A Courageous Doctor

The telephone began ringing just as both Lizzie and the man spoke at precisely the same moment.

‘They’re sick—the whole bloody lot of them,’ the man announced impatiently.

‘It looks like mild food poisoning to me,’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s eleven of them.’

Anne’s voice cut into the pause as Hugo held up a hand to request one speaker at a time.

‘I’ve got Mr Payne on the phone, Hugh. He sounds very upset.’

‘Lizzie?’ Hugo tilted his head as he moved towards the desk, inviting the senior nurse to follow. ‘Just give me a second with Mr Payne and then you can fill me in.’ He took the phone from Anne. ‘Hugh Patterson.’ He listened for a few seconds. ‘Try and calm down, Tom. How long has she been missing? Has she been unwell in any way today?’ He listened again for a moment. ‘If you don’t find her in the next few minutes, call the police in to help. We can send an ambulance out as well if you need it.’

Lizzie was shaking her head as Hugo hung up. ‘The ambulance won’t be available for at least ten minutes. It’s on its way back from Coronet Peak with a ski trauma. Erin Willoughby’s broken her arm, snowboarding.’

‘Oh, no!’ It wasn’t the first time Hugo had had cause to regret working in such a popular location for adventure sports of all kinds. It was easy to attract staff, especially young nurses who had leisure pursuits such as skiing, but it led to a high staff turnover and complications such as staff shortages due to injuries like this. ‘We’re short-staffed as it is.’

‘I know,’ Lizzie agreed grimly. ‘And we’re heading into the winter peak season.’ She glanced over her shoulder, frowning. ‘Where’s that bus driver gone?’

Hugo could see where. Young Japanese tourists were climbing off the bus, some clutching their stomachs and some holding suspiciously full-looking paper bags. They were all heading for the pedestrian entranceway to the hospital.

Lizzie followed his gaze and sighed heavily. ‘I’ve told him that we can’t admit them all. I’ve talked to Jenny, who’s the GP on call for their hotel, and she’s happy to keep an eye on them. They’ll be fine if they go to bed and keep their fluid intake up.’

‘Have you checked them out?’

Lizzie gave Hugo a look that suggested he should know better than to ask such a question. ‘Only half of them are vomiting so far and the ones that have are feeling better already. None of them are showing any signs of dehydration.’

‘They’re all very young.’ Hugo smiled automatically at the first couple entering the reception area but received no response. One after another the tourists filed in, followed by the driver.

‘There you go,’ he told them with satisfaction. ‘They just need something to stop them throwing up and we’ll get out of your way.’

‘Stopping the vomiting will only keep them sick longer,’ Lizzie responded coolly. ‘Their bodies are just trying to eliminate the toxin.’

The girl who approached them was looking very pale. ‘Where is toilet, please?’

‘Through there.’ Lizzie pointed to the door at one side of the desk and the girl turned in the direction indicated. The queue for the single cubicle was instantly a problem.

‘Anne, could you hand out some vomit containers, please? You might need to show some people through to a ward if they need a toilet as well. We’re not going to cope with just this one.’ Hugo turned to the bus driver. ‘Are you the only one who isn’t unwell?’

‘Yep. That’s because I didn’t eat the picnic. I don’t go for weird things like seaweed. I went to the pub and got a pie instead.’

‘They stopped at Alexandra,’ Lizzie explained. ‘To eat the fish sushi they collected in Dunedin this morning. Everyone else ate the sushi and started getting sick within two hours. Five couples and the tour guide.’

‘It’s the “Western Wedding Experience”,’ the driver added helpfully. ‘They have the white wedding in the stone church in Christchurch with full video recording and then they get the four-day adventure honeymoon. Ice-skating in Alex, gold mining stuff in Arrowtown—’

Anne was waving at Hugo. ‘Mr Payne’s on the phone again. They’ve found Mrs Payne but she’s refusing to go home and she hit him in the face. He can’t stop his nose bleeding.’

‘Sounds like her Alzheimer’s is getting worse,’ Lizzie commented.

‘It’s too much for Tom to manage, no matter how much he wants to,’ Hugo sighed. ‘We’ll have to get her in for assessment and look at a rest-home placement.’

A young man near the door groaned loudly and dipped his face towards the white plastic bucket he held. Hugo felt like groaning himself but the bus driver was cheerfully ignoring any interruptions.

