with the messy bits that he was forced to cope with himself now. Back in Sydney, if a patient retched he’d step back and hand over to the nurses.
‘I’m good at woodwork,’ he told Ginny without much hope, and she smiled.
‘Not in a million years, mate,’ she told him. ‘I’m on door duty. You’re on patient duty.’
Finally the last screw holding the door to the hinge was released. The door fell forward and Ginny grunted in satisfaction as she took its weight.
‘Great. I was afraid it’d be solid. This is light enough to give us a bit more leverage.’
‘So now what?’
‘Let’s get it under him,’ she told him. ‘Is his airway clear?’
‘As good as I can get.’ Oscar was drifting into alcoholic sleep, which at least meant that they could work without abuse.
‘We’ll leave the oxygen on till the last moment,’ Ginny told him. ‘He’ll have to be unhooked for a bit while we load him into the truck. But we’ll work fast.’
‘Are you medical?’ he asked, bemused, but she wasn’t listening. She was sliding the door toward him, signalling him to shove the other end as close as he could to Oscar.
Then she hauled the mattress on top.
‘Put this pillow between his hips in case he really has got a broken bone,’ she ordered, and he stopped wondering whether she had a medical background. He was sure.
‘Now.’ Fergus was on one side of Oscar. Ginny was on the other with the door-cum-stretcher between Ginny and Oscar. ‘Roll him sideways as far as you can toward you,’ she said. ‘One hand on his shoulder, the other just above his hip. Don’t try and lift—you’re just rolling. And I’ll shove.’
‘Where did you learn to do this?’
‘I had a different childhood,’ she said. ‘I played doctors a lot, and moving patients was my specialty. Shut up and roll.’
So he rolled and she shoved and a moment later their patient was three-quarters on the door.
‘Great,’ she muttered, completely intent on the job at hand. ‘Now we slide. You do the shoulders, I’ll do the pelvis. Let’s keep those hips in a straight line.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he uttered under his breath, but he didn’t say it. Where did her knowledge come from? Even with knowledge, Oscar was huge. How could she do it?
She did it. Fergus was getting more and more gobsmacked by the minute. Her strength was amazing.
They now had their patient fully on the door.
‘Now we tie him on,’ she said, producing something that looked like frayed hay bands. ‘I’m not going to all this trouble to let him roll off.’
So they tied, sliding the ropes under the door and fastening them across his legs, hips and stomach. Oscar grunted a few times but he seemed to be intent now on his breathing—which was just as well. They completed six ties before Ginny declared them ready.
‘You’re not proposing to lift this,’ Fergus muttered, knowing that lifting only one end was beyond him.
‘Trust a man to think of brawn when there’s brains at hand,’ she told him. She disappeared briefly outside and came back carrying something that looked dangerously like an axe.
‘Hey! I’m not sure about operating here and axes aren’t my tool of choice,’ Fergus told her, startled, and she grinned.
‘This is a splitter for chopping wood. Or it’s a really neat wedge.’ She laid it sideways so the edge of the splitter lay under a corner of the door. She put her weight behind the handle and tugged it in a quarter-circle.
The splitter dug under the door and the corner rose.
‘I’ll keep shoving and you stick in a pole,’ she ordered and he was with her. The fence posts…. long cylinders, ready to roll, were lined up, ready to insert under the door.
‘I’ll operate the axe, though,’ he told her, seeing her strain to get the sedge further in. Enough was enough. He had to be stronger than she was.
He had to be something more than she was.
Whoever, whatever, the plan worked. Two minutes later they had three poles under the door. At first push the door started rolling, with Fergus and Ginny carefully manoeuvring it toward the back door.
‘What’s happening?’ Oscar muttered, sluggish and barely conscious.
Fergus was hauling a pole out at the back of the door, to carry it forward so it became the front roller. ‘You’re going for a ride,’ he told him. ‘Courtesy of the most amazing ambulance officer I’ve ever met. And the most amazing trolley.’
It worked.
Luckily Oscar had a ramp instead of steps leading to the veranda and the only hard part was keeping the thing from sliding too fast. The dogs watched from a distance, seemingly almost as bemused as Fergus.
Then there was the little matter of getting their makeshift stretcher into the truck, but they did that working as a team, finding wedges and chocks of different sizes in the woodshed, tying the ropes under Oscar’s arms tighter so he couldn’t slip, gradually levering up the end of the door to a new level, chocking, levering again until finally the door reached the height of the floor of the truck.
That was the only time when they needed real strength. There was a moment when they had to take a side apiece and shove.
‘One, two three…’
The door slid in like a dream.
‘This place stinks,’ Oscar said clearly through his mist of alcohol and confusion, and Fergus climbed up beside him to administer oxygen again and tried not to flinch at the by now awful smell in the rear. Oscar was no pristine patient and the ewe’s legacy was disgusting.
But it was Oscar’s ewe. Ginny’s phrase came back to him. She’d just walked out to take in some bucolic air? ‘It’s good bucolic air,’ he told Oscar, trying not to grin. Ginny was still outside the truck, and she, too, was smiling her satisfaction. It had been a neat piece of engineering and they deserved to be pleased with each other. ‘Ms. Viental, wasn’t that what you were stepping out to find this afternoon? There’s lots of it in here. Would you like to ride in the back with our patient while I drive?’
But Ginny was already swinging herself into the driver’s seat, reaching over to the back and holding out her hand for the keys.
‘You’re the doctor,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m just part of the bucolic scenery.’
They made a stop on the way that Fergus hadn’t planned on.
I can’t go straight to the hospital,’ Ginny told him as they left Oscar’s farm behind them. ‘Richard will be worried.’
‘Richard?’
‘I told him I’d be gone for an hour and it’s been two already.’ She was driving more competently than he’d been, steering the truck with a skill that told him she’d spent years coping with eroded country tracks.
Where had she learned ambulance skills? Her farming skills? What else did she have going for her?
Gorgeous figure? Lovely complexion? Good sense of humour?
He had to concentrate on his patient.
Luckily, that wasn’t too difficult. Oscar was rolling from side to side, fighting against the straps, and Fergus was starting to get really concerned. If he had a broken hip he’d be in agony, the way he was moving. OK, he didn’t have a broken hip, but Fergus was starting to worry that the man’s blood alcohol level was dangerously high. He reeked of beer and whisky, and his breathing was getting weaker.
‘We need to get to