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A pang of guilt—one she knew only too well—shafted through her. Dad really should have a life of his own...
Perhaps here...
Soon...
But the conversation was continuing around her and she tuned back into it to find the women discussing unmarried men around town who might suit her.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. The remark earlier about her being a possible candidate for the unknown Marty’s new woman told her they already knew she was a single mother—single being the operative word.
Small town, indeed.
But before she could protest that she didn’t want to go out with anyone, the chat swerved off to the fire. Joss lived out of town on a cattle property and although they were always prepared, she thought this time they’d be safe. She was explaining how they kept the paddocks close to the house free of trees or tall grass when Sylvie came to the door.
‘Emma, you’re needed on the chopper. It’ll put down here to collect you. You have about ten minutes. You know where the landing pad is?’
Emma nodded confidently in answer to Sylvie’s question but inside she felt a little nervous. Although, as an emergency department doctor in a small town, she knew she’d be on call for the search and rescue helicopter, and she’d been shown over it by one of the paramedics, she hadn’t had much time to take it all in.
By which she really meant she’d refused to think about it. She’d done the training originally to help her overcome her fear of heights, and although she knew most rescue crews got an adrenaline rush at the thought of a mission, her rush was more one of trepidation than anticipation. Yes, she could do her job and do it well, but no amount of training or practice would ever stop the butterflies in her stomach as she waited to hang in mid-air, suspended from a winch.
‘—party of older children with special needs from the unit at the high school,’ Sylvie was explaining as they left the room together. ‘They were walking the coastal path, just this end of it. Apparently, the wind turned suddenly and the fire came towards them, so you can imagine the panic. We know one child with asthma is having breathing difficulties. No idea about the others but they’re stuck where they are and will have to be evacuated.’
Beach rescue, no winch!
Her tension eased immediately...
Even inside the hospital Emma could hear the helicopter’s approach and hurried to collect the black bag that held all the drugs she could possibly need. But she checked it anyway, relieved to see a spacer for an asthma inhaler, a mask for more efficient delivery of the drug, and hydrocortisone in case the child was badly affected.
Outside, she waited by the building until the bright red and yellow aircraft touched down lightly. Then, ducking her head against the downdraught from the rotors, she ran towards it.
The side door slid open and an unidentifiable male in flight suit and helmet reached out a hand to haul her aboard. She’d barely had time to register a pair of very blue eyes before she was given a not-so-gentle nudge and told to take the seat up front.
She clambered into the seat wondering where the air crew were, but there was no time to ask as the man was already back behind the controls, handing her a helmet with a curt ‘Put it on so we can talk’, before lifting the aircraft smoothly into the air.
Emma strapped herself in, settled the bag at her feet and pulled on the helmet with its communication device.
‘I’m Marty,’ her pilot said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. ‘And I believe you’re Emma. Stephen told me to look out for you.’
‘Stephen?’ She had turned towards him and shaken his hand—good firm handshake—but wasn’t able to take in much of the man called Marty. Unfortunately, checking him out had diverted her from working out who Stephen might be.
‘Stephen Ransome—he was up a couple of months ago to introduce the family to Fran. He’s my foster brother. You know he got married?’
Steve Ransome was this man’s foster brother? Why? How? Not questions she could ask a stranger so she grasped his last bit of information.
‘No, I didn’t know, but I’m so pleased. He’s a wonderful guy and deserves the best.’
‘He is indeed,’ Marty agreed, and Emma turned to look at him—or at what she could see of him in his flight suit and helmet.
Tanned skin, blue eyes, straight nose, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of smiling all the time.
So, this was Marty, subject of the hot gossip and, apparently, the local lover-boy!
Foster brother of Steve, who ran an IVF clinic in Sydney and had been her specialist when she’d decided to use Simon’s frozen sperm to conceive the boys.
Simon...
Just for an instant she allowed herself to remember, felt the familiar stab of pain, and quickly shut the lid on that precious box of memories.
She was moving on—hadn’t that been another reason for the shift to Braxton?
Marty was saying something, pointing out the path of the fire, visible in patches where the smoke had blown away.
She glanced out the window as he manoeuvred the controls to give them both a better view, then straightened up the chopper, intent on reaching their destination.
Marty, the man who didn’t do commitment and was open about it...
As she mentally crossed him off her list—not that she had a list as yet—she wondered why he’d be so commitment-shy.
His growing up in a foster family might be a clue.
Had he been born in a disruptive, and possibly abusive, family situation?
