16. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Monday dragged. To kill time, Ollie helped her brothers with pruning, her old trusty Akubra she’d uncovered from the back of her bedroom closet keeping the sun off her face.

“Look at you,” laughed Nico as she arrived alongside them. “You can take the girl out of Queensland…”

“Highest rates of melanoma in the world,” she shot back. “Had a skin check recently? You’re going to look like a raisin by the time you’re forty-five.”

“Not all of us work indoors Miss Lily-white.” He kicked a small spray of dirt at her legs.

Ollie looked down. Just a few weeks back home and she was thoroughly golden-brown. She was starting to look like she’d never left.

“So.” Matty eyed her from the other side of a vine. “You and Lara Bennett.”

“Anyone tell you that you gossip like an old woman?” she fobbed him off. She didn’t want to talk about Lara. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She wanted to talk day and night about Lara. But not while she kept floating just out of Ollie’s reach, shrouded in rumour and protected by spiky defences. Ollie wasn’t quite sure if she was planning a seduction or mounting an investigation at this point, but she definitely knew she was thinking way too much about Lara Bennett.

“You’re the one inviting her home to family dinner and barely remembering to eat you were so busy staring at her,” Matty raised his eyebrows at her. “First time I’ve ever seen you off your food.”

Ollie stepped deliberately to the next vine.

“You’re imagining things,” she denied.

He lifted his head.

“You should stay away from her,” he said seriously. “She’s bad news. ”

“You don’t even know her,” she said, a spike of anger rising in her blood. “You’re as bad as the rest of Ribbonwood.”

“No I’m not.” He let his pruning shares dangle at the end of his long arm. “I welcomed her into our home, didn’t I? But it’s one thing to watch you bond with an old school mate and another to watch you get tangled up in something you don’t understand.” He held up his hand as she scoffed. “You’ve been away from Ribbonwood a long bloody time,” he warned. “Lara Bennett is dangerous.”

Ollie’s jaw dropped.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She squared her shoulders ready to get into it.

“Sadie reckons she’s alright,” Nico piped up.

Ollie had never been so pleased to hear her middle brother’s input in her life.

“Well, you would believe that,” she said, raising her eyebrows, grateful at him for putting his head above the parapet, “since you fell into a little gooey puddle at her feet.”

She ignored Matty’s ongoing gaze for another three long seconds before he caved, the new low-hanging fruit far too tempting to ignore .

“Mate it was tragic.” He turned on Nico. “Don’t reckon you’ll get another look in there.”

“Will too,” Nico said with a grin. “I’m taking her down the pub on Saturday.”

“What?” Ollie clutched her hand to her hat. “Wow. She must have felt really sorry for you if she agreed to that.”

They both continued to mock Nico who took it all with the pleased indifference of a man who at least had a date with the object of his affections. All Ollie really had to hold onto were a few hot-eyed glances and hints that Lara Bennett didn’t really want her to leave her alone as much as she was pretending she did.

If Lara really didn’t want anything to happen between them there was no way Ollie would push her. She could take no for an answer, no problem. But between the rebuffs that felt like come-ons and come-ons that felt like rebuffs her head was thoroughly turned. She just couldn’t shake the idea that something - be it small town closet queerness, their own thorny history, or perhaps even everything she was starting to understand had happened to Lara - meant she couldn’t drop her hard front and admit she was just as affected by Ollie as Ollie was by Lara. She’d felt it, she was sure, in the tingling in the air between them as they’d gazed up at the stars together, Lara’s breathing speeding up in the night air beside her.

“Earth to Ollie.” Matty’s voice broke through.

She blinked. Both her brothers were eyeing her, one with amusement and one with concern.

“Jesus and you think I’ve got it bad.” Nico raised his eyebrows. “You’re a lost cause there, kid.” He threw all brotherly attempts to protect her to the wind.

Ollie was starting to wonder if he maybe was right.

That afternoon she looked down at her phone screen, watching it ring. She gulped in a deep breath, her skin suddenly clammy.

“Hi Cherie,” she finally made herself answer.

“Ollie,” came the warm, patrician voice of the medical director of the Emergency Department at the kids’ hospital. “How are you going?”

