A Single Dad to Heal Her Heart

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Is she injured?’

  ‘Haven’t checked. Her airway’s certainly clear.’ And children who were crying that loudly were generally not badly injured. It was more likely to be the quiet ones you had to worry about. ‘Are there any medics on scene yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Traffic’s snarled up badly for miles. They’ll deploy a chopper soon, if it’s needed.’ The fire officer stared past Cooper. ‘How many others are in the car, do you know?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a baby in the back. There’s a crazy woman who’s trying to get her out.’ Cooper turned his head but all he could see was an undeniably shapely, denim-clad bottom poking out of the back door of the car. Wriggling, as she moved backwards and then turned, a baby’s car seat in her arms.

  ‘Good grief...is that Fizz?’ Another fire officer had joined his senior colleague and was shading his eyes against the glint of the afternoon sun on the sea, trying to assess what they were about to deal with.

  ‘Trust her to be first on the scene.’ The older fireman shook his head, heading into the water to help rescue the baby. ‘Why doesn’t it even surprise me?’

  ‘Fizz?’ This was getting even weirder, Cooper decided. Who had a name like some sort of party drink?

  ‘She’s an ED doc,’ he was told. ‘But give her a chance to get out in an ambulance or helicopter and she’s in, boots ’n all. Everybody in this business knows Fizz.’ His tone was admiring. ‘Don’t worry, she knows what she’s doing.’ But he was watching the handover of the baby seat to the fire officer. ‘Uh-oh...’

  ‘Oh, no...’ Cooper couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There were experts on scene now. Equipment to make any further rescue attempts a lot safer. This woman with the odd name and an unbelievable attitude had already saved two children but it seemed that that wasn’t enough. She was heading back to the car yet again.

  ‘Fizz!’ the younger fire officer yelled. ‘Hold your horses. We need to get a cable onto that car, at least.’

  Either she didn’t hear him or—and this seemed more likely to Cooper by now—she was choosing not to hear him. He wasn’t the only person to be appalled by her recklessness and, as he automatically moved to try and prevent another casualty, he found himself part of a group of rescue workers, armed with ropes and tools and protective clothing. There were police officers here now, as well as the fire crews, but he still couldn’t see any paramedics arriving.

  ‘Stay back, mate,’ one of them told him. ‘This isn’t a spectator sport.’

  ‘I’m a paramedic,’ Cooper replied. ‘With specialty training in disaster and scene management.’

  And this looked like it was about to become a disaster, on a small scale, anyway. A wave large enough to reach his waist rolled in and one of the firemen lost his footing. The crashed car also lost its grip on the rocks beneath it, tipping and then sliding sideways with a chilling, metallic screech. A second wave rolled right over the top of its roof.

  Where was that adrenaline junkie emergency department doctor?

  Cooper couldn’t see her anywhere and, just for a heartbeat, he was aware of something that felt like...grief?

  He didn’t even know this woman and she had taken stupid risks here, so if she was injured or had been killed—perhaps knocked out and then pinned underwater by the car—everybody would know it was her own fault but...

  But how incredible a person was she? Cooper had met a lot of courageous people in his lifetime, both as his colleagues and amongst the patients he had treated, but this woman stood out as being something quite astonishing. Fearless. Concerned only about people other than herself.

  Or maybe it was something much deeper than that. Much darker. A flashback to a moment in time he could never undo and would never forgive himself for. A moment that he could have used to try harder to stop someone doing something foolhardy. A moment that could have meant he wouldn’t have lost the person who’d been everything to him.

  A chain of people was in the water now and a plastic basket stretcher was being carried towards where the car had settled, but Cooper was ahead of them and he could see that the driver’s door had stayed open as the car had been washed sideways. He could see movement as the foam of a wave cleared. The doctor was still alive...but she was inside the vehicle and it looked like she was struggling to release the catch of the safety belt.

  Cooper had a cutting device on his multi-tool that was in a pocket of the first-aid kit he kept in the small backpack but he’d left that back on the beach before he’d climbed that first rock. Because he’d known he wouldn’t be able to treat anybody until they were out of the sea. Not that he spared more than a split second of thought to how useful that device would be right now. In fact, he wasn’t thinking anything particularly coherent. If he had been, he’d never have done what he did right then, which was to take a deep breath, reach down to take hold of the car door and pull himself beneath the surface of the water.

  It was useful to have the outline of the door as a guide because it took more than a second to be able to see past the sting of salt water in his eyes. And it kept him from being washed away by the swirling current of the waves coming past. The car was more stable now than it had been on top of the rocks but it was still moving. How long had it been since the first wave had rolled over its roof and started to fill the interior? How long had it been since this mysterious woman had taken a breath of her own? Her hair had come undone from its knot and was now floating around her head, making her look like a mermaid and probably obscuring her vision as she wrestled with the seat-belt catch.

  Cooper caught her hand and pushed it away from the catch. Then he held the bottom and felt for the release button. Pressing it down hard didn’t seem to be enough, so he held the button down with one hand and took hold of the upper part of the strap with his other hand and pulled. Hard.

