'She said angina. I think now … cardiac arrest. No pulse.'
Jake was on the other side of the bed, like her, searching for a pulse, then hauling pillows away, lying her flat, checking her airway.
'Breathe for her,' Jake snapped, and took the neckline of Doreen's flannelette nightgown and ripped it to the waist. His big hands rested on Doreen's chest for a moment, steadied, then moved rhythmically into cardiac massage. 'Breathe,' he snapped at her again. 'Tip her head back, hold her nose and fill her lungs with your breath. Twice. Then I pump. Come on, Tori … '
She needed no third bidding. She breathed while Jake took a short break from chest compressions. Fifteen pumps per minute, down, down, down, while Tori breathed and prayed and breathed and prayed and breathed and prayed.
They needed an ambulance, defibrillator, oxygen, adrenaline, but there was no time, no space, to call for help. If they didn't get Doreen back now, no amount of equipment or expertise would help her.
No more deaths. Please, no. Not Doreen.
Breathe and pray. Breathe and pray.
'Don't panic,' Jake said softly and he must have sensed rather than felt her surge of despair. 'Steady, Tori, slow and steady, don't stop breathing until you've seen her chest rise.' He wasn't altering his rhythm. Down, down, down, over and over, over and over.
How long now? Please, please …
'Early days,' Jake said. 'Two minutes, no longer. Big breaths, Tori, deeper, I'm going harder.'
He did, and she heard the unmistakable sound of a rib cracking. She winced but kept on breathing, kept on breathing. Another crack. And then …
A ragged, heaving gasp, so harsh it caught them both by surprise. Doreen's whole body shuddered. Tori drew back a little, hardly believing, but Doreen dragged in another breath and then another.
Life.
Jake was hauling her onto her side, clearing her mouth again, supporting her, making sure she didn't gag, choke, while Tori sat back on her heels and stared and felt sick to the stomach. And then suddenly … not sick.
She could hear Doreen breathe.
Itsy bitsy spider, climbed up the waterspout …
Where had that come from? It was weird little song, a child's tune from her past, and suddenly as she watched Jake work, as she waited to see that she was no longer needed, that she was free to go for help, the song was in her head. Her mother had taught it to her. She remembered sitting on her mother's bed singing it. And then after her mother's funeral, she remembered her father bringing home two puppies, one for her and one for Micki.
'I'm calling him Itsy,' she'd told her father, and Micki had called her puppy Bitsy. She thought suddenly, crazily and totally inappropriately, if Doreen lived, then she wanted another dog and she wanted to call him Itsy. It was part of her prayer.
Doreen's breathing was steadying. Tori was grinning like a fool, and Jake's smile was almost as wide as hers.
But he wasn't relaxing yet. His smile was there but it was intent, and his attention was totally fixed on Doreen. He was moving on, she thought, totally concentrated on medical need. She, however, could back away a little. With Doreen's breathing settling they could risk Tori leaving for a moment.
'Call the ambulance,' Jake said. 'You have mobile cardiac units here?'
'MICAs, yes. Mobile intensive-care ambulances.'
'That's what I want and I want them here yesterday. Then wake Rob. I want the first-aid kit he keeps. We have oxygen. Move, Tori.
She moved. She might be a vet and not a doctor but she didn't have to be a doctor to know the situation was still grave. Something had stopped the flow of blood to Doreen's heart, and that something was still not resolved.
'See if Rob has dissolvable aspirin,' Jake snapped, and then as Doreen's eyes widened, focused, his tone changed. He sat down on the bed beside her and he took her hand in his.
'Hey, Doreen, you've given us all one hell of a fright,' he told her, as Tori headed for the door. 'You passed out on us. I'm supposed to be an anaesthetist, not a cardiologist. And I'm not supposed to practise medicine in Australia. Are you trying to get me into trouble?'
He was wonderful, Tori thought dreamily. She fled.
When the ambulance arrived it came complete with its own paramedical team. They moved swiftly and efficiently, and Tori and the now wide-awake Rob were no longer needed. And Doreen still wouldn't let them wake Glenda.
'She hasn't slept for weeks,' she whispered. 'I checked on her before I went to bed and she was sleeping like a baby. Please don't wake her. I don't need anyone to go with me.'
