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On Call to the Vampire

Part 1.

John would never admit it, but he enjoyed being on call. He enjoyed being among those working in the wells of the night. He enjoyed handling the fatigue - the challenge of maintaining concentration and focus, of keeping up the same professional, positive yet detached demeanour at 4 am. He especially enjoyed the elation when adrenaline suddenly overcame exhaustion.

In Dalwallinu there wasn’t much by way of adrenaline. John and Dr van Oyck did a week-on, week-off, rota of call. Here John discovered other pleasures of the night. He would try and stay awake despite the mundanity, the sheer uneventfulness, of on call life. He would await the occasional burst lip on a Friday night, or the upset stomach of the early hours of a Tuesday morning, with the same phlegmatic approach. In busy jobs, he had learnt to grab sleep whenever he could; in Dally, it was a point of pride not to sleep on call.

John MacHale had come to enjoy life in Dalwallinu. He had come to Australia a year before, intending to spend a year in Fremantle, working in A&E and partying for a few months and then travelling around Western Australia. Coming from internship spent in a crumbling emergency department in Ireland, he found the well stocked and provided A&E a huge relief. Towards the end of his time in Freo, he had met Louise. Louise was a little older than John, and worked in the Clinical Decision Unit, a sort of halfway point between A&E and admission to the full hospital... She gave the impression of being highly sceptical of his medical skills, which meant they immediately had something in common. She was also far and away the most beautiful woman he had ever met. Their interactions in the CDU were brief, almost monosyllabic. For some reason she seemed always to be looking after patients who had drunk themselves into some kind of state of acute ill health, and immediately wanted to leave the hospital when the immediate threat to their life was gone. John would have to go to CDU to try and persuade them to stay, unenthusiastically and ineffectually.

One frequent visitor to the ward was Martin Darling. Mr Darling had overnight residencies in Fremantle Hospital about twenty-five times during the time Louise and John worked there. Each visit had the highly stylised, ritualised quality of a Kabuki play. Darling would be brought in unconscious, having been found passed out on the streets of Freo. He would have endured multiple traumas, have spectacularly deranged liver function tests, have mislaid chunks of flesh - ICU would be alerted, a special nurse would be assigned to ensure that he did not trash the entire A&E in his state midway between intoxication and withdrawal (as had happened a few weeks before John arrived) - and yet the next day Martin would demand discharge and no one could find a reason to deny it. Louise was, invariably, the nurse who called John to review Darling in the CDU.

All the Irish doctors and nurses ended up in The Bog, along with most of the other transient expats. It was a sort of barn that served beer and played raucous Irish favourites. One night John, against his better judgement perhaps, went there. With some other junior doctors, all of whom had begun drinking long before John, he entered the place, looking around rather scornfully at the neon shamrocks and framed Guinness posters. Then he saw her, with some of the other Freo nurses, standing at the edge of the dancefloor. She waved and came over.

“Hiya, Johnny” said Louise, and to John’s surprise she immediately placed herself deep into his personal space. At least he thought she said hiya Johnny, it could have been almost anything else. The Pogues were drowning out all conversation. He shouted at her something about where she was going next. He caught the word “Dalwallinu”, and nothing else, and she kept shouting. He shouted back something about his own plans to travel around Western Australia.

There was a mutual silence (surrounded as they were by noise), and a moment of eye contact; then a moment both simultaneous to their eye contact yet somehow after it when kissing was inevitable, and then they kissed. She felt light in his arms, her lips felt warm and she clasped him tightly. As the lights went up, they continued to hold each other, kissing deeply. After a while, they disengaged. They stared awkwardly at each other, and then clasped hands. That night, John and Louise kissed and slept on the couch of one of her friends. Nothing more happened, really – Louise allowed John’s hands to wander down to the top of the curve beneath the small of her back, but steered them away anywhere further down, or anywhere down her front. The next morning Louise seemed hungover, and John quietly left.

Louise had been finishing up in Freo, and was embarking on a rural relief stint in Dalwallinu. After a few days, John had gathered up the courage to ring directory enquiries and ask for the nurses residence in Dalwallinu District Hospital.

“Hi... Louise?”

“Hello?”

“It’s John. John McHale.”

“Oh.” A pause - a little too long for comfort. “How are you?”

“Great, great, great. How are things in the outback?”

