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And the iron was raised and moved aside.
Revealing a woman huddled underneath.
Luc was underneath before the iron was clear. He was stooping, feeling his way in, reaching her. He was lifting a cloth she’d obviously used to protect her face, wiping her face free, clearing her airway. He had a mask on her almost instantly. The initial need was clean air, more important than anything else.
She was matted with grey-white dust. Her eyes were terrified. ‘My...my baby...’
And then she faltered as she stared wildly into his eyes. Even with his mask, even with the dust, she knew him.
‘Luc?’
* * *
He felt as if all the air had been sucked from his body.
Beth!
His wife.
Not his wife. She’d walked away eight years ago. For a while he’d tried to keep in touch but it had been too hard for both of them.
‘Stay safe.’ That had been Beth’s last ask of him. ‘I know you can’t keep out of harm’s way but, oh, Luc, don’t you dare get yourself killed.’
And she’d touched his face one last time, and climbed aboard a train bound for Brisbane.
Stay safe. What a joke, when here she was, trapped by a mass of rubble, so close to death....
The nearest car alarm stopped abruptly. In reality its battery had probably died, but to Luc it felt like the world had stopped. Instinctively his hand came up to adjust his own mask, a habit entrenched by years of crisis training.
His mask was fine. His breathing was okay.
And he wasn’t hallucinating.
Beth...
‘Leg trapped,’ Kev at his side murmured, and just like that, the doctor in Luc stepped in. Thankfully, because the rest of him was floundering like a stickleback out of water.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ he told her, in a voice he could almost be proud of. It was the voice he was trained to use, strong, sure, with a trace of warmth, words to keep panic at bay.
He needed to get the whole picture. He leaned back a little so he could see all of her.
She was slumped against the remains of a pillar. There was a mound under her shirt, and she was cradling it with both hands. A slab of concrete had fallen over her left leg. Her right leg was tucked up, as if she’d tried to haul back at the last minute, but he couldn’t see her left foot.
His gaze went back to her face, noting the terror and the pain, then his gaze moved again to the mound at her chest. A child?
He put a hand on the mound and felt a wash of relief as he registered warmth and deep, even breathing. He slipped a hand under her T-shirt and located one small nose. Clear. Beth had managed to protect the airway.
Beth’s child?
This was sensory overload, but he had to focus on imperatives.
‘Your baby?’ he said, because the fact that a child was breathing didn’t necessarily mean all was well.
‘T-Toby.’
‘Toby,’ he said, and managed a smile. ‘Great name. Beth, was Toby hit? Do you know if he’s been hurt?’ He lifted the mask a little to let her speak.
‘I felt... I felt the fall.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper, muffled by the mask. ‘I crouched. Toby was under me. He seems fine. He’s fallen asleep and I’m... I’m sure it’s natural. It’s been...it’s been a big day at childcare.’
‘Huge,’ he agreed. He was acting on triage imperatives, taking her word for the child’s safety for the moment as he moved his hands down to her leg. The dust was a thick fog the light was having trouble penetrating. He winced as he reached her ankle and could feel no further.
‘It’s...stuck...’ Beth managed.
‘Well diagnosed, Dr Carmichael,’ he said, and she even managed a sort of smile.
‘I’m good.’
‘I suspect you’ve been better. Pain level, one to ten?’
‘S-Six.’
‘Honest?’
‘Nine, then,’ she managed, and then decided to be honest. ‘Okay, ten.’
And she wouldn’t be exaggerating. He looked at the slab constricting her leg and he felt sick. She’d been under here for more than an hour. Maybe two. What sort of long-term damage was being done?
There was no use going down that road. Just do what came next.
‘Relief coming up now,’ he said, loading a syringe. There were workers all around them now, shoring rubble. Kev was making his workplace as secure as he could, but Luc was noticing nothing but Beth. If he couldn’t block out fears for personal safety then he shouldn’t be here. ‘No allergies?’ He should know that. He did but he wasn’t trusting memory. He was trusting nothing.
‘N-no.’
‘What else hurts, Beth?’
‘I... My back...’
She was sitting hard against concrete, as if she’d been slammed there. She had full use of her arms and fingers, he could see it in the way she cradled the bundle on her breast. But what other damage?
First things first.
He should get the child... Toby...away to where he could be examined properly, where he was safe, but for now she was clutching him as if her own life depended on that hold. She was holding by a faint thread, he thought, and he wasn’t messing with that thread.
His priority was to do what he must to keep her safe.
And suddenly he was enveloped by a waft of memory. Ten years ago. He and Beth were newly dating, med students together. She was little, feisty, cute. Messy chestnut curls. Big brown eyes. Okay, maybe cute wasn’t a good enough description. Gorgeous.
He’d asked her out and couldn’t believe it when she’d said yes—and a month later they’d spent a weekend camping.
A week after that she was in hospital with encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus.
The day he most remembered was a week after that. She was still in hospital, fretting about missing her next assignment. He’d brought her in chocolates and flowers—corny but it was all he could think of. He was twenty-two years old, a kid, feeling guilty that she was ill.
But she was recovering. She was laughing at one of his idiotic jokes. Opening the chocolates.
