Bride by Accident

A stunned pause.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. He cleared a flat spot to put his bag and hauled it open, with another fast, incredulous glance at Emma. Then he started work.

‘It’ll be a couple of minutes before we have Suzy ready to shift,’ he told Helen. ‘Go ahead and lift Kyle free. I’ll manage here. I think. Or rather, we will.’

It was a dreadful place to work. An impossible angle. Far too much broken glass. Seats that were upside down. Suzy was lying on the outside wall of the bus, jammed against the bus wall and two seats. Over the last half-hour Emma had wiggled so she was right in there beside her, supporting her head as best she could. It was impossibly cramped.

Dev had taken the situation in at a glance. Emma underneath the little girl, her fingers holding the ballpoint tube.

‘I can’t move,’ Emma said—unnecessarily—and Dev nodded.

‘Don’t.’ He smiled down at Suzy, a slow, lazy smile that almost reassured Emma. Almost. ‘You guys just stay still while I do my stuff,’ he told them. He wouldn’t be sure if Suzy was hearing him but he wasn’t taking chances.

‘Suzy, I’m giving you something for the pain right now,’ he told her. ‘Then I’m going to put a little tube in your arm so we can replace some of the blood you’ve lost. As soon as you stop hurting so much, we’ll lift you out of here. Your mum and dad are waiting on the cliff.’

Of course they would be. Emma winced. All the mums and dads would be frantic. By now the rest of the kids would probably have been taken back to town, she thought, and reunited with their parents.

Except for Kyle.

Don’t go there.

She was close to breaking, she thought, suddenly fighting another wave of nausea. It was adrenaline that had kept her going until now. But Dev was here and…

‘Don’t give in now, Emma.’ Devlin’s voice jerked her back. To the urgency of what she was doing. The dizziness receded. ‘Suzy needs you too much.’

‘I wasn’t planning on giving in,’ she said with what she hoped sounded like indignation. ‘Only wimps give in.’

‘And you’re no wimp.’

He sounded teasing, she thought. Nice.

That was another crazy thing to think. Just because he had Corey’s face…

No.

He had a syringe prepared now. Swiftly he swabbed Suzy’s arm and injected what must be morphine. He wasn’t touching her throat. He had too much sense.

‘I don’t think a stretcher’s going to work in here,’ he said, glancing at the chaos around them as the morphine slid home. ‘That ballpoint needs to stay absolutely still. I don’t think taping’s going to work.’

‘I don’t see how it can.’ She was lifting the tube a little so it wasn’t hitting the far wall of the trachea. A proper tracheal tube would go down, past the damage and the swelling. But to put a proper tracheal tube in now…To remove the ballpoint and to take such a risk…

No. She needed to keep it in place until they got somewhere with decent theatre facilities, where they could operate fast. Where they’d have oxygen to compensate for faltering breathing.

She couldn’t leave her ballpoint.

‘I think the only way is if we inch her out,’ Devlin was saying. He was setting up an IV line, knowing they had to get fluid in. It’d make it more complicated to lift her but they could place the bag on her chest and she needed the fluid so much… ‘Literally inch by inch,’ he continued. ‘If I lift her, can you come with me every step of the way? Can you do that?’

‘I can.’

He was looking at her—really looking at her—and there was concern in his face. ‘You’ve been in the accident yourself. You were concussed. You shouldn’t be here.’

‘I am here. Let’s get on with it.’

‘I can ask Helen to take over.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s taken me time to figure out where this has to lie,’ she told him, motioning with her eyes to the ballpoint. ‘If I wobble even a fraction from where I’m holding it, it’ll block, but I’ve figured out now how to get it back. I’m the only safe person to hold it.’

He stared at her for a long moment—and then nodded. There was no choice and he knew it.

He went back to fitting the intravenous line. Above them came the sound of scraping, of broken glass being scrunched.

Kyle’s stretcher was being hauled from the bus.

‘Do you want any more help in here?’ Helen sounded subdued—as well she might. She’d helped the stretcher out and then had paused at the window.

‘We’re going to have to do this on our own,’ Devlin told her. ‘Just clear a path, Helen, and cross every finger and every toe. And then some.’

He shouldn’t ask her for help.

He didn’t have a choice.

