She opened another door.
‘I’ll have it made up by the time you get your gear out of the car, and as far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to stay here. This is the doctor’s house after all.’
She was doing it to get her own back on Ned, Mak realised that immediately. He also realised it would give him an ideal opportunity to really get to know her!
So why did he feel uneasy?
Because of the deceit? Or because on first impression this woman was nothing like the manipulative gold-digger he’d envisioned?
‘You don’t have to put me up.’ It was a token protest, brought on by the uneasiness, but she waved it away.
‘Of course I don’t, but sometimes I get very tired of being bossed around by every single person in this town. Sometimes I’d like to be allowed to make my own decisions. Now, get your things—you know where the bathroom is. I’ll put some fresh towels in there.’
She whirled away, opening a cupboard near the back room, pulling out sheets and towels.
‘Leave the sheets on the bed, I’ll make it up,’ Mak told her, and she silenced him with a glare.
‘Don’t you start,’ she warned, marching back down the hall, slipping past him into the bedroom.
Mak set the tray down and left her to it, wondering just why the town would be so protective of her. Okay, so it was hard to get doctors to serve in country towns and the further outback you went the harder it became, but…
Maybe it was her pregnancy.
The phone was ringing as he re-entered the house, silenced when Neena must have answered it. He heard her say, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and the click of a receiver being returned to its cradle.
‘Bed’s made,’ she said, passing him in the passage. ‘Towels in the bathroom.’
And she kept walking.
Dumping his bag, Mak followed her.
‘You’re going out on a call,’ he said as his long strides caught up.
She nodded but her pace didn’t slacken as she crossed the veranda and ran lightly down the steps—running when being back out in the hot night air immediately sapped his energy.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, determined to get used to whatever the climate threw at him. ‘It’s what I’m here for, to see how you work.’
‘You’ve been driving all day and you’re tired,’ she said, opening the door of a big four-wheel-drive that stood just off the main circular driveway. Then she turned to look at him. ‘But it’s probably your kind of thing and I could certainly use some help. An accident at the drilling site. The ambulance was out of town but it’s on its way.’
Mak didn’t answer, instead striding around the car and climbing in the passenger side, relieved to find she’d already started the engine and had the air-con roaring.
‘Motor vehicle?’ he asked, and as Neena reversed the car competently onto the drive, she shook her head.
‘I don’t know how much you know about it, but if you’re employed by Hellenic Enterprises presumably you know they’ve gone past the initial exploratory drilling stage and are setting up an experimental geothermal power station. Basically they pump water down into the bowels of the earth onto shattered hot rocks, and the heat of the rocks turns the water to steam, which comes up through different pipes and is harnessed and used to make electricity.’
Her explanation had holes in it but as a basic description of a scientific process it wasn’t too bad.
‘And what’s happened?’
‘A seam on a pipe burst and steam escaped. Two men badly burned, others less seriously.’
‘Steam burns—bad business,’ Mak said, wishing he had the facilities of St Christopher’s burns unit here.
‘The flying doctor’s on the way. We stabilise them as best we can and they’ll fly them to somewhere with a burns unit.’
‘So, it’s a first response situation,’ he said, turning to look at her. She was studying the road ahead, concentrating on the thin strip of bitumen, so all he could see was a clean, perfect profile—high forehead, straight nose, the flare of lips, the delicately pointed chin.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Most of our emergencies are. We stabilise people and send them on—some, if they’re locals, come back so we know about the eventual outcome but many of them, travellers passing through, are never seen again.’
‘Most emergency medicine is like that—I rarely see anything of the patients I treat once they’ve left the ER. Rarely hear how they’ve fared, for that matter.’
‘And does that bother you?’
She glanced his way and he sensed she was really interested in his reply, an interest that intrigued him.
‘Why do you ask?’
She smiled.
‘I suppose because I know most of my patients so well. The local ones are part of my life and I’m part of theirs so we work together to get the best outcomes for them. I can’t imagine a scenario where I don’t know what happens next.’
The words rang true, and Mak wondered if a woman who could be so involved in her patients’ lives could also be the manipulative female he suspected she was.
Of course she could be. All human beings were multi-faceted.
‘I suppose part of the fascination of medicine is that it offers so many different opportunities in its practice,’ he said, although the way she’d spoken made him wonder about what had happened to some of the patients he’d treated. Just a few who’d made a big impression on him, or those who had been tricky cases…
‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re here for this job,’ she continued. ‘You probably have far more experience with burns than I do.’
Her gratitude made his gut squirm and her frank admission about her capabilities didn’t fit with the picture he’d built up in his mind. Served him right for pre-judging?
He turned his mind from the puzzle this beautiful woman presented to the task ahead of them.
‘Were the pipes in an enclosed space?’
She glanced his way again.
‘I haven’t been out there for a couple of weeks so I don’t know what’s been going on, but originally all the piping was exposed—right out in the open.’
Another glance then her attention switched back to the road. ‘You’re thinking inhalation injuries? Even outside, if they were close to the pipe when the accident happened…’
She paused, frowning as she thought, then asked, ‘Would obvious facial burns always be indicative of inhalation injuries?’
She had a quick mind, something he usually admired—and enjoyed—in a woman, but in this woman?
‘Yes, it should give us an indication. If there are signs of facial involvement—maybe even if there aren’t—we should intubate them. If there’s internal tissue damage that causes swelling—’
‘Intubating later might be impossible,’ Neena finished for him, happy to be talking medicine, although distinctly unhappy about this man’s sudden intrusion into her life.
Was he simply who he said he was—someone sent by the company to assess the strain the additional population was putting on medical services? Or had Theo’s mother, the coldly formal Helen Cassimatis of the emails and letters, sent him?
He was quiet now. Maybe, like her, he didn’t want to