come out behind him, shoved his hands in the small of his back and pushed.
‘Just a nice, gentle, ocean breeze, kiddo,’ he said, grinning as both men put their heads down and battled the short distance to the hospital.
‘My God … This is cyclone stuff.’
‘Edge of a cyclone,’ Cal agreed. ‘Willie. But the weather guys are still saying it’ll turn out to sea. They’re predicting strong winds for this afternoon’s wedding, but not as strong as this. It’ll settle soon.’
‘Do you often get cyclones?’
‘Not bad ones. Or not often. Tracy took out Darwin on Christmas Day twenty years ago and one came through south of here last year and flattened the nation’s banana crop.’ He was yelling, but as he spoke they reached the hospital and walked inside. Cal’s last couple of words echoed round the silence of the hospital.
‘Why does Georgie want me?’ Alistair asked. He knew this wasn’t a social call. He knew she’d be avoiding him. So what now?
‘She’s worried,’ Cal said. ‘And Charles and I concur, but there’s not a lot we can do about it. If this wind wasn’t grounding all planes, we’d do an evacuation but … well, let’s see what you think.’ And he pushed open the doors to the nursery.
Charles was there, in his wheelchair. It hadn’t taken long for Alistair to discover that Crocodile Creek’s medical director was a really astute doctor. Charles had lost the use of his legs through an accident in his youth, but what he lacked in mobility he more than compensated for with the sheer breadth of his intellect.
Charles was a big man with a commanding presence, but right now Alistair hardly noticed Charles. For Georgie was beside him. The bruise across her cheek had darkened overnight and swelled still more. She’d removed the dressing he’d put over the split, and the cut looked … vicious.
They could throw away Smiley’s key as far as he was concerned, Alistair thought darkly. Hitting a woman …
Hitting Georgia …
But they were standing by a cot, looking worried. He needed to focus on their problem.
‘Cal said I might be able to help,’ he said softly, and Georgie turned.
‘Dr Carmichael,’ she said.
They were obviously on professional ground here. OK, he could do that. He nodded. ‘Dr Turner.’ He nodded to Charles. ‘Dr Wetherby.’
He looked down into the cot. Megan was lying on her side, one thumb pressed hard into her mouth. She wasn’t asleep. But …
She was quiet. She was oddly still. First rule for care of children. Worry about the quiet ones.
And she looked so small. Malnourished? Probably. The cigarette burn on her hand looked stark and raw, and once again his gut clenched in anger.
No. Put emotion away. He was there for a reason.
‘How’s her mother?’ he asked, still watching the little girl. They’d called him for something and he needed to figure out what. He was switching into professional mode, checking visually with care. Yesterday Megan had seemed lethargic. This morning he’d have expected her to be brighter. But she seemed apathetic. When he put his hand down in front of her eyes she blinked but didn’t otherwise respond.
Hell.
‘Lizzie’s good,’ Georgie said softly into the stillness. She was watching Megan’s reactions as well. ‘She’s even managed a little breakfast. We’ve put Davy and Dottie into the ward beside her so they can see her as she sleeps, and she’s a hundred per cent better than yesterday. Certainly she’s out of danger. And so is Thomas.’
This was the benefit of a country hospital, Alistair thought. To combine medicine with family … It’d be great to be able to do these things.
‘But you’re worried about this little one,’ he said.
‘We are.’
‘Tell me all you know.’
‘It’s not a lot but it’s more than yesterday. Damn, we should have picked this up on admission.’ Charles’ words were almost a growl as he wheeled away from the cot to bring an X-ray back from the desk. He handed it to Alistair without a word.
Silence.
The X-ray showed the little girl’s skull. With damage. The fracture was only hairline—no worse than the fracture of Georgie’s cheek. But under Georgie’s fracture lay muscle which could bear damage. Under Megan’s skull fracture lay her fragile brain. Internal bleeding would be a catastrophe.
Internal bleeding may well be causing the symptoms they were worried about.
‘Can I check?’ he asked at last, and got three sharp nods for assent.
He crossed to the sinks and washed, carefully. Megan had survived the squalid circumstances of the hut. There was no way Alistair was risking infection now.
What infections did chicken bones carry? He washed twice as diligently as he normally did, and then he washed again.
Then he examined her. Cal left them, obviously needing to be elsewhere, but Georgie and Charles stayed. He ignored them. Instead, he talked to Megan, explaining gently that he was looking at her head, trying to find what was hurting her, trying to find a way to make her feel better. He wasn’t sure that she was taking in anything.
He could see no retinal haemorrhage. That had to be a good sign. There was no obvious swelling.
‘No fever?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Georgie whispered. ‘But … Charles didn’t like the look of her. It was more on a hunch than anything that we did the X-ray.’
‘Good hunch.’
‘Which is when we bailed out and called you,’ Charles said.
‘Do we have the facility to do a CT scan?’
‘Our radiotherapist is on his way in,’ Charles told him. ‘He’s boarding up his mother’s windows or he’d be here now.’
‘Send someone else to board windows. I want him here now,’ Alistair snapped. He closed his eyes, thinking things through. But his decision was inevitable. ‘This little one was talking and responding normally last night. The provisional diagnosis is that she’s bleeding internally, but slowly. If I’m right then we get in there now to try to stop lasting damage. There’s no choice.’
We? Him.
He was under no illusion as to why Georgie had called him. He was a neurosurgeon.
But here …
He wanted a major city hospital. He wanted MRI scans. He wanted …
‘We can’t fly her out,’ Charles said, sounding apologetic. ‘Even by road we’re starting to get worried. We’ve had a couple of big trees come down already, and the road’s getting dangerous. They’re saying it’s
