in and out of the tops of his lungs without going deeper and his body was coiled tight, ready to react to the next disaster. He’d been in a constant state of high alert for two weeks.
It’s been longer than that.
He shook away the thought. Emergency aid work was, by definition, disaster management, and he had the dubious honour of being an expert. Once the powers that be recognised someone with the skills they needed, they locked onto them and never let them go. Not that he wanted to be let go—he lived for being busy. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
He stepped back from the antiquated operating table that even on its highest extension was too low for his height, stripped off his gloves and rubbed his aching back. ‘Wake him up,’ he said to his current anaesthetic nurse, a local islander who had blessedly trained in Melbourne. ‘And keep a close eye on the drainage bottle.’
‘Sure thing, Charlie,’ Shirley said, her teeth a flash of white in her dark and smiling face. ‘You get some sleep now, yeah?’
He laughed; the sound as far removed from jolly as possible. ‘I’m going down to the wharf.’
‘I see your eyes close. You need sleep.’ She gave an islander shrug—the one that implied it will be what it will be. ‘You can’t will the boat to come.’
‘I can try.’ He wasn’t about to explain to Shirley that there was no point in trying to sleep, because sleep no longer came. If insomnia had been a visitor in the last few months, it had taken up residence since the cyclone had hit. For the last two weeks he’d only cat-napped. An hour here, a half-hour there, all squeezed in between medical emergencies, general hospital work and helping the islanders clean up the havoc Cyclone Samuel had wrought on them. Although some aid had arrived, it was going to take months for the replacement of vital infrastructure. Not that he’d be around to see it. By then he would have been moved on, dispatched to another place of need and leading another team.
He walked into the basic change room that all the staff shared and stripped off his scrubs. He was shoving his left leg into his shorts when the room shifted and he shifted with it, banging hard into the old metal lockers and jarring his shoulder. What the hell! Was it an earth tremor? He righted himself and listened keenly for rumbling but all he heard was birdsong. He was no rookie at natural disasters and birds didn’t sing when there were tremors. Nothing sang then; every animal and insect went deathly silent—the anthem of impending doom.
Trying again, he lifted his right leg, aiming it at the leg hole in his shorts. This time silver spots danced in front of his eyes and then the floor shifted again. He flung out an arm to steady himself and sat down hard on the bench seat. Sucking in some deep breaths, he closed his eyes and waited for the floaters to vanish.
‘You okay, boss?’ Bert asked, suddenly appearing in front of him. ‘You don’t look so good. You need a smoke?’
‘Don’t tempt me, Bert.’ Charlie gave him a grim smile. ‘I just need to eat.’ But just the thought of food made him feel queasy, let alone trying to eat any.
Men’s shouts rent the air, sliding in through the open window, and Charlie’s empty stomach fell to his feet. He didn’t understand a lot of Bislama and his French was tourist-competent, not medical literate, but the last time he’d heard a commotion like this they’d found an islander who’d been trapped under rubble for three days. Despite the joy in finding the man alive, Charlie had been faced with the task of amputating the patient’s crushed leg in the hope of saving his life.
‘Grab my medical kit.’ Charlie lurched to his feet, taking a moment for his head to stop spinning.
‘No, boss!’ Bert grinned at him. ‘This good news. Come on.’
He followed Bert’s brightly coloured shirt through the door and down a short corridor until they were both outside and in the glare of a fearless sun. Under the wind-stripped and almost naked palm trees Charlie glimpsed heaven—a group of men and women dressed in fresh and clean Australia Aid uniforms. All of them clutched the distinctive and life-giving red and blue medical packs. At the back of the cluster he recognised the distinctive height of Richard di Stasio—his boss.
Relief carried him towards them, his long strides steady. ‘You lot are a sight for sore eyes. That is, if you’ve brought IV fluids and antibiotics.’
‘Would we dare turn up without them?’ Richard shook Charlie’s hand and his dark eyes did one of those quick head-to-toe assessments that emergency medicos specialised in. ‘You’re looking a bit rough, Charlie.’
He shrugged as they walked inside. ‘It’s been tough. You saw what’s left of the town on your trip from the wharf? Or what’s not left of it, to be more precise. Half the hospital’s out of action and we’ve got limited power. The fuel for the generator’s dangerously low, the sat phone’s dodgy and I’ve got three patients battling septic shock.’
‘You look a bit shocked yourself.’
‘Nah.’ He ran his hand through his hair and suddenly realised it was longer than it had been in years. ‘No more than usual.’
Richard shook his head. ‘You look like you’ve dropped at least five kilos. Possibly more.’
‘The joys of a fish and taro diet. Listen, Richard,’ he said, suddenly gripped by urgency. ‘I’ll happily give you a full report as soon as I’ve administered those antibiotics to my three sickies.’
‘Keith can do that. You’re handing over to him and then you’re getting on the boat to Port Vila and going home.’
No! Every part of Charlie stilled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There’s still mountains of work for me to do here.’
Richard sighed. ‘You know the rules, Charlie. First response teams get pulled out after two weeks when second response arrives.’
‘Hell, Richard, you know as well as I do that you’re the first response team, not me. The only reason I’m on Pipatoa is because I came for a few days of diving after teaching the emergency trauma course in Port Vila. Two days after I arrived, Samuel blew up and I got stuck here.’
‘That’s irrelevant. The bottom line is you’ve done the job of first response without the back-up of a trained team. It doesn’t take a medical person to see you’re completely exhausted. God, man, have you slept at all since the cyclone?’
‘I’m fine,’ Charlie ground out. ‘Besides, you’ve got me pencilled in for Ghana next week, right?’
‘That was before you lived through the most savage cyclone to hit the area in forty years.’
‘So?’
Richard’s brows rose at the belligerence in Charlie’s voice. ‘So, HR’s been on my case because you haven’t taken any leave in eighteen months. Now you’ve lived through the cyclone, the psych’s waded in.’
Charlie’s head ached and his gut cramped. ‘I don’t want to take leave. I want to go to Ghana.’
‘Neither of us has a choice in the matter. Even if HR weren’t getting antsy about your accumulated leave, you’re mandated to take time out of the field and attend three post-disaster counselling sessions.’
‘Hell, Richard, I’m not going to get PTSD.’
‘You know as well as I do no one’s bulletproof. The rules exist to protect Australia Aid workers. As an employee, those rules apply to you.’
‘But you’re the boss.’ Charlie hated the frantic pitch to his voice. ‘You can pull strings.’
Richard shook his head. ‘Not this time, mate. Besides, it’s not the end of the world. There are worse times than summer in Australia to go home.’
It was never a good time to go home. Not that he considered Australia home anymore, or anywhere else for that matter. ‘How long am I on enforced leave?’
‘A