There was no time for Abbey to do more than glance upwards and say a tiny thankful prayer that Eileen had been able to locate him. All her concentration was on getting enough pressure on the pad to stop Steve bleeding.
Where on earth was the ambulance? She had to have plasma. Now!
And what about the injured children?
‘Ryan, I haven’t done triage,’ she gasped as Ryan reached her side. She was pushing down as hard as she could on Steve’s leg and she couldn’t move. ‘There are two others hurt but I can’t leave this.’
‘There’s a girl with a gashed arm. My boys are dealing with her,’ Rod told her briefly. He was hauling another towel tight around Steve’s upper leg. He glanced up at Ryan. ‘But Leith Kinley’s just over there, Doc, and she’s hurt bad. We carried her out of the water on a surfboard because she wasn’t feeling her legs. Caroline-the nurse who was with Doc Pryor-is with her but she looks… I dunno…’
Leith Kinley… Their little asthmatic. Ryan’s swimming pupil.
Ryan took one long, hard look down at the nearunconscious Steve and turned to where Leith was lying ten yards away. Abbey felt her heart give a sickening lurch. Leith… But she had to leave Leith to Ryan. If she didn’t concentrate on what she was doing Steve would bleed to death under her hands.
Where on earth was the ambulance?
And what had happened? It seemed inconceivable that someone just ride a jet ski into the swimming beach.
And then the ambulance screamed across the sand, followed by the local police car, the fire truck and the State Emergency Services van for good measure. Eileen had clearly decided that the more people helping the better.
And Eileen herself arrived in the hospital car.
With plasma. Eileen had plasma.
For Steve, plasma meant the difference between life and death, and he’d lost so much blood now that the line between the two was growing very close indeed.
For the next few minutes Abbey couldn’t think past getting the plasma running into Steve’s body and the flood of blood from his leg completely stopped. Finally, with the combined effort of Abbey, Rod, Don and Eileen, they achieved success.
Abbey sat back in the sand and looked down. She took three deep breaths, as if she hadn’t had time to breathe until now. Steve’s leg was no longer bleeding. The tourniquet would have to be loosened every few minutes to let the blood flow through but she’d tied towelling pads across the wound so tightly that it shouldn’t be a problem.
Plasma and intravenous fluids were flowing into Steve’s veins. And adrenalin to counter shock. His pulse was thready but still there. He was young and strong. He’d need a decent surgeon to repair the damage to his thigh but, barring complications, Steve should live.
‘You’ll make it, Steve,’ Abbey whispered as she saw his eyelids flutter open. She gripped his hand and held tight. She’d only known this young doctor for three weeks but he was already a friend.
‘He’s a bloody hero,’ Don said faintly. Despite his initial protest, Don had worked like a Trojan, building Steve up with towels and sand so his thighs were at a thirty degree angle to his torso. It had made Abbey’s job of stemming the blood loss much easier, and Don hadn’t fainted once. Now, though, with urgent needs over, Don shoved his head between his knees and took a few deep breaths himself. When he finally raised his head he looked better.
‘You know he saved the kids?’ Don said.
‘How?’ Abbey was looping a vast strip of Elastoplast around the pad of towels pressing down on Steve’s leg. She didn’t want the pad coming loose before he reached Cairns. Steve would have to go to Cairns, she knew, and probably on to Brisbane. He needed plastic surgeons skilled in reconstruction for this leg.
‘There was a bloody kid on a jet ski,’ Don told her roughly, glaring around the beach as if trying to locate him. ‘Showing off outside the nets. In bathers and no other protection, mind.
‘Then the obvious happens. He gets stung by a stinger of some sort and assumes it’s a box jellyfish. Panics and starts screaming and then comes haring through the nets to the beach. Forgot the nets would foul him. Got all tangled up and wrenched out of it-straight into a group of kids.
‘Steve here saw him coming,’ Don added, staring down at the injured doctor in awe. ‘Faster than the rest of us put together, I reckon. He lunged across and shoved the kids out of the way. If it wasn’t for Steve, it’s my guess we’d have half a dozen dead kids.’
