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CHAPTER FOUR

‘SNAKES are attracted to water,’ he said as he picked up another one of her bags. ‘This has been one of the longest droughts in history. They can slink in under doors in search of a dripping tap. One of the locals had one come in under the door a few blocks from here. They lost their Jack Russell terrier as a result. I just thought I’d warn you. It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

Kellie eyed the open front door with wide, uncertain eyes. Snakes were fine in their place, which for her had up until this point been behind a thick sheet of glass at a zoological park. She had never met one in the wild, and had certainly never envisaged meeting one in her living space. She was OK with rats and mice; she was even fine with spiders—but snakes?

She suppressed a little shudder and straightened her shoulders as she faced him coming up the verandah steps with a bag in each hand. ‘I suppose the next thing you’ll be telling me is the house is haunted.’

Something shifted at the back of his eyes. ‘No, it’s not haunted,’ he said, and moved past her to take the bags he was carrying to one of the bedrooms off the passage.

Kellie followed him gingerly down the hallway, her eyes darting sideways for any sign of a black or brown coil lying in wait to strike, but to her immense relief nothing seemed to be amiss. It looked and felt like any other house that had been unoccupied for a while—the air a little hot and stale and the blinds down over the windows, which added to the general sense of abandonment.

The sudden wave of homesickness that assailed her was almost overwhelming. A house was meant to be a home but it couldn’t be that without people in it and she—for the next few months—was going to be the only person inside this house.

It was a daunting thought, Kellie realised as she wandered into the kitchen. The layout was modern but very basic, as if Tim and Claire Montgomery had not wanted to waste money on top-notch appliances and joinery.

The rest of the house was similar, tasteful but modestly decorated, the furniture a little dated though comfortable-looking.

Matt came back in with the last of her bags and put them in the largest of the three bedrooms before he came back out to the sitting room where she was trying to undo one of the two windows. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

‘I want to air the house but I think this window is stuck,’ she said giving it another rattle.

‘Here, let me have a go.’

Kellie stepped back as he worked on the latch and pushed the window upwards with his shoulder, the timber frame creaking in protest.

‘It needs to be shaved back a bit,’ he said, inspecting the inner section of the window. ‘I’ll send someone around to fix it for you.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it.’

He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he pulled out a business card and handed it to her. ‘Here are my home and mobile and the clinic numbers.’

Kellie caught a brief glimpse of a photograph of a young woman just before he closed his wallet. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

His expression closed down and his tone was guarded and clipped as he responded, ‘Who is who?’

‘The woman in your wallet,’ she said.

His brows moved together in a frown. ‘Do you make it a habit of prying into people’s wallets?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t prying,’ she protested. ‘You had it open so I looked.’

‘Would you like to count how much money I have in there while you’re at it, Dr Thorne?’ he asked with a sardonic curl of his lip.

Kellie glared up at him. ‘If that is your girlfriend in your wallet then I don’t know what on earth she sees in you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxiously unfriendly man I’ve ever met and let me tell you I’ve met plenty. I just didn’t realise I had to travel quite this far to meet yet another one.’

Blue eyes battled with brown in a crackling-with-tension silence that seemed to go on indefinitely.

Kellie was determined not to look away first. She was used to the stare-downs of her brothers but something about Matthew McNaught’s midnight-blue gaze as it wrestled with hers caught her off guard. She found herself blushing and averted her head in case he saw it. ‘Thank you for the lift and bringing in my bags,’ she said in a curt tone. ‘No doubt I’ll see you at the clinic some time.’

‘Yes, I expect you will.’ His tone was equally brusque.

Kellie listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall. She heard the screen door squeak open and close and then the creak of the weathered timber of the verandah as he stepped on it before going down the three steps leading to the pathway to the gate. She heard his car start then the grab of the wheels on the gravel as he backed out of the driveway and the growl of the diesel engine as he drove back the way they had come, turning right, away from town at the corner.

And then all Kellie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. It seemed faster than normal and her heart felt like it was skipping every now and again just to keep up.

She turned from the window and looked at the space where moments before Matt had been standing, frowning at her, those incredibly blue eyes searing and yet shadowed at the same time …

A sudden knock on the front door made her nearly jump out of her skin but when she heard Ruth Williams’s friendly voice calling out, her panic quickly subsided. ‘Dr Thorne? I managed to get some milk and bread for you. I rang Cheryl Yates who runs the general store and she made up a survival pack for you. You can pay her later.’

Kellie pushed open the screen door. ‘That was very thoughtful of you both.’

‘Not at all,’ Ruth said, handing over the basket of groceries.

