our bonuses, and contributes a large amount of money to the hospitals that supply staff, so don’t forget that.’ She led the way up the now all but empty aisle.
Outside it was hot—and this was winter? But the heat wasn’t like the heat at home—this heat seemed to burn into the skin, drying it of moisture, making his eyes itch and his nose tingle.
He followed Annabelle towards a small tin shed that obviously did service as the air terminal, wondering how the hell he had got himself into this situation. Then she began to run, and training had him running right behind her, the suit jacket he held over his arm flapping against his body as he followed her.
He heard the sounds of chaos as he drew closer. Loud shouts and yelling, swearing that would make a policeman blush, thumps and thuds and the occasional cry of a woman. Inside the tin shed, a fight was well under way, rough, tough men hurling round arm punches at friends and enemies alike—or so it seemed.
Annabelle apparently had a destination in mind, so he followed her as she squirmed between the bodies towards a counter on one side of the building. Around them, figures lurched and dodged until, suddenly, one of the altercations was far too close to Annabelle. Nick thrust forward, putting himself between two battling men and the slight woman, using the bulk of his shoulders to protect her until he could lift her out of the way of the struggle and set her safely down behind the counter.
She looked up at him, and grinned.
‘Sir Galahad?’ she teased, and he doffed an imaginary hat and bowed in front of her.
‘At your service, ma’am!’
It was a light-hearted exchange but Nick sensed a shift in the dynamics between them—a shift instinct warned him not to investigate…
In front of the counter, a man and woman were bent over a figure slumped on the floor.
‘Let’s see if we can get him up on the counter, take a look at him. If we leave him here, we’ll all be trodden on,’ Nick suggested.
The man glanced up.
‘You the new doc?’ he guessed, and the Nick nodded.
The man grinned at him. ‘Welcome to the wild west. I’m Phil Jackson, departing nurse.’
Together they lifted the injured man onto the counter, as a lone policeman came in through the front door, whistle blowing shrilly in an attempt to calm the melee.
‘This is Deb Hassett, the doc,’ Phil said, introducing the woman by his side and standing back while Nick examined the injured man. Annabelle introduced herself and Nick then, as the fight began to settle down around them, she suggested she and Nick take care of the injured man while the other pair readied themselves for departure.
Phil shook his head.
‘The plane won’t go for a while. This fellow is the dispatcher—the guy who checks everyone’s ticket and takes out the luggage and loads it on board. Guess the pilots will have to do it themselves now, so there’ll be a delay.’
The man on the counter began to move, moaning piteously and squirming around on the hard counter.
‘The bastard hit me,’ he said, trying to sit up as if determined to find his attacker and continue the fight.
Nick was pressing his fingers into the man’s jaw bone, already swelling beneath a red abrasion, feeling for any sign of movement that would indicate serious damage then continuing his exploration by pressing fingertips to his patient’s cheekbone and eye socket.
‘Everything seems to be intact,’ Nick finally declared, helping the man sit up, which was when they all saw blood, leaking from the back of the man’s head, pooled on the counter and soaked into his khaki shirt.
Annabelle headed for the bathroom, returning with a bunch of paper towels and her hat filled with water.
‘I couldn’t find another container,’ she muttered, when she saw the look on Nick’s face. ‘And we only need it to clean up the blood so we can find the injury.’
She proceeded to mop at the man’s head, seeking the source of what seemed like a massive haemorrhage but was probably only a freely bleeding scalp wound.
‘And surely there’s a first-aid box in this place,’ she added, looking around for Phil or Deb, who might know where it would be.
‘They went outside,’ Nick told her, finding the cut on the man’s head and pressing a wad of clean, dry paper towels to it.
He’d barely spoken when the pair reappeared, carrying what seemed like a large chest between them.
‘Why we don’t have small first-aid boxes in the vehicle I don’t know,’ Phil complained as he opened the box then looked up at Nick. ‘What do you need?’
‘Razor to clear some hair, antiseptic, local anaesthetic then sutures.’ He was on autopilot as far as tending the patient was concerned, so his mind was able to process a lot of other concerns. ‘Why are we doing this? Murrawingi is a big enough town to have a clothing store, surely it has a hospital and doctor and even an ambulance.’
‘You’re right.’ It was Deb who answered while Phil passed him a sterile pad soaked in brown antiseptic. ‘But there was a bad road accident a hundred k south of town early this morning and the whole team’s there.’
Phil nodded briefly towards the young policeman, now talking to the pilots from the plane.
‘That’s why we’ve only got the baby policeman here.’
‘He seems to be doing a good job,’ Annabelle said, feeling someone needed to defend the young man. ‘I mean, the fight stopped, didn’t it?’
‘Jim, one of the drillers, stopped the fight. He’s a big devil and he just lifted the bloke who started it up in his arms, carted him outside and told him to stay there until the plane was loaded. Not many people argue with Jim.’
Nick had just finished stitching the cut and was taping a dressing over it when the young policeman approached.
‘Where’s the dog?’ he asked, and although Nick and Annabelle could only shake their heads, the other pair obviously knew all about a dog.
‘That’s him you can hear barking out the back,’ Deb said. ‘This fellow got the dog into the container before the other guy hit him. Said he had to weigh him and he crated him at the same time, then he snapped a lock and wouldn’t give the other bloke the key so the dog’s owner hit him.’
The young policeman looked bemused, and this time it was Phil who came to his rescue.
‘We’d just checked our luggage in when it happened. Apparently the dog was booked to fly but as Henry Armstrong, travelling with Bill Armstrong, but when Henry turned out to be a dog, the clerk said he had to travel in a crate and Bill went berserk, insisting he’d paid for a seat and Henry had every right to sit in it.’
Annabelle was watching Nick as the story was revealed, watching the parade of emotions—mostly disbelief—passing across his face. But the question he finally asked was the last she’d expected.
‘The dog’s called Henry? Whatever happened to names like Spot and Rover?’
No one answered, the young policeman now intent on getting the passengers onto the plane, checking again with the pilots that they were willing to carry Bill Armstrong in spite of the trouble he’d caused.
‘As long as he agrees the dog goes in the crate, we’ll take him,’ one of them said, then he turned to Deb. ‘I don’t suppose you could carry a tranquillising dart with you just in case?’
Deb laughed, but Annabelle suspected the pilot wasn’t joking. No doubt he flew this route often and knew the rough, tough men he carried. Maybe it explained why a small plane on a country route had two pilots.
People were moving towards the doors leading out onto the tarmac.
‘That’s