Emergency in Maternity

by Fiona McArthur

  Noah had told her that the army and navy were sending helicopters to pick up stranded families and those needing assistance. Food drops were being organised and extra ambulance personnel were on their way from Newcastle. Cate shook her head as the announcer confirmed that the town had been officially declared a disaster zone.

  All these years of hearing about the floods and now she was here for one. She prayed that no lives would be lost. That was the most important thing.

  But only two things were certain in this weather—the hospital was built on a hill so it couldn’t get flooded, and tomorrow would be another busy day.

  Saturday 10 March

  Cate woke to the sound of rain on the roof. A few minutes later, the thump of helicopter rotors vibrated through the air and she lay and listened like a bemused child. She swung her legs out of bed and stood up to stretch the kinks out of her back.

  When Cate went in for breakfast at seven, Noah looked in fine form. He sat opposite a very crumpled Brett and she struggled to keep a straight face. Considering the similarities of their profession, she couldn’t think of two more different men.

  When she went over to the table Noah stood up. Brett must have thought he was leaving because he looked confused when Noah sat down again when she did.

  She swallowed a hiccup of laughter and pretended not to notice. ‘Good morning, Noah.’ She turned to her ex-fiancé. ‘Good morning, Brett. How’s your mother?’

  Brett was obviously pleased to have Cate’s attention and he edged closer to her. ‘She woke a couple of times during the night but her condition is much the same as yesterday. I slept in the chair beside her bed.’

  ‘I was just saying he looked like it,’ Noah commented.

  ‘That was kind of you, Noah.’ Cate kept her shoulder turned towards Brett. ‘Iris must have been pleased to have you there. But I’m sure she’d think you should go to her house for a sleep today.’ Her voice softened. ‘I can phone you if she needs you.’

  Brett visibly drooped. ‘I am tired. Maybe you could come out to the farm this afternoon after work? We could have tea there before coming back here.’

  Noah shook his head at Cate. ‘Sorry, Dwyer, but I’ve booked Cate to come for a ride in the SES boat this afternoon. The controller especially asked for her. And then we have to discuss what we find in relation to health factors.’

  Cate nearly choked on a mouthful of muesli. When Noah offered to pat her back she declined with a glare. Brett just looked more confused.

  What was Noah playing at? Cate glanced at her watch. It was later than she’d thought. She’d have to go soon. ‘You look exhausted, Brett. I have to go to work and you should be in bed. Drive carefully. At least the farm is on the flood-free route.’

  He nodded. ‘You will wake me if there’s any change or even just to say hello.’ Brett looked so forlorn Cate dropped a sisterly kiss on his head before he got up to leave.

  ‘I’ll let you know, don’t worry.’

  As Brett sauntered out of earshot Cate narrowed her eyes at Noah. ‘I’ve never heard so much rubbish in my life. Why would anyone from the SES ask for me?’

  ‘Angela likes you. Actually, she asked me and I asked for you. I thought it would be a good chance for you to get out for an hour or so. Then you can fill sandbags or whatever afterwards.’

  ‘So why do you want me…’ she tapped her chest ‘…to come?’

  Noah shrugged and pretended to whine. Unfortunately he sounded very much like Brett. ‘You’re my only friend here?’

  Cate’s head lifted. ‘That’s cruel. His mother is dying.’

  Noah looked disgusted. ‘I have sympathy for his mother, but her son is a dweeb. How could you be engaged to that?’ He shook his head in disbelief.

  Cate glared at him. ‘He treated me with respect.’ She tilted her head defiantly. Noah stared implacably back.

  ‘You deserve respect.’ His voice was clipped. ‘Give me another reason.’ His face said he couldn’t think of one good enough.

  Cate couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I thought I could love him.’

  Noah snorted. ‘Came to your senses, eh?’

  How dared he? ‘This is none of your business.’ Cate tapped her fork. ‘And I have work to do.’

  Noah held her gaze for a long moment before saying firmly, ‘Fine. Remember you have an appointment at four o’clock.’ He strolled out of the cafeteria before she could say anything further.

