How to explain that after so much death, one life became disproportionately important. This little one she was working on didn’t have a name. Or…she shouldn’t give her one. She should not be emotionally involved.
Only, of course, she was emotionally involved. Koala Number Thirty-seven-the thirty-seventh koala she’d treated since the fire-belonged in the wild, and Tori was determined to get her back there. She would win this last battle. She must.
Thanks to this man, she just might.
Who was he?
She was finishing now, applying dressings, having enough time again to pay attention to the man at the head of the table. He was watching the monitors like a hawk, his face fierce, absorbed, totally committed to what he was doing.
Inserting an endotracheal tube in a koala was always dangerous territory. If you went too deep there was a major risk of traumatising the trachea and extending the tube into bronchus. She hadn’t told him that. There hadn’t been time, but he’d seemed to know it instinctively. How?
Maybe he was a vet, or maybe he did paediatric anaesthesia. Sometimes she thought paediatrics and veterinary science were inexplicably linked. Varying weights and sizes. The inability of the patient to explain where the pain was.
Who was he?
She was finished. Another check of the monitors. Pulse rate eighty. Blood oxygen saturation ninety percent.
Koala Thirty-seven just might live.
She couldn’t help herself; she put her hand on the soft fur of the little koala’s face and bestowed a silent blessing.
‘You keep on living,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve come so far. You will make it.’
‘She might well,’ Jake said. He was working surely and confidently, removing the endotracheal tube with care and watching with satisfaction as the little animal settled back into normal breathing pattern. ‘So who’s going to pay her bill?’
‘Now there’s a question,’ she murmured. She was carrying the little animal carefully back to her cage in the corner. She wasn’t out of the woods yet-she knew that. Any procedure took it out of these wild animals, but at least there was hope.
She’d done all she could, she thought, arranging the IV line the little animal needed to provide fluids until she started eating again. Then she was finished.
Really finished, she thought suddenly. There was now nothing left to do.
The sensation was strange. For the six months since the fires Tori had worked nonstop. This place had been a refuge for injured wildlife from all over the mountain. They’d had up to fifty volunteers at one time, with Tori supervising the care of as many as three hundred animals. Kangaroos, wallabies, possums, cockatoos, koalas-so many koalas. So many battles. So much loss.
It was over. Those who could be saved had been saved, and were being re-introduced in the wild. The spring rains had come, the bush was regenerating; there was food and water out there for animals to re-establish territories.
This little koala was the last of her responsibilities. She glanced down at her and, as she did, she felt a wave of the deep grief that was always with her. All those she’d failed…
‘Is it okay if I go now?’ Becky said, glancing uncertainly at Jake. ‘It’s just…Ben’s picking me up. He’ll be waiting.’
‘Sure, Becky. Thanks for your help.’
‘You won’t need me again, will you?’
‘No.’ She glanced back at the koala. If there was a need for more surgery, she knew what her decision would have to be, and for that she wouldn’t need Becky.
‘See you, then,’ Becky said. ‘I’m out of here. Hooray for the city-I’m so over this place.’ And with another curious glance at Jake she disappeared, closing the door behind her.
Leaving Tori with Jake.
‘I… Thank you,’ she managed. He looked pretty much like he had the night before. Slightly more casual. Faded jeans and a white, open-necked shirt. Elastic-sided boots. He looked like a local, she thought, which was at odds with his American accent.
‘My pleasure,’ he said, and sounded like he meant it. ‘I didn’t realise last night that you were a vet.’
‘I didn’t know you were.’
‘I’m not.’
‘So inserting endotracheal tubes in koalas is just a splinter skill for, say, a television repairman?’
‘I’m an anaesthetist. Jake Hunter.’
‘An anaesthetist,’ Tori said blankly. ‘In Combadeen? You have to be kidding.’
‘I’m not kidding. I’m staying at Manwillinbah Lodge.’
‘Rob Winston’s place?’ She was struggling now with the connection. What had Jake said last night? ‘I own properties here, in the valley and up on the ridge.’ And Rob. Distracted, she thought of the pleasant young man who’d flirted outrageously last night. She remembered him arriving with this man. With Jake. ‘Was Rob Winston the ninth date last night?’ she demanded.
‘That was Rob.’
‘He was nice. Fun.’
‘Meaning, I wasn’t?’
‘I didn’t say that. But I wish I’d known who he was,’ she said ruefully. ‘He should have told me. I need to thank him, and not only for letting us use this place. I had a friend who went to Manwillinbah Lodge when she was released from hospital two months ago. It wasn’t right for her. She needed ongoing medical treatment, but that wasn’t Rob’s fault, and she said he tried so hard to give her time out. So many people around here need that.’ She frowned, figuring more things out. ‘So is this…is this your farm?’
‘It is.’
‘Oh, my…’
Uh-oh.
Last night she’d walked out on her landlord. On the guy who’d made this whole hospital possible. ‘You’ve been giving this place to us rent free and I didn’t even know who you were.’ It was practically a wail and he grinned.
‘This is a whole new conversation topic. If we’d known last night we could have used our whole five minutes.’
She managed a smile-just. How embarrassing. And how to retrieve the situation?
She should shake his hand. Or, um, not. She glanced down at her gloves and decided gratitude needed to wait. Plus she needed to catch her breath. Breath seemed in remarkably short supply.
‘Could you excuse me for a moment?’ she muttered. ‘I need to wash.’ And she disappeared-she almost ran-leaving him alone with Koala Number Thirty-seven.
He was in the front room of what seemed to have been a grand old farmhouse. It still was, somewhere under the litter of what looked to be an animal hospital.
When the fires had ripped through here, almost fifty percent of properties on the ridge had been destroyed. The loss of life and property had been so massive there’d been international television coverage. Horrified, he’d contacted Rob to see how he could help.
‘The lodge and the winery are okay,’ Rob told him. ‘We’re almost ten miles from where the fire front turned back on itself, so apart from smoke on the grapes there’s little damage. I’ve been asked if we can provide emergency accommodation, if it’s okay with you. And the farmhouse on the ridge… There’s an animal-welfare place wanting headquarters. When the wind shifted, pushing the fire back on itself, your place was spared. Just. There’s still feed around it, and the house itself is basically okay, but your tenants are moving off the mountain. They can’t cope with the mess and the smell, and they’re going to her mother’s. Can the animal-welfare people use it for six months or so?’
‘Of course,’ he’d said, so it was now a hospital-of sorts.
But as he looked around he thought he wouldn’t have minded seeing it as it once was-a gracious family home. And he wouldn’t have minded seeing the bushland around here as it was either. The fire had burned to within fifty yards of the house and then turned. Beyond that demarcation, the bush was black and skeletal. Green tinges were showing through the ash now, alleviating the blackness, but six months ago it must have been a nightmare.
He stared out the window until Tori bustled back into the room, carrying a bucket of steaming, soapy water. She looked like a woman who didn’t stay still for long, he thought. Busy. Clinically efficient. Cute?