  He felt the driver of the car slump towards him as the belt was released and he caught her under her armpits, pulling her free of the vehicle and then pushing up through the water. He just had to hope that she didn’t have any kind of spinal injury but there was no way she could have been left in the car long enough for a more careful extrication process because she would have drowned.

  He wasn’t even sure that she was breathing now as he lifted her head clear of a breaking wave but there were others taking over. Taking the woman from his arms and putting her into the rescue basket to carry her towards the shore. Beside him, his fellow rescuer had already emerged from beneath the surface and she was dragging in great gulps of air as she tried to catch her breath.

  ‘Thanks...’ she managed. ‘I was having a...bit of trouble...there.’

  Not that she looked at all bothered by the fact that her ‘bit of trouble’ could have actually put them both in danger. She wasn’t looking directly at him, either, as she pushed her hair back from her face and swiftly braided it to get it under control but he could see that her whole face had a glow about it—as if it had been so exciting, she’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

  Wow...there was something inspirational in that kind of passion. But Cooper had always known that, hadn’t he? She reminded him of...

  No. He wasn’t about to go there. Even the nudge in that direction was discomforting, which was probably why his tone was distinctly sharp when he spoke again.

  ‘It’s lucky I didn’t have to rescue you as well,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

  The reprimand in his tone was wasted on her. She didn’t seem to even be listening. She was watching the progress of the fire officers who were carrying the driver back to shore.

  ‘I need to see if she’s okay.’ She started moving. ‘I’m just hoping...she didn’t start drowning while I was fiddling with that belt.’

  ‘There was still some air in there, between waves.’ Cooper automatically reached out as the woman beside him stumbled on a rock. To his surprise, she caught his hand and held
it as they both made their way back to shore as quickly as they could. His brain registered how that wet T-shirt was clinging to her body and he knew that image was going to resurface at a later, and less inappropriate, moment.

  They were both soaking wet and should have been freezing given the water temperature and the slight breeze adding a chill factor but, oddly, the only thing that made Cooper realise he might be cold was the extraordinary warmth of that hand he was holding. It wasn’t until she let go, as they leapt out of the last wash of the waves, that he started to shiver.

  The toddler and the baby in the car seat were nowhere to be seen so they must have been taken up the bank already. Perhaps the police officers on scene were caring for them in the warmth of one of their vehicles. They needed to get the female driver into shelter as well but it looked as if she wasn’t stable enough for what would have to be a slow journey up the steep slope.

  He watched Fizz crouch beside the woman. She had her cheek near the victim’s face and a hand on her abdomen. ‘She’s breathing...just.’ She looked past the group of fire officers nearby. ‘Doesn’t look like we’ve got an ambulance on scene yet, does it?’

  ‘No.’ Cooper could see his own backpack not that far away. ‘But I’m a paramedic. I’ve got a kit. I’ll grab a stethoscope, shall I?’

  It was the first really direct look he had received from her. She had brown eyes, he noticed. Really dark orbs that were assessing him with lightning speed.

  ‘Get my kit, too, would you?’ she said. ‘It’s over there on top of that flat rock.’

  Cooper moved instantly. It felt as if he’d passed an unspoken test of some kind, he realised as he grabbed both backpacks and turned back. Not that it should have made any difference at all to this situation but instinct told him that it would not be an easy thing to gain this woman’s approval. Absurdly, Cooper actually felt a beat of pride in himself that he was being accepted as a temporary colleague.

  * * *

  He was a big bear of a man, this unexpected assistant that she had. Well over six feet in height and broad-shouldered.

  Felicity Wilson believed that he was what he said he was. He’d clearly known what he was doing when he’d taken over getting this woman out of her crashed car and the way he’d told her to stay back until the car could be secured safely was pretty much what most people in the emergency services would have told her.

  How could anybody have stood back when you could see that tiny face in the window, though? And yeah... Fizz knew she had a bit of an issue with impulsiveness when it came to dangerous situations but how good did it feel when taking that risk actually worked?

  It would feel even better if she could make sure the mother of those children made it out of this disaster alive.

  He had big hands as well, this man, but they were clever and nimble. He was opening pockets within the backpacks and extracting all the kinds of things that were going to be needed. Fizz stole the occasional glance as she looked up from doing a rapid primary survey on her patient, who was groaning but not conscious enough to open her eyes or speak to them coherently. She lay in the plastic rescue basket the fire service had provided.

  Currently, those officers were setting up a canvas wind shield around them and watching what was happening. Two of them had taken off their heavy jackets and had passed them to the medics. Fizz felt swamped by the size of the garment but she wasn’t about to let it hamper her movements.

  ‘I’d put her GCS at less than ten. She’s tachycardic at one twenty-four,’ she told the man helping to stabilise her patient. ‘Tachypnoeic with a respiration rate of thirty-two and... I’m not sure I’m getting any breath sounds on the left side. Hard to tell with the noise of the waves.’