“Fine, fine - except Dally isn’t the outback. It’s the wheatbelt. Flat as far as you see.”

“Oh. Are you enjoying it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t spend the rest of my twenties here. But it’s OK for a few weeks.”

He couldn’t think what to say.

“Do you get to come back to civilisation much?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, do you get to Freo, or Perth?”

“I don’t think so. It’s pretty intense here.”

“Really?”

“Yes, well it’s quiet, but your duty is almost every day.”

“Oh.”

This was hard to read. On the one hand, she was clearly a little flummoxed by the call. On the other, she seemed to want to say more, but was finding it hard to think what to say next.

“And what after .. Dalwallinu?”

“We’ll be going to the East Coast, probably up to Cairns.”

“Great. I’ll be there myself. Is Dalwallinu worth visiting?”

“Oh no, not - well, it depends I guess.” Obviously it wasn’t worth visiting from a purely touristic point of view, but she didn’t want to seem to be putting him off. So John told himself. Why not go for it?

“It would be nice to see you again.”

Silence. “You know, at some point” he added, feeling like an idiot immediately.

“It would.” Then a little warmer “yeah, it would.”

“I could go up there to visit, or I have a rural relief stint coming up.”

“It would be nice to have someone under fifty to talk to.” He could see her smiling, could see her standing, slim and lovely. She lowered her voice “everyone else here on rural relief is about 50 and spend their time moaning about their bunions. When we go out, they dress up like for Princes Street on a Saturday night and they were eighteen years old again, and wave what they have at the poor old laddies in the bar for a quiet drink. They think I am some kind of fashion adviser who has to tell them how to snatch a man. I wouldn’t mind but they are all married with kids who are about my age I guess.” She laughed.

“Oh dear... that doesn’t sound great for you.”

“No, not at all. So come on down John, though I have to tell you that there aren’t many places to stay down here.”

It was then a matter of sending in his preference for the rural relief placement. A couple of weeks later, he was disembarking at Dalwallinu, taking in the war memorial, the diner, the library, the fire station, the general store, then looking at the directions scrawled on his hand, and walking towards the hospital. He looked down the endless straight roads, and wondered what the highest point nearby was. Very quickly, he was at the district hospital, a low functional building. A tall, rangy man was waiting outside the doors, greeting John with the words “Dr MacHale, welcome to our little hospital. I am Cornelius van Oyck.”

Van Oyck had taken him round the tiny hospital, with its two four bedded wards, single dialysis machine, tiny laboratory, operating theatre (“mainly for the deliveries”), and nurses station. John’s main role was to give van Oyck a holiday, which the South African was taking in two weeks – until then he would do every second night on call. John had a cabin behind the hospital, along with those of the visiting nurses. The tour was brief. Van Oyck was laconic, and ten minutes after meeting him John was left alone, with a final “I expect you’ll want to get unpacked. If you’d like, you can come down to the clinic later, or you can take it easy and explore a little.” . John unpacked his clothes and a few books. That was it. He walked out to the communal kitchen, in another cabin. There a peroxide blonde in her mid fifties sat in a lounger. She bore the effects of having been in the sun too long; her vest and shorts exposed rather too much leathery skin for John’s comfort.

“Hey there,” she said, “who is this young fella?”

“Hi, my name is John. John MacHale. I’m the new rural relief doc.”

“Rural relief. That’s right, rural relief it is. My name is Angela. I’m from Perth. I’ll tell you straightout, I can’t wait to get back there. Only four more weeks in this armpit of nowhere.”

“Really? How long have you been here.”

“Three months! I’ll just give you one word: uni. You are a handsome young thing, Doc, let me give you a piece of advice: never have kids.”

John reddened. “Are there many other nurses here?”

“Sorry Doctor John, but I’m the youngest there is. There’s another old bat from Perth, makes me look like Elle MacPherson, and then there’s the local girls. I know I’m no old painting, John Boy, but I look better than any of them.”

“Oh. I had thought some of the nurses I worked with in Freo were here.”

“There was this girl, Louise, but she suddenly upped and left a week ago. That was it – ah, Johnny Boy, was it for Louise that you came all the way to the flat flat wheatbelt? Ah, poor Johnny.”

“Um, well. Actually, yes.”

“Awww. I’m sorry. And I can understand why. You poor boy. Do you have a number for her?”

