There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.
‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.
‘Political?’
‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’
He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.
Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.
She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.
Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.
They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.
Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.
‘No full-time doctors here at all?’
‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’
‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’
‘Then there are about half a dozen of us who handle various specialities, travelling between several small hospitals in the region, as you’ll be doing. You can work out your own timetable, within certain constraints. Linda Gardner has space in her rooms, and will share her staff with you.’
‘Yes, Steve told me. Thanks for arranging it. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘You’ll like her, I think. She’s married with two teenagers.’
‘We’ll have something in common in that area, then!’
‘Basically, you’ll probably want to operate one day a week here in Narralee, and a day every fortnight at Harpoon Bay and Shoalwater.’
‘A slower pace than I’m used to.’
‘Enjoy it!’
‘Oh, I intend to.’
The hospital had already created a pleasing impression. Its red-tiled roof had pale green lichen growing on it, attesting to its comfortable age. Above what must once have been the main entrance, the date ‘1936’ was carved. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded thick couch-grass lawns, and windows tinted with a gold reflective film ran all along one side of the building.
Most of the windows were open, providing a volume of fresh, mild air that was unheard of in Candace’s experience. In Boston, winters were arctic, summers were steamy and hospitals had air-conditioning.
With its pink walls and mottled linoleum floors, the place was too clean and cheerful to be called shabby, and there was an atmosphere of peace, underlaid by a low buzz of unhurried activity which suggested that hospitals didn’t have to be nearly as dramatic and hectic as they always seemed on prime-time television.
Terry doggedly tramped the building from one end to the other on their tour. He showed Candace the eight-bed maternity unit, which opened onto a shaded veranda. He took her through the four-bed high-dependency unit, the agedcare rehab beds, day surgery, the pharmacy, Emergency and Physio. He even took her past the tiny chapel and even tinier kiosk, which was open for just one hour each day. Finally, he pointed out the electrical plant room.
It was a relief to both of them when he finally announced, ‘And now I must pick up Myrna. She’ll be packed and waiting. Steve should be back before too long. Find someone to make you a coffee, and—’
‘I can do coffee on my own, Terry,’ Candace said gently. Several strands of his grey hair had fallen onto the wrong side of his parting, and he was rubbing his stomach as if he had heartburn. ‘Just give Myrna my very best and have a safe trip.’ She almost pushed Terry out through the administration entrance.
She had no trouble over the coffee. Found the nursing staffroom and was at once invited in. She hadn’t finished her mug of unremarkable instant by the time Steve appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, but it didn’t matter.
‘Now, what do you need to get done?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not seeing patients today, and you know Terry will have my guts for garters when he gets back if I haven’t been looking after you.’
‘He’ll have your…what?’
‘Guts for garters.’ He grinned.
‘That sounds violent.’
‘So you’d better let me look after you, then, hadn’t you?’
‘Apparently!’
‘Good decision.’
‘Right, well, I need to get groceries, open a bank account and buy a car,’ she announced.
Steve raised his eyebrows and grinned, appreciating the way she’d ticked off each item on her finger with such assurance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her with that piece of colourful Australian idiom just now. She didn’t need him to entertain her so deliberately.
‘Need to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, too?’ he suggested.
‘Well, yes.’ Now she looked less confident, but the effect was just as attractive.
His expectations for the day notched themselves a little higher, and he was aware that they’d been high enough to begin with.
‘I’ll give you a driving lesson,’ he offered.
OK, now she looked quite panicky. She gave a shriek, but she was smiling as widely as he was. ‘This is going to be a treat for my fellow road-users!’
‘Is that where we should start?’ he asked. ‘With the driving lesson? I can take you somewhere quiet first off then, when you’ve got some confidence, you can do the shuttling round to the bank and the supermarket. I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and give a terrified hiss every now and then…’
‘And slam your foot onto an imaginary brake pedal on the floor. I get the picture. Is it an automatic?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And is it insured?’
‘Comprehensively.’
‘OK, let’s do it before I start thinking of excuses. How’s the public transport around here?’
‘Not good enough for commuting between three hospitals more than fifty kilometres apart, every week.’
‘Thought not.’
So he gave her a driving lesson, and it wasn’t nearly as hair-raising as either of them had feared.
I’m not flirting with her, Steve realised. Why is that? I’d planned to.
He