  ‘Pneumothorax?’ The fire-service jacket looked like it was the perfect size for this man. And he looked as if he was well used to a uniform and the authority it conveyed. He had found the small oxygen cylinder in a side pocket of her first-aid kit and was attaching a mask. ‘Is she hypoxic?’

  ‘Let’s get some oxygen on.’ Fizz nodded. ‘Got some shears?’ She cut at the woman’s clothing when he placed the tool in her hands and then slipped the elastic of the oxygen mask around their patient’s head to keep it in place.

  ‘Look at that...’ The marks of deep bruising from the seat-belt injury were already visible in dark red patches. Fizz palpated the side of the woman’s chest. ‘Definitely some rib fractures.’

  Her partner had his fingers on the woman’s neck. ‘Carotid pulse palpable but weak,’ he told her. ‘Looks like her jugular venous pressure is raised, too.’

  Fizz nodded. She could see the veins on the neck were visibly distended. She needed to have another listen to the chest and to check whether the tracheal line was deviated, which could confirm that air trapped in the woman’s chest was developing into the emergency that a tension pneumothorax represented.

  Her partner was setting up for an IV, she noticed. He had his own roll that contained cannulas, alcohol wipes, Luer plugs and tape. He also had a litre of saline and a giving set ready to go. And he’d got a blood-pressure cuff on their patient’s arm already.

  ‘Blood pressure’s eighty-five over fifty,’ he told her. ‘Can’t see any external bleeding. I’ll check that her pelvis is stable in a tick.’

  Fizz nodded but didn’t say anything for a moment. She had her stethoscope on her patient’s chest. Right side then left side. Yes...she was sure there were no breath sounds on the left but was it air or blood that was stopping the lung functioning?

  ‘I’m missing my ED ultrasound,’ she muttered.

  ‘The portable ones we carry in the ambulance now are great. Love them.’

  She gave him a glance that probably looked startled but she knew that it was only the most highly trained paramedics that got to use equipment like portable ultrasound machines or ventilators. This guy not only knew what he was doing but he was very likely to be very good at it as well. It only took the briefest eye contact but she knew that he could tell exactly what she was thinking. His gaze was steady.

  I am good at what I do, it told her. You can trust me...

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Cooper. Cooper Sinclair.’

  He wasn’t local. Fizz would have noticed this man amongst all the emergency services personnel she had worked with in the last few years. Noticed and remembered him. It wasn’t just his size that made him stand out. He had a strong Scottish accent. Not that where he came from or why he was here was of any interest to her right now.

  ‘What do you need there, Doc?’ A senior fire officer had come close. ‘Ambulance is just arriving on scene now but it’ll take them a minute or two to get their gear down the cliff. They want me to ask you what you need.’

  ‘The usual,’ Fizz responded. ‘Life pack, oxygen and the kit. I’d like to get her airway secured before we move her.’

  ‘Her name’s Sonya Greene. We got her bag out of the car and found her driver’s licence. She’s thirty-two years old.’

  The same age as she was. With two very young children. ‘Somebody tracing next of kin?’

  ‘Cops are onto it. I’ll go and help get that gear down to you.’

  ‘You going to intubate?’ Cooper asked as the fire officer stepped back, talking into his radio.

  ‘I’ll need to decompress the chest before intubating.’

  He nodded. ‘Positive pressure ventilation could make a pneumothorax a lot worse.’

  ‘I think it’s getting worse, anyway. Does that look like tracheal deviation to you?’

  His head came very close to her own as he leaned over to get into a position to be able to see the line of their patient’s neck and chest. Fizz could feel his body heat, which struck her as odd because she knew how cold they both had to be, despite the thick jackets over their wet clothes. She made a note in the corner of her brain that they should probably wrap some foi
l sheets around themselves at the first opportunity. But she wasn’t going to mention it just yet. Somehow, she knew that this Cooper was not going to be any more interested in his own protection from hypothermia at the moment than she was.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Tension pneumothorax?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  The new medics on scene arrived moments later.

  ‘Want me to get an IV in, Fizz?’ one of the paramedics asked.

  ‘We’re good for the moment. You’ve got that, haven’t you, Cooper?’

  ‘Yep.’

  It was someone else’s turn to look startled. Fizz gave him a brief nod. ‘Cooper here is an advanced paramedic, Jack,’ she told the new arrival. ‘I was lucky he was here. We nearly didn’t get to save this woman. And right now, I need to decompress her chest and I want to do a finger thoracostomy rather than a needle decompression. Can you draw up some local?’ She looked at the second crew member. ‘Could you get the monitor on, please? I’d like to know what her oxygen and CO2 levels are.’

  All four of them were kept very busy for the next fifteen minutes but Fizz was satisfied that it was safe to transport their patient by that point. The chest decompression had dealt with the breathing emergency and both the pulse and breathing rate had dropped to an acceptable level. Blood pressure was coming up and the airway was controlled.

  ‘Good job.’ She nodded, as the paramedics secured their patient in the basket for the journey up the steep bank. ‘I’ll come with you in the ambulance and get a police officer to get my car back into town.’