Marion Lennox - Bushfire Bride

And everything.

The fire threatened for most of the morning, but that was all it did. Threaten. Reports coming into the town were that the line created by backburning was holding. The temperature soared but the wind seemed to rise to a certain velocity and stay. Holding.

Rachel worked through the myriad minor ailments presenting at the clinic. There were so many she had to concede that Hugo had been right in asking her to take over. Asthmatics were having appalling trouble with the smoke, and people who’d never had asthma in their lives had it now. The town’s older residents, their capacity to retain body equilibrium with sweating compromised with age, were in real trouble. Rachel admitted two elderly men to hospital, and Don rang through wanting advice for another in the nursing home.

‘The ash in the air is messing with our air-conditioning,’ he told her. ‘The oldies are suffering enough already and we need to have them fit to evacuate.’

‘You’re planning on evacuating?’

‘Hugo’s down on the beach, setting up a full medical centre in case,’ Don told her. ‘The real problems will be when this wind changes. It’ll strengthen before any change and that’s what Hugo’s most worried about. It’s what we’re all worried about.’

So she should be worried, too. Rachel gave him the advice he needed, replaced the phone and looked out the window. There was nothing to see. The smoke had thickened to the stage where visibility was down to about ten yards.

Toby was settled out in the waiting room, playing with a train set. He seemed perfectly content to be there, watched over by Ruby, Hugo’s receptionist, but within calling distance of Rachel. Unless she was actually examining patients, she left the door open so she could make eye contact. Every now and then he’d look up and make sure she could see him, and then he’d glance over to where the giant suitcase was sitting in a corner.

He had Rachel. He had his precious belongings. Penelope and Digger were out on the veranda, in sight. So… Hugo was out in the wide world but this link made it OK.

For now.

‘Rachel!’ It was a call over the intercom. Rachel had just seen her last patient but the call made her sink back into her seat. Elly, the hospital charge nurse, sounded worried. ‘Rachel, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you come through to the hospital? Fast? There’s a baby fitting. Katy Brady, the baby’s mother, is bringing her in now but she sounds as if she’s unconscious already.’

A fast word of explanation-thankfully, Toby was a doctor’s child and knew what the word emergency meant-and Rachel ran, leaving the dogs and Toby with Ruby. She reached the hospital entrance as a rust bucket of an ancient Ford screeched to a halt in the entrance.

‘It’s Connor Brady and his mother, Katy,’ Elly told her as they hauled open the car door, but there was no time for more. The young mother almost fell out of the driver’s seat.

The baby was slumped over his mother’s knee. Katy was obviously a teenage mum-young to the point where she was scarcely out of childhood herself. She was wearing frayed jeans and a tiny crop top with tattoos peeking out from underneath. Her hair hung in dreadlocks down to her waist.

But it wasn’t Katy that Rachel was looking at.

Connor Brady seemed about six weeks old and he was in dire trouble. The baby had been lying across his mother’s knees and one look told Rachel what the trouble was-and what was the cause of what was happening. She put her hand on the child’s forehead and winced at what she felt. Fever. The baby’s temperature must be over forty.

And he was wrapped-tightly wrapped-in blankets!

‘My baby…’ Katy was sobbing, almost incoherent in fear, but Rachel already had him, hauling away the blankets as she lifted the little one from the car. The baby was limp, his eyes rolling back in his head as if he’d been convulsing for far too long.

‘I need Dr Hugo,’ the girl wailed, but Rachel wasn’t listening. She was doing a fast assessment, looking for tell-tale signs of a meningococcal rash, checking for neck stiffness, searching…

Thankfully there was nothing.

‘Get me scissors,’ she told Elly. Damn, there were buttons and ribbons everywhere and she wanted these clothes off fast. There were no signs of a rash that she could see, and the little one’s neck was moving freely. The likely cause of this was a simple fever combined with heat. ‘Elly, run me a sink full of cool water.’

As the girl stumbled out of the car and reached for the baby. Rachel met her fear head on. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she told her. ‘Katy, I’m pretty sure that your baby’s convulsing because he’s hot. We need to get him cool straight away.’

‘Give him to me.’ The girl was reaching out for her baby in instinctive protest at losing contact, but Rachel was already moving toward the hospital entrance, carrying the baby with her.

‘Come with me,’ she told Katy. ‘Talk to me as I work. How long’s he been like this?’

Her confident tone must have broken through. The girl hiccuped on a sob and then tried to talk.

‘He’s…he’s got a cold. I asked Dr McInnes for antibiotics but he wouldn’t give me any. Then this morning he was so stuffed up and the radio said we might be evacuated so I wrapped him up really well and started packing, but then I came back to his crib and he was…he was all rigid. Then when I picked him up he went sort of limp.’

Rachel had reached the emergency room now. She hadn’t stopped-Katy had stumbled along beside her as she’d taken Connor inside. Now she had him on the examination table and was attacking the crazy layette, peeling it away like an unwanted skin. A really thick skin. Bootees, jacket, nightgown…

The baby’s body was so hot.

‘When you found him, did you put him straight in the car?’ She was turning to the sink where Elly was already running water, but she was still questioning the frightened child by her side. The girl needed comfort but the need to establish a time frame was more urgent than comfort.

‘What?’

‘How long’s he been fitting?’ she asked directly. ‘When did you phone?’

‘I phoned as soon as I saw him. I picked him up and he was really odd and I was so scared I just called.’ The girl hiccuped on a sob.

‘The call came through eight minutes ago,’ Elly told her. ‘I rang you straight away.’

‘How long had you left him in the cot? Could he have been fitting for a while before you found him?’

‘No.’ The girl was trying desperately to focus, sensing it was important. ‘Just for a moment.’ The last of the baby’s clothes fell away to reveal a tiny limp body. ‘Just two minutes at most. I wrapped him and put him down and went to get his carry-cot and then he was like this.’

So he’d been fitting for probably no more than ten minutes. But ten minutes convulsing still meant a risk of brain damage. They had to get him cool.

‘What’s the problem?’

It was Hugo. He’d entered unseen behind them, taking in the scene before him as he strode into the room.

‘Convulsion,’ Rachel said shortly, without turning. She’d lifted the baby to the sink and shoved her elbow in to check the temperature, but Elly knew her stuff. The water had the chill taken off but that was all. It was cool to the touch. Rachel lowered the little one right in, up to his neck. The remains of his clothing and all.

‘Sponge water over his head,’ she told Elly. ‘Hugo, I need diazepam.’

He didn’t question her need. ‘Coming,’ he replied, and disappeared.

‘Come on.’ The baby lay unresponding in her hands.

Please…

It was a silent prayer, said over and over in her years working in Emergency. Sometimes it worked. Let this be one of those times. Please… ‘Come on, Connor.’