Healed by Her Army Doc

by Meredith Webber

  So back down to the red tunnel, trying hard to think of the survivors they might rescue, rather than the man who’d virtually put her to bed an hour ago.

  But how could she not think of him?

  For weeks she’d been trying to shut away the memories of their time together, trying to box them up to look at far in the future when thinking about him wouldn’t be so painful.

  It shouldn’t have been, she knew that.

  It had been a brief affair, nothing more, but those magical days in Sydney, although cut short, had made her realise—

  No, she wouldn’t go there!

  Couldn’t go there!

  Red tunnel, concentrate on that.

  She found the team working to get to this group of survivors—five, they told her—in an offshoot of the tunnel she knew, and joined them in lifting rubble, piece by careful piece, aware from the sounds beyond them that the little group was doing the same thing on their side. And as they moved debris on their side, a couple of soldiers shored up the new length of tunnel, making sure the rescue workers stayed safe.

  They were almost through when an ominous creaking above made everyone pause.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ one of the army rescuers shouted through to the survivors, before radioing for an engineer to get down there fast.

  They were all peering upward, trying to figure out what might be shifting above them, while the silence from the other side sent an uneasiness through the rescuers.

  It was probably inevitable that Angus arrived with the engineer.

  ‘You could have slept longer,’ he said to Kate, who was so busy trying to cope with all her physical reactions to his presence—the ones that wouldn’t go into that damn box—she just ignored him.

  Until he moved closer, stood right behind her and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘The engineer will be a while figuring out the best way forward,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you take another rest? I’ll stay in case they need a doctor.’

  Kate turned to look at him, her fingers curling into balled fists so she didn’t reach out to touch his cheek, his arm, any bit of him.

  ‘You look worse than I do,’ she told him. ‘Why don’t you take a break?’

  ‘Who me? A soldier? Take a break?’

  He tried to look shocked but all he looked was more tired, and Kate could feel her heart aching for him. Aching to help him, to look after him, to hold him and—

  Yes, to love him!

  She turned away, hoping he wouldn’t see her thoughts written on her face or in her eyes.

  Where had love come into it? she demanded of herself as she moved back a little way up the tunnel to let the team do their work.

  And when?

  Surely not right back at the island, for all her heart had lurched at the sight of him in the SDR meeting.

  Maybe as they’d sat together beside wee Joshua’s grave—or perhaps on the Ferris wheel high above the harbour when the world had been a magical place, she and Angus the only inhabitants.

  It must have sneaked in, a subconscious knowing, just waiting for a propitious moment to firm in her head.

  Not that this was anything like a propitious moment! She was trying not to think about him at all, so definitely didn’t want to consider what she felt might just possibly be love.

  He was working beside the engineer, his broad back towards her, and though suitably and completely covered in army fatigues, she saw it as she had in bed, the flat planes of muscle around his shoulders, the shape of his vertebrae that she’d touched with fingertips—

  And the thoughts she couldn’t keep away when she was studying him sneaked back into her mind. The ‘would the baby’ thoughts—useless comparisons—the past she thought she’d conquered finding its way into the present—

  Focus!

  The rescuers were now passing rubble back along the tunnel, hand to hand, others now joining the line that stretched out into the open air.

  Desperate to think about anything other than Angus’s back, Kate squeezed into a space, passing debris with the best of them.

  ‘You got gloves?’ the woman beside her said quietly, and she stepped back for a minute to pull her heavy gloves from a pocket down the leg of her overalls and fit them on snugly.

  It became mechanical—take a bundle from the woman on one side and pass it on to the man on the other, the movement gaining a rhythm of its own, so she was surprised when she looked up to see how much further they had gone, edging little by little towards the survivors.

  ‘Are you free?’

  Blake’s voice in her helmet jolted her slightly, and once again she stepped out of the line, this time making her own way to the mouth of the tunnel, already telling Blake she was on her way.

  Angus, answering a call on his headphones, followed her, realising she, too, must have been contacted for something more urgent than moving rubble.

  As ever when he saw her, or was in her presence, his skin tightened with a sensory awareness that was hard to ignore, for all he knew he had to be totally focussed on the job.

  Lives depended on it.

  Blake Cooper was standing with the site manager and one of Angus’s colleagues beside what looked like a newly opened tunnel.

  Except when they got there, he hard on Kate’s heels, it was more a steep shaft than a tunnel.

  ‘From what we can make out, there’s a badly injured woman down there.’

  Silence greeted the remark, all of them only too aware they’d passed the thirty-hour mark since the buildings had collapsed, and the hope of finding anyone still alive was lessening by the minute.

  ‘The USAR have done their best to make it safe but the space they’ve managed to shore up is too narrow for you or me to get in there, Angus.’

  He turned to Kate.

  ‘You’ve already done more than your share of crawling into tight spaces,’ he said. ‘Are you up for one more? Be honest about it. No one’s going to think less of you if you say no. We don’t want you going in only to find you’re too exhausted to get out.’

