Something Else

Excerpt

Something Else
Alicia Thompson © 2021
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

He’d felt the pull, but there was no pain. Yet. Only the livid blood running through his fingers, dropping to the ground like seed. Grabbing his wrist, he ran back to the cab of the ute, found a rag in the glove box, clutched it in his hand. The fleshy part of his palm just below the thumb was beginning to throb.

He walked back to where the cows were chewing the hay he’d torn apart. Shaking out that last biscuit with his good hand, he found the culprit. A jagged piece of fencing wire. Bastard. Better him than one of his cows.

By the time he’d driven through three sets of gates and juggled numerous gear changes, the pain was like a blade pushing through his palm to his wrist. He consoled himself that in his own experience the smallest wounds often hurt the most.

He ransacked the cupboard under the bathroom sink and found cotton wool and a roll of bandages. No Dettol. Reefing everything out onto the floor, he found a small can of antiseptic spray rolling around the back of the shelf. It was rusted and useless.

Still clutching the dirty rag in his hand, he headed out to the kitchen. He wasn’t much into hard spirits, so the ancient cooking brandy used for his mum’s Christmas cakes would have to do.

Back in the bathroom he slowly pulled away the rag. It grabbed where it had stuck to the wound and fresh carmine welled up through the rusty-brown muck. He turned on the tap and before he had time to think about what was coming, thrust his hand under. It was times like this he realised how limited his repertoire of swear words actually was. Catching him once, his mother had said, “That’s a lovely conjugation, dear, now take it outside before I belt you round the head.”

He could now see the extent of the damage: a gutter of open flesh, torn to a long triangle at the end, black in its depths. He glanced at the brandy bottle. Shit. He hugged it to him and unscrewed the lid. He was about to pour it when he chickened out and took a big slug instead. Then another. Gritting his teeth, he poured the rest into his hand.

Fang lay where he’d been left, staring through the screen door on the front verandah, his head on his paws, his ears pricked. The tan dots above his eyes gave him a perpetually surprised look. An anguished howl roared down the hallway. He lifted his head and waited.

*****

He woke up several hours later on the couch shivering, cradling his bandaged hand to his chest. His hand felt like it had grown to the size of a pumpkin. His head was ready to split open and his throat was sore. Bloody brandy. May as well have eaten Ratsak. He swung his legs to the floor, but his knees gave way and he felt dizzy. After a few deep breaths he made it to the bathroom and took some aspirin. And promptly vomited them into the toilet.

He splashed some water on his face and looked in the mirror. Ugly as. He took a few more deep breaths. “Okay, all right.” He opened the screen door and Fang scrambled to his feet. “Lassie would’ve gone for help by now, you useless mutt.” He leaned down to rub the dog’s head and they got in the ute together.

The forty-kilometre trip took longer than usual as he forced himself to concentrate on the road ahead. He passed the school bus before crossing the Mill Bridge. Not so many kids on that bus these days. Fewer families, fewer kids. More single guys like himself. You couldn’t blame the girls for wanting better jobs in town or moving to the city. His sister had upgraded boarding school for uni and never looked back, and when his dad had died, his mother hadn’t waited long either.

The town of Bruce wasn’t anything pretty to look at. Flat, with the red-roofed houses sprawling out till they ran out of energy. The town was a main street with a hardware store and bus depot at one end and a Woolworths at the other. Dr Jacobs was in a leafy street parallel and behind. Surgery hours would be over, but he felt confident of rousing the old man up. A man his age didn’t get up to too much at the end of the day.

He rolled down the window an inch. Fang settled down in the driver’s seat and watched him as he tried to tuck his shirt in with one hand. He walked under a rose trellis, up a narrow brick path, and knocked on the heavy green door with the lion’s head knocker. Its clatter seemed to echo through the house. He heard a door open and then there was the delicate pulse of classical music.

When the door finally opened, all he could think was, who the fuck are you? Before him stood a thin young man with a high forehead partly covered by an unruly fringe. But what took him aback were the deep-set eyes. Dark blue and compelling.

“Sorry, I was after the doctor.”

“I am the doctor. Dr James. Martin James.” He held out his hand but let it drop when he saw the bandaged hand. “Ah.”

“I’ve never seen anyone but Dr Jacobs my whole life.”

