Melting the Trauma Doc's Heart

by Alison Roberts

  Not that it was going to be easy to push those stupidly intense minutes out of her head, she realised a few minutes later. It wasn’t just that horrible conversation with her father, because she was already pushing that into the part of her brain where everything else to do with Donald Donaldson had been buried. No... There was another man whose image it might be even harder to erase. The troublemaker. Some kind of irresponsible bad boy who’d fallen into a forgotten corner of her life and had decided to wreak havoc.

  It was quite possible she was going to be thinking about Isaac Cameron for a rather long time. Wondering why she’d never felt anything quite like that kind of tingle deep in her belly before and whether she would ever feel it again. That pull of sheer...desire that even thinking about the man could generate.

  Good grief... Olivia shook her head. It wasn’t just an electrical jolt she could feel in her body, she could hear a loud humming in her ears that was getting rapidly louder. So loud, she found herself looking up. And then she was stamping on the brake pedal and bringing her car to a complete halt as a single-engine light plane came from nowhere, only a short distance ahead of her, crossing the road barely above the level of her car’s roof. Its engine was roaring as it gained some height and then it coughed and spluttered and the plane dipped again. What was the pilot trying to do—make an emergency landing in a farmer’s field? If so, it needed to get a lot higher than it was, to clear the dense macrocarpa pine trees in the windbreak and how was it going to do that if its engine was dying?

  Olivia watched in horror as the plane’s wheels dragged through a treetop and then its wings tipped one way and then the other as it got rapidly closer to the ground, sheep scattering to get away from the overhead intrusion. It bounced as a wheel touched the ground but then the small aircraft rolled, nosedived and finally came to a shockingly abrupt halt upside down. Olivia sat there, frozen, for a moment and then jumped out of her car, her phone in her hand. She punched in the three-digit code for the emergency services.

  ‘Where is your emergency?’

  ‘I’m on State Highway One. About ten minutes out of Cutler’s Creek, heading towards Dunedin.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s a plane. It’s crashed into a paddock. Small plane, a Cessna, maybe.’

  ‘Do you have any idea of how many people are involved?’

  ‘No... I couldn’t see inside when it went over me.’

  ‘What can you see now?’

  ‘Um...’ There was a puff of smoke coming from where the plane had crashed but Olivia was too far away to see whether there was any movement inside or around the plane. ‘I can’t see anything.’ She needed to get closer but there was a barbed-wire fence and a ditch she would need to cross.

  ‘Stay on the line,’ she was told. ‘Help’s on its way.’

  Olivia was looking up and down the road. How long was it going to take for that help to arrive? Surely someone would come past and be able to assist her with a first response? From the direction she’d come from, she could hear the faint wail of a civil defence siren. Were the local volunteer fire brigade and ambulance officers being summoned to the station?

  Even if they were, it was going to take them at least several minutes to get here. Possibly crucial minutes if there were lives that were hanging in the balance. Someone with an arterial bleed, perhaps. Or now trapped upside down in a position that was occluding their airway. Olivia was a doctor—she couldn’t stand here and do nothing, even though the prospect of being first on this scene was actually rather terrifying. She’d worked in emergency departments with all the equipment and staff available to back up or take over an attempt to save a life but here...here she was entirely on her own and in a huge space with those towering mountains in the background that were still making her feel insignificant and she had nothing and nobody to help and...

  It was possibly the first time in her life that Olivia Donaldson had to rely entirely on herself and her own judgement and to act so fast it had to be based on instinct as well as any skills she had learned over the years. Those skills didn’t include getting over a fence with barbed wire on the top but Olivia pulled apart two strands lower down on the fence, put her head through and then one leg and somehow the rest of her body followed easily enough, although she could feel the side seam of her narrow skirt catch and rip a little. She set off across the uneven grassed land at a run and all she was thinking about as she got closer to the plane was how she was going to try and get the doors open and how badly hurt the occupants might be and how on earth she was going to get them out and look after them with nothing more than her bare hands.

  Slowing down as she got close to the plane wasn’t just to catch her breath. Long ago, at medical school, Olivia had attended an interesting workshop that paramedics had given about being first on the scene at any emergency. Snippets were drifting back into her head and she knew that the first thing she had to do was to assess the scene for any dangers to herself and any other rescuers that would be arriving. Things like broken glass or leaking fuel that could present a fire hazard or power lines that were down. A glance back towards the road confirmed that nearby power lines seemed to still be intact.

  It also showed Olivia that a vehicle with a flashing light on its roof had come through the gate of this huge paddock further down the road. It wasn’t a fire truck or an ambulance. It looked like an SUV and the light was one of those magnetic temporary ones. Someone was driving rapidly towards her. It should have been far too far away to recognise the driver but Olivia had no doubt at all about who it was.

  Isaac Cameron.

  It didn’t matter that it was the person who had just stirred up a part of her past that should have been left well alone. She had never been so pleased at the prospect of seeing anyone in her whole life.

  She wasn’t facing this alone, after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ISAAC CAMERON HAD never expected to see this woman again.

