LITMIR.BIZ

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wait outside. I’ll take care of the sheep. Someone’s got to take care of the sheep. Then I’ll come with you to the hospital.’

      He frowned. He wasn’t too sure why she intended coming to the hospital. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her. There was something about this woman’s presence that was sending danger signals, thick and fast. ‘You were going to walk home.’

      ‘He’ll have to go to hospital,’ she said evenly. ‘He’s drunk, his breathing’s unstable, and you won’t be able to prove he hasn’t got a broken hip without X-rays. How are you planning to lift Oscar yourself?’

      ‘I’ll call in the paramedics,’ he snapped.

      ‘Excuse me, but this is the last home and away football match for Cradle Lake this season,’ Ginny snapped back. ‘If by paramedic you mean Ern and Bill, who take it in turns to drive the local ambulance, then you’ll find they refuse absolutely to come until the match—and the post-match celebration—is over. Especially if it’s to come to Oscar.’

      Which was why he had come here in the first place, he thought dourly. The call had come in and there’d been no one willing to take it.

      ‘That leaves you stuck,’ she continued. ‘For a couple of hours at least. Unless you accept help.’

      ‘Fine,’ he conceded, trying not to sound confused. ‘I’ll accept your help. Can you wait outside?’

      ‘Very magnanimous,’ she said, and she grinned.

      His lips twitched despite his confusion. It was a great grin.

      Get on with the job. Ignore gorgeous grins.

      ‘Just go,’ he told her, and she clicked her disreputable boots together and saluted.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      SHE went. Fergus did a perfunctory examination and then a more thorough one.

      Oscar had no broken hip, but Ginny was right—the man was dead drunk. His blood pressure was up to one ninety on a hundred and ten and his breathing was fast and noisy, even once he was on oxygen. Fergus checked his saturation levels and accepted the inevitable.

      ‘I gotta go to hospital, don’t I, Doc?’ Oscar demanded, with what was evident satisfaction. His breathing was becoming more shallow now and Fergus wondered whether he’d drunk a lot fast just as they’d arrived—just to make sure. ‘I told you I got a broken hip.’

      ‘You don’t appear to have broken anything,’ Fergus told him. ‘But, yes, you need to come to hospital.’ He gazed around the kitchen and grimaced. ‘Maybe we need to think about some sort of permanent care,’ he suggested. ‘Unless there’s anyone who can stay with you.’

      ‘That’s not me,’ Ginny said through the screen door. ‘Or anyone in this district. This isn’t exactly Mr Popular here. What’s the prognosis?’

      ‘Mr Bentley needs help with his breathing,’ Fergus said, trying not to sound like he was talking through gritted teeth. He knew by now that the diagnosis she’d made had been spot on. ‘He’s not safe to leave alone. The ambulance will have to come out to collect him.’

      ‘I told you—they won’t come for at least a couple of hours.’

      ‘Will you stay with Mr Bentley until they come?’ he asked, without much hope, and she shook her head.

      ‘Nope. I’m needed elsewhere and I can’t stand Mr Bentley.’

      ‘I can’t stand you either, miss,’ the farmer snapped. ‘You and your whore of a mother. You and your family deserved everything you got.’

      Ginny had opened the screen door and stepped inside, but Oscar’s words stopped her. She flinched, recoiling as if she had been struck. Her colour faded and she leaned back against the kitchen bench as if she suddenly needed support.

      ‘No family ever deserved what happened to us,’ she whispered, and she turned to Fergus as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the man on the floor. She swallowed, evidently trying hard to move on from his vicious words. ‘Obese patients like him are the pits,’ she said, ‘and if you leave him alone he’ll stay alive just long enough to sue. More’s the pity. So you need to take him to hospital. If neither of us want to sit here for a couple of hours, that means we use the back of your truck. I got the ewe out.’

      ‘You got the ewe out,’ he said blankly, and she managed a weak smile.

      ‘That would be the sheep, city boy. The one that was…well, making herself at home in the back of your Land Cruiser. I put the ewe and her baby in the home paddock.’ She glared down at Oscar with disdain. ‘I put hay in there, too, and I filled the trough,’ she said. ‘Much to the relief of the rest of the stock. You’re so off our property. I’d rather let the place go to ruin than let you agist on our place again. The dogs are starving. The sheep are fly-blown and miserable, and there’s a horse locked up…’ She broke off and Fergus saw real distress on her face. ‘I’ll get the RSPCA out here straight away,’ she whispered, ‘and I hope you end up in jail. You deserve to be there. Not hospital.’

      Whew. ‘Ginny, can we keep to the matter at hand?’ Fergus said, trying to keep control in a situation that was spiralling. ‘We can’t take Mr Bentley in the truck.’

      ‘Sure we can,’ Ginny said, making an obvious effort to shove distress aside. ‘I’ve washed it out—sort of. A nice amniotic smell never hurt anyone. Maybe we could be super-nice and find a mattress. The back of the Land Cruiser is long enough to make an ambulance.’

      ‘But lifting—’

      ‘A stretcher won’t do it,’ she agreed. ‘We’d break both our backs. Hang on for a bit and I’ll find a door and some fence posts. And a mattress. Be right back.’

      And she was gone, slipping through to the living room and the bedrooms beyond.

      ‘You gonna let her just walk though my house?’ Oscar roared—or tried to roar, but the drink and the asthma were taking their toll and he was losing his bluster. His roar was cut off in mid-tirade and the last words were said as a gasp.

      ‘I’m not sure what else to do,’ Fergus admitted. ‘She’s in control and we’re not. So you concentrate on your breathing and we’ll let Ginny sort us both out.’

      His opinions were consolidated five minutes later while he watched, as Ginny attacked the kitchen door. She’d found a mattress and had it lying on the floor beside Oscar. She’d also found three cylindrical fence posts, each about three feet long, and now she was unscrewing door hinges.

      ‘Do you mind letting me in on the plan?’ Fergus asked, but Oscar chose that moment to retch and he had to focus on keeping the airway clear.

      ‘He took this too far,’ Ginny said briefly, glancing across at their patient with active dislike. ‘If you hadn’t been available he’d have risked dying. He’s played this too many times for the locals to take any notice.’

      Fergus sighed. Doctors were trained to save lives, no matter how obnoxious those lives were, but it didn’t always feel good. Now he thought longingly about his beautifully equipped city hospital and his wonderfully trained nursing staff who’d cope with the messy bits that he was forced to cope with himself now. Back in Sydney, if a patient retched he’d step back and hand over to the nurses.

      ‘I’m good at woodwork,’ he told Ginny without much hope, and she smiled.

      ‘Not in a million years, mate,’ she told him. ‘I’m on door duty. You’re on patient duty.’

      Finally the last screw holding the door to the hinge was released. The door fell forward and Ginny grunted in satisfaction as she took its weight.

      ‘Great. I was afraid it’d be solid. This is light enough to give us a bit more leverage.’

      ‘So

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