Dev lifted the little girl carefully, so carefully, inching his way backwards out of the bus. Every move had to be measured so the woman—Emma—could keep up with him. Her hand was holding the ballpoint steady so air could enter Suzy’s lungs. She looked so battered he’d been afraid she’d faint, but that battering wasn’t affecting her hand. It was rock steady.

Could she keep it up?

Maybe they should stay, he thought. Maybe they should try and stabilise the airway.

To operate in these confines, to remove the ballpoint and try and replace it here…

They couldn’t.

It was a huge risk to move Suzy, but it was a risk they had to take. He was forced to depend on this woman he didn’t know. This woman who should be a patient herself.

She must be a doctor. She had to be. To perform a trach-eostomy in these conditions, with such a result—it was an operation that was little short of miraculous.

But where had she come from? She wasn’t a local. Yet tourists didn’t tend to travel alone, not when they were six or seven months pregnant.

Now was not the time to ask questions, he decided as he kept inching out. He had Suzy cradled in his arms and Emma was with him every inch of the way.

Just as long as she held up.

He glanced at her face and it was sheet-white. She had the baby to consider, he told himself savagely. She’d been almost unconscious when he’d found her. She should be in hospital herself.

If she were in hospital, Suzy would be dead.

He needed her. Suzy needed her.

He kept inching out backwards.

Emma kept following.

They emerged to a scene that made Emma blink.

The children were gone—all of them. The bus driver, the truck driver, the injured teacher—they were gone, too. They must have been ferried away from the scene at some time while the bus had been in the process of being stabilised. There were two steel cables running from the bus’s chassis to the trees on the opposite side of the road.

Since those cables had been attached, they’d been safe.

What else?

Kyle was still there. His tiny, blanket-covered body lay to one side and there was a fireman sitting beside the stretcher. Just sitting. As if he’d sit however long it took. No matter that there was nothing to do. The man’s stance said that he was simply here to guard. To begin the grieving for the loss of a tiny life.

Once again Emma felt tears welling behind her eyes.

‘Not yet,’ the man beside her said, and she blinked.

He knew what she was thinking?

‘I’m fine,’ she muttered, and he smiled, albeit a shaky one.

‘I know you are. You’re great.’

There was a stretcher waiting, with Helen hovering. They lay laid Suzy down with care. The morphine had taken hold now and she was drifting in a haze of near-sleep.

‘I’ll take over now,’ Devlin said, moving to take over her grip on the ballpoint, but Emma shook her head.

‘I know how it should feel,’ she told him. ‘I have it right where it should be. I’m hanging on until we get to a proper theatre with proper equipment. And a surgeon. Tell me there’s a surgeon at Karington.’

‘That would be me,’ he said gravely.

That would be him.

Her eyes met his. A surgeon. She had a surgeon right here. The relief was so great it made her dizzy all over again.

‘Well, hooray,’ she managed. ‘So what are we waiting for? Let’s find you a theatre and a scalpel and something to replace this blasted pen. But you’re not removing me from it except by scalpel.’

And twenty minutes later she was finally, finally able to step away.

Not only was Dev O’Halloran a surgeon, he was a surgeon with real skill. Inserting a tracheostomy tube into a wound that was massively swollen, where the cut was jagged and rough, where there was too much bleeding already and where the patient was a child with a trachea half the size of an adult’s…It was a nightmare piece of surgery that Emma couldn’t imagine doing. But, then, she couldn’t have imagined using a ballpoint casing and a pencil sharpener to perform similar surgery. It seemed that on this day anything was possible.

Devlin’s surgery worked. Finally, finally the tube was in place. Emma’s ballpoint casing was just an empty piece of plastic abandoned on the tray, and she was free to step back from the table.

They’d used a local anaesthetic. Anything else would have been too risky with the breathing so fragile. But Suzy was so shocked and so groggy with the morphine that she didn’t register as Emma stepped back.

‘Give the lady a chair,’ Devlin growled, and one of the nurses pushed a chair under her legs.

Emma sat.

Her legs felt funny, she thought.

Dev was still working, closing the wound, doing running repairs to the ravages of the little girl’s face.

Preparing her for the trip to Brisbane where a skilled plastic surgeon could take over.

