‘He’s slid off the road.’
Harry’s words confirmed her thoughts and she broke into a jog, running behind him as he dropped her hand and raced towards the lights.
Hairpin bends around the mountain—they rounded one, then two, and were on the outward curve of a third when they saw the vehicle, which had come to rest against a pillar-shaped rock, its headlights pointing uselessly into the blackness of the forest.
‘Stay here,’ Harry ordered, but Grace was already picking her way carefully down the slope, testing each foothold before shifting her weight.
The torch beam cut through the useless illumination provided by the vehicle’s headlights, but revealed nothing more than a cloud of white behind the windscreen. The air bags had obviously worked.
Then, as the torch beam played across the vehicle, Grace saw a movement, a hand, pushing at the cloud of white, fighting against it.
‘It’s Troy!’
Harry’s voice held all the anxiety and pain she knew he’d feel about this, the youngest of the men on his staff.
‘Sit still,’ he yelled, scrambling faster down the slope, cursing his bad leg, and unheeding of the danger to himself as he plummeted towards the young policeman. ‘The less you move, the less risk there is of the vehicle moving.’
Grace followed more cautiously, aware, as Harry was, that Troy wouldn’t hear the warnings over the wind and through windows wound up tightly against the weather.
Harry reached the car, more careful now, not touching it—not touching anything—but circling, motioning with both hands for Troy, whose face was now visible, to be still. Grace stopped a little further up the hill, then turned to look back the way they’d come.
‘Would you trust that red gum to hold the car if we wind the winch cable around it?’
She pointed towards a tree not unlike the one that had fallen close to them earlier, but this one was on the far side of the road.
‘We’ll have to,’ Harry said. ‘For a start, we’ll just use it to anchor the vehicle while we get Troy out. I won’t risk using the winch with him in the cabin. You stay clear of everything while I take the cable up to the tree.’
He made his way to the front of the vehicle where the winch was sited and bent to release the cable.
Grace watched the careful way he touched the winch and understood his caution. The vehicle might seem secure enough, resting as it was against a massive rock, but with all the rain they’d had, the rock could have been undermined and any change in the dynamics of the vehicle could send it and Troy plummeting into the gully.
‘Damn! I can’t get in the back to get a bag,’ Harry muttered, looking helplessly around then focussing on Grace. ‘I don’t suppose you’re wearing something—no, of course you’re not. It’ll have to be my jacket.’
He handed the hook of the winch cable to Grace to hold and for the first time she realised he was still in his dinner suit. The bow-tie was gone but, yes, that was definitely a filthy, sodden dinner jacket he was removing.
‘What do you need it for?’ Grace asked as he took the cable hook from her and turned towards the road.
He looked back at her and smiled.
‘To wrap around the tree. We all keep bags in the back of our vehicles to use as tree protection but as I can’t get at a bag, the jacket will have to do. If there’s no protection the steel cable can ringbark the tree and possibly kill it.’
Grace shook her head. Here they were in the rainforest, with gale-force winds and torrential rain whipping the vegetation to ribbons, and Harry was protecting a gum tree?
She watched him clamber and limp his way back up to the road, seeing the way his wet shirt clung to his skin, defining the muscles and bones as well as if he’d been naked.
She shut her eyes, trying to blot images of a naked Harry from her mind, then turned back to Troy, using her hands as Harry had, to motion him to stillness, smiling encouragement. And something worked because although all his instincts must be screaming at him to escape the confines of the vehicle, he stayed where he was—statue still.
‘I’ll just hook this up—doubling the cable back to the vehicle halves the weight on the winch, although the vehicle’s only a couple of tons and the winch’s weight capacity is five tons.’ Harry explained, returning with the hook end of the cable, which he attached to a towing point at the front of the vehicle. ‘Now, I’ll take up any slack in the cable then get in the cab to check the lad.’