‘Oh, Steve…’
‘And then Caroline-the only qualified nurse on the beach-tried to stop his leg bleeding and Steve made her go to Leith,’ Rod added. The lifesaver had fixed the tourniquet to his satisfaction and now was wiping some of the blood from his hands with an already bloodied towel.
Towel sales in Sapphire Cove were due to go through the roof in the next few days, Abbey thought grimly.
‘Caroline showed us how to get Leith out of the water without moving her back but, meanwhile, Steve here was bleeding like a stuck pig.’ The lifesaver shoved his hand on Steve’s shoulder and gripped hard. ‘You’re all right, mate. A bloody hero.’
Bloody was right. No one smiled.
‘Leith,’ Steve said faintly. ‘Abbey, Leith…’
‘Ryan’s with Leith,’ Abbey told him.
‘You go too… I’ll be right. You go…’
Abbey stooped and gave him a quick hug, sent a silent message to Eileen with her eyes to look after him-and then went.
Once Steve’s bleeding had stopped, Leith was in more trouble than Steve.
She was conscious and there seemed little blood, but as Abbey approached she could tell things were serious by the look of grimness around Ryan’s mouth.
‘Ryan?’
Ryan looked up and saw her and then looked down again. He was injecting morphine into Leith’s lateral thigh and it took his entire attention.
He signalled to Caroline to keep holding the little girl’s hands.
‘That’ll stop the pain, Leith,’ Ryan said gently. ‘Just don’t move one inch. You hear? I want the painkillers to work and they can’t work if you move.’
He rose to greet Abbey.
‘Steve?’ There was no disguising the anxiety in Ryan’s voice.
‘I’ve stopped the bleeding and I’ve set up a line for plasma. He should be OK.’
‘The leg?’
‘Retrievable. Not by me, though. I’d imagine he’ll have to go to Brisbane. The air ambulance service is sending a helicopter. It should be here any minute. They’ll take him to Cairns, stabilise him and send him on. Leith?’
‘I’d guess fractured spine.’
‘Oh, Ryan… ’
‘I’m not sure of the damage,’ Ryan said grimly, ‘but she’s not feeling her legs. What else is there?’
‘I’ll find out,’ Abbey said grimly. ‘Oh, God…’
The other two casualties were a child with a gashed arm-it’d need stitching but Abbey could do that at Sapphire Cove-and a boy with a bluebottle sting. The rider of the jet ski.
‘I thought I must have been stung by a box jellyfish, like that boy was a couple of weeks back,’ Paul muttered over and over again. Bluebottles were tiny air-filled sac-like jellyfish that trailed along the water’s surface. They stung, but the pain eased after thirty minutes or so with no lasting damage. Paul was all of twelve years old and what had happened had him appalled. ‘I never meant… I never…’
‘It’s not your fault, Paul,’ Abbey said wearily, and she gave him a hug as she washed down his leg with fresh water. She was right. It was his stupid parents for letting him have such a powerful machine in the first place.
Abbey badly wanted to kick someone-and she couldn’t kick a twelve-year-old. His parents were just as appalled as Paul. They were being punished enough, without Abbey kicking.
Which didn’t ease Abbey’s desire to kick one bit.
She went back to check Steve and found him drifting in and out of consciousness. She’d given him as much morphine as she dared.
‘You go with them,’ Abbey yelled at Ryan over the noise of the chopper as Steve and Leith were skilfully loaded onto stretchers. She glanced down at Leith and her mouth tightened in fear. A broken back. Was Leith facing paraplegia-or worse? Maybe… maybe with Ryan the child had a chance. Spinal injuries were so unpredictable. But if Ryan was there…
‘Please, Ryan. I want you to go.’
Ryan looked down at Abbey with an unreadable expression on his face.
And he went.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RYAN was away for five days.
For those five days Abbey hardly had time to blink. She was thrust back into her old workload with a vengeance.
