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Her fingers were on Malu’s wrist. His pulse was settling. There was no need to turn on the torch.
She flicked the torch on anyway, just for a moment. Just to see.
Their chamber was about eight feet in diameter. The roof was still up there, and there were shoring timbers above them. Where their tiny enclosure ended, the shoring timbers had splintered like kindling.
The floor was rock-strewn. She needed to clear it a bit to get Malu more comfortable.
She could do it without the torch. She had to do it without the torch. She flicked it off again and the total darkness was like a physical slap.
Her phone gave a tiny ping and the screen lit momentarily. She took three deep breaths—because she had been close to panic—and she let herself look.
Landed. You nice and safe down there? Got a couple of good rocks you can use for pillows or are you thinking you might like to come on up? Josh.
She could have kissed him. Except she didn’t kiss Josh. Not any more. He’d always been uncomfortable with overt displays of affection. Even when they’d been married … Affection had been an effort, she thought, seizing on the excuse to get her mind off the dust. She’d never been in any doubt that he’d wanted her, but affection had been for behind closed doors. It was almost as if he’d been ashamed to admit he’d needed her.
He didn’t need her. He’d figured that five years ago when he’d walked away from their marriage. But right now she needed him. She texted him.
I’m not going anywhere. Just trying to decide which rock pillow to use. It seems I have a choice. Have given Malu morphine. He’s suffered major blood loss. Have given two litres of saline. I only have one more and want to hold it in reserve.
For drinking? She didn’t say it. She couldn’t.
Heart rate a hundred and twenty. Only just conscious. Worrying.
Damn Keanu and his ban on using her phone, she decided, as she hit Send. Okay, her battery life was precious, but Josh was a trauma specialist, a good one, and she needed advice. If she was going to be stuck down here with Malu, then the least she could do was keep him alive.
Which meant texting Josh. Didn’t it?
She didn’t get the little whoosh as her message sent. She stared at the single flickering bar of reception on her screen and willed it to send. Send. Send.
The screen went blank again and she was left with darkness.
Whoosh.
Sent. Delivered. At least she hoped it had been delivered. Josh would be on his way from Wildfire’s tiny airstrip, and he had to cross the mountains to get to the mine. There were places up there where there was no phone reception at all.
How long before he saw it?
Did it matter? She was pretty sure there was nothing more she could do medically for Malu, except make him comfortable.
Comfortable? Rock pillows. Ha!
Josh will text when he can, she told herself, and the thought was comforting.
Why? Why Josh rather than anyone else?
She had lots of friends on Wildfire Island. She’d been working as a fly in, fly out doctor here for five years now, spending two weeks here, one week in Cairns. She was doing okay. She’d put her marriage behind her. This next stage of her life … Well, it was a gamble but it was something—someone—she desperately wanted.
Unconsciously her hand went to her belly. She’d been hit as the rocks had flown, but surely she’d protected her baby enough?
Why on earth had she risked her baby? It had been a split-second decision but now … it seemed almost criminally stupid.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to the little one in her belly, and she felt like weeping.
She had to talk to someone.
Maybe she could text Hettie. Hettie, Wildfire’s charge nurse administrator, was a real friend, whereas Josh was now merely a contact, someone she’d put to the back of her mind like she’d put old school photos to the back of her wardrobe. One day she’d throw them out.
But not yet, she decided as she told herself she couldn’t phone anyone and started groping her way around the floor. She was shoving loose rocks to the side, clearing space so she could make Malu as comfortable as possible.
Photos. The thought was suddenly weirdly front and centre. Pictures of her mother before the stroke. Photographs of her wedding day.
They were all history, she told herself. She should get rid of them all. She touched her belly again, lightly, a touch that, all at once, seemed to be almost a prayer.
‘I don’t need any of it,’ she said out loud, even though speaking was impossibly hard through the dust. ‘The past is just that. I have a future now.’
But still …
Text soon, she pleaded silently to her phone. Please, Josh?
And she went on clearing rocks.
A truck met them at the airstrip. A chopper would have been more sensible, Josh thought grimly as they transferred gear from the plane to the truck, but the instructions had been explicit. ‘We used to keep a solid clearing around the minehead but there’s been cost-cutting,’ Hettie had told them. The charge nurse at the hospital had put herself in charge of communication. ‘The jungle’s come back and even the parking lot got so rutted in the last rain it’d take hours to clear a landing site. We’ll get you from the airstrip to the mine by truck.’
If they couldn’t land the choppers, the injured would have to be trucked back to the airstrip for evacuation.