  At four o’clock, Noah opened the door of his car for Cate. This time she wore three-quarter-length black jeans and a red-checked shirt knotted at the waist. She had red sandshoes on and no socks, and he loved her in that black cowboy hat.

  ‘Do you always have footwear appropriate to the occasion?’ he said.

  ‘I try.’ She glanced down at his leather shoes and bit her lip. She couldn’t wait to see him wade to the flood boat in them.

  He caught her eye and smiled sardonically back. ‘My gumboots are in the back so you can stop gloating.’

  She inclined her head in appreciation of his forethought. ‘So how does a city boy have gumboots in the back?’

  Noah stared ahead at the road. ‘Is that a riddle or a question?’

  A smile tugged at the side of her mouth. She knew what he was doing. ‘You’re stalling for time while you think about something else, aren’t you?’

  He glanced across at her and his face was serious. ‘Doesn’t it amaze you that we can be so in sync?’ His eyes returned to the road. ‘We understand each other too well sometimes.’

  Cate frowned and tried to make sense of his comment. Then the sight ahead diverted her. The car had to backtrack to the highest cross streets to get to where the SES boat waited at the flooded road. Cate’s eyes widened. She hadn’t been born in 1963 for the last big flood and it was bizarre to see the main road to the centre of town disappear under the water.

  The flood boat was waiting, pulled up on the bitumen. Noah parked his car back on a slight rise opposite the ambulance station.

  They pulled on lifejackets and one of the other men shoved their boat off so that they were propelled slowly down the main road in a metre of water. Angela Norton, the controller, an enthusiastic thirty-year-old, looked more tired than she usually did. She pointed out the waterfall over the levee, with water streaming across a lake that used to be playing fields.

  ‘The Kemp Street levee overtopped at midday and the water came through the center of town pretty fast after that. A metre of water in less than an hour caught a few out. Most emptied what they could from the shops overnight,’ Angela said.

  The boat turned into Stuart Street for an eerie float through silent streets. Some shopfronts were filled halfway up the window height with water. Lounges bobbed up and down and everywhere strange objects floated out of context past their bow. People waved from the top stories of buildings and everywhere, despite the brown water covering familiar landmarks, the people they saw were cheerful enough.

  Noah shook his head. ‘It would turn me off, having a shop in a flood zone,’ he said.

  Angela nodded. ‘There’s a lot of work to fix it. But the water will go down.’ She steered the boat around a submerged car. ‘One of the oldtimers used to say, “You can always come back with your livestock after the water has gone, but always go early and shift in daylight hours, not in the dark.” Luckily, we had a fair idea she’d go over today.’

  A television news helicopter thumped noisily overhead, no doubt taking their photos for the nightly news. When it had moved on, Noah asked about the other helicopters they’d heard were coming.

  Angela nodded. ‘We’ve got a few. There’s a Chinook that landed at South West Rocks in bad weather and decided to stay. Plus the three Seahawks from the navy, six from the army and an Iroquois aircraft. The Chinook’s gone to Bellbrook as there are a hundred stranded people to move from there.’

  Noah winced at the numbers. ‘So those people go to the local high school refuge centre? Do you have enough food and bedding?’

&n
bsp; ‘We’ll have over two hundred refugees there tonight. The church ladies are buttering up a storm of sandwiches at the showground and others are packing food drops. A lot of bedding and clothes have been donated from the families in town and hopefully it will only be for a few days. There’s a queue of trucks both sides of town that were on their way between Sydney and Brisbane. They can’t get through but at least the hospital and people on the west side of town have the train line to deliver food supplies.’

  Cate could see Noah was impressed. She was conscious of a lump of pride in her chest at the smiling faces around her. Most were willing to bide their time and get on with life when mother nature had finished with them. The rest of the boat ride passed mostly in silence.

  Noah was still quiet as they drove back towards the hospital and Cate pondered where she could be the most help for the next couple of hours.

  Those victims cut off from home struck the closest chord with Cate. ‘Drop me at the high school and I’ll have a scout around to see how they’re coping.’

