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The look he threw her was derisive. ‘My father is not the tea-party type.’
‘What about Margie Green?’
His brows came together. ‘What about her?’
‘She’s a close friend, isn’t she? Or she was in the old days before your parents got together.’
His expression was guarded now; the drawbridge had come up again. ‘You seem to have gained a lot of inside information for the short time you’ve been in town.’
Izzy compressed her lips. ‘I can’t help it if people tell me stuff. I can assure you I don’t go looking for it.’
He curled his lip in a mocking manner. ‘I bet you don’t.’
She picked up her doctor’s bag from the floor with brisk efficiency. ‘I think it’s time I left. I’ve clearly outstayed my welcome.’
Izzy had marched to the front door before he caught up with her. ‘Dr Courtney.’ It was a command, not a request or even an apology. She drew in a tight breath and turned to face him. His expression still had that reserved unreadable quality to it but something about his eyes made her think he was not so much angry at her as at the situation he found himself in.
‘Yes?’
He held her gaze for a long moment without speaking. It was as if he was searching through a filing drawer in his brain for the right words.
‘Yes?’ Izzy prompted.
‘Don’t give up on him.’ He did that hair-scrape thing again. ‘He needs time.’
‘Will four weeks be long enough, do you think?’ she asked.
He gave her another measured look before he opened the screen door for her. ‘Let’s hope so.’
* * *
‘So, what did you call your new boyfriend I sent you?’ Hannah asked when she video-messaged Izzy a couple of nights later.
Izzy looked at the blow-up male doll she had propped up in one of the armchairs in the sitting room. ‘I’ve called him Max. He’s surprisingly good company for a man. He doesn’t hog the remote control and he doesn’t eat all the chocolate biscuits.’
Hannah giggled. ‘Have you slept with him?’
Izzy rolled her eyes. ‘Ha-ha. I’m enjoying having the bed to myself, thank you very much.’
‘So, no hot guys out in the bush?’
She hoped the webcam wasn’t picking up the colour of her warm cheeks. She hadn’t told Hannah about her case of mistaken identity with Zach Fletcher. She wasn’t sure why. Normally she told Hannah everything that was going on in her life...well, maybe not everything. She had never been the type of girl to tell all about dates and boyfriends. There were some things she liked to keep private. ‘I’m supposed to be using this time to sort myself out in the love department. I don’t want to complicate my recovery by diving head first into another relationship.’
‘You weren’t in love with Richard, Izzy. You know you weren’t. You were just doing what your parents expected of you. He filled the hole in your life after Jamie died. I’m glad you saw sense in time. Don’t get me wrong—I really like Richard but he’s not the one for you.’
Izzy knew what Hannah said was true. She had let things drift along for too long, raising everyone’s hopes and expectations in the process. Her parents were still a little touchy on the subject of her split with Richard, whom they saw as the ideal son-in-law. The stand-in son for the one they had lost after a long and agonising battle with sarcoma.
Her decision to come out to the Australian Outback on a working holiday had been part of her strategy to take more control over her life. It was a way to remind her family that she was serious about her career. They still thought she was just dabbling at medicine until it was time to settle down and have a couple of children to carry on the long line of Courtney blood now that her older brother Jamie wasn’t around to do it.
But she loved being a doctor. She loved it that she could help people in such a powerful way. Not just healing illnesses but changing lives, even saving them on occasion.
Like Jamie might have been saved if he had been diagnosed earlier...
Thinking about her brother made her heart feel like it had been stabbed. It actually seemed to jerk in her chest every time his name was mentioned, as if it were trying to escape the lunge of the sword of memory.
‘Maybe you’ll meet some rich cattleman out there and fall madly in love and never come home again, other than for visits,’ Hannah said.
‘I don’t think that’s likely.’ Izzy couldn’t imagine leaving England permanently. Her roots went down too deep. She even loved the capricious weather.
No, this trip out here was timely but not permanent.
Besides, with Jamie gone she was her parents’ only child and heir. Not going home to claim her birthright would be unthinkable. She just needed a few months to let them get used to the idea of her living her own life and following her own dreams, instead of living vicariously through theirs.
Izzy’s phone buzzed where it was plugged into the charger on the kitchen bench. ‘Got to go, Han. I think that’s a local call coming through. I’ll call you in a day or two. Bye.’ She picked up her phone. ‘Isabella Courtney.’
