An hour later Felix and his parents were in the med. evacuation chopper on their way to Sydney. Meningitis hadn’t been confirmed but Beth wasn’t wasting time doing the tests herself. If the infection was moving fast, Namborra wasn’t where he needed to be. It was better to bail out early, maybe even terrify his parents unnecessarily, than risk the unthinkable.
Even after he’d left, there’d been things to do. She’d cleaned herself with care, then organised for parents to be contacted, with antibiotics ordered for anyone who’d been in contact with Felix. Finally she’d stripped again—one thing a country GP always carried was a change of clothes. She’d then hugged her own little Toby and carried him out through the undercover car park.
He was whinging because he was tired. She was also tired, but Toby didn’t have meningitis and right now she felt the luckiest mother in the world.
‘Let’s have spaghetti for tea,’ she told Toby, and his little face brightened.
‘Worms.’
‘Exactly. How many worms would you like?’
‘One, two, a hundred,’ he crowed, and buried his head in her shoulder.
She hugged him tight and headed toward the entrance. Doug, her next-door neighbour, would be waiting to pick her up. Bless him, she thought, not for the first time. Doug was in his seventies, a widower who spent his days making his garden and his car pristine. When she’d first started working at Namborra he’d noticed the number of taxis she was using and tentatively made his offer. At first she’d been reluctant—her hours were all over the place—but she’d finally accepted that Doug’s offer filled a need for him as well as for her.
Giving was lovely. She’d realised that a long time ago. It was the taking that was the hardest.
So now...she’d kept Doug waiting for over an hour but she couldn’t hurry. The light was dim and she had trouble making out the pillars. Grey on grey was her worst-case scenario.
Sometimes she even conceded a cane would help.
‘Yeah, a toddler in one arm, a holdall and briefcase in the other plus a cane...where? Not going to happen...’
And then she paused.
There was a roaring from above, the sound of a plane.
The town’s small airstrip was close. It wasn’t so unusual for planes to fly overhead, but the approaching roar was so loud it was making the building vibrate.
What the...?
She had a fraction of a second to clutch Toby tighter and duck because that was what she always did when she sensed trouble. Keep your head out of the firing line...
All of her was in the firing line. So was all of the Namborra Plaza.
* * *
Luc had finally found something to do. A kid playing hockey after school, no shin pads and a ball hit with force. He’d been bleeding impressively as his teacher had tugged him through the emergency doors. The dressing they’d hopefully taped to his lower leg wasn’t doing it.
The kid was ashen and feeling nauseous, mostly from the sight of blood rather than the pain, Luc thought, but eight stitches, a neat dressing and a promise of a scar had him restored to boisterous. ‘You’re sure it’ll scar?’ he demanded.
‘Just a hairline,’ Luc told him.
‘You can’t make it bigger?’
Luc grinned. ‘You want me to re-stitch, only looser?’
The kid chuckled. A nurse appeared with soda and a sandwich and the kid attacked them as if there was no tomorrow.
‘Shin guards from now on,’ Luc told him, and then the beeper in his pocket vibrated.
The hospital used his phone—or the intercom—to page him. The vibrating pager was used for members of the Specialist Disaster Response.
Three buzzes, repeated.
Code One.
Yes!
Or...um...no. He shouldn’t react like this. Code One emergencies meant the highest level of need. It meant that somewhere people were in dire trouble. He should hate it, and a part of him did. After a multiple casualty event, he made use of the SDR’s debriefing service and sometimes even that didn’t stop him lying awake in the small hours, reliving nightmare scenarios.
But this was what he was trained for, and in a way it was what he needed.
One of the team’s more perceptive psychologists had had a go about it once, and for some reason—the nightmares must have been bad—he’d let her probe.
‘Your childhood was traumatic and your mum depended on you?’ In typical psych. fashion she’d put it back on him. ‘How did that make you feel?’
And for some reason he’d let himself think about it.
His mother had walked out on his father when he’d been a toddler. She’d gone from one tumultuous relationship to another, one crisis to another. His earliest memories... ‘Is there anything in the fridge? Go next door and ask Mrs Hobson for something. Tell her I’d kill for a piece of toast. And aspirins. Go on, Luc, Mummy will hug you if you get her an aspirin...’
More dramatically, he remembered a drunk and angry boyfriend tossing them out at midnight. He remembered his aunt arriving and scolding him. ‘What are you doing, boy, standing round doing nothing? Go back inside and demand he give your mother her belongings. Go on, Luc, he won’t hit you. Can’t you see your mother needs you? You’re no use to anyone if you can’t help.’
He’d been seven years old. Somehow he’d faced down his mother’s bullying boyfriend. He’d pushed what he could see into a suitcase and his aunt had reluctantly taken them in.
And then there’d been his cousin...
Don’t go there.
‘So you’ve always associated love with being needed?’ the psychologist had asked, but it was too close to the bone and Luc had ended the sessions.
Did he associate dependence with love? There was a germ of truth, he acknowledged, and maybe that’s why he and Beth...
But this was no time to think of his failed marriage. His pager was still buzzing.
Don’t run in the hospital.
His long-legged stride came close.
* * *
After the massive roar of the plane, the shock of impact, then the domino effect as the slabs of concrete smashed down around them, there was suddenly silence.
And then the car alarms started, reacting to the fall of debris.
Beth was on the ground—at least she thought it was the ground. Her back was hard against a pillar.
There was rubble all around her, almost head-high.
Something was across her leg. Something...
The pain was unbelievable.
But worse... Toby was silent.