  Noah turned to look at her. ‘Don’t you ever stop?’

  ‘Why? I might find a health risk. Besides, I can’t sit on my hands until tomorrow’s shift.’

  Noah shrugged and turned the car. ‘Fine. I’ll come with you. The hospital can page me if they want me.’

  By the time they’d spent two hours at the high school, finding necessities for people and arranging for others to contact relatives, Noah and Cate had heard more hair-raising stories than they could possibly remember. They’d listened to plenty of praise for the volunteers who had saved what they could from the water and some of the stories were harrowing. Times present and past when the access to the hospital had been a deciding factor in saving someone’s life seemed to strike Noah the most. Cate planned to take full advantage of it. Hopefully, Noah would see more ‘town need’ than dollar signs when he returned to being an administrator.

  Noah agreed to drop two of the stranded women off at the showground on his way back to the hospital to help with the food preparation. Cate suggested they go in to say hello.

  Inside the old weatherboard building she knew every face, because whenever there was a crisis—be it flood, fire or man-made disaster—these were the people who always turned up. There were a lot of elderly men and women—arthritis and stiff legs didn’t bar these people from buttering enough to feed the multitude—Noah smiled, shook hands and congratulated people on their effort. Cate felt a warm glow spread through her as she watched him.

  Back in the car, again Noah didn’t say much and Cate stared out of the window, praying he was receptive to the needs of the community.

  It was close to eight o’clock when they pulled up at the hospital and Noah turned off the engine. Cate had leaned to open her door before she’d realised he hadn’t moved. She sat back in the dark and waited for him to speak.

  ‘That was pretty incredible,’ he said, and the emotion in his voice was testimony to his reaction. He turned to face her and a beam from a streetlight illuminated the strong planes of his face. ‘It’s the human spirit thing, isn’t it? I think I lost it two years ago when my wife died and now this flood has given me a touch of it back. Thanks for sharing it with me, Cate.’ He leaned across and kissed her cheek before reaching to open her door.

  ‘Goodnight, Noah.’

  Cate climbed out and leaned on the door to look back in.

  Suddenly, it seemed neither of them were ready to end the evening and Noah heard himself say, ‘I’ll park the car but it’s still early. Are you up for a game of pool in the nurses’ home?’

  Cate hesitated. She’d probably spent too much time in Noah’s company than was good for her. But the competitive demon inside her couldn’t resist the challenge. Maybe this was a chance for her to win at least one round against him. ‘One game. Then I’m going to bed. We country people go to bed early, you know.’ She shut the door and stood back.

  Cate watched him start up the car again. She stroked her cheek where he’d kissed her. So Noah was a widower? More clues as to the nature of his baggage and more intriguing questions she didn’t know the answers to. Cate kicked a stone as she turned away and it skidded ahead of her and disappeared into a shadow. A bit like the pieces of Noah’s life that she wondered about.

  Cate entered through Emergency and for a change it seemed quite civilised. Stella was on the evening shift again and lifted her hand in greeting as Cate walked through. They should compare hours worked at the end of this, Cate thought with a wry smile.

  The hospital corridors were quiet as she continued until she came to the children’s ward. She dropped in to see Sylvia but the little girl was sound asleep. Cate wrote a quick note and folded it like a card for Sylvia to find when she woke up. She propped it on top of her black hat so Sylvia would see it and know Cate had been by if she woke in the night. Then she slipped out of the back door.

  Cate followed the path beside the nurses’ quarters to the old laundry which had been converted into a games room. Most of the equipment had been donated and two junior nurses were having a rowdy game of pool when she pushed open the door. They were just finishing up, with only the black ball left on the table. Cate grinned at them and plonked a coin onto the edge of the coin-operated pool table to claim the next use, then wandered over to battle the pinball machine until Noah arrived.

  A few minutes later, Noah nodded to the nurses playing pool. Their girlish voices made him feel like Methuselah and he wondered when he’d become so old. He stepped over to stand behind Cate as she gyrated at the end of a prehistoric pinball machine and suddenly, ridiculously, he felt sixteen again.

