The Flyer (18 page)

“Keep your eyes on the road, please, Paul. I’d like to get there with my head still firmly attached to my shoulders.”

He refocused his attention on his driving and within a few seconds brought them to a stop directly in front of the office.

Helen rushed inside, leaving her clutch and her nurse behind. Once inside, she yanked her laboratory jacket from its hook in her office and ran to the examination room.

Marla McIntyre lay unconscious on Doc’s old wooden table. Her clothing was soaked through. Her shoes were covered in silt and mud. Droplets of water fell from the ends of her hair to land silently on the hardwood floor.

Mrs. McIntyre hovered over her daughter, rubbing the cold, pale cheeks with the palms of her hands. “Wake up, darling. Mummy needs you to wake,” she cried.

“How long has she been like this?” Helen inquired, advancing to the table as if she prepared to take on a superior enemy.

“You? What are you doing? Get away from her!”

“She needs medical attention. If you can’t stay out of my way, I’ll have you removed.”

“I want Dr. Mallory,” Mrs. McIntyre demanded.

Paul and Nanara came into the exam room.

“What should I do?” Nanara asked.

Mrs. McIntyre gasped. “You cannot allow that black woman to tend my daughter!”

“Paul?” Helen insinuated.

“Come on with me, Mrs. McIntyre. Let the ladies do their work.”

“No! I’m not leaving my daughter with them. You said you were going to find the doctor,” she cried, tears streaming over her cheeks.

Helen knew exactly how she felt. Hopeless to change something that she didn’t like. Having choices made for her when she felt other choices would have been better. Losing the one thing she cared about in all the world.

Still, Helen couldn’t work if Mrs. McIntyre was going to continue her hysterical rant.

Paul escorted her from the room while she continued to sob uncontrollably. “You said you were getting the doctor!”

“I did. She’s a fine doc, Mrs. McIntyre. You’ll see.”

Once they had traveled far enough down the hall that

Helen was reasonably sure they couldn’t overhear anything said in the exam room, Helen spoke her concerns aloud. “She didn’t go swimming. She fell in, either just before or just after she hit her head.” Helen pulled her stethoscope from its wooden box and put the earpieces in place.

“How do you know?”

“She’s wearing her shoes.” Helen listened closely to her patient’s heart for a few seconds. The beat was strong. Releasing a breath she hadn’t known she held until that moment, she instructed Nanara to hold the child up on her side.

The lungs would tell the tale. She closed her eyes and placed the chest piece on Marla’s back. No rattling. Clean, steady breath sounds.

No water in the lungs.

“Is she going to recover?” Nanara asked, gently placing Marla on her back when Helen indicated she’d finished.

“She wasn’t breathing while she was in the water. That’s a good sign, but it all depends on how hard she’s hit her head. Will you take off her wet clothes and wrap her in a blanket while I go speak with her mother?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nanara immediately set herself to the task, the pride of her new position shining through in her smooth, gentle movements.

Paul was in the parlor, sitting next to Mrs. McIntyre while the older woman wept uncontrollably. On her other side, another man, burly and quite tall with a full beard and long, black hair, rubbed her back in a soothing motion.

Mrs. McIntyre loved her child. Of course, that wasn’t so unusual, but for some reason, it struck Helen right between the eyes. To lose a child was the most painful, heart-wrenching, cruel experience anyone could endure. Children were supposed to live forever; they were an immortal extension of the parent, and even though she knew that no one could live forever, it was supposed to seem like forever. So long as the child outlived the parent…

Immortality.

All wrapped up in pink-and-blue ribbons.

“Mrs. McIntyre,” Helen announced. When her voice caught in the back of her throat, she forced a cough. “Mrs. McIntyre?”

Red-rimmed eyes lifted to Helen. “Is she dead?”

“No! Heavens, no. She’s breathing normally, and there’s no water in her lungs. We’ll need to wait until she wakes to assess any real damage. We’ll know more in a few hours. Who pulled her out?”

“I did.” A young boy with the same glowing red hair as the McIntyre girls was standing in front of the upright piano. While his hair had dried to the fiery shade, his clothes were still wet. “Is my sister going to die?”

“Joshua! Didn’t you hear the doctor? Of course, she isn’t going to die,” announced Mr. McIntyre.

“Joshua, can you tell me what happened?” Helen held her hand out to the young man, who slid around the chair as though he was afraid she might bite him. “It’s fine. I won’t hurt you.”

He took her hand, and she led him down the hall where they could speak privately. If what she suspected was true, he might not want to announce it in front of his parents.

“Tell me what happened, please, Joshua. If I know how she was hurt, I’ll be able to help her get well much faster.”

“We were running along the edge of the water, and she fell in.”

“Josh—may I call you Josh?” The boy nodded twice, then fixed his gaze on his folded hands. “Thank you. I think there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

“Wh-what do you mean?” He quickly tossed a glance over his shoulder, paused when something caught his eye, then faced down the hall again.

Helen looked over her shoulder to make sure his parents weren’t listening. His parents weren’t, but Paul had moved into the foyer and was studying her carefully. When she escorted Joshua closer to her office, she could still feel the intensity of Paul’s gaze on her back.

“You won’t be in any trouble,” she continued. “You can tell me everything that happened.”

“We weren’t supposed to play so close to the river. Dad and Mum will blame me if she dies.”

