by Annie O'Neil
She and Liam had attacked Jack’s takeaway like a pair of starving wolves. And Liam had already had his tea! It was as if Jack’s presence had given them both an extra jolt of energy, reminding her that life did have its footloose and fancy-free moments. She giggled a little.
Fancy-free was for sure. With his unerring ability to catch her at her worst, she had given up worrying about the fact that her couch-potato outfit hardly flattered her petite figure. She was just having fun with a new friend—right? Well, a new friend who flirted, gave her goose pimples from ten meters away and lit up her tummy like a lava lamp for the first time in—well, a very long time.
Liesel’s fingers ran through the fine waves of her son’s blond hair. From the looks of things, it didn’t seem as though he’d share her thick, corkscrew curls. It was definitely Eric’s hair.
Her stomach clenched. Eric. Her son’s father. Her first love. And had she really just spent the past couple of hours flirting with another man as if he had never existed?
Her body gave her the answer before her mind dared confirm it.
Yes.
Liesel felt her lips thin as she tried to press away the fact that not only had she kept Eric and their history out of the conversation with Jack, but she hadn’t even thought about him. They’d been having so much fun and the time had flown by. How could she have let this happen? She needed to knock some sense into herself—and she definitely needed to give herself a good mental talking-to.
Tipping back her head, she closed her eyes as tears prickled at her lashes.
Would it ever end? The guilt? The need to hold on to the past knowing full well the only way to give her son a future was to let go? And how much? Were there guidelines? How much of the past could she let go of before safely moving on?
“Liesel, you need to come now.”
Jack’s low voice sounded urgent. He was halfway back down the corridor before she’d swatted away the stray tears he hopefully hadn’t spied trickling down her cheeks.
“What’s going on?”
“Your parents’ neighbor has just had a nasty fall on her back patio. Pretty sure it’s her hip but she’s nonresponsive. Her husband’s with her now. I’m going to call an ambulance but the first aid required is beyond my terrain. See you there in a few minutes?” Jack grabbed the wall phone, not waiting for an answer.
Instinct took over. Liesel bolted out of the back door and through the adjoining gate between her parents’ and the Daleses’ backyards. The two sets of parents were longtime friends; they’d known each other long before their children had been born and had moved next door to each other for this very reason—to be there if they ever needed help.
Liesel’s heart lurched into her throat at the sight of Mrs. Dales sprawled on the hard tiles of their patio, a small pool of blood forming along the slate stone beneath her head. Mr. Dales looked up at her, eyes stricken with panic. “What do I do? She’s barely conscious.”
This was exactly the sort of situation Liesel had been trained to deal with. Extreme trauma. And exactly the type of scenario she’d been actively avoiding since she’d frozen in the Adelaide trauma unit.
She had a duty of care. And her head was spinning.
She had a duty of care.
Her instinct was to run and curl up in Jack’s arms, hands pressed against her ears, blocking it all out. She’d feel safe in his arms.
She had a duty of care.
He was here. Close by. She could do this without freezing. Steeling herself, Liesel stepped forward, placing as reassuring a hand as she could on the elderly man’s shoulder. It had worked for her when Jack had done it so she hoped it had the same calming effect on her neighbor.
“You’re doing a great job, Mr. Dales. My friend is ringing for help.” She let herself feel the invisible squeeze on her own shoulder.
“Would you run into the kitchen for me and grab some clean towels, ice and some warm water? Don’t try and get it all in one trip, all right?” He nodded wordlessly and disappeared into the kitchen as she knelt, turning her full focus onto Mrs. Dales. Her fingers automatically dropped to the woman’s slender wrist to check for a pulse. Her skin was deathly pale and she was now unconscious. A sharp trauma could cause that. Liesel knelt closer, tipping her cheek to the side to check for breathing. The faintest of breaths stirred the fine hairs on her cheek. Uneven. Slight. But breathing.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
As if on autopilot, Liesel started working her way through a mental checklist she hadn’t used for a long time. She wouldn’t move Mrs. Dales at all. That would be a job for the SAAS team when the ambos arrived. They would have neck braces, immobilization backboards, the lot. Her job now was to stabilize Mrs. Dales as best she could. The possibility of a break bordering on a key arterial route was often lethal. The slightest of movements could cause paralysis if the break was in the neck or spine. Equally, a sudden movement could loosen a blood clot, sending it on a fatal path, ultimately blocking the blood supply to the brain.
Liesel scrunched her eyelids together as tightly as she could, a heavy exhalation gushing past her lips. It felt as if she was short-circuiting.
Breathe. Focus. Jack thinks you can do this. You know you can do this.
Liesel opened her eyes, blocking out everything but Mrs. Dales. From the placement of her legs and her sprawled arms, it was clear she had taken quite a fall. Broken hip, leg, back, arm, wrist—one or all of them were possibilities. Intrascapular fractures, breaks along key arterial routes of the neck, were also a possibility. Much more likely in a woman than a man, but from the placement of Mrs. Dales’s body, she guessed it was more likely to be a hip injury than anything else.
She’d encountered quite a few broken hips during her tenure on the slopes, young people usually—daredevil skiers losing a game of chicken with a pine tree or suchlike. They were extreme traumas but youth was on their side.
