Chapter 1

Meghan's heart jumped into her throat when she heard the crash, and then a cry for help. She tossed aside the magazine and ran out of the tearoom and up the corridor. She rounded the corner by the nurses' station and slammed headlong into a man's solid chest. He was tall, immovable and it felt like she'd run into a wall – a warm, human wall smelling of dust and sweat.

'Sorry —' she gasped, winded by the impact.

The man grunted, steadied her with strong hands. Meghan glanced up into grey eyes fringed with the thickest eyelashes she'd ever seen. She sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself away from him just in time to see a pair of denim-clad legs and large, scuffed boots being dragged through the swing doors of Accident & Emergency.

'Oh, no. Gotta go.' Meghan rushed towards the emergency room with a brief backward glance. She could feel his grey gaze follow her all the way.

Jayne, the registered nurse on duty, looked up from where she was kneeling beside the man on the floor. 'Dr Kimble, you're here. What perfect timing! I'm sure the hospital board won't mind if you start work a day early.'

'Glad to be of service.' Meghan flashed a smile as she quickly assessed the patient. His hair was thinning but he was tanned and fit, without a spare ounce of flesh on his rangy frame. His clothes were dirty and his hands callused. His work boots pointed heavenward.

'His name is Rob Dewhurst. He came in clutching his chest. I just about got him through the doors when he collapsed. No pulse,' Jayne said, working his buttons. She ripped open his shirt to ready him for CPR while Chris, the other nurse, wheeled the emergency trolley across the room.

Emergency trolleys were the same the world over and it only took Meghan a second to spot the equipment needed. She grabbed the bag valve mask off the trolley, turned on the oxygen and dropped to her knees, adrenaline surging through her. She cleared his airway and squeezed in a few breaths.

'You know him?'

Jayne nodded and started counting as she began external cardiac compressions.

'Damn.'

Chris crouched on the floor beside Jayne. Wordlessly they changed positions, as smoothly as dance partners.

Jayne took the bag mask from Meghan: two breaths to thirty compressions. The moment the defibrillator pads hit the patient's chest and Meghan saw a fibrillating green line on the cardiac monitor, she knew they had a chance at resuscitating him.

'Everybody clear,' Meghan said with cool authority, and both nurses drew back. She pressed the button and the patient jerked as the charge shot through him. She glared at the small screen, willing the fluorescent line to respond. It didn't.

'Come on, come on,' Meghan said, her pulse roaring in her ears. The two nurses slipped back into the rhythm of the CPR while Meghan pulled equipment from the trolley, ripped open packets and rapidly inserted an intravenous access.

It took four more shocks and two shots of adrenaline before the man's heart stuttered back to life and he took his first gulping breath.

Meghan drew in a deep, steadying breath herself and her heart rate began to settle. She sank onto her haunches. Taking her eyes off the rhythm on the screen to glance at her watch, Meghan was relieved to see they'd only been working on him for ten minutes. It always seemed like hours.

At Meghan's nod, Chris set an oxygen mask into place over the patient's mouth and nose. Then Chris got to her feet and adjusted the oxygen flow. The patient's eyelids flickered.

'We'll need to get him up off the floor,' Jayne said. She propped pillows under his head and slipped an oxygen monitor onto one of his callused fingers before wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around his arm. 'Ninety on fifty,' she said, climbing to her feet and taking a moment to ease the stiffness out of her sixty-year-old joints.

'So, we know who he is.' Meghan looked up from one nurse to the other.

Chris snorted. 'Of course we do. You don't live in a country town this size and not know everyone.' She pursed her thin lips.

'Rob's a farmer and his wife's the Chair of the hospital board,' Jayne explained. 'He's about sixty-five.'

Meghan nodded, tucking a clump of carroty red curls behind her ear. 'Can you set up a saline drip, please,

Jayne, and take an ECG? I'll make some calls, see if we can get him to Adelaide as soon as possible. He's probably a candidate for clot-busting.'

Jayne nodded. She was tall and slim, her dark hair streaked with grey and pulled into a clasp at the nape of her neck. 'Chris, get the patient lifter, please. We'll try using that. And see if you can call another nurse to come in for a couple of hours.'

Chris gave a nod as she collected rubbish from the floor – torn packets, used syringes, discarded Alcowipes and a disposable razor with a wad of greying chest hair caught on the blade. 'Righto,' she mumbled and walked out of the room.

Meghan, hand on her patient's forearm, felt the warm skin move under her fingers.

'It's all right. I can get up,' a voice croaked from behind the oxygen mask.

