BY THE following Wednesday, Rebecca was starting to feel as if she had her bet with the disturbing Dr Jones almost won.
Not that he’d acknowledged there was a bet, of course. He had been impeccably professional with her for the past two and a half days, and she had returned the favour. Harrison Jones had his good points, she had to concede.
She liked the openness of his laugh, and the occasional piquant cynicism of his humour. She’d noted the tin of Viennese chocolate biscuits he had brought in on Tuesday morning for everyone on staff to enjoy with tea or coffee, and liked what that said about his awareness of the importance of creating small islands of friendship and sharing in the busy practice day.
He exuded a casual, relaxed athleticism, too, which shouldn’t have impressed her as she wasn’t particularly sporty and certainly wasn’t fixated on muscular types. But she’d discovered that he swam almost every morning at nearby Maroubra beach, before coming in to work, and there were often strands of dark hair still curling damply at his neck and even the faint, freshly salty smell of the sea clinging to him when his shower afterwards hadn’t been quite thorough enough. Yesterday, she’d had the most idiotic urge to grab a hand towel and finish drying him off properly. And he’d looked so invigorated by his swim that she might have considered taking up the habit, if she hadn’t known she’d encounter him in the water.
But if he was under any illusion that he was gaining her complete trust…
‘Think again, Dr Jones,’ she had muttered yesterday afternoon—just before biting into one of his delectable Viennese biscuits.
And Dad was definitely behaving strangely. He verged on ignoring her most of the time, and Rebecca, who had been prepared to speak to him seriously on the subject of him being over-anxious on her behalf, was now starting to wonder if he had something on his mind. He hadn’t asked her once how she was managing, how she was enjoying the work or whether she’d had any sticky diagnoses thus far.
Over dinner last night she had mentioned Dotty Gillespie.
‘She was concerned about a lump in her breast. She’s been with this practice for years, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, but we don’t see her very often.’ He’d reached for a section of the newspaper and forked in a mouthful of spaghetti.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a cyst and nothing to worry about, but I’ve given her a referral to a specialist.’
‘Which one?’
‘Dr Warner.’
‘Mmm,’ was the brief response. ‘He’s good.’
‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’ An apparently reluctant look upwards from the paper.
‘Nothing.’
She hadn’t been able to articulate the problem then. Still couldn’t. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Things were going fine. She’d done the right thing with Dotty Gillespie. After all, she hadn’t wanted Dad to fuss. And Harry had been very helpful on Monday in giving her a complete run-down on procedures and where things were stored so she couldn’t claim to be working in the dark.
Sitting back in her swivel chair at four-twenty on Wednesday afternoon, she seized on the moment of respite which her very brief previous appointment had given her. Little Margaret Hurst, aged three, had only come in for a follow-up check on her right ear, to make sure that her course of oral antibiotics had fully cleared the infection. It had. The examination of the healthy ears and throat had only taken a few minutes.
She’d been a sweetie of a thing, though, blonde and blue-eyed and bossy, energetically curious about everything in Rebecca’s office and quite happy to talk very earnestly, with her big eyes fixed on Rebecca, about anything that came into her head. It would have been nice to find out more about what went on in that bright little mind, but Rebecca had sensibly chosen to usher Margaret and her mother out in a timely fashion in order to spend a few minutes catching her breath.
Beyond the closed door of her office she heard the activity which was typical in a family practice like this one. The phone rang. The computer printed out an account. A child cried. Harrison’s shoes squeaked on the vinyl tiles as he came past with a patient, talking about the weather. Dad was off this afternoon, as he would be on Wednesdays for the next few weeks.
In total there were now ten people on the staff of the practice, which gave the place a buzz of variety and personal contact. There were the four doctors, who between them held appointment hours between eight-thirty and six, Monday to Friday, with a short break for lunch. Their special interests ranged from sports medicine to obstetrics and asthma, and between them they made regular visits to a local nursing home called Hazel Cleary Lodge. There were four receptionists, Deirdre, Chrissie, Andrea and Bev, all married women in their forties or fifties who worked part time.
