Jack shook his head.
‘I tried. I really tried. I worked on another property. It didn’t pay much so I got this other job, then I had some time off so I thought I’d go and see her—tell her what was happening. But I couldn’t get a lift—I tried, I really tried—and I had to get back, and it turned out—Anyway, if I had got to her place, her dad would probably have killed me. It was her dad broke us up. He rang my uncle and told him we’d been seeing each other. Apparently he went mental about it and that’s why my uncle sacked me.’
The story had come tumbling out in confused snatches, but Kate was able to piece it all together.
‘Love problems are the pits,’ she sympathised, ‘but, really, yours are chicken feed, Jack.’
‘Chicken feed?’ He perked up at the challenge she offered him. ‘I’m shot and I lost my girl.’
‘OK, but what about this? I stop work to nurse my mother—’
‘Who wasn’t your mother,’ Jack offered.
‘That’s right, but I loved her.’ It was only with difficulty Kate stopped her own voice cracking. This wasn’t personal, it was professional, and Jack was sounding much more alert. ‘Anyway, I took two months off to nurse her at the end and my ever-loving fiancé and my best friend began an affair right under the noses of all our colleagues. OK, so I didn’t lose my job, but can you imagine going back to work with the pair of them billing and cooing all over the place, and everyone laughing about it?’
‘More swabs.’
The gruff demand reminded Kate that Jack wasn’t the only one hearing the story of her recent life, but Hamish had told her to distract Jack, and her strategy was working. She opened a new packet of swabs and passed them over, giving Hamish a look that warned him not to say one thing about her conversation.
‘No, I wouldn’t have gone back to work there either,’ Jack said. ‘But you’ve got another job now, haven’t you? I’ll never get another job.’
‘Piffle! Of course you will. Young, healthy, good-looking chap like you. You’ll get another job and another girl, both better than the ones before.’
Silence greeted this remark, a silence that stretched for so long Kate checked his pulse again. Then he said quietly, ‘I don’t want another girl, and I don’t know how to get … the one I want back now I’ve messed things up so much.’
‘We’ll help you,’ Kate promised rashly. ‘Won’t we, Hamish? We’ll get you better then we’ll help you find your girl.’
Hamish looked up from the business of debriding infected tissue from Jack’s leg.
‘We can certainly try,’ he said, but the frown on his face was denying his words.
Did he think they wouldn’t find the girl?
Or … Kate’s heart paused a beat … did he think they wouldn’t get this young man better?
‘OKAY, THAT’S ABOUT as clean as I can get it without actually removing the bullet,’ Hamish announced. ‘I’d like to go in and get it, but without X-rays to show us exactly where it is and where I’d have to cut, I wouldn’t risk it. You’re also losing a fair bit of blood, Jack. Had any problems with bleeding before?’
Jack ignored the question, closing his eyes as if the effort of talking to Kate had exhausted him.
Which it might have, though Hamish was thinking otherwise.
‘At least, doing it back at the hospital, we’ll have blood on hand should you need it. The helicopter will be back at first light, and we’ll have you in Theatre in Crocodile Creek a couple of hours later.’
Jack’s eyes opened at that, and he tried to sit up straighter.
‘Shouldn’t I go to Cairns? Or what about Townsville? That has a bigger hospital, doesn’t it?’
‘Bigger but not better,’ Hamish told him. ‘Besides, it’s too far for a chopper flight. Something about Crocodile Creek bothering you? We don’t really have crocodiles in the creek—well, not where it flows past the hospital.’
Jack didn’t answer, but turned his head away, as if not seeing Hamish might remove him from the cave.
And the prospect of a trip to Crocodile Creek …
Hamish watched Kate bend to speak quietly to the young man, no doubt reassuring him he’d have the very best of treatment at Crocodile Creek, but Hamish was becoming more and more certain that Jack had reasons of his own for avoiding that particular hospital.
But how to confirm what he was thinking?
He walked around to the other side and squatted beside the open pack, delving through it for what he needed. Then, from this side, he looked directly at Jack.
‘I’ll add some pain relief to the fluid now, so you should be feeling more comfortable before long, and then I guess we should do the paperwork. You up for that, Kate? Did you see the initial assessment forms in the pack?’
Kate’s frown told him she disapproved of the change in his attitude from friendly banter to practical matter-of-factness, but she didn’t know about a feud between two neighbouring families up here in the north, or the connection of one family to the hospital. Or about a baby called Lucky who was now called Jackson who had a form of haemophilia known as von Willebrand’s disease.
Or about the search for the baby’s father—a young man called Jack.
‘I’ve got them here,’ she said, putting ice into her words in case he hadn’t caught the frown.
‘Then fill them out. You and Jack can manage all the personal stuff then I’ll do the medication and dosages when you get down to that section. And while you’re doing it, I’ll take a look around to see if there’s a patch of clear ground from which we can winch Jack up in the morning.’
He found a stronger torch in the equipment backpack, turned it on and walked away, hoping his absence might help Jack speak more freely. If he’d talk to anyone, it would be to Kate. Nothing like a baring of souls to create a bond between people. But had she really been through so much emotional trauma or had she made it all up to keep Jack talking? He had no idea, which wasn’t surprising, but what did surprise him was that he wanted to find out.
Hell’s teeth! He’d been in Australia for nearly two years, and while he’d enjoyed some mild flirtations and one reasonably lengthy and decidedly pleasant relationship, he’d remained heart-whole and fancy-free. So now, three weeks before he was due to return home, was hardly the time to be developing an interest in a woman.
Yet his mind kept throwing up the image of his first sight of her, a slight figure, dressed all in brown, except for those ridiculous purple sandals, standing in the gloomy hallway, with a stray sunbeam probing through the fretwork breezeway above the door and turning the tips of her loose brown curls to liquid gold.
‘Is he a good doctor?’ Jack asked, when Hamish had disappeared into the darkness.
Kate looked in the direction Hamish had taken, but already she could see nothing but inky blackness beyond the glow of the lamp.
‘I’ve just started work so I don’t know, but from the way he treated you I’d have to say he is.’
Jack closed his eyes and lay in silence for a while, but just when Kate had decided he’d drifted off to sleep he opened his eyes again and looked at her.
‘So you don’t know anything about the hospital?’ he asked.
‘Not a thing, except its reputation is excellent. Apparently the boss, Charles Wetherby, insists on hiring top-class