backwards and caught her on the leg and she winced. Drat.
And here was Harry marching toward her, barely letting his crutches touch the ground.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Nope.’ She barely looked at him. The tension between them was nigh on intolerable.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I’m being a family doctor,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m engaging in a bit of preventative medicine.’
‘Preventing what?’
‘Mavis killing herself.’
‘So you’re chopping with bare legs.’ He pointed down. She’d worn her standard little skirt out on house calls. Nice shoes. City shoes. Or they had been nice city shoes three weeks ago. They’d seen a lot of life since then. ‘You’ll kill yourself instead.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine. If Mavis’s eyes weren’t going she’d have told you what I’m telling you now,’ he told her. He stepped forward and took the axe from her hands. ‘You’re likely to get hit in the leg by splinters. You already have been hit on the leg by splinters. You’re bleeding.’
She looked down at a trickle of blood coming from a scratch on her knee.
‘Not very much.’
‘I suppose you think this is what doctors do.’
‘You’re telling me you wouldn’t chop wood.’
‘I can chop wood. I choose not to. I concentrate on my areas of expertise. As you should. As you especially should. If I was a damned fool city kid, I’d give axes a wide berth.’
‘Hey.’ She glared. A damned fool city kid? Who did he think he was talking to? ‘Give me my axe back and go back to your crutches.’
‘Mavis…’ He sidelined her nicely, turning to the old lady who was watching with avid interest. The tension between the town’s two doctors hadn’t gone unnoticed by Mavis-or by anyone else in town. After the kiss on the day of the race there had been talk of little else. That and Emily’s continued absence…
‘Mavis, I’ll ring the local Rotary club and have someone come out and chop you enough wood to last for the rest of winter,’ he told her, and Mavis grinned, a gap-toothed smile that contained more than a hint of mischief.
‘It’s more fun watching you two fight over it.’
‘Maybe, but I’m on crutches and she’ll kill herself.’
‘She-the cat’s mother?’ Lizzie asked, dangerously polite, but she was ignored.
‘I’ll take her back to the hospital.’
‘Would you mind not talking about me as if I’m an inanimate object?’
‘Would you mind acting as if you had a brain in that frothy head of yours?’
‘Just because I’m trying to be a family doctor…’
‘You can’t be a family doctor unless you commit. And you’re not committing.’
‘Hey, who’s talking about not committing? You’re the one who crashed into my car rather than get married.’
All of a sudden things were way, way too personal. Mavis’s grin had faded. But her ears were positively flapping.
‘This is not…’ Harry took a deep breath. ‘This is not the time.’
‘Is there ever a time?’
‘No.’
And then his mobile phone rang.
It was just as well, Lizzie thought, trying to regain a semblance of her dignity. Things had moved far, far too fast. If Phoebe hadn’t been so loaded down with puppies she’d have done what she should have done three weeks ago. Gone back to Queensland.
To Edward?
Maybe.
But then she stopped thinking about herself. She was hauled out of her emotional turmoil. Harry had replaced the cellphone on his belt and his face told her that what he’d heard was suddenly deathly serious.
‘We need to go,’ he told her. ‘Sorry, Mavis. There’s been a car crash. May’s driven her car off the road near her home and crashed into a tree. The car’s hanging over the cliff and she’s trapped inside.’
The police car was already there. Two more cars. A school bus. Blocking the road.
They’d driven in Lizzie’s little car, hurtling along the back road with more daring than sense. But…
This was May, Lizzie thought over and over again, and by the look on Harry’s face he was feeling exactly the same. And when they pulled up…
The road here twisted around the cliff face. The car looked as if it had veered off the road, smashed into a tree and swung around, so the back half of the car was hanging over a ten-foot drop down to the beach below.
No!
They were out of the car, hauling the emergency equipment Lizzie had started carrying as normal, running past the school bus where a frightened teacher was yelling at his charges to stay sitting, to not move, that everything was OK.
Stupid thing to say. Everything wasn’t OK.
The local police officer looked up as they arrived, his face sagging in relief. ‘Doc… Thank God…’ He had a fire extinguisher playing on a stream of petrol oozing from the still steaming car. There were two men-the drivers of the other two cars, presumably-sitting on the bonnet of the crashed car and Lizzie saw with horror exactly why. The whole car was threatening to slip.
And the car…
The old Ford was crumpled beyond belief, its back wheels hanging out over the edge and still slowly spinning. It looked a complete wreck. A disaster prepared to topple into the sea and be forgotten.
Except…through the shattered glass they could see May, folded forward on the steering-wheel, her hair sprawled out over the dashboard and her hands reaching out…
As Lizzie stared in horror she stirred and lifted her head. She stared out sightlessly and let out a slow keening moan of horror.
There was blood on her face. Blood on her hands…
‘I’ll go in,’ Harry snapped. ‘Car’s not stable.’
‘And neither are you,’ Lizzie told him. ‘You can’t manoeuvre yourself in that space with one good leg. I’m going.’ May was trying to move now, struggling feebly against whatever was holding her. She couldn’t shift. The keening increased.
She couldn’t bear it. ‘May…’
‘We need chocks. We need weight on the hood to keep it stable.’ Harry looked around as a tow truck screamed up beside the school bus. ‘Thank God. Someone, get that bus turned around. Get the kids out of here. Hell, Les, May’s kids are on that bus.’
‘I’ll do it,’ someone said. People seemed to be arriving from nowhere. ‘And I’ll take the kids home to the missus.’
‘We need chocks,’ Harry was yelling. ‘Now. We have to get this thing stable.’
‘I’m lighter than anyone. We can’t leave her. If she tries to haul herself out she’ll cut herself to ribbons.’
‘But-’
‘I’m going in,’ Lizzie said. She grabbed a pair of protective gloves from her bag and hauled them on.
There was glass and torn metal everywhere. She was wearing a miniskirt…
‘Take my overalls,’ the police officer volunteered. He’d been wearing some sort of protective all-in-one suit over his uniform but was already hauling it off. She wasn’t objecting. She grabbed it and pulled it on. It was ten sizes too big but it was better than nothing. Way better than nothing.
But Harry was still aghast. ‘Lizzie, no…’
‘There’s no choice. Get those chocks in place and don’t let me fall,’ she told Harry, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. The overalls clipped into place. She was secure as she was going to be and May needed her.
She didn’t try the driver’s door. The roof and the driver’s side were appallingly crushed. The passenger door