‘Please come in,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m still finding my way around but I can rustle us up a cup of tea if you’d like one.’

‘I would love one,’ Ruth said, puffing slightly. ‘I think Cheryl’s even put some of those fancy teabags in here somewhere and some chocolate biscuits. You’d better put them in the fridge, though, as this heat would melt stone.’

‘Yes, it is rather hot, isn’t it?’ Kellie answered as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘But I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a day or two.’

‘You know when you first stepped off the plane with Dr McNaught I thought I was seeing a ghost,’ Ruth said as she started to help unpack the groceries.

Kellie turned and looked at her. ‘A ghost?’

Ruth’s smile had a hint of sadness about it. ‘Yes. Although your hair is a different colour, you reminded me a bit of Madeleine,’ she said, ‘Dr McNaught’s fiancée.’

Kellie felt her eyes widen in surprise. No wonder he’d said he wasn’t looking for a wife, although she couldn’t imagine who would be brave enough to take him on. ‘Dr McNaught is engaged?’ she asked.

‘Was engaged,’ Ruth corrected. ‘She was killed in an accident two days before their wedding.’

‘Oh, dear …’ Kellie said, a wave of sympathy washing over her, followed by a rising tide of insight into why Matt was so standoffish and formal. She mentally cringed at his dislike of her prying into the photograph in his wallet.

‘He doesn’t talk about it much, of course,’ Ruth went on. ‘But that’s the male way, isn’t it?’

Kellie nibbled at her lip. ‘Yes … yes, it certainly is …’

Ruth handed her a carton of milk. ‘It was her birthday on Saturday,’ she said. ‘That’s why he went to Brisbane—to visit her parents.’

‘That was nice of him,’ Kellie offered, still feeling utterly wretched about her rapid judgement of him.

Ruth gave her another sad smile. ‘Yes, he does it every year.’

Kellie put the milk in the fridge and filled the kettle before she sat down opposite the older lady. ‘Dr McNaught told me about your daughter,’ she said. ‘It must be very hard for you … you know, not knowing where Tegan is or what happened to her.’

Ruth let out a little sigh. ‘It is hard,’ she said. ‘The hardest thing after all this time is that no one is actively searching for her any more. I feel that I’ll go to my grave without knowing what happened to her.’

‘The police keep most missing-person files open, though, don’t they?’ Kellie said. ‘I’ve seen a few news stories about old cases that have been solved, using DNA to match perpetrators to crimes.’

‘That’s true,’ Ruth said, ‘but out here there isn’t the manpower to do any more than maintain law and order. Doctors aren’t the only people who resist remote country appointments—police are pretty thin on the ground out here, too.’

Kellie met the older woman’s brown eyes. ‘You don’t believe she’s dead, do you?’ she asked.

Ruth held her gaze for several moments. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I feel it in here.’ She placed a hand over her heart. ‘She’s out there somewhere, I just know it.’

Kellie felt deeply for the poor woman. She had a pretty clear idea of the process of denial—she had witnessed it in her father for the last six years. He still acted as if her mother was going to walk in the door. He even occasionally spoke of her in the present tense, which made the job of getting on with his life so much harder for him and his family, not to mention Aunty Kate.

‘Well, I must let you settle in,’ Ruth said a few minutes later after they had finished the tea. ‘It’s an isolated place out here—but it’s not an unfriendly one.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that,’ Kellie said with genuine feeling. ‘This is a leap into the unknown for me. I’m right out of my comfort zone but I need the challenge right now.’

‘Well, it will certainly be challenging, it always is when the unexpected happens in places as far out as this,’ Ruth said as she gathered up her bag. ‘But Matthew McNaught is a very capable doctor. He’s experienced and caring. I am sure you’ll enjoy working with him, especially once you get to know him. This last weekend was a tough one for him. It’ll take him a few days to get back to normal.’

‘I think we’ll get along just fine,’ she said to the older woman with a smile. ‘In any case, I’ve got a week up my sleeve to get a feel for the place. I kind of figured it would be wise not to rush headlong into a close community like this.’ ‘You might not have any choice, my dear,’ Ruth said with a sombre look. ‘Things can happen out here in a blink of an eye.’

Soon after Ruth left Kellie decided to walk the short distance to the pub. She had always enjoyed male company and while the pub looked nothing like the family-friendly bistros she was used to, she didn’t see any harm in getting to know some of the locals in a relaxed and casual atmosphere.

She was barely in the door before Bluey, the man with the broken arm, came ambling over. ‘What would you like to drink, Doc?’

