"THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!"
A young man up in the morning at the entrance of his property slammed the sledgehammer down hard onto the top of a timber post, driving it hard into the ground. He grunts, lifting the tool over his head once more before swinging back over his shoulders, at long last driving the post firm into the ground. Without a minute more of hesitation, the young man retrieved another post, lined it up in a small hole he had pre-dug in the ground, before lining up the sledgehammer once more to repeat the same monotonous task.
This man in question was one local of the rural town of Morrisvale on the Eastern Australian Coast, the son of a carpenter, James H. Steele, more locally known as "Jim". Jim was a simple type of bloke living a humble, more simple life, though he was not one without intellect. He wore his usual attire that day; A broad-brim dark-brown Akubra hat, a scarlet long-sleeve button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of black trousers and some brown Williams boots.
After finally driving the second post in with his strength, Jim examined the post to see if it was straight enough. He eyes it, closing his right eye and crouching down to examine it compared to the horizon.
He grunts, getting back up; "Not bad, Jim, not bad," he complimented himself, before deciding to take a small break. He sat down in a folding camping chair he had set up earlier in the morning and took a swig of some black tea he had brewed himself; Thankfully, it was still somewhat warm, much like the weather forecast. He looked across the road, a truck with a load of livestock drove past, intending to pass through the town. Jim relaxes, looking into the dense bushland, admiring the view.
This serenity, however, was interrupted as he saw a figure shift in between the trees. Initially, Jim thought he was seeing things, but sure enough he could tell that someone was sluggishly walking in between the trees towards a long-since dried up creek-bed across from his property. He watches the individual, who he could now tell was a woman, stumble slowly and sluggishly through the trees. To the surprise and concern of Jim, she suddenly stumbles, collapsing to the ground and into the base of the dried-up creek-bed, seemingly falling unconscious.
"Shit!" Jim exclaims, running across the road from his property and into the tree line.
Not before long, he at last reached the woman in the slight gully, calling out to her to see if she was okay, deeply concerned for her well-being; "Hello! Hello, lady! Are you alright there?"
Jim stops, looking down at the woman who was barely conscious, lying face-up in the dirt. He noticed just how strange this woman was, taking note of her appearance; She had a fair skin complexion, and long gray hair which Jim personally had never seen before, the right side of her hair partially shaved in a modern type of haircut usually seen in urban areas. She wore short clothing; a dark gray crop top, a pair of black shorts, black leggings which stretched up to her thigh, and a pair of black and gray shoes.
Jim, concerned for her well-being, placed his palm on her forehead, confirming that she was suffering from heat stress and a heat-induced temperature. Without a second more thought, he speaks to her, clear and concise; "Hang in there, mate, I'm going to get you out of here! Just, please, hang in there!"
Jim then proceeds to gently pick the woman, heaving her into his arms with a grunt before walking as fast as he could back up into his property. In a rush decision, he jogs up to his Ute, opening the door to the best of his ability with the woman still in his arms and carefully rests the barely conscious woman in the passenger's side. Jim rushes over to the driver's side, swings the door open, and gets in with haste. In a rush, he slams the door shut, starting the engine and turns on the air conditioner on to full blast, cooling the interior down.
"Come on, matey, stay with me," Jim demands, increasingly concerned for the woman slumped in the passenger's seat who was trying her best to open her eyes with little success.
Jim floors it, speeding down the gravel and dirt path from his house and onto the main road into town, thanking the heavens that there was barely any traffic on the road at that time. He briefly every-so-often darts his gaze over to the woman with deep concern, who was still barely conscious and groaning ever so slightly, her face flushed red with sweat.
At long last Jim pulls up next to a pharmacy, hastily parking the car before swinging his door open, barging out of the driver's seat and rushing to the other side. Jim curses under his breath, swinging the passenger's side door open and hastily picking up the woman in his arms, reassuring her that she was going to be saved.
The man barged right into the pharmacy, just about smashing both doors with his entire body weight, carrying the just about unconscious stranger in his arms. With haste and bated breath, he calls out to any possible occupants.
"Oi, Victor! Victor, mate, I need help here! Vic!"
An older gentleman stumbles out of the office door adjacent to the front counter, answering the plea: "What the bloody hell's going on?"
Jim, just about to pass out with exhaustion himself, shows the resident pharmacist the stranger, almost unconscious in his arms; "Look, I found this woman on the edge of my property, she's just about half dead! Got here as fast as I could!"
The pharmacist quickly realized the urgency of the situation; "Ah, shi- Quickly, in here!"
He then escorts Jim into his office, a bed and other assorted adequate equipment waiting for their arrival. Jim manages to rest the stranger on the bed, heaving from exhaustion himself, before slumping on an adjacent chair provided to him. He rubs the sweat from his eyes as he curses from under his breath, watching the stranger intensely with concern. With haste, the pharmacist gets to work, checking up on the state of the stranger; temperature, any possible wounds, breathing rate, so on and so forth.
After a quick examination, he comes to his conclusion: "Heat exhaustion and moderate dehydration. Any minute more out there, and she'd be gone."
Immediately, the pharmacist acquires an IV bag full of fluid, hanging it up on a stand. He then inserts a needle attached to the bag itself into the stranger's arm, for immediate flow of the contents. Afterwards, he adjusts the air conditioner in the room to the coldest setting, at the highest possible flow rate. After much effort, the pharmacist himself sits down back into his chair, wiping his brow.
"Will she be alright?" Jim asks, full of concern.