“The only contact I had with her was here.”

“Awww. Young love. Did you root her?”

John knew what root meant. “No.”

“Did you snog her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s something. She was nice, but a bit flightly. Were you the guy who rang about two weeks ago? “

“I guess so.”

“Yeah, well I’m not saying this to make you feel better, but she said she liked you. She said she had talked to this guy she kissed who was coming down. She didn’t know what to make of it all, but she was excited. And then she just left overnight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was pretty sudden. They are desperate to get someone else down. I don’t mind, more overtime for me, more money, the work is so quiet it’s hard to believe you get paid, and in fact you get paid much more. There’s nowhere else that pays so well for working through the night.”

Part 2.

After Angela had left, things quietened down. Everyone knew about him, the doc who had come down after Louise only to find that she had gone. One night John was reading in his cabin while on call. Sara, one of the local nurses, rang from the nurses’ station. “There’s a fella here to see you, Dr MacHale.” Since the story of Louise, and since Angela left, John had maintained professional distance from the nurses.

There was a man in the assessment room. John said, “Hello, I’m Dr MacHale.”

“My name... you don’t want to know my name.”

He spoke the way that Nazi villains in old World War II movies spoke - precisely, exactly, always in control. However, this man utterly lacked the self-confidence of those Ubergruppenfuhreren and SS-Kommandos; his bearing was apologetic, as if he wished to be an utter non presence. John wondered was this drugs or mental illness or some combination of both.

“We just want to help, and I suppose knowing each other’s name will get things started. My first name is John. You can call me John, or Dr MacHale, whatever suits. And you can give me a name that suits you, and I can be as formal or informal as you wish.”

John had noticed that the young Australian doctors he had worked with tended to automatically assume informality. Dr van Oyck, integral part of the community since 1993 that he was, was informal with most patients but formal with some older ones (and indeed with some teenagers). Sensing that this man was not an Australian, John wanted to keep his options open.

“I’m Irish, by the way. I’m here for a few months. And you know that we are bound by confidentiality” he continued.

“Irish. So, call me Mr Melmoth.”

“Mr Melmoth. As in the wanderer”

The man smiled slightly. “I had thought that doctors were no longer literary men, or women.”

“Mr Melmoth, I will be honest and say I have heard of the book, but not read it.”

“Modest and well-read? I must say I have not encountered any doctors on my wanderings that could be so described.” John was thinking of Munchausen’s syndrome, the “peregrinating patient”, the chronic seeker after medical attention trying to fill whatever void in their lives by investigations and tests and whatever comfort there was in the attentions of doctors and nurses. But this didn’t add up. Why would he say straight out that he wandered around seeking medical advice?

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m that well read. I haven’t read the book after all.” This was getting ridiculous. The slightly wheedling tone of the man was beginning to annoy John. It was 4 in the morning and for all his love of the wells of the night, he was trying to remember just what Trudy had said when she called. Usually the nurses were pretty good at repelling the timewasters, the worried well, the odd drunk and those who could generally either wait until the morning or didn’t need a doctor at all. “But Mr Melmoth, I must admit to wondering what brings you here tonight?”

“I want you to give me your blood.”

“What?”

“The blood in this hospital.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Well, we don’t –“

“- keep units on the premises? I know that. However, you can order blood from Perth. They can bring it up in the ambulance or the RFDS can do it.”

“Has something happened? Has there been an accident somewhere?”

“It is for me.”

He looked tired and perhaps a little pale but was evidently ambulant. Some rare anaemia?

“We need to have a reason. We can do some blood tests here and get an idea of what you need, but I would need to have some indication.”

“You can make something up.”

“Mr Melmoth, I have to tell you that blood is very precious commodity.” John thought – blood doping, and recalled articles about cyclists and long distance runners loading up with extra haemoglobin and platelets. This chap didn’t look like an athlete. Maybe a coach, or some sort of shadowy procurer. His eyes went to the panic button on the wall. Not only would it alert the nurses, but also the police station. “Why do you want it?”

“I want to drink it. I have to drink it.”

“Do you have some kind of anaemia?”

“I do not. I need to drink blood. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I have not hurt anyone yet.”

Yet. Not what John wanted to hear. So, some kind of mental illness then. Maybe schizophrenia? The thing to do was to react calmly, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

“Ok, Mr Melmoth. You do understand that it takes some time for units to get up, and there are a lot of procedures to go through” he said blandly.

