The Australian's Proposal. Alison Roberts

have you know, Sister Winship, I’m known as One-Go McGregor,’ Hamish said huffily, taking the tourniquet Kate passed him and winding it around Jack’s upper arm, hoping to raise a vein in the back of his hand or his wrist.

      The needle slipped in. ‘See, told you!’ Hamish turned triumphantly to Jack. ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t bet?’

      Kate had tubing and a bag of fluid ready, and she turned her light onto the cliff-face behind their patient in search of small ledges where they could place the bags.

      They changed places, Kate starting the fluid flowing into Jack’s vein, then setting the bag so it would continue to gravity feed through the tube. And all the time she talked to him—not about how he’d come to have a bullet in his leg, but about what she was doing, and how it would help.

      ‘Once Hamish has you hooked up on that side, we can start pain relief and antibiotics. It’s the infection from your wound that’s making you feel so lousy.’

      ‘Actually,’ Hamish said mildly, ‘getting shot in the first place would make me feel pretty lousy.’

      Jack gave a snort of laughter, and relief flowed through Kate. Surely if he could laugh he’d be OK. But he was very weak and the wound, now she could see it, was a mess. A deeply scored indentation running from halfway down his thigh towards his hip, then disappearing into a puckered, blue-rimmed hole. Dried blood on the bandages suggested it had bled freely—but not freely enough to keep infection at bay.

      Hamish set the second bag of fluid on the ledge behind Jack, then probed through the contents of the backpack.

      ‘I’ll get some antibiotics into you with that fluid, then I want to check your distal pulses and test sensation in your foot and lower leg. Kate, would you watch for renewed bleeding from the wound? We know you’ve been lucky, Jack, in that the bullet didn’t go into your femoral artery. And how do we know that?’

      Hamish had found what he wanted—a small bag of fluid Kate recognised as IV antibiotic medication diluted with saline. He spiked it with an IV administration set, connected it to a second port in the IV line he had running, then placed the small bag on the ledge so the drug could be administered simultaneously with the fluid.

      ‘Because you’d have bled to death by now—that’s how we know the bullet didn’t hit your artery,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But it might have damaged a nerve, which is why I’m going to prick your foot, or the velocity of the bullet might have chipped a bone and sent that as a secondary missile to squeeze against the artery, which is why I’m going to check to see if blood is still flowing in your foot.’

      Kate watched Jack’s face and saw that Hamish’s matter-of-fact approach was just what the young man needed. In fact, he was interested enough to ask, ‘Why does Kate have to watch for bleeding?’

      ‘Good question! Go to the top of the class.’ Hamish smiled at him. ‘Kate has to watch because you’ll have damaged some blood vessels, but smaller veins and capillaries have the ability to close themselves off if that happens. Problem is, once we build up your fluid levels, they might get all excited and open up again—bleeding all over the place.’

      ‘Ouch!’

      Jack jerked his leg, and the bleeding Kate was watching for began right on cue.

      ‘Well, you’ve feeling in your toes and a weak but palpable pulse in your ankle, so I’d say you’ve been a very lucky young man. Unfortunately, that luck’s about to change. I need to clean up that wound and, although I’ll anaesthetise the area around it with a local, it won’t be comfortable. Kate, how about you shift over to Jack’s other side and talk to him while I work? Can you talk and pass instruments and dressings?’

      Kate stared at the man who was taking this situation so calmly, chatting away to Jack as if they were sharing space on a city bus, not a cave at the bottom of a gorge at nightfall, while someone with a gun lurked somewhere in the darkness.

      ‘Well?’

      Hamish smiled at her and she shook her head, then realised he might think she was answering his question.

      ‘Of course I can talk and pass things,’ she said, immediately regretting the assurance when his smile broadened and he threw a conspiratorial wink at Jack.

      ‘I thought so,’ he gloated. ‘Most women can talk and do other things, can’t they, mate?’

      Jack smiled back while Kate glowered at the pair of them. She’d walked right into that one.

      ‘Local anaesthesia is in the green box,’ Hamish continued, ‘and sterile swabs in the white one with the red writing. You might pass me the sharps container and a plastic bag out of that pack as well, so I can put the soiled stuff away as I use it.’

      Kate handed him what he needed, then checked the contents of the pack again, trying to anticipate what Hamish would want next. A scalpel, no doubt, to cut away some of the infected tissue, and more swabs to mop up blood as he got down to clean flesh.

      Sutures? Would he stitch it up or leave it open until they got back to the hospital where further surgery would be necessary?

      She set out what she thought he’d need immediately, placed them on a large flat stone and lifted it across Jack so it was within Hamish’s reach.

      ‘You’re supposed to be talking to me,’ Jack reminded her, but his voice was weaker than it had been earlier. Seeing them had probably prompted a surge in his adrenaline levels which had now waned. Did Hamish want her talking to the young man to distract him, or to keep him awake and stop him slipping into unconsciousness?

      Not that the reason mattered.

      ‘I will,’ she promised, checking his blood pressure, pulse and respirations. He had the mask across his mouth and nose, but was talking easily through it. His breathing was still far too fast, but his pulse, though still tachycardic, was more regular than it had been when she’d automatically felt it earlier. ‘You start. Tell me all about yourself.’

      ‘Not worth talking about,’ he muttered weakly. ‘In fact, I’d have been better off if you hadn’t come.’

      ‘And here I thought you were pleased to see us,’ Kate teased, aware a little self-pity was quite normal in someone so ill.

      ‘Well, I was at first,’ Jack grudgingly admitted, ‘but only because I was feeling so lousy. Really, though, I’d be better off dead.’

      ‘Don’t we all feel that at times?’ Kate sighed.

      ‘I bet you don’t,’ Jack retorted, buying into the argument she’d provoked, although he was so weak. ‘Look at you—pretty, probably well dressed under those overalls, good job. What would someone like you know about how I feel?’

      ‘I would if you told me.’ Kate smiled at him. ‘In fact, you tell me the Jack story and I’ll tell you the Kate story, and I bet I can beat your misery with my misery—hands down.’

      ‘I bet you can’t.’

      ‘I bet I can.’

      ‘Bet you can’t!’

      ‘Can!’

      ‘Children, just get on with it.’

      Hamish’s voice was pained, but Kate heard amusement in it as well. He knew they had to find out Jack’s background, and had guessed this was her way of goading Jack into telling it.

      ‘My family didn’t want me,’ Jack began, anxiety and pain tightening the words so they caused a sympathetic lurch of pain in Kate’s chest. ‘They all live in Sydney and they sent me right up here to work. Can you imagine a family doing that?’

      ‘Not to a nice boy like you,’ Kate told him, taking his hand to offer comfort even while she tried to stir him into further revelations. ‘But mine’s worse. My father died, then my mother, then my brother told me they weren’t my parents at all. They’d just brought me