‘Little girl, Libby, just through there,’ she said, ignoring the totally inappropriate reactions of her body to Angus’s presence by her side. ‘Libby, here’s Angus and he’s going to help us. He’s big, and brave, and strong, so we’ll soon get you out.’
‘My daddy’s big and brave and strong,’ Libby told him and Kate found herself smothering a smile.
Angus had shifted, getting carefully to his knees so he could see over the trap in which the little girl was caught.
‘I think there’s a sturdy piece of timber over there that I can get without bringing anything down on top of us.’
‘That would be nice, then what do we do?’ Kate asked, totally focussed now on the child they had to rescue.
‘I poke it in very carefully until it’s beside Libby then I can use it as a lever to cautiously raise the mess in front of her and she should be able to scramble forward—’
‘To under the mattress!’ Kate finished for him. ‘I’d worked out that bit just not how to get her that far.’
She looked at the piece of timber Angus was now holding, and pictured how far in it would have to go to work as a lever.
‘I’ll wiggle in a little further,’ she said, ‘so I can guide it past where Libby is then ease her out.’
‘You stay right where you are,’ Angus told her.
This time she chuckled. She knew it was probably adrenalin making her a bit silly, but to have Angus squatting there bossing her about—well, it was just too bizarre.
And as she was already wiggling forward, what was he going to do about it?
She found the end of the timber he was using and guided it, talking all the while to Libby, explaining, checking she was okay.
Though what was ‘okay’ in this situation?
Once they had the timber in place, Angus lifted it cautiously, and Kate was able to grasp both of Libby’s hands and pull her gently with her as she, Kate, wiggled backwards.
The timber had lifted whatever had been blocking Libby’s passage closer to Kate as well, so she could pull the child right through.
‘There was absolutely no need for you to go that far in,’ Angus was saying crossly when she was finally able to sit up and lift Libby onto her knees.
Kate looked up at him and smiled, then began to examine the little girl for any injuries, Angus crouching beside them now, his arm around them both, making it difficult for Kate to concentrate on what had to be done.
Libby was scratched and bruised in places, but shock was the most likely thing to be affecting her right now so, easing away from Angus, Kate just sat and held her, rocking her back and forth, feeling the little arms clasped around her neck and praying that Mummy and big, brave, strong daddy were still alive somewhere.
Angus watched them, sensing the child needed the reassurance of Kate’s arms around her, and Kate’s soft words of comfort, but something in the way Kate had bonded with the child, the way she held her so tightly—a precious bundle in her arms—bothered him slightly. As if there was something deeper going on.
Unless what was bothering him was the image of a woman and child—like a mother and child—like a family...
Or that he’d had to watch as she’d put herself in danger to get to the child.
He shook his head, trying to clear the—was it frustration? Or simply the situation itself, being with Kate yet not with her, being distracted by her presence when all his attention should be on the job at hand?
‘Okay,’ she finally said. ‘I think I’ll pass you up to Angus and he can take you out to see the helicopters and the tents and all the stuff we’ve got out there to rescue people like you.’
Realising it was his cue, he turned to lift the little girl and caught the glint of tears on Kate’s cheeks.
He moved away, bent double for the first few yards. He had to go. There was work to be done, but not stopping to comfort Kate—or to puzzle out what had brought on those shining tears—was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
* * *
Kate was emerging from the tunnel a little later when a dishevelled and slightly bloody woman caught her arm.
‘I heard there was a child rescued,’ she said, panic making her voice rise with each word.
‘What’s your child’s name?’ Kate asked her, holding the woman’s arm to steady her.
‘It’s Libby, Libby, and she’s only six.’
Kate gave the woman a quick hug.
‘And she’s brave as a barrow full of bears,’ she told the mother. ‘You’ll find her in the white tent, probably with a tall guy in army fatigues.’
The woman took flight, her feet barely touching the ground beneath her, obviously not feeling the cold or anything other than relief.
Kate watched her go, praying that big, brave, strong Daddy had also been found and at least one family could be reunited. She headed back down the tunnel. The USAR team, or maybe the army equivalent of it, had made branch tunnels off the main one and every one of them would have to be investigated. The USAR would have gone through their search routine, calling out to survivors, and Kate imagined that, by now, most of the victims they found would be unconscious.
As the new tunnel diminished in height, she bent, and then crawled her way along it. There’d been two families in this building—where was the other one?
Paul had found a man, wedged in a space beneath a fallen refrigerator, and a quick glance told Kate why they wouldn’t be moving it in a hurry as it was holding up a tangle of shattered building material that might once have been kitchen cupboards.
‘He said his foot was bleeding before he passed out, possibly from pain, and I’ve managed to get a faint pulse in his neck but if he’s losing blood fast—’
‘We need pressure bandages and a tourniquet,’ Kate finished for him.
She was studying the space beside the man. Paul had been able to get close enough to feel for the carotid, for a pulse, but she was reasonably sure she could slide down beside him. Though whether far enough for her to check his foot, she wasn’t sure.