  She wouldn’t have been his first choice to work with in an emergency situation, either, but—fair play—when he’d arrived, he’d seen how hard she’d been running across this paddock with the obvious intention of helping whoever was in this plane. As he pulled his vehicle to a halt and leapt out to get his medical pack from the back, part of his brain registered that she must have ripped that tight skirt of her power suit getting past the barbed wire on the fence and she probably wouldn’t appreciate the fact that her careful hairstyle was coming a little unravelled and that she was now well splattered with animal manure but, in this moment, her appearance was totally irrelevant to either of them.

  ‘Did you see it come down?’ Zac dropped his pack near a wingtip and bent to get beneath the diagonal strut that connected the wing to the fuselage of the small aircraft.

  ‘Yes. It went right in front of my car.’

  ‘So it was trying to land?’ Zac could see the slumped figure of a man in the cockpit.

  ‘I think so. It sounded like there was something wrong with the engine. The wheels got caught in the trees. It flipped over right at the last second and there was a bang when it stopped so suddenly.’

  Zac wasn’t surprised. The propeller had dug itself deep into the soil. The Plexiglas of the windshield was broken, too, and there were splatters of blood on it. He leaned to look in further.

  ‘I can’t see any passengers. I think it’s just the pilot.’ He rapped on the side window. ‘Hello...can you hear me? I’m a doctor. We’re here to help you.’

  ‘Is...is he still alive?’

  She sounded as if she really cared.

  ‘He’s not responding.’ He tried the door. It opened an inch or two but then stuck. He braced his back against the strut and wrenched harder. With a third attempt and the screech of metal against metal he shifted the door enough to reach the victim. He eased him back, upright enough to ensure that his airway was open, keeping hold of his head to pro
tect his neck. A trickle of blood rolled down the man’s forehead from an injury hidden in his hair. That could be where the blood on the windscreen had come from, which meant there was a potential head injury to be concerned about. The man groaned loudly as he was moved.

  ‘What’s hurting, mate?’ The man wasn’t local, which was a relief. In a small place like Cutler’s Creek, an accident scene often meant they were treating someone they knew well and Isaac knew exactly how devastating that could be—like that time their local police officer had arrived at a car accident involving his own son.

  On a personal level for Zac, any emergency scene carried the threat of a flashback, along with a memory of Mia. It was no wonder he’d been able to start shutting down the ability to care too much after that—a skill that might have ended up being too well honed but was still useful in some situations, like when he’d had to work on Bruce’s son, but it was always easier when the patient was a stranger. And the really disturbing flashbacks had stopped long ago.

  ‘My back...’ the man groaned. ‘And my leg...’

  ‘Are you having any trouble breathing?’

  ‘Hurts...’

  Zac could hear that his breathing was rapid and shallow but it was too cramped to try and assess anything in here.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Dave... Wilson.’ He groaned again and tried to roll his head away from Zac’s grip. He tightened his hold to limit the movement.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  ‘I... It’s... Oh, God...what’s happened?’

  ‘You’ve been in an accident. Try not to move, Dave,’ Zac told him. ‘We’re going to get you out of here, okay?’ He turned his head to meet a wide-eyed gaze from Olivia. She looked scared, he thought, and he could understand why. Used to the clean environment of first-world hospitals and a team around her, she was a long way out of her comfort zone right now. But her determination was obvious in the way she pulled back a tress of her hair that the wind had caught and shoved it behind one ear as she raised her chin. She wasn’t about to let any nerves get in the way of what needed to be done.

  ‘There’s a cervical collar clipped to the side of my pack, there. Could you pass it to me, please?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He had the plastic and foam collar in his hands seconds later and he carefully slipped it into place and fastened the Velcro straps.

  ‘Ow...’

  ‘Sorry, mate. I know it’s not comfortable but we need to protect your neck. We’ll get you something for the pain as soon as we get you out.’

  We...

  As if they were a team? Zac knew the local first response would be on their way already. He could hear voice traffic on the radio that was clipped to the dashboard of his vehicle but he couldn’t hear what was being said. He needed to update the emergency services as soon as he could to make sure a rescue helicopter had been dispatched but, yes...for the moment, he and Don Donaldson’s daughter felt like a team.

  Still keeping a protective hand on the man’s forehead, he reached for the fastening of the safety harness with his other hand.

  ‘Dammit...’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t reach the catch.’

  ‘Maybe I can.’ Olivia spoke before he could make the same suggestion.

  She had to squeeze past him into the narrow space he’d created. She was pressed right against his body by the time she was reaching in, trying to follow the safety harness to its catch.

  ‘Be careful. There’s sharp stuff in here.’

  ‘He’s bleeding. A lot.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘I can’t see... Lower leg, maybe.’

  ‘We need to get him out. Stat.’

  ‘I can feel the catch but...it’s not working.’

  Zac saw the way her forehead furrowed with the effort she was making. And the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She was pressing even harder against him, making it impossible for him to move that arm.