“So you’re doing it.” The man was transformed. The negative presence was replaced by ecstasy.

“Well, I’m just saying that I don’t want you to expect it to happen quickly. We have quite a lot to get through.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anytime we meet a patient we have to take their history and examine them, and rule out any other illness.”

“My history... my history. That would take some time.”

“It might. We can come back to certain aspects later.”

“Doctor, I will not be here later. When I drink the blood, I will move on.”

“But do you not need blood on an ongoing basis?”

“No, it is something that we only need every ten years or so.”

“How much do you drink?”

“Two of your units will do. It isn’t much.”

“And does it have to be human?”

“Yes. A doctor in Meekathara tried to pass off what must have been pigs blood as human. That did not work. My nose for blood is exquisite.”

“Meekathara... are you from there?”

“No. Australia is such a young country for me, though I recognise that the Aborigines do not see things that way. I am from Europe. Can we leave it at that?”

“So, how did you get to Meekathara?”

“I was on a boat which put in at Port Hedland. When the craving comes, we must leave our loved ones and go as far as we can.”

“How often have you had the craving?”

“Twenty, twenty-five times.”

“And its every ten years?”

“Less often as we get older.”

“So...”

“I have seen generations come and go. Mostly I have stayed out of the centre of events, in remote spots. Most of my life has been spent in Russia. Wars have been the saving grace for us. A freshly killed young soldier could provide the opportunity for sating the craving, even up to a day after he died...”

“There are many wars around the world right now, though none in Australia. Why are you here?”

“The world is full of painful memories. I am proud to say that I have not taken a life for nearly two hundred years. I can be killed by the usual means. I am a man, as you are, except for this craving and this ... well I am not sure if it is immortality. Long life, we’ll call it.”

“Are there others?”

“Yes, but we tend to avoid each other. As a young man, you don’t quite get the shame of it. You glory in it. After you have a family of your own, which in my case was after a hundred years, you realise. You try and lose yourself in life, in love, in art, in public life, in seclusion, in religion. And it comes back, and you find some ingenious way to sate it, but in the end you have to leave it all.” John had not taken in all that much of his psychiatry teaching, but one thing stuck with him. A guest lecturer, his name forgotten, whatever he was lecturing on lost in the mist of memory, saying “never just write down that so-and-so is deluded, or paranoid, or suspicious. Be specific. What are they saying, or doing, or not doing that leads you to that conclusion.”

“Can you be specific about the last time you felt the craving?”

“I feel it now.”

John stifled his yawn. “Mr Melmoth, what you are describing must be very stressful for you. Sometimes when people are very stressed, they experience things that they may find unusual, that other people cannot-“

“Doctor, I am impressed. Normally you people get started on the crazy questions straight away. I will answer them for you. I do not hear voices when there is no one there. I do not see things when there is nothing there. I do not believe that people are trying to deliberately hurt me or conspire against me, apart from the times when I have been driven out of my home by a mob armed with torches and pikes. I do not believe I have any special powers, if only I did, or that the Almighty has chosen me for any particular purpose. I can read the newspaper and watch the television and listen to the radio without believing that anything is being communicated to me personally. I am in control of my own thoughts. No one is taking them out of my head, putting them into my head, or able to read them. I will admit to being desperate for blood, but I do not wish to end my life. I would say my mood is generally poor, but can be better at times. I laugh at amusing things, such as your Footy Show. I do not worry about my weight. My mother and father were extremely kind and generous people, who always treated us with fairness and love. I do not think Dr Freud would have had much to work on with me.In fact, I know so.”

Melmoth’s manner was calm, his speech was coherent, he seemed to have shed utterly his initial diffidence.

“So, let me summarise. You want me to give you blood from the bank.”

“Yes. Ethically, you should not have any qualms. I know from bitter experience that if I do not obtain blood from a source such as this, the compulsion becomes irresistible. I am quite beyond the power of any law. You could save a life.”

“Ok.” John decided to buy time. Bring him in - there were spare beds. Dr van Oyck was away for another week, so it would be possible to sort something out without too many raised eyebrows. Get Dr Green, the psychiatrist who called every two weeks, to see him. She would be in Dalwallinu two days later. He could use a cover story of anaemia, or maybe depression, to justify the admission. “We’ll have to bring you in, you know. And to be honest, we’ll have to give you some kind of cover story.”