‘Zach Fletcher here.’ Even the way he said his name was sharp and to the point.
‘Good evening, Sergeant,’ Izzy said, just as crisply. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I just got a call about an accident out by the Honeywells’ place. It doesn’t sound serious but I thought you should come out with me to check on the driver. The volunteer ambos are on their way. I can be at your place in two minutes. It will save you having to find your way out there in the dark.’
‘Fine. I’ll wait at the front for you.’
Izzy had her doctor’s bag at the ready when Zach pulled up outside her cottage. She got into the car and clipped on her seat belt, far more conscious than she wanted to be of him sitting behind the wheel with one of those unreadable expressions on his face.
Would it hurt him to crack a smile?
Say a polite hello?
Make a comment on the weather?
‘Do you know who’s had the accident?’ she asked.
‘Damien Redbank.’ He gunned the engine once he turned onto the highway and Izzy’s spine slammed back against the seat. ‘His father Charles is a big property owner out here. Loads of money, short on common sense, if you get my drift.’
Izzy sent him a glance. ‘The son or the father?’
The top edge of his mouth curled upwards but it wasn’t anywhere near a smile. ‘The kid’s all right. Just needs to grow up.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Eighteen and a train wreck waiting to happen.’
‘What about his mother?’
‘His parents are divorced. Vanessa Redbank remarried a few years ago.’ He waited a beat before adding, ‘She has a new family now.’
Izzy glanced at him again. His mouth had tightened into its default position of grim. ‘Does Damien see his mother?’
‘Occasionally.’
Occasionally probably wasn’t good enough, Izzy thought. ‘Where does she live?’
‘Melbourne.’
‘At least it’s not the other side of the world.’ She bit her lip and wished she hadn’t spoken her thoughts out loud. ‘I’m sorry...I hope I didn’t offend you.’
He gave her a quick glance. ‘Offend me how?’
Izzy tried to read his look but the mask was firmly back in place. ‘It must have been really tough on you when your mother left. England is a long way away from here. It feels like everywhere is a long way away from here. It would’ve seemed even longer to a young child.’
‘I wasn’t a young child. I was ten.’ His voice was stripped bare of emotion; as if he was reading from a script and not speaking from personal experience. ‘Plenty old enough to take care of myself.’
Izzy could imagine him watching as his mother had driven away from the property for the last time. His face blank, his spine and shoulders stoically braced, while no doubt inside him a tsunami of emotion had been roiling. Had his father comforted him or had he been too consumed by his own devastation over the breakdown of his marriage? No wonder Zach had an aura of unreachability about him. It was a circle of deep loneliness that kept him apart from others. He didn’t want to need people so he kept well back from them.
Unlike her, who felt totally crushed if everyone didn’t take an instant shine to her. Doing and saying the right thing—people-pleasing—had been the script she had been handed from the cradle. It was only now that she had stepped off the stage, so to speak, that she could see how terribly lonely and isolated she had felt.
Still felt...
When had she not felt lonely? Being sent to boarding school hadn’t helped. She had wanted to go to a day school close to home but her protests had been ignored. All Courtneys went to boarding school. It was a tradition that went back generations. It was what the aristocracy did. But Izzy had been too bookish and too shy to be the most popular girl. Not athletic enough to be chosen first, let alone be appointed the captain of any of the sporting teams. Too keen to please her teachers, which hadn’t won her any friends. Too frightened to do the wrong thing in case she was made a spectacle of in front of the whole school. Until she’d met Hannah a couple of years later, her life had been terrifyingly, achingly lonely.
* * *
‘When I was ten I still couldn’t go to sleep unless all of my Barbie dolls were lined up in bed with me in exactly the right order.’ Why are you telling him this stuff? ‘I’ve still got them. Not with me, of course.’
Zach’s gaze touched hers briefly. It was the first time she had seen a hint of a smile dare to come anywhere near the vicinity of his mouth. But just as soon as it appeared it vanished. He turned his attention back to the grey ribbon of road in front of them where in the distance Izzy could see the shape of a car wedged at a steep angle against the bank running alongside the road. Another car had pulled up alongside, presumably the person who had called for help.