“Good,” she said. “Yeah, really good.” She began to pace the deck, the sun beating down on her shoulders. She felt agitated, the phone against her ear an almost physical threat. She fought the urge to throw it as far as she could, out towards the dam like a venomous snake.

“And how are you really going?” Cherie said gently. Ollie’s shoulders dropped .

“I…I’m not sure?” she managed. It had been less than a month since Cherie had sat with her, side-by-side in the director’s office, Ollie unable to stop crying and unable to fully explain why.

Sienna Lau. Aged four. Let go of her mother’s hand and ran out into the street at just the wrong moment. The mother’s scream when Ollie finally, finally stepped away from the ongoing resus and gently explained that they’d done everything they could. That it was time now, to stop.

It was by any measure, a terrible moment, and a terrible death. But not Ollie’s first, nor her last. It was her fucking job after all and she’d coped before and she could cope and why couldn’t she cope? Cherie was in her late sixties, tall and commanding, a fucking god in their field. Her eyes were infinitely understanding. Honestly darling, she’d said calmly, the voice of a woman who’d broken bad news to parents a hundred thousand times, it would be more of a worry if you weren’t crying right now, don’t you think?

But the thing was, Ollie didn’t always cry. Rarely cried, in fact. You couldn’t do this job day in, day out and fall to pieces every time you had a loss. There’d been a shift that happened inside Ollie at some point early on where she simply found solace in the fact that she was damn good at her job. If something happened to your child, she was the person you wanted to have there on those darkest of nights. It wasn’t traumatising to see sick or injured children every day if you were the person doing something, using your well-honed skills to save a life or a limb. It was only traumatising if you were a bystander and Ollie was very much not a bystander. So she was, by any measure, always fine at the end of the day.

Until she wasn’t. And the thing that hit her, when Cherie gently sent her home, told her to take a couple of personal days and come back when she was ready, was the shame. Not shame that she hadn’t been able to save a little girl’s life - no, Ollie had known the futility within moments of laying eyes on the tiny body - but shame that she, Dr Gabrielli, MBBS, FACEM, PEM was, after all, just another member of the public after all. Not special. Just a human.

There’d been at least eight or nine other members of the team in there with her - nurses, doctors, orderlies - and she, the team leader, was the only one who had truly broken down. For fuck’s sake, she was a consultant, the top of the top, the most trained you could bloody well be. There was always a kind of veiled machismo in critical care areas like E.D; everyone caught it. It was the badge of honour they’d all earned: throw whatever you can at me, universe, I can handle anything. Everyone had a bad day sometimes, everyone shed a tear from time to time, everyone needed a goddamned holiday, but Ollie… Ollie didn’t seem to be coming back from it.

“Theoretically,” Cherie said now, her voice low and calm, “you’re due back at work in nine weeks.” Ollie nodded. That was forever away. But also? It sounded impossible. Walking back into the E.D., seeing her colleagues again, having a child’s life in her hands? Those same hands had started shaking at some point in this call and she didn’t know when. “I’d love to see you back,” Cherie continued, “because you’re about near irreplaceable.” There was a smile in her tone before she became serious. “But your wellbeing is my utmost priority.”

“I appreciate that,” Ollie managed. “I’ll be back. ”

There was quiet down the line for a long moment.

“I’m going to send you a name,” Cherie announced. “She’s Melbourne-based but she can do online appointments while you’re away.”

“Oh no,” Ollie protested quickly. “Honestly, it’s fine, I just need some time out. A reset.”

“Mm,” Cherie responded. “I think you’re smarter than that, don’t you?”

“Uh… no actually, apparently I’m not.”

“Ollie.” Suddenly Ollie could remember very well what it had been like to be one of Cherie’s interns. “Put the fucking ego to the side and go and see the nice head doctor would you?”

Ollie spluttered out a small laugh.

“Ugh,” she said. “Fine.”

“Good girl,” Cherie approved. “Now, how’s your weather? I’d let you know that it’s eleven degrees and raining right now but I want you to come back, so I won’t. ”

Despite the pleasantries, Ollie’s hands were still shaking when she hung up the phone.