“You can use your imagination.”

“I will say that you are exhausted, need blood work. The nurses are under the impression that you have walked from Port Hedland.”

“I have.”

“Indeed. I realise that you may find this annoying, but I probably will have to get the visiting psychiatrist to see you, in a couple of days.”

“That’s fine. I appreciate that I can go along with the charade. And when will I receive the blood?”

“Well, obviously it will take a couple of days to get the tests done.”

“You can spin the bloods here.”

“True.” Melmoth had him there. The hospital had the facility to perform straightforward blood tests on site. .”I can. But for things to look convincing, it has to seem to go through the usual motions. Which would be, in this case, that you be admitted and the bloods taken tomorrow. As a matter of interest, when you have the craving, does some kind of anaemia also exist?”

“Alas not, my dear fellow. The craving is an absolute physical and psychological necessity, but there is no physical or psychological abnormality any of us can find that can explain it. Believe me, from William Harvey to Sigmund Freud to the medical titans of today, pathological scientists of many countries have tried to find a cause for what ails me.”

Part Three

Melmoth was daintily buttering his toast. His slim form seemed to match the tubing that made up the frame of the King’s Fund bed. Melmoth had entered his life only a handful of hours before, but had occupied his thoughts since. All sorts of scruples had filled his night – the ethics of deceiving the system, the potential embarrassment of going along with the charade and it becoming public in some way, his own doubts about his clinical acumen and managerial assertiveness. The next morning on his round – a rather grandiose term for a process that took in two rooms, at the most – John reviewed his only inpatient.

"Would you like some Vegemite?" he asked Melmoth.

"Now, that is an acquired taste."

"What do you make of Australia?"

"A wonderful place. Such space, such solitude! And yet you are never alone. A landscape full of singing and memories. The aborigines, as you – or rather they - call them, preserved a great truth of the entire earth - the world is one long song. You can hear the music everywhere, if you tune into it."

"And what is the music like?"

"I'm afraid for me it gets drowned out by the sound of blood rushing through the veins.”

“Oh,” John said noncommittally“I see Sara took the blood sample. I’ll spin your blood now.” He rose, and went into the lab. The lab was a tiny room, with a small counter on which sat the centrifuge. After inserting the tube into the machine, John sat and turned the machine on. It spun and hummed. John like this process. It passed the time, but it also made him feel like a scientist. He was here, finding the truth about some observable aspect of the universe, recording it, acting upon it. He lost himself in the process and temporarily forgot about Melmoth. Only when he had finished, and found that there was no deficiency in haemoglobin at any rate, did he think of him again.

John had decided that to get a psychiatrist involved only ran the risk of further complication. He realised that he believed Melmoth, and to his shame realised that his main reaction was to try and find some way of ensuring that he could just get out of the situation with the minimum of fuss.

The problem was, Melmoth had been only half right. Protocol demanded that if units of blood were required in an emergency, they had to be couriered up by RFDS. And there was no non-emergency reason for someone to receive units, unless they had a chronic condition requiring regular transfusions, in which case they had to be under the care of a consultant in Perth as well. John knew this because in the first week of Dr van Oyck’s holiday he had administered a unit to Ellie Campbell, a lady with recurrent anaemia.

He went back to Melmoth.

“That was entirely normal” he said.

“I could have told you that.”

“You could have. Anyway, I’ll report that your haemoglobin is in your boots and get a unit sent up.”

“Thank you. You are a most understanding young man, with an excellent bedside manner.”

“Thanks. Tell me one thing though – what is your own explanation? You say there’s no physical cause, and yet the way you talk about it you experience it as such a strong feeling.”

“Well, it is physical, a need as urgent as any other bodily need. There’s no physical cause in the sense that there is no pathological cause, at least none that modern methods can discern.”

“So do you think there is a pathology there, it’s just that we haven’t identified it yet?”

“My dear Dr MacHale, I must confess that I don’t know. What can I say? You may be right and there is an ultimate physical cause– “

“I have no opinion about it. I am trying to find out what yours is.”

