Hijacked Honeymoon

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE following few days were some of the bleakest of Abbey’s life.

She should have been cheerful. So many of her problems were solved.

Janet’s walking went from strength to strength. At the end of the following week Janet could walk, unaided, from one end of the corridor to the other, and was agitating to go home. Only the knowledge that she’d refuse to take things easy when she did go home made Abbey keep her in hospital for a few days longer.

Sam was home already. Ryan had taken him out to the farm and Abbey hardly saw either of them.

‘If there were problems we’d have heard,’ Steve Pryor told her at the end of the following Friday. ‘But, if you’re worried, why don’t you take off early and drop in and see him?’

‘No.’

Abbey and Steve had been sharing the workload for the previous week and had found they worked well together. With two doctors working together, everything was well under control. The hospital was quiet and there was no reason Abbey shouldn’t leave early. But to drop in on Sam meant dropping in on Ryan.

No and no and no.

‘Are you busy tomorrow?’ Steve asked, and Abbey hauled her thoughts back to work.

‘No. I’m not busy and my babysitter’s available if you want me to work.’

‘Could you run the morning clinic?’ Steve asked. Then he turned pink. ‘I… Caroline and I…’

Caroline. The pretty young night sister.

Abbey smiled. ‘You’d like to do something together?’

‘Just spend the day at the beach,’ Steve confessed. His blush deepened. ‘I don’t usually swim but Caroline…’

Caroline was hauling this young man from his academic pursuits with the strength of a bulldozer, Abbey thought Steve only had a week more to work in Sapphire Cove but if Caroline had her way…

Her thoughts flew off at a tangent. Maybe Steve could be persuaded to work here. Then she could leave…

No, she couldn’t. There was still Janet. There were still her debts. There was still her little son who should be brought up in the place his father loved.

‘What’s wrong, Abbey?’ Steve asked gently. ‘You look sad.’

‘Do I?’ Abbey managed a smile. ‘Nope. I was just reminiscing about young love. Far be it from me to put my oar between the pair of you. Certainly have the day off with Caroline. You can work Sunday.’

‘I hoped you’d say that.’ Steve leaned over and kissed her on the nose. As working companions they’d achieved almost instant rapport and Abbey was growing fonder of this owlish young man by the minute. ‘And I wouldn’t get too nostalgic about young love just yet, Dr Wittner. You’re not exactly grey-haired and matronly.’

‘I’m a widow, Steve.’

‘And Ryan Henry’s just lost a fiancée.’

‘Steve…’

‘I know.’ Steve held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘You’re just good friends. And I’m the monkey’s uncle.’

He laughed and left her, walking down the hospital corridor with his stethoscope swinging jauntily and a bounce in his step.

Steve was in love and he wanted the world to be in love with him. Well, Abbey was in love, but…

But there was no happy ending for her love. It didn’t put a bounce in her step.

A week from today Ryan was due to go back to New York, and life was due to go right back to where she’d left off three weeks ago.

There was no real need for her to even say goodbye, she thought bleakly. Ryan could leave next week without her seeing him again.

It didn’t happen, of course.

Later that night Ryan telephoned her and asked if he could see her.

Abbey closed her eyes in pain, told him she was busy and put the phone down on its cradle before she broke down and wept.

She stayed awake all night and stared into the darkness. Thought about the impossibility of what Ryan was asking her to do. Thought about the impossibility of not doing what he wanted. Thought about life without Ryan.

Impossible.

On Saturday morning she rose and dressed, and the shadows on her face were darker than ever. She performed morning surgery like an automaton, and by the end of the morning there wasn’t a patient she’d seen who didn’t know there was something seriously amiss with Sapphire Cove’s Dr Wittner.

And most of them figured what it was.

There were telephone calls going from one end of the community to the other. But the last telephone call of the morning was the worst. Abbey was in Sister’s station when it came though.

It was Rod at the surf club, and his voice was shaking as he tried to speak.

