Amy's Touch (31 page)

Things were looking very grim. Croft’s goons would do anything he ordered them to—and worse, the gambler appeared to be beside himself with fury because he couldn’t get his hands on the money. Please, God, he prayed, his brown eyes gazing up at the boat’s ceiling, a small miracle now would really be appreciated.

A noise behind Croft made the man turn around. Quincey, Verne and Ming, the latter with a cleaver raised in his right hand, ready to attack, stood in the starboard wheelhouse doorway. Danny grinned in spite of the pain. Thank you, God.

‘’Allo, ’allo, what do we have here? A party? Good, I
like
parties,’ the Englishman said, tongue-in-cheek.

The natives holding Danny stepped back and let him go. He saved himself from falling to the floor by grabbing the lugger’s wheel. He watched Croft’s gaze make a speedy calculation of the situation and reassess the possible outcome. ‘Just a little misunderstanding, mates,’ his whine was placatory. ‘Wasn’t it, Danny?’

Danny wiped the blood away from his upper lip. A large part of him wanted to retaliate, to give Croft a dose of his own medicine, but common sense, and the fact that he wasn’t naturally aggressive, prevailed. ‘I guess so. But let me say this, Croft: if you ever board the
Geraldine
again, it might be you who ends up as shark bait. Do I make myself clear?’

Croft knew when he was beaten. He nodded, snapped his fingers for the natives to follow and turned on his heel. Quincey and Verne jostled him with their chests as he passed, and the natives, big as they were, received similar treatment, with Ming waving his chopper threateningly and following them all the way to the gangplank.

‘You a mess, Cap’n Danny,’ Ming said when he came back to the wheelhouse. ‘I get warm water and special salve. You wait here.’

Danny knew the men deserved an explanation for what had gone on, and he would give them one, but not now. He hurt all over from Croft’s beating and he’d consider himself lucky if his nose wasn’t broken. ‘Thanks, all of you. Things were a bit grim for a while. When Jamie comes on board I want someone to stand watch on the gangplank all night. Do it in four-hourly shifts.’

‘Will you be well enough to sail, Captain?’ Verne asked, his tone respectful.

Danny held on to his ribcage. Now he was sure that Croft had fractured at least one rib—he remembered the feeling because once, in his younger days, he’d had a riding accident and broken two ribs. He felt dreadful, but he didn’t want the men to see that, so when he spoke his tone was confident. ‘Get what rest you can. We up anchor at first light.’

J
oe Walpole crouched behind several jagged rocks to spy on the stockmen from Drovers Way working the tractor to build another earth dam. The old man was back from Britain and he wasn’t going to be happy about Randall putting in several dams to catch rainwater. It would stand Drovers in good stead during the long summers when little rain fell, or when the Flinders went through a drought cycle.

His father remained determined to force Randall off the land in spite of being satisfied that Beth was now happily wed. In fact, the old geezer was purposely losing money, intending to undersell his flock at the Hawker sales again to make it difficult for Drovers to make a profit. Joe was more than a little miffed about that. Old Bill was whittling away the value of Ingleside’s stock, which meant, in the long run, less money for Joe when the old so-and-so finally passed on. If he ever did! Bill Walpole, now well into his fifties, was as healthy as the proverbial Mallee bull. Joe swallowed the sour taste in his mouth—because his mother took such good care of Bill, he’d probablyhang on for another twenty years!

Thinking about that made Joe’s features contort into lines of irritation. Shit, if old Bill lived that long that’d make Joe an old man himself, more than fifty. A nerve at the side of his mouth began to twitch. How was he going to survive till then on the pitiful wage his father paid, having to beg and scrape to get every additional pound out of him? Maybe, the thought struck him, he should look around for a wealthy wife. A few women in the Flinders considered him a worthy catch because of his financial potential. Trouble was, he
hadn’t found a woman who appealed to him—they all acted too much
the lady
, like his faraway sister, and none was a patch on Bessie Thomas, who ran a brothel in Hawker. She was all woman. He licked his lips in anticipation of a visit to Bessie’s place when they took their flock to market.

He got up awkwardly from his crouching position and massaged his gammy leg to get the circulation going. He’d seen enough to make his father cranky as hell. A sly smile spread across his lips as he went back to his horse. Good. He kind of enjoyed seeing the old man get upset…

Amy scattered the greens and other scraps near the chicken coop and smiled as hens of several different sizes and colours ran from all directions to peck at their daily treat. With her face turned skywards, one of her hands patted the growing mound of her stomach and her smile widened as she did so. The baby was due around their first wedding anniversary, and, as she went to the fenced-off vegetable patch Jim had created, to ladle water on what was growing, she silently marvelled at how her life had changed since her marriage to Randall.

She had thrown herself into the role of a pastoralist’s wife with gusto, embracing life on a property, with its mixture of advantages and disadvantages. Jim, kind soul that he was, had helped her to learn how to cook for three men with hearty appetites. She had learned to milk Crystal, the Jersey cow, to make butter and cheese in the hand-operated churn, to bake bread and to find eggs in the chicken coop. But she’d baulked at having to kill or pluck poultry for a Sunday lunch. If the men wanted a roast chicken lunch—as a change from lamb or beef—someone had to provide the chook ready for baking.