Kellie smiled so as not to offend him. ‘It’s fine, really. I’ll get my own.’

‘Nah,’ he drawled as he winked at his two mates. ‘It’s been a long time since I bought a pretty lady a drink. Don’t spoil it for me. What’ll you have?’

Kellie agreed to have a lemonade, lime and bitters and sat at the table with Bluey and his cronies, who turned out to be two other farmers looking as though they had spent many a long day in the sun.

‘So what brings a nice girl like you out to a place like this?’ Jeff, the oldest of the three, asked.

‘I saw Tim Montgomery’s advertisement in the Australian Medical Journal and thought it would be a great chance to do my bit for the bush,’ she answered. ‘A house, a car and a job all rolled into one sounded too good to miss.’

‘It sounds too good to be true, right, Jeff?’ Bluey said with a gap-toothed grin.

Kellie wasn’t sure what he meant and didn’t have time to ask as just then she heard a commotion from behind the counter of the pub.

‘Quick, call the doctor!’ a female voice shrieked. ‘I think I’ve cut off my finger!’

Kellie leapt to her feet and approached the bar. ‘Can I help?’ she asked. ‘I’m a doctor.’

The face of Bruce, the barman, was ashen as the woman was clutching a blood-soaked teatowel to her right hand. ‘It looks pretty bad,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better call Matt McNaught.’

Kellie stood her ground. ‘By the time Dr McNaught gets here I could at least stem the bleeding and assess the damage.’

‘Good point, but I’ll give him a call in any case. He’ll know what to do, you being new in town and all,’ Bruce said, and lifted a section of the bar to allow her access to where the woman was sitting visibly shaking as she cradled her hand against her chest.

Kellie introduced herself to the woman, Julie Smithton, who told her she had been using a sharp knife to cut up some lemons when the knife had slipped and cut through the top of her finger.

‘Let me have a look at the damage,’ Kellie said, gently taking the woman’s hand in hers. She carefully unpeeled the teatowel to find a deep laceration across the palmar surface, indicating there was a possibility the flexor tendon could be severed.

‘Have I cut it off?’ Julie asked in a thread-like voice.

Kellie smiled reassuringly. ‘No, Julie, you haven’t. The finger’s completely intact. But it looks like you might have damaged a tendon. Do you think you can try and bend your finger, like this?’ She demonstrated the action of moving her index finger up and down in a wave-like action.

Julie gingerly lifted her hand but even though she was clearly trying to move her finger there was no flexion response. ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried.

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie said gently. ‘It’s something that can be easily fixed with a bit of microsurgery. You’ll be back to normal in no time.’

Julie’s eyes flared in fear. ‘Microsurgery?’

‘Yes,’ Kellie said. ‘It’s done by a plastic surgeon, but it will soon be—’

‘But can’t Dr McNaught do it?’ Julie asked. ‘I don’t want to travel all the way to Brisbane. I’ve got three kids.’

‘Who’s looking after them now?’ Kellie asked.

Julie lowered her eyes. ‘They’re on their own at the house,’ she mumbled. ‘They’re not little kids any more. I guess they might be all right for a day or so.’

‘What about their father?’ Kellie asked. ‘Couldn’t he look after them?’

A dark, embittered look came into the young woman’s eyes. ‘He left us close to three years ago. Got himself a new family now in Charleville, last I heard.’

Kellie looked at the woman’s prematurely lined and weather-beaten face and wondered how old she was. She wasn’t sure but she didn’t think she was that old, but clearly the strain of bringing up three children on her own had taken its toll, not to mention the unforgiving outback climate.

‘You’ll only be in hospital a few days, five at the most,’ Kellie said. Turning to the hovering Bruce, she asked, ‘Do you have a first-aid kit here, Bruce? My doctor’s bag is back at the cottage. And I’ll need the number of the flying doctor service. I left the card Dr McNaught gave me with all the contact numbers on it back at the cottage.’

Once the call had been made Julie asked to be taken to her house to see her kids and organise things before the flying doctor arrived.

‘I’ll take you,’ Bluey offered as he came to where they were gathered.

‘Yeah, right,’ Julie said with a look of disdain. ‘You’re exactly what I need right now, a broken-armed drunk to come to my rescue in a beat-up hulk of a car.’

Bluey looked affronted. ‘I’m no drunk, Jules. I’ve only had two light stubbies. Sure, there’s a spot of rust or two in the old Holden, but I can drive it with one arm tied behind my back …’ he grinned and added, ‘or my front.’

