Australia: Handsome Heroes. Alison Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ and I won’t leave you.’

      Gina and I.

      Gina backed, moving out of the way of the men with the machinery, but the image of the girl Cal was treating stayed with her. The girl’s pupils weren’t responding to light. Her face was badly damaged, and there was a deep indentation behind her ear. Fractured skull. What damage was underneath?

      Cal wasn’t moving clear. The cars were having to be wrenched apart to get her out. There’d be splintering of metal; there was danger in him staying where he was. It was probably a hopeless task—but he wouldn’t leave.

      Gina and I.

      She loved him. He was so desperately needful and she loved him so much, but he wouldn’t see it.

      Numbly she went back to the kids who still needed her. Her girl with the punctured lung seemed to be stabilising. The boy with fractured legs was drifting into unconsciousness but part of that might well be the morphine she’d administered. The girl who seemed to be in deep shock wasn’t taking anything in, and Frank called her over to help. She went, but a part of her stayed achingly with Cal holding the girl to him, fighting against all odds.

      Cal battling the odds as he’d done all his life.

      Medicine. Concentrate on need.

      ‘The chopper’s on its way,’ one of the policemen told her.

      That meant she could arrange to get the girl with the punctured lung and the one in shock into the road ambulance. She sent them off with the two paramedics. They’d need the helicopter for Karen. If…

      If.

      The vast pliers-like equipment nicknamed the Jaws of Life was working now, the noise blocking out any other. It stopped for a minute and she heard Cal.

      ‘Breathe for me, Karen. Come on, love. Breathe.’

      Love. He was fighting with love, she thought, and he didn’t even know he was doing it.

      She needed time to think things through.

      There was no time here.

      Then the helicopter landed, and Gina was so busy she hardly noticed. One of the boys was vomiting and it took all her skill to stop him choking. She had him on his side, clearing his airway, and when Cal’s hand settled on her shoulder she jerked back in surprise.

      He was clear of the wreck, but she glanced up and saw that he wasn’t clear. Karen…

      Not dead. Not yet.

      Cal was looking at the boys she was treating, doing fast visual assessment, trying to figure priorities.

      ‘I’ll take Karen back to base in the chopper,’ he said, briefly, dully, as if he was already accepting the outcome. ‘Her parents will want to come with us, and by the look of…things, I think that’s wise.’ He stooped to feel the pulse of the boy who’d just vomited. Both boys were seriously injured but not so seriously that their lives were in immediate danger. But both of them needed constant medical attention. It wasn’t safe to leave either without a doctor.

      Which left them with a dilemma. Only one of these kids could fit in the two-patient chopper, but if one of them went, Cal’s attention would be divided. Or Gina would need to go, too, leaving one boy untended.

      Impossible. They’d have to wait.

      ‘I’ll send the chopper straight back,’ Cal told her, and she understood.

      ‘Fine.’

      Fine? To be left on the roadside with three dead kids and two seriously injured kids and so many distraught relatives?

      ‘No one else can stay,’ Cal told her helplessly. ‘Damn, there should be another doctor. We’re so short-staffed.’

      ‘Just go, Cal,’ she told him. ‘Move.’

      ‘I’ll send someone back to cope with the deaths,’ Cal said. There were adults keening over the bodies and the scene looked like something out of a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare. ‘Charles said he’d send back-up. Where is it? But, Gina, I need to go.’

      ‘Of course you do. Go, Cal. I’ll manage.’

      He touched her hair, a fleeting gesture of farewell—but then, before she could begin to guess what he intended, he bent and kissed her. Hard. It was a swift kiss that held more desperation than tenderness. It was a kiss of pure, desperate need.

      Maybe it had been intended as reassurance for her, she thought numbly as she raised a hand to her face, but it had ended up being a kiss for himself. For Cal.

      Cal had never kissed her as he’d just done then.

      But he was already gone, stepping away from her. Stepping away from his need.

      Into the chopper, back into his medicine, and away from her.

      Somehow she organised order from the chaos at the roadside. She couldn’t work miracles—there were still three dead kids. But she sent relatives to start the drive into town so they could be at the hospital when the kids were brought in. She worked with the police sergeant who’d come to assist the white-faced officers who’d been first on the scene, getting details from shocked relatives. The bodies had to stay where they were until the coroner arrived.

      She worked.

      Finally the helicopter returned and by the time it did, she had her two remaining patients ready to go. She’d hauled the stretchers from the road ambulance she and Cal had come in, so the moment the chopper landed she had them ready to carry on board. Mike was the pilot. He swung out to help her. There was another paramedic or doctor in the back, receiving the patients, but there was no time for introductions.

      ‘Let’s go,’ Mike told her.

      She glanced one last time at the mess left for the police to handle—the detritus of wasted lives—and then she concentrated on the living. She climbed up into the chopper herself. Moving on.

      If only it was that easy.

      Someone—a big man with a Scottish accent that was apparent the moment he opened his mouth—was organising the securing of the stretchers. He talked over his shoulder to Gina as Mike fastened himself back into the pilot’s seat.

      ‘You’ll be Gina,’ he said briefly, hanging the boy’s drip from the stand built into the side of the chopper. ‘I’m Dr Hamish McGregor. Call me Hamish.’

      ‘William’s IV line’s not stable. And his leg…’

      ‘I’m noticing that, and it’s my problem.’ Hamish was making a calm assessment of each patient. And of her. ‘You look like death and I’m taking over. If I need you, I’ll say so. Meanwhile, sit back and close your eyes.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘Just do it.’

      She did. She buckled her seat belt and closed her eyes, and suddenly nausea washed over her in a wave so intense that she needed to push her head down between her knees to stop СКАЧАТЬ