From Christmas To Forever?. Marion Lennox

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      There was a truck below the collapse. Over the cliff!

      A few hundred yards back she’d passed a sign declaring this area to be Wombat Valley Gap. The Gap looked to be a magnificent wilderness area, stretching beneath the road as far as the eye could see.

      The road was hewn into the side of the mountain. The edge was a steep drop. Very steep. Straight down.

      The truck looked as if it had rounded the curve too fast. The skid marks suggested it had hit the cliff and spun across to the edge. The roadside looked as if it had given way.

      The truck had slipped right over and was now balanced precariously about ten feet down the cliff, pointing downward. There were a couple of saplings holding it. Just.

      A woman was crouched on the verge, weeping, and Polly herself almost wept in relief at the sight of her. She’d escaped from the truck then?

      But then she thought … SUV blocking the road. Wombat Valley Medical Service … Two vehicles.

      Where was the paramedic?

      Was someone else in the truck? Was this dramas, plural?

       Help!

      She was a city doctor, she thought frantically. She’d never been near the bush in her life. She’d never had to cope with a road accident. Yes, she’d cared for accident victims, but that had been in the organised efficiency of a city hospital Emergency Room.

      All of a sudden she wanted to be back in Sydney. Preferably off-duty.

      ‘You wanted to be a doctor,’ she told herself, still taking time to assess the whole scene. Her lecturers in Emergency Medicine had drilled that into her, and somehow her training was coming back now. ‘Don’t jump in before you’ve checked the whole situation. Check fast but always check. You don’t want to become work for another doctor. Work out priorities and keep yourself safe.’

      Keeping herself safe had never been a problem in the ER.

      ‘You wanted to see medicine at its most basic,’ she reminded herself as she figured out what must have happened. ‘Here’s your chance. Get out of the car and help.’

      My, that truck looked unstable.

       Keep yourself safe.

      The woman was wailing.

      Who was in the truck?

      Deep breath.

      She climbed out of her car, thinking a flouncy dress covered in red and white polka dots wasn’t what she should be wearing right now. She was also wearing crimson sandals with kitten heels.

      She hardly had time to change. She was a doctor and she was needed. Disregarding her entirely inappropriate wardrobe, she headed across to the crying woman. She was big-boned, buxom, wearing a crinoline frock and an electric-blue perm. She had a man’s jacket over her shoulders. Her face was swollen from weeping and she had a scratch above one eye.

      ‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’ Polly knelt beside her, and the woman stared at her and wailed louder. A lot louder.

      But hysterics was something Pollyanna Hargreaves could deal with. Hysterics was Polly’s mother’s weapon of last resort and Polly had stopped responding to it from the age of six.

      She knelt so her face was six inches from the woman’s. She was forcing her to look at her and, as soon as she did, she got serious.

      ‘Stop the noise or I’ll slap you,’ she said, loud and firm and cold as ice. Doctor threatening patient with physical violence … Good one, Polly thought. That’s the way to endear you to the locals. But it couldn’t matter. Were there people in that upside down truck?

      ‘Who’s in the truck?’ she demanded. ‘Take two deep breaths and talk.’

      ‘I … my husband. And Doc …’

      ‘Doc?’

      ‘Doc Denver.’

      ‘The doctor’s in the truck?’

      ‘He was trying to help Horace.’ Somehow she was managing to speak. ‘Horace was bleeding. But then the ground gave way and the truck slid and it’s still wobbling and it’s going to fall all the way down.’

      The woman subsided as Polly once again took a moment to assess. The truck was definitely … wobbling. The saplings seemed to be the only thing holding it up. If even one of them gave way …

      ‘Have you called for help?’ she asked. The woman was clutching her phone.

      ‘I called Doc …’

      ‘The doctor who’s here now?’

      ‘Doc Denver, yes.’

      ‘Good for you. How about the police? A tow truck?’

      The woman shook her head, put her hands to her face and started loud, rapid breathing. Holly took a fast pulse check and diagnosed panic. There were other things she should exclude before a definitive diagnosis but, for now, triage said she needed to focus on the truck.

      ‘I need you to concentrate on breathing,’ she told the woman. ‘Count. One, two, three, four—in. One, two, three, four—out. Slow your breathing down. Will you do that?’

      ‘I … yes …’

      ‘Good woman.’ But Polly had moved on. Truck. Cliff. Fall.

      She edged forward, trying to see down the cliff, wary of the crumbling edge.

      What was wrong with Christmas in Sydney? All at once she would have given her very best shoes to be there.

CHAPTER TWO

      TRIAGE. ACTION. SOMEHOW POLLY made herself a plan.

      First things first. She phoned the universal emergency number and the response came blessedly fast.

       ‘Emergency services. Fire, ambulance, police—which service do you require?’

      ‘How about all three?’ She gave details but as she talked she stared down at the truck.

      There was a coil of rope in the back of the truck. A big one. A girl could do lots with that rope, she thought. If she could clamber down …

      A police sergeant came onto the phone, bluff but apologetic.

      ‘We need to come from Willaura—we’ll probably be half an hour. I’ll get an ambulance there as soon as I can, but sorry, Doc, you’re on your own for at least twenty minutes.’

      He disconnected.

      Twenty minutes. Half an hour.

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