‘Dr Wittner, you’d better get over here fast. Some idiot’s driven a jet ski straight through the stinger net and into the swimmers. We’ve got two children and Dr Pryor injured here-and they’re all in a bad way.’

A jet ski.

Abbey stood motionless for two seconds while she took this on board and there was no comfort in her thoughts. Jet skis were like powerful motorbikes on water. They were totally banned from the swimming beach. Dear heaven… The injuries could be horrific.

‘I’m on my way,’ she snapped. ‘Pressure on bleeding wounds, Rod. You know. You can cope until I get there.’

She slammed down the phone and turned to Eileen. Eileen had been pushing a medication trolley down the corridor but had stopped dead. She’d seen Abbey’s face.

‘Eileen, take over the phone,’ Abbey told her, her mind racing. ‘Tell the ambulance to get to the surf club fast A jet ski’s hit swimmers and there are three casualties. Rod sounds horrified and he doesn’t scare easily. I’m going ahead now. Tell the boys to bring as much plasma as they can find. If you can find someone to cover for you here then you come too. Ring the air ambulance from Cairns and get a helicopter here fast. And, Eileen?’

‘Yes?’

Abbey took a deep breath. ‘Ring Dr Henry. If he’s still in Sapphire Cove we need him. I have a feeling we need everyone we can get.’

For the five minutes it took Abbey to reach the beach she prayed she was overreacting. Surely calling the air ambulance was unnecessary. Surely notifying Ryan was stupid.

She wasn’t overreacting at all.

Abbey’s car flew over the last hill and one look at the beach told her she was in dire trouble.

No one was in the water, and for a hot Saturday that was almost unheard-of. Instead, there were scores of people milling around the beach in horrified clusters.

There were three main groups. Two children had been injured, Rob had said, and Dr Pryor. Steve…

Dear heaven.

Abbey pushed her little car as far over the beach as she dared, then grabbed her bag and ran the rest of the way. Her bruised knee was forgotten.

There were people everywhere!

‘Abbey!’ It was Rod, seeing her and calling through the crowd, and his voice was urgent. ‘Abbey, I need you here. Now!’

Not yet. First she should check all casualties and sort out priorities. Triage… Abbey gave a helpless look around. There seemed to be blood and people everywhere. Many of the swimmers were bloodstained. At a guess, many had carried the injured from the water.

There was mass shock, mass distress and tears, and the sobbing of frightened children.

Caroline, the nurse who’d come to the beach with Steve, was bending over a child, and she seemed to be working frantically. But Rod’s voice was just as frantic and Abbey finally abandoned triage as an impossibility. She trusted Rod enough to be led. Two seconds later she was at Rod’s side and she knew there could be no higher priority than the one facing her.

Steve.

Steve Pryor’s leg was slashed to the bone and bright red arterial blood was spurting upwards.

‘I can’t stop it,’ Rod gasped. ‘Abbey, help.’ He was searching desperately for a pressure point and getting nowhere. The wound was massive.

‘Get me towels!’ Abbey snatched the first towel she could see from one of the limp and appalled bystanders. She shoved it into a pad over Steve’s leg and pressed as hard as she could. She used every muscle she had, and a few she didn’t know she possessed, as she pressed downward.

‘OK, Rod, wind another towel around the top of his leg. Fast. You’ll have to burrow under the leg as I can’t take the pressure off here. And, Don… ’ She looked up and directed her gaze at a middle-aged man with a beer gut. The local publican.

‘Don, I need your help. Get everyone’s towels, beachbags-anything you can lay your hands on-and shove them under Steve from his waist to his feet. Work under me. Put them under his hips, use them to shore up sand and build a pile. I want Steve’s legs to be above his heart from waist to ankles.’

The publican looked a sickly shade of green.

‘Abbey, I can’t…’

‘Don’t give me can’t!’ Abbey snapped. ‘Steve’ll die if you can’t. Just do it!’

As the publican moved to do her bidding Abbey glanced up as another car roared across the beach and stopped in a shower of sand, its tyres spinning.

