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‘If this keeps up I’m joining the army,’ Josh grumbled to Beth, his paramedic colleague. ‘Maybe there’s a place for me in the bomb squad. Do you suppose there’s any call for bomb disposal any place around here?’
‘You could try cleaning our kitchen as practice,’ Beth said morosely. ‘School holidays and three teenage boys? I’d defy a hand grenade to make more mess. You need to try a touch of domesticity if you want explosions. Consider marriage.’
‘Been there, got the T-shirt,’ he muttered.
‘That’s right, with Maddie, but that’s ancient history.’ Beth and Josh had joined the service at the same time, and after years of working together there was little they didn’t know about each other. ‘You hardly stuck around long enough to feel the full force of domestic bliss.’ And then her smile faded. ‘Whoops, sorry, Josh, I know you lost the baby, but still … It was so long ago. You and Karen, you think you might …?’
‘No!’ He said it with more vehemence than he’d meant to use. In fact, he startled himself. They were in the staff office, in the corner of the great hangar that held the service planes. The door was open and Josh’s vehemence echoed out into the vaulted hangar. ‘No,’ he repeated, more mildly. ‘Domesticity doesn’t interest either of us.’
‘And you’re seeing less of each other,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘Moving on? Seeing we’re quiet, you want to check some dating sites? We might just find the one.’
‘Beth …’
‘You’re thirty-six years old, Josh. Okay, you still have the looks. Indeed you do. It drives me nuts, seeing the way old ladies melt when you smile. But your looks’ll fade, my lad. You’ll be on your walker before you know it, gumming your crusts, bewailing not having a grandchild to dandle …’
‘I’m definitely applying for the bomb squad,’ he retorted, and tossed a sheaf of paper at her. ‘Just to get away from you. Sort these for a change. They’re already sorted but so what? Give me some peace so I can download a bomb squad application.’
And then the radio buzzed into life. They both made a grab, but Beth got there first. She listened to the curt instructions on the other end and her face set.
The tossed papers lay ignored on the floor. Josh was already reaching for his jacket. He knew that look. ‘What?’ he demanded as she finished.
‘Trouble,’ Beth said, snagging her jacket, as well. ‘Mine collapse on Wildfire Island. One smashed leg, needs evac to the orthopods in Cairns. Plane’s leaving in ten.’
‘Mine collapse?’ He was snapping queries as he got organised. ‘Just the one injury?’
‘He was injured at the start of it. One of the supports collapsed. Fell on this guy’s leg but the rest of the idiots didn’t see it as a sign they should evacuate. But now …’ She took a deep breath. ‘The collapse looks serious. We’re working on early information but one of the local doctors is trapped, as well.’
One of the local doctors.
Wildfire.
And something inside seemed to freeze.
Beth stopped, too. ‘Josh? What is it?’
‘You said Wildfire. Part of the M’Langi group?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s where Maddie’s working.’
‘Maddie?’ Her eyes widened as she understood. ‘Your Maddie?’
‘We’re not married.’ It was a dumb thing to say but it was all he could think of.
‘I know that. You haven’t been married for years. So how do you know she’s there?’
‘I sort of … keep tabs. She’s working fly in, fly out, two weeks there, one week on the mainland. Her mum’s still in a nursing home in Cairns.’
‘Right.’ Beth started gathering gear again and he moved into automatic mode and did the same. There was a moment’s loaded silence, and then …
‘You mean you stalk her?’ she demanded, but he knew it was Beth’s way of making things light. Making a joke …
‘I do not stalk!’
‘But you keep tabs.’ There was little to add to their bags, only the drugs they kept locked away or refrigerated. ‘It sounds creepy.’
‘We keep in touch. Sort of. Christmas and birthdays. And I take note of where she’s registered to work. In case …’ He hesitated. ‘Hell, I don’t know. In case of nothing.’
Beth’s face softened. She clipped her bag closed, then touched his shoulder as she straightened. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married twice, remember. Once your ex, always your ex. Unless it’s nasty there’s always a little bit of them under your skin. But, hey, there’s a sizeable med centre on Wildfire. The trapped doctor doesn’t have to be Maddie.’
‘Right.’ But suddenly he was staring into middle distance. He knew … Somehow he knew.
‘Earth to Josh,’ Beth said, not so gently now. ‘The plane’s waiting. Let’s go.’
The crash had come from nowhere. One minute Maddie was working efficiently in the dim light, worried but not terrified.
Now she was terrified.
She needed to block out the dust and dark and fear.
Where was her patient?
She’d lost her torch. She’d fallen, stumbling in terror as the rock wall had crashed around her. She was okay, she decided, pushing her way cautiously to her knees. There was still breathable air if she covered her mouth and breathed through a slit in her fingers. But she couldn’t see.
Somewhere in here was a guy with a life-threatening bleed.
Where was the torch?
Phone app. She practically sobbed with relief as she remembered an afternoon a few weeks ago, sitting on the hospital terrace with Wildfire’s charge nurse, Hettie, while Caroline had shown them apps they could put on their cell phones.
Most she had no use for, but the torch app had looked useful for things such as checking it was a gecko on her nose and not a spider in the middle of the night. The disadvantages of living in the tropics. But now … Yes! Her phone was in her jacket pocket. She grabbed it and flicked it on.
