Greek Doctor: One Magical Christmas

‘I’m conscious and feeling no pain so I assume I’m okay and, yes, my feet are free. What did we hit? I didn’t see anything ahead of us and there certainly wasn’t anything on the road as we came out.’

‘It’s a camel, I just looked. I’d heard there was a mob of them out here, but hadn’t believed it. They’re usually further west, around Alice and over in the Western Australia deserts. By the look of things it was already dead—maybe the ambulance hit it a glancing blow on its way back to town. The damage is on your side so I doubt your door will open. Here’s a knife, can you cut your way free of the airbag? I’ll phone a tow truck.’

He felt the knife press into his palm then heard her move away, speaking quietly, no doubt phoning for help, but when he made his way out of the vehicle she wasn’t on the phone. The headlights, still working on the driver’s side, illuminated a macabre scene, the slight woman kneeling by the big animal, talking not to it but to a young calf that stood making bleating noises at its mother, no doubt waiting for her to get up.

‘She had this calf—the poor wee thing. See the cord—it’s not very old.’

The pain in the woman’s voice pierced Mak’s heart and he heard his own voice saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after it.’

We?

He was here for a month and what did he know about raising camels? Raising anything? Okay, so he’d thought he’d be a father—once upon a time—and he’d liked the idea, but his marital experience still rankled. It wasn’t something he was likely to repeat.

‘I’d like to get a rope around his neck,’ Neena said.

Mak smiled to himself, feeling the words were a great segue to his thoughts, then he realised she was trying to hold the struggling baby camel.

Struggling baby camel? The animal was kicking its ridiculously long legs and the woman holding it was pregnant.

‘Let go,’ Mak ordered. Guessing she was about to argue, he added, ‘If it kicks the baby, you’ll be sorry.’ He lifted it out of the way, standing up with it and wondering what to do next.

He supposed it was fate that the tow truck should arrive at that moment so he was illuminated by its headlights, standing in the middle of the road, a baby camel in his arms.

‘You guys been having fun?’ The tow-truck driver got out of his cab and surveyed the scene. ‘Not your baby, is it, Neena?’

‘It is now,’ Neena told him, standing up and moving across to where the driver was examining the calf. ‘We’d better put him in the back of my vehicle and get him out when we get to town. Can you drag the mother’s body off the road a bit before you hitch up to my car, Nick? Oh, sorry, Nick, this is Mak—Mak, Nick.’

‘New doctor in town, I heard,’ Nick said as he offered his hand to Mak.

‘Word gets around,’ Mak said, shaking hands with the man, although it did puzzle him just how this had happened in the early hours of a Saturday morning, especially as the town had been deserted when he’d arrived.

He didn’t puzzle over it long, putting the calf into the back of the vehicle then helping Nick wrap a chain around the dead camel and walking in front of the tow truck as it pulled the animal off the road and into bushes well off the track. Next, Neena’s vehicle, with its badly damaged bull bar and left wheel arch, was attached for towing, and Neena, who had settled the calf in the back of her big four-wheel-drive, talking to it all the time, was persuaded to leave it for the drive back to town.

‘Birds like ducks and geese attach themselves to humans if they don’t have a mother—do you think camels might do the same?’ she asked as she climbed into the tow vehicle, moving across the bench seat to make room for Mak in there as well.

‘Patterning, don’t they call it?’ Nick said, and Mak’s world became a dream again. Crammed into the cab of a tow truck as a brilliant dawn coloured the eastern sky, the smell of diesel fuel filling the air, and a slim, pregnant, beautiful woman squashed beside him, chatting on about the patterning habits of birds, stirring heat in his body again…

He’d put it down to tiredness and ignore it, that’s what he’d do, but, exhausted as he was, the night was not over. As Nick pulled up outside the big old house and Mak wearily alighted, his hostess was already making plans.

‘My office is the first room on the left, the computer’s on the desk,’ she said to Mak. ‘Could you hop on the internet and see what you can find out about camel milk? The little one will need a drink. And Nick, if you wouldn’t mind carrying it out to the stables. A rubber glove, that would do for a teat do you think, until I can get something sent out?’