That last could make sense...
But he was talking again and she had to concentrate on what he was saying, not on who he was or why he wasn’t into commitment, although that last bit of info was absolutely none of her business.
‘There’s a coastal path that runs for miles along most of the coast in this area, and people can do long walks, camping on the way, or short walks,’ he explained. ‘The school mini-bus dropped these kids about five miles up the track—there’s a picnic area that’s accessible by road—and the idea was they’d walk back to Wetherby and be picked up there. It’s a yearly tradition at the school, and the kids love it. Unfortunately, the wind spun around from northeast to northwest and the fire jumped the highway and raced through the scrub towards the path.’
‘Poor kids, they must have been terrified,’ Emma said. ‘Do we know how many there are?’
‘Two teachers, a teacher’s aide, and sixteen children,’ Marty said grimly. ‘Hence no aircrew. We stripped everything not needed from the chopper because we’ll only have two chances to lift them all off the little beach they ran to. Once the tide comes in, that’s it, and not knowing the age or size of the kids makes calculations for lift-off weight difficult.’
Emma nodded. She’d learned all about lift-off weight during the training she’d undertaken in Sydney, necessary training as the rescue helicopter at Braxton relied on emergency department doctors on flights when one might be needed.
They were over the fire by now, seeing the red line of flame still advancing inexorably towards the ocean, while behind it lay the black, smouldering bushland.
Two rocky headlands parted to give a glimpse of a small beach and as they dropped lower she saw the group, huddled among the rocks on the southern end, their hands held protectively over their bent heads as the down-thrust from the rotors whipped up the sand.
‘Good kids, did what they were told,’ Marty muttered, more to himself than to Emma.
They touched down, the engine noise ceased, and before she could unstrap herself, Marty was already over the back, opening the doors and leaping down onto the sand.
He turned to grab Emma’s bag then held up a hand to help her down. An impersonal hand, professional, so why didn’t she take it? Jumping lightly to the sand as if she hadn’t noticed it...
‘I’m a trained paramedic so if you need me just yell,’ he was saying as she landed beside him. ‘I’m going to juggle weights in the hope we can get everyone off in two lifts.’
He paused and looked her up and down.
‘You’d be, what—sixty kilos?’
‘Thereabouts,’ she told him over her shoulder, hurrying towards the approaching children. One of the adults—probably a teacher—was helping a young, and very pale, girl across the beach.
‘Let’s sit you down and make you comfortable,’ Emma said to the child, noting at the same time a slight cyanosis of the lips and the movement of the girl’s stomach as she used those muscles to drag air into her congested lungs.
‘I’m Emma, and you’re...?’
‘Gracie,’ the girl managed.
‘She’s had asthma since she was small but this is the first time we’ve seen her like this,’ the woman Emma had taken for a teacher put in.
‘Do you have your puffer with you?’ Emma asked, and was pleased when Gracie produced a puffer from a pocket of her skirt.
‘Good girl. You’ve had some?’
Gracie nodded, while the teacher expanded on the nod.
‘She’s had several puffs but they don’t seem to be helping.’
‘That’s okay,’ Emma said calmly to Gracie. ‘I’ve brought a spacer with me, and you’ll get more of the medicine inside you with the spacer. Have you used one before?’
Another nod as Emma fitted the puffer to the spacer and inserted a dose, then found a mask she could attach to the spacer so the girl could breathe more easily.
‘Just slow down, take a deep breath and hold it, then we’ll do a few more.’ Probably best not to mention twelve at this stage. ‘See how you go.’
The girl obeyed but while it was obvious that the attack had lessened in severity, she was still distressed.
Marty had appeared with the oxygen cylinder and a clip and tiny monitor that would show the oxygen saturation in the blood. He joked as he clipped it on the girl’s finger, and nodded to Emma when the reading was an acceptable ninety-four percent.
The oxygen cylinder wouldn’t be needed yet.
Emma drew the teacher aside and explained what had to be done to fill the spacer and deliver the drug.
‘Are you happy to do that on the way to the hospital?’ she asked, and the teacher nodded.
‘I do it all the time,’ she said. ‘My second youngest is asthmatic. We just didn’t think to carry a spacer with us.’
Which left Emma to fill in the chart with what she’d done, dosage given, and the time. The flight from the hospital had only taken fifteen minutes so the child would be back in the emergency department before there was any need to consider further treatment, and she knew from her briefing that another doctor would have been called in to cover for her.