A part-time practice nurse, Julie Cummings, came in every morning, but her hours would probably need to increase soon, and a dietitian, Nickie Paulsen, came in on Thursdays to help patients with problems such as cholesterol, weight, diabetes, food allergies and any other medical condition which could restrict or dictate diet.
Most patients in the practice who needed hospitalisation went to nearby Southshore, which was large enough to cater for everything from cancer surgery to acute psychiatric conditions. The practice also had a close relationship with Southshore Health Centre, attached to the hospital, whose director, Dr Gareth Searle, was an old friend of Dad’s.
The health centre had two full-time physiotherapists on the staff so most patients who needed follow-up physio, usually after an initial appointment with Harrison for a muscle, bone or joint problem, were directed there.
The only unknown quantity in the life of the practice at the moment was the large medium-and high-density housing development going up three streets away on several hectares of land that had formerly belonged to the Department of Defence. Some of the new dwellings were occupied already, but the rest of the development was behind schedule.
Since Southshore Health Centre and the practice of Irwin, Gaines, Jones and Irwin were the two medical centres closest to the new housing, the coming increase in local population would swell patient numbers at both places considerably. The only questions were when and by how much.
Dad had already said that Rebecca need not work full time at this stage, and that her workload would build gradually as the patient base increased. She wondered whether she should fill the time with activities, or whether she’d find herself run off her feet in a matter of weeks.
Maybe Dad just wants me at home two days a week to keep the house nice and cook him his meals, she wondered now, smiling at the thought. Hardly surprising if he did, given the standard of his own cooking, and she didn’t resent the possibility.
He didn’t have a housekeeper. His last experience of one two years ago had ended so badly that Rebecca hadn’t urged him to repeat the experiment, despite the resultant scratchy meals and amateurish cleaning by both her father and her brother Simon.
Just thinking about the way Tanya Smith had used him, it made her ache for Dad, and tears pricked behind her eyes. She blinked them angrily away. How could any woman have hurt him like that, so callously, when Mum’s death had already hit him so hard twelve years ago? It still made her fiercely angry to think of it, and renewed her determination to protect her father from anyone else who had ulterior motives in their dealings with him.
Like Harrison Jones? she wondered now.
Hearing him go past again, she noted the confidence of his stride and his deep male laugh. Did he want more from this practice than he was admitting to? Like complete control, perhaps. There were people like that in all walks of life, people who sought power purely for the sake of it.
On Monday night, Harry and Dad had stopped to eat out together on their way home. Dad hadn’t got in until after ten. A friendly meal? Or a business meeting?
If it had been the latter, neither Grace nor Rebecca had been invited. Grace didn’t seem to mind, and it had certainly had the air of an impromptu arrangement. But, then, Grace, who was nearly six months pregnant with her first child, was more eager to get home to her obstetrician husband than to extend her working hours with meetings over dinner.
‘I’m not going to sit in here getting paranoid and angry!’ Rebecca concluded sensibly aloud. ‘I don’t normally react like this. It’s just because Harry Jones…rubs me up the wrong way.’ Somehow that last phrase was very unsatisfactory. It didn’t encompass the complexity of her feelings about the man at all.
In any case, it was four-thirty, and time to see her next patient, whom she encountered in the waiting room with Harry. The two of them were engaged in a shameless flirtation.
‘I know you must be very disappointed that I didn’t want to see you today, Dr Jones.’
‘Well, yes, I think you’ve actually broken my heart completely this time, after bruising it so badly a month ago when you told me you’d always preferred red-headed men.’
‘Perhaps I was just trying to make you jealous…’
‘Well, it worked, Irene, it worked.’
His grin was irresistible, and Rebecca’s patient had clearly fallen completely under its spell. She was gurgling with laughter and patting her beautifully coiffed hair with a coy gesture.