Stop daydreaming, she chided herself, as she turned towards the back porch. She still had half a dozen chores to finish before she went into Gindaroo for her shift at the hospital.

Thinking about work drew her thoughts to her father. With his surgery and home visits and operations at the hospital, he had fallen into the same situation he’d been in in Adelaide, of doing too much. He looked permanently tired and needed to slow down, as well as to make the decision to bring another doctor into the practice. Gindaroo was growing. It wasn’t as big as Hawker or Quorn, but it was becoming large enough to accommodate two doctors. She decided to
ask her father and Meg out to Drovers for Sunday lunch, during which she would bring up the matter.

Back in the kitchen, her chores done, including cold lunches put in the meat safe for the men, Amy stuffed several pieces of paperwork into her valise. After work at the hospital today she would chair an important meeting of the Country Women’s League.

Plans had been drawn up and, after many months, they had finally been approved by the district council for the Mabel Ellis Sports Field. The members, who’d been fundraising for almost a year, were to vote today on allocating those funds in order to start building the facility. Winnie and Dot were particularly excited that the plans were moving from the drawing board towards reality.

Amy spread the plan of the sports field out on the kitchen table for one final inspection before rolling it up and taking it with her. It had taken some doing, working with an engineer from Whyalla, but she’d insisted that the sports field be a facility where cricket could be played in the middle of the oval in summer, Australian Rules football in winter, with a small grandstand for spectators, and that the circular fence be strong and suitable to hold occasional race meetings. In addition, there should be a toilet block to enable the district to hold the occasional country show. Secretly she was proud of herself, because she believed that with her own and the members’ input they’d thought of everything.

Randall, who’d been in the study, came into the kitchen at that precise moment. ‘Can’t believe it’s actually going to happen, can you?’ he teased as, standing behind her, he put his arms around her expanded waistline and drew her back against his chest. His lips found the nape of her neck and rained a series of kisses from her hairline down to the lace-edged top of her frock.

‘Mmmm, it has taken longer than expected.’

‘Thanks mainly to Walpole making things difficult by having the council veto it.’

His comment made her smile. ‘He didn’t count on two of the councillors having wives who are members of the league. I believe they made home life, shall we say, hell for them, until they caved in and gave approval.’

Randall sighed and kissed her hair. ‘Never underestimate the power of a woman.’

‘Exactly.’ She turned around in his arms to face him. ‘I’m going to ask Father and Meg out for Sunday lunch, so while I’m in town I’ll
get some of that Barossa wine, the one we liked from the Bethany Winery. Clem keeps a few bottles in stock.’

‘You’ll be coming home after dark. Be careful on the road, won’t you?’ He spread his fingers over her rounded stomach. ‘Don’t want anything happening to you or the baby.’

Her smile was reassuring. ‘We’ll be fine.’ She grabbed her valise, hat and gloves. ‘Got to go. Jim’s going to cook dinner tonight.’

All the way into town Amy alternated between smiling and trying to be serene. Life was good. Randall was a wonderful husband and she was happier than any mortal ought to be.

Halfway through Amy’s shift, while Sarah and Rebekkah were on a lunch break, Ben Quinton rushed into the hospital ward.

‘Amy!’ Overweight, Ben was more than a little breathless from running. ‘There’s been an accident at the Royal. Young Jonathon. He was tapping in the tap and the beer keg exploded. It’s pretty rare for that kind of thing to happen, I’ve only heard of it happening once before. Clem reckons the bottom metal band surrounding the keg was fractured, and when Jonathon tapped the plug it somehow made the keg explode.’

‘Was he hurt?’ Amy asked, trying to get Ben’s thoughts back on track.

‘Yes. I rang your father’s surgery, asking for him, but Meg said he’s on his way back from a home visit and won’t be in town for another half-hour. Jonathon’s bleeding all over the place and Winnie’s beside herself. Can you come?’

‘Of course. Give me a minute to tell Sarah I’m going with you.’

Amy raced down the aisle of the ward to the cupboard-sized room where, if they were lucky, they took a meal break or had time for a cup of tea while on their shift. When she told Sarah and Rebekkah, Jonathon’s sister insisted on coming with her. Amy threw gauze bandages, antiseptic and wads of cotton wool into a paper bag before she and Rebekkah hurried out to follow Ben to the Royal Hotel.

The heavy smell of brewed beer spattered around the saloon bar was almost overpowering. The women found Clem and Winnie beside Jonathon, who was lying on bare boards behind the counter. His clothes were soaked in blood and beer. He had a wound on his forehead that was bleeding profusely, in spite of Winnie’s efforts to staunch the flow. A sliver from the beer barrel had sheared off and
penetrated the youth’s chest, just below the shoulder, and another shard had pierced his upper thigh.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ Winnie cried as soon as she saw Amy and Rebekkah. ‘He’s in so much pain. He’s dropping in and out of consciousness.’