She needed to get out of there, Emma decided. Dev had skilled nurses to help him. He no longer needed her.

The smells of the theatre were making her feel ill. She was accustomed to them. They shouldn’t…

‘Excuse me,’ she said, and pushed herself to her feet.

‘Go with her, David,’ Devlin said urgently to one of the nurses.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she muttered.

But she wasn’t.

No matter. She made her jelly legs move.

Ten minutes later, after as nasty a little interlude in the bathroom as she could imagine, she emerged a new woman. Or almost a new woman. She’d washed her face, splashing water over and over until she felt that she was almost back to reality.

What was she about—almost passing out in Theatre?

It was hardly surprising, she told herself. Students did it all the time, and even more experienced theatre staff did it more often than they liked to admit. The trick was to hold it back until you were no longer needed.

She’d done that. She should be proud of herself.

She wasn’t.

She swiped some more cold water onto her face and stared into the mirror.

What had she done? Realisation was only just dawning.

She’d risked her baby.

The sight of those cables when she’d climbed from the bus had made her feel sick. She hadn’t realised. When she’d climbed on board she’d thought at some superficial level that the bus might slip, but she hadn’t considered it as a real possibility. It was only now as she thought back to the huge cables and thought of what might have been…

Her hand dropped to her swollen belly and she flinched.

She’d taken a gamble. She’d won, but such a gamble.

Maybe she wasn’t such a new woman. Maybe she’d better splash some more water.

Finally she took a deep breath and went to face the world again. In the waiting room there was a man and a woman—farmers? They looked up as she emerged from the washroom, and their faces reflected terror.

Oh, help. They’d be Suzy’s parents, Emma thought. They’d seen her go into Theatre with their daughter, and then they’d seen her rush out to the washroom. Ill.

Two plus two equals disaster.

‘Hey, it’s fine,’ she told them, rushing to take that dreadful look from their faces. ‘Everything’s gone brilliantly. Suzy’s breathing’s stabilised and Dr O’Halloran is just fixing the dressings. She’ll need to go to Sydney to have her face repaired by a plastic surgeon, but even that doesn’t look too difficult. I’d imagine you’ll have a Suzy with a couple of scars—but that should be the extent of the damage’s all. Honestly.’

The couple visibly restarted their breathing process. Their combined faces sagged in relief.

‘But you…’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, trying to make her voice cheerful. ‘I’m really sorry I scared you, but pregnant women throw up all the time.’

Their faces cleared still more. ‘Oh, my dear…’ the woman faltered, and Emma suddenly decided against medical detachment. She bent over and hugged her.

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘It’s been dreadful but now she’s safe.’

‘We’ve just seen Kyle’s parents,’ the man—Suzy’s father—said heavily. ‘He’s the only one dead. We’ve been lucky, but they…’

‘The nurses won’t let them see him.’ Suzy’s mother pulled herself out of Emma’s arms and she sniffed. ‘But you…you’re a doctor.’

‘I am.’

‘Helen—the ambulance officer—said you saved our daughter’s life.’

‘I was in the right place at the right time,’ she said softly, but Suzy’s mother had something else on her mind. Her daughter would make it. She had room to worry now about others.

‘The hospital’s chief nurse, Margaret Morrisy…she’s a stickler for the rules. She’s told Kyle’s parents that they can’t see Kyle until Dr O’Halloran says so. They’ve been waiting and waiting for Dev to finish and I think…they’re going crazy.’ She gulped and gave a little nod towards the theatre. ‘If it had been Suzy who’d died, then I know what I’d want and I’d want it now. If you’re a doctor…can you figure out how they can see him? Now?’

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT she really needed was bed. Urgently. But Emma glanced out to the parking lot and saw Kyle’s parents. They were holding each other, isolated, a cocoon of despair that wrenched her far out of her professional detachment and her own need for rest. There were other children around them, staring up at their parents in distress.

A shattered family.

Dev would be in Theatre for another half-hour at least, she thought grimly. He had to make sure Suzy was stabilised for the trip to Brisbane. And then there was everyone else.

Jodie and the schoolteacher—Colin Jeffries—had already been airlifted out. Dev had told her that much. The Medivac air rescue team had blessedly been in the air when they’d sent out a call for help, and they’d been able to evacuate them fast. Jodie needed urgent vascular surgery and Colin’s wound required the attention of a plastic surgeon, so they’d taken off straight away, promising to return for Suzy.

