‘Look, I’ll get in the ute, go to the bottom of the foothills, see if he’s in trouble,’ Ric offered.
‘Would you?’ An immediate sense of relief flowed through her. ‘I hate to ask, but it’s not like him…’
‘No problem, Brooke. Jason’s been very good to us. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
Brooke replaced the receiver and stood there, chewing her bottom lip. She knew she shouldn’t let her imagination run away with her, but she had a bad feeling about this. Her hand moved to the phone again. Hesitated. Should she call Wes? Sindalee wasn’t far from the Stephanos’s property. Her hand fell to her side. She was worrying unnecessarily. It could be something quite simple: maybe one of the tyres had punctured, maybe the engine was being difficult—it was contrary at the best of times. But why hadn’t he phoned? Perhaps the satellite was out of range, or the battery had gone flat—Jason occasionally forgot to charge it.
Get a grip, she ordered herself. Nothing could happen to Jason, he was virtually indestructible.
So she paced, she tidied up, she made another cup of coffee which she couldn’t drink. She picked up the letter from her friend Janice. Janice was getting married and wanted all of them to come down for the wedding in June. Brooke knew she should write back, she’d been meaning to all week. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow she would.
Damn it! Her nerves were definitely on edge. She had to talk to someone. She picked up the receiver and dialed Wes’s number. She told him about Jason being abnormally late. Like Ric, he offered to check the road.
‘I want to come with you,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand sitting around here, killing time.’ When he made no objection, she added, ‘I’ll have Jean come and watch the kids.’
‘Brooke, I’m sure there’s no need…’
‘I need to come,’ she answered in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’ll meet you at the fork in the road, the one to the west of Bindi. We’ll go in the one car.’ His sigh was audible through the receiver. She ignored it.
‘Okay, if that’s what you want.’
It wasn’t a matter of want, she had to be there. If he’d been hurt she could tend to him, and if it turned out to be a wild goose chase they’d all have a good laugh about it. And her laugh would be the heartiest.
The bike’s headlight was still on, flickering spasmodically as the battery slowly went flat. Ric got out of the ute and checked the skid marks; they went from the middle of the deep puddle right over the edge of the hill. He shone his torch down the slope, and at first the light only picked up the chrome of the motorbike. He splayed the beam around and finally picked up Jason’s yellow rain gear. He looked up as Wes’s Land Rover stopped near the edge of the road.
‘I found him,’ he shouted to Wes, then acknowledged Brooke with a nod of his head. ‘He’s not moving. Looks like he’s down about eight metres or so.’
Wes jumped from the vehicle and shone his own torch down the slope. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed.
He ran his other hand through his hair. Think, man, think. What to do? ‘Here’s my mobile.’ He gave the phone to Brooke, who had joined him on the edge of the drop. ‘Ring the emergency number, tell them we need an ambulance and the police. We’ll need serious help to get Jason up the slope.’ He glanced at Ric. In the near darkness he was a shadowy blur. ‘Got a rope?’
‘In the back of the ute. Should be long enough.’
‘I’ll go down first. Looks as if the bike’s on top of him. I’ll try to lift it off using the rope and something—maybe a tree branch—for leverage.’ He studied Ric’s ute for a couple of seconds. ‘Could you bring the ute round and over to the edge to give me more light?’
Wes tied one end of the rope around a sturdy gum and, torch in one hand, rope in the other, went over the edge. He slipped and slid down the muddy, rain-drenched slope till he reached the spot where Jason lay. His friend was unconscious and blood oozed from about half a dozen wounds on his head. Wes winced visibly at the look of him. ‘You’ve got yourself in a fine pickle, mate,’ he said, half to himself.
He heard a noise above him and looked up to see Brooke slipping and sliding on her backside down the slope towards them. He’d have given anything for her not to see her husband like this, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He knew she was emotionally tough—she’d shown that over the years—and he doubted she’d break into sudden hysterics.
He looked again at the accident site. It was going to take some manoeuvring to pull the heavy bike off. He’d need Ric’s help.