  ‘I can find a soldier to do it,’ Angus said.

  But Kate shook her head.

  ‘If she’s injured maybe there’s something I can do, and if I can’t make it out at least I can stay with her. I’m sure you lot would eventually dig down to us.’

  She was looking at Angus as she spoke, making light of it, but his tight mouth and undoubtedly clenched teeth told her just how much he disapproved of the idea.

  Someone had rigged up a rope and harness, insisting she should wear the harness even though the shaft sloped gradually at first.

  ‘At least this way we can haul you out if we need to,’ the USAR man told her.

  She tightened the harness around her chest, checked that her bag was secure, and went cautiously into the sloping shaft. Easy going initially. She had to bend slightly but that was okay, then as the gradient grew steeper and the shaft walls began to close in on her, she sat and worked her way down on her backside, glad of the harness, even happier that whoever had tunnelled down here had been able to string some lights along one side.

  She used her boots as brakes to slow her progress as the gradient grew steeper, not wanting to slide full tilt into the injured woman.

  But now the shaft widened and levelled out slightly, and Kate realised it had been specifically dug to get to the lowest section of the ruined lodges.

  Some parts were shored, but she guessed if the woman lay that way she’d have been found.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she called, praying for an answer.

  Nothing!

  She shone her torch, deep into the wreckage.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  This time a movement of some kind—over to the right—not distinct, more a slight shuffle.

  The other rescuers had heard a
woman!

  She shone her torch to the right, asking this time, ‘Can you see the light?’

  The faintest of moans, but at least Kate now knew where to look.

  She could see a space that seemed stable some way in. All she had to do was get there.

  On hands and knees she started forward, lying down to slither under beams, pushing herself forward with her feet, crawling where she could, talking all the time, telling whoever was there that she was coming.

  The woman, when she finally came to her, was sheet white and barely conscious. A trail of blood going back into the rubble told Kate she’d already made her way through a lot of debris.

  Now she lay on her back, blood seeping from her body, too far gone to answer even the simplest of questions.

  With space to move, Kate set up fluids before beginning any examination of her injuries, instinct telling her there was something seriously wrong. But it took a long moan from the woman and a reflex writhing motion for Kate to realise the significance of the blood.

  She ran her hands over the woman’s abdomen, felt it tighten as she examined it, then relax, flaccid—empty!

  And between the woman’s legs, the placenta she’d just delivered, the cord that should have connected it to a baby now severed.

  The baby! Where was the baby? She had to find the baby.

  But the woman was bleeding more heavily now, too much blood added to what she’d already lost.

  Post-partum haemorrhage.

  Kate pressed down hard on her patient’s belly, hoping to seal off the offending blood vessel, but the blood kept coming.

  And somewhere in the wreckage there was a baby—a newborn.

  She breathed deeply, closing her eyes and willing herself back under control, thinking, thinking, thinking.

  Then a remembered picture from some book she’d studied flashed into her mind. Lacking medical help, post-partum bleeding could be handled manually.

  First, pressure on the abdomen, pressing downwards, holding it—hopeful the damaged vessel would close of its own accord.

  No luck—the bleeding continued.

  Back to the remembered picture.

  Twisting her mike so she could speak into it, she knelt between the woman’s legs and carefully inserted one gloved hand into her body, using her other hand on the woman’s belly, pressing down against her own hand as hard as she could.

  Now she could speak.

  ‘I need a collapsible stretcher sent down on a rope. Woman with post-partum haemorrhage and no sign of the baby. Once I have her free of the debris and ready for you to lift, you’ll have to pull me too because the only way I’ve been able to stem the bleeding is manually.’

  Someone up there would get the picture, she told herself, and hopefully have blood products and anticoagulants on hand for the woman as soon as they reached the top.

  There’s a baby somewhere...

  She had to fight the thought, fight even harder the urge to go and look.

  Rattling noises, dirt coming down the shaft and Kate was glad she and her patient were clear of it.

  But someone had understood—understood enough to send down a slightly built soldier with the stretcher.

  ‘Reckoned you’d need help,’ the new arrival—a young woman soldier—said, and Kate smiled with relief.

  ‘Can you slide the stretcher through that opening?’ she asked, shining her torch along the hole she’d crawled through.

  ‘No worries,’ said the cheerful woman, and she set to, threading the long, narrow, well-packed stretcher under and around obstacles until it reached Kate.

  Who now had a dilemma.

  No way could she keep up the pressure on the woman’s uterus and load her on the stretcher.

  She lifted her top hand and fished in her bag for a tightly folded cloth that could be fashioned into a sling, or if necessary used as a towel for messy hands.

  Carefully she removed her other hand, wiped it swiftly on the bandage and began to unpack the stretcher, sliding one side in under the woman’s body, then rolling her slightly to click the other side into place.