‘Mrs MacInerney?’ Rebecca cut in crisply. Really, Harrison Jones had no business attempting to entrance and captivate every female who crossed his path. It was highly inappropriate! The fact that Irene MacInerney was ninety-six years old was no excuse!
‘Oh, yes, I’m ready.’ A little flustered, she picked up her bag and tapped along the corridor on thin yet steady legs.
Living right next door to the practice, she had been coming here for years and was remarkable for her age. Although she did have a range of medical problems associated with her advanced years—fragile, paper-thin skin, recurrent bronchitis and slightly lowered blood pressure—Rebecca knew she’d probably come in today ‘for a check-up’ mainly to meet the new doctor on staff.
‘What a treasure!’ Harry was saying, half under his breath. He was grinning after the small, white-haired figure with a beam of a smile as if he really was half in love with her.
‘Do you think you should flirt with patients like that?’ Rebecca couldn’t help challenging him.
‘I don’t flirt with patients,’ he shot back. ‘I flirt with her. And she always starts it!’
‘Hmm!’
‘And admit it, Rebecca, she’s amazing, isn’t she?’
‘Well, yes, she is. Absolutely.’
‘So there you go!’ He turned to call his next patient, leaving Rebecca with heightened colour in her cheeks and feeling as if she’d lost points in a game she shouldn’t have started in the first place. Chagrined, she followed Mrs MacInerney down the corridor. The ninety-six-year-old came up with a clean bill of health, although a scrape from a fall six weeks ago was still proving slow to heal. At four forty-five, Rebecca was ready for the next name on her list.
John Morrison, a walk-in with no appointment, had the thin folder that betokened a new patient, Rebecca found when she picked it up from the desk at the back of the reception area and called his name. The tall, thin man in his thirties had been pacing the waiting room restlessly, clearly in severe pain, and as he lurched forward she saw why. His right shoulder was dropped back, making his arm hang at a strange angle, and she realised at once that it was dislocated.
‘Can you hurry?’ he groaned, twisting his face. ‘I’m in bloody agony!’
‘I bet!’ she answered heartily. ‘How long ago did it happen?’
‘Must be twenty minutes by now. More! Couldn’t drive. A mate dropped me off.’
He sniffed absently and pinched his nostrils together with his left thumb and forefinger. Then he moaned and swore. ‘Agony!’ he said again.
Under the circumstances, Rebecca didn’t bother with a detailed chat about his medical history. She sat him on the examining table, quickly prepared an intravenous injection of a morphine-based drug, swabbed his skin and pushed the needle home. It took effect within thirty seconds, making him look relaxed and rather wobbly. She positioned herself behind him and said, ‘OK, now, take a deep breath and try to relax.’
‘Very rel—relaxed now, Doctor!’
‘Good. OK, here goes.’
She had manipulated a dislocated shoulder before, in Casualty in Melbourne during her internship, but the procedure wasn’t always easy and she was holding her own breath even as he released his. This could be hard work.
But, to her relief, the shoulder slipped back with butter-like ease straight away, and she was pleased that she had the technique down so well.
‘There!’ she said.
‘Thanks…’
‘Anything else bothering you?’ He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave but, of course, the drug had slowed him down. He wasn’t the type of man to create a good first impression. He needed a shave…and his clothes were rather too dirty to give credence to the idea that his jaw was merely sporting eighties-style designer stubble.
He hesitated, before answering her question, and his look seemed speculative. ‘No, nothing else,’ he answered finally.
‘How did it happen, by the way?’
‘What? The shoulder? Oh, I…work on a building site.’
‘The new housing development?’
‘Housing development, yes, that’s the one,’ he said vaguely. ‘You know, unloading…piles of girders and all that? It just went out.’
He gave a spaced out smile and slid down off the examining table to walk to the door. She picked up his file and followed him down the corridor, about to suggest that he sit in the waiting room for a while until he was feeling less wobbly, but he wasn’t waiting. As he slammed the waiting-room door behind him and hurried away down the front steps and along the street towards the beach, his gait weaving, the truth hit her like a bucket of cold water.