It took the two men about ten minutes, as well as a lot of grunting and cursing, to push the bike off to Jason’s right. The battered bike then careered on down the slope until it was stopped by a huge gum tree.
Brooke looked at him. Oh, my God. He looked…terrible. She shut her eyes for several seconds, then forced her lids open again. She didn’t have time to panic, to fall apart. She had to pull herself together and do what she could to stabilise him. And she had to work fast before reaction set in and made her incapable of clear thoughts and actions.
With the bike out of the way, Brooke moved closer. Were any bones broken? None seemed to be, but she couldn’t be sure. His head wounds worried her the most. She was tentative about moving him in case there was spinal or neck damage but knew that they had to so she could examine him better. She decided that the best thing they could do was to wrap Wes’s shirt around Jason’s head to staunch the bleeding. Pools of blood were staining the boulder and running down Jason’s yellow coat in dark, zigzag rivulets. It appeared that he’d already lost a considerable amount of blood.
Her fingers shook slightly as, with Wes shining the light on Jason’s head, she tried to estimate how bad the damage was. It looked really bad. Head injuries. She hated head injuries, and she couldn’t kid herself or underestimate the seriousness of what had happened to him. She looked around for his helmet but couldn’t see it anywhere. It must have come off when he’d fallen, leaving him vulnerable.
Deep inside she tried to contain the growing panic that threatened to numb her brain and her ability to respond. Every minute counted, every minute was precious. They had to get him up and out of the ravine—quickly—to a hospital where he could be assessed thoroughly. Her nerves were stretched to the limit as she forced herself to remain calm and in control. It wouldn’t help Jason if she fell apart. She had to be strong, for both of them.
With two police and the ambulance officers helping, it still took an hour to bring Jason up to the level of the road, where the paramedics could stabilise him before putting him into the ambulance.
‘Come in the ambulance with us, Mrs d’Winters,’ the senior officer said as they loaded the patient. ‘Those head injuries look serious. The doctor in charge at Cowra will probably insist he be helicoptered to Sydney straightaway.’
‘What do you reckon his chances are?’ Ric asked.
The officer saw that the doctor’s wife was now in the ambulance, out of earshot. ‘Off the record? Touch and go, mate. He’s lost a good deal of blood, his blood pressure’s dropping, shock has set in.’ He shook his head fatalistically. ‘Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.’
Sitting beside Jason, holding his left hand because his right had been crushed in the accident, Brooke couldn’t relax. She watched the paramedic monitor her husband’s condition. Occasionally he would smile reassuringly at her. A decided trembling had begun in her hands and proceeded to race through her body, sending every nerve ending and tissue into palpitations. In the bright lights of the ambulance she saw just how badly Jason was hurt.
God, she hated head injuries. A sense of dread gripped her stomach and tightened the muscles till she could hardly breathe. From her medical background she knew enough to be truly alarmed by the look of him.
She closed her eyes, gulped in a deep breath and then forced it out slowly, trying to regain control. She had to think, plan what she should do, and she needed a clear head for that, but every time she began to think she remembered the scene i
n the ravine: Jason lying in a puddle of his own blood, unable to move. Her vision would blur and it would be a relief to give way to tears, but no, she mustn’t cry. She pressed her lips together tightly, hoping that would stop the tears. She didn’t have time for tears; they could wait till later.
Instead, she thought about the children, and on the forty-minute trip into Cowra, that was her salvation. The kids would be all right with Jean looking after them. They were used to her—she was their honorary aunt. Oh, God, what would she do without her dear friend? Jean was like a rock: solid and dependable. Jean would have to tell the children what had happened to their father—what and how much, though? The truth. Yes, the twins were too smart to be fobbed off with half-baked stories. Besides, they’d all been exposed to medical emergencies over the years; they understood that they happened. Sheridan might be a problem, she thought. She was very much Daddy’s girl.