The injured …
Maddie?
The thought of where she was made Josh feel sick. He couldn’t think of her. He had to concentrate on the job at hand—but it was taking too long to reach her.
To reach it. To reach the mine.
Maddie.
With the gear loaded he jumped into the front passenger seat of the lorry. Another jeep took Beth. They turned off the coast road, skirting the plateau to the other side of the island.
He checked his phone.
Nothing.
‘There’s no reception, mate,’ the lorry driver told him. ‘Not with the plateau between us and transmission.’
‘Do you know anything more?’
‘Not more’n you, probably.’ The guy’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but it wasn’t because of hard driving. His face was grim as death. ‘We haven’t heard from Macca and Reuben. They’re mates. We know Malu and Doc Haddon are alive but they’re trapped.’ The man’s knuckles gripped even tighter. ‘Bloody Lockhart. Rips all the money from the mine and what does he do with it? He’s been told those shoring timbers needed replacing or the mine sealed. And where is he? Not here facing what he’s done, that’s for sure. It won’t be him crawling down the mine trying to get them out.’
‘That’ll be Max Lockhart?’ Josh ventured, trying not to think of anyone crawling down the mine to get … Maddie out. He was dredging up stuff he’d seen in the press about this island group. ‘Isn’t Max Lockhart the owner of Wildfire?’
‘Yeah.’ The guy spat out the window of the moving truck. ‘But we’ve hardly seen hide nor hair of Max for years. Ian’s his brother. He took over day-to-day running of the mine a few years back. He’s supposed to be running the island for his brother, but as far as we can see he’s just out for what he can get. He’s somewhere overseas now. The mine got dangerous, the money stopped and he left. And now this mess … How the hell are we going to get ‘em out?’ There was a moment’s silence and then he swore with an intensity Josh had never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
‘And … Doc Haddon?’ Josh ventured, not because he wanted to but because he was almost forced to say it.
The knuckles kept their death grip but the lines on the man’s face softened. ‘She’s a great kid. Well, maybe she’s not a kid any more but I’m sixty, mate, so she’s a kid to me. She’s been on the island for five years now. The wife got shingles last year. Doc saw her in the market, saw the bumps. We’d thought they were just bites but before we knew it Doc had her at the clinic. She gave her this fancy medicine right on the spot. The shingles was bad enough but Ally—that’s our daughter—she looked it up on the internet and said if Mum hadn’t taken the stuff it could have been ten times worse. And every day Doc found an excuse to pop in. When she was off island she got Caroline or Ana to come instead. You know that nerve pain they get? Real bad, it was, but Doc Maddie was right onto it. She cares for everyone like that.’
And then his face hardened again. ‘They say she just ran in. Everyone else was running out and someone shouted that Malu was bleeding so hard the guys carrying him had to stop. She grabbed her bag and ran. She’s a hero.’
And his voice cracked with emotion as he swiped his arm across his face and sniffed.
Josh’s phone pinged. He glanced down, trying not to hope, but the word on his screen read Maddie.
He couldn’t read the message. For some dumb reason his eyes were blurry, too. He had to do a matching swipe before he could make it out.
I’m not going anywhere. Just trying to decide which rock pillow to use. It seems I have a choice. Have given Malu morphine. He’s suffered major blood loss. Have given two litres of saline. I only have one more and want to hold it in reserve. Heart rate a hundred and twenty. Only just conscious. Worrying.
How long since that’d been sent? While he was in the air? He swiped his face again and turned into doctor. Texted back, hoping whatever sliver of reception he had would last.
You’re doing great. Heart rate will be high considering shock. Do what you can to keep him warm, cuddle him if you need to. If it’s his thigh, see if you can get him sloped so his legs are higher than his heart. But you know this, Maddie. Trust your instincts. Love you.
And then he paused.
How many times in the past had he texted his wife and finished with the words Love you?
‘You’ve never really loved me.’ He remembered Maddie saying it to him in those last dreadful days when he’d known their marriage was over. ‘Love shares, Josh. Love gives and takes and you don’t know how.’
Love you?
She was right, of course. He hadn’t loved her. Or not enough.
He stared at the screen for a moment and then he deleted some characters. Then hit Send. Without the love.
‘I can’t imagine what the wives are going through,’ the truck driver said, almost to himself. ‘And Pearl … Malu’s wife … She’s another who thinks the sun rises and sets with Maddie. Y’know, our local mums are supposed to go to Cairns six weeks before bubs are born but the docs can’t make ‘em so Pearl didn’t. Maddie had to be choppered out to Atangi in the middle of the night. Breech it was, and Doc Maddie did an emergency Caesarean, right there in Pearl’s kitchen. Pearl won’t go to any other doctor since. And now Doc’s trapped with Malu. Doesn’t bear thinking of.’
