The Outback Doctor Read online

  ‘Well, excuse me,’ she said crossly. ‘I hadn’t planned on assisting in a major trauma retrieval team and I’ll thank you to keep your comments about the way I dress to yourself.’

  ‘Difficult and snappy. Oh, the next six months are going to be a barrel of laughs.’

  They’d reached Rose’s car and she turned around to glare at him. ‘Listen, Dave whoever-you-are, I have been driving for two days to get to Broken Hill. I’m hot, uncomfortable and extremely tired. Now, if you want my help then get…off…my…back!’ Rose glared at him, adding emphasis to the last four words. Then she turned and opened her door, placing her medical bag carefully on the seat. Next, she took a white handkerchief from her pocket and took off her hat, wiping the perspiration from her forehead and running her fingers through her short blonde hair.

  She’d half expected Dave to have gone, but when she turned around again it was to find him frowning at her as though she were some sort of alien. ‘Let’s check on Bob and then get to the hospital,’ he said briskly, before striding off towards the ambulance.

  What was the matter with him? He was a grown man and one look at Miss High and Mighty had his hormones in overdrive. So she was beautiful—he’d fallen in love with beautiful before and where had it got him? Divorced!

  ‘Just concentrate on your patient and keep your mouth shut, Dunbar,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Talking to yaself, Dave?’ one member of the emergency crews asked. They were getting ready to spray the road, dampening any petrol fumes that might ignite before they began the tedious job of cutting the body from the wreck. The young man who they’d tried to resuscitate was being taken care of by the local undertakers who’d arrived on the scene soon after the ambulance.

  ‘Something like that. Keep up the good work,’ he encouraged, but continued on his way to the ambulance. He could feel rather than see that Rose was following him, which annoyed him even more. Keep your mind on the job. That was the answer and it was the best advice he could give himself.

  Once he reached the ambulance, he climbed in and assessed Bob’s condition. For now, he was as stabilised as they could get him.

  As Rose climbed in, Dave could smell the subtle scent of her perfume and was surprised that it wasn’t as overpowering as that which most city girls usually wore. It was sleek and seductive, winding its way around him and drawing him closer. He shook his head to clear it and handed her Bob’s chart.

  ‘If you authorise some analgesics, we’ll get this show on the road.’

  ‘Certainly, Doctor,’ she replied briskly, and, without waiting for her, Dave climbed from the ambulance and spoke to the ambos.

  When everyone was ready, they shut the back door of the ambulance and headed back to their respective vehicles. Dave found the urge was too great and couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder to where Rose hurried towards her car. Her back was ramrod straight, her arms swinging at her sides, her hips swaying slightly. The action was unintentionally provocative and once more Dave had to rein in his hormones.

  He kept a close eye on her in his rear-view mirror as they followed the ambulance back into town. Her sporty Jaguar XJ-6 kept up quite nicely with the ambulance and his ute, and he couldn’t help reflecting that the woman and machine complemented each other nicely.

  Finally, they arrived at the hospital without the need to stop, Bob’s situation remaining stable. Dave had kept in constant contact with the ambos, via the HF radio, the entire way. Now they’d arrived, it was all systems go.

  As he walked in the door, he called for Carrie, one of the theatre nurses. ‘Dr Rose Partridge, the new anaesthetist, is about to walk through those doors. Show her where she needs to be, changing rooms, theatres—that sort of thing.’

  ‘No problem, Dave.’

  He strode to Bob’s side and asked for an update on vital signs, and was glad to hear his mate was hanging in there. ‘Cross-type and match. Two units of blood, stat. Let’s get him to X-ray,’ Dave said as he wrote up the requests for Radiology. ‘I’ll be in Theatre, getting things ready. Page me when he’s done.’ With that he headed for the male changing rooms to get ready. Once he was changed, he walked out into the corridor, only to find Rose standing there, looking slightly lost. She was dressed in theatre scrubs.