"She'll be fine, mate, don't worry," Victor responds, taking a sip from a canister from his desk; "She's very bloody lucky you found her when you did."
The two men look towards the stranger once more, observing as the treatment stabilised her condition: her breathing had quickly stabilised, getting deeper and steadying to a reasonable rate. The two men both let out a collective sigh of relief, at last their efforts paying off.
"So, wait a minute, Jim, where did you find her," Victor asks Jim, genuinely curious.
"Just on the outskirts of my property, where that little dip towards that old creek is," Jim explains, turning towards Victor; "Got no bloody idea as to where she came from, or why she's dressed like she's come from the city, but here she is."
"Righto," Victor acknowledges, once again turning to his patient. He noticed that the stranger had at last begun showing more signs of life, her eyes slightly opening, looking up towards the ceiling. With this prompt to act, Victor begins talking to his patient; "Hey, lady, you okay?"
The stranger nods ever so slightly, obviously still weak.
"Don't try to move, just rest. You're safe now, but you're suffering from heat stress. Just rest for now, and I'll let you go when you've recovered."
The stranger once again nods, groaning slightly before closing her eyes again.
"You did a good thing there, young Jim," Victor remarks, grabbing Jim's shoulder; "You've saved her life."
"Well, shit, I wasn't going to let her die, now was I," Jim shrugged, letting out a slight chuckle through his teeth, sipping on his own water.
Victor snickers in return, as well taking a swig from his canister himself, both men awaiting the results for this patient. The room had cooled to a reasonable degree, allowing for Victor to lower the flow rate of the air conditioner. Jim looked at his watch, then back to the stranger, then to Victor.
"If you need me, I'll be across the road in the servo," Jim told the doctor, still observing his patient, writing notes of her progress.
Victor merely gave a slight nod, before waving him off: "All good, matey, I'll see you when you get back."
With that, the taller young man got up with a wheeze from all the effort and stress from mere minutes ago, stretched his arms before quietly cursing once more over his tired, aching body, and set off. The room was quiet, with only the quiet buzzing of the air conditioner and the hum of the computer monitor to keep the doctor and his patient company. Minutes had passed before movement arose, with the stranger beginning to move once more, slowly raising her arm to place her palm onto her forehead.
Victor, noticing this, raised his attention to the stranger, getting up from his chair and walking over: "Hello? Are you feeling any better?"
The stranger turned her head slightly to her right, glancing through strained, tired eyes at the doctor now standing next to her: "...nngh... f-feel like shit."
Victor, nodding his head slightly, noted in his clipboard: "10:15AM – Patient Improving: Drowsiness and Fatigue continues."
Victor adjusts the IV bag, retrieving a spare onto his desk if needs be. He looks at his clipboard and places it back onto his desk, checking that everything was still in order. Before he could turn back around to his patient, she begins to speak, this time with a question:
"H...hey... a-are you V-Victor," she groggily asks, trying to raise her head with more success than minutes earlier, her strength once again returning.
Victor turns around, wiping his brow before taking a swig of his canister once more: "Yes, I am, though there are two Victors in this town – I'm Dr. Victor Price."
"So... n-not- argh- not Victor... M-Malloy?" The stranger once again lies her head back down onto the pillow.
"Oh, Malloy," the doctor answers, almost bluntly; "No, I'm not Victor Malloy. He lives further up a couple of miles to the west. Why, what about him?"
"...W-was hoping to... speak w-with him," the patient replies, rubbing her forehead once more, though this time her answer and manner of speaking was much clearer than moments ago as she once again gained consciousness.
Victor Price scoffs before letting out a wheezing laugh; "Well, good luck with that – he's an old bastard who will attack anyone and everyone, if not everything, for even looking at him or anything he owns. My best advice to you is to stay away from him as far as humanly possible. What do you want from him, anyway? You look like one of them, I dunno, university student journalist types."
The patient glances slightly at the doctor, hesitating slightly; "Y-yeah... agh- yeah, some-something like that... look- I don't want to talk... can you... keep it d-down?"
"Of course, no worries," the doctor replies, coughing slightly before returning to his computer.
Once again, silence returned to the office, allowing for the stranger to return to a resemblance of sleep once again. That was until, after a while, when Jim knocked on the door and made himself known to be present. Victor Price opens the door slightly, telling the young man to keep it down in accordance with his patient's request. Jim obliged, gently placing a bottle of water onto the desk and a pear he had just bought.
"So, how's she going," Jim whispered, glancing over to the bed.
"She's stabilising, I reckon she'll be out of here within the hour," the doctor whispered in return.
Jim nodded, sitting once again in his original spot. A little while later, the stranger was now able to sit up in the bed, drinking some water provided to her for ongoing sustenance. At this point, both IV bags had been used, and the needle was now discarded from the stranger's arm.
After a brief check-up on the stranger's current state of health, the doctor made his conclusion: "Alrighty, I reckon you're all set," Victor told the stranger; "For the moment, stay out of the sun, drink plenty of water, and whenever you can continue to rest. Any more problems, you can come back to me."
"Sure, noted," the stranger replied bluntly, still trying to get used to her surroundings after the ordeal an hour or so earlier.
"I'll pay on her behalf, Victor, don't worry," Jim offered, placing a couple of bills onto the desk next to the doctor.
Victor thanked the young man, accepting the payment, throwing it into his wallet.
"Thanks for that, I guess," the patient thanked bluntly once more, without looking at the young man now in front of her.