And then, suddenly, she was falling back on her pillows.
‘I can’t... Luc, I feel so dizzy... My eyes...’
It was optical neuritis, a rare but appalling side-effect of encephalitis. It had meant almost instant, total blindness.
For weeks she’d had no sight at all, and his guilt had reached stratospheric proportions.
Beth’s parents were...absent, to say the least. Suddenly Beth seemed solely dependent on him.
The next few weeks had been a nightmare, for her and for him. His carefree existence was finished. He’d dated her because she was gorgeous, vivacious, funny. Now she was his responsibility.
Blind and bereft, with no other options, she’d agreed to come home with him. He’d cared for her, protected her...and loved her? He still wasn’t sure where care ended and love started but her need filled something inside he hadn’t been aware was missing.
Her sight gradually returned, not fully but enough to manage. If she was careful. If she was protected.
And as the months went by their relationship had deepened. She’d lain in his arms and he’d known she felt safe and loved. That felt good enough for him. He’d lost sight of the carefree, bubbly girl he’d dated but in her place he had someone who’d need him for ever.
They’d married. And here she was, half-buried in this mess—with a child who wasn’t his.
Was there a husband? Was someone else doing the protecting?
This wasn’t the time for questions.
He was pushing memory away, years of training putting him on autopilot. Beth was leaning back, her eyes closed as he inserted an IV line.
‘This’ll make you sleepy,’ he told her. ‘Relax into it, sweetheart.’
‘Toby...’
‘You want us to take Toby? Beth, I swear I’ll take care of him.’
‘How do I know you mean that?’ She even managed a smile. ‘Of course you will.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty months.’
‘Is there someone we can call who he’ll trust?’ Someone to sign papers if he had to be treated? Someone like the baby’s father?
She wore no wedding ring. That didn’t mean anything. Did it?
And once again his heart did this stupid lurch. This was Beth. His Beth. He wanted to gather her into his arms, hold her, keep her safe...
Which was exactly why she’d walked away from him eight years ago. Into...this.
‘Margie,’ she managed. ‘At the childcare centre. Toby trusts...’
The childcare centre at the plaza? He was pretty sure it had been safely evacuated, but he couldn’t be sure of every individual. Right now he could only focus on one trapped woman—a woman who was also his wife.
Ex-wife.
But no matter who she was, she was in trouble and she had no need to be worried by anything else.
Her voice was starting to drag and Luc thought the time for Beth to make decisions was over.
‘Right,’ he said, firmly and surely. ‘Let’s get Toby out of here, Beth, so we can concentrate on freeing your leg.’
‘You’ll look after him? If Margie can’t?’ Through the haze of pain and drugs, her voice was still fierce. ‘Luc, swear?’
‘I swear,’ he said, and something inside him hurt. Badly. That she could still ask this of him... That she could still trust him...
He’d wanted this, so much, but to happen here, in this way...
And despite the pain and the fear, Beth must have sensed it. Her hand caught his and held.
‘Luc, I swore I’d never need you again but I need you now. Thank you...’
His throat was so thick he couldn’t speak, and it wasn’t from the dust. He squeezed her hand back and then carefully lifted the sleeping child away from her breast. The little boy snuffled against Luc, recoiling a little as his face hit the repellent fabric of Luc’s high vis jacket, and then relaxing again as Luc hauled a cloth someone handed him around the little boy’s face. Luc tucked it in, giving him a soft place to lay his head as well as protection from the dust.
There were hands willing, wanting to take him, to carry him to safety, and Luc’s priority had to be with Beth. But still he took a moment to hold, to feel the child’s weight in his arms, to feel the steadiness of his breathing, his sleeping, trusting warmth.
He would take care of him. He’d take care of them both.
He must.
* * *
The next hour passed in a blur of medical need. The rest of the team was here now, with Blake in charge. They were panning out through the ruins, removing the need for Luc’s attention to be on anything but Beth. Still trapped, she needed constant monitoring.
She was semiconscious, drugged to the point where pain and her surroundings were a haze.
Finally, moving with infinite caution, aware that a break in the concrete over her leg could mean parts of it would topple and cause more damage, the slab was lifted. Finally Beth was extricated.
She’d been wearing pants and leather boots. That had been a blessing—it had stopped lacerations that might well have been serious enough for her to bleed out. There was no doubt there were fractures, but blood still seemed to be getting through. Luc knew the greatest danger was the fact that the leg had been compressed for so long.
He accompanied the stretcher across the debris to the makeshift receiving tent the team had set up.
‘Status?’ Blake Cooper, ER consultant, had been working on an elderly man as Luc brought Beth in. The sheet drawn up over the man’s face told its own story, as did the slump of Blake’s shoulders.
‘Lacerations, bruises, but priority’s a broken ankle and crushed lower leg,’ Luc told him.
Blake cast him a fast, concerned look. His voice was thick, Luc realised, and it wasn’t from dust.‘Do you need me to assess?’ He and Blake had worked together for so long they trusted each other implicitly. Luc knew Blake wasn’t asking about Luc’s ability, it was all about what he could see in Luc’s face.