‘I’ll try to get in there,’ she said to Paul, and the team had been together long enough to know that sometimes only a woman could reach into certain places, and he didn’t argue.
Angus would!
The thought, coming out of the blue when she’d been totally focussed on the problem in front of her, sent a jolt of annoyance through her body.
And a bit of warmth as well, she had to admit. It was nice to have someone thinking of her safety for all they should both be concentrating one hundred per cent of their intention on their jobs.
She eased under the refrigerator, pausing to check there was still a pulse in the man’s neck, counting his breaths—slow and steady. As the space narrowed she was forced to turn onto her side and crab along like that, as close to the man’s body as a lover.
And she knew why that description had come to mind—Angus again.
Focus!
Whatever had happened between her and Angus was in the past, and that’s where it would stay. She’d reached the man’s thighs and felt carefully around the one closest to her, shoving her hand to get it underneath, feeling for obstructions.
But that one, at least, was free, although the other was under a tangle of crockery and she didn’t have time to waste clearing it.
Just a little further, not far now, edging past knees and on down to his feet.
Or what was left of his feet.
One seemed to be intact but the other had been partially severed, possibly by a sheet of glass, right across beneath the toes. A complete amputation might have caused the blood vessels to shrink back and close defensively, but this was bleeding profusely.
Hauling her bag up towards her, she took out gauze padding and clamped it on the injury, holding it tightly with her hand, applying all the pressure she could, packing more gauze agai
nst it when it was still bleeding after what had seemed like an hour but was only ten minutes.
‘Have a man in blue tunnel,’ she said into the mouthpiece on her helmet, glad she’d noticed the colour of the ribbons on this one. ‘Bleeding profusely from a partial amputation of his left foot. He must be trapped by his other leg as we can’t move him. The injured leg is free.’
She added more gauze then bandaged the wound as tightly as she could, lying on her side in a space more suited to a rabbit.
Tourniquet?
She had a commercially produced one in her bag, but there were pros and cons.
She glanced back at the blood seeping now through the bandages, and reached for the tourniquet, slipping it out of its plastic bag and swiftly getting the strap in place around the man’s lower leg, just above the ankle. She tightened the strap and buckled it then used the small rod to wind it even tighter—noted the time using a stylus on the small screen attached to her overalls above her top pocket. Waited for a minute, then removed the padding from the wounded foot. There was still blood seeping out but it would be controllable with the gauze and a new bandage.
Now she could feel around the other leg to see if she could find the obstruction that was holding him, praying that it would be something fixable and they wouldn’t have to amputate the man’s trapped leg in order to free him. He’d already lost half a foot.
‘Hop out and let me see what I can do,’ a male voice said.
The man was in USAR overalls, and although he was larger than Kate, she wasn’t surprised to see him sit down beside the injured man and sinuously work his way in.
‘Feet first so I can see what’s above him,’ he said to Kate. ‘You said it’s his right leg that’s trapped?’
Kate agreed, while the newcomer felt all around the refrigerator, testing its stability.
‘Seems solid,’ he said. “I’m Charlie, by the way.’
‘Kate.’
‘Well, Kate, I don’t think we can lift the fridge to get at him,’ he said, and Kate refrained from telling him she’d already figured that out.
‘The fridge is holding this partition down and it’s the end of the partition or whatever it was that’s landed on his leg.’
Kate had swabbed the man’s hand and was inserting a cannula, preparing to start some fluid running into him, but she understood what Charlie was saying.
Not only understood, but also realised they were getting closer and closer to a nasty solution to the problem.
Satisfied she’d done what she could for the moment, she checked the fluid bag she’d left resting on the fridge and made sure the line was clear, then backed away until the tunnel was high enough for her to stand.
Not wanting the man’s situation to be broadcast to everyone, she made her way to the tent in search of Blake. If the limb had to be amputated, they would have to prepare the necessary equipment.
‘A team member from USAR will contact me if we need to go back in,’ she told Blake, whose face already looked grey with fatigue.
‘Well, you take a break,’ he told her. ‘Maybe in the mess. I’ll call you if you’re needed.’
Kate nodded. Her body told her it would rather rest on a bed, but Blake was right. If they had to amputate, he’d need her there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE WAS LEAVING the tent when she realised that on shelves that had miraculously appeared along its side, and were apparently held up by air, were stacks of equipment. In fact, everything she needed to restock her bag.
She replaced all the items she’d used, ticking each one off a list on a clipboard on the shelves.
Slinging her bag back over her shoulder, she headed for the mess.
Angus had been treating a woman with crush injuries to her left arm and shoulder, splinting the arm to keep it stable as she was airlifted to hospital.
Had he sensed Kate’s presence in the tent that he wasn’t surprised when he looked up to see her speaking seriously to Blake?
The thought was disturbing. Hadn’t he always prided himself on giving one hundred per cent of his attention to whatever he was doing?
