Emily Forbes – A Mother To Make A Family (страница 3)

He’d become very good at disguising his feelings, an expert at pretending everything was okay. But he didn’t know if he had the strength to get through another tragedy. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did he’d have to find the reserves somewhere. The children were all he had and he was all they had.

He knew he had to keep his composure, had to stay calm, and he was grateful that no one else had been injured. He’d seen more than his fair share of injuries, and even a couple of fatalities, from accidents with horses. But being around horses was a way of life on the station and Mitch knew it was important that the children were familiar with them. Of course, he’d always insisted that they wear helmets when they were riding and fortunately that was a rule they’d never broken. Lila’s accident could have been much worse; it wasn’t as bad as it got but it was close.

In the distance he heard the sound of an engine. The familiar whine of the flying doctor plane. It was coming from the west and he looked at the sky, searching for a flash of silver and white. There. The plane was silhouetted against the endless, clear blue sky. He watched as it dropped lower, heading for the dirt landing strip behind the outbuildings, and waited again for the doc.

Darren, the head stockman, pulled up in a dusty four-wheel-drive and the doc and the flight nurse piled out. He recognised Doc Burton. Mitch reckoned he’d worked with all of the doctors over the years. He nodded in acknowledgement and then relayed what he knew of the events, what he’d given Lila for pain relief, and her medical history and then he stepped aside to let them examine his daughter. He wasn’t one of them any more, he was just Lila’s father.

Lila was alert and talking as they checked her pupils, got her to move her fingers and toes and gradually worked their way up her limbs. She seemed to be able to move her upper limbs reasonably comfortably but her legs were a different story. Doc Burton gently palpated Lila’s neck before removing her helmet. He moved to her abdomen as the nurse retested her blood pressure.

Lila cried out in pain as the doc pressed on her pelvis and Mitch had to restrain himself from leaping in and stopping the examination right there. He couldn’t stand to see Lila in more pain.

‘Temp thirty-six point two degrees, pulse one hundred, respirations twenty-two, BP ninety on sixty, oxygen ninety-eight percent.’ The flight nurse relayed Lila’s vital statistics.

‘Can you run five hundred millilitres of normal saline and draw up five milligrams of morphine? I want to give her a shot before we move her.’ The doc finished speaking to the nurse before turning to Mitch.

‘I agree with you,’ he said, ‘there’s no apparent head injury and her spine seems okay but it looks like she has a fractured pelvis so we’ll need to take her with us to the base.’ Back to Broken Hill, to the hospital. ‘I don’t think she has major internal injuries, her observations are quite reasonable, which suggests that there’s no excessive internal bleeding but I won’t really know until we get her to Broken Hill for scans. She may need to go to Adelaide but you know the drill.’

The doc took the syringe from the nurse and injected the morphine into Lila’s abdomen. ‘This will sting a little, Lila, but it will work fast to take the pain away,’ he told her.

Mitch knew the drill all too well. Doc Burton would take away the pain and then he’d take Lila. Mitch had known that would be the case. He’d known her injuries were too severe to be treated out here. He’d known she would need to go to hospital and he would follow. He hadn’t set foot in a hospital for two years but that was all about to change. He’d known the day would come when he’d have to face up to the past and that day was now. He would have to cope, for Lila’s sake.

He picked up Lila’s hand, holding it, not sure whether he was comforting her or himself.

‘All right, we need to get her in the plane.’ Doc Burton looked at Mitch and Mitch knew his face would be pale under his tan. ‘You’re coming?’

Mitch nodded as the doc and the flight nurse wrapped a brace around Lila’s pelvis and rolled her onto a spinal board. He’d managed to avoid the hospital for two years but deep down he’d wondered what it would take to get him back there. Now he knew. This was it.

Mitch looked at the length of the stretcher and then at the four-by-four utility parked nearby. The ground was dry, hard and corrugated, he didn’t want to drive Lila over it to the airstrip.

‘Can we carry her back to the plane?’ he suggested. ‘Three of us should manage it easy.’

