath the broad-brimmed hat. A cleavage so well rounded, sweaty and sweet, a man would have to be a priest not to want to bury his head in it. Legs so long, slim and well formed, they could have wrapped around his waist two times over – well, nearly.

  And the face.

  Tanned snubby nose, high-boned lightly freckled cheeks and blue eyes that flicked and fluttered with so much wantonness. He was in meltdown. And that was just her appearance.

  Watching the confident and compassionate way she handled herself with that poor couple in the middle of the road. Will was sure glad it wasn’t him trying to help in that situation. He wouldn’t have known what to do or say.

  If anyone had told him ten minutes ago it was possible to be suddenly and utterly bewitched by a woman, he’d have said they were an idiot. Now he felt like the idiot – a besotted idiot.

  But then there was her friendship with his sister to consider. In fact the Vermaelon and O’Hara families had been friends for three generations. They even had a mutual relative in Aunty Maggie, Bella’s aunt who’d married Will’s uncle, if anyone could work out that convoluted connection. And getting on the wrong side of Maggie wasn’t an option. Not to Will’s mind anyway. Maybe he should just turn and walk away.

  So many thoughts swirled through his brain as he took in the girl in front of him. His senses were aroused. His blood was stirred. Testosterone was pumping and Will was smitten with lust.

  ‘So are you coming or are you going to stand there all afternoon?’ Bella was getting into the boys’ four-wheel drive.

  ‘Oh yeah. Coming.’

  Bella watched as Will moved to the driver’s side and jumped in, dragging his cream felt hat from his head and tossing it behind the seat.