The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (42 page)

‘So Willie moves on,’ Grace whispered as she heard this report. ‘But how do people here move on? How can anyone move on from something like this?’

Harry glanced towards her, and she knew he was thinking of her stupid declaration.

Well, so what if he was? Like Willie, she was moving on.

Moving on …

T
HEY
stopped at the house just long enough for Harry to satisfy himself Sport wasn’t there. Neither was his dirt bike, which meant Georgie and Alistair were still out in the bush.

They were both sensible people, they had his vehicle out there to shelter in—or the bus—they’d be OK.

But had they found the kids?

Worry knotted inside him and he sent a silent prayer heavenward, a plea that they and the two children were all right. Then he looked around at the havoc and wondered if heaven had given up answering prayers, because plenty of people had prayed the town would be spared a cyclone.

‘Do you think the old bridge will hold?’ Grace asked as they approached the bridge across the creek that separated the hospital part of the town from the main commercial and residential areas.

‘The council engineers looked at it when it was forecast Willie might head this way and declared it would probably outlast the new bridge across the river,
but the problem is, because it’s low and water is already lapping at the underside, all the debris coming down the creek will dam up behind it, causing pressure that could eventually push it off its pylons.’

‘Debris piling up is also causing flooding,’ Grace said, pointing to where the creek had already broken its banks and was swirling beneath and around houses on the hospital side.

‘Which will get worse,’ Harry agreed, concern and gloom darkening his voice.

They were driving towards the civic centre now, Grace looking out for Sport, although the streets were still largely deserted.

Except for teenagers, paddling through floodwater on their surf-skis here and there, revelling in the aftermath of the disaster.

‘I’ll be in meetings for the rest of the morning,’ Harry said, turning towards Grace and reaching out to run a finger down her cheek. ‘You do what you have to do then get someone to run you home, OK? You need to sleep.’

‘And you don’t, Harry?’ she teased, discomfited by the tenderness of his touch—by his concern.

‘I can’t just yet,’ he reminded her, then he leant across the centre console and kissed her on the lips, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ and breaking her heart one last time because the apology had nothing to do with not sleeping.

One of her fellow SES volunteers drove her home to check the cottage was all right. She’d lost a window and the living room was awash with water, her garden
was wrecked, but apart from that she’d got off lightly. They drove on to SES Headquarters, passing people wandering through the wreckage of countless homes, oblivious of the rain still pelting down, looking dazed as they picked an object from the rubble, gazed at it for a moment then dropped it back.

Some were already stacking rubbish in a pile, hurling boards that had once made up the walls of their houses into a heap on the footpath. It would take forever to clear some of the lots, but these people were at least doing something. They were looking to bring some order back into their lives.

Once at Headquarters, she set up a first-aid station. Volunteers would be injured in the clean-up and would also know to bring anyone with minor injuries to the building.

What she hadn’t expected was a snakebite.

‘Bloody snake decided it wanted to share our bathroom with us. I had the kids in there,’ the ashen-faced man told her. ‘I picked it up to throw it out, and the damn thing bit me on the arm.’

He showed the wound, which Grace bandaged with pressure bandages, down towards the man’s fingers then back up to his armpit.

But it was really too late for bandages. The wound had been oozing blood, and snake venom stopped blood clotting properly.

‘Did you drive here?’ she asked, and the man nodded, his breathing thickening as they stood there.

‘Good. We’ll take your car.’

She called two of the volunteers who’d come in looking for orders to carry the man out to the car.

‘The less effort you make, the less chance of poison spreading.’

‘It didn’t look like a brown or taipan,’ the man said, but Grace had already taken the car keys from his hand and was hurrying towards the door. Even so-called experts couldn’t always identify snakes by their looks.

The volunteers settled her patient into the car, and she took off, making her way as fast as she could through the hazardous streets. At the hospital she drove straight into the emergency entrance, leaping out of the car and calling for a stretcher.

‘Bringing your own patients, Grace?’ someone called to her as she walked beside the stretcher.

‘Snakebite,’ she snapped, pushing the stretcher in the direction of a trauma room. ‘We need a VDK.’