For the elderly? Life wasn’t as kind. Particularly with someone who was suffering from osteoarthritis—an affliction shared by both Mr. and Mrs. Dales. Her parents had laughingly told her about how their lives were reduced to swapping notes about medications over the garden fence. It was no laughing matter now.
The elderly were highly susceptible to these types of injuries and Liesel knew more than most that a broken hip for someone in their seventies could easily result in death. If not today, the chances of it happening over the next year were high. Too high.
It was the cut to the head that needed immediate attention. Head injuries always bled heavily but weren’t necessarily as bad as they looked. Infection could be the real problem.
Liesel made a quick scan of the patio. A plate of raw sausages was strewn over the crisscross of slate and stone tiles. The squared edge of the barbecue side tray was just to their left. A small stain of red and a couple of white hairs on the corner betrayed its status as the culprit for the head wound. Liesel’s instinct was to stem the blood flow as quickly as possible but, well aware her hands weren’t sanitary, was relieved to see Mr. Dales appear alongside her with a pile of immaculately clean dishcloths.
“We were just going to cook a few sausages and she—” Mr. Dales stopped as if just describing how the accident had happened would make the situation worse.
“Thanks, Mr. Dales. These are exactly what we need.” Liesel gave his arm a gentle squeeze, before pressing a cloth to the wound, using another to carefully dab at the trickle of blood running down Mrs. Dales’s face. “Would you mind going to your medicine cabinet? Any gauze bandages, antiseptic—anything like that would be a great help.”
He nodded silently, his softly jowled cheeks betraying a slight tremble.
Liesel stemmed the flow of blood as best she could. It was not too long a cut, about seven centimeters, but it was jagged and had been lacerated by the aluminum of the barbecue side tray, which probably conta
ined an untold number of germs. She had to get some antiseptic in there before applying a bandage. The cut most likely required a couple of butterfly stitches or adhesive strips. Again, things she didn’t have to hand.
Liesel felt her heart rate begin to speed up again. She wanted order, precision and calm. Without all the appropriate kit to hand, how was she going to help Mrs. Dales to the best of her ability? The buzz began in her ears again.
Stop it, Liesel. Stop it! The old you wouldn’t be freaking out like this! You’d improvise and make the best of a bad situation. Focus, focus, focus.
“Ambos should be here in under ten.”
Liesel’s eyes shot up at the sound of Jack’s voice. There it was. The injection of calm she needed.
“Don’t worry.” He pulled Liam’s baby monitor out of the back pocket of his worn jeans and waggled it between his thumb and forefinger as he opened the clasp of the gate between them with the other hand. “I’ve got you covered.”
She believed him. Right here, right now, kneeling on the patio in an old pair of sweats and an oversize T-shirt, hands mechanically swabbing away at the blood on Mrs. Dale’s forehead, she believed him. And she was grateful for the strength emanating from him because it was taking every single teeny-tiny morsel of concentration she possessed to keep her cool.
“What can I do to help?” Jack crossed the lawn to the patio in two long-legged strides—poised for action.
Liesel blew a fine stream of air past her lips. She wasn’t going to let him hear her voice shake.
“There’s not too much more to do until the ambulance arrives. Without proper immobilization, I think it’s too dangerous to move her.” Just hearing her old voice say the words as she connected with those pure blue eyes of his and—ba-bump ba-bump—her heartbeat began to steady itself.
“You’re the expert.” He gave her a mini-salute of respect.
“Hardly.” Liesel shook away the compliment. “I haven’t been around this sort of injury in a while.”
“Looks like you’re doing all right from where I’m standing.”
He was good. Almost too good. Could fate have sent him to help restore her confidence in life? In living?
She heard a low buzzing and followed Jack’s hand as it automatically slipped the beeper off his belt loop and pulled it up for inspection. His change of demeanor was instantaneous.
“Liesel, I’ve got to get this. House fire in the hills at the back of a small estate bordering on dry bushland.”
Her head didn’t turn. Was she angry? Focused? C’mon! Give me something to work with here!
Leaving wasn’t his style—but fighting fires was. Jack winced, simultaneously scanning the yard as if one of the blossoming rosebushes would offer him a solution. On call was on call. He was already wasting precious seconds. The longer a fire burned, the more harm came of it. He had to go.
Mr. Dales came through the patio doors, using both of his hands to carry a wicker basket overflowing with multicolored medicine tubes, bandages and cotton swabs.
“Anything here of use? How is she?”
“That’s great, Mr. Dales, thank you. She’s still unconscious, but she’s got a steady pulse. Not long now.” Liesel’s voice was tight, her eye line fastidiously restricted to her patient and the basket of first-aid items.
Jack stayed static, his impulse to help Liesel overriding his professional duty. It was an entirely new feeling. He knew his behavior was entirely personal. Professionally? Lingering wasn’t an option.
Mrs. Dales was in good hands. He watched as Liesel’s slender fingers swept through the basket brought by Mr. Dales. Were they shaking or just hurried? Maybe he should wait until the ambulance arrived.
“Go on, I’ll be all right.”