  The bleeding continued, so as quickly as she could she wrapped the stretcher’s wings around the woman’s upper body and tightened straps to keep her securely in place. Pulled on a clean glove and once again invaded the poor woman’s body to apply pressure on the bleeder.

  ‘Now, if you can pull the stretcher towards you, I’ll do what I can to push with my knees, but once we get her out to where you are, you’ll have to go up the shaft to give the two of us room to be pulled up.’

  ‘I could take over from you,’ the soldier, now introducing herself as Laura, said.

  And I could look for the baby.

  The thought sneaked into Kate’s mind but she pushed it away. What point in finding the baby if the mother died through blood loss that she, Kate, might be able to prevent.

  Laura somehow got them back to the bottom of the shaft, then, aided by her harness and rope, made her way up to the top.

  ‘Call when you’re ready to come up,’ a voice yelled from above.

  ‘Anytime now,’ Kate answered, ‘but pull us slowly as we’re coming up in tandem.’

  And slowly but surely they made their way to the top, where waiting hands unhooked both the stretcher and Kate, and carried the patient, Kate still bent over her, still applying pressure, into the tent.

  ‘We’ve got one of our gynaes up on the screen in a live feed from the hospital,’ Blake told her as the woman, now free of Kate, was lifted onto an operating table. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

  Kate nodded, anxious to get away and get cleaned up—even more anxious to get back down that shaft.

  Would they let her?

  The thought made tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

  Of course they would, she told herself as she stripped off and stepped under the shower.

  Where tears really didn’t matter as it was all water running down her cheeks.

  She had no clean underwear or a clean overall, and she was running short of gloves, but she’d noticed piles of clothes just inside the door of the facilities tent.

  Khaki but who cared! Wrapped in a towel, she already had underwear sorted—a singlet would do instead of a bra—and was checking out a thick sweater that would keep her warm under her overalls when Angus appeared.

  ‘Stealing army clothes, are you?’ he teased, and, startled, she turned towards him, not having felt his presence as she usually did.

  ‘It’s okay, that’s what they’re there for, but I wouldn’t bother putting overalls back on, you need a proper break. A new response team has arrived, so it’s time to sleep—perhaps eat something and then sleep.’

  But Kate clutched the overalls to her, backing towards the privacy of the shower stall, so anxious to get back down that shaft and start looking for the baby she didn’t stop to argue.

  ‘Kate?’

  He sounded puzzled—perhaps anxious.

  ‘Not just now, Angus. I really do have to get back down there.’

  She shut the screen between them and pulled on her purloined clothes—including the overalls and, oh, the bliss of clean socks!

  Angus stared at the screen. Okay, she’d closed it in case someone else came in and saw him staring at her getting dressed, except it wasn’t modesty or possible embarrassment at all, it was to shut him out—or maybe off! To stop him arguing with her, which he fully intended doing. She must be exhausted and he knew only too well that that’s when accidents happened.

  Yet when she reappeared, everything clean but her boots, it was to hurry past him, hurrying not to the tent to see how the woman she’d rescued was but back to the shaft, jogging now for all she’d said she didn’t jog.

  He wanted to follow her, to try to stop her, to speak to whoever was in command over there and order she
be stopped.

  He gave a huff of despairing laughter.

  Like she’d thank him for that!

  He headed for the tent instead. Surely there he’d find a clue to her impetuous flight.

  Blake’s face was bleak, although the woman on the table in front of him looked relatively uninjured.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Blake said. ‘We’ve stopped the bleeding and they’ll fly her straight out.’

  ‘And the problem?’

  Blake hesitated, shook his head and finally explained.

  ‘She’s just given birth,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s a baby down there somewhere.’

  A picture of Kate as she held the little girl, Libby, in her arms, flashed through Angus’s head. Kate holding her tightly, tears on Kate’s face...

  A baby?

  Had there been a baby somewhere in her life?

  Or did she just long for one?

  He knew she was estranged from her parents, who hadn’t understood—or bothered to understand—why she’d cancelled her wedding. Would a baby be someone for her to love—someone to love her?

  He had no idea but he did know, for certain, that it was the baby that had taken her back down that shaft.

  He shook his head as he realised just how little he knew about the woman he loved.

  Loved?

  Hadn’t he recoiled from that thought once before?

  But that must be it, love, and now she was in danger.

  Might be in danger.

  Turmoil he’d rarely if ever felt was gripping his body, while his thoughts ran riot in his head.

  He left the tent, intending to go down to the head of the shaft, but paused. He’d only be in the way, and if Kate was down there he certainly didn’t want to distract any of the people up top who’d be responsible for her safety.

  So?

  First things first—start thinking clearly.

  He’d eat and maybe rest—no, no way he could rest.

  He’d eat and...

  His mind went blank again.

  He needed a distraction—any distraction—something to focus on...

  Mail, there was mail!

  He clutched at the idea, something positive he could do. Anything to take his mind off Kate down some deep tunnel...