Women and War (18 page)

‘We'll have to send down to the blood bank at the civil hospital,' Kate suggested.

‘No good. I believe it's been hit.' He finished drying his hands and tossed the paper towel into the bin. ‘I'll go with her to theatre. Can you hold the fort here?'

‘Yes, of course.' Kate Harris was every inch the efficient AANS sister. As two orderlies wheeled Alys out of the cubicle she shook her head. ‘That is going to be touch and go. Thank goodness I noticed the bracelet, though. If she had been given the wrong blood …'

Tara said nothing. Ever since the bracelet had been identified she had been listening intently; now she mentally completed Kate's sentence for her. A transfusion of the wrong blood would have killed Alys.

Tara knew all about rare blood groups. It was a subject she preferred not to think about. But Donald Mackintosh – Mac the Knife as Maggie had called him – had explained it to her once in what she had found sickening detail.

‘Will they be able to get her some?' she asked.

Kate crumpled a used paper sheet with more than usual force.

‘I hope so. She certainly needs it – more than one unit I should say. But you heard what Captain Allingham said – the blood bank at the Civil Hospital has been hit. The best thing would be to find a donor. But there aren't that many people walking about with AB rhesus negative blood in their veins. Marvellous, isn't it? All the work the Red Cross do with blood, and when she needs some herself …'

‘I am,' Tara said in a small voice.

‘I have a feeling you can use the O or B negative groupings in an emergency,' Kate continued, then stopped abruptly. ‘
What
did you say?'

Tara was shaking. Blood – she hated it. And injections terrified her. Now the thought of feeling a needle go deep into her vein and seeing the warm scarlet tide flow from her own body into a clinical bottle made her feel physically sick with fear and loathing. If it had been anyone else in need Tara honestly believed she would have remained silent and learned to live with her conscience. But she felt a strange inexplicable kinship with Alys Peterson. In a shared half hour's drive something had grown up between them and Tara knew that to give way now to her own fear would be to betray not only Alys but also herself.

‘I am AB rhesus negative,' she said more loudly.

Kate's face registered surprise and disbelief mingled with relief.

‘You are? Are you sure?'

Tara nodded.

‘Well, that is the most incredible coincidence! Listen, go straight over to the operating theatre – it's in the next block – and tell them there … no, wait.' She cast a quick look around the newly tidied treatment room. ‘I'll come with you and show you the way.' She smiled at Tara. ‘You know you might just be able to save Alys Peterson's life.'

‘Yes, I suppose I might,' Tara said faintly.

It was a thought to keep hold of.

Captain Richard Allingham bent over the basin and splashed water lavishly onto his face. The water was tepid – nothing in Darwin was ever cold unless it had come directly from the ice-works – but against his taut skin and eyes that burned with tiredness it felt refreshingly cool. He reached for a towel blindly and felt it rasp over the stubble on his chin.

How long was it since he had shaved? Two days? Three? He had lost count. Since the raids, day and night had merged for he had worked around the clock patching up burned and broken bodies and snatching only a few hours' sleep where and when he could. In all that time he had not been out of his clothes except to change from perspiration-soaked into fresh, nor sat down to eat a proper meal. His body ached from napping in awkward positions when weariness had completely overcome him and his brain felt as fugged and feverish as if he had been a patient suffering from sleeping sickness or malaria.

Perhaps today would see an easing of the situation, he thought, snatching at the prospect with more desperation than hope. The hospital ship
Manunda
had been in the harbour at the time of the raid and although she had been hit by two bombs one of which had killed a nursing sister and eleven others she was still seaworthy. It was intended to move her to the safety of Fremantle and some of the patients of 138 AGH were to be evacuated with her. At present it was barely possible to walk through a ward without climbing over the mattresses laid end to end on the floor to accommodate those patients for whom there were no beds and the pressure on the nursing staff had been unbelievable.

