Then there was Western Downs, Dalby, Roma . . . if she saw another old farm machinery museum advertised she’d scream.
She stayed overnight in Roma for a prearranged interview with the flying obstetrician and gynaecologist, Phillip Willis, a man she’d done some training with a long time ago in Melbourne. He had been grappling with the district’s losses as well, and his thin face was serious as he shared his own theories.
He’d been incredulous at Sienna’s travelling from Melbourne to Red Sand in her tiny car, and amused by the fact she would be staying there for three months. He angled for Sienna to give him a day off every now and then as the emergency obstetrician while she was staying in town.
‘Not a hope. I don’t like to fly in large planes, let alone the sardine cans you fly around in.’
‘It’s a very safe aircraft.’ Phillip wasn’t ruling it out. ‘We’ll see. I know you’re out there.’
As if. ‘Don’t count on it. This is a fact-finding mission only.’
This time he roared with laughter. ‘Not the way it works out here. Everyone pitches in because when it happens – you’re it!’
She hadn’t been told that. What the hell had Wallace put her in for?
The next morning, another 268 kilometres down the road, Sienna drove through Charleville, where a billboard tried to point her to the flying doctor base. Visitors welcome. She smiled tartly.
‘Not on your Nellie,’ she growled, passing the old pubs and courthouse, until she found the sign that directed her to Quilpie. She passed a billboard assuring her she was now on Australia’s longest road. The Diamantina Development Road. Well, it had better be developed because she wasn’t bashing her baby around. Ahead lay a long thin strip of black tar slashing through the orange dust swathe. Every now and then she saw an emu – which even she had to admit lightened her mood.
She encountered a few four-wheel drives and a couple of intrepid caravaners – she refused to leave the bitumen, so the passing traffic had to – and the occasional lean cow and calf grazing hopefully in the scrubby mulga forests. And of course there were the ghastly birds feeding on the relentless roadkill. But mostly she had the 200 kilometres of red ribbon–edged tar to herself.
She slowed to avoid a road train that took up most of the bitumen, dug her heels in at hitting the dust – but then, so did he, so that was interesting because she nearly lost paint – and finally, over another dry creek bed bridge, she hit Quilpie.
The scrub had been cleared and there was a pile of red boulders with a sign poking out of it. Surely there would be coffee here.
As she drove in it wasn’t as sparse as she’d feared. Wide bitumen streets with a green median strip housing tables and chairs gave it a welcoming demeanour. Okay. If Red Sand was as pleasant as this she’d possibly survive, but what she’d seen last time hadn’t enthused her. She lifted her brows at the flat wrought-iron emus and sheep sharing the grass strip with the caravaners drinking thermos coffee.
She passed a two-storey pub and a row of surprisingly diverse retail outlets. And a coffee shop! She stopped and climbed stiffly out of her car and stretched her hands over her head to pull out the kinks.
So this was the nearest town. At least it had a ‘hairdresser’. She smiled wryly to herself. Mark had said she wouldn’t find one.
After the surprisingly good coffee and a last glance around the arty little outpost she flexed her shoulders and put her hands back on the wheel for the last 400 kilometres to Red Sand. The sun had a few hours to go. Eve had warned she should stop driving before sunset because of the wildlife on the roads, but Sienna wasn’t quitting now.
It was almost dark as she hit the ‘10 kilometres to go’ sign. And that was when the approaching vehicle’s lights veered off the thin strip of tar and stopped suddenly.
Sienna frowned. Either there was a farm entrance up ahead and the person had got out to open the gate, or something had made them run off the road.
She slowed as she drew closer. An older model Holden, like something from a sixties sitcom, had spun off the road and finished driver’s side door up against a fence.
Sienna’s heart rate sped up as she pulled over and climbed out. She crossed her fingers superstitiously as she approached the passenger side of the vehicle. It didn’t look too bad, except that the vehicle was tilted into the culvert gouged out of the dirt at the side of the road. The angle didn’t allow her to see the driver easily.