When they got to the hospital she would call home. She had to remind Jean that the twins had a school project to hand in tomorrow, and Sheridan had a cold, so she’d have to tell her where the cough medicine was. And…She frowned. There was something else. Oh, yes, a few appointments in the surgery book.
She knew her thoughts were rambling, jumping from one thing to another, but she couldn’t help it. Her gaze locked onto her dear, sweet love, her one true love. He was in a lot of trouble, that was something she couldn’t deny. Jean should cancel the appointments and tell the patients. She blinked a few times to push back the tears. Tell them what?
For the rest of the drive Brooke practised steeling herself for the worst, for what the doctors would say. In her heart, though, she knew it wasn’t going to be good.
It wasn’t. The registrar in emergency decided to have Jason flown to a Sydney hospital immediately. She was to go with him.
She remembered Wes striding towards the helicopter just before it took off. The sheer bulk of the man, his confidence, had made her take heart, irrational as the reaction was.
‘Are you all right?’ he had yelled over the noise of the helicopter.
Brooke had squared her shoulders, forcing a smile into place. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ll come to Sydney as soon as I tidy up a few things at Sindalee.’
‘There’s no need,’ she had shouted back to him. ‘I mean, you don’t have to.’
‘I want to. Jason is my friend—my best friend.’ He had given her a searching look and squeezed her hand. ‘You are going to be okay, aren’t you?’
She had nodded a ‘yes’ at him and the flight attendant had closed the door. In seconds they were airborne.
As the helicopter circled above Cowra and then headed east, she knew that Wes knew that she was not all right, but there had been no need for either of them to dwell on her distress. Her world as she knew it was falling apart. The man she loved was close to death, and there seemed to be little she or Wes could do about it other than to watch, wait and hope.
Careflight flew Brooke and Jason to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. During the short flight, as a nursing sister monitored him, Brooke had time to go over what had happened at the hospital and what the doctor in charge had told her. Jason had lost a considerable amount of blood and had been given plasma to help combat shock. His right shoulder had been dislocated, but the Cowra medical staff had rotated it back into its socket and his right hand had been X-rayed. The decision had been made to immobilise the limb to prevent further swelling until an orthopaedic specialist could examine it.
But the head injuries were what worried the medical staff the most. She knew they had immobilised the cranium because of rising intracranial pressure and commenced a drip containing Mannitol. As well, a preliminary X-ray had shown the possibility of a large subdural haematoma. The neurology department at RPA had been put on alert and would have a neurologist and neurosurgeon on hand to make an assessment when the helicopter arrived. Brooke had been advised, given the circumstances and Jason’s level of injury, to expect a neurosurgeon to operate on him immediately.
Steady rain spattered against the waiting room window and blurred the outlook. Even though she was looking out, Brooke didn’t see the grey day, the other hospital buildings or the occasional passer-by. Her gaze registered nothing because her thoughts were focused in another direction entirely. Jason had been in the operating theatre for three, almost four, hours. The wait was agonising. From the moment they’d wheeled him into theatre, her imagination had gone into overdrive, conjuring up all kinds of scenarios. Would he survive surgery? Was there spinal cord damage? Would he be able to function normally again?
She made a strange, sobbing sound in her throat. If only she didn’t know as much as she knew about medical matters she wouldn’t be so worried. It was what the doctors hadn’t said that was making her insides churn with anxiety.
Over the hours she’d been in the Sydney hospital she had drunk so much coffee that the caffeine had hyped her up. This, compounded by the forced inactivity, made her reaction twice as bad.
In her head she kept seeing the face of the operating neurosurgeon. Before going into theatre his expression had been serious, his opinion non-commital. No joy there! As well, she’d been told that the orthopaedic surgeon wouldn’t work on Jason’s damaged hand until the head injuries had been attended to. She glanced at her watch: 5.00 a.m. Another hour had ticked by while she’d stood at the window. They were still working on him. That wasn’t a good sign, but she also knew that brain surgery was highly specialised and time-consuming. They had to be so careful and she was sure that’s what they were doing.