  She even looked good in baggy blue cotton, he realised, but knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. She seemed the type of woman who would look good in a garbage bag. Her hair was slightly wet, indicating she’d had a quick shower to get all that dirt off her before she’d changed into the scrubs.

  He stood by the door and stared.

  When she turned and caught him in the act, he found he couldn’t move. For what seemed like an endless moment they looked at each other, and Dave felt his breath catch in his throat. Her deep blue eyes were made brighter by the blue of the material. She was…a vision.

  Rose was first to break the contact, looking down at the ground momentarily before walking off. She didn’t care which direction she went but she knew she couldn’t stay still any longer. With one single look, Dave had managed to increase her heartbeat so it pounded erratically against her ribs. Her knees felt like jelly and her mind seemed incapable of coherent thought.

  Why should she be feeling slightly breathless just because she’d shared a look with Dave Whoever? So what if he’d made her a little breathless and light-headed with the scorching look that had seemed to reach right down into the depths of her soul? He probably looked at every woman like that. Learn from your experiences, she told herself. All men were awful and that was all there was to it.

  ‘The heat,’ she mumbled. She just wasn’t used to the heat. When she finally found which theatre Bob was due to be in, she was told that the patient was still in Radiology but that Dave had asked to be paged when Bob returned. Rose frowned. Why would Dave want to know? Shouldn’t the surgeon in charge be informed? The pennies started to drop and she realised that Dave was the surgeon and not a local GP, as she’d originally thought.

  Her opinion of him grew a little—a very little. He was conceited, arrogant and dictatorial. All the qualities she’d come to expect from a surgeon. She was quite surprised she hadn’t picked up on it sooner. Then again, she had been a little preoccupied since they’d met.

  When they eventually were under way in Theatre, Rose re-evaluated her opinion of him yet again. As far as his professional attributes went, they were superb. He was casual yet direct with his staff and possessed great skill as a surgeon.

  The man seemed to have many facets to his personality, at least from what she’d observed during the past few hours, and part of her was intrigued by that. She monitored the patient, keeping a close eye on the dials, forcing any personal thoughts of Dave Whoever out of her mind.

  Dave methodically went through the steps to stop the bleeding, suturing off the offending arteries in the femur and removing glass from Bob’s abdomen but leaving the fractured bone for the orthopod to fix. Nevertheless, he didn’t close the wound until he was absolutely positive each and every piece of shattered glass had been removed.

  When he was finished, Rose accompanied the patient to Recovery, ensuring that Bob didn’t have any side-effects from the anaesthetic. She wrote up her notes and went to change back into her dirty clothes, longing to get to her father’s house so she could have a more leisurely shower.

  After she’d dressed, she returned to Recovery to find Dave sitting by Bob’s bed, talking softly to his friend. She was just to the side of him so he couldn’t really see her, and it gave her the opportunity to observe him further.

  ‘Hang in there, mate,’ he said softly. ‘I know last year was a horrible year for you, and you didn’t need this to happen, but you’re going to get through it, mate. Promise.’

  Rose felt her heart melt at the genuine concern Dave felt for his friend.

  ‘I’ve done a first-rate job on you, mate,’ he continued. ‘Everything’s going to be smelling of roses once we get your orthopaedic bits taken care of. You’ll be as good a
s new.’

  Rose continued to stare at Dave. Who was he? First she’d thought he’d been some busybody come to gawk at the accident. Then she’d discovered he was a doctor. Not only a doctor but Broken Hill’s resident general surgeon.

  Now here he was, displaying compassion for his friend, the friend he’d operated on and, more than likely, saved his life. From what she could tell, Bob’s internal injuries were not a pretty sight yet Dave had systematically gone about making sure everything was back where it was supposed to be.

  It must have been extremely difficult to operate on his friend, but when he’d been standing at the operating table he’d been one hundred per cent professional. Rose had never been in that type of situation before—anaesthetising and monitoring a friend—yet she supposed that, being the only general surgeon in Broken Hill, he would have to do it quite often.