“I have no opinion about it. The world is what it is. Over my lifetime, long as it is, I have learned that the human mind – and I am as human as you are, except for one or two things – is capable of apprehending a problem much more than it is capable of solving it. Especially when this problem lies in the realm of speculation. Why does time pass? Why is there gravity? Of course, the scientists can tell us what causes these things, or the perception of these things, but why do they occur? Why anything instead of nothing? It is an easy question to ask, and not a question easy to answer.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, but I do not claim any expertise. I have had no revelation. I do not think I was cursed with this, in any but the metaphorical sense. I believe in God for the same reason that most people do – I was brought up that way, and faith simply persisted.”

“What religion are you?”

“Let’s just say that I am pre-Reformation.”

“Roman Catholic?”

“We didn’t need to emphasise the ‘Roman’ part. And what about you? An Irishman, but of course one shouldn’t presume based on that –“

“I was brought up Catholic. I don’t believe.”

“As simple as that?”

“I suppose. When I was eighteen I just stopped believing.”

“Why?”

“No reason. It just seemed that the world was perfectly understandable without the idea of a supernatural being.”

“Understandable. Not the word that I would use to describe the world.”

“But how can you reconcile Christianity with – “

“The blood drinking?” Suddenly Melmoth looked crumpled again, defeated, just like he had the first moment John had seen him. “I can’t.”

“Have you talked to a priest?”

“I’ve talked to Popes.”

“And what did they say.”

“Something akin to what I said to you. The world is what it is. That, and do no harm to others.”

“So since then, you haven’t?”

“My dear young man, I told you I believed, that I was a Christian. I am not a saint, and I do not mean that as any kind of boast. Don’t you realise that you can be an honest Christian and yet also a sinner? Indeed, in some ways that was the whole point of the exercise, if I could be forgiven for verging on blasphemy. None of this impertinence. Christianity is no more a guarantee of good behaviour than atheism is, and these days is much less self-righteous.”

“I’m sorry –“

“Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I am unrepentant? Did you not see me last night? Did you not?”

“No. I don’t think you enjoy it. I am sorry if I gave that impression.”

“No, forgive me. I should not lose my temper.”

“It’s OK. I am sorry.” John paused. “Mr Melmoth, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“No, I don’t.”

“What would happen if you were on a deserted island? Or in the middle of the arctic?”

“It may be hard to believe, but there are no deserted islands. They may seem to be, but they never are. And never were.”

Part Four

After that conversation, John went back to his office and picked up the phone. He dialled a number.

“Hi, is Dr Harper there?”

“Hold on a sec, deary” said the voice at the other end.

A few seconds later he was put onto Colin Harper.

“Colin, this is John McHale, I’m Jonty’s rural relief assistant in Dally. I think I talked to you on the phone from the A and E in Freo about an RFDS case.”

“Right you are, you’re the Irish lad.”

“Well, that’s me, I guess. I was just ringing because I saw you are on district emergencies this week.”

“I am . It’s been quiet so far. I hate doing it though, its a real pain. I’m always the unlucky bastard who gets caught in some massive disaster.”

“How would you like if I covered the rest of the week?”

“You mean do a swap?”

“No, I’ll just cover it.”

“You’re down for next week, or rather Jonty van Oyck is, so I assume you are doing it.”

“I am. I don’t mind.”

“You sure? I really appreciate this. Had been hoping to get up to Perth for a few reasons this weekend. You’re holding yourself down, you know.”

“I don’t mind. I need the experience, frankly.”

“And the dollars. Good on ya, anyhow.”

John made another call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is that Dr Piozzi?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is John MacHale. I’m the rural relief doc down in Dalwallinu. I am covering for Jonty van Oyck. I was just ringing about your district emergencies rota. Jonty was saying that sometimes Dally covers the districts further north.”

“Yes, that’s right. This is amazing, John, I was actually working up the courage to ring you. I’m on this week and I am desperate to get a few nights off. We’ve had a rough run of things up here with the everyday work, don’t know if you heard about the accident down the mines –“

“So you’re looking for some cover.”

“That would be great. No one up this way would budge. We could cover you anytime.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m trying to build up experience. Statistically I gather that it can be hit and miss –“

“Well between ourselves and your district there is a serious RTA every three days. No surprise with those thousands of kilometres of highway and all those dust roads, and all those young speed demons with nothing else to do. Certainly you’ll get your trauma experience.”

“That would be great.”