Ryan, too, had beaten the ambulance.

Ryan… She wasn’t alone.

There was no time for Abbey to do more than glance upwards and say a tiny thankful prayer that Eileen had been able to locate him. All her concentration was on getting enough pressure on the pad to stop Steve bleeding.

Where on earth was the ambulance? She had to have plasma. Now!

And what about the injured children?

‘Ryan, I haven’t done triage,’ she gasped as Ryan reached her side. She was pushing down as hard as she could on Steve’s leg and she couldn’t move. ‘There are two others hurt but I can’t leave this.’

‘There’s a girl with a gashed arm. My boys are dealing with her,’ Rod told her briefly. He was hauling another towel tight around Steve’s upper leg. He glanced up at Ryan. ‘But Leith Kinley’s just over there, Doc, and she’s hurt bad. We carried her out of the water on a surfboard because she wasn’t feeling her legs. Caroline-the nurse who was with Doc Pryor-is with her but she looks… I dunno…’

Leith Kinley… Their little asthmatic. Ryan’s swimming pupil.

Ryan took one long, hard look down at the nearunconscious Steve and turned to where Leith was lying ten yards away. Abbey felt her heart give a sickening lurch. Leith… But she had to leave Leith to Ryan. If she didn’t concentrate on what she was doing Steve would bleed to death under her hands.

Where on earth was the ambulance?

And what had happened? It seemed inconceivable that someone just ride a jet ski into the swimming beach.

And then the ambulance screamed across the sand, followed by the local police car, the fire truck and the State Emergency Services van for good measure. Eileen had clearly decided that the more people helping the better.

And Eileen herself arrived in the hospital car.

With plasma. Eileen had plasma.

For Steve, plasma meant the difference between life and death, and he’d lost so much blood now that the line between the two was growing very close indeed.

For the next few minutes Abbey couldn’t think past getting the plasma running into Steve’s body and the flood of blood from his leg completely stopped. Finally, with the combined effort of Abbey, Rod, Don and Eileen, they achieved success.

Abbey sat back in the sand and looked down. She took three deep breaths, as if she hadn’t had time to breathe until now. Steve’s leg was no longer bleeding. The tourniquet would have to be loosened every few minutes to let the blood flow through but she’d tied towelling pads across the wound so tightly that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Plasma and intravenous fluids were flowing into Steve’s veins. And adrenalin to counter shock. His pulse was thready but still there. He was young and strong. He’d need a decent surgeon to repair the damage to his thigh but, barring complications, Steve should live.

‘You’ll make it, Steve,’ Abbey whispered as she saw his eyelids flutter open. She gripped his hand and held tight. She’d only known this young doctor for three weeks but he was already a friend.

‘He’s a bloody hero,’ Don said faintly. Despite his initial protest, Don had worked like a Trojan, building Steve up with towels and sand so his thighs were at a thirty degree angle to his torso. It had made Abbey’s job of stemming the blood loss much easier, and Don hadn’t fainted once. Now, though, with urgent needs over, Don shoved his head between his knees and took a few deep breaths himself. When he finally raised his head he looked better.

‘You know he saved the kids?’ Don said.

‘How?’ Abbey was looping a vast strip of Elastoplast around the pad of towels pressing down on Steve’s leg. She didn’t want the pad coming loose before he reached Cairns. Steve would have to go to Cairns, she knew, and probably on to Brisbane. He needed plastic surgeons skilled in reconstruction for this leg.

‘There was a bloody kid on a jet ski,’ Don told her roughly, glaring around the beach as if trying to locate him. ‘Showing off outside the nets. In bathers and no other protection, mind.

‘Then the obvious happens. He gets stung by a stinger of some sort and assumes it’s a box jellyfish. Panics and starts screaming and then comes haring through the nets to the beach. Forgot the nets would foul him. Got all tangled up and wrenched out of it-straight into a group of kids.

