Back to the real world. For the moment they needed the championship of at least one GP/OB.
Most new mums stayed between one and three nights and, as they always had, women post-caesarean birth transferred back from the base hospital to recover. So a ward round in maternity and the general part of the hospital each morning by the VMO was asked to keep the doors open.
The tense set of her shoulders gradually relaxed as she distracted herself with the chore she’d previously completed six times since old Dr Rodgers had had his stroke.
The first two locums had been young and bored, patently here for the surf, and had both tried to make advances towards Ellie, as if she were part of the locum package. She’d had no problem freezing them both back into line but now the agency took on board her preferences for mature medical practitioners.
Most replacements had been well into retirement age since then, though there had also been some disadvantages with their advanced age. The semi-bald doctor definitely had been grumpy, which had been a bit of a disappointment, because Dr Rodgers had always had a kind word for everyone.
The next had been terrified that a woman would give birth and he’d have to do something about it because he hadn’t been near a baby’s delivery for twenty years. Ellie hadn’t been able to promise one wouldn’t happen so he’d declined to come back.
Lighthouse Bay was a service for low-risk pregnant women so Ellie couldn’t see what the concern was. Birth was a perfectly normal, natural event and the women weren’t sick. But there would always be those occasional precipitous and out-of-the-ordinary labours that seemed to happen more since Ellie had arrived. She’d proven well equal to the task of catching impatient babies but a decent back-up made sense. So, obstetric confidence was a second factor she requested now from the locums.
The next three locums had been either difficult to contact when she’d needed them or had driven her mad by sitting and talking all day so she hadn’t been able to get anything done, so she hadn’t asked them back. But the last locum had finally proved a golden one.
Dr Southwell, the elderly widower and retired GP with his obstetric diploma and years of gentle experience, had been a real card.
The postnatal women had loved him, as had every other marriageable woman above forty in town.
Especially Myra, Ellie’s other neighbour, a retired chef who donated two hours a day to the hospital café between morning tea and lunch, and used to run a patisserie in Double Bay in Sydney. Myra and Old Dr Southwell had often been found laughing together.
Ellie had thought the hospital had struck the jackpot when he’d enquired about a more permanent position and had stayed full-time for an extra month when the last local GP had asked for an extended holiday. Ellie had really appreciated the break from trying to understand each new doctor’s little pet hates.
Not that Dr Southwell seemed to have any foible Ellie had had to grow accustomed to at all. Except his love of surfing. She sighed.
They’d already sent one woman away in the last two days because she’d come to the hospital having gone into early labour. Ellie had had to say they had no locum coverage and she should drive to the base hospital.
Croak... There it was again. A long-drawn-out, guttural echo promising buckets of slime... She sucked in air through her nose and forced herself to breathe the constricted air out. She had to fight the resistance because her lungs seemed to have shrunk back onto her ribcage.
Croak... And then the cruk-cruk of the mate. She glanced at the clock and estimated she had an hour at least before the new doctor arrived so she reached over, turned on the CD player and allowed her favourite country singer to protect her from the noise as he belted out a southern ballad that drowned out the neighbours. Thankfully, today, her only maternity patient had brought her the latest CD from the large town an hour away where she’d gone for her repeat Caesarean birth.
It was only rarely, after prolonged rain, that the frogs gave her such a hard time. They’d had a week of downpours. Of course frogs were about. They’d stop soon. The rain had probably washed away the solution of salt water she’d sprayed around the outside of the ward window, so she’d do it again this afternoon.
One of the bonuses of her tiny croft cottage on top of the cliff was that, up there, the salt-laden spray from waves crashing against the rocks below drove the amphibians away.
She knew it was ridiculous to have a phobia about frogs, but she had suffered with it since she was little. It was inextricably connected to the time not long after her mother had died. She knew perfectly well it was irrational.
She had listened to the tapes, seen the psychologist, had even been transported by hypnosis to the causative events in an attempt to reprogram her response. That had actually made it worse, because now she had the childhood nightmares back that hadn’t plagued her for years.
Basically slimy, web-footed frogs with fat throats that ballooned hideously when they croaked made her palms sweat and her heart beat like a drum in her chest. And the nightmares made her weep with grief in her sleep.
Unfortunately, down in the hollow where the old hospital nestled among well-grown shrubs and an enticing tinge of dampness after rain, the frogs were very happy to congregate. Her only snake in Eden. Actually, she could do with a big, quiet carpet snake that enjoyed green entrées. That could be the answer. She had no phobia of snakes.
But those frogs that slipped insidiously into the hand basin in the ladies’ rest room—no way! Or those that croaked outside the door so that when she arrived as she had this morning, running a little late, a little incautiously intent on getting to work, a green tree frog had jumped at her as she’d stepped through the door. Thank goodness he’d missed his aim.
She still hadn’t recovered from that traumatic start to her day. Now they were outside her window... Her hero sang on and she determined to stop thinking about it. She did not have time for this.
* * *
Samuel Southwell parked his now dusty Lexus outside the cottage hospital. His immaculate silver machine had never been off the bitumen before, and he frowned at the rim of dust that clung to the base of the windscreen.
He noted with a feeling of unreality, the single Reserved for Doctor spot in the car park, and his hand hovered as he hesitated to stop the engine. Doctor. Not plural. Just one spot for the one doctor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been without a cloud of registrars, residents and med students trailing behind him.
What if they wanted him to look at a toenail or someone had a heart attack? He was a consultant obstetrician and medical researcher, for heaven’s sake.
At that thought his mouth finally quirked. Surely his knowledge of general medicine was buried miraculously in his brain underneath the uteruses? He sincerely hoped so or he’d have to refresh his knowledge of whatever ailment stumped him. Online medical journals could be accessed. According to his father it shouldn’t be a problem—he was ‘supposed to be smart’!
Maybe the old man was right and it would do him good. Either way, he’d agreed, mainly because his dad never asked him to do anything and he’d been strangely persistent about this favour. This little place had less than sixty low-risk births a year. And he was only here for the next four weeks. He would manage.
It would be vastly different from the peaks of drama skimmed from thousands of women and babies passing through the doors of Brisbane Mothers and Babies Hospital. Different being away from his research work that drove him at nights and weekends. He’d probably get more sleep as well. He admired his father but at the moment he was a little impatient with him for this assignment.
‘It’ll be a good-will mission,’ Dr Reginald Southwell had decreed, with a twinkle in his eye that his son had supposedly inherited but that his father had insisted he’d lost. ‘See how the other half live. Step out of your world of work, work, work for a month, for goodness’ sake. You can take off a month