‘I’ll get in the cab to check him,’ Grace said. ‘And don’t bother arguing because you know it makes sense. I weigh half as much as you do so, like with the cable, we’re halving the risk of the vehicle moving.’
Even in the torchlight she saw Harry’s lips tighten, going white with the pressure of not arguing, but in the end he gave a nod.
This wasn’t anything to do with the new physical attraction, Harry assured himself as he very carefully opened the passenger door of the cambered vehicle—the door not jammed against the rock. His anxiety was for Grace, his friend.
‘You OK?’ he asked, peering through the maze of white towards the young constable.
‘I think I’ve hurt my leg.’
Troy’s voice wavered slightly and Harry understood. Barely more than a kid, he’d had to drive out through the wind and rain and flying missiles, then the car had skidded and he’d thought he’d had it.
‘Grace will check you out,’ Harry told him, turning towards Grace so he could help her into the cabin.
Beneath his wide-brimmed hat, her face was pale and streaked with dirt, and the embattled smile she gave him tweaked at something in his heart.
Concern, that’s what it was. The same concern that was making his stomach knot as she slid across the seat, cutting at the air bags with the penknife off her belt, talking all the time to Troy about where he hurt and how he felt.
‘There’ll be a torch snapped in grips underneath the dash,’ he told Grace when she’d collapsed the air bags and pulled them out of the way.
‘Thanks!’
She found the torch and turned it on, setting it down so its light shone on her patient. Then, as her small but capable hands slid across Troy’s head, feeling for any evident damage, Harry remembered this was only the beginning of the salvage operation. Unless they wanted to walk the forty-odd kilometres back to Crocodile Creek, he had to get this vehicle back up onto the road.
He prowled around it, checking the tyres—all intact—and damage to the body that might inhibit movement of the wheels. The mudguard, which had taken the brunt of the collision with the rock, was pushed in, but he found a strong branch and levered it off the rubber of the tyre. Everything else looked OK, which wasn’t surprising as his reading of the accident had the vehicle going into a slow slide, first across the road, then down the slope to where it had come to rest against the rock.
‘Where do you keep the first-aid kit in these new vehicles?’ Grace called to him, and he turned to see she’d clambered over the back of the front seat and was now searching around behind the back seats.
‘It should be strapped against the back of that seat you’re on,’ he told her, managing to answer although his lungs didn’t want to breathe while she was moving in the cabin.
‘Got it. I think Troy’s right leg might be broken. I’ll give him a painkiller before I try to move him, then splint it as best I can.’
She turned back to her patient, the small medical kit already open on her lap.
‘Actually, Troy, it might be best if you fainted when we move you. That way you mightn’t feel the pain so much.’
The lad grinned at Grace and Harry shook his head. They were like two kids playing doctors, seemingly unaware that a twisted metal cable was all that held them from the very real possibility of death.
‘Do we really need to get him out?’
Grace had skidded across the seat to speak quietly to Harry, while Troy’s eyelids were closing, no doubt in response to the drug she’d given him.
‘I don’t
want to try winching it with anyone inside,’ Harry told her once again. ‘In ordinary circumstances it’s better for have someone steering, but not in this situation where we don’t know if the anchoring tree will hold the weight. The winch will pull the front around this way, then drag the vehicle up the slope.’
‘We hope,’ Grace said, and for the first time since their adventure together had begun she sounded tired.
‘The cable’s holding—let me in there!’ Harry said, his stomach knotting with more anxiety.
‘No, I’ll manage and I need you there to help Troy out and lift him down to the ground. Would there be something in the back we can wrap him in? He’s already shocky from the accident and his leg. I don’t want that getting worse.’
Harry pictured the gear they all carried in the back of the big police vehicles.
‘There’ll be a small waterproof tarp folded in the pocket behind the driver’s seat and a space blanket in a pouch beside it. Get them both out and we’ll wrap him in the space blanket then the tarp. It will make moving him easier as well.’