That was three patients sorted, but there were so many others. Stitches, fractures, trauma…Dev would be frantic for hours.

Taking care of Kyle’s parents would be dreadful, Emma thought, glancing again at the little family out in the parking lot. But maybe she could help. This was something she could do for him.

And she desperately wanted to do something for him, she decided. She thought of Dev as she’d left him in Theatre: a big man with clever fingers and eyes that cared. She let herself dwell on the image for a moment—and she felt the stirring of an emotion that was at least as strong as anything else she’d felt that day.

Dev was like Corey but also unlike him. Gentle yet strong. The way he’d smiled…The way he’d spoken to Suzy…

She caught herself, confused. Where was her mind taking her? This was crazy. She had no business even vaguely thinking of Dev in the way she was thinking of him. It was ridiculous.

She shook away the feeling of unreality she’d had ever since she’d seen Dev. Emotion had to wait. Inexplicable emotion. Inexplicable…linking?

OK, maybe it had to be faced some time but not yet. Meanwhile she had to find the chief nurse.

She found her fast. Margaret was in the nurses’ station. Young, very attractive and beautifully presented, her dark hair twisted into an elegant knot, her flawless skin carefully, unobtrusively made up so she seemed perfect, she was speaking urgently into the phone and her tone was one of complete authority.

‘I need plasma now. No, it can’t wait until morning. Our stocks are completely gone. Well, if you want the risk of an accident in the middle of the night where we can’t transfuse—are you personally willing to take that responsibility? I can sign you off on saying that? I didn’t think so. I know the Medivac team have already left. No, I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have needed to ask. You know what the situation is. I’ll leave it to you, then, shall I? Plasma by sunset.’

The phone was replaced.

This was the sort of woman who was invaluable in a crisis, Emma decided. A stickler for rules but ruthlessly efficient. Once onside she’d be an unopposable force.

She needed to get her onside.

‘Hi,’ Emma said, and the woman came out of the nurses’ station to greet her.

‘Oh, my dear.’ Her voice was warm and decisive. Maybe a little condescending? Surely they had to be about the same age.

No matter.

‘We can’t believe you’ve done so much,’ she was saying. ‘Helen has been telling me what happened. For you to be a doctor, and to be brave enough to climb on the bus…Suzy was so lucky.’

‘But not Kyle,’ Emma said gently, and Margaret winced.

‘I know. It’s dreadful.’

‘I hear you’re not happy about Kyle’s parents seeing him until Dr O’Halloran gives the all-clear?’

‘No, I—’

‘I understand you’d like clearance but I’m happy to take that responsibility.’

‘You?’ The woman backed off a little.

‘I am a doctor.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘I’m a battered and pregnant doctor, but I’m still a doctor,’ Emma said, and her tone was as decisive as Margaret’s had been a moment before. ‘I can certify death and I can give permission for the relatives to be with him. Kyle’s parents need to see him as soon as possible and I can’t see any reason for delay. Where is he?’

Margaret was frowning. ‘In the morgue.’

‘Do you have a private room free?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Then let’s move him in there, shall we?’ she said, her tone still inexorable. ‘He’s not so dreadfully battered that we risk shock by letting the parents close. Regardless, they need to see him. We both know that. They can’t accept his death until they do. So…We need to do the best we can for these people and it can’t wait. Can you show me where the morgue is? I’ll take care of Kyle’s body while you start preparing your private room for him.’

‘Can’t they see him in the morgue?’

‘If he was your little son,’ Emma said gently, ‘would you like to say goodbye to him in a morgue? I think we can do better than that.’

The log had smashed Kyle’s internal organs, crushing him instantly, but to look at his face he might almost be sleeping.

He was such a…

No. Stay dispassionate. Somehow.

Emma washed his face with care. With tenderness. She wrapped his little body tightly so the crushing injuries weren’t apparent, she wrapped him again, more loosely, in a soft blanket so if need be he could be lifted and cuddled, and then she supervised the orderlies as they wheeled him through to the ward.