“Why would she die? She got a little wet and hit her head, but I can’t see where that would be life threatening. She only has a little bump. What I can’t figure out is why she won’t wake. Can you help me figure that out?”

“She didn’t fall into the water. She was running like the wind. I could barely keep up with her, then she screamed and fell down.”

“She hit her head on a branch, maybe?”

“No, ma’am. She hit her head after she fell down. Then she slid into the water.”

That would explain the mud in her shoes. Helen frowned. If she hadn’t hit her head, causing her to lose her balance and fall into the river … then what?

“Doc! Come quickly!” Nanara shouted from the exam room.

Helen dropped Josh’s hand and hurried to Marla’s bedside. She was convulsing wildly. Nanara could barely keep her from falling off the table. “Hold her down! Here,” she shouted, placing a tongue depressor in Marla’s mouth and grabbing Nanara’s hand, “put this in her mouth like so. She could very well swallow her tongue if this keeps up for long. Paul! I need you!”

Paul appeared almost at once, as though he’d been waiting right outside the door for her to call him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Hold her down. Keep her as still as you can.”

Helen flew to the medicine cabinet and withdrew a vial of sedative. She quickly filled a shot, tested it, and injected the mixture into Marla’s arm. Within a few seconds, the girl quieted, a soft, mewling sound coming from deep in her throat.

The boy appeared in the doorway. “Doc?”

“Yes?”

“She was snakebit. I saw it hanging on the tree. It didn’t mean to bite her. She ran directly into it, that’s all.”

Paul frowned at young Josh, the concern written in the hard lines by his eyes. “What kind of snake was it, Josh? Was it the brown one I showed you last summer?”

“No sir.”

“What did it look like?”

“It was red, kinda like the rocks at Marble Bar, and it had black stripes.”

Helen looked to Paul for the answer. He lowered his head, placing his elbows on the table. “Death Adder.”

“What?” Helen whispered harshly. “Did you say
Death
Adder?”

“Yeah. Not good,” he whispered back. To Josh, he continued, “How long was she in the water, mate?”

“I jumped right in, pulled her out, and ran for help. It’s been maybe two hours since she was bit.”

“Two bloody hours,” Paul repeated, crossing to the medicine chest. “I hope Doc has some antivenom in his little bag of tricks.”

8

N
anara stripped the blanket from Marla’s too-still little body while Paul read each vial until he found the one he needed.
Equine
—
Redback spider. Equine
—
Brown snake
.

Equine
—
Death Adder
.

“Found it!” he cried, grabbing the vial and handing it Helen.

“So did I,” Nanara announced. “Bite marks, right here on her shoulder. Bloody hell. It’s a miracle she could move at all.”

“I’m not familiar with snakebites, I’m afriad. Is this an intravenous or muscular injection?” Helen’s voice cracked while she reached for a new needle.

But her hands were steady when she prepared a syringe for the antivenom.

“How the bloody hell am I supposed to know?” Paul asked, running a hand through his hair to keep it from shaking. “Is it on the vial?”

“Of course,” Helen huffed. “Stupid mistakes cost lives, Stanwood.”

She looked at the vial and squinted at the tiny print. Her full lips moved silently as she read the information to herself. “Intravenously. Nanara, if you would please combine the contents of this vial with one of the bottles in the cabinet behind you. It’s the clear bottle marked
saline solution.”

“Right away,” she answered.

Helen poked a needle into Marla’s hand and attached a length of tubing so quickly she was finished before Nanara had completed the mixture. When the bottle was ready, Helen attached the tubing to the bottom of the bottle, then hooked it on a tall metal pole beside the exam table. Then she moved to Marla’s other side and examined the bite marks. “No necrosis. That’s good.”

Helen straightened her back and took a deep breath. “That’s all we can do for now.” She glanced at Nanara and then Paul. “We’ll have to wait and see. The next twelve hours will tell.”

“Is there anything else I can do?” Nanara asked, tucking the blanket back into place.

“No. Why don’t you go get some rest? I know it’s early, but it’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid. I may need you later.”

Nanara left, taking the child’s soiled clothing with her.

“Do you want me to speak with her oldies?” Paul asked. “I will, if you’d like me to.”

Her eyes grew wide, and she tucked her lips between her teeth briefly. Helen had just faced performing a medical procedure on a patient who could die if she did it improperly and she hadn’t looked as fearful as she did in that moment. Finally, she rolled her neck and rubbed the top of her shoulder, forcing herself to relax. “No, I’ll do it. I’m the doctor. It’s my job.”

He wished she’d let him do that. Rub the kinks out of her neck when the stress of her occupation got too thick. The feel of her skin beneath his hands had haunted him, day and night, since he’d kissed her. The taste of her lips, the velvety sweetness of her mouth. Everything about her invaded his thoughts and his dreams.

“Doc?” Buddy McIntyre stood in the doorway, his slouch hat held in a white-knuckled grip in both hands. “Can I see my little girl?”

“Of course. I was just on my way out to speak with you and your wife.”

“My older girls are with her and Josh. I’ll just go let them know we can come in now.” He vanished into the dark hallway.

“Wonderful,” Helen mused. “The whole family.”

“Don’t let them push you around. You’re every bit as good as they are.” Paul tried to sound comforting, but it came out more like a defense. He couldn’t help it. She made him want to protect her.

“They don’t like me. They don’t trust me.”

“That’s their problem, too, isn’t it?”

When Helen smiled, he thought his heart might burst. He’d do anything to make her smile.