'Mr Dewhurst, it's okay. Stay where you are. I'm Dr Meghan Kimble.' She laid her hand on his arm. 'You collapsed because your heart stopped. We started it again and your heartbeat is getting stronger now. I'm about to organise for you to be transferred to Adelaide for some tests and more treatment. I suspect you've had a heart attack. Do you have any chest pain now?'

He turned towards her, trying to clear his vision. 'Water,' he rasped. 'Can I have a drink of water?' He blinked, squinting up at her.

'Yes, we'll get you some water, and an aspirin. Do you want us to ring your wife?'

He nodded, closed his eyes.

 

'Do you have any chest pain now? Tell me on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you've ever had.'

'Three,' he whispered, his breath fogging the mask.

'Jayne, could you get ten of morphine when you've done that?' Meghan gingerly rose to her feet, easing from one foot to the other as life tingled back into her toes.

'I'll have the ECG for you in a few minutes,' Jayne said as she deftly placed more electrodes on Rob's bare chest. 'BP is holding at ninety on fifty. I'll get some water and the aspirin.'

Meghan frowned and reached for the telephone, scanning a laminated sheet of emergency numbers stuck to the wall. This hadn't been part of the plan. But then, emergencies never were.

Dr Meghan Kimble wasn't due to start work at Magpie Creek Medical Centre, or the hospital, until the following morning at nine a.m. She'd climbed off the bus an hour ago and all she'd been doing was waiting in the hospital tearoom for someone to take her to her accommodation. She hadn't had any orientation but there was no way she would have ignored the desperate shout for help when she heard it.

She turned back to Jayne before she punched in the phone number for the Royal Adelaide Hospital. 'Jayne, there was a man out there when I came in, a friend of the patient's. I'll ask him to help us get Mr Dewhurst onto the bed.'

 

When Meghan opened the A&E doors she didn't expect to find the man with the silver eyes pacing the passageway right where she'd left him. He was tanned and broad-shouldered, handsome in a rugged kind of a way. His jeans and khaki shirt were faded and his work boots worn.

'Doc?' he said and restlessly swapped his battered akubra from one hand to the other.

She nodded and extended her hand. 'Dr Meghan Kimble.' Her slender fingers were swallowed up by a large, firm grip. Energy surged between their palms, her heart kicked once, her eyes widened and she quickly withdrew her hand.

'Sean Ashby,' he replied. He thrust a thumb in the direction of A&E. 'We were out fencing when he got the chest pain. I shoved him into the ute and got here as fast as I could. I dropped him off and went to park the car.'

'Rob's stable at the moment,' she said. 'The retrieval team will be airborne in the next ten or fifteen minutes.
Chris said you'd contacted his wife?'

'Yeah.' He cleared his throat, fiddled with his hat and looked somewhere over her shoulder. 'Jenny and their son, Tim, should be here any minute now. Can I see him?'

Meghan looked back over her shoulder into A&E where her patient was still lying on the floor, propped up on pillows and covered with a blanket. They'd managed to roll a sheepskin under him. He'd said he had no pain after the morphine but beneath the oxygen mask his skin had a pale, greyish tinge, and each breath he took was shallow and rasping. Jayne was kneeling beside him recording vital signs. The cardiac monitor traced out the distorted rhythm of an injured heart muscle.

'The ambos should be here shortly to help us get Rob off the floor onto the stretcher. Could you give us a hand as well?'

'Sure. No problems.'

His voice was gravelly and it sent goosebumps skittering across her skin. 'You can come in for a minute or two but that's all,' she said before she changed her mind. She pushed the swing door open wider with her backside and he brushed past.

Sean dropped to a squat beside his mate and awkwardly grasped his hand. Meghan looked away. She felt as if she was intruding on a private moment between friends.

Rob's eyes fluttered open and he tried to smile. 'Thanks, mate. I'd say you and the Doc, and the nurses, of course, saved my life.'

'You're an obstinate bastard, you know that. Jenny'll probably read you the riot act when she gets here.'

With a grimace and a sigh, Rob closed his eyes.

Sean frowned, his eyes never leaving Rob's face. 'I should have come in with him, got a wheelchair or something, not bothered to park the ute. He said he was okay, that he felt a bit better, not much pain —'

'Wouldn't have made any difference,' Jayne said. 'It would've taken me just as long to get up the corridor, even if you had been there with him.'

'She's right,' Meghan said. 'You got him here as fast as you could.'

Rob shook his head. 'Leave it, Sean,' he whispered. 'You did what you could.'