‘Oh, hell!’ she snarled, leaning one arm on the high counter at the reception desk.
With her nicely manicured hand resting on the phone she’d just put down, Deirdre was looking at the still-rattling slats of the doorblind.
‘I’ve just given a hefty dose of a morphine-based drug to an addict, haven’t I, Deirdre?’ Rebecca said to her heavily.
‘Looks that way, because I’ve just got off the phone with Ros Reynolds at Southshore Health Centre,’ Deirdre answered quietly. She was a trim, efficient worker, and was obviously as frustrated and upset about this as Rebecca. ‘She wanted to warn us that there’s a man going the rounds with a dislocated shoulder. At Southshore he called himself Joe Morrow. If she’d just rung five minutes sooner…’
‘No, I should have seen it, should have taken more time and asked more questions, but that shoulder was dislocated and he was in pain.’
‘It’s amazing, the lengths they’ll go to, isn’t it? Putting his own shoulder out.’ Deirdre shook her neatly coiffed head.
‘He was taking advantage of an old injury, I expect,’ Rebecca answered. ‘And he’s probably done it so many times that it’s no trouble now. It certainly went back in easily enough! Like a well-oiled hinge. I thought I’d done a brilliant job! And then it began to nag at me. It was too easy!’
‘What’s up?’ said Harry casually…or was it casually? He was strolling up to the desk to collect his next file with all the ease of a man taking a springtime walk in the park, but he must have suspected something was up or he wouldn’t have asked, Rebecca concluded.
The waiting-room was filling with the backlog and the late appointments that inevitably built up towards the end of the day. Again, Rebecca felt her colour mounting. By now he must think she spent half her time in a passionate flush! She was enveloped in the unique male scent that he exuded, and had to fight her awareness of it. Did he do this to her deliberately, she wondered illogically, as a way of undermining her control and competence?
But she managed to meet his mildly curious look head-on.
‘I just got conned,’ she said bluntly. No point in trying to pretend.
She told the story briefly, then felt his hand brush her arm. The small, unexpected gesture of support after her instinctive suspicions and her earlier attack on the subject of Mrs MacInerney set the fine hairs of her forearm standing on end and made a tingling connection with nerve-endings in her whole body. She distrusted the intensity of the feeling—more, perhaps, than she distrusted the man himself.
‘Don’t,’ she told him. Surely it had to be deliberate, the way he used his touch and his body to distract her!
His face closed up and his hand dropped. ‘Sorry,’ he said in a wooden tone. ‘But, look, don’t dwell on the man. You did your job. You saw a medical problem that was causing pain, and you fixed it.’
‘I know, but—’
‘You did the right thing under the circumstances. So don’t dwell on it,’ he insisted. It sounded like an accusation.
Forgetting about the incident was easier said than done. Harry had already taken his next file and probably dismissed it completely, but Rebecca couldn’t help feeling that she’d let Dad down, that a more experienced doctor would have assessed the situation more quickly and fobbed Mr Morrison, a.k.a. Morrow, off with a different, non-addictive drug which would not have encouraged a repeat performance.
Now, though, it was possible that word would get around that the Irwin practice was an easy touch or, even worse, that they turned a blind eye. No doctors liked hard-core addicts in their waiting-room. There was the potential for violence and disruption, and even the modest amount of cash that flowed through the receptionists’ cash drawer, between visits to the bank twice a day, might be targeted.
Rebecca knew that she’d slipped up, and it nagged at her like the splinter under a seven-year-old boy’s finger which she removed ten minutes later. She’d have to tell Dad about it, and she wasn’t looking forward to his reaction.
Examining a skater’s swollen ankle in his own office, Harry was still thinking about the addict, too. Or, rather, thinking about Rebecca’s response to the whole incident. He knew she would dwell on it. She’d left him in no doubt of her strong reaction, and he had to admire her for it despite his impatience with her. He was even rather tickled about her attack on his shameless behaviour with Mrs MacInerney.
