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The father was so enraged by the department’s attempted interference, the beatings got worse and Fatima was kept under lock and key. It was two years before she was allowed out on her own. Every visit had to remain confidential. I made the decision to support her rather than provoke more violence. You have to remember that Fatima was a victim, sure, but she wanted to stay at home.’
    Anya wondered how many more young women were like Fatima Deab.
    Dr. Wallace sutured the wound with a semicircular needle.
    ‘This isn’t an isolated case. Domestic violence is a way of life in many cultures. Look at African American women, Aboriginal communities. We Anglo Saxons can’t be proud of our record either. Domestic violence rates are horrific but it’s difficult to help when women don’t want to isolate themselves from their communities and prefer to stay where there is financial and social support. As doctors, all we can do is be there to patch them up, wait for the next crisis and hope something like this doesn’t happen.’ She finished tying the stitch. ‘Do you mind cutting?’
    Anya picked up the pair of scissors and snipped the end of the stitch. ‘Did you know if she experimented with drugs?’
    ‘There was nothing to support that. She looked anemic so I took a blood count and iron levels when she had the last frac-KATHRYN FOX
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    ture. I’d have noticed track marks if there were any. Besides, she was needle-phobic.’
    Suicide remained a possibility, Anya thought. She thought about the nun suiciding off the Gap and wondered if Fatima had felt as desperate. ‘Was she depressed?’
    ‘Not clinically.’ The doctor inserted another suture.
    ‘To your knowledge was she sexually active?’
    ‘I discussed contraception and pap smears but she denied any sexual activity. There was never a suggestion of sexual abuse.’
    ‘Or herpes?’
    ‘Definitely not.’ The GP slowly tied off the last stitch and looked at Anya. ‘Is that what they found at autopsy?’
    ‘It looks like it.’ Anya averted her eyes.
    ‘Oh, God. Did the father know?’
    ‘I’m not sure.’ Suddenly Anya felt as though she’d breached a confidence.
    Dr. Wallace wiped the closed wound and applied a waterproof dressing.
    ‘What that poor child must have gone through. Now, herpes is so common. There’s not supposed to be a stigma attached to something that affects one in eight adults. But none of that applied to Fatima.’ The doctor’s eyes moistened as she spoke.
    ‘For a girl like Fatima, herpes was akin to a death sentence.’

    7
    Debbie Finch watched the little boy’s chest rise and fall with each artificial respiration. A cardiac monitor lauded one hundred beats per minute. He could have been any other sleeping five-year-old except for the ventilation tube in his neck.
    She reached down and tucked his tiny cold hand under the cotton blanket.
    The night doctor approached. ‘The CareFlight team will be another twenty minutes. You might as well hand over and go home,’ he said before moving on to the next patient.
    Debbie checked the fluid dripping into the boy’s vein, unable to move her eyes from her little patient who, only a few hours ago, no one thought would survive. He had choked on a cherry tomato and lay limp in his mother’s arms.
    When the doctor had tried to intubate, the fragile tomato broke into pieces and completely occluded the windpipe, rendering him without oxygen for three more agonizing minutes.
    The doctor performed a tracheotomy and inserted a breathing tube into the child’s motionless neck, bypassing the obstruction. Debbie had deftly handed him sterile equipment, connected up the ventilator and administered medications efficiently and accurately.
    Her hands were still warm from the nervous excitement.

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    She couldn’t remember feeling this charged, not in all her nursing career at Gosford Regional Hospital. She didn’t want to go home, not to her father, not tonight.
    She glanced down at the