Inside the trauma room she started with the basics, knowing a doctor would get there when he or she could. She slipped an oxygen mask over her patient’s head, opened his shirt and set the pads for electrocardiogram monitoring, and fitted an oxygen saturation monitor to one finger.

IV access next—they’d need blood for a full blood count and for a coag profile, urea, creatinine and electrolytes, creatine kinase and blood grouping and cross-matching. Urine, too—the venom detection kit worked on urine.

She talked to the man, Peter Wellings, as she worked, hoping a doctor would arrive before she got to the catheterisation stage.

A doctor did arrive, Cal Jamieson, looking as grey and tired as Grace was feeling.

She explained the situation as briefly as she could, then was surprised when Cal picked up a scalpel and turned to her.

‘Where exactly was the bite?’

Grace pointed to the spot on the bandaged arm.

‘And it was definitely bleeding freely?’

She nodded.

‘OK, we can take a swab from there for venom detection, rather than wait for a urine sample. I’ll cut a small window in the bandages, and in the meantime let’s get some adrenaline for him in case there’s a reaction to the antivenin—0.25 milligrams please, Grace. And get some antivenins ready—the polyvalent in case we can’t identify the snake, and some brown, tiger and taipan, which are the most likely up here.’

Cal was working swiftly, cutting through the bandages, swabbing, talking to Peter as well as telling Grace what he required next. He took the swab and left the room, returning minutes later to go through the antivenins Grace had set out on a trolley.

‘Tiger,’ he said briefly, more to Grace than to Peter, who looked as if he no longer cared what kind of snake had bitten him. ‘I’m going in strong because of the delay. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories recommend one ampoule but we’re going two. I’ve actually given three to someone who had multiple wounds. But he’ll need careful monitoring—straight to the ICU once I’ve got the antivenin going in his drip.’

He glanced towards Grace as he worked.

‘You’ve obviously been outside. How bad is it?’

Grace thought of the devastation she’d seen and shook her head.

‘I can’t describe it,’ she said. ‘I can’t even take in what I’ve seen. All the photos of floods and hurricanes and even bomb-sites you’ve ever seen mixed into one. I don’t know how people will begin to recover. And the rain hasn’t let up one bit. That’s making things worse.’

Cal nodded.

‘We’ll see plenty of post-traumatic stress,’ he said. ‘Hopefully we’ll be able to get the staff we need to handle it—it’s such a specialist area.’

He was adjusting the flow of the saline and antivenin mix, ten times the amount of saline to antivenin, and calibrating the flow so Peter would receive the mixture over thirty minutes.

Grace wrote up the notes, and the latest observations, wanting everything to be in order as Peter was transferred.

‘He’ll need to be on prednisolone for five days after it to prevent serum sickness,’ Cal said, adding his notes. ‘And watched for paralysis, which with tigers starts with muscles and tendons in the head.’

He was silent for a minute then added, ‘And renal failure.’

Grace knew he was talking to himself, adding reminders as he would be the person caring for Peter in the ICU. Mistakes happened and were more likely when people were exhausted by extra shifts, and only by constant checking and rechecking would they be avoided.

‘You staying?’ he asked Grace.

‘Am I needed?’

He shook his head.

‘I think we’ve got things pretty well under control. The worst of the accident victims, a young woman called Janey, is coming out of her induced coma, and everyone else is stable so, no, if you’re not on duty, buzz off home. You look as if you could do with about three days’ sleep.’

‘Couldn’t we all?’ Grace said, but she was grateful for Cal’s dismissal. She could walk home and look for Sport on the way. Later she’d return to SES Headquarters for another shift, but she’d be a far more effective participant in the clean-up operation if she slept first.

She tapped on Jill’s office door before she left, wanting to be one hundred per cent sure she wasn’t needed.

‘Go home and sleep,’ Jill ordered in answer to Grace’s query. ‘You look as if you need about a week to catch up. Go!’

She waved her hands in a shooing motion.

‘We’ve all been able to grab a few hours—mainly thanks to all the extra staff available because of the weddings. Joe’s been marvellous, and even Christina has put in a couple of shifts on the monitors in ICU. They’re both safe and sleeping at my place at the moment, in case you were worrying about them.’

Grace shook her head in amazement that she hadn’t given her friends a thought for the last few hours, although she
had
known they were at the hospital and so had assumed they’d be safe.

‘Some friend I am,’ she muttered to herself as she left Jill’s office, then her weary brain remembered Georgie and the children. She poked her head back around the door.

‘Georgie?’

Jill frowned in reply.

‘We think she’s OK. A truckie out west picked up a message that would have been sent about the time the eye was passing over. Something about finding two children, but the signal kept breaking up so he didn’t catch it all.’

Jill looked worried but Grace realised there was little they could do until they heard more.

The wind had eased off, but not the rain, so she took an umbrella from one of the stands at the entrance to Reception. She’d return it when she came back on duty, although so many umbrellas were left at the hospital no one would ever notice one was missing.

The scene outside hadn’t improved. The Agnes Wetherby Memorial Garden between the hospital and the doctors’ house had been flattened, but the old house stood, apparently having come through the violent cyclone unscathed. Grace didn’t pause to check it thoroughly—her own home was calling to her.

But as she passed the big house on the headland, she looked down into the cove, staring stupidly at the waves crashing on the shore. It was low tide, there should be beach, but, no, the storm surge had pushed the water right up to the park that ran along the foreshore so the beautifully ugly breadfruit trees and the delicate casuarinas that grew there now stood in water.

Every shop in the small shopping mall had lost its roof, while the Black Cockatoo looked as if it had lost most of its upper storey, although, from the sounds of revelry within, it was still open for business.

Grace turned down a side street, wanting to walk closer to the police station and Harry’s house, hoping she’d see Sport.

Had the dog sensed Harry was in danger that it had taken off?

It seemed possible—

The scream was so loud and so fear-filled all thoughts of Harry and his dog fled. Grace turned in the direction it had come from and began to run, though to where she had no idea, until she turned a corner and saw the floodwaters. Filthy brown water swirling angrily along the street, washing under high-set homes and straight through those set lower.

Treetrunks, furniture, books and toys all rode the water, and further out something that looked like a garden shed sailed on the waters.

Another scream and this time Grace could pinpoint it. The Grubbs’ house, Dora standing on her front veranda, water all around her, lapping at her feet, but seemingly safe, although she screamed and pointed and screamed again.

Grace pushed her way through shallow water towards the house, feeling how stupid it was to be carrying an umbrella with floodwaters up to her waist.

‘No, no!’ Dora cried, waving her arms when she saw Grace approaching. ‘It’s not me, it’s the kids,’ she yelled, pointing out into the maelstrom, towards the garden shed. ‘The pantry broke off the house. I had the kids in there because it was safe and, look.’

‘What kids?’ Grace yelled, wondering if the cyclone had affected Dora’s rationality. From what Grace had learned, Dora’s ‘kids’ were in their thirties and living far from Crocodile Creek.

‘CJ and Lily. I was minding them then Molly had the pups and the kids wanted to be there, and they’re all in that room.’

Peering through the falling rain, Grace could almost imagine white, scared faces in the doorway of what she’d taken to be a shed.

‘It will stop at the bridge,’ she said to Dora. ‘Have you got a cellphone?’

Dora shook her head.

‘No matter, I’ve got a radio. Hopefully it’s waterproof. I’ll swim out to the kids and radio from there, but in the meantime, if anyone comes by, tell them to get onto the police and let them know to meet us at the bridge.’

Meet us at the bridge? she thought as she waded deeper and deeper into the murky water. As if they were going for a pleasure jaunt on the river.

Tourists went out on the river, but that was to look for and photograph crocodiles.

This was the creek, not the river, she reminded herself, but she still felt fear shiver up her spine.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Crocodiles have enough sense to stay out of flooded rivers
and
creeks.’

She bent into the filthy water to pull off her boots, then began to swim, setting her eyes on the floating bit of house, praying it would stay afloat at least until she got there.

The water fought her, pushing her one way and then another, making her task seem almost impossible. But then she looked up and saw the children. Cal’s son, CJ, and Lily, Charles’s ward, clinging to each other in the doorway of the floating room. Then CJ left the safety
of the room, venturing out onto what must have been a bit more veranda, bending over as if to reach into the water.