Grace found them both and wriggled across the seat to drop them out the door to Harry, then, satisfied the painkiller had had time to work, she turned her attention back to her patient.
Her first examination of him had told her he was holding up well. His pulse and breathing were steady, his pupils responding evenly to light, and he was able to move all his limbs so the front and side air bags seemed to have done their jobs, protecting his head and holding his body firmly in the seat belt so his spine wasn’t compromised.
But even with a painkiller circulating in his blood and blocking messages to and from his brain, he was going to be in agony when he moved his leg.
‘Troy, I need to get you over onto this passenger seat before we can get you out. The best way I can see to do it would be for you to lie sideways across the centre console so your head and shoulders are on the passenger seat behind me, then if you can bring your good leg up onto your seat and use it to help you inch your way towards the door until your butt’s on this side. Can you do that?’
Troy looked at her, his eyes glazed by the medication, but he nodded and turned so he could wiggle across the seat. His groan as he moved confirmed her thoughts, but she had to get him out of the vehicle before she could splint his leg and stabilise him properly.
She was squatting in the footwell on the passenger side, her body canted across the gear lever as she reached out to take a firm grip on his injured leg. She had to get it up onto the seat of the car before she could examine the damage and was concentrating on doing this is carefully as possible, trying not to hurt him, when the vehicle moved.
Troy let out a yelp, and Harry roared, ‘Keep still!’
‘As if I needed to be told that!’ Grace muttered to herself, frozen in place with Troy’s calf held gingerly in her hands.
‘It’s my weight coming onto this side,’ Troy said.
But it was Harry’s ‘I need to get you both out now!’ that caught Grace’s attention.
She couldn’t see anything from where she was so she continued with her job, lifting Troy’s injured leg up onto the seat.
He gave a whistling sigh then slumped against the seat, the pain making him pass out.
Swelling around his ankle suggested the problem was there, or at the base of his tib and fib, but there was no time to do anything but get him out, preferably while he was still unconscious.
‘How are we going to do this?’ she called to Harry, who now had the door propped or tied open in some way.
‘You push his shoulders down towards me, and I’ll ease him out. Do what you can to protect his leg as we move him.’
Back in the footwell on the passenger side, she eased Troy’s body around so his shoulders slid out the door. Harry’s hands caught him, then lifted him as Grace grasped the injured limb to lift it over the centre console and gently out the door.
Harry cradled the young man in his arms, holding him as easily as she’d have held a baby, then he knelt and rested his burden on the spread-out covers on the ground, so carefully Grace shook her head in wonder at his gentle strength.
‘The space blanket’s a bit wet but it will still keep his body warmth in,’ he said, wrapping first it and then the tarp around Troy’s upper body, leaving his legs unwrapped so Grace could see to his injury.
Again using her knife, she cut through the leather of his boot, wanting to ease the constriction on his blood vessels that the swelling would be causing.
‘Does he need this to order a new pair?’ she asked Harry, tossing the wrecked boot to one side, cutting off Troy’s sock now so she could put a half-splint around his foot to hold it steady while allowing for more swelling.
The police car’s first-aid kit didn’t run to splints, but there were plenty of sticks which she could pad with torn strips of sock before binding them into place around his foot and ankle.
Harry watched her work—small, capable hands moving so steadily she might have been in A and E, not on a dangerous, slippery slope with wind and rain raging about her.
She was good!
‘OK?’
Had she said something that he’d missed while thinking about her, that now she was standing beside him, waiting for a response?
‘He’s done?’
Harry looked down at the young policeman who was now fully wrapped in the space blanket and tarp.
‘We just need to get him up the hill,’ Grace said, nodding up the slope. ‘I’ll take his legs.’
For a moment Harry considered arguing but although he’d been able to lift Troy free, he knew he couldn’t carry him all the way up the slippery hill when he was healthy, let alone with a bung leg. Between them they lifted the injured man and carried him up the slope, slipping and sliding, Troy groaning from time to time, but eventually they had him safely on the road.