He couldn’t stand the prevailing fashion in certain circles to be blasé and careless about things that really mattered. He knew too many women of his own age and younger whose response to practically everything was a shrug and a laugh and a bored drawl. Like Phoebe Patterson, whom he’d met at tennis and had gone out with for several months recently, the latest in a long line of women whom he’d sincerely wanted to fall in love with but somehow just couldn’t. Where was the passion in the women he met? He liked passion.
This young skater, Jade, had it.
‘When can I skate again?’ she demanded, while he still had his fingers on her swollen right ankle.
‘Stay off it for four weeks,’ he told her. ‘You’ve torn a ligament, I’m afraid.’
‘Four weeks? But I’ve got to skate! There’s an exhibition at my rink in a couple of months that I have to train for, and I’m going to the Junior Worlds next year!’
‘Stay off the ice for four weeks and you’ll get there, too,’ he told her seriously. ‘If you skate on it now, or even in two weeks, you won’t. I’ll give you some exercises and send you to physio at the health centre, and you should still be able to do most of your office training,’ he promised.
‘But I’ll lose fitness…’
‘A bit,’ he had to agree. ‘Listen, it’s not a serious problem, and if you strengthen the ankle off ice it shouldn’t recur. Do the same exercises on your good ankle as well, so you won’t get the same injury there. This is the foot you land your jumps on, right?’
He touched the bad ankle once more. The foot showed the marks of her stiff leather skating boots in several places. Skaters were like dancers. They suffered for the beauty of what they did.
‘Yeah, and I’m working on triples now. Well, one triple, and I haven’t landed it yet.’ She grinned. ‘But I will!’
Passion. He responded to it. ‘When you come back in four weeks, could you bring me a video of your skating?’ he asked Jade. ‘I’d like to have a look at what you can do.’
‘Really?’ She was tickled.
‘Sure! I have a few careers I’m keeping track of. A dancer who’s aiming for the Australian Ballet. A cyclist who has his eye on the Sydney Olympics. Maybe I’ll see you on television in Salt Lake City in 2002 for the Winter Games.’
Twelve-year-old Jade made a dismissive face. ‘Two thousand and two? Nah! I’ll only be fifteen by then. I’m aiming for 2006…’
Harry threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s great, Jade! I bet you make it, too!’
He had his competition track cyclist, Shane McNeill, coming in this afternoon. Shane’s pregnant wife Lisa would be here, too, but she would see Dr Gaines. In fact, as Jade Staley collected her mother from the waiting room, the McNeills were already seated there.
For the moment, however, Harry was still more interested in Rebecca. Was it the mobility and sparkle in her face which made it so easy for him to read? At the moment, both those attributes were gone, and her stormy, brooding look was accentuated by that wild, wonderful hair of hers, barely contained in its large tortoiseshell clip. Her sea-blue eyes seemed to emit their own light.
‘You’re not following doctor’s orders,’ he murmured to her as they met in the corridor.
‘What doctor’s orders?’ she snapped absently.
‘Mine,’ he pressed. She wasn’t making it easy for him to look after her as Marshall had asked, but he wasn’t a man to give up easily. ‘I told you not to dwell on it.’
She looked up, startled and suspicious. ‘That obvious, is it?’
‘’Fraid so.’
Letting down her guard a little, she sighed. ‘My first mistake here.’
‘It won’t be your last…’
‘Thanks a lot!’ The bristle was back, with bells on.
‘Don’t keep a running tally,’ he advised, staying calm.
‘Why, you’ll do that for me?’ The tone was sweet, but he didn’t miss the bite behind it.
‘Rebecca…’ Frustration!
‘Harry…’ She mimicked his heavy tone, then lifted her chin. ‘Your advice is perfectly sound, I admit.’
‘Wow! That’s a first,’ he muttered.