'I'll go with you,' Tori said.
'I don't need anyone.'
'Of course you do.' Tori smiled down at her, the events of the night making her feel spacey and happy and floaty. Nothing would happen now. Jake had saved Doreen. And somehow … somehow it felt as if Jake had saved her. The leaden weight that had hung around her heart for six long months had lifted.
She glanced down as something brushed against her leg and it was Rusty, but he wasn't brushing against her. He was simply positioning himself so he could press more closely against Jake.
You and me both, she thought mistily, and then Doreen's hand reached out and took Jake's and she thought, You and me, three?
'Could you come with me?' Doreen whispered to Jake, and the force she'd used to forbid them to wake Glenda was gone. She sounded frail again, and frightened. 'You're Old Doc's son.'
'I'm-'
'That's a really good idea,' Rob said, sounding relieved. 'It'd be great if she had a doctor go with her.' In case she arrests again. It was unspoken but definitely implied.
And for reasons of her own, Doreen agreed. 'Old Doc's son,' Doreen whispered. 'Combadeen has its doctor back.' Her hold on Jake tightened. 'It's so good to have you home.'
Who could sleep after that? The ambulance left, with Doreen and Jake aboard. Despite Rob's protestations Tori sat on the verandah and watched the dawn. Rusty was watching the road again, but things had changed. Who he was watching for had changed.
'There's no use changing your allegiance in that direction,' she told him. 'But as a transitional tool he's very useful.'
The only problem was, Jake didn't seem like a transitional tool. He felt permanent.
But, of course, he wasn't.
When she'd run into him tonight he'd been shocked to the core, thrown out of kilter by what he'd heard about his father. He had a lot of thinking ahead of him.
She'd seen his face as he'd followed Doreen to the ambulance. There was no choice in what he had to do. He'd care for the old lady, he'd do his best, but he was thrown.
What had Doreen said? He'd come home.
He was a long way from home.
She was sitting outside Glenda's bedroom. The French windows were open, and when finally she heard her stir she went in to tell her what had happened. To her surprise Glenda seemed almost relieved.
'I knew something was wrong. I've been so worried, but all she'd do was worry about me. I had to pull her out of the fire. I was sure she'd collapsed and it wasn't from the smoke but everyone was so busy … They just treated the burns.' She sat up in bed and nursed her bad wrist and she looked almost happy. 'And Old Doc's son is with her. Jake. Jake's home. I'm sure she'll be fine.'
She had breakfast, refusing to be worried, her faith in Jake absolute. When Rob offered to take her to the hospital, to relieve Jake, to bring him home, she accepted with pleasure.
They left-and finally Tori went back to bed.
Jake's home?
It didn't make any sense at all, but it kept playing, and she slept with it in her head.
Jake's home.
It was midday before Jake drove Rob's car back to the lodge.
Doreen had been transferred to the large teaching hospital in the city-without Glenda accompanying her. Stubborn and Independent R Us, described the two sisters, Jake thought wryly. They worried about each other and not themselves. Thus, 'You stay here and get that hand seen to,' Doreen ordered Glenda as she was wheeled away to the waiting ambulance on her way to get a cardiac stent.
Rob offered to stay on with Glenda. He had things to do in town and was happy to wait, if Jake came back later in the afternoon to pick them both up. That should have left Jake free to return to the lodge, but the Combadeen hospital was short-staffed, and once she'd heard the story of Glenda's hand, once Glenda told her what Jake did for a living, the local doctor grabbed him and held.
'If you're an anaesthetist I'd like some solid advice,' she said, so firmly he had nowhere to go. 'I can't get Glenda into see a specialist before the end of the month, yet I can't have her in this level of pain until then. If she'd told me … '
It seemed she hadn't. Discharged from hospital, Glenda had made perfunctory follow-up visits to the city outpatients and then had simply ceased complaining.
'Neuropathic pain's horrible,' Dr. Susie Fulton said gently to Glenda, still fixing Jake with a gimlet eye. He wasn't escaping on her watch. 'But anaesthetists are better at diagnosing it than family doctors. So can you bear Dr. Hunter examining you fully, so he can tell us what he thinks is going on? That way I can care for you until we get you some specialist help.'