Marty had done a rough estimate of the weight of his possible passengers and had begun loading them into the helicopter. To the west the smoke grew thicker and the fire burning on the headland to the south told them they were completely cut off.
He looked at the tide, encroaching on the dry sand where he’d landed. He had to move now if he wanted to get back here before the tide was too high.
‘I’m taking the sick child and the teacher with her,’ he said to the new doctor, wondering how she’d cope being left on the beach surrounded by fire on her first day at work.
‘And the teacher’s aide who’s upset,’ he added, concentrating on the job at hand. ‘She’s not likely to be of any use to you, plus another six children. Will you be all right here until I get back? You have a phone? We’re quite close to Wetherby so there’s good coverage.’
‘I have a phone, we’ll be fine, you get going,’ she said, waving him away, and as he left he glanced back, seeing her hustling the children towards the sheltering rocks to avoid the sand spray at take-off.
Sensible woman, he decided. No fuss, no drama, she’ll be good to work with.
He settled the asthmatic girl in the front seat and strapped in those he could, letting the rest sit cross-legged on the floor.
He ran his eyes over them, again mentally tallying their combined weight, adding it to the aircraft weight so he was sure it was below take-off weight. The next trip would be tighter.
They were off, the children sitting as still as they’d been told to, although the urge to get up and run around looking out of windows must have been strong. The teacher he’d brought along would have sorted out those who were strapped in seats, he realised when the excited cries of one child suggested he had at least one hyperactive passenger.
‘Can you manage?’ he asked the teacher, who was in the paramedic’s seat behind the little girl, and had put another dose of salbutamol into the spacer and passed it to his front seat passenger.
‘Just fine,’ the sensible woman assured him. ‘You fly the thing and I’ll look after Gracie. Deep breath now, pet, and try to hold it.’
The school mini-bus was waiting behind the hospital as he landed, and the aide helped the children into it while the teacher took Gracie into Emergency.
‘Most of the parents are at the school,’ the bus driver told him. ‘I’ll take this lot there, then come back.’
Marty nodded, hoping he hadn’t misjudged the tide and that he would be bringing back the other children, the teacher and the unknown Emma Crawford.
As yet unknown? he wondered, then shook his head. Hospital staff were off limits as far as he was concerned.
Besides which, she was short and dark-haired, not tall and blonde like most of his women.
Most of his women! That sounded—what? Izzy would say conceited—as if he thought himself a great Lothario who could have whatever woman he liked, but it really wasn’t like that. He just enjoyed the company of women, enjoyed how they thought, and, to be honest, how they felt in his arms, although many of his relationships had never developed to sexual intimacy.
What colour were her eyes?
Not Izzy’s eyes, obviously, but the short, dark-haired woman’s eyes—the short, dark-haired woman who wasn’t at all his type.
The switch in his thoughts from sexual intimacy to the colour of Emma Crawford’s eyes startled him as he flew back towards the beach.
Meanwhile, the woman who wasn’t at all his type was attempting to calm the children left on the beach. Three were in tears, one was refusing to go in the helicopter, and the others were upset about not being in the first lift. The teacher was doing her best, but they were upsetting each other, vying to see who could be the most hysterical.
‘Come on,’ Emma said, gathering one of the most distressed, a large boy with Down’s syndrome, by the hand, ‘let’s go and jump the little waves as they come up the beach.’
Without waiting for a response, she steered the still-sobbing child towards the water’s edge, and began to jump the waves herself. A few others followed and once they were jumping, the one who still clung to Emma’s hand joined in, eventually freeing her hand and going further into the water to jump bigger waves.
‘Now they’ll probably all compete to go the deepest and we’ll be saving them from drowning,’ Emma said wryly to the teacher, who had joined her at the edge of the water.
‘At least they’ve stopped the hysteria nonsense,’ the teacher said. ‘They work each other up and really...’ She hesitated before admitting, ‘I was shaken by it all myself, so couldn’t calm them down all that well.’
‘No worries,’ Emma told her. ‘They’re all happy now.’
Which was precisely when one of them started to scream and soon the whole lot were screaming.
And pointing.
Emma turned to see a man race down the beach and dive into the water, her fleeting impression one of blackness.
‘He was on fire,’ one of the children said, as they left the water and clustered around their teacher, too diverted by the man to be bothered with screams any more.
Emma waded in to where the man was squatting in the water, letting waves wash over his head, her head buzzing with questions. How cold was the water? How severe his burns? Think shock, she told herself. And covering them...
