Heart's Command
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
‘WHAT do you mean, the building’s occupied?’
From within the old stone building, Kirsten heard the steely demand, the voice not so much loud as carrying. She strained to hear the reply from the young soldier, a punctiliously polite lieutenant who hadn’t deserved the wrath she’d heaped on him.
Nothing.
Perhaps the army didn’t teach voice projection until later in their recruits’ careers.
‘Squatting? Someone’s squatting in there and you haven’t moved them on?’
It was the carrying voice again, and she guessed the underling was being flayed by the bits she couldn’t hear. In all fairness to the youth, she should step in.
Or out, in this case. At present, she was lurking in the former convent’s marble-tiled entry, while the men were standing in what feeble protection from the rain the portico, formed by the first floor balcony, afforded them.
Footsteps on the front steps finessed her plan and all she had time to do was step forward, hoping it would look as if she’d just that minute walked into the foyer.
The carrying voice belonged to a tall, erect man—the phrase ‘soldierly bearing’ flashed obligingly through Kirsten’s mind. He was so wet his army fatigues clung to him like a second skin, revealing a body of hard, flat planes and sculpted muscle. His dark-looking hair was plastered to a well-shaped skull, but the weak light from the opening behind him threw his face into shadow so she was unable to read either his expression or the colour of his eyes.
Beyond him, she could see large trucks pulling up, and hear orders being shouted.
‘May I help you?’ Kirsten asked in her carefully polite, ‘talking to bureaucracy’ voice.
His strides shortened as if he was taken aback to find her there—so much so he didn’t reply to her directly but turned to his hapless subordinate again.
‘I understood all women and children had been evacuated from the town, Lieutenant.’
His tone suggested ‘exterminated’ might have been an equally fitting verb.
‘Not quite all,’ the unfortunate, who’d introduced himself to Kirsten as Lt James Ross, replied.
‘I can see that, Lieutenant!’
Not only carrying, but honed to the sharpness of a fine steel blade, that voice.
‘Ah, sir. You see, sir. Dr McPherson is a doctor, sir,’ James stumbled.
More ‘sirs’ than the House of Lords, Kirsten thought, watching the wet and distinctly aggravated man closely to see how he’d react to this blindingly obvious news.
‘But still a female of the species, I presume.’ More a growl than a reply. Not a good reaction.
Brown—his eyes were brown, Kirsten realised. And right now they were boring into the lieutenant as the young man floundered into a string of half-sentences, obviously trying to find an answer which would satisfy his superior while not arousing more ire in the aforementioned doctor.
She smiled encouragingly at him, amused by her reading of the situation. True, she’d snapped at him earlier. More than snapped in fact. She’d let loose the full force of the anger and frustration built up over weary months of fighting for the survival of Murrawarra’s hospital.
Perhaps she should make up for her outburst by rescuing him now. She took another step forward, invading the interloper’s space.
‘You might understand the situation better if you talk directly to me, rather than using James as an intermediary. If spoken slowly and carefully, I can understand English.’
The brown gaze swung towards her, the man’s startled expression suggesting that he wasn’t used to people addressing him without permission. Possibly written! For a moment Kirsten wondered about the penalties for insubordination. Were firing lines still used in today’s army?
‘I’m Major Harry Graham, in charge of this operation, and this building is to be used as the company’s HQ,’ he snapped, ignoring her smart comment. ‘We’ll be setting up our own FAP so your services won’t be required. I’ll give you an hour to pack, then you, and whoever else is squatting here with you, will be ferried into Vereton.’
Ken arrived right on cue. Six feet one and drop-dead gorgeous, he was also one of the best general nurses Kirsten had ever seen in action.
‘Rob West phoned to say he’s bringing Cathy in,’ he said, ignoring the two intruders with masterly aplomb. ‘He’ll leave her at the water’s edge downtown then he has to get back to the property. He wants someone there to meet her in an hour. Actually, it will be less than an hour now, as Chipper needed a bottle. Thirty-five minutes would be closer. He’ll come in near the old meatworks.’
Kirsten checked her watch.
‘I’ll go,’ she told him. ‘You mind the shop.’
Ken nodded, then, still without acknowledging the presence of the strangers, disappeared back along the corridor that led to their ‘ward’.
‘I want you out of here in an hour, not meeting more people to add to your squatters’ colony,’ Brown Eyes told her. ‘This building is to be—’
‘You’re repeating yourself,’ Kirsten interrupted. ‘You want it for your HQ, but I want it for my h-o-s-p-i-t-a-l. Do you understand that? It’s a word for a place where people come when they’re in need of medical attention. And if FAP stands for first-aid post, I doubt whether your firstaiders can handle all our patients. For instance, that message was from the husband of a pregnant woman who’s coming in from an outlying property. I imagine her imminent arrival means she’s in labour.’