  Thankfully, Bob’s fractured femur and arm were stabilised and she wondered whether he’d be transported to Adelaide, six hours away, for orthopaedic treatment or whether someone at the hospital would perform the surgery.

  It was all quite new to her, working in a small hospital. She was so used to the red tape of a large teaching hospital that she knew it might take her some time to adjust to the way things were done in this eighty-eight-bed hospital.

  As she stood by the door, watching him, Rose felt the stirrings of admiration. It was strange. She usually took her time to get to know new acquaintances before admiration set in—if the person was worthy of the label. Other people usually thought her stand-offish at first, until they discovered the real Rose lying beneath the cool exterior, but because Julian had broken her heart and crushed her self-confidence, Rose had built many walls around her for protection.

  ‘Problem?’

  Rose snapped out of her reverie and realised that Dave was now looking at her.

  ‘Uh—no problem,’ she spluttered. ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

  The frown in Dave’s forehead deepened.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ she continued as she crossed to the end of the bed and picked up the chart. She pretended to read it, knowing it was only a matter of five minutes since she’d last read it. No other changes had been made but, still, she had to do something to escape his penetrating gaze.

  ‘Same.’ He stood and walked around behind her. As he passed, Rose caught a whiff of his aftershave. It was spicy and appealing but mingled with the mild aroma of his obviously exhausting day it made for a heady combination.

  He reached for the chart as Rose was about to slide it back into the holder, his arm brushing lightly against hers. The action caused shivers to run up her arm and spread throughout her body.

  ‘Uh…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me.’ With that, Rose turned and walked away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t pass Go. She didn’t collect $200.

  What was wrong with her? She asked herself the question over and over again as she climbed into her car and checked the map book. As she started down the road towards her father’s house, Rose was determined to get control over her emotions.

  She was tired. That had to be it. She’d been under a lot of stress during the past two days and even before that. During the past few months she’d had her break-up with Julian, as well as her decision to get out of Sydney. They were all factors which could contribute to her uncharacteristic behaviour towards her new colleague.

  As she pulled into the driveway of her father’s double brick house, Rose put all thoughts of her day behind her. Her father had been worried about her driving such a long way by herself, but she’d assured him she would be fine. If he saw otherwise in her expression, it would only cause him to worry and that was the last thing he needed. His wedding day was tomorrow. At last her father had found happiness, and she was glad he’d invited her to share it with him.

  ‘There you are,’ Beverley, her father’s fiancée, said as she came out the front door and crossed to Rose’s side. ‘Your father and I were starting to worry.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Rose replied. ‘There was an emergency. I asked someone at the hospital to call and let you know.’

  ‘They did.’ Beverley gave her a warm hug—not a gentle pat on the shoulder but a real hug. A motherly hug. To someone who’d basically grown up without a mother, these hugs were precious. ‘I can’t believe they’ve had you working at the hospital already.’

  Rose smiled and shrugged. ‘What else was I supposed to do?’

  ‘What a welcome to Broken Hill!’ Beverley laughed. ‘We’re so glad you’re here.’ Beverley hugged her again. ‘Come inside out of the heat. We can get your bags later—right now, your father is impatient to see you.’

  ‘How’s everything going for tomorrow? All organised?’ Rose asked as they walked inside, Beverley’s arm linked with hers.

  ‘I certainly hope so. Oh, Rosie, it’s so silly. I’ve been through this before—a wedding, I mean—yet I can’t believe how nervous I am.’

  ‘Pre-wedding jitters.’ Rose chuckled and patted Beverley’s arm, pleased that her stepmother-to-be felt comfortable calling her Rosie. It was a pet name that only the people closest to her used. It showed her that Beverley felt comfortable and relaxed in her presence, and Rose knew this was an important factor for her father.