Sean stood up, hat in hand. 'Minute's up,' he said, glancing at Meghan. 'I'll leave you to it. I'll go wait for Jenny and Tim. Just yell when you need a hand to get Rob off the floor.'

Meghan watched him leave, then perched on the stool at the bench and focussed on writing the resuscitation notes and the transfer letter to the receiving hospital.

'You've done a fantastic job, Meghan,' Jayne said quietly, 'especially considering you'd never set foot in the place before. Thank God you were in the tearoom.' Jayne didn't say the rest of what she was thinking – thank God this hadn't happened the day before, or the week before, when there wasn't a doctor within cooee of Magpie Creek. The outcome could have been so different. Since their permanent GP had left several months before, the supply of locums had been sporadic to say the least.

'Emergency trolleys are pretty much the same everywhere you go. And the paperwork, well, there's always a heap of it.'

The A&E doors opened and Chris came in with two ambulance volunteers in green overalls. They were followed by Sean Ashby, an immaculately dressed older woman and a man Meghan pegged to be about her age, early to mid-thirties. He was a younger, tidier version of her patient on the floor.

Jayne took over directing what needed to be done. It wasn't long before Rob was resting more comfortably on the ambulance stretcher, ready for his trip to the airstrip when the retrieval team arrived, with his wife and son on either side of him. After the flurry of activity, Meghan realised with a stab of disappointment that

Sean Ashby had left without saying goodbye. Then she scolded herself for being so silly. Why should he say goodbye to her? She was just doing her job and besides, after Charlie Cooper, she was completely off men.

 

The retrieval team came and went and the hospital routine returned to normal. Trolleys were restocked and oxygen cylinders replaced. Meghan agreed to see several outpatients who'd turned up.

'They'll be coming out of the woodwork now the word's out there's a doctor in town,' Jayne said as she tidied up the nurses' station. The afternoon shift nurses had started, handover had been given, and the day shift was late getting off duty.

Meghan was writing up the A&E outpatient forms. She looked up. 'Good, that's what I'm here for. I'll ask the locum service to backdate my contract to today.'

Jayne raised her eyebrows. 'Good idea, and prepare yourself. We haven't had a doctor for a couple of weeks so there'll be an influx.' She filled in her timesheet and shoved the folder into the top drawer of the desk, then gave Meghan a bright smile. 'I'll see you in the morning at about eight; I can show you around here before you start at the medical practice.'

'I'll be here, ready to go.'

Jayne washed her hands and Meghan returned to her work. Moments later both women jumped in surprise when a gruff voice interrupted the silence. 'Is there a doctor in the house? Reckon I need a few stitches.'

Sean Ashby stood in the doorway of the nurses' station, about five steps from where Meghan had first run into him several hours earlier.

'Sean! What have you done to yourself?' Jayne exclaimed as she dried her hands on a paper towel.

Meghan's gaze reluctantly shifted from his face to the grubby makeshift bandage wound around his hand.

'Fencing wire,' he said, flexing the fingers on the injured hand.

Meghan stood up. 'You go, Jayne. I'll take a look at it.'

Jayne glanced from one to the other. 'Okay. I will, if you don't mind. We have friends coming for dinner and the house is a mess. See you, Sean, take care and thanks for helping us earlier,' she said, and with a wave she was gone.

'Follow me.' Meghan felt her face flame as she brushed past him.

'Right,' he said, and followed her into A&E.

 

'What happened?' She motioned him towards the nearest chair in the emergency room.

'I was cleaning up old fencing wire and didn't realise there was rusty barbed wire caught up in it. I haven't set foot in this hospital in years, and now it's been twice in one day.'

Meghan washed her hands and pulled on a pair of disposable gloves. Then she unwrapped the bandage and exposed a gaping, ragged gash between thumb and forefinger.

'Ouch. I bet that hurt.'

'A bit,' he said. She leaned in for a closer look and her soft curls brushed against his chin. When he sucked in a quick breath, she looked up.

'Sorry. Can you move your thumb and finger? Make a fist? Make an O?'

He wiggled his digits obligingly.

'Can you feel that?' she said and ran her gloved fingers across his fingertips.

'Sure can,' he drawled. Their eyes locked and she quickly withdrew her hand, pulled off the gloves and dropped them into the bin.

'It will need cleaning up and a few stitches, but there doesn't appear to be any other damage. How long since your last tetanus shot?'

'No idea.'

'In the last five years?'

'No, wouldn't have thought so.'

'You'll need one, then.'

He nodded. Meghan rifled through the cupboards in search of a suture tray.

'Looks like you're finding your way around,' he said.