  Her thigh pressed against the metal as she bumped it with her pelvis every now and then to direct the ball, and he watched, fascinated, as she threw her whole concentration into the game. For the first time in his life he wished he’d been born as an arcade machine. The thought made him smile.

  The fact that Cate had barely noticed his arrival didn’t escape Noah. She was immersed in the game. The silver ball flew around the course and her long fingers tapped madly at the flippers to block the ball from sinking.

  He hadn’t seen one of these machines for a long time but obviously Cate was no stranger to it. She was good, a lot better than he’d be, and he grinned at her intense concentration as she gripped her bottom lip with her teeth in determination.

  The digital counter flew into the hundred thousands in response to her unerring aim at the targets and she muttered to herself as the last ball eluded her and disappeared down the centre hole. She’d just missed out on a free game.

  ‘Pretty good score, Sister Forrest.’ When she turned and grinned up at him he felt like dropping a kiss on those pink lips of hers but he hesitated a moment too long. She turned back to the machine to calculate her score. This wasn’t the place, anyway, he consoled himself. Maybe coming here hadn’t been a good idea.

  Across the room, the young nurses finished up their game and waved goodbye. Now that Cate’s machine had stopped ringing and beeping, when the door shut behind the girls with a whoosh, it was silent in the room.

  Cate flexed her fingers and patted the machine then she turned to the pool table. Her eyes sparkled blue and challenging and he couldn’t help the answering smile that tugged at his lips. She vibrated with energy and he felt the tension zapping between them. He wondered if she did.

  Lately he hadn’t found her so easy to read. Sometimes he wondered if she felt anything at all when he was around. It was very disconcerting.

  Cate hopped from foot to foot like a champion tennis player. ‘Let’s see how good you are at pool, then, Mr Masters.’ She lifted her favourite cue from the wall-mounted rack. ‘One game. Choose your weapon.’

  Noah perused the rack of cues and decided on a nicely weighted mid-length. So, she thought she could beat him, did she? He hid his smile. ‘Set ’em up.’ He reached for the triangular rack and placed it on the table as Cate inserted the money and collected up the balls from the drop-tray. ‘Wo
uld you like to make a small wager on the outcome?’ His voice was nonchalant.

  Cate was chalking her cue and she looked up equally innocently. ‘Sure. Whoever loses…pays for the game.’ She threw him the chalk. ‘You break.’

  Their eyes met across the table as he dusted the cue tip with the chalk, and his fingers slowed. Suddenly there was a lot of heat in that look and he was intrigued that it was Cate who looked away first. Maybe she wasn’t as oblivious to him as he’d thought. He stared down at the more than adequately chalked cue tip and dragged his mind back to the game. The woman was addling his brains!

  Cate was quiet as he broke the stack, and with more fluke than skill the number ten spun off into the side pocket. ‘Looks like I’m after the big ones, which is only fair seeing as I’m taller.’

  Cate nodded but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. He saw that she was actually planning her next move and he grinned at her competitiveness. He shot again but the ball missed the pocket and she brushed past him as she moved around the table to line up her target so that she was opposite him.

  When she bent over the table he had to avert his eyes from the straining buttons on her shirt and the soft swell of her breasts as her neckline opened. He’d thought a game of pool would be fun before turning in for the night but he was afraid this could be more in the way of torture. Clunk went the ball.

  She slid past him to lean in front of him and he stepped back out of her way to admire the view as she bent low over the table and the short jeans tightened across her bottom. A bit like his jeans were tightening. At this rate he’d be spending the night in a cold shower. He gritted his teeth. Clunk.

  Noah averted his eyes again as Cate leaned even further down on the table, then came back to the present with the sound of another ball thudding home into a pocket. Startled, he saw that she’d sunk all her balls and only the black eight ball and his four coloured ones were left on the table. Thankfully, the black ball bounced harmlessly off the cushion away from the pocket.

  He moistened his lips and loosened the tension in his shoulders. ‘Nice of you to give me a shot.’ His voice sounded incredibly normal, and Noah narrowed his eyes to concentrate.