  ‘Ah, the two most important women in my life,’ Reg Partridge crooned as they walked into the kitchen. He took the wok off the stove and walked over to embrace his daughter. ‘My beautiful Rose.’ He held her possessively for a long moment before placing a kiss on her forehead. ‘Your coming is an added blessing upon our marriage. Isn’t that right, Bev, darling?’ he asked as he held out his arm to his bride-to-be.

  Rose felt a lump building in her throat and marvelled at how sentimental she was being. Then again, she hadn’t seen her father for a good six months and it had been six months too long.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it home for Christmas,’ she told her father.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, just like he always did, and she knew he meant it. Reginald Partridge was a unique man, who accepted people for who they were. ‘The bonus is that you’ll be here for six months and that in itself is a present worth waiting for.’ He kissed her forehead again, but when a faint hissing noise sounded, he abruptly let the two women go and rushed back to the stove to remove a lid from a bubbling saucepan.

  ‘What are you cooking? Don’t you know what the time is?’ she asked, as she sat down at the island bench to watch him. It was a position she’d spent most of her life in—watching her father as he cooked. Now he was about to reap the rewards from another cookbook of his going on the shelves, the photographs having been taken by Beverley.

  ‘I’m making beef in black bean sauce and rice, and there are spring rolls warming in the oven for the entrée. I was going to make special fried rice but we haven’t been shopping so I’m missing some of the ingredients.’

  ‘Dad—it’s almost midnight.’

  ‘I thought you might be hungry,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Besides, I was worried about you and you know how cooking helps me relax.’

  ‘Never mind.’ She laughed. ‘It sounds and smells delicious.’

  ‘I can’t believe my good fortune, marrying a man who likes to cook.’ Beverley chuckled as she crossed to his side and kissed him.

  Rose watched them and sighed with happiness. Seeing her father like this was one huge weight off her mind. He was happy—at last—and he deserved all the happiness in the world.

  If only she could find such happiness, but at the moment she wasn’t sure. Broken hearts took a long time to fix or, at least, she assumed this one would. A vision of Dave swam before her eyes and her heart jolted. Her uncharacteristic reaction to the man had completely thrown her, and at the moment she wasn’t sure whether it was a good or bad thing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE reception was well under way when a deep voice drawled from behind her, ‘What’s this? The groom’s daughter standing all alone in the corner?’

  Even
though she’d only heard that voice a few times, Rose knew immediately who it belonged to without turning around. Besides, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end and a wave of goose bumps had pricked their way down her arms.

  ‘I’m watching my father and his bride,’ she retorted icily, straightening her back even further. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’ She continued to watch her father lead Beverley around the dance floor, their arms entwined around each other.

  ‘So true.’

  ‘I don’t recall seeing your name on the guest list.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Do you always gatecrash weddings?’

  ‘Only when there’s an emergency.’

  Rose turned to look at him then. It was a mistake. She hadn’t realised he was that close. She breathed in deeply and was treated to the heady combination of spicy aftershave mingled with sweat. It must still be hot outside. ‘I…er…thought there was an anaesthetist here to cover the weekend.’

  ‘There was. That’s the emergency.’

  Rose sighed heavily. ‘Isn’t there anyone else? I don’t officially start at the hospital until Monday.’ She was cross and annoyed and it helped to dampen her other unwanted feelings. ‘This is my father’s wedding!’

  ‘Aw, come on, Rosie,’ he teased, and she widened her gaze in surprise before bristling at the use of her nickname. ‘It won’t be a long operation and you know it’s better if you do it rather than anyone else. Besides, your old man will be leaving soon anyway.’

  ‘Please, don’t—’

  She was interrupted by the sound of the band finishing their song and people clapping.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the MC announced, ‘the bride and groom are about to depart.’

  ‘See?’ Dave said softly from behind her.

  Rose looked away, becoming even more frustrated with the man. She didn’t want to miss the opportunity of saying goodbye to her father and new stepmother. It would also give her an excuse to escape Dave’s company.