He shook away the notion and concentrated on securing his patient to the stretcher.
But as Kate stopped near the entrance to replenish her supplies, he came abreast of her as his patient was wheeled out towards one of the helicopters, both now ferrying the injured and their families to hospitals.
‘Are you taking a break?’ he asked, when he’d said goodbye and good luck to his patient.
‘Just until Blake needs me,’ she said, explaining about the possible amputation.
‘I could assist with that,’ he said, thinking it might spare Kate the horrifying sight of a field amputation.
She looked up at him, a glint in her eyes.
‘Think I can’t take it?’ she challenged, and he had to laugh.
Though when he spoke, he was serious—speaking softly, gently.
‘I think you could take whatever life threw at you.’
The glance she shot him was startled, and he imagined she’d grown a little paler, but as she straightened her shoulders and colour returned to her cheeks, she said, ‘I might take you up on that offer to assist Blake. I think a quick nap would do me more good than another meal or even a hot drink in the mess.’
‘If that hamburger is all you’ve had to eat today, you need some real food. Come on, I’ll pull rank and get you a decent meal then even find a bed for that nap.’
He went to sling his arm around her shoulders, but she moved away, whether deliberately or not he didn’t know, although he was glad she did. Neither of them would enjoy being gossiped about if people thought they were interested in each other.
Because they weren’t, were they?
Well, not now—not after the now...
Much as he wanted to, he could hardly bang his hand to his head either, but he needed to get it straightened out—concentrate on work, not emotion.
He scanned the blackboard menu as they entered the mess, and decided on the rich beef stew for himself, pleased when Kate agreed it would be just the thing for a cool night in the mountains.
Sending her to find a table, he got the meals himself, bringing them across to where she sat beside one of the ‘windows’ in the mess tent.
‘The night is so light—bright with stars, I suppose,’ she said, thanking him when he set down the meal but continuing to look out the window, colleagues, nothing more. ‘We don’t really see stars in the city.’
So they talked of stars, and the city, and he told her how overwhelmed he’d been by the stars in the Sahara—finding it hard to believe there could be so many of them when the night skies he was used to had so few.
‘So few visible,’ Kate reminded him, and he smiled at her.
‘I sometimes wonder if a lot of things aren’t visible in the city,’ he said.
‘Like homelessness,’ she suggested. ‘We get so used to seeing people sleeping in doorways we don’t stop to think about what horror they’ve known in their lives to have ended up there.’
He shook his head, surprised yet not surprised at her reaction.
‘Here I am thinking about emotions, how the everyday rush and hurry in the city, the need to earn enough to be able to live in the place, can overwhelm the things in which we should find joy, like looking at the stars or walking on the beach. And you come up with homelessness, which is, of course, only too true. We don’t look hard enough’
She smiled at him, but he felt it was a polite smile, nothing more, no hint of the Kate who’d been coming to life only a few weeks ago—the one who would use her fingers to stifle a chuckle at something absurd.
‘The man Blake’s with is in the blue tunnel,’ she reminded him, in case he hadn’t got the message that they were here to work, not chat about stars and life in the city. Let alone emotions.
‘And the bed?’
He stood up, collecting their plates so he could drop them over at the servery, and led the way out of the mess.
‘It’s just a basic tent, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Shared facilities and hot beds, with someone dropping into one the moment it’s vacated.’
She half smiled.
‘I didn’t expect five stars,’ she assured him.
They found an empty bed, complete with a sleeping bag opened up to act as a duvet.
‘Pull it over you,’ Angus said. ‘You won’t realise how cold it is until your body relaxes.’
He paused, sure there was more to say—more he wanted to say—but only silence stretched between them.
Kate thanked him, and dropped her bag at the end of the bed before slumping down on it, suddenly so tired she knew she would sleep just as she was, not even bothering to remove her boots.
Not even sparing a thought for all her physical reactions generated by Angus’s re-emergence in her life.
It was only temporary anyway, and the work was so important she could ignore them.
Most of the time...
She set the alarm on her watch to wake her in an hour, and lay down, only vaguely aware that Angus was still standing there.
‘Blue tunnel,’ she reminded him, before she closed her eyes and slept.
* * *
‘Like intern year all over again,’ she muttered to herself when the alarm hauled her back to consciousness. Back then, sometimes on duty far beyond the twelve rostered hours, grabbing an hour’s sleep had been the only way to keep going, but she’d forgotten how fuzzy she’d always felt when she woke up.
Like now. Her head full of cotton wool.
A quick but surprisingly hot shower partly restored her, and a coffee and pastry in the mess completed the job. The army sure knew how to live!
A new site commander was organising things from above the ruins and he directed her back to where she’d first been.
‘They’ve shored up a lot more of the wreckage in there,’ he told her, ‘and they’re trying to get through to a small group of survivors—talking to them and all.’
Healed by Her Army Doc Page 10