For once she ignored him and finished, ‘But you’d be more useful if you could find the little switch in my back marked “obsessing” and click it to the off position.’
‘Would it help if I whisked you off to dinner after we finish up?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ she retorted bluntly.
‘Just an idea. No need to snap.’
Harry turned away, and Rebecca could almost have sworn she heard him mutter, ‘Why do I bother?’
She bit her lip, knowing she’d been ungracious. Unwise, too, probably. Strategically, it might be better to disguise the fact that she distrusted his motives.
Grace came through at that moment and added to the growing congestion in the waiting-room. ‘Lisa?’ she said, looking across at Shane McNeill’s wife.
The pregnant woman rose, with her husband following close behind her, then stumbled a little just as she reached Grace so that their bellies bumped.
‘We’d work very nicely as book-ends, wouldn’t we?’ the pregnant doctor joked. ‘Did you know we’re due on the same day, Harry?’
‘Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly! The twenty-fifth!’
‘Makes it look suspiciously unplanned, doesn’t it?’ Lisa laughed. ‘Who’d choose to have a baby anywhere around Christmas?’
But a frown darkened Grace’s features at this. It disappeared so quickly that Harry wasn’t sure the McNeills had even seen it, but it made him wonder if Grace’s baby was quite the unclouded blessing everyone assumed. Often, lately, she hadn’t looked all that happy…
To deflect attention he told Shane McNeill, ‘You’re too early, mate. I’ve got two more patients before you.’
‘Not playing the cyclist at the moment, Dr Jones,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘I’m playing the father-to-be. Lisa says the heartbeat is such a great sound, I’ve got to hear it for myself.’
‘Lisa’s right,’ Harry agreed. ‘OK, then, Shane, I’ll be with you later.’
‘More room now that those two have gone,’ Rebecca said to her next patient, a woman in her thirties who was here for a Pap smear.
Sue Jolly smiled and went through to Rebecca’s office. Rebecca was about to follow when Deirdre put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and said, ‘I’ve got a new patient on the phone. Or her husband, at least. His name is Dinh Tran and his English isn’t very good. He says his wife has a tummy-ache and wants to know if they can come in straight away.’
‘A tummy-ache?’
‘I know. Not very specific, but I expect he doesn’t have the vocabulary for a better description.’
‘Well, yes, tell them to come in, then.’
‘He also mentioned a baby.’
‘A sick baby? Perhaps it’s the baby with the stomach ache.’
‘Could be. I did have a lot of trouble understanding. Do you want me to try and get it straight?’
‘No, don’t worry, just tell them to come in and we’ll sort it out. Could be anything from indigestion to appendicitis.’
‘I’d ring the interpreting service, but I doubt we’d get anyone promptly at this hour.’
‘We’ll sort it out,’ Rebecca repeated, and thought no more about the Trans for the next fifteen minutes until she saw that they’d arrived and were sitting quietly in a corner of the waiting room. Mrs Tran had her head resting rather wanly on her husband’s shoulder, and there was no sign of a baby. Could she be pregnant, perhaps? If so, she wasn’t that far along because there was no obvious bulge from this perspective.
Was her ‘tummy-ache’ some kind of gastric upset? It seemed most likely. Surely if there was any real urgency, the Trans would have gone to the hospital’s Accident and Emergency department. She saw no need to jump them ahead of the queue.
Shane and Lisa McNeill were standing by the desk, both making follow-up appointments. Lisa needed another prenatal check-up in four weeks, obviously, but Rebecca heard Shane say to Deirdre, ‘He wants me back in two weeks to check on the effect of the physio. I can’t believe I’m having another problem!’
He looked worried and unhappy. The knee injury must be significant, then. He was lifting his right leg and massaging the muscles around the knee joint as he waited for Deirdre to bring up the correct screen on the computer. His stocky legs looked like hairy tree trunks.
‘Mr Radovanovic?’ Rebecca called to her next patient.