Josh tried to think of something to say—and couldn’t. He didn’t trust his own voice.
‘Married yourself, are you?’ the guy asked at last. They were heading downhill now, through dense tropical rainforest, presumably towards the coast. Josh was trying to consider the terrain, thinking of what he already knew: that the rainforest had reclaimed most of the cleared land round the minehead, and how hard it was going to be to get machinery in.
He wanted to worry about machinery. About technicalities. He wanted to worry about anything but Maddie.
Married yourself? The guy’s question still hung.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘Not now.’
He didn’t deserve to be married. He hadn’t protected …
He’d failed.
Born to useless, drug-addicted parents, Josh had been the protector since he could first remember. The strong one.
He remembered a social worker, one of the early ones, walking into their house to find Holly curled on the bed and whimpering. There hadn’t been food in the house for days.
He’d been eight and Holly five. Josh had been big for his age, confused, helpless, as hungry as his little sister, but he hadn’t been whimpering. He’d learned early not to cry.
And the woman had turned on him, shocked into an automatic attack. ‘Why didn’t you come for help?’ she’d demanded. ‘You’re big enough now to protect your sister. Why didn’t you at least tell a neighbour?’
He’d never made that mistake again. He’d protected and protected and protected—but it hadn’t worked. He remembered the helplessness of being torn apart from Holly, placed in separate foster homes. The nightmares.
He’d learned to disguise even those. His job was to protect, not to share his pain. Not to add to that hurt.
And now? Once again Maddie was hurting and he was stuck on the far side of a mountain.
‘Partner?’ Maybe the guy was trying to distract himself. Surely he was. They were his friends underground.
And that was what Maddie was, he told himself. His friend. Nothing more.
‘I guess … A girlfriend,’ he told the guy and tried to think of Karen. They’d only been dating for three months but that was practically long-term for Josh. Karen was fun and flirty and out for a good time. She didn’t mind that his job took him away so much. She used him as he used her—as an appendage for weddings and the like, and someone to have fun with when it suited them both.
Maybe she wasn’t even a girlfriend, Josh thought. But that didn’t matter.
Whereas Maddie …
‘Here we are,’ the truck driver said, turning off the main road—if you could call it a main road—into a fenced-off area. The main gates were wide open. The sign on the fence said Mining Area—Keep Out, but there was no trace of security.
There were a few dilapidated buildings nestled among the trees. Only the cluster of parked vehicles, an ancient fire truck, a police motorbike and a jeep with the Wildfire Medical insignia, told him that anything was wrong.
‘Best place for the chopper’s round the back,’ the truck driver told him. ‘The guys were starting to clear it when we left.’ He pulled to a halt outside the first of the buildings and turned and clamped a hand on Josh’s shoulder. ‘Good luck, mate,’ he told him. ‘Thanks for coming. We sure need you.’
Josh climbed out of the truck and as he did his phone pinged. Maddie again.
We’re warm enough. Could use a bit of air-conditioning. Do you think you could arrange it? Also a couple of fluffy pillows, two mattresses and Malu reckons he could handle a beer. I could handle a gin and tonic, though I suppose I’m stuck with a lemonade. Actually lemonade sounds brilliant. I’m happy to make do. That’s my ‘needs’ list, Dr Campbell. Could you get onto it, stat?
A pillow would be nice. A pillow would be magnificent. Instead, Maddie lay on her back, with her hands behind her head, trying not to think how hard the rock was. And how much of a dead weight Malu’s legs were.
See if you can get him sloped so his legs are higher than his heart.
That was easier said than done. She could have put rocks under his thighs—yeah, that’d be comfy. Instead, she’d emptied her soft leather medical bag and given that to him as a pillow. She’d given him a couple of sips of the water—not as much as he wanted but she was starting to figure that if Keanu said two days then she might need to ration. Then, out of options, she’d lain down and lifted his legs onto hers.
It helped. She had her hand on his wrist and she could feel the difference.
He’d objected but not very much. In truth, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. He could hardly assess what she was doing.
She wouldn’t mind a bit of unconsciousness herself. She ached where she’d been hit by flying debris. She had a scratch on her head. Blood had trickled down and it was sticky. And grimy.
She’d kill for a wash.
Her back hurt.
Cramps?
