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.
