It was the middle of the night when the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane headed from Alice Springs, Australia, to a small point in the central desert. The plane was quiet, no need for talk. Hushed, the medical gadgetry silent for now. Eventually a lit runway appeared beneath the stars; so many sharp lights pierced that sky. Sometimes I sat in the cockpit but not tonight with Darryl flying.

I knew that Bluey was shaking. “He’s shakin’, Doc.” That’s all I knew; that’s all the Aboriginal health worker could tell me. With that information, we flew 2 hours through the night.

Landed. Gangway down. Darryl lit a smoke and tipped back against the fuselage, looking upward quietly. He always stayed with the plane. The ute ^∗

∗ Ute is a ubiquitous Australian term for a utility vehicle.

In the desert clinic Bluey lay rigid on a desk. He was hours into a seizure by now. The nurse and I gave drugs, life support, hooked up monitors. We made the tiny cinderblock clinic into an ICU. Time came to move Bluey to the plane, get him to the hospital. Our ambulance was the ute we came on, but its open flatbed filled now with Bluey’s family and friends. They were coming with him to the plane, that much was clear. Where to put Bluey himself?

I sat him up, unconscious Bluey, squeezed beside him into the passenger seat, held the tubes in place and bounced over corrugated red dusty roads back to the plane. Darryl was in the cockpit waiting, gangway down. The flight back was not quiet. Medical equipment read Bluey’s pulse, his respirations, his oxygen level, themselves sharp lights in darkness.