‘It’s no use arguing,’ Nick said to Mak, as Neena made her way to the back of her vehicle to release the calf. ‘Once she’s got a bee in her bonnet about something, there’s no stopping her. I’d better catch up or she’ll lift the damn thing out herself.’

Nick hurried after her while Mak wearily climbed the front steps. They felt as high as Everest, but as tiredness cramped his legs he had to wonder just how tired a pregnant woman must be feeling. Not that he intended using her office for the internet search on camel milk.

Was he really about to do that?

Yes, he was, but he’d use his laptop—that’s if wireless worked out here. One day in four, she’d said—was that when it did work or it didn’t?

He sighed, too tired and confused to think about such irrelevancies. Though wasn’t the constitution of camel milk an irrelevance?

Not in Neena Singh’s opinion!

He ate the sandwich as he searched the ‘net, and even drank a cold cup of tea, making notes at the same time.

‘Camel milk is lower in fat and lactose than cow’s milk and higher in iron, potassium and Vitamin C,’ he reported, after finding his way around the back of the house to what had obviously been stables at some time and entering the one that was brightly lit from within.

Neena, seated on the stable floor with the calf’s head in her lap, looked up at him and smiled, although he was so far beyond smiles he wondered how she’d managed it.

‘That’s great. We can work out some kind of formula but to begin I’ve given him some newborn infant formula I had out here from when we were looking after an injured foal. There’s no vet in town, you see, and the stables aren’t used most of the time. Someone told me about rubber gloves and he seems to have taken to it because he drank quite a lot before he went to sleep.’

She held up a two-litre soft-drink bottle to which she’d attached a rubber glove, the fingers tied off so the thumb formed a soft teat.

Mak shook his head, although was feeding a camel calf through a rubber glove any more unbelievable than the rest of the occurrences of the night?

‘You should be in bed yourself,’ he said, knowing if he didn’t lie down soon he’d probably fall down but not wanting to portray such weakness in front of this apparently inexhaustible woman.

‘I’ll go soon. You go—have a shower and leave your clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. Ned will take care of them for you. Grab something to eat in the kitchen if you’re hungry. You won’t sleep otherwise.’

‘And you’re going to do what?’ Mak demanded, sensing she had no intention of following her own advice and going to bed.

‘I’ll doze here. From the moment I was pregnant I took up dozing. I can doze just about anywhere. And I don’t want Albert waking up and finding himself alone.’

‘Albert?’

She smiled at Mak and he felt a now familiar stirring deep inside him. Tiredness!

‘He’s got a noble look about him and I think Albert is a noble name, don’t you? I did consider Clarence— Clarence the Camel, you know—but he might think that’s a bit sissy when he grows up.’

‘And Albert isn’t?’ Mak muttered, but not loudly enough for Neena to hear because right now he didn’t want to get involved in an argument over the naming of a camel calf. Besides, she was talking again.

‘When Ned gets up he’ll rig up something for him, some way that Albert can feed on demand and some music or something to keep him company, but until then I’ll stay here. There’s straw and bags, I’ll be perfectly comfortable.’

Mak knew he should argue, but with what—the on-demand feeding? What did he know? Her staying there? He doubted he’d budge her.

He walked away, but the image of her, sitting on the floor, dirty and dishevelled, the camel’s head on her lap, wouldn’t go away.

Might never go away.

And that thought made him shiver…

Neena watched him go, her mind churning. A man who’d check out the constitution of camel milk in the early hours of the morning couldn’t be all bad. But what if her suspicions were right—what if he’d come to take her baby from her, if not physically, then at least to persuade her to let the child be part of a family of which she had a very poor opinion?

She had to be wary of him—and not be taken in by little acts of kindness. Except that kindness, right now when she was feeling so terribly, terribly tired, seemed particularly important.

She studied the calf’s funny face through teary eyes and told herself it was just pregnancy making her weepy, and thinking of the pregnancy—of her baby’s welfare— she stretched out on the bag-covered straw and settled the calf so its legs were stretched away from her, then she patted Baby Singh, talked softly to him for a few minutes, telling him about the little camel he’d have for a playmate, wondering about family—a concept not all that familiar to her, although deep down she knew that every child deserved to have a family.

But that family?