Brooke leant her forehead against the cool glass and worked hard not to give way to tears and a growing sense of depression. Sure, they’d had a few dramas in the course of their marriage, but nothing like this. She had to be strong, she kept telling herself, for the children, for Jason.
As her mind wandered from one thing to another, she recalled their anniversary weekend and how special it had been. A shiver of remembered pleasures ran down her spine. Her husband was a tender, loving man, a good man and a wonderful father. God, she thought, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling, it sounded as if she were writing his epitaph. She shook her head and straightened up. No! Somehow they would get through this, even though this— what had happened to him—wasn’t fair.
‘How are things going?’
Brooke turned sharply at the sound of Wes’s voice. Never had she been so glad to see anyone. The antiseptic hospital walls, the calm, quiet efficiency of the nursing staff, even the cleaner’s silent attack on the floor of the waiting room, had begun to close in on her.
‘Goodness, you must have strapped wings on your car and flown,’ she said, trying for light-heartedness though she felt anything but.
‘There’s not much traffic on the road in the early hours of the morning. It’s the perfect time to drive.’ His grey eyes gave her a thorough once-over and he nodded imperceptibly. She was holding up. He’d known she would be. ‘So, what’s happening?’
‘Jason’s still in surgery. It’s been almost five hours.’
That didn’t sound good, but of course he wouldn’t say so. He said instead, ‘Why don’t we go for a walk? There’s nothing to do here but stare at the floor or the walls.’ Hospitals weren’t his favourite place, even if he was only visiting and not a patient.
‘I…I can’t. Not yet. Not until he comes out of surgery and I talk to the surgeon.’
‘Okay,’ he agreed easily. Anything to keep her on an even keel. ‘How about a coffee?’
‘No more coffee,’ she said emphatically. ‘I think I’ve drunk a litre or two of the stuff, and it’s not decaffeinated.’ Her forehead creased in a frown. ‘You’d think they’d have decaffeinated in a big hospital.’ God, they were talking about such a mundane thing as coffee when her husband was lying unconscious under the surgeon’s knife!
They sat opposite each other and Wes grabbed a magazine. He slowly flipped the pages over, though he wasn’t reading a single word. All the w
ay from Cowra he’d been thinking about how badly Jason was injured. No-one could come through those head injuries unscathed. And he was his best friend; in fact, his only real friend apart from Hugh Thurtell. Frustration welled inside him. Damn that shitty bike. He should never have gotten it, or ridden it. If he’d been in the family car, the accident probably wouldn’t have happened.
He heard muted footsteps on the hallway before Brooke did and looked down the corridor as the surgeon came towards them, still wearing his cap and operating coveralls, which were slightly bloodied.
‘Mrs d’Winters?’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ Brooke stood up. ‘How is he?’
‘We’re lucky that your husband is a reasonably fit man—I almost lost him once. I’ve done what I could, Mrs d’Winters. There was extensive damage to various parts of the brain. I won’t go through the details, but the frontal bone was so badly fractured that I inserted a metal plate. We found two haematomas in the left cerebellum, which we drained, and several skull fractures. The fact that he’d already lost a considerable amount of blood and suffered a deprivation of oxygen to the brain has me concerned as to how much of the brain’s function will return to normal.’ He looked at her and qualified what he meant: ‘Whether all parts will function normally.’
‘Can you give that to us in plain English?’ Wes said impatiently.
‘Very well.’ The surgeon’s tone was stiff. ‘There is a possibility of permanent brain damage. How much and how severe it may be is something we won’t know until he regains consciousness and until the pain-killers—which he’ll have to be on for a while—wear off.’
‘A– and how long will that take, Doctor?’ Brooke asked in a small, hesitant voice.
‘He could remain unconscious for several days. We’ve no way of knowing how long.’ A wave of compassion flicked across the surgeon’s tired face. ‘I’m sorry the news isn’t better, Mrs d’Winters, but your husband suffered extensive injury to the brain in the accident. We were lucky to manage to save him.’
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