‘Steve here saw him coming,’ Don added, staring down at the injured doctor in awe. ‘Faster than the rest of us put together, I reckon. He lunged across and shoved the kids out of the way. If it wasn’t for Steve, it’s my guess we’d have half a dozen dead kids.’

‘Oh, Steve…’

‘And then Caroline-the only qualified nurse on the beach-tried to stop his leg bleeding and Steve made her go to Leith,’ Rod added. The lifesaver had fixed the tourniquet to his satisfaction and now was wiping some of the blood from his hands with an already bloodied towel.

Towel sales in Sapphire Cove were due to go through the roof in the next few days, Abbey thought grimly.

‘Caroline showed us how to get Leith out of the water without moving her back but, meanwhile, Steve here was bleeding like a stuck pig.’ The lifesaver shoved his hand on Steve’s shoulder and gripped hard. ‘You’re all right, mate. A bloody hero.’

Bloody was right. No one smiled.

‘Leith,’ Steve said faintly. ‘Abbey, Leith…’

‘Ryan’s with Leith,’ Abbey told him.

‘You go too… I’ll be right. You go…’

Abbey stooped and gave him a quick hug, sent a silent message to Eileen with her eyes to look after him-and then went.

Once Steve’s bleeding had stopped, Leith was in more trouble than Steve.

She was conscious and there seemed little blood, but as Abbey approached she could tell things were serious by the look of grimness around Ryan’s mouth.

‘Ryan?’

Ryan looked up and saw her and then looked down again. He was injecting morphine into Leith’s lateral thigh and it took his entire attention.

He signalled to Caroline to keep holding the little girl’s hands.

‘That’ll stop the pain, Leith,’ Ryan said gently. ‘Just don’t move one inch. You hear? I want the painkillers to work and they can’t work if you move.’

He rose to greet Abbey.

‘Steve?’ There was no disguising the anxiety in Ryan’s voice.

‘I’ve stopped the bleeding and I’ve set up a line for plasma. He should be OK.’

‘The leg?’

‘Retrievable. Not by me, though. I’d imagine he’ll have to go to Brisbane. The air ambulance service is sending a helicopter. It should be here any minute. They’ll take him to Cairns, stabilise him and send him on. Leith?’

‘I’d guess fractured spine.’

‘Oh, Ryan… ’

‘I’m not sure of the damage,’ Ryan said grimly, ‘but she’s not feeling her legs. What else is there?’

‘I’ll find out,’ Abbey said grimly. ‘Oh, God…’

The other two casualties were a child with a gashed arm-it’d need stitching but Abbey could do that at Sapphire Cove-and a boy with a bluebottle sting. The rider of the jet ski.

‘I thought I must have been stung by a box jellyfish, like that boy was a couple of weeks back,’ Paul muttered over and over again. Bluebottles were tiny air-filled sac-like jellyfish that trailed along the water’s surface. They stung, but the pain eased after thirty minutes or so with no lasting damage. Paul was all of twelve years old and what had happened had him appalled. ‘I never meant… I never…’

‘It’s not your fault, Paul,’ Abbey said wearily, and she gave him a hug as she washed down his leg with fresh water. She was right. It was his stupid parents for letting him have such a powerful machine in the first place.

Abbey badly wanted to kick someone-and she couldn’t kick a twelve-year-old. His parents were just as appalled as Paul. They were being punished enough, without Abbey kicking.

Which didn’t ease Abbey’s desire to kick one bit.

She went back to check Steve and found him drifting in and out of consciousness. She’d given him as much morphine as she dared.

And then the helicopter roared in overhead and came in to land on the firm, damp sand at the water’s edge.

‘You go with them,’ Abbey yelled at Ryan over the noise of the chopper as Steve and Leith were skilfully loaded onto stretchers. She glanced down at Leith and her mouth tightened in fear. A broken back. Was Leith facing paraplegia-or worse? Maybe… maybe with Ryan the child had a chance. Spinal injuries were so unpredictable. But if Ryan was there…

‘Please, Ryan. I want you to go.’

Ryan looked down at Abbey with an unreadable expression on his face.

And he went.