‘There’s two days in Queenstown to do the four-wheel-drive Skippers Canyon run with bungy-jumping, white-water jet-boat ride, skiing and so on. We’re due for a dinner cruise on the lake tonight and…’

Hugo sucked in a deep breath. ‘We’ll send the ambulance out to check on the Paynes as soon as it arrives. Put Erin in the trauma room and keep our other visitors in Reception or the treatment room if any of them look like falling over.’ His smile was apologetic. ‘I’ll have to leave you to it for the moment. We’ve got a delivery imminent that may need assistance and I’ve to check that Nancy’s antibiotics are under way. She’s got another dose of pneumonia.’

‘Oh, no.’ Lizzie’s expression confirmed Nancy’s status as one of the small hospital’s favourite residents. She nodded. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll hold the fort here.’

‘I’ve already called Steve in to do the X-ray for Erin,’ Anne told Hugo.

‘Good girl.’ For a recent school-leaver, Anne was proving very capable. She dimpled at Hugo’s praise.

‘I can help Lizzie look after this lot till you get back,’ she added. ‘Do you want me to call any of the other GPs in?’

‘We’ll see how we get on in the next half-hour or so,’ Hugo decided. ‘If things get any more chaotic than this, I’ll definitely need some help.’ He turned back to the driver who was, remarkably, still continuing his monologue.

‘Then it’s off to Te Anau, and the Milford Sound and dolphin bit, before heading back to Christchurch and the plane back to Japan.’

‘Shift your bus,’ Hugo instructed curtly. ‘You’ll find a parking area outside Outpatients to the right of the ambulance bay.’

The maternity suite beckoned like an oasis of calm in a day that had deteriorated at an alarming rate. The midwife, Joan Pringle, was outside the door of the delivery room when Hugo arrived. Her white uniform looked as crisp and fresh as it had first thing this morning and her long blonde hair was still neatly coiled at the back of her head, with no errant tendrils to spoil the young woman’s aura of competence. Joan’s even features were as pleasing as the rest of her appearance, and her pale blue eyes never failed to be a little surprising. At present, however, the midwife’s smile was strictly professional.

‘Good timing, Hugh. I think the pethidine is wearing off. The entonox doesn’t seem to be providing enough additional relief any more.’

‘How’s it looking?’

‘Seven centimetres last time I checked, maybe eight. And that was twenty minutes ago so we shouldn’t be far off transition. She’s getting very tired, though. I think she might need some help. I’ve got the ventouse and forceps kits ready but I won’t call you until I know for sure.’

‘I’m glad you’re in charge here, Joan. It’s going mad everywhere else at the moment. Roll on Friday.’

‘I’m looking forward to it as well.’ Joan’s smile was less professional this time and it took Hugo a second to realise she was referring to their customary Friday night date and not the end of his week on full-time hospital cover that he had been referring to. He returned the smile, feeling a trifle guilty that the date hadn’t been a priority.

Nicola Cross, doing her best to deliver her second child, was delighted to see Hugo.

‘I’m so glad you’re still on duty, Dr Patterson.’

‘I would have come in for this anyway, Nicky. And I’m never far away.’ His smile was a little wry as he noted the healthy rate of beeping from the foetal heart-rate monitor. ‘Sometimes I think I should have bought a house a bit further on around the lake.’

‘You got part of the old Spencer farm, didn’t you?’ Nicola seemed eager to distract herself from the prospect of another contraction.

‘Yes. I was lucky enough to get a stretch of lakeside with the old shearers’ quarters and the woolshed.’

‘Is it true that some hotel chain offered Mrs Spencer millions for it?’ Nicola’s husband, Ben, was sitting beside the bed.

‘She certainly could have done a lot better than selling it to me, but she knew how much I loved the place.’ Hugo smiled fondly. ‘I inherited her dogs last year. Maybe she wanted them to live out their lives on a patch of their own land.’

‘Hugh’s converted the shearers’ quarters,’ Joan added. ‘It’s a beautiful little house now.’ She turned away to wash her hands and Hugo couldn’t help wondering if it had been the mention of the dogs that had prompted such laudable thoroughness in her technique. Despite some valiant efforts, Joan had never been able to hide her dislike of any domestic pet’s less hygienic attributes.

Nicola wasn’t listening any more. She had put the entonox mask to her face and was sucking in long breaths of the pain-relieving mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide.