Rescue Nights (3 page)

‘Villa living isn’t for everybody,’ she said, knowing how inane it sounded.

There weren’t many cities in the world where you could stay in absolute luxury for a fraction of the cost. Chronic oversupply of luxury accommodation after a tourism downturn, and civic minded owners, meant that she had been able to negotiate a rate she could afford even on a paramedic’s salary. She just hadn’t expected that privilege to be extended to others.

‘Yeah, I suppose the feeling of a permanent holiday would be hard for some,’ he replied.

Damn, why had she stayed incommunicado for the last four days? If she couldn’t have persuaded the reception staff to turn down his booking, at least she could have asked them to put him over the other side of the resort.

As if he could hear her thoughts and wanted to spite her, he pointed to her overnight bag. ‘Do you want to give me that? We are heading the same way?’

Heading the same way was her exact problem. However, Kate managed to smile politely.

‘It is fine. It is just clothes,’ she said, as she shouldered the duffle bag.

As if he wanted to annoy her further, Andrew slowed down her rapid escape by stepping in front of her and peered into the admittedly grimy window of her station wagon.

‘A little bit into diving, are you?’ he asked, smiling wryly.

With the car’s backseat pushed down, she had two wetsuits drying, and snorkels and various fins strewn about. The only thing that was neatly stowed were the oxygen bottles. She knew enough to always show her lifesaving equipment the greatest respect.

‘I spent the weekend on a boat doing my dive rescue recertification,’ she said, as she started down the path.

Andrew fell into step beside her as they made their way through the lush tropical gardens. However, he didn’t seem inclined to enjoy the peace and charm of the exotic planting.

‘Do you spend the weekend diving often?’ he asked.

‘I dive for pleasure and as a volunteer,’ Kate answered. ‘When I am off duty, I am a member of the SES, so I can get called in to help out police divers.’

‘Helping out police divers isn’t exactly glamorous work,’ he said.

Kate could hear an incredulous tone in his statement. She resented it enough that he really was lucky she didn’t call him on it.

Instead, she answered patiently, ‘We live in a regional centre, but in the end we are a reasonably small group of rescue specialists. So, volunteering our skills in our off hours is important.’

She could see from the expression on his face that he was still cynical. Typical doctor, they thought they were the only ones with skills to offer.

Their relatively fast walking pace had brought them to the edges of the resort’s grounds, where Kate’s, and what she knew now as Andrew’s, villas were located. The place next to her was so infrequently inhabited that she had forgotten how closely it was situated. The worst of it was that they shared a common wall as well as having a perfect view of one another’s front verandas.

With horror still growing, Kate gave Andrew a perfunctory smile. ‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.

The quirk of his mouth told her that he was more amused by the encounter than she was.

‘Definitely,’ Andrew replied.

Kate opened the ornate wooden door and dumped her duffle bag on the polished floorboards. She immediately turned on the television to muffle any sounds. The wall between her and Andrew was heavy, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Kate picked up the room phone, and punched in an internal code.

‘Are you punishing me for something?’ she said, into the receiver, as soon as the manager picked up the phone.

A dirty laugh greeted her words.

‘What is wrong with the gorgeous doctor?’ Lucy asked, once she had her amusement under control. ‘Is he just too good looking for you?’

Kate was not quite ready to give up her ill temper. ‘He is a co-worker and a clear believer in his own god-giftedness,’ she protested. ‘As well as being bossy as hell.’

‘Well if he told you what to do, we can’t fault his bravery,’ Lucy quipped. ‘Not to mention those lovely muscular arms.’

A new thought occurred to Kate. ‘I’ll never be able to bring a man home again.’

‘Considering you seem to prefer your couch, and television, to the men of Cairns, I’d have to say what else is new?’

Kate had to concede, in her own head at least, that Lucy had a point. However, for form’s sake, she put in a half-hearted protest. ‘You never know when the desire for a one-night stand might hit me.’

‘If that unique event happens, I promise I’ll do my best to distract the good doctor.’

Kate went over to the wooden blinds on her window, which she usually loved to keep open, and shut them.

‘Why did you have to put him next to me?’ Kate asked. She hated the fact that she could hear the whine in the higher register of her voice.

‘You know why?’ Lucy told her, probably more patient than she deserved. ‘Most guests don’t like being so far away from the resort’s main buildings, which is why Andrew’s villa is usually empty. I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t give him that one.’

Now that Lucy had invoked professionalism, the argument was over. Kate couldn’t complain anymore about living in her co-worker’s pocket.

Still, damn.

‘Beep, beep, beep.’

Andrew heard the three blasts that signalled an incoming emergency call. He and Kate got up and left the drug inventory where it lay. For the first time since medical school, Andrew had been actually participating in this menial task. Kate didn’t look like she was joking when she suggested it, and for some reason he didn’t seem to want to incur her displeasure.

‘What have we got, Margo?’ Kate asked, as she preceded him through the door of the dispatch office.

‘Serious head injuries at a mining site. Patient was still unconscious at the time of emergency call. Onsite medic is attending the scene.’

Those vital pieces of information tripped off Margo’s tongue with the ease of long practice.

‘Wheels-up three minutes,’ Kate told him, as she began the equipment grab. ‘We will patch you through to the medic once we are in the air.’

Fifteen minutes later, Andrew was watching the rapidly passing landscape from the sky. The most recent onsite report had come in, so he was sitting opposite Kate with little to do. He still wasn’t sure that the jobs she had him doing this morning weren’t punishment for intruding on her life last night. It hadn’t taken any psychic ability to see her thinly veiled discontent at having her privacy so invaded. Andrew would have felt guilty if he hadn’t been really enjoying the stylish luxury of his new accommodation.

‘The exact GPS coordinates of the nearest landing site have been sent through,’ Joe reported.

‘What kind of mine is the Twenty-Ten?’ Andrew asked.

‘It is an open cut mine, so no worries about going underground,’ Kate answered.

Hell, why did she have to make everything sound like he was only interested in saving his own skin?

Andrew knew there was twenty minutes remaining of the flight, so he relaxed back into his seat. Taking a moment of quiet whenever he got the chance was something he had learnt as an overworked resident. It was a way to withstand the stress and rigours of a long shift. Today, it would provide the extra benefit of withstanding the disapproval emanating from Kate.

A voice in his headphones alerted Andrew to their imminent arrival.

‘Appearing to our right is the gorgeous manmade monument that is the Bental Twenty Ten mine,’ said Joe, speaking in faux travel guide tones.

Whatever the jokes, the view from above was genuinely awe-inspiring. Carved out of red earth, the Bental mine looked to be a massive hole. It was so big that the other side was lost in the haze on the horizon.

‘We haven’t been here for ages,’ Kate said. ‘They usually airlift their injured men directly to hospital.’

‘You think they didn’t want to transport this head injury with only their medic as backup?’ Andrew asked.

‘Yeah, they seem to have finally listened to our briefings this time. If anything starts to happen to the patient in the air, we really are the best equipped to deal with it.’

As Joe guided the helicopter down, the earth was stirred around them. For almost a minute, red dust completely obscured the outside world.

‘Bloody hell, I hate this place,’ complained Ben. ‘I’m going to have to wipe down every inch of this bird before the day is out.’

Thankfully, despite the lack of vision, the chopper was brought down lightly.

Kate opened the door before Andrew could. She started into the haze, the med bag in her hand. ‘We’ll use their stretcher,’ she called back to Andrew.

Andrew stepped out of the helicopter onto the hard baked earth and immediately wished it was concrete.

‘Where is rain when you need it?’ he muttered, for his ears only.

Maybe some dampness would have stopped the dry dust from rising and getting caught in every crevice in his face and uniform. He could see the vague outline of Kate ahead. He followed her example of protecting his mouth and nose by holding his sleeve in front of his face.

Finally, they got far enough away from the choppers rotors, and the air around them started to clear.

‘Should have remembered to bring along a surgical mask,’ said Kate.

‘Somehow I don’t think even a gas mask could have helped that dust storm.’ Andrew replied. He watched closely as she wiped her dirty hand across her already red streaked face.

He was glad she wasn’t so gung-ho that she was going to pretend that she had enjoyed this particular experience.

In front of them was the cluster of heavy moving equipment and mining fleet trucks which they had seen from the sky. A group dressed in high visibility gear started shouting as soon as they were within earshot.

‘He was checking something on the edge of the road and fell,’ said one of the hard-hat-wearing men, as he pointed further down the road edging the mine face. ‘We have been keeping the heavy equipment away so we don’t risk him slipping further.’

As they got closer, Andrew could see how precarious a position their patient was in. ‘Christ, that isn’t good.’

This time he didn’t care if Kate heard him. No-one could argue with the truth of it. Kurt, their patient, was dangling on the lower slope. He was twisted in a way that indicated serious breaks and, even against the red earth, a dark stain of blood could be seen.

They put down their equipment a little bit away from the group, and began conferring. Andrew saw Kate grabbing her harness.

‘I’m the one going down there, not you,’ he said, his voice heavy with command.

‘Didn’t you read the rescue handbook?’ she replied, as she continued to attack the clips. ‘I’m the rescue co-ordinator so I’m going to be making the rescue.’

Andrew reached out his hand to halt her. ‘I’m the best one here to assess his suitability to put him in an induced coma on site. With those head injuries, I don’t want him moved until I’ve done that. So, there is no point you going down and coming back again.’

He could see from her eyes exactly how annoyed she was, but at least she had stopped buckling that bloody harness.

‘If you do anything to destabilize the patient on the way down, he is going to end up slipping and getting injured further.’ The note of warning was very clear in her tone.

Andrew had to stop a long-suffering sigh from escaping his mouth. ‘I’ve spent a long time climbing glaciers as unstable as that slope, and I have yet to send anyone tumbling to their death.’

He was glad that no-one was standing near enough to overhear their words. The nature of their conversation was hardly going to get them nominated for professionals of the year.

Kate must have come to a similar conclusion. Because, while her expression promised future retribution, she began to work at anchoring his harness.

Now a decision had been made, she got behind it with lightning speed. He had to admire her for that. She wasn’t the sort to slow down with a sulk. He stood patiently as she got close, checking the tension in each of the clasps. If he wasn’t so concerned with his patient, he knew he would have enjoyed the feel of his co-worker’s hands running up his sides.

Finally, she nodded her approval and he stepped back over the crumbling slope.

Two hours later, and Andrew had completed handing over his patient to the hospital’s trauma team. He was standing, feeling rather warm in the humid air, outside the ambulance bay. A car he recognised as Kate’s pulled up.

Andrew climbed in and appreciated the chill of the car’s air conditioner.

Before he could thank her for the lift, she spoke. ‘Normally we ask the ambos to bring us back to base, but I wanted a word.’

Andrew knew that no good could ever come from a woman speaking those words, personally or professionally. However, he was feeling the effects of the morning’s exertion enough not to feel too concerned. Instead, he quietly admired the elegant lines of Kate’s neck, exposed as it was by a neat braid. She had obviously had time for a shower, something he hadn’t gotten to yet. With red silt still in his hair, Andrew had been forced to borrow a set of hospital scrubs.

They travelled in silence for the short trip from the hospital base. Once parked, Kate turned to him within the close confines of the car.

‘You are going to have to trust my professional opinion,’ she said. ‘I can take patient obs accurately, and I have been making the call about the induced coma protocol ever since it was introduced to paramedics.’

Kate’s voice was steady and Andrew could all too clearly hear the steely conviction behind her words. He hated being put on the back-foot, a dance Kate seemed to relish, but he attempted to explain.

‘I’m sure you are able to make those decisions perfectly competently,’ he said, trying to reassure, trying to earn his leadership stripes. ‘But I am the senior medical personnel on the scene and where there are important medical decisions, I am absolutely the one to make them.’

‘While your climb to the patient was…competent,’ Kate drawled his words back to him, ‘rescue operations are what I have spent the last five years working in and training for. Apart from that, I am the lighter team member so me going down would have made any rockfall much less likely. There was a medical argument today for you to do it. But me letting you do it doesn’t mean it is going to happen that way every time.’