Jonty had told him that at times that the two districts were so stretched that Dally would cover both. He had also observed that in an RTA, either the person died straightaway, or you could bring them back to base, stabilise them, and either get the RFDS in or they could just go home. John had driven with Jonty to one accident about eighty kilometres away, A speeding motorist had skidded off a bend in the road, and then flipped back on, with no loss of life and only a shocked driver. They had put up a bag of fluids and waited for the ambulance, which followed twenty minutes later. It took a while for the ambulance crew to come from their farms, Jonty explained, and they would be at least fifteen minutes later.

John strode back into the ward.

“I need to know something.”

“Yes?”

“You talked about drinking a soldier’s blood. One just killed in battle.”

“Yes.”

“You said it could be up to a day later.”

“Yes.”

“How long did the actual blood drinking take?”

“It depended on a few things. If it was immediately after dying, and the heart perhaps pumped even a little keeping even a little pressure up, seconds. Later than that, five, ten minutes.”

“I see. And for how long would that sate the craving.”

“Thirty, forty years.”

“Ok. I’ll need you to get dressed. I’ll need to start giving you leave from the hospital. I’ll tell the nurses that I think you are mainly a social case, but I want some more blood tests first.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. I want you to let me know where you will be at any moment. In fact, I want you to spend most of your time on the bench near my quarters.”

“Why, my dear fellow?”

“You’ll see. It’ll be a few days. Allow me to surprise you.”

Part five

It was on the second day it happened. John picked up the red phone himself. It was perfect – nearly two hundred kilometres to the north. That would give at least half an hour before the ambulance. Two car crash, three injured, probably fatally. It sounded right. It had been called in by a cell phone by a driver passing who had had to drive thirty kilometres to get reception.

“Tell the person who alerted them to stay where they are. We’ll be there ASAP.” “Great. The cops are held up a few score clicks away – a guy has locked himself in his mother’s house with a gun. It’ll just be you.” This was perfect. He ran out, and found Melmoth on the bench. “Come on”, John said while grabbing his shoulder. “What?” “Just come with me. No time to lose.”

They got into the emergency car. John waited a few seconds before pressing the call button on the radio to alert the ambulance. This also trigged the car’s sirens. They sped on. John ignored Melmoth all the way. They drove through flat lands that seemed to get progressively flatter, not to mention drier. John realised that he hadn’t seen a river, a lake, or even a pond in weeks. Just over an hour and a half later, they arrived. Few cars went this way, and John was not surprised to see nothing on the scene except the two twisted wrecks, fused together in a dance of death. He drove to within twenty metres and stopped. He turned to Melmoth. “Ok, there are three dead people in that car. Or if they are alive, they aren’t conscious. I’m giving you ten minutes to do what you need to do. I’m trusting you to come back and tell me if there’s anything I need to do, straightaway. Then I want you to get into the boot of this car. When we go back, I’ll let you out.” “My dear Dr MacHale, I thank you. One thing – after I am finished, I can just walk. I will have enough resources to survive the walk back to Port Hedland.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am. Would you care to observe me? I do not mind.”

“I won’t. Ten minutes.”

Melmoth shook his hand, and got out. John watched the vampire approach the wrecks. From where he had stopped, he could see the still shapes of people, unmoving. His instinct told him that he had done the right thing. Then he looked away, across the expanse of arid plains. It could only have been a second or two later that his attention was brought back to the scene by a knock on his window. It was Melmoth, with small rivulets of blood dripping from each corner of his mouth. He looked taller, fuller, more complete. He smiled and waved, and mouthed “thank you”, and then began to sprint away, perpendicular to the road, into the immense flatness. John got out of the car, and slowly walked towards the wrecks. He had seen a lot of trauma back in Ireland and in Freo, and felt he had been inured to anything in the line of work. He was not inured to this. Three corpses were twisted among the wreckage, each one with the skin stretched taut over bones, so that they looked like skeletons. Melmoth had drained them dry. With a sickening feeling in his stomach, John recognised one of the cadavers as possessing the excellent cheekbones and well-proportioned nose of Louise. She, like the other bodies, looked like she had fallen asleep, were it not for the rough gash in her neck. John realised that there was no chance these marks had been made by the accident itself.

He stood there for a long time, until he heard sirens approach, and a rush of voices, and then questions, but he did not reply.