Margaret hovered, anxious, ready to say no, but Emma gave her no chance. She used the authority of her training—and the instincts of her heart. If this little one had been hers…

The orderlies—two young men who looked as if they were barely out of school, and who looked as if the shock of the day had them wanting to be back there—held back, unsure in the face of death, so in the ward it was Emma who lifted him across into the bed, settling his head against the pillows, arranging his features so he wasn’t stiffly at attention but rather in the pose of a child sleeping.

Finally she stood back and nodded. She’d done all she could. She couldn’t bring him back to life but at least he looked as if he was at peace.

This was so important. Desperately important. In a moment his parents would see him for the last time, and this memory of their child would be carried with them for ever. She couldn’t bring him back for them but she could do this.

Finally she went outside to find them. Huddled in their misery, Kyle’s parents didn’t see her coming. She touched the woman lightly on the shoulder and they turned.

Their children looked mutely up at her, past asking questions.

‘Come and see your son,’ she told them. ‘We’ve washed him and popped him into a bed for you to say goodbye to him. He’s ready.’

‘The…kids?’ the woman whispered, and Emma looked at the children. At Kyle’s brothers and sisters.

‘That’s up to you,’ she said. ‘Whether you want your children to say goodbye to their brother is your decision. But if it was my kids…I know what I’d do.’

Fifteen minutes later, Dev left Theatre, reassured Suzy’s parents, took two deep breaths and thought, What next?

The Medivac team had taken the worst of the casualties out on the first run.

Suzy was stable and the Medivac helicopter was on its way back to evacuate her. The worst was over.

There’d still be traumatised kids. Too many traumatised kids.

Maybe they could wait for a little. The nurses would have done preliminary assessment and called him for anything urgent.

He needed to find the woman who’d helped him, he thought, and the vision of her as he’d first seen her came back to him. She’d been only semi-conscious. Hell, he’d had no time for her. She’d been injured, yet she’d thrown herself into the chaos and there’d been no time for him to assess her. She’d looked sick as she’d left Theatre.

Kyle. Kyle’s parents. They had to be his priority.

But the image of the woman—what had she said her name was, Emma?—stayed with him. She was a heroine, he thought. Somewhere, somehow he’d get a medal for her if he had to do battle with politicians himself to arrange it. She was such a slip of a thing, too thin, her eyes too big for her pinched face, heavy with pregnancy, yet what she’d achieved…

He’d find her. As soon as possible he’d find her.

There was no one at the nurses’ station. Where was everyone?

Where was Emma?

There was a sound of distant sobbing. Kyle’s family? Margaret came round the corner and met him, her face a mix of uncertainty and concern.

‘Kyle’s parents?’ It must be.

‘Kyle’s in Room 5,’ she told him.

He frowned. The last time he’d seen the child’s body the orderlies had been carrying it into the morgue. ‘Why?’

‘Emma…the doctor…asked me to put him in there so his parents could spend time with him. I hope it’s OK. Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No,’ he told her. ‘Do you know where Emma is?’

‘She’s with them. Or she was.’

What the heck was she doing there? She should be in bed. He needed to check her baby. He…

‘You’ve had a hell of a day,’ Margaret was saying. She put a hand on his arm.

He grimaced. ‘Yeah,’ he said softly, and listened to the sobs. ‘But not as hellish as some.’

‘I hope I did the right thing, letting Emma bring him from the morgue.’

‘Of course.’ She seemed to expect it so he gave her a swift hug. She smiled, and then pulled back, smoothing her uniform.

‘Not here.’

‘No.’

Enough. He had to face Kyle’s family.

He turned towards room 5, thinking through the decision to move him. A private room and a bed rather than a stretcher in the morgue. Good call.

Here she was again. His phantom doctor, springing up where he least expected her.

She wasn’t very good at lying down and dying, he decided. Thank God.

‘OK. It’s a good idea,’ he told Margaret. ‘So you’ve been talking to her. Do we know anything about her other than her name’s Emma?’

‘She’s bossy,’ Margaret said, and gave him a half-smile. ‘Almost as bossy as I am. She washed Kyle and made him look…normal. She did a lovely job.’

He winced at that.

A lovely job. Bad choice of words, he told Margaret silently. Was there any such thing as a lovely job where Kyle was concerned?