‘Damien’s father’s not going to be too happy about this,’ Zach said. ‘He’s only had that car a couple of weeks.’
‘But surely he’ll be more concerned about his son?’ Izzy said. ‘Cars can be replaced. People can’t.’
The line of his mouth tilted in a cynical manner as he killed the engine. ‘Try telling Damien’s mother that.’
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN IZZY GOT to the car the young driver was sitting on the roadside, holding his right arm against his chest. ‘Damien? Hi, I’m Isabella Courtney, the new locum doctor in town. I’m going to check you over. Is that OK?’
Damien gave her a belligerent look. ‘I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor. And before you ask—’ he sent Zach a glance ‘—no, I wasn’t drinking.’
‘I still have to do a breathalyser on you, mate,’ Zach said. ‘It’s regulation when there’s been an accident.’
‘A stupid wombat was in the middle of the road,’ Damien said. ‘I had to swerve to miss it.’
‘That arm looks pretty uncomfortable,’ Izzy said. ‘How about I take a look at it and if it’s not too bad we can send you home.’
He rolled his eyes in that universal teenage this sucks manner, but he co-operated while she examined him. He had some minor abrasions on his forehead and face but the airbag had prevented any major injury. His humerus, however, was angled and swollen, indicative of a broken arm. Izzy took his pulse and found it was very weak and the forearm looked dusky due to the artery being kinked at the fracture site.
‘I’m going to have to straighten that arm to restore blood flow,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you something to take the edge off it but it still might hurt a bit.’ She took out a Penthrane inhalant, which would deliver rapid analgesia. ‘Take a few deep breaths on this...yes, that’s right. Good job.’
While Damien was taking deep breaths on the inhalant Izzy put traction on the arm and aligned it. He gave a yowl during the process but the pulse had come back into the wrist and the hand and forearm had pinked up.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘You did really well. I’m going to put a splint on your arm so we can get you to hospital. You’re going to need an orthopaedic surgeon to have a look at that fracture.’
Damien muttered a swear word under his breath. ‘My dad is going to kill me.’
‘I’ve just called him,’ Zach said. ‘He’s on his way. The ambos are five minutes away,’ he said to Izzy.
‘Good,’ Izzy said, as she unpacked the inflatable splint. The boy was shivering with shock by now so she gave him an injection of morphine. She was about to ask Zach to pass her the blanket out of the kit when he handed it to her. She gave him a smile. ‘Mind-reader.’
He gave a shrug. ‘Been at a lot of accidents.’
Izzy hated to think of how terrible some of them might have been. Cops and ambulance personnel were always at the centre of drama and tragedy. The toll it took on them was well documented. But out in the bush, where the officers often personally knew the victims, it was particularly harrowing.
The volunteer ambulance officers were two of the people Izzy had met the other night at the pub, Ken Gordon and Roger Parker. After briefing them on the boy’s condition, she supervised them as they loaded Damien onto a stretcher, supporting his arm. And then, once he was loaded, she put in an IV and set some fluids running. The Royal Flying Doctor Service would take over once the ambulance had delivered the boy to the meeting point about eighty kilometres away.
Not long after the ambulance had left, a four-wheel-drive farm vehicle pulled up. A middle-aged man got out from behind the wheel and came over to where Zach was sorting out the towing of the damaged vehicle with the local farmer who had called in the accident.
‘Is it a write-off?’ Charles Redbank asked.
Izzy paused in the process of stripping off her sterile gloves. Although Zach had called Charles and told him Damien was OK, she still found it strange that he would want to check on the car before he saw his son. What sort of father was he? Was a car really more important to him than his own flesh and blood?
Zach put his pen back in his top pocket as he faced Charles. His mouth looked particularly grim. ‘No.’
‘Bloody fool,’ Charles muttered. ‘Was he drinking?’
‘No.’
‘He’s not seriously hurt.’ Izzy stepped forward. ‘He has a broken arm that will need to be seen by an orthopaedic surgeon. I’ve arranged for him to be flown to Bourke. If you hurry you can catch up with the ambulance. It’s only just left. You probably passed it on the road.’
‘I came in on the side road from Turner’s Creek,’ Charles said. ‘And you can think again if you think I’m going to chase after him just because he’s got a broken arm. He can deal with it. He’s an adult, or he’s supposed to be.’
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