  ‘My back pocket.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got a multi-tool in the back pocket of my jeans. Get it out and we’ll cut the harness.’

  He felt her fingers slide into his pocket. He shouldn’t have been thinking of anything but looking after his patient’s cervical spine, watching any movements of his chest to try and assess just how much difficulty the pilot was having breathing, and planning ahead for the urgent assessment and treatment that would be needed the moment they could free their patient from the wreckage, but...

  ...but it felt as if there was no layer of denim between those fingers and the bare skin of his buttock and, just for a nanosecond, Zac was aware of...heat. Skin-scorching, spine-tingling heat... And it was the first time he’d felt even a hint of something like that since... Oh... God... It wasn’t just an emergency scene that could bring back a memory of Mia, was it? He might not want to be someone who felt nothing at all but the pendulum swinging too far the other way—to huge emotions that could prove impossible to control—was just as undesirable.

  ‘Take that cap off the side.’ His command came out as a snap. ‘See that V-shaped notch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put the edge of the safety belt into that notch and just pull. Mind your fingers, it’s sharp.’

  Zac was holding onto the pilot with both hands to steady both his neck and his body as Olivia sliced through the heavy straps. Despite how nervous she’d looked when he’d arrived at this scene, she hadn’t hesitated in following his instructions, he noticed, and she’d checked to see that their patient was supported before she cut the second strap. Then, in what seemed like an automatic gesture, she recapped the sharp implement and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket.

  She was thorough, he thought. And pretty courageous, given the way she had virtually climbed into this wreck to help. Moments later, as Olivia took the weight of Dave’s legs as Zac lifted his upper body, keeping him as straight as possible as they eased him to the ground beside the plane, he had to add an impression of surprising strength that this woman had.

  There were so many things that needed to be done. The cries of pain from Dave let Zac know that his airway was still clear but he needed to be on oxygen to compensate for any breathing difficulty and he needed pain relief as soon as possible, which meant getting an IV line in. He needed to have any severe bleeding controlled and, given how agitated he was, it might well be necessary to sedate and intubate him so that they could transport him safely.

  Zac could hear the siren of the first local response getting closer but while the volunteers here were well trained for fire-fighting and a basic level of first aid, he had to hope that Olivia Donaldson’s clinical skills were on the same level as her courage and strength.

  * * *

  She’d never seen anyone work like this.

  Isaac Cameron only had the contents of his pack to work with until the local ambulance arrived but you would have thought he was in a resuscitation area of a well-equipped emergency department given how smoothly he was using his resources.

  Including her, along with the two ambulance officers that arrived within minutes of them getting Dave out of the wreckage of his plane. It was Olivia who was doing the most to assist, however, as the most qualified extra medic on the scene. She was the one who put an IV line into their patient’s arm while Zac was busy assessing both Dave’s head and chest injuries. She drew up the drugs needed for pain relief as the paramedics controlled the bleeding from an open fracture of his lower leg.

  One of them looked up. ‘D’you guys smell that?’

  Zac unhooked his stethoscope from his ears and inhaled sharply. ‘You’re right, Ben. We’ve got a fuel leak happening somewhere.’

  ‘At least the firies are on their way. I can hear their siren.’

  ‘We still need to move him.’ The other young man jum
ped to his feet. ‘I’ll get the scoop.’

  ‘Move back,’ Zac ordered Olivia. ‘At least to the other side of the ambulance. This isn’t safe.’

  ‘It’s never been safe.’ She shook her head. ‘And I’m not going anywhere.’ She leaned towards Dave’s head. ‘Are you allergic to any medicine you know of, Dave?’

  ‘Don’t think so... Oh, God...it still hurts...’

  ‘I know. I’m about to give you something for that. It might make you feel a bit woozy.’ Olivia flicked the syringe and then pressed the plunger to expel any air, removing the needle and attaching the syringe to the Luer plug but glancing up before she actually injected the drug. She knew Zac was watching her and it was polite to get his permission before going any further. As bizarre as this situation was, it was his territory and he was in charge here.

  He held her gaze for the split second it took for him to nod and she could see something more than permission to administer the drugs in that look. Respect, perhaps? Whatever it was, it felt good enough for any residual nerves at having to work in such unusual circumstances to dissipate almost entirely.

  The paramedics had a bright orange, plastic stretcher that was separated into two pieces.

  ‘We’re going to roll him to each side and slip the stretcher together underneath to clip together,’ Zac told her. ‘We need to be careful to keep spinal alignment, okay? I’ve got his head. You take his upper arm and the guys will do the rest. Ready? On the count of three. One...two...three...’

  Carefully, but swiftly, they log-rolled the pilot to one side enough to get half the stretcher in place and then they repeated the procedure on the other side. Olivia had to scramble to her feet, then, as the three men, working as a well-oiled team, lifted the stretcher and shifted it rapidly to a safer area of the paddock. Olivia gathered up as much of the gear as she could and ran after them. She could see the fire engine coming into the paddock but then she heard the whoosh of fuel igniting behind them, felt the instant blast of heat from the flames and she missed her footing and fell.