Steve Pryor was undergoing massive reconstruction of his thigh. He wouldn’t lose his leg, but it would take months before he was able to use it in anywhere near a normal fashion.
Caroline, the night sister who’d spent the day at the beach with him, travelled to Brisbane so there’d be someone with him during major surgery. It turned out Steve had no family. Caroline was it. And, by the look of her haggard face as she arrived back in Sapphire Cove, Abbey knew Caroline wouldn’t have it any other way.
‘He’s such an owl,’ Caroline sniffed into Abbey’s arms. ’Such a gentle, loving person. And he saved those kids. I don’t think I can bear it.’
‘You’re in love with him,’ Abbey said on a note of discovery, and that produced more sniffs and a fast retreat into a handkerchief.
‘Yes. but now… I mean it all happened so fast. I only went out with him the once and how’s he supposed to believe I love him already? And now he’s in Brisbane and I’m here and he was only here on a locum anyway and I’m never going to see him again.’
‘Let’s see what Steve has to say about that when he’s feeling a bit better.’ Abbey smiled. And then asked what she most wanted to know. ‘Now, tell me. How’s Leith? Is Ryan still with her?’
Caroline hauled herself together and blew her nose. And managed a watery smile.
‘Dr Henry assisted at the operation. The surgeons down there asked him to. Oh, Dr Wittner, they think he’s wonderful. No one thought she’d walk again but there’s some new technique Dr Henry knew was being trialled.
‘The surgeons here did a video conferencing session with some of Dr Henry’s colleagues in the States-paediatric orthopaedic surgeons, the best in the world. Dr Henry organised it so it seemed like they were actually in the theatre while they were operating on Abbey. And now they say there’s a really good chance she will walk.’
Well, well.
Abbey took it all in and hugged it against her heart. It helped. It helped that even if she couldn’t marry Ryan the Ryan she knew and loved was still going strong.
She was proud of him. She ached for him. She loved him.
It had to be shoved aside for the moment. There’d be time to be really miserable later. There were all sorts of after-effects from the accident on the beach. Paul, the child who’d been riding the jet ski, had been admitted to hospital, suffering from shock, and it would take all her skills to pull him out of it without serious emotional scars. His parents were almost as bad. Basically good-hearted people, they were deeply distressed at what had happened.
The police sergeant wasn’t helping. He wanted blood, and when Abbey counselled him strongly about taking it further he broke down and wept and needed help himself.
The small child with the gashed arm was the least of her worries. Wendy was proud of her stitches but her parents were upset. Then the local school teacher wanted Abbey to come and speak to the children at assembly as the children were desperate to know what was going on.
And there was her ordinary hospital work. Abbey asked the farmers to take over her cows again and Marcia kept on helping with Jack, but still she finished each day exhausted. And missing Ryan.
Janet was still recovering, following her exercise regime with stoic determination. With reason.
On the fifth day after the accident Abbey walked into Janet’s ward to find her sitting up in bed with Sam at her side. That didn’t surprise her. Sam had been a constant visitor. What did surprise her were the silly grins on both of their faces. They sat hand in hand on the bed and they looked for all the world like two teenagers caught having an illicit cuddle.
Abbey lifted her eyebrows and smiled a query.
‘Sorry, guys. You want me to come back later?’
‘No.’ Janet blushed and looked at Sam. And blushed again.
‘We have something to say to you,’ Sam said seriously. And it was his turn to turn pink.
And Abbey knew.
‘You want to ask for Janet’s hand in marriage,’ she said in delight. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Well…’ Sam’s smile deepened in quiet satisfaction. ‘I should ask someone.’
‘Have you asked Janet?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she said?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said bluntly. ‘She said she’ll marry me if you’ll marry Ryan.’
Abbey frowned. ‘I like the marriage idea,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t agree with the if part of the deal. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘That’s what I told her,’ Sam said, ‘but she won’t leave you by yourself.’