The doctor arched an eyebrow at him, and his thin lips looked like they might smile but didn’t. “Well, he’ll be back in six months if you’d like to wait till then.”

Right. Those dark eyes held his and he felt he was being turned into a private joke somewhere in their depths.

The doctor took in his dusty boots and exhausted features and inclined his head towards the surgery. “You’d better come round the front.” He walked past him and pulled some keys from his pocket. When he realised he wasn’t being followed, he turned back and said, “If you’re willing to take a punt, that is.”

Once in Dr Jacobs’ surgery he relaxed a little. He watched this new man open cabinets and extract bandages, cotton wool, scissors, and bottles. “So, where’s Dr Jacobs?”

“On holiday. I’m covering for six months.”

“Jessie had enough, then?”

The doctor glanced round and smiled. “I guess so.”

Mrs Jacobs was always saying that being married to a country doctor was harder than being one as you never got a holiday. She never seemed to see the irony of saying this to farmers’ wives.

The doctor had taken a seat and pulled a pad towards him. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

“David. David Mulkerin. Property’s out on the Fullerton Road.” He explained what happened to his hand.

The doctor scribbled some notes and put his pen down. “Okay. Let’s take a look.”

He held out his hand, palm up, on the desk between them. With the doctor bending over his hand and gently beginning to unravel the bandage he could look at his face unobserved. Cheekbones to cut bread, as his sister would say. Sandy eyelashes. He felt a second uncomfortable wave of déjà vu since first encountering those eyes. He swallowed it down and tried to focus on what was going on.

Long girlish fingers wove the bandage under and over, under and over.

“Hands like that, you must be a piano player.”

He didn’t look up from his task. “Flute, actually, but only for a short while. Why, do you play?”

Something in his tone made him bristle. “Yeah. Yeah, I do, actually. We’re not all yokels out here, y’know.”

The doctor paused to look up at him. “Is that right.” His smile seemed genuine.

There was a brief moment of pleasure as the cool air of the surgery hit his newly exposed skin, but it was soon replaced with the pain of being pressed and stretched.

“Jesus, man. Why didn’t you come in straight away? This will need some serious embroidery. Look at it. It’s already weeping pus. Have you heard of septicaemia?”

“It’s just a cut. I didn’t wanna make a fuss,” he mumbled into his collar while the doctor turned away and rattled metal in a tray.

“You macho types toughing it out.” The doctor sighed and shook his head.

The anaesthetic hurt more than the actual stitches, but he wasn’t going to let on if it killed him. He stared over the doctor’s shoulder, trying to focus on breathing.

“So, where’re you from?”

“Sydney.”

Like it wasn’t obvious. “So, what made you want to come out here then? I hear they pay good money to get doctors out into the country.”

“I did a long stint in casualty at St Vincent’s during my training. Saw a lot of things I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It wears you down after a while.”

“Be around some real people for a change.”

The doctor looked up. “The people I saw in casualty are about as real as they get.”

“I didn’t mean—what I meant is country people are different.”

“They are that.”

He stumbled on, sure he had offended. “I lived in Sydney for a while. Did my degree at New South.”

“We must just have different definitions of what constitutes ‘real’ then.” He pulled a stitch in and it grabbed, drawing a gasp. “Sorry. Nearly done.”

Once he had painted him with antiseptic, rebandaged his hand, and given him a tetanus shot, the doctor made some more notes on his pad. “I’d like to take another look at it next Thursday. You said you’re on a property. How are you going to manage with one hand? Are you married? Do you have family or hired help?”

He opened his mouth and shut it again. The answer was D, none of the above, but if he said this it was bound to encourage interference. It was bad enough having Jodie dropping in all the time.

“Yeah, ah, the neighbours are good.”

The doctor paused in his writing to look at him. He nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Here’s a script for some painkillers if it gives you any trouble, and here’s another for some antibiotics. Make sure you take the whole script. But I’m warning you, if you start trying to do any heavy work and burst those stitches, next time I’ll whack you in a full cast.”

David looked down at his hand.

“David? I’m serious.”

The doctor followed him out to his ute. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Fang.”

“A bit vicious, is he?”

“Nah. More likely to fang you to death with his tongue.”

“You sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Yeah. My left does all the work. She’ll be right.”

As he cranked into second, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Dr James was still standing on the nature strip, his arms folded, watching him.