'He's a patient,' Fliss murmured. 'I was at his house when this started. We're trying to get back to my surgery.'
She could feel the new tension in Angus's body as his level of alertness suddenly increased.
'Where is he now?'
'He went a different way. There's a little boy who might be hurt.'
The low moan from nearby reminded Fliss of a more urgent mission. Of someone who was definitely hurt.
'There's someone here!' Fliss couldn't stop her voice getting louder. 'I was trying to get to her when you attacked me.'
'I was heading for her myself,' Angus responded. 'And then I spotted you.' He rolled sideways and Fliss sat up. Angus pulled her flat again instantly.
'Wait,' he commanded. 'I'll go first.' He raised his hand and made some sort of signal.
'What are you doing?'
'Letting Seth know what the plan is. We don't use our radios unless we have to.'
'Seth?'
'My partner. He's armed and close. He's going to cover me while I check out that woman.'
Fliss stared around her but could see nothing. Then she stared harder. A pinprick of red light showed behind a gravestone that was only a few metres away.
'That light...?'
'Sights on the gun.'
Good grief! Someone was pointing a weapon right at them at almost point-blank range and Fliss had had no idea he was even there. These guys were good at what they did and no mistake. She was quite happy to let Angus be the one to move and see what the situation was with the groaning woman.
The sound of distress grew louder a few seconds later.
'It's my leg,' Fliss heard the woman say hoarsely. 'I can't move.'
'Shh.' Angus spoke too quietly for Fliss to catch any words but she could sense the reassurance in whatever he was saying. When the woman spoke again, she copied his inaudible volume.
Long seconds of silence followed and then a louder groan followed by an apology from his patient. Angus must be doing something that had increased her pain temporarily, Fliss thought. A rough splint, perhaps, or inserting an IV line.
She saw one of the dark shapes move and a moment later Angus was back beside her.
'She's been shot in the leg. It's fractured her femur and there's been heavy blood loss. I've got a dressing and pressure bandage on it and I've given her some pain relief, but she's in shock. How far from your surgery are we?'
'Not far.' Fliss matched his whisper. 'I was going to climb over the Carsons' fence there to get to the street. My place is two houses down from there.'
'I'm going to carry Maria.'
'Maria?' Fliss was shocked. 'What was she doing here?'
'Hiding, I expect. She's not too big so I can carry her, but not over a fence.'
'She's pregnant,' Fliss told him. 'Thirty-six weeks.'
'I did notice.' Even the whisper sounded wry.
'Her babies have come a bit earlier each time. This is number five.'
'Definitely not over a fence, then.'
There was an undercurrent of amusement in the whisper now. And something else. A response to a challenge. Excitement, even.
'I'm going to have a word with Seth. We might need some extra cover so we can go down the street.'
The consultation with the still unseen Seth took less than a minute. Then they waited for perhaps another ten minutes until they were given permission to carry out the planned rescue mission. Angus went back to Maria but Fliss was ordered to stay where she was for the moment. It was a long time to sit in silence, knowing that every minute could represent a deterioration in their patient's condition.
She needs oxygen, Fliss thought. And fluids. Being in shock would be a danger to the baby whose survival depended on the oxygen supply it received from its mother's blood.
Maria adored her children and after four girls she was convinced that a longed-for boy was due to arrive. Fliss had visited their alternative lifestyle block where they grew most of their own food and home-schooled their children. She had envied the contentment and solidarity of the self-sufficient family. She couldn't let anything horrible happen to Maria or the baby.
The wave of anger towards the perpetrator of this violence shouldn't have come as such a surprise to Fliss. It was people like that who shattered the lives of innocent people, including children.
The way hers had been shattered all those years ago. Sitting in the cemetery with the memories of her own losses made Fliss all too aware of what the repercussions of random acts of violence like this could be. The effects could be so far-reaching they could interfere with the rest of your life. They could put what you wanted more than anything out of reach. Could undermine and destroy relationships.
As hers had been.
The force that had plucked her father from her life had not been something a person could be blamed for because no one had ever been caught for the arson attack that had started the house fire. That her fire-fighter father had been caught when the roof had collapsed unexpectedly had been deemed a disastrous miscalculation. A terrible accident but one that came with the territory of such a career.
Some of her earliest memories had to do with that nebulous force of danger that had hung over her father's career, reinforced by her mother's anxiety every time he'd gone on duty. For the first time, however, Fliss could feel hatred for the person who'd committed the mindless act of starting that fire in the first place. The same kind of hatred she was experiencing towards whoever was roaming through Morriston right now with a loaded gun.
And she could find an outlet for such a negative emotion much closer to hand. In the men who chose a career that brought them close to that kind of evil. Who waited for it to happen. Looked forward to it, even, because it provided excitement. When Angus came back to her position, Fliss found herself watching for evidence of that career satisfaction.
'You guys are enjoying this, aren't you?'
'Keep your voice down, Fliss.'
'This must be the biggest callout you've ever had.'
'Shh!' The hiss was a command. 'We're moving. Follow me, and, for God's sake, shut up.'