‘I’m not by myself.’ Abbey took a deep breath. ‘So… you two love each other?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said firmly, and put his arm around Janet’s waist. ‘We do.’
‘Then I’m walking out of here right now and announcing it to the world,’ Abbey told them. ‘Sam and Janet are getting married. And there’s no conditions applying. Not one!’
She hugged them both. ‘And don’t you dare stuff this up by stupid quibbles, Janet Wittner,’ she ordered. ‘You’ve got your Sam. And I have my little Jack. I won’t be lonely.’
Only it wasn’t quite true. Jack was here, but anywhere without Ryan was lonely.
Where was he? He’d been away for five days. Why didn’t he return?
Half of her was starting to think that the next thing they’d hear from Ryan would be a phone call from New York to say that his career had reclaimed him, and it was time to get on with his life.
At two the next morning someone knocked hard on Abbey’s door.
Abbey flicked on her bedside light and looked blearily at the clock. Two?
People telephoned in an emergency. They didn’t come here.
For a moment she felt a pang of alarm. This little cottage was set back far from the road and, apart from Jack, she was alone. Still, if it was an emergency…
She hauled a wrap around her flimsy nightgown, went to the door and opened it a crack.
Ryan.
She shut it again. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
‘Abbey!’
‘Go away, Ryan Henry,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s two in the morning. I’m not… I’m not dressed to receive visitors.’
‘I’m not a visitor. I’m me.’
‘Ryan…’
‘Twenty years ago, when I came at midnight to take you turtle-hunting, you never had maidenly quibbles.’
‘You want to go turtle-hunting?’ she demanded with her back to the door, and Ryan laughed.
‘No, Abbey, I don’t. I’m looking for something much more precious. Let me in.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I love you.’
Silence.
The words echoed round and round Abbey’s little living room.
This was dangerous.
‘Ryan…’
‘Abbey, I’m not here to demand you leave everything you love,’ Ryan pleaded. ‘I promise. Let me in.’
Abbey took a deep breath. This was mad. Crazy. But there was nothing else to do but let him in.
She’d expected to open the door and have him sedately step inside. No such thing. She opened the door an inch, it was shoved wide with ruthless
force and she was swept right up into Ryan’s arms and kissed so thoroughly that there was no possible way she could protest.
And after the first millisecond she didn’t try.
Abbey wound her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.
Crazy, crazy, crazy.
But sense was for tomorrow. Crazy was for now.
Ryan was for now.
He swung her round and round the room, his kiss intensifying as he whirled. Abbey was laughing and dizzy and so madly in love her feet wouldn’t have touched the ground even if she’d been standing.
There was only Ryan. There was only this love.
And finally-somehow-they were in her bedroom, falling onto the soft covers. And Ryan’s mouth left off claiming hers. He lay with Abbey in his arms and he pulled away so he could see her. His hand reached up and switched off the bedlight and there was only the light from the full moon, glimmering onto the land and through the open window from the sea.
‘Woman, you are driving me crazy,’ Ryan groaned. ‘You know that? Five days… Five days since I’ve seen you and I haven’t had you out of my head for one minute. Abbey, you must marry me. To save my sanity, you must… ’ And he hauled her tighter to him, tighter-until his need was her need and the world was fusing in a mist of love and desire and the coming together of two people who were right for each other.
But they weren’t. They couldn’t be.
Somehow Abbey made herself push away. She held Ryan at arm’s length and she looked into his eyes in the dim light. And what she saw there told her that she was truly loved.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the next bedroom lay her little boy. And there was a hospital five minutes down the road that depended on her. And Janet?
No. Janet had sorted out her own loneliness. But there was no way Abbey could find the same happiness.
‘Ryan, this is crazy. We can’t…’ Her breath broke on a sob. ‘I can’t…’
‘You can.’ Ryan’s hand held her and he smiled-a smile that made her heart do crazy things inside her breast. ‘Abbey, for the past five days I’ve been thinking. Really thinking. Leith’s injury…’
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