The Bush Doctor's Challenge. Carol Marinelli

into his office when Abby had ordered a multitude of tests on a patient for the most simple of complaints?

      ‘Try telling that to the rest of the staff.’

      ‘There’s no need to tell them,’ Reece had insisted. ‘No one in this department thinks what happened that night was your fault.’

      If only she could believe him, if only she could believe that the silence that descended every time Abby approached a clique of nurses had more to do with her seniority and less to do with David’s death.

      David.

      A vague attempt at a smile inched across her lips as she tried to imagine David’s take on all this. What David would say if he could see his Abby, the eternal city girl, on her way to three months in the middle of nowhere. But the start of a smile vanished as, once again, cruel realisation hit.

      David was dead.

      ‘So we’re ordering abdominal ultrasounds on each and every abdominal pain now?’ Reece’s biting sarcasm as he’d audited her patient cards had hurt, but Abby had stood her ground, arguing it was surely far safer to err on the side of caution. To be sure, beyond any doubt, that her diagnosis was spot on.

      But Reece had begged to differ.

      ‘You need to get your confidence back, Abby,’ he’d insisted. ‘You need to regain some perspective. No one would have guessed Dave had a drug problem, no one.’

      ‘Perhaps not, but if he hadn’t been a friend, hadn’t been a colleague, if David had just been a stranger wheeled through the doors, I’d have treated him differently.’

      Reece had shaken his head, even offered his sympathies again for the terrible circumstances of that fateful night, but his stance had remained unchanged—if Abby wanted the upcoming consultant position in Emergency, then some grass roots medicine was the order of the day and Reece knew just the guy to teach her. And while she was at it, hell, why not go the whole hog and try making a couple of friends along the way?

      ‘Back to grass roots—but, what grass?’ Abby muttered to herself.

      ‘Sorry, love? I didn’t catch what you said.’ Bruce turned again, his open face ready to join in the first conversation Abby had initiated, and Abby’s blue eyes widened in angst, wishing Bruce would at least look as if he was controlling the plane!

      ‘Nothing,’ Abby shouted over the noise of the engine, embarrassed at being caught talking to herself. ‘I was just saying that the land looks very dry.’

      ‘Does it?’ Bruce peered out of the side window for what seemed an inordinate length of time as Abby forcibly resisted the urge to take over the controls of the plane herself. ‘No more than normal, love.’

      Picking up her papers, Abby gave herself a mental shake. OK, so she was effectively out of action for three months, but you didn’t have to be on the front line to fight a war. If her plans for the department were going to take shape then there was a pile of research to get through, people to be contacted, plans to be made. Her time in Tennengarrah wasn’t going to be a total write-off.

      She could still keep her promise to David…

      As the very occasional buildings started to multiply, Bruce finally started to look at least a little like he was concentrating and Abby braced herself for a rather bumpy descent.

      It never came. The only shudder she felt was when the plane touched down and a relieved escape of air came out of Abby’s tense lips as they hurtled along the small landing strip.

      ‘How was that, Doc?’

      ‘Excellent!’ Abby stood up, her first genuine smile of the day parting her full lips. Stretching her long legs, she plucked at some imaginary fluff on her very crisp, very white cotton shorts then ran a slightly anxious hand through her shock of long dark hair, wishing Bruce would stop grinning at her so she could touch up her lipstick.

      ‘Here’s Kell to meet you.’

      ‘Kell?’ Abby frowned as she hovered by the door. ‘I thought Ross Bodey was supposed to be here.’

      ‘Oh, sorry, I should have told you. Ross is on a call-out. I’ll head off and pick him up soon, once I’ve had a cuppa.’ Bruce didn’t look sorry, not even remotely, and, picking up a large stainless-steel Thermos flask, he opened the exit door and jumped out easily before gallantly offering his hand as Abby made a rather more tentative descent to the dry soil beneath her. The low glare of the sun hitting her face on forced Abby’s hand straight up to shield her eyes.

      ‘Hi, Abby, I’m Kell.’ A very deep, very masculine voice greeted her and with her sun-dazed eyes making focussing impossible for a moment or two, Abby’s imagination involuntarily sprang into action, images of a cool, suited sophisticate springing to mind. Perhaps there was another young doctor Ross Bodey had forgotten to tell her about! ‘It’s good to have you joining us.’ As the voice’s hand gripped hers Abby couldn’t fail to be impressed by the strength of its grip and a smile played on the edge of her lips as his image came into focus. Maybe the outback might have some advantages after all!

      Wrong.

      Never had a fantasy been so quickly dashed. Standing before her, smiling easily, was Mother Nature’s original version of the Neanderthal man. A hulking brute of a male, well over six feet, was grinning down at her, dark shaggy black hair that needed a good cut hanging too far down his long thick neck, and dark eyes thickly rimmed with even darker lashes were smiling quizzically at her.

      He wasn’t wearing a loincloth exactly but the faded denim shorts he wore were a pretty good attempt, considering that was all he was wearing!

      Even though Abby was wearing only white linen shorts and a crisp white blouse, coupled with some beige loafers, suddenly she felt terribly overdressed. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Abby murmured, her eyes involuntarily travelling the long length of his impossibly tanned body, taking in the dark-haired legs and the chest hair, then blushing as she realised she’d been caught staring.

      ‘Shelly wanted to come and meet you, but I told her to stay put, she’s not feeling the best.’

      ‘Is that right?’ Pouring out a cup of tea from his well-loved Thermos then lighting up a cigarette, Bruce leant against the plane, obviously settling in for a chat. ‘What’s the problem?’

      Abby fidgeted uncomfortably, anxious to get to the homestead, desperate to have a long cool shower as opposed to standing in forty degrees of heat for a cosy little chat.

      ‘She’s acting a bit strange.’ Kell shrugged. ‘So maybe you should hurry up your smoko and go and get Ross.’

      Abby glanced over to Bruce, doubting anything short of a nuclear missile would hurry him up, but as Kell carried on chatting in his laid-back voice she did a double-take.

      ‘If the baby is coming, Ross will want to be there.’

      ‘She’s in labour?’ Abby gasped, but Kell just gave a vague shrug as Bruce noisily supped at his tea.

      ‘Well, Shelly insists she isn’t, but if you ask me she isn’t far off. She’s been cleaning like a woman possessed this morning, and now she’s pacing up and down like a tractor turning the soil.’

      ‘And from that you assume she’s in labour?’ There was a slightly sarcastic edge to Abby’s voice, which she quickly fought to correct. After all, it wasn’t Kell’s fault he didn’t know what he was talking about!

      ‘I’m just saying I’d be happier if Ross was here, and that as much as Shelly refuses to admit it, I think she’d be happier, too,’ Kell added, with all the authority of a man who’d no doubt single-handedly delivered a zillion calves! ‘She’s supposed to be flown to Adelaide in the morning.’

      ‘When’s she due?’ Bruce asked, slurping his drink in such a disgusting fashion Abby felt like putting her hands up to her ears.

      ‘Three weeks tomorrow, but they’ll take her to Adelaide in case the baby