Fliss shut up, her anger replaced by fear. Angus gathered Maria into his arms seemingly effortlessly and Fliss walked beside him with Seth on her other side. She presumed they had cover from other members of the squad, although she couldn't see anyone.
Maria bravely kept as silent as she could, her pale face pressed into Angus's shoulder, her broken leg hidden by the long, flowered dress she wore. The ungainly knot of humanity crept slowly along the street until Fliss breathed an audible sigh of relief.
'This is it. My surgery.'
A faded sign designated the add-on to the small cottage as the 'Morriston Medical Centre'. Fliss had left her keys with the rather cumbersome kit back at Jack's house but it didn't matter. The door, panelled with opaque glass, that led into the small waiting room was never locked. Fliss reached for the handle.
'Wait!'
'Why?'
'Has this door been unlocked since you left?'
'Yes. I never lock it on Wednesdays. I usually hold surgery hours between seven and nine and if I'm called out, people need somewhere to wait.'
Seth and Angus exchanged a glance and Fliss dropped her hand. What if someone was waiting inside who wasn't a patient? It had never occurred to her that she needed to fret about security in a place like Morriston.
Things were never going to be the same after this.
'I'll check it out,' Seth said quietly. 'Stay here.'
He was back only moments later. There hadn't been much to check. A waiting area, a toilet, the consultation room and a small storage space. The connecting interior door that led from the waiting area into the cottage was always locked from the house side. If Fliss wanted to enter her home during working hours, she would walk around the corner to the small verandah that had her front door exactly in the middle.
Angus carried Maria straight into the consultation room and laid her gently on the bed. Seth locked the ou
tside door behind them and then pulled the curtains closed.
'Don't turn on any more lights than you absolutely have to,' he instructed.
Fliss put a desk lamp on the floor, angled the head down and switched it on. The pool of light wasn't enough but a small penlight torch provided a narrow, bright beam that wouldn't be obvious from outside.
Fliss shone it briefly on Maria's face. Tear-streaked and terrified, the young mother was far paler than normal, and when Fliss touched her skin, it was cool and clammy.
'It's going to be all right, Maria,' Fliss said with a conviction she was far from feeling herself. 'We're going to get through this.'
'But what's happening?' And why are you dressed like that?'
Fliss pulled the black hat from her head. 'Sorry. I must look a bit weird. Jack thought I'd be a bit obvious if I didn't cover up.'
'Cover up from what? What's going on? Who's got a gun and why are they shooting at us?'
'They?' Seth's question was a demand for more information. 'You saw more than one person?'
'Yes.'
'How many?'
'I.. .I'm not sure. It was so dark. I was running.. .and then I fell.. .and then it.. .it started to hurt and...'
'It's OK, love.' Fliss shot Seth a warning glance. Her patient was distressed enough without being interrogated. Seth nodded curtly and began talking quietly and rapidly into his microphone.
Fliss looked up at Angus as she reached for a blood-pressure cuff. 'Do you know what's going on?'
He was uncovering the wound on Maria's leg and held out a hand for the torch.
'I'm not up with the latest info. My radio transmissions are a bit patchy. I think something got damaged when I tackled you. What I do know is that it appears some locals have got caught up with a drugs ring. We think this started because someone was being warned off and it's escalated. Whoever's involved isn't too bothered if innocent people get in the way.'
'Are you talking about cannabis?' Maria gave a short, unamused huff of laughter. 'They're trying to kill people for the sake of a bit of hooch?'
'Not "a bit",' Seth put in. 'We're probably talking about major production here. The kind of multi-million-dollar operation that requires large areas of plantation.'
'And it could be that a cannabis operation is just part of something bigger,' Angus added. 'Like methamphetamine production. Easy to hide a lab in the kind of bush around here. It could be that someone knows more than they should.' He glanced up. 'The bleeding's stopped, Fliss. I need to get a dressing on this again and have you got a traction splint available?'
'Yes. There's one in the storeroom.' Fliss let down the pressure in the cuff. 'Blood pressure's 95 on 50. I'm going to start some fluids.' She eyed the cannula taped to Maria's forearm. 'What gauge did you use?'
'Sixteen,' Angus responded. 'I knew she'd need fluids as well as the pain relief.'
'You gave her morphine?'
'Yes. Five milligrams.'
'And an anti-emetic?'
'Yes. Metaclopromide, ten milligrams.'
'How's the pain at the moment, Maria?'
'It still hurts.'
'We'll give you some more morphine in a minute, before we splint your leg.'
'This.. .isn't going to hurt the baby, is it?'
'No,' Fliss said reassuringly. 'We're going to take the best care of you and that way we'll be looking after baby as well.'
She went to the storeroom with only the light from the tiny torch to locate the traction splint and a bag of saline. As she attached the giving set to the cannula and hung the bag of fluids, Fliss found herself thinking about what Angus and Seth had been saying about the quiet little township of Morriston being possibly caught up in a major drug bust. Had she really thought that by coming here she would be immune to the kind of problem she had encountered all too often in a big city emergency department? Had that, in fact, blinded her to something she could have spotted earlier?