Half an hour later, at a quarter past six, it was the Trans’ turn at last. The waiting-room was almost empty now. They came forward, still quiet and calm, holding hands, and Rebecca saw that Mrs Tran was pregnant, though not hugely so. Seated in her office a minute later, Rebecca asked Mrs Tran, ‘You’ve got tummy pains?’ as she put her hand across her own stomach, and Mrs Tran nodded.
‘Baby,’ said her husband, nodding as well.
‘Yes, you’ve got the baby,’ Rebecca agreed. ‘Now when is that due? About January?’
‘No,’ Mr Tran frowned. ‘Baby is coming now.’
His English might have been elementary, but he’d stated the case with perfect accuracy, Rebecca found when she quickly threw her preconceived ideas about a mild gastric upset out the window and gave her pregnant patient a lightning-fast internal exam.
Mrs Tran was nearly ten centimetres dilated, and if the ambulance managed to get here before the baby did—
Then I’ll still need a good, stiff drink! she thought, not exactly panicking but definitely envisaging the possibility of doing so. Had Mrs Tran had any prenatal care? Was she more pregnant than she looked, or was this baby going to be dangerously premature? If so, then they certainly didn’t have the facilities for its care here!
‘Just stay on the table, Mrs Tran, please!’ she told the slightly built young woman as she grabbed the phone.
After ordering the ambulance, she called for Deirdre, who had at least been a registered nurse twenty years ago. Julie Cummings, in her twenties and very well trained, only worked mornings at the moment and had gone home hours ago. Deirdre came, rather faster than usual, alerted by something in Rebecca’s tone.
‘The panic, probably,’ Rebecca muttered, then rapidly listed the equipment she would need if delivery became a reality.
Mrs Tran was still lying quietly on the table, though the contour of her belly had changed even in the ten minutes since she’d come from the waiting-room. The baby was well descended into the birth canal, making an odd, shallow and much softer hollow open up in the formerly drum-hard oval of Mrs Tran’s abdomen.
There was no point at this stage in trying to gauge an accurate due date with a measurement of Mrs Tran’s abdominal size, and several more questions to Mr Tran failed to get any information. He just didn’t understand, poor man, and he was starting to look as alarmed as Rebecca felt. Any minute now…
‘Aagh…’ A grunt of sheer hard work, rather than a groan of pain.
‘Mrs Tran, are you starting to push? Can you try and hold back, please?’ Oh, she didn’t understand the words! ‘Pant. Like this.’ Rebecca demonstrated. ‘I can hear the ambulance now…’
Mrs Tran panted obediently for fifteen seconds, then shook her head as another contraction intensified and began her hard work once again, just as the ambulance officers, both older, experienced-looking men, came calmly through the door.
Assessing the situation at a glance, one teased, ‘You’re only just managing to wriggle out of this one, Doctor!’
Rebecca was beyond joking. ‘I don’t know how far along she is. I told them on the phone. Definitely premature, as far as I can tell. And delivery is imminent. Do you need me to—?’ she began, her fists tight.
‘Don’t worry, we have premmie transport gear in the old bus, and we’ve delivered a few babies in our time.’
The two men helped Mrs Tran onto a stretcher as she could no longer walk.
‘Thank goodness! If I’d had to do it here…’
Mr Tran seized her arm. ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ He smiled, and even Mrs Tran managed to nod and smile as well. The contraction had eased, but now the next one was already building and she began to strain again.
‘Don’t thank me…Good luck!’
She just had time to pat both of them on the arm before Mrs Tran was carried off down the corridor. Rebecca followed, trying to keep up, in order to gabble the relevant details of the situation to the ambulance officers as they went. Not that she had many details in her possession! She had no idea, for example, why the Trans had come to this practice. Had Mrs Tran been given any prenatal care at all? Too late to worry about it now. Seconds later, the ambulance had left.
‘What was that all about?’ Harry wanted to know, handing his last patient file of the day to Bev, the second receptionist on this afternoon.
‘I’ll tell you over dinner,’ Rebecca answered Harry weakly.