Amy hadn’t seen so much blood since tending soldiers during the Great War, and decided in an instant: ‘We have to get him to the hospital.’ She turned to Clem. ‘Find something, a wide plank, six feet long, or an old door that can be used as a stretcher to take him over.’

Clem and two of his customers went out the back to find suitable transportation for Jonathon, while Amy, with Rebekkah’s help, got to work on the boy’s wounds. They packed the head wound with a wad of cotton wool and wrapped a bandage securely around it. Blood seeped from the slivers of timber in Jonathon’s chest and leg, and the best that could be done till they got him into the hospital was a compression bandage around the wounds to slow the flow. As they worked on him, Jonathon moaned and twitched with pain.

It took about ten minutes to get Jonathon to the hospital, and Amy directed the men carrying him to take him straight to the operating room and transfer him to the table.

Andy Cummings, who’d never taken to Amy and had tried to get her sacked after she’d saved his wife and their twins’ lives, had been one of the carriers. Giving her a sour look, he said, ‘I suppose you’re going to play doctor again and operate on him, seeing as your father’s not available.’

Amy looked directly into his hard grey eyes. ‘I am not. Jonathon is not in a critical condition, as Christine and the twins were. We’re going to clean him up and prepare him for surgery, so that Dr Carmichael can operate as soon as he arrives.’

‘Oh shut up, Andy,’ Clem, his clothes spattered with Jonathon’s blood, retorted. ‘You wouldn’t have a family if it wasn’t for what Amy did last year. Where’s your gratitude?’

Andy’s only reply was to shrug his shoulders, then he turned on his heel and strode out of the operating theatre.

‘Amy, what can I do?’ Winnie wrung her hands as she stared wideeyed at her unconscious son.

Amy knew that it was important to keep Winnie occupied. ‘Help Rebekkah get him ready for surgery. We’ll have to cut his clothes off him, put antiseptic around the wounds and continue to slow the blood flow. I’ll prepare instruments and get the anaesthetic ready.’

David Carmichael had been flagged down at the edge of town by Ben Quinton, who’d acquainted him with the medical emergency, so the doctor went straight to the hospital’s operating theatre. Pushing back his tiredness after the long drive from Wilpena Pound, one eyebrow lifted over his glasses in appreciation when he saw that the staff had the operating room ready. He smiled briefly at his pregnant daughter—Amy and her staff were their usual efficient selves—then removed his coat and donned a white smock—a hygiene measure Amy had introduced to the operating room.

‘I see everything’s ready,’ he said superfluously. He washed his hands thoroughly in the enamel sink and, after drying them on a clean towel, moved to the operating table.

‘The doctor says he should be fine, though he’ll be sore and sorry for himself for quite a few days,’ Amy reassured Winnie as they looked down on the sleeping Jonathon. ‘The surgery went well, but he’s lost a considerable amount of blood and will need strengthening broths and red meat, when he is well enough, to stimulate blood regeneration.’

‘I’d like to thank Dr Carmichael,’ Winnie said, placing her hand on Amy’s forearm. ‘The doctor and you have done so much for the Cohen family.’

Amy stretched; her back was aching from having had to bend over while assisting her father during the operation. She had noticed that her father’s hands had trembled several times, and once he had delayed clamping off a blood vessel longer than he should have. And no, she hadn’t imagined those things, all of which reminded her that her father was allowing himself to become exhausted. And he was no longer a young man. She had to do something about the situation. If necessary, she would talk to the hospital’s board of governors about bringing in another doctor to relieve her father’s burden. David Carmichael was a proud man, and he would never admit to needing help, so she knew it was up to her to see that he got it.

‘The doctor’s still in the operating theatre. I’ll pass your thanks on to him.’

‘Thank you. Is it all right if I sit by Jonathon’s bed for a while and watch over him?’

Amy understood Winnie’s anxiety. She wouldn’t be able to rest until her son regained consciousness, which could take another hour or so. ‘Of course.’

Sarah caught Amy’s attention—she needed help with a patient—so Amy left Winnie to her own devices. Another half-hour went by before Amy realised that her father hadn’t come out of the operating room. Odd. He didn’t usually hang around at the hospital unless he was needed. At the first opportunity she went into the theatre to see what he was doing.

David Carmichael lay on his side on the floor, unconscious.

‘Father!’ Amy rushed to him, knelt, felt for the carotid artery at the side of his neck: the beat of his pulse barely registered. She grabbed a stethoscope from the instrument table and rolled him onto his back. His skin tone was greyish-white, a similar colour to his neatly trimmed beard. She checked his pupils: they lolled back, reacting sliggishly to light, and his breathing was laboured. As she moved the stethoscope over his chest, she scarcely dared to breathe. The beat was erratic. Biting her lip, her own heart beating an odd, staccato tempo from shock, she got up. She had observed these symptoms many times in her nursing career, so she knew what they meant. Her father had had a heart attack, and the nearest doctor to attend him was…