It had been inevitable, of course. Besides the casualties who had been brought in during the aftermath of the raid there were the patients evacuated from the other hospitals more in the firing line than 138. They had arrived together with the medical staff in a convoy of ambulances and staff cars on the night of the raid and somehow 138 had stretched to accommodate them. There had been no choice and Richard accepted that fact without the slightest hint of resentment. This was war and in wartime one was not allowed the luxury of adhering to normal standards.

That did not stop him from pondering ruefully how very different it was to the way he had expected his carefully planned career to progress. He had thought he had almost done with the bone-racking tiredness of seventy and eighty hour weeks as he approached the end of his apprenticeship as a resident at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, done with being dragged from bed after only a few hours' sleep to pronounce on a patient who had taken a turn for the worse, done with being a small and helpless cog in a machine that ran relentlessly on the same power that had propelled it for generations. He had looked hopefully towards a future when he would be able to enjoy his chosen profession – enjoy it as opposed to surviving it – and use the skills he had learned and inherited without being so damned tired that he lived in terror of making some ghastly mistake.

The war had changed all that and dreams and ideals had been placed in cold storage. War meant doing what had to be done and doing it to the best of one's ability, whether it was in Tobruk or Darwin. War meant carrying on, knowing that even a tired and inadequate doctor was better than no doctor at all, trying to put the failures out of one's mind and barely pausing to savour the triumphs.

But triumphs there were, nonetheless. Triumphs such as saving the life of Alys Peterson.

Drying his face on the rough cotton towel Richard thought of her and her desperate condition when she had been brought in with her life's blood pumping out of a gaping wound in her stomach. The sight had shocked him – he had seen plenty of men with wounds as bad and worse during his time in Tobruk, and had dealt automatically and almost without emotion with the other casualties of that dreadful day in Darwin – yet none of it had prepared him for the rush of anger he had experienced when he saw the young Red Cross girl on the stretcher, red-gold hair in glorious disarray framing her deathly white face, uniform skirt in blood-soaked tatters. She had been almost awash in her own blood in spite of the attempts of the orderlies to stop the flow, her legs stained with red streaks, her motionless hands caked with it. At first glance he had thought she was past help, yet somehow his own skill and the skill of Bob Parks, the surgeon, had been able to save her and this had started a glow of pride and satisfaction that played warm fire on the cold remote place inside him which had begun with professionalism and been frozen to numbness by the death and destruction he had witnessed.

Not that they alone could take credit for saving her, of course. Their skill would have been useless without the transfusions of lifegiving blood. Thinking of it now Richard shook his head, marvelling at the twist of fate that had put another young woman with the same rare blood in the hospital – and not only in the hospital, but right on the spot so that she was able to volunteer her blood without delay. The hand of God, his mother would call it, but Richard, a confirmed agnostic, preferred to think of it as one of those strange coincidences that happen from time to time. Yes, Alys could certainly thank Tara Kelly for her life. She had done all that anyone could ask of her and more, insisting that she should give a second unit as soon as it was safe for her to do so. Under any other circumstances Richard would never have allowed it. Taking two units in so short a time, especially from a slim young girl, was not something to be done lightly. But these were not ordinary circumstances. Tara might be weak and woozy as a result of the transfusions, but she was in good health and it would not kill her, whereas Alys … Without Tara's blood and the subsequent top ups from other compatible donors she would certainly have died. As it was she now stood a good chance of recovery.

Richard tossed the towel down and went outside. The rain had not yet started for the day but underfoot the earth was still a cake of red mud and beneath the coconut palms at the edge of the drive the bougainvillaea and hibiscus ran riot. Midway across the drive stood an ancient baobab tree which no one had had the heart to cut down when the ground had been cleared for the hospital to be built; as he passed it Richard glanced up at the sky between the branches that fanned out from the huge gnarled split-parsnip shaped trunk, estimating how long it would be before the downpour began once more. If it were possible to get the stretcher cases out and on their way to the
Manunda
whilst it was still dry then so much the better. His boots squelched in the soft earth and he smiled wryly remembering the strict hospital regimes he had been raised to. His father was one of the most eminent surgeons in Australia – what would he think if he could see the conditions under which the sick and wounded were cared for?