One push and a surprising amount of light fought through the dust.
She could now see the big torch, lying at her feet. She grabbed it. The switch had flicked off when it had fallen. Not broken. She had light.
Next …
The guy she’d come in for.
She’d met them halfway in. Blood had been streaming from Malu’s thigh and he’d been barely conscious. The miners with him had tied a tourniquet but it wasn’t enough.
‘He needs more pressure,’ she’d snapped. ‘Put him down.’
And then she’d felt the rumbles. She’d felt the earth tremble.
‘Run!’ she’d screamed at the two guys who’d been carrying him, and she still seemed to hear the echoes of that yell.
They’d run.
She hoped they’d made it. Fallen rock was blocking the way she’d come. Please, let them have made it to the other side.
It was no use hoping. First things first. She was raking the rubble-strewn floor with her torch beam, searching for Malu. The combined beam of torch and phone only reached about three feet before the dust killed it.
He must have pulled himself back.
‘Malu?’
‘H-here.’
A pile of stone lay between them. She was over it in seconds. It hurt, she thought vaguely. She was eight months pregnant. Climbing over loose rock, knocking rock in the process, was maybe not the wisest …
She didn’t have time for wise.
He was right by the pile. He was very lucky the rocks hadn’t fallen on him.
Define luck, she thought grimly, but at least he was still alive. And still conscious.
Dust and blood. A lot of it.
He had a deep gash on his thigh where his pants were ripped away. The guys had tried to tie a tourniquet but it had slipped. Blood was oozing …
But not pumping, she thought with relief. If it’d been pumping he’d be dead by now.
She was wearing a light jacket. She hauled it off, bundled it into a tight pad, placed it against the wound and pushed.
Malu screamed.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she told him, but there was no time to do anything about the pain. She had to keep pushing. ‘Malu, I have drugs but I need to stop the bleeding before I do anything else. I need to press hard.’
‘S-sorry. Just the shock …’
‘I should have warned you.’
Go back to basics, she reminded herself, desperately fighting the need to cough, and the need to breathe through the grit. Desperately trying to sound in control. Don’t start a procedure before explaining it to the patient, she reminded herself, even if she was trapped in a place that scared her witless.
Malu had relapsed into silence. She knew Malu. He was a large, tough islander from the outermost island of the M’Langi group.
He had a wife and two small children.
She pushed harder.
She had morphine in her bag. If she had another pair of hands …
She didn’t.
His pants were ripped. Yes! Still pressing with one hand, she used the other and tugged the jagged cloth. The cloth ripped almost to the ankle.
Now she was fumbling one-handed in her bag for scissors. Thank heaven she was neat. There was so much dust … Despite the torchlight she could hardly see, but the scissors were right where she always stored them.
One snip and she had the tough fabric cut at the cuff, and that gave her a length of fabric to wind. The miners had tried to use a belt as their tourniquet but it was too stiff. The torn trouser leg was a thousand times better.
She twisted and wound, tying the pad—her ex-jacket—into place. She twisted and twisted until Malu cried out again.
‘Malu, the worst’s over,’ she told him as she somehow managed to knot it. ‘The bleeding’s stopped and my hands are now free. I’ll make us masks to make breathing easier. Then I’ll organise something to dull the pain.’
And get some fluids into you, she added to herself, saying silent prayers of thanks that she had her bag with her, that she’d had it beside her when the collapse had happened, that she’d picked it up almost automatically and that she hadn’t dropped it. She had saline. She could set up a drip. But in this dust, to try and keep things sterile …
Concentrate on keeping Malu alive first, she told herself. After so much blood loss she had to replace fluids. She’d worry about bugs later.
Malu was barely responding. His pulse … His pulse …
Get the fluids in. Move!
Five minutes later Malu had morphine on board and she had a makeshift drip feeding fluids into his arm. She’d ripped her shirt and created makeshift masks to keep the worst of the dust from their lungs. She sat back and held the saline bag up, and for the first time she thought she might have time to breathe herself.
She still felt like she was choking. Her eyes were filled with grit.
They were both alive.
‘Doc?’ Malu’s voice was a whisper but she was onto it.
‘Mmm?’
‘Macca and Reuben … They were carrying me.’
‘I know.’
‘Reuben’s my uncle. You reckon they’ve made it?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was no point lying; Malu would know the risks better than she did. She grasped his hand and held. There was nothing else she could do or say.
The thought of trying to find them, trying to struggle out through the mass of rubble … Even if she could leave Malu, the thing was impossible. The rubble around them was unyielding.
Malu’s hand gripped hers, hard. ‘Don’t even think about trying to dig out,’ he muttered, and she thought that even though his words were meant as protection to her, there was more than a hint of fear for himself. To be left alone in the dark … ‘It’s up to them outside to do the rescuing now. Meanwhile, turn off the lights.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The lights. We don’t need ‘em. Conserve …’
‘Good thinking,’ she said warmly, and flicked off her torch. Then she flicked off the torch app on her phone. But as the beam died, a message appeared on the screen. When had that come in?
She wouldn’t have heard.
The message was simple.
Maddie? Tell me you’re not down the mine. On way with Cairns Air Sea Rescue. Josh.
