Emergency Response by Nicki Edwards Page B

’cause it’s not likely you’ll get a chance to pee.”
    Mackenzie raised her eyebrows. “How long have you worked here then?”
    “Coming up my tenth year. The hubby and I were planning to travel around Australia in our caravan. We were going to do the gray nomad thing. We got to Iron Ridge and the van needed fixing. We planned to stay a few nights and we’re still here. Our two boys ended up moving over here for the mines too.”
    “You obviously love it.” Mackenzie couldn’t imagine choosing to stay that long otherwise.
    “It’s got its good and bad days. It took me a while to settle in, but it’s a lot different now. Lots of new families so it’s not quite so cliquey. Anyway, I’d better get onto Tom again.” Debbie put the phone to her ear and punched in a number from memory. “I need to find out what’s takin’ him so bloody long to get ’ere.”
    “So Mackenzie, what brings you out here?” Doc asked.
    Mackenzie spun around. She hadn’t heard him come in.
    He collapsed into Debbie’s vacated seat at the front desk. Mackenzie started to reply but he held up his hand. “No. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. A relationship breakdown. No? Then you’re out here to find yourself .” He used his fingers to make quotation marks. “Not that? Oh of course ,” he drawled, pulling off an aristocratic-sounding accent which sounded very well-rehearsed, “you’re here to close the gap between indigenous Australians and white man.”
    Mackenzie tried not to roll her eyes. She had no idea how to respond to this man. He was the rudest person she’d ever encountered. She wasn’t given a chance to reply.
    “Well, Mackenzie Jones, let me tell you something. Out here, it’s a matter of survival of the fittest. No one comes to the emergency department because they have a sniffle or they hit their big thumb with a hammer – not like they do in the city. ”
    Mackenzie flinched at the way he accentuated the word. She might not have any emergency nursing experience, but she had spoken to plenty of her colleagues and what he was describing did occur in some city hospitals. Plenty of people who should have visited their GP instead wasted everyone’s time and filled up emergency department beds with their non-urgent problems. But why was he having a go at her, as though she was somehow to blame for the failure of the entire Australian health system?
    “Out here people only seek help when they actually need it,” he continued. “You’ll see some awful injuries here; injuries which normally require admission to an ICU in the city. Of course, they don’t have that option unless we fly them out. I’ve seen people recover from their injuries by sheer guts and determination – not because of the machines they were connected to.”
    “Daniel do you have a problem with me coming out here to work?” she asked. Surely not? The agency said they were desperate for staff. The nurse she was replacing was going back to the UK for three months and obviously, he was that nurse.
    “The name’s Doc.”
    “Whatever,” Mackenzie muttered under her breath. If she was supposedly his replacement, he’d be gone soon and she’d never have to see him again, therefore it wouldn’t matter what she called him.
    “I have a problem with intensive care trained nurses who can’t work unless they have machines beeping at them all the time. It drives most city nurses crazy and they never stay. I cannot believe the agency would employ someone with no emergency experience. It’s just typical. We can never get staff out here so they take anyone. It’s like if you have a pulse you’ll be good enough.”
    Mackenzie was livid. She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I think you’re making a huge assumption about me and my nursing abilities.”
    He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
    His phone rang then and the sound cut through the room like the shattering of glass. Mackenzie jumped. He turned away from her to take the call