'There's nothing like being thrown in at the deep end.' She set up the equipment on a trolley and dropped a pair of sterile surgical gloves on top. She felt his eyes following her as she went to the basin and washed her hands, dried them on the paper towel, pulled on the surgical gloves. She draped a dressing towel over his hand.

'Rob got away okay?'

'Yes. I'm sure he'll do well. He was lucky someone was around when it happened. If he'd been on his own . . .' She shook her head. 'Jenny managed to get onto the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane with Rob, and Tim's driving down to Adelaide. They'll probably arrive at about the same time.'

She began to clean up around the wound and was impressed that when she jabbed in the local anaesthetic, he didn't even flinch. With skilled fingers, she stitched up the wound and carefully covered it with a dressing.

'You'll need to keep it clean and dry for a few days.' She wound a firm bandage around his broad hand.

'Come and get the stitches out in a week or so.'

'Thanks,' he said and stood up. 'You don't make house calls, then?'

Her lips twitched with amusement as she pulled off the gloves and balled them up with the rubbish. 'Not as a rule,' she said, 'but there are always exceptions.'

'I see. Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.'

'Now, you'll need to have that tetanus shot.'

She pushed through the doors, the suck of air cool on her cheeks. 'Trish,' she called to the RN who'd taken over from Jayne. 'Sean Ashby is in A&E. I've stitched up his hand but he needs —'

'A tetanus shot and the paperwork? I'll sort it out.'

Meghan let out a slow breath. 'Yes, thanks.'

'You found everything okay?'

Meghan nodded. 'Thanks. Haven't cleaned up properly, though. Wasn't sure where it all went.'

Trish crossed the corridor to the emergency room. 'Don't worry about it. We'll look after it.'

She emerged ten minutes later with an A&E treatment record in her hand and the patient in tow.

'I'll get you a handful of dressings, Sean,' she said, passing Meghan the A&E treatment record and disappearing into the workroom behind the nurses' station.

Meghan scanned through the notes Trish had written. Sean Ashby. Farmer, single, forty years old, post office box as an address.

She sat down at the desk and quickly documented on the treatment record what she'd done, and wrote an order for the tetanus shot. She looked up to find him standing in the doorway of the nurses' station, watching her.

'I'm sure Trish won't be long.'

A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth and he gave a slight nod. Somewhere the phone rang and Trish reappeared, cordless handset in hand.

'That was Jayne,' she said to Meghan. 'She wondered if anyone had shown up yet to drop you off at your accommodation. She apologised for not waiting for you.'

'Oh, no!' Meghan cried, her hand going to her mouth. 'My bags are at the service station. When I got off the bus, and there was no-one to pick me up, I walked to the hospital. I bet it's closed by now.'

Trish glanced at her watch. 'Yep, he'd be closed for sure. He only opens Sunday arvo because the bus stops and he catches business from the occasional tourist.'

'Bugger!' All Meghan had with her were the clothes she was wearing, and whatever toiletries she could scrounge for in her shoulder bag.

Sean cleared his throat and the two women looked at him.

'I've got your bags,' he said. 'They're in the back of the ute.'

'What?'

'Dusty said you'd headed this way.'

'Dusty?'

'The old bloke at the servo.'

'Him. How'd he know I'd walked here?' Meghan was surprised he'd noticed anything. His rheumy eyes hadn't got any further than her chest.

'Not too much gets past old Dusty,' Trish said.

'Yeah, right,' Meghan said with a dry laugh.

'I'll get your bags.'

'Wait a minute.' Trish rested a hand on his arm. She looked at Meghan. 'Where're you staying? The hospital cottage?'

'I think so. All I was told is that accommodation was provided and that it was within walking distance.'

'It's not exactly the Hilton but it's handy.' She turned to Sean. 'Would you mind dropping Meghan off? I don't know who was supposed to take her down but it's getting late.'

Sean shifted his attention to Meghan and under his slow scrutiny her face began to heat. Her mouth went dry and her heart gave a funny little flip. 'No, don't worry, Sean. I can walk. You said it wasn't far.' The way he'd been looking at her just then had set her warning bells ringing. She was here to work, nothing else. She turned to Trish. 'Give me the key and point me in the right direction.'

'Don't be silly. It isn't far but you've got your luggage. Sean doesn't mind, do you, Sean?'

'No problem at all,' he said with a gleam in his eyes.

'Thanks. I'll grab the key,' Trish said. 'No point hanging around here, Meghan. You've done more than enough for today.' She went back into the workroom.

'Ute's out front,' Sean said, throwing the words out like a challenge. He clamped the akubra back onto his head, scooped up the spare dressings from the desk and walked out.