‘She should have been airlifted out!’ the infuriated soldier growled at Kirsten. ‘Her evacuation should have been a priority. Maybe you don’t understand the severity of this situation. There’s a wall of water approaching this town that could destroy ninety per cent of the buildings, to say nothing of the already affected water supply and sewerage. It’s no place for pregnant women.’
‘Woman, singular,’ Kirsten corrected him. ‘And the convent has its own water supply, generators and a septic system. It’s also high enough above the projected flood level to be safe. I imagine that’s why you want it for your CP.’
Dark eyebrows knitted as he frowned at her.
‘CP?’
‘Command Post,’ Kirsten responded, grinning at her feeble attempt at humour. ‘Feel free to adopt it if it isn’t already one of your set of initials. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve patients to see.’
‘Patients? You’ve other patients here as well? Good heavens, woman, don’t you understand the danger? Why weren’t they evacuated earlier? Who authorised you staying on in the town?’
Kirsten forgot about feeble humour, as her anger, easily aroused these days, flared again.
‘Now, see here, buddy!’ she retorted, stepping closer to the man and stabbing her finger into his chest. ‘I don’t need authorisation from anyone to do my job! I am bound by an oath your rule-book mind could never understand, by things like compassion and humanity, concepts people like you ignore because you can’t show them on a graph or measure their effectiveness with numbers.’ She paused, then gave another stab. ‘And don’t call me “woman”. Ever! Understand that? My name is McPherson, Kirsten to friends, Dr McPherson to you.’
Harry stared down at this little pipsqueak of a woman who had the temerity to be poking his chest. Shiny brown curls framed a face that would have been right at home in an old painting—perhaps with a blue ribbon, to match the blue of her eyes, threaded through the hair.
He was wondering where he’d seen just such an image when another sharp jab to his sternum brought his mind back to the present.
‘I can’t say I’m pleased to meet you, Dr McPherson,’ he told her, realising he must be tired for his mind to be wandering the way it was. Now it was wondering how long it had been since he’d seen blue sky, and if it really was the same colour as those angry eyes.
He straightened his shoulders and continued. ‘As I said earlier, I need this building and I don’t have time to argue about it. The latest estimates are that the flood will peak here within the next three to five days—which doesn’t give me and my men much time to raise the levee banks and do whatever else we can to save what’s left of the town.’
The blue eyes took on a stormy look, darkening in colour as he watched.
‘You took long enough to get here,’ she snapped at him. ‘This is the third flood to head towards us in as many months. Which is why the hospital is operating from this building. The first flood destroyed the hospital outbuildings, and weakened the foundations of the main structure so badly that the second lifted it up and took it two hundred yards downstream, then set it down out of kilter so the floor slopes every which way. That and the smell are not conducive to good patient care.’
She was sidetracking him. He knew it instinctively, although he couldn’t guess why.
‘You’ll have to go,’ he said, and saw the defiance flare in her eyes.
‘We’re not going,’ she told him, then she stepped back and added, ‘But there’s plenty of room. We use the west wing of the building for the hospital, also the old dining room and some small rooms I assume were once offices. The kitchen is between the two wings—out there beyond the stairs—and big enough for us to share.’
Harry closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to relieve the tension building in his head, then said, ‘We won’t share because you’re leaving.’
The words should have been strong and forceful but came out slightly strangled as a sneeze got caught up in them.
‘Perhaps you should change out of your wet clothes,’ she offered helpfully. ‘I’m short-staffed at the moment and wouldn’t like to have too many extra patients in the hospital.’
He was just wondering about the punishment for strangling a civilian, when she turned and whisked away, disappearing down the dim passageway her henchman had used earlier.
A shuffling sound reminded him who was to blame for all of this and he turned to Ross and demanded, ‘Where’s Captain Woulfe? He’s supposed to have had this in hand.’
‘He was detained at the council chambers, sir. Seems the mayor has a list of the properties he considers top priority. Captain Woulfe suspects he owns them, sir, and is checking the contour maps against the mayor’s list.’
Harry sighed, then sneezed again. A rumbling noise outside suggested that more trucks had arrived, having traveled over the treacherous mountain track that was the only open road leading into the town. Maybe he’d get those dry clothes before long.
He nodded towards the stairs.