The air was so thick she could hardly breathe.
Toby.
She was still cradling him against her chest. His little body was curved into hers.
His stillness...
‘Toby...’ Her voice came out as a strangled, dust-choked whisper. ‘Toby?’
And he moved, just a fraction, to bury his face deeper into her breast. A whimper...
Thank you. Oh, thank you.
Her hands were moving over him, searching, pushing away rubble.
No blood. No more whimpers as she ran her fingers over his body.
She was good at this, assessing in the dark. Too good. But her skill was useful now. Her fingers were telling her there seemed no damage. Her arms had been around his chest and his head. He seemed okay.
But for herself...
There was no damage to her hands—maybe scratches but nothing serious. But her leg...
She tried to pull it free from the rubble, and the pain that shot through her body was indescribable.
But Toby was her priority. She was wearing a T-shirt, the one she’d changed into in a rush after treating Felix. Somehow she managed to put Toby back from her, enough to wiggle the hem of the T-shirt up to her neck. Then she pulled it down again, all the way over Toby
, turning it into a cocoon to protect him from the dust.
Still he didn’t move. The noise, the shock, the darkness must have sent him into panic and for most toddlers the reaction to blind panic was to freeze.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, but it wasn’t.
Breathing seemed almost impossible. Her mouth was full of grit. The dust wasn’t settling.
Toby was safe under her T-shirt, but what was the rule? In a crisis, first ensure your own safety. You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.
Okay, Toby had come first but now she needed to focus on herself.
The leg... She needed to...
Breathe. That was top of the list.
She was cradling Toby with one arm. With the other she groped and found the canvas carryall she’d brought from crèche. The clothes she’d just taken off were in a plastic bag on the top. Maybe they were contaminated with meningitis virus but now wasn’t the time to quibble.
Oh, her leg...
Somewhere close by, someone started to scream.
There was nothing she could do about it.
First save yourself.
She’d been wearing a blouse when she’d treated Felix and it was at the top of the bag. She tugged it free and a flurry of concrete rubble fell into the bag as she pulled it out.
Was there anything around her likely to fall? How could she tell?
The darkness was total. Her phone had a torch but her phone was at the bottom of her purse and where was her purse? Not within reach.
No matter. She was used to the dark.
Toby wasn’t, though. He was whimpering, his little body shaking.
There was nothing she could do until she had herself safe.
She had the shirt free. She shook the worst of the dust out, knowing more was settling every second. Then she had to let Toby go while she wrapped and tied the shirt around her face.
The whimpering grew frantic.
‘It’s okay.’ And blessedly it was. The shirt made breathing not easy but at least possible.
She took a moment to cradle Toby again, hugging him close, blocking out the messages her leg was sending her.
‘Stay still, Toby, love,’ she whispered. ‘I need to see if I can get this...this mess away from us so we can go home.’
Fat chance. She wasn’t going anywhere soon.
Oh, her leg...
Was she bleeding? She couldn’t tell and she had to know.
Carefully she manoeuvred Toby around to her side, though he clutched her so hard she had to tug. Thankfully the neck of her T-shirt was tight so he was safe enough in there. He wasn’t crying loudly—just tiny terrified whimpers that did something to her heart.
But her leg had priority. With Toby shifted to the side she could lean down and feel.
There was a block of concrete lying straight across her lower leg. Massive. She couldn’t feel either end of it.
She was bent almost double, fighting to get her fingers underneath, fighting to see if there was wriggle room.
Her fingers could just fit under.
No blood or very little. She wasn’t bleeding out, which was kind of a relief.
The pain was...was...there were no words.
She went back to clutching Toby. If she just held on...
She was awash with nausea and faintness. The darkness, the pain, the fear were almost overwhelming and the temptation was to give in. She could just let go and sink into the darkness.
But that’d mean letting go of Toby. He was being so still. Why? She didn’t have room in her head to answer. He was breathing, his warm little body her one sure thing in this nightmare.
The sound from the car alarms was appalling. The screaming from far away reached a crescendo and then suddenly stopped, cut off.
There was nothing she could do. Her world was confined to dark and dust and pain—and Toby.
There was nothing else.
* * *
Even without the emergency code, Luc would have known there was trouble the moment he walked into the Specialist Disaster Response office. Mabel, the admin secretary, was staring at the screen and her fingers were flying over the keyboard. This was what she was trained for.
Mabel sensed rather than saw him arrive, and she didn’t take her eyes from the screen as she spoke.
‘Plane crash into shopping centre,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Cargo plane. Pilot on board but hopefully no passengers. It’s smashed into the side of the Namborra Shopping Plaza. You know Namborra? Five hours’ drive inland, due west. It’s the commercial centre for a huge rural district. Hot day, air-conditioned shopping centre, Tuesday afternoon. There’s no word yet but guess is multiple casualties. It seems the undercover car park and a small section of the plaza itself have collapsed.’
‘What resources are on the ground?’ Luc asked.
‘There’s a small local hospital but anything serious gets airlifted here, so there are few resources. I’m bringing the team back, field hospital, the works, but it’ll take time to get them there. Luc, I’m trying to sequester med staff from the rest of the hospital but they’re not geared up like you are. The fire team’s already notified and the first responders will go with you. The chopper’s on the roof. Gina’s refuelling and ready to go. Resources will follow at need but I want you in the air ten minutes ago. Go!’
And ten seconds later he was gone.
Copyright © 2018 by Marion Lennox
ISBN-13: 9781488079870
The Shy Nurse’s Rebel Doc
First North American Publication 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Alison Roberts
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