A room had been made available for Alys Peterson and Tara Kelly in the administration block – the two wards had been needed for the dozens of male patients. Richard entered the block, returning the greeting of the two clerks in the outer office. As he walked along the corridor a storeroom door opened and Tara Kelly backed out, a jam jar containing a bunch of wild flowers held carefully between her uplifted hands. She turned and saw him, her face brightening.

‘Oh, good morning!'

‘Morning, Tara. What have you got there?'

A faint pink flush tinged her cheeks. Good, he thought, she still has enough blood left in her to blush.

‘I picked a few flowers to brighten up the room. It's so bare in there, so it is! But Sister wouldn't allow them to stay there overnight. Something about the oxygen, she said.'

He smiled, a half-ironic smile with the irony directed at himself. Perhaps not quite all the conventional hospital standards had gone by the board. Trust the sisters to keep up discipline. It had been the same in Egypt. They had tried to run their wards in the ways they had been trained to, as well as making their quarters as homely as possible. Tobruk had not been the same after they had been pulled out.

‘How are you feeling this morning?' he asked. She pulled a mischievous face. ‘A little bit as if I'd had too many nights on the town.'

‘Tired?'

‘Uh huh. But I'm fine really, considering. It takes more than the loss of a couple of pints of blood to grind down an Irishwoman.'

‘I can see that.' But he was remembering the fear in her eyes when he had taken the first unit from her – fear that she had been determined to hide – and the stubborn determination with which she had insisted she stay around in case more of her blood was needed to save Alys' life. One thing Tara Kelly did not lack was courage – and her pride was equally fierce.

‘And how is Alys?' His tone softened almost imperceptibly but she heard it and the dimples in her cheeks tucked and hardened.

‘Oh sure, you'll have to see that for yourself. You're the doctor.'

‘True.' He lengthened his stride.

‘Oh, it's all right, don't worry. She's still alive,' she said drily.

The two beds had been squashed into the small room at right angles; the one in which Alys lay was beneath the window. The bright sunlight flooding in was harsh on her pale skin but illuminated her hair, fanned out on the pillow so that it gleamed like burnished copper. She had turned her head away from the window to escape the glare of the sun; now as she heard the footsteps and voices she opened her eyes and smiled. The tiny movements appeared to cost her tremendous effort and Richard was aware of a twinge of alarm, sharper than he would have expected in the line of duty.

‘How are you doing?' he asked.

‘I'm fine.' But her tired voice belied it.

‘Hmm.'

‘I am! At least I'm alive – thanks to you and Tara.'

‘To Tara mainly.'

‘Sure I didn't do anything much,' Tara said almost irritably. ‘Look, here are your flowers. I suppose that witch of a sister won't make me take them away again now it's morning – though how flowers can do you anything but good at
any
time I can't imagine.' She turned to Richard. ‘I suppose you want me to go now so that you can examine her.'

‘No, you can stay and help me. That will save me having to call a nurse over. Now, let's have a look at you, Alys.'

He crossed to the bed, checking the record chart then lifting Alys' hand which lay inert on the coverlet. The skin looked pale and transparent with veins and sinews clearly visible, and her nails, devoid of varnish, appeared quite colourless. He took her wrist between his fingers feeling for the pulse. Still faintly irregular and not as strong as he would have liked. Then he pulled back the covers, gently eased off the dressing and examined the wound to her abdomen. It was deep and angry though not as large as the first sight of her had led him to believe. She had left her ambulance to take cover under a clump of gums when the Japs had come – just as well for the ambulance had been hit. A piece of jagged metal had caught her and was responsible for her wound. Carefully he probed it. It should be all right now – provided it healed. The trouble was that in this steamy heat things did not heal, or if they did they took a very long time about it. Unfortunately, it was all too easy for wounds to putrify. He thought of the hospital ship sailing tonight for the south. She would have a better chance of recovery there – if she could stand the journey. He stood deep in thought, his handsome face furrowed with concentration and haggard with tiredness. Then he bent his long back to sit on the edge of the bed.