‘Set us up in whatever rooms are available upstairs and in the east wing your doctor friend was talking about. I’d better go along on this rescue mission for the pregnant woman. We can’t afford to appear anything but helpful to civilians in this situation. While they’re here!’
He watched Ross take the steps two at a time, then headed down the corridor in search of the cheeky doctor. Hospital indeed! The place was over a hundred years old and probably as unsanitary as hell. He pushed open the first door on his right and was greeted by a bedridden elderly man, strung up in so many weights and pulleys he looked like something out of a comic movie.
‘Morning!’ the patient said. ‘Young Kirsten told me the army had landed. Think you’ll win the war against the water?’
‘Were you offered the opportunity to be evacuated?’ Harry ignored the jibe. He couldn’t afford to be diverted by trivial conversation. ‘I understood all hospital patients had been transferred to Vereton and the hospital closed after the second flood.’
‘Ha, state government ploy, that’s all that was,’ the feisty gent replied. ‘But they couldn’t take me, could they? Not all strung up like this. One jolt of the ambulance and me pelvis would all come apart again. No, sir, they couldn’t take me.’
He sounded so pleased with himself, as if being stranded in the flood-bound town were a prize of some kind, that Harry again suspected there was another agenda here, but he didn’t have time to pursue it at the moment.
‘Where can I find Dr McPherson?’ he asked.
‘Down the hall, last door on the left. It was a little sitting room originally. The nuns used it when their families visited. Kirsten’s made it a combined office and bedroom as she’s kind of on duty at night as well and she can hear our bells ring.’
He reached out and lifted up a small device, like a front doorbell.
‘I can call her for you if you like.’
‘No, I’ll find her,’ Harry said, preferring to argue with her without an audience this time.
He grinned to himself as he strode down the corridor. Why was he so certain there’d be an argument?
‘I do not need an escort to drive down the hill and bring back one pregnant patient,’ Kirsten said, when the very wet major appeared in her doorway and suggested going along with her.
‘Nevertheless, you’ll have one,’ he said, in a placid voice she found even more irritating than his order-giving one. ‘What are you driving?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she demanded. ‘It’s a Toyota if you must know, and you’ll make the seats all wet.’
She didn’t add that she’d picked up so many wet patients in recent weeks that her car upholstery was already sprouting an interesting variety of fungal growths. She walked down the passage, pulled on her raincoat with its slick oiled coating and plunged out into the unrelenting rain.
Then stopped. The convent grounds were being transformed. Olive drab tents were rising like giant toadstools from the ground while workers in slickers of the same colour scurried through the rain like ants around a disturbed nest.
‘Where did they all come from?’ she asked, unable to believe the feverish activity on what had once been the gently sloping lawn of the convent.
‘I’ve three platoons here already and more men on standby if required. They all need to be housed, supplied and fed.’
He turned aside to address one of his men, then swung back to her.
‘We’re also preparing to take in evacuees if the families who’ve opted to remain on their properties need to be airlifted out. FAP, mess tent, accommodation for troops, same for civilians, supplies, latrines—we move as a self-contained unit.’
Although he spoke crisply, Kirsten could detect pride in his voice, as if the army’s efficiency pleased him, but it wasn’t the efficiency that snagged her attention.
‘All those men are wearing oilskins,’ she pointed out. ‘How come you’re so wet?’
He grinned at her and she realised he was a very handsome man. In fact, the smile made him look almost human.
‘Rainwear’s designed to keep out rain not flood waters. We had a slight misadventure in a rubber ducky. Hit a submerged log.’
‘You fell out of a boat? Into the flood water? I hope you haven’t any open cuts or scratches. There are dead animals in that water that have come all the way from central Queensland. Fertile breeding ground for who knows what diseases. You should at least take off your clothes.’
‘Right here and now?’ he asked, the smile still lurking in his dark eyes.
Heat swamped her cheeks and she felt sixteen again as she realised she was blushing.
‘Yes, if necessary,’ she retorted. ‘You’d be far better served taking care of yourself, instead of minding my business for me.’
‘Ah, but I’m paid to serve the people of Australia, of whom, I presume, you are one. In fact, we could take my Land Rover,’ he offered, waving a hand towards a bulky four-wheel-drive vehicle parked not far from her small blue car.
He’d switched the conversation with the neatness of a master strategist, but she was tired of arguing. Tired, full stop. For a moment she considered his offer. If they took his vehicle he would drive. But in the end she shook her head regretfully.
‘No, it’s too high and it would be too awkward for Cathy to climb into the seat,’ she said, and led the way towards her car.
‘I’ll drive, you direct me,’ he suggested, his long strides taking him ahead of her so that he reached the car first and had the passenger door open before she could protest.