Jimmy had taken the horse back to the stables, leaving just the three men and the flight nurse. Mitch put himself at the foot of the stretcher where he could keep an eye on his daughter. Doc Burton and Darren took one side each at the head and the flight nurse loaded the equipment back into the four-by-four and drove it back to the airstrip. The boys came running from the kitchen as the procession headed to the runway. Charlie tagged at Jed’s heels, doing his best to keep up with his older brother.

Ginny fell into step beside Mitch. ‘You’re going with her.’ Her words weren’t a question. He nodded and Ginny took the boys’ hands as they reached the airstrip, keeping them under control, one on each side of her. Thank goodness he had Ginny to help out. But not for much longer. Ginny was leaving soon, heading off to travel the world with her boyfriend. Mitch needed to do something about finding a replacement but that was a problem for another day. He had enough to worry about for the time being.

Once Lila was loaded onto the plane Mitch bent and kissed the tops of his sons’ heads. ‘Ginny will look after you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘Lila too?’ Charlie asked. He adored his sister and followed her around constantly. The boys would be lost without Lila. So would he. He couldn’t imagine losing all the women in his family.

‘Lila too,’ Mitch replied, hoping he could keep his promise.

Shirley, the cook, had appeared from the kitchen and she pressed a paper bag into his hands. He knew the bag would contain food and although he couldn’t imagine that he’d feel like eating he took the bag anyway, he knew it was her way of coping. He climbed into the plane, choosing a seat from where he could keep watch.

Lila was drowsy now, the pain relief was working, and as the engines started up her eyelids fluttered and closed.

Through the window Mitch watched the station fall away as the pilot lifted the plane into the air. Red dirt, chestnut cattle, the dry, stony creek, grey-green trees and the silver, corrugated-tin roofs of the buildings that glinted in the sunlight. He looked down onto Jed and Charlie as they stood at the edge of the runway and watched him leave.

He could see it all laid out before him, his entire life, and he wondered when it would get back to normal. Would it ever?

The past two years had been the most difficult of his life. How many more traumatic events could they be expected to endure?

The last time he had been in the flying doctor plane on his way to Broken Hill he’d been with his wife and unborn child.

He turned away from the window, his gaze seeking Lila. He was determined to come back with his daughter. He couldn’t bear the thought of returning alone again.

CHAPTER TWO

ROSE’S RIGHT FOOT ACHED, complaining about being crammed into uncomfortable shoes. She should have worn socks, she thought, something that would cushion her misshapen foot from the unforgiving canvas of her sneakers, but socks had looked ugly so she’d gone without and now she was paying the price for her vanity.

She had to wear closed-toe shoes for work but she wished she could wear ballet flats, something prettier than canvas sneakers. Work dress rules allowed ballet flats but she couldn’t wear them any more. They wouldn’t stay on.

Rose undid the laces and slipped her shoe off. She hated these shoes, hated the fact that she couldn’t wear anything pretty any more. She hadn’t minded these shoes on occasion before, but having to wear them, or something similar, every day had certainly taken the gloss off. She was sick of the sight of them. And the feel.

Once upon a time appearances had been so important to her but she was having to adjust her thinking on that. She was having to adjust her thinking on a lot of things.

Gone were the days of wearing her towering, strappy, glamorous shoes. She was prepared to admit that by the end of an evening out she had always been glad to remove them, they hadn’t necessarily been made for comfort but they had been pretty. Now she had traded impractical, pretty and uncomfortable shoes for practical, ugly and uncomfortable. If she had to sacrifice comfort she wished she could at least look pretty.

Winter would be better, she thought. She could get a pair of flat boots. She’d tried wearing ankle boots but even in the air-conditioned hospital rooms her foot had got too hot and it had swelled up and ached even more.

She rubbed her foot on the back of her left calf, trying to get her circulation going. She knew she was supposed to be desensitising her foot by rubbing it regularly with different textures but she hated even looking at it let alone touching it. How ridiculous that toes that didn’t exist any more could give her so much trouble.