Grace took off Harry’s hat and placed it, carefully tilted, on Troy’s head to keep the worst of the rain from his face, then she watched as Harry made his way back down the slope and, using a hand-held remote control, started the winch.
She heard the winch motor whirr and held her breath then, oh, so slowly, the front of the big police vehicle swung around and, with wheels churning the surface of the slope to mud, it began to move, inch by inch, towards the tree that held its weight.
Harry had placed Troy well away from where the car would reach the road, and out of danger should the tree fall, but still Grace felt her nerves tighten, fear for all of them should the tree come down, or the vehicle not make the road, clutching at her stomach.
It was nearly up, front wheels on the verge, the winch whining complaints all the way, when the back wheels skidded, sending a final flurry of slush into the air before ploughing forward onto the bitumen.
‘You did it!’ Grace yelled, abandoning her patient to jump up in the air in excitement. She’d have hugged Harry if their earlier conversation hadn’t suggested even friendly hugs should be avoided. ‘You got it up!’
‘But will it go?’
Harry’s question tempered her delight, but she sensed satisfaction in his voice and knew he was fairly confident the vehicle would be drivable. He was unhooking the towing cable, then using the winch to wind it up, while Grace walked over to the tree to retrieve his dinner jacket.
‘Beyond repair?’ Harry asked, seeing the muddy, crumpled garment in her hands.
‘We’ll see,’ she said, clutching the jacket to her chest, holding onto something that was Harry’s, barely restraining an urge to sniff at it in the hope of picking up something of his scent.
‘You’re so tired you’ve gone loopy!’ she muttered to herself, returning to her patient, who was peering out from underneath the hat, no doubt wondering if there was any chance he could be moved out of the rain.
Harry started the car then drove slowly towards them, checking the vehicle was safe to drive. He stopped beside Troy and Grace, leaping out to open the back door and lift Troy inside.
&n
bsp; ‘See if you can strap him in there so he’s comfortable,’ he said to Grace, who scrambled in beside her patient. ‘Then you hop in the front and put on your seat belt. We don’t want any more patients delivered to the hospital today.’
Grace obeyed, making Troy as comfortable as she could, checking his pulse again before abandoning him to climb over into the front seat and strap on her seat belt.
‘OK?’ Harry turned towards her as he asked, and the smile he offered was so kind Grace felt tears prickle behind her eyelids. She knew it was relief that they were all safe, and tiredness as it had been a very long day, but try as she may she couldn’t answer him, making do with a very watery smile instead.
She was exhausted, Harry realised, remembering something she’d said that morning when they’d been called out to an accident at Wygera—something about just coming off night duty.
‘When did you last sleep?’ he demanded, anxiety making his voice more abrupt than he’d intended.
But Grace didn’t answer. She was already asleep.
At least he’d got everyone off the mountain …
‘Scruffy!’
Max slid and scrambled down the hill, stumbling over rocks, ducking around the ferns, yelling until he thought his chest would burst.
The bus had been on its side, that’s all he remembered. The bus being on its side and no windows where the windows should have been.
No Scruffy either.
His dog was gone.
‘Scruffy! Come on, boy. Scruffy!’
He listened for the yelp that Scruffy always gave in answer to his name, but how to hear a small dog’s yelp when the wind was howling and stuff was crashing in the bush all around him?
‘Scruffy!’
CHAPTER FIVE
HARRY drove carefully down the road, one hand fiddling with the radio, which seemed to be the only thing not working in the vehicle. Had a wire come loose? He twirled knobs and banged his hand against it, but couldn’t pick up even a burst of static.
No distraction there …
He checked the rear-view mirror. Troy appeared to be asleep as well. So he looked back at Grace, at her pale face and almost translucent eyelids, at the shadows under her eyes and the spread of freckles now dark against her skin.
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 40