CHAPTER ONE
Waverly Medical Centre, Brisbane
THE SURGERY HAD BEEN chaotic that morning. Winter flu. The time of year no one looked forward to. The epidemic had hit the city in the wake of the August Royal National Show, a huge crowd-pleaser, with plenty of hot sunshine and flying red dust from the show ring to encourage the germs. The patients, coughing, sneezing, searching for tissues, others with their heads firmly buried in magazines, were either waiting for flu shots—injections of the vaccine, which was an attempt to second-guess what strain of influenza would strike or seeking medication to relieve the distressing symptoms. Antibiotics didn’t work.
Sarah didn’t prescribe them for the flu or a common cold, but she knew she’d always get an argument from some of her patients who thought that only drugs could kill off the virus. These were the days of Be-Your-Own-Doctor, with many a patient discussing his or her diagnosis and suggesting various drugs. Home remedies and bed rest simply wouldn’t do. Small wonder the pharmaceutical companies were becoming enormously rich while bacteria became increasingly resistant to the most frequently prescribed drugs. It was a big problem and it worried her.
Around midday things got worse. Pandemonium broke loose when a three-year-old boy with silky blond hair was brought in suffering severe febrile convulsions.
“Please, please. Where’s Dr. Sarah?” The distraught mother registered her terror, appealing to the packed waiting room in general, tears pouring from her eyes.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Fielding, you’re here now. We’ll take care of you.” The clinic’s head receptionist, Janet Bellamy, a kind, competent woman, closed in on the hysterical mother fast, while her junior, Kerri Gordon, ran for Dr. Dempsey, who had a wonderful rapport with her patients, children in particular. Dr. Sarah was the one everyone wanted to see. Especially the mothers of young children.
By the time Sarah, who’d been preparing to run an electrocardiogram on a male patient with chest pains, rushed into the reception room, the young mother was screaming her fear and desperation. Janet and one of Sarah’s female patients, an ex-nurse, were trying ineffectually to calm the young woman and take the lolling, unconscious child from her arms. Another child, a little girl who’d been sitting quietly with her pregnant mother, was sobbing into her hands at this frightening new experience, while her mother placed a soothing, protective arm around her shaking shoulders.
Sarah remembered this wasn’t the little boy’s first brush with seizures. She had recommended further action at the child’s first presentation, but his mother, Kim, had been fiercely against it, no doubt dreading a worse neurological disorder like epilepsy.
At Sarah’s appearance, Kim Fielding seemed to gather strength. She stopped screaming when Sarah addressed her and immediately surrendered her only child to Sarah’s arms. The frantic look left her eyes and in the examining room she watched calmly as Sarah swiftly administered an anticonvulsant medication. The seizure, however, proved of such severity and duration that Sarah called for an ambulance to take the child to hospital to be admitted for observation. Privately she thought the boy’s high fever was only masking a more serious disorder. She grieved for the mother, and the anxious years ahead, squeezing her hand tightly as the young woman climbed into the ambulance to go with her son. These incidents involving children were deeply heart-wrenching for everyone, doctors and patients alike, but for the sake of her other patients Sarah had to refocus in order to deal with her caseload for the afternoon. It didn’t help knowing she’d have to tell Megan Copeley the results of her mammogram.
Not good.
Megan’s fat-rich, low-fiber diet alone had increased her risk of breast cancer by a factor of six. Despite every warning and every lecture Sarah gave her, she’d been unable to wean herself off it.
“But, Sarah, I can’t go without all the foods I enjoy. Neither can my family. Mealtimes would be so dull. Jeff wouldn’t stand for it. There’s no history of breast cancer in my family, anyway.”
There was now. Sadness crept up behind Sarah’s fixed resolve to maintain a professional detachment. She could picture Megan sitting opposite her in a state of shock. Megan was only a handful of years older than her. Thirty-five, with two beautiful children. Some days Sarah could hardly bear the terrible burden and responsibility of being a doctor—telling patients their fears were confirmed or breaking totally unexpected bad news. There was no way out of telling the truth, of telling patients that life as they knew it was over. It was her job to help them deal with it. She knew she was a good doctor. She knew her patients liked and respected her, but sometimes she wanted to pull a curtain and hide behind it. To weep.
What Sarah didn’t know as she agonized for Megan Copeley and tried to swallow the lump in her throat was that tragedy was about to strike her.
Not for the first time. Sarah was no stranger to loneliness, grief and despair. She had walked, talked and slept with it for years. Could she ever put the loss of her own child, her baby, behind her? Never. A mother doesn’t suffer a blow like that and continue serenely on with life. Maybe she’d learned a deeper, fuller understanding her patients seemed to recognize, but the grief and the insupportable loss would go on forever.
Baby Dempsey, who had lived only a few hours. She’d already named her in her mind—Rosalind (Rose) after the grandmother she recalled with such love. From time to time, although it was fifteen years ago, she relived the long, empty months leading up to the birth. Hidden away with a middle-aged married couple Ruth McQueen had found. She relived the birth itself, which had taken place in a private clinic. My God, the pain! Her patients didn’t have to tell her anything about that, not realizing because of her single status and lack of family that she’d given birth to a child. She remembered the morning after when she’d awakened, wanting to get up, to go to her baby. She’d wanted to tell Rose not to fear, she’d make something of herself. For both of them. Don’t be afraid, my little one. My little one. There were moments when she could remember nothing but the feel of her baby against her breast. So fleeting a time!
Miss Crompton always told her she had what it took to be anything she wanted.
“You work hard, Sarah, and I see a future far beyond this little outback town. You’re one pupil I know in my bones is going to make a name for herself. You have it here.” At this point Miss Crompton always tapped her head.
She might’ve had the brains, but emotionally she’d been frail. At fifteen she’d been made pregnant by the great love of her life, the only love, and she was into her thirty-first year now, with all her friends either married or getting married. But she couldn’t forget Kyall and the wonder of loving him. His spirit, like their baby’s, was locked up inside her. Internalized. She carried Kyall within her, and his presence in her life sometimes seemed so real it was as if he was there, melting her spine with love of him. Other times she hated him with a shocking intensity, lowering herself to curse him to hell. How could he have abandoned her? Kyall McQueen, her soul mate. They’d each shadowed the other, despite the opposition of the all-powerful Ruth McQueen, his grandmother, and his mother, Enid. Even her own mother had found their unique bond a source of great worry.
“You can’t be so daft, Sarah, as to think anything good can come of this. They’re the McQueens! God almighty, they’re royalty to the rest of us. We’re nothing, nobodies. It takes all my time to put clothes on your back and shoes on your feet. With your father gone…” Here her mother used to choke on her tears.
In the end, her dear sweet mother had been right. A few secret hours spent together one starry night, one single glorious starry night cocooned in the bush, and she’d gotten pregnant when she was little more than a child. So much for Miss Crompton’s pleasure and pride in her! Her whole future ruined. Kyall’s splendid future already mapped out. Master of Wunnamurra, one of the country’s most historic sheep stations. Kyall had been born not with a silver spoon in his mouth but the whole goddamn service.
Ruth McQueen had snatched her away from the town. Snatched her away from Kyall. Forced her devastated mother to keep her mouth shut about Sarah’s baby. But