They’d beaten the ambulance.
Ryan’s guess had been right. The child had been swimming in unprotected water. The main beach was two hundred yards further north. This section of beach was deserted, apart from a family group in various stages of hysteria and two lifesavers who must have run from the patrolled beach. They were bent over the child, working hard.
The lifesavers looked up as the car approached, and there was real relief in their eyes.
‘Dr Wittner…’ One of them breathed Abbey’s name as he saw her, and then paused as he registered that Abbey wasn’t driving.
Ryan was out of the car almost before the car stopped, hauling the back door open so that Abbey could see and then stooping quickly over the child.
‘Abbey, don’t try to get out,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t. Just tell me what to do,’ he ordered brusquely, moving as he spoke to check the child’s airway and vital signs.
The child-a boy of about thirteen-was unconscious and limp. He’d been wearing a brief costume that only covered his hips. His chest and arms and legs were a mass of angry red weals, and there were traces of tentacle still clinging to his skin.
‘Vinegar…’ Abbey hauled herself upright on her seat so she could see. Despite Ryan’s orders, she’d be out of the car if she could make her damned leg work. She couldn’t. ‘How much have you used?’ she asked the onlookers. Then, as no one answered, she looked down on the sand to where there were two empty flasks and two full ones. She took a deep breath, pushed her faintness aside and raised her voice to command.
‘Get all that vinegar on,’ she ordered. ‘And get the remaining tentacle off.’ She was speaking to everyone within hearing distance. ‘All of you. Get down on your hands and knees and rub every trace of tentacle off his body. There’ll be more venom going in while we watch.’
‘You…’ She pointed to a gangly boy of about sixteen. ‘Pour vinegar over everyone’s fingers while they work or you’ll be stung yourselves. You…’ She pointed to the youngest child-a girl of about twelve. ‘Run to the lifesaving club and say you need more vinegar. Scream it. Tell them Dr Wittner says she needs it and she needs it now! There’s a shop behind the club. Go up there and yell it, too. Tell them to bring all they’ve got Ryan, his breathing…’
‘Yeah…’ Ryan already knew. The child was half-dead from shock and likely to stop breathing at any minute. ‘Is there antivenom?’ He was trying to remember. Had there been antivenom available when he’d lived here as a boy? He didn’t think so.
‘Yes,’ Abbey snapped, and if her painful leg was causing her any problem Ryan couldn’t hear a trace of it in her voice. ‘It’s coming in the ambulance. Just keep him alive until then. Rod…’ Abbey looked across at the senior lifesaver and then winced as a shaft of pain fiercer than the rest shot up her leg. She shoved away her faintness as irrelevant. ‘Stand by to do mouth-to-mouth if-’
She didn’t have time to say more. The boy stopped breathing at that moment.
Ryan swore, shot an urgent look up at Rod and moved to the cardiopulmonary massage position. His hands linked on the boy’s chest and he started thumping down.
‘Breathe for him, Rod,’ he ordered harshly, hoping Australian lifesavers still had the training he remembered undergoing himself as a teenager here.
They did. Rod had a mask at the ready. Standard equipment for a lifesaver at the beach. Now Rod started breathing-two breaths for every fifteen of Ryan’s heart compresses. Ignoring everything else.
‘Move! All of you,’ Abbey yelled in a voice that would have woken the dead. It was a voice designed to do just that. Ryan’s eyes widened as he worked. This was an Abbey Ryan had never met before-accustomed to emergencies and accustomed to authority. Any doubts as to her medical training disappeared right then and there.
The family and onlookers were frozen to immobility in their horror. ‘Do what I said,’ Abbey ordered harshly. ‘Now!’
They moved.
That is, everyone moved except Abbey. She had to stay on the back seat of the car, watching as everyone else did her work.
It was driving her crazy, she thought desperately. She’d never felt so helpless in her life.
Ryan was good, though. Thank God for Ryan…
But, then, if he hadn’t been here her leg wouldn’t have been damaged in the first place. At least he was good There was no way she could fault what he was doing now.
Four minutes… Five… Ryan worked on, hardly pausing for breath, pumping the rhythm on the young boy’s heart while Rod breathed steadily through the mask into the boy’s mouth.
There was dead silence on the beach.
The child’s parents and the other lifesaver were working frantically, rubbing off tiny parts of tentacle from legs and arms and around Ryan’s pounding hands, while the older boy kept the affected area awash with vinegar. A small crowd had gathered around, but no one spoke. The parents’ faces were streaked with tears, but no one made a sound.
They just worked.
And then there was the sound of the siren. Moments later, the ambulance appeared across the headland and lurched across the beach. It stopped before it reached Ryan’s car, the driver clearly worrying more about being bogged down than Ryan had, and in seconds two ambulance officers were running across the sand toward them.
They had what Ryan most needed. Oxygen. Adrenalin. And antivenom.
‘Give it to Ryan,’ Abbey ordered, pointing at Ryan as the ambulancemen stopped, astounded at the sight of her. ‘Dr Henry. He’s in charge now.’
And two minutes later the boy started breathing again.
Despite their success, they still couldn’t relax. The fact that they had the child breathing again meant little yet in terms of whether he lived or died. The boy was still deeply unconscious but, breathing, he had a chance. That was all they knew. Keeping him breathing gave the antivenim time to work. It meant there was time for a miracle.
He was loaded speedily into the ambulance, and Ryan took charge.
‘I’ll go with the ambulance,’ he said crisply, with only a fleeting thought as to what he should be doing right now. Damn, this was his holiday-his honeymoon, for heaven’s sake-but there wasn’t a lot of choice here. He looked across at the lifesavers. ‘Can one of you bring Dr Rhodes in to the hospital? She has a dislocated knee, possible fracture and possible concussion.’ He’d like to take her in the ambulance but if the child stopped breathing again they’d need all the space they had and more.
‘Dr Rhodes…?’ The ambulance officers looked blank.
‘He means me,’ Abbey said wearily. ‘He’s about twenty years out of date. Go on, Ryan.’ She motioned to her mobile phone. ‘I’ll ring the hospital and tell them to expect you. Give you authority to act… ’
‘Gee, thanks.’ It was as wry as he was going to get. Ryan didn’t feel wry. He felt railroaded.
Still, this was no time for hesitation. With a last long look at Abbey, Ryan followed the boy’s mother into the ambulance. And he gave his last order concerning Abbey. ‘Whoever she is,’ he growled at the lifesavers, ‘take good care of her. And bring her in fast.’
CHAPTER TWO
IT TOOK an hour and a half for Abbey to reach the hospital, and by the time she did Ryan was practically going round the twist.
Not medically.
Sapphire Cove had a beautiful little hospital, with every piece of modern equipment he could hope for. The nursing staff, forewarned by Abbey via mobile phone, greeted him with efficient courtesy, and there was little more Ryan could have done for his jellyfish victim if he’d been back in New York.
Less, he thought grimly. There wasn’t a lot of call for jellyfish antivenom on Long Island.
For the first half-hour after he arrived at the hospital his hands were full. The boy took all of his attention. He