‘Hello? You okay?’ Sienna stepped onto the downward slide of loosely packed red dust at the side of the road. She slid the last few feet and stopped as her hip hit the passenger door and she flattened against the side of the car. Not elegant, but at least she could look in.
When she peered through the window she could see a young woman jammed up against the door on the far side. Sienna’s eyes widened at the big bulge of pregnant belly just in front of the steering wheel. This wasn’t good. She’d need to go to hospital regardless.
‘Hi. I’m Dr Sienna Wilson. What’s your name?’
‘Gracie.’ A young, shaky voice drifted across.
‘Are you hurt, Gracie?’
‘Noooo. But my waters broke and I hit the kangaroo. At least, I think that’s what it was. Is it okay?’
Sienna gave a cursory glance around the area. ‘I can’t see it anywhere so it probably hopped away.’ Suicidal wildlife was not high on her list of interests.
Then the pale face winced and screwed up as a contraction followed her words. It looked suspiciously long and strong to Sienna and she reached into her pocket to pull out her mobile phone. She glanced at the bars and thanked God the service was coming back in.
‘Well, it’s your lucky day. I specialise in babies. Can you get out?’
‘I want to, but the door won’t open.’
‘It’s okay. The car’s against the fence. We need help. I’ll just phone for an ambulance and then I’ll try to get you out this way.’ Which was going to be a mission when gravity was pulling Gracie the other way. ‘At least we’ll see what we can do to make you more comfortable.’
There was a whimper in reply and then a sigh so big Sienna expected the girl to deflate like a balloon. Brows raised, Sienna remembered to be reassuring.
‘So you know your deep breathing. Clever girl.’
The phone finally connected and she gave her name, their position and the problem. Ten kilometres out of town shouldn’t take them too long but as Sienna hung up Gracie moaned.
Oh no, you don’t, Sienna thought, we’re not having this baby here. She yanked the door open – thank goodness she’d been going to the gym because it wasn’t easy – and peered in.
Definitely a puddle of water. She saw a ripple of movement through the thin material of the girl’s dress and her relief expanded. At least baby was okay for the moment. A birth she could cope with, but a flat baby would not be fun.
‘So, Gracie, when this next pain is finished, can you take your seatbelt off and slide along the seat towards me? We’ll see how we go.’ It had been a long time since she was at a birth away from the high-tech world, with paediatricians seconds away. This baby better have read the rule book about breathing.
Gracie got halfway along the seat before the next contraction started. There was a pause as she breathed and then gave a big sigh.
‘Something’s happening.’
‘That’s okay. I thought it might be. If we have to we can take your pants off, have a baby, and maybe even get them back on before someone comes.’ If the pants came off they weren’t going back on, but it sounded reassuring.
‘I think it’s comiiiiing.’
Shit. Sienna had hoped a bit of calming would slow things down, but bloody Eve would probably say it was the opposite.
Despite the increase in her heart rate, Sienna’s voice was calm and quiet. ‘Let it happen. Can you manage to wriggle out of your underwear and move so you’re not sitting so upright on your bottom?’
It wasn’t easy but the girl managed to get one leg free of her
bikini bottoms.
Gracie moaned; Sienna was on tiptoes, leaning in and then up on her knees on the seat beside her, backside in the air for passing traffic – if there’d been any. Thank God for the old Holden’s bench seat. Life certainly promised to be different out here.
In a rush it happened; it was bloody lucky she’d climbed up there to reach for the jumble of limbs or baby would have been floating in the pink water around the accelerator pedal. She scooped the newborn from between the mother’s legs and unwound a tangle of cord from around a plump little shoulder as the sound of a siren whooped over them, drowned out by the gasp and cry of an indignant baby.
‘I’m going to push baby up under your dress until —’ Sienna peered between the baby’s legs to establish the sex, ‘— she —’ they grinned at each other ‘— pops out the top. She’ll stay warmest against your skin. Okay?’
‘Holy cow! I guess.’ Gracie sank back in shock as Sienna wiped the baby with a cardigan on the seat, and then, still joined by the long umbilical cord, she was settled between her mother’s breasts, jammed into place by the thin material of the baggy dress. The baby blinked.