She hesitated, instinctively reluctant, as if driving around Murrawarra with this man posed an unnamed threat.
‘Look,’ she said, tilting her head so she could see into the brown eyes, ‘isn’t the army here to help save what’s left of the town? Shouldn’t you be filling sandbags, or directing your troops, or yelling orders over there where things are happening? I’ve been ferrying people from the water’s edge to the hospital since this inundation began. I can manage one more run without your help.’
‘I need to assess the situation,’ he said stiffly.
‘You mean, check that Cathy’s pregnant? That I’m telling the truth? What’s it got to do with the army?’
He sighed tiredly and for a moment she felt a spurt of sympathy for him. ‘It’s most irregular, having civilians in need of medical care in the front line,’ he muttered.
Kirsten forgot her own tiredness and chuckled.
‘I know it’s rough out here, but it’s not exactly war,’ she told him. ‘And most of the civilians in these parts are very capable people. They’ve had to be, to survive the rigours of the bush.’
The brown eyes met hers in a kind of challenge, but all he said was, ‘I understand toughness and the rigours of the bush, and if you don’t stop arguing you’ll be late collecting your patient.’
Disturbed by what hadn’t been said, she climbed into the passenger seat and waited while he shut the door and walked around the car. It was a small courtesy, but one which pleased her. An officer and a gentleman? She stole another look at him as he opened the driver’s side door, and felt an unfamiliar, and totally unexpected, quiver of an elemental attraction deep inside her body.
He eased himself in behind the wheel then adjusted the seat back as far as it would go.
‘Just put it back where it was when you get out,’ she grumbled at him, more because she was disconcerted by her reaction to his presence than with any real annoyance at him shifting it. ‘I’ll never reach the pedals with it right back there.’
He shot a look at her as he started the car.
‘You won’t be needing to worry about where the car seat is for a while. You’ll be flying out of here later today. Just as soon as I can bring in some Blackhawks. The car will stay!’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘Not while I’ve patients here who need me.’
‘Your patients will also be airlifted out as soon as I can get a chopper suitable for medical evacuations,’ he informed her, driving slowly past the tent city his troops were erecting.
‘Checking to see they’ve got the tent-pegs in line?’ Kirsten asked nastily, sniping at him because the other conversation was veering towards a childish ‘will not’, ‘will so’ argument.
He ignored her, steering through the stone posts at the entrance to the convent grounds and turning the car towards the town.
‘You’re meeting your patient near the old meatworks?’
‘Yes, it’s—’ she began, but he’d already turned left and was heading towards the old ruined building. ‘How do you know where it is if you’ve just arrived in town?’
‘We do have maps,’ he said coolly. ‘Which happen to have all civilian structures marked on them, including abandoned buildings and unoccupied convents.’
The penultimate word was stressed just enough to let her know that the issue of her presence in the convent hadn’t been laid to rest.
Well, that was too bad. He might have maps that showed the structures in the town, but who could map the spirit of a place?
She stared out the window at the now familiar sea of brown flood water. It was moving sluggishly today, swirling in eddies around abandoned homes and the trunks of the tall gums that had so far survived. Debris clinging to the walls of the buildings showed where the previous floods had peaked and Kirsten shuddered as she imagined the next wave of water, sweeping towards them from so far up north it had already devastated half a dozen towns.
‘Rob has a tinny. He’ll come from that direction.’
She pointed, peering through the rain for a first glimpse of the little aluminium runabout the farmer used, in better times, for fishing,
‘He’ll have to travel slowly,’ her chauffeur said. ‘Watching out for submerged fences and floating debris.’
The windows were fogging up and Kirsten pushed open the car door as they rolled to a halt by the water’s edge. The rain eased to a kind of damp mist and she heard the chug of an outboard motor above the gurgle of the moving water.
She stepped out of the car and moved towards the shelving bank where Rob would bring the little boat in to rest.
‘How far have they come? Don’t you realise the dangers associated with travelling across the water? There are civilian and military helicopters available for evacuations—why didn’t you call in one of them?’
‘It wasn’t my choice,’ she reminded him. ‘Besides, most of the helicopters are working north of here, where the flood’s peaking right now. I thought their role was to rescue people in immediate danger.’
‘So you’ll admit your patient’s not in immediate danger?’
Kirsten spun towards him.
‘What is this? Interrogation army-style? Where are the spikes for pushing under my fingernails? Do you pack electrodes when you head off on these civilian rescue missions?
‘And I told you to get out of those wet clothes,’ she added crossly, as the man sneezed again.