She flicked her eyes up at him. Her voice was solid. He guessed he had his answer. He had to go.
* * *
As she heard Jack’s truck pull away from the curb, Liesel let Jack’s words run through her mind in a loop. He was right. She knew how to do this. It was scary, especially on her own, but she could do it. She let her fingers slip down to Mrs. Dales’s wrist, a religious check on her pulse rate. Liesel held her breath and waited.
One.
Two.
Where was it?
Her fingers flew to Mrs. Dales’s neck, just below her chin.
Where was the pulse?
She knelt directly over the elderly woman, fingers moving from the papery-soft skin of her wrist to the same position on her forehead where Jack had touched her just a few days previously at the first-aid demonstration.
She shifted her cheek to feel and listen for breath. “Mrs. Dales?”
There was nothing.
“Mrs. Dales?” It was all she could do to keep the panic out of her voice. She could sense Mr. Dales approaching. They’d been married just shy of fifty years. The same as her parents. The couples were going to share a golden wedding anniversary cruise to New Zealand via the South Pole in a few months. A group of adventurers, they’d told her, smiles spreading across their faces at the thought of everything life still held in store for them. The type of future she hoped for herself one day.
No, no, no, no. She wove her fingers together, intuitively beginning to perform the perfectly timed compressions essential to bringing back breath. Bringing back life.
In the distance she thought she could hear— Yes! She could hear the faint sound of an ambulance siren. I can do this. I can do this.
* * *
Jack’s conscience gnawed at him. He’d been flat out for the past seven hours and hadn’t had a moment to call Liesel to check on how things had gone with her neighbor. With the moon ready to make its descent and the sun teasing at the horizon, he was pretty sure a phone call would be an unwelcome intrusion. Liesel was one tough cookie, but she had looked as white as a ghost when he’d left. Not to mention seeming none too impressed with him when he’d announced he had to race back to the station. She worked in the public sector—surely she knew it wasn’t personal.
Attend a fire or stay with a medical emergency he couldn’t assist on, with an ambulance en route?
These were the types of decisions he had to make all the time now. Staff numbers were short. Decisions had to be made. Prioritizing crises—the bureaucracy of fighting fires.
“Drink this before you drop off, Jack. It’ll do your muscles wonders.”
Jack put up his hand and caught the flying bottle of colored liquid. “This one of your magic vitamin drinks, Chief?”
“Precisely, mate.” Jack’s commanding officer sank onto the bunk beside him and began to peel off his socks. “Get that down you and you’ll feel better than new.”
“Better than that house we just doused at any rate.”
“I’ve never seen a place go up so quickly. Like it was made of kindling or something.” The regional chief officer shook his head. “Such a shame.”
Jack shook his head in agreement as he bent over his knees to unlace his leather boots. It never ceased to amaze him how quickly a house could be reduced to a pile of ashes.
“How was your date?” His boss jigged his eyebrows up and down for effect.
“Sorry, mate?” Jack thought he’d been discreet about nipping out of the station for a bit.
“I saw how quickly you hightailed it out of here earlier. Never seen anyone go for a quick bite to eat ‘with a mate’ with such well-combed hair.” He reached across the space between bunks and gave Jack a light punch on the arm. “Looks like love-’em-and-leave-’em Casanova Keller is back on the scene!”
“Hardly!” He winced away the moniker from his training days. Liesel was in an entirely different category from the girls he used to date. If you could call two or three nights maximum dating.
“Was she worth almost getting a reprimand for?”
> “Reprimand?” Jack felt his forehead crinkle in consternation. He’d arrived at the station before the callout.
“I’m just joshing you, mate, but you’d better watch it. The higher-ups are getting more strict about personal lives taking precedence over station business. Especially when we’re short on staff and belts are being tightened. It wouldn’t take much for them to close down Murray Valley in the blink of an eye.”
“They said I had a year.”
“They say a lot of things.”
Jack sat back in his bunk, stuffing a pillow between his head and the wall.
When he was working he liked to be entirely focused. That’s why his cavalier approach to “dating” during his training days had earned him the Casanova nickname. The theory was, if he didn’t get serious with anyone then he could keep his eye on the prize—running his own station. The fact that his assignment was in his hometown only doubled the stakes.
The station and its success was his main aim right now. It had to receive his full attention. Failure was, quite simply, not an option.
He could hear his father’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to him, “You have always been an either-or fellow, haven’t you, Jack?”
He’d been right.
Either he joined the rugby team or he joined the Aussie rules team.
Rugby.
Either he put Engleton Station on the map or he turned down the posting.
Map.
Either he accepted responsibility for his mother’s death the day of the fire or he—
No. That hadn’t been his fault. That’s what the facts said anyway. Too bad his father didn’t see things the same way. If he hadn’t run round the back of the barn, outside his mother’s sight, she might not have entered the barn. Then again, she might have. She’d loved the horses as much as he had. It had been their secret meeting point. If ever Jack had been escaping another how-to-run-the-winery lesson from his father, his mum had known exactly where he’d be. The stables. He hadn’t ridden a horse once since then. Or discovered the love his sister had for running River’s Bend.