Sienna stared down at the perfect fingers that had popped out with the little scrunched face, and eased back a little.
She felt the exultant laugh bubble up in her chest, a buzz that seemed to have been lost over the last couple of years of high-risk care, and she smiled with astonished pride at the new mum.
‘Gracie! Congratulations. I have to admit, you are one incredible young woman!’
‘Excuse me. I need to get to this pregnant woman urgently!’
Sienna wiggled her backside to retreat along the seat so she could glance backwards. She brushed her hair from her forehead with the back of a bloody hand and looked up, a long way, into the angled face of a ruggedly macho policeman. They bred them bigger out here, apparently.
‘Actually, Officer, she’s not pregnant any more.’
The man’s face paled but before he could say anything the baby cried again and the sound was undeniably healthy.
He turned into a sergeant-major. ‘Move!’
Sienna kept the smile on her face as she winked at the new young mother with the wide-eyed baby glued stickily under her dress. She took one last assessing glance at the little pink face gazing owlishly at the world before she wriggled completely out of the car. She had the idea the cop would pick her up and remove her none too gently if she didn’t.
There was a certain primordial attraction in the thought.
Gracie and the baby would be fine. The rest could wait; she didn’t want to wrestle with afterbirth if she didn’t have to, and her knees were killing her.
‘Thank you,’ the officer growled as his way cleared to see in, and after one long look back, which said he hadn’t missed much of her dishevelled appearance, he turned away.
Tsk tsk, Sienna thought with a certain grim satisfaction. Don’t like waiting, do you? She didn’t feel it was unreasonable that there was a touch of tartness in her voice as she spoke to his back. ‘You’re welcome, Officer.’
She had noticed he was big and rangy and importantly cross as he’d pushed past her, but now she could hear his voice had softened as he spoke to her new friend.
‘You okay, Gracie?’ It was totally unlike his tone to Sienna. Fatherly. Concerned.
Sienna arched slowly as she backed away from the car and eased the kinks out of her spine.
His exasperation with Sienna should have been approval but approval was a little hard to come by this week. Mark hadn’t cared that she was shipped out here and that Blanche woman was treating her like a pawn to be shifted where she chose. All she needed was a wise-arsed pin-up policeman to give her a hard time and her week would be complete.
Lucky young Gracie had been driving an ancient, roomy sedan, and not some tiny Japanese whiz car, or they’d both still be stuck in there like corks in a bottle.
Sienna glanced down at her messy hands and edged carefully back over the uneven rocks to her car. Her heel wobbled. She should have packed the runners. She grabbed her water bottle from the car and poured it over her hands. Then she crouched and rinsed her nails until there was a puddle of red water in the dirt at the side of the bitumen. She watched the swirls of blood spin like the pattern on a cappuccino until they sank into the ground.
The sky rumbled and a flash of lightning in the distance warned of a storm coming. God, she’d kill for another coffee.
Sienna straightened again, shook the droplets from her hands, then scooped out the emergency hand sanitiser from her car, one of those things a woman just couldn’t live without, and chewed the last of the red lipstick off her lips. There might be a lot of things she’d be living without now. But it was only three months.
The sound of the approaching ambulance drifted in and out through the evening shadows. Sienna glanced at the taut rear end of the law and decided he would find her even if she left as soon as the ambulance arrived. It’d be any second now. She massaged the evaporative gel into her palms and between her fingers. There hadn’t been time for protective gloves, and she’d have to scrub her nails when she got to the B&B, but her first in-car delivery was special enough to put up with the mess. It had been a long time since she’d delivered a baby without the hordes in labour ward around her.
The ambulance pulled up and the policeman retreated and waved reassuringly to the alighting person.
He loomed over Sienna in the cool evening air. ‘Gracie seems as comfortable as possible.’ He spoke almost as if it would have been her fault if she wasn’t.
Sienna struggled to keep the irritation from her face. ‘Then I can go?’