‘What’s going on?’ Matt’s voice sounded deep and controlled as he came in, carrying a doctor’s bag in one hand.

‘Julie has a lacerated flexor tendon and I’ve organised transport to Brisbane with the flying doctor service,’ Kellie informed him. ‘I called them and they’re only half an hour away on another trip from the station out at Gunnawanda Gully.’

Matt took Kellie aside and, looking down at her seriously asked, ‘I notice you have blood on your hands,’ he said. ‘Do you realise you should be wearing gloves? You could put yourself at risk of infection.’

Kellie felt a little tremor of unease pass through her. ‘I didn’t have my doctor’s bag with me,’ she said. ‘I simply responded to a call for help and acted accordingly.’

‘There’s no point putting yourself at risk,’ he admonished her. ‘Once you had established it wasn’t a life-threatening injury you should have taken universal precautions. You should have called me and met me at the clinic where we could have explored the wound, gloved up at the very least.’

‘I realise that but—’

‘Furthermore, if it turns out Mrs Smithton doesn’t have a tendon injury, you would have wasted thousands of dollars of community money, getting an air ambulance out here for nothing.’

Kellie was incensed. She knew a tendon injury when she saw one—her brother Seb had severed his during an ice-hockey match when he’d been sixteen—so she considered herself somewhat of an expert on that particular injury.

‘Not only that …’ Matt was still dressing her down like a junior colleague. ‘You are not officially on duty until next week.’

‘I don’t see why that should make any—’

Matt ignored her to turn back to the group surrounding Julie. He opened his bag and, putting on some surgical gloves, gently inspected the wound. ‘What about if I call Ruth Williams?’ he asked Julie. ‘She’ll be happy to help you out with the boys.’

‘I called her a few minutes ago,’ Bruce piped up. ‘She’s gone to the house to get some things together for Julie for the hospital. She said she’ll meet you at the airstrip.’

‘Good,’ Matt said, and stripped off his gloves. ‘You’ll be OK, Julie. It’s a bit of bad luck but it could have been a lot worse.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Julie said with a despondent set to her features. ‘I won’t be able to work for a couple of weeks and I need the money right now.’

Matt put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. ‘The boys will be fine, Julie. Ruth will love being with them, don’t worry. I’ll keep my eye on things as well, OK?’

Julie gave him a grateful look. ‘The new doctor’s nice, isn’t she?’ she said. ‘Very pretty too, don’t you think?’

Matt concentrated on zipping up his doctor’s bag. ‘I hadn’t really noticed.’

Kellie felt that all too familiar ache of inadequacy as she overheard the exchange. Maybe she should do something about her hair, she thought, tucking a wayward strand behind one ear. A few highlights, maybe even a trim, or even a new style would give her ego a much-needed boost. Not that she’d noticed a hairdresser’s anywhere in town. Culwulla Creek was hardly the place to prepare for a Miss Universe line-up, Kellie realised, but a girl—even a girl living in the dry dusty outback—needed a lift now and again, didn’t she?

‘I think she’s just what this town needs,’ Julie said. ‘Tim and Claire will be delighted to know they chose exactly the right person to fill the position.’

‘The flying doctor’s just landed,’ Bluey announced as he popped his head around the door. ‘Do you want me to come with you and hold your hand, Jules?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got nothing planned for the next few days.’

Julie gave him another scornful look. ‘That’d be the blind leading the blind, wouldn’t it?’

Bluey grinned boyishly. ‘You break me up, Jules.’

Kellie looked at Matt, who was smiling at the exchange. It wasn’t a broad smile by any stretch of the imagination but it was enough to make his dark blue eyes crinkle up at the corners and his normally rigid mouth relax. Kellie couldn’t help thinking how sensual it looked without its tightened contours.

He turned and caught her staring at him and his smile instantly faded. ‘Is there something wrong, Dr Thorne?’ he asked.

Kellie met his gaze. ‘No,’ she said, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed under his frowning scrutiny.

He held her look for a tense moment. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I have a patient to see to. I’ll let you get back to your socialising.’

Kellie couldn’t help thinking there was a hint of criticism in his tone. He made it sound as if she had nothing better to do than sit around and drink cocktails with the locals while he got on with the job of being the only reliable, hard-working doctor in town. ‘I’d like to come with you to the airstrip,’ she said with a little jut of her chin. ‘I need to learn the ropes and now is as good a time as any.’

He looked as if he was about to disagree, but perhaps because of the assembled group nearby he appeared to change his mind. ‘All right,’ he said, letting out a sigh that sounded like something between irritation and resignation. ‘Follow me.’