'I had a patient a couple of weeks ago,' she told Angus. 'He wanted something for his eczema. His arms were scratched to bits.'
Angus was on her wavelength instantly. 'Did you notice anything else?'
'He talked fast. Kind of mumbled.'
'You think he might be a methamphetamine user?'
'It's possible, in hindsight. I thought he was a bit odd but then I thought I was being biased. I knew he killed and stuffed possums for a living, which I thought was really gross.'
'Darren?' Maria's eyes widened. 'You think Darren shot me? No way! I've known him since he was a kid. We went to school together.'
'Do you know if he uses drugs?'
'He's always smoked a lot. He used to get into trouble at school for it. I haven't really had anything to do with him for years, though. I did hear he'd been in trouble with the police a while back. For burglary, I think.'
Angus raised an eyebrow. 'Maybe possums aren't enough to support a serious habit.'
'If he's using something like P, it could have changed his personality from what you remember, Maria,' Fliss said. 'People can get paranoid. Violent. It could explain what's happening out there.' She looked up at Angus. 'Couldn't it?'
The acknowledgment was a brief nod. 'You want to top up that morphine? I'd like to get this splint on.'
The extra pain relief was welcome. Fliss had to raise Maria's leg while Angus slipped the splint underneath and attached the figure-of-eight strap to hold the foot of the broken limb. Then the tension was wound on until the leg was the same length as her unbroken one. Fliss pulled the wide Velcro straps into place at intervals up the leg, avoiding the dressing over the open gunshot wound.
'You're going to need surgery to clean this up and repair the bone damage,' Fliss warned their patient. 'We'll get you to a hospital as soon as we can.'
'When will that be?'
There was a moment's awkward silence.
'When it's safe,' Angus said.
Maria's eyes filled with tears. 'I want to go home. Ben will be getting worried by now.' She caught Fliss's arm. 'What if he gets the truck out and comes looking for me? And brings the girls?'
The anxiety was contagious. There was no phone at Maria's isolated farmlet. No way of reassuring her family or warning them not to come into the village.
'The roads are all covered,' Angus said. 'There's no way they'll get anywhere close enough to be in danger. I'll try and get a message through but I can't promise anything.'
Fliss had to look away. She fiddled with the little blue wheel on the IV line, making an unnecessary adjustment to what was already the fastest flow rate.
Of course Angus couldn't promise anything. That had always been the problem, hadn't it?
He hadn't been able to promise he wouldn't get called away on any of those first dates they'd had, over a year ago now. The pager he had with him twenty-four hours of every day could go off at any time.
He could never promise to be home at a certain time or to complete the chores he had willingly taken responsibility for when they had started to live together only weeks after their first date.
And he certainly couldn't have promised not to take risks in his job. Risks that could well mean he would never come home at all.
At least he was honest enough not to make promises when the keeping of them was out of his control. Echoes of the deep, rumbly voice of her father, which always seemed to be on the brink of laughter, sounded in a far corner of her mind.
'Be back in the morning, button—I promise.'
Or 'See you tonight, sweets—I promise.'
And for her mother 'Don't worry so much, darling. I'll be back—I promise.'
As a child, Fliss had never been able to understand why those promises hadn't given her mother the same comfort they had given her.
The woman she was now could understand the anxiety in Maria's face but there were no promises Fliss could make either. She could only offer the comfort her skills could reliably provide as she made a thorough check on both Maria and the baby.
The sound of the
strong, steady foetal heartbeat they all heard a few minutes later made them smile.
But Fliss made the mistake of catching Angus's glance as she smiled—sharing the hope they all felt in that moment that somehow everything was going to be all right.
It had been a very similar moment that had started everything between Angus and Fliss. On a day when Angus and his partner had brought in a patient with serious chest trauma. Fliss had been given a leading role in the drama of opening the man's chest in the emergency department—a desperate and usually futile attempt to save a life. On that occasion, however, it had been successful and the bleeding from a ruptured major vessel had been controlled well enough for the young man to make it as far as Theatre.
Angus had been there. Unwilling to give up on a patient he had already struggled to stabilise. Ready to assist the new senior registrar who had landed such a major case on one of her first shifts. Openly admiring of her skills.
Of her.
And that shared glance, when it had become apparent they had succeeded, had been enough to spark so much more.
Something was still smouldering despite everything that had happened since. Fliss could tell because she felt it burn. Tendrils of flame that ignited somewhere deep in her abdomen and spread instantaneously. The hint of remembered passion was more than enough to bring the pain of its ending way too close to the surface.
It still hurt.
The smile prompted by the healthy sound of Maria's baby's heartbeat vanished. Fliss removed the foetal stethoscope and pulled back the blanket to cover Maria. If only it could be that easy to pull a cover over the raw patch on her soul.
How many more reminders would there be before this was all over?
Fliss needed a distraction. She would take another complete set of vital-sign measurements on Maria, she decided, picking up the bulb of the blood-pressure cuff in preparation for inflating it.
'Stop!'
The command from Seth, still standing close to the window, was quiet but stern enough for Fliss to freeze.
To hold her breath.
They all froze. The silence was absolute for just a split second.
One Night to Wed Page 4