Cool grey eyes brushed over her as if she were on trial, though she did wonder if there was a tinge of appreciation in that glance. But the unspoken message was an order. ‘We need to get her safely into the ambulance. If you could spare another few minutes in your rush to get somewhere, then I’ll take your name and contact details before you leave.’
‘Sienna!’ Eve strode across the road and hugged her. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine. You’re an ambulance driver, now? No end to your talents. I was just passing. Your patient’s in there.’
The policeman looked at both faces and saw the resemblance. Then he scowled. ‘Gracie’s in the car.’
Two hours later, back in Red Sand, Sienna had checked into Fran’s B&B, and now she was back at the medical centre to see Gracie.
The storm had prevented the flying doctor from coming in, and she’d agreed to take over Gracie’s care until the young woman went home the next day. Eve would do the night shift and Callie would run the clinic in the morning, so they had sorted out the logistics of staffing a place that didn’t cater to overnight stays. Already they were breaking the rules.
Eve was busy assembling some inpatient notes for record-keeping when Sienna went in to see her patient.
‘And here’s Sergeant McCabe, come to visit,’ said Carol, Gracie’s mum. That made Sienna glance up as that hunky policeman strode down the corridor of the tiny medical centre. He stopped at the sight of a packed room and Sienna’s eyes were drawn to the bunch of desert flowers gripped in his large hand. He seemed totally unaware he’d choked the life out of them.
TWENTY-TWO
‘You have quite a fan club, Gracie.’ Sienna’s voice was low but carried confidently as she looked up at Sergeant McCabe and raised her brows. She saw the policeman give her the once-over and then hastily lay the flowers down and shake Gracie’s dad’s hand before excusing himself. All in the space of a few seconds. What a strange man . . . The thought floated briefly across Sienna’s mind before she concentrated on her patient.
Young Gracie seemed to glow at the unexpected pleasure of being the centre of attention. Eve had said Gracie was the eldest child of six. Sienna couldn’t imagine growing up like that. The proud mum beamed from her hospital bed like a little red sunflower, her appreciative audience arrayed like one of the floral arrangements resting on the met
al chest of drawers – tall Dad at the back, little thin Carol in the middle, younger brothers and sisters leaning on the bed at the front so they could all see Gracie’s gorgeous daughter, Tilly, in their sister’s arms.
To Sienna’s relief, Eve, who’d arrived with a patient chart, asked Gracie’s mother to gather up her mob, and tucked Gracie’s baby in the crib. Within seconds, apart from herself and Eve, only Gracie and her baby remained.
It seemed that respect for the patient’s privacy lingered in this backwater; Sienna could be thankful at least for that.
Gracie wasn’t technically anybody’s patient. Or was she Callie’s? Or Eve’s? Whichever way, Sienna wasn’t here to do rounds of a medical centre that wasn’t supposed to have overnight patients, but she wanted to check on Gracie before she went to bed.
She noted the bruised-looking eyes, luminous skin and pale lips of the mother and wondered what her red-cell count had been before she’d had her baby.
‘Her Hb was normal last week.’
As if her sister had read her mind. ‘But the new results won’t be in till tomorrow lunchtime,’ Eve went on. ‘The bloods won’t go until morning.’
Sienna sighed for the speed and effortless computerised system she was used to. ‘Fine. Thanks.’ She looked at Gracie. ‘Can you lie back? I’d like to feel your tummy again, just to make sure it’s still going down and everything is normal with your uterus after such a quick birth.’ She palpated. Well down. Good. ‘Not bleeding too much?’
Gracie blushed. ‘Like a period.’
Sienna glanced around the little hospital room: there were real boards halfway up the wall, even a picture rail with paintings. And was that pressed metal on the roof? How quaint. It made her think of the bed and breakfast that had turned out to be better than she expected, though she’d been surprised that its owner worked with Eve too.
She looked back at her patient. ‘Your baby is perfect and you didn’t break anything, so you were very lucky.’
Red Sand Sunrise Page 16
