‘If you think I can, dear,’ she whispered.
Nikki grinned. ‘I’m sure you can,’ she said solidly. ‘I’m sure we all can.’
It was the last time Nikki had to ask anyone to help. The whole hospital was galvanised into action, even the patients doing what they could to clear the mess and prepare for the onslaught.
And onslaught there was. Five minutes after they emerged from the inner rooms their first casualty arrived-a man carrying his three-year-old daughter. She’d been hit by a block of plaster falling from the roof. The child was concussed and needed stitches to a nasty gash on her head, and by the time Nikki had attended her there were three more patients waiting.
Amazingly there seemed little serious injury. As each casualty arrived Nikki braced herself for tragedy, but, although the stories of property damage were heartbreaking, as yet there were no reports of loss of life. There were a couple of fractures and dozens of lacerations caused by falling debris. Nikki held her breath as she worked. If this was all…
‘The new regulations seem to have worked,’ Andrea told her in a break between patients. ‘And the warnings which everyone’s had since Darwin. People haven’t taken risks, and they haven’t been seriously hurt.’
Nikki nodded. ‘Andrea, could you find out about Whispering Palms?’ she said tightly. The girl working beside her flashed her a look of understanding.
‘Oh, Doctor, I’m sorry. I’ll contact SES. They’ll go around now.’
‘There’s no need to make a special trip,’ Nikki managed. ‘But…but I’ll work better if I know it’s still standing.’
‘Of course.’ Andrea turned to go but before she did they heard footsteps racing along the debris-strewn hall and the door to their inner sanctum burst open.
It was Sandra.
Sandra was soaking wet, her dress was torn and a gash dripped blood slowly down across one eye. She was wild-eyed and gasping for breath.
‘Nikki,’ she burst out. ‘Doctor…Nikki, can you come…?’
Nikki turned from the wound she was dressing. The colour drained from her face. Sandra had been in the cellar at Whispering Palms.
‘Amy,’ she whispered. She clutched the edge of the examination table. ‘Sandra, where’s Amy?’
Sandra caught herself with a visible effort. She took a ragged breath and then another. Silently Andrea moved forward and took the girl’s arm. She looked as though she was about to collapse.
‘It’s not Amy,’ she managed. ‘I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t think…’
‘You were in the cellar at Whispering Palms?’
Sandra nodded. Andrea pushed the girl into a chair and she sat gratefully, her knees buckling under her. ‘Th- thanks.’
‘OK.’ Now that Nikki’s worst fear had been relieved she could be calm again. She knelt in front of Sandra and took her hands. ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ she said gently.
‘It’s Jim…’
‘Jim Payne.’
Sandra nodded. ‘He was with us at the beginning. Helping with the kids. Then, when Beattie rang, he said it was sensible that we all go to Whispering Palms. So he took us.’
‘But he didn’t stay?’
Sandra shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t. He…he made sure we were all safe and made us promise not to leave the cellar. And then he said he had to go to his father…’
His father. Nikki thought of Bert Payne’s tiny rundown house down by the beach. Whatever regulations the council had introduced, she could be a hundred per cent sure that Bert wouldn’t have introduced them. He’d tell any official to mind his own damned business.
‘So Jim’s down at his father’s.’
‘No. Yes.’ Sandra looked up, her face a tear-stained plea for help. ‘As soon as we got out of the cellar I went to try to find him. Whispering Palms is OK and Beattie said she’d be fine with the kids. And…and Jim’s been so good to us. I had to leave the car a quarter of a mile from the house and walk in. There’s trees down all over. And then… then I came to the house.’ She looked up. ‘It’s down.’
‘The house has collapsed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Jim and his father are inside.’
‘Yes.’
Nikki’s grip on the girl’s hands tightened. ‘Are they dead, Sandra?’
The shock tactics worked. Sandra’s eyes flew open and she fought for some sort of control. She shook her head. ‘Not…not yet. I…Will you come?’
‘Of course I’ll come.’ Nikki was already rising, pulling Sandra after her. ‘Are they trapped inside?’
‘I don’t…’ Again a ragged gasp for breath. ‘Yes. There’s a huge tree over the house. And Jim’s inside and his father’s stuck fast. And Jim says he’ll bleed to death if he leaves him, but the tree’s going to come all the way down any minute, and…’
‘Let’s go.’ Nikki turned to Andrea. ‘Let the emergency services know. I want able-bodied men there as fast as possible. Tell them I want shoring timbers and as much help as I can get.’
‘Do you want me to come?’ Andrea asked.
Nikki shook her head. ‘You’re needed here, Andrea. I’m needed here too, come to that, but if Bert Payne’s bleeding…’ She turned back to Sandra. ‘Does anyone else know?’
Sandra shook her head. ‘I…It was closer to run to the hospital than go back for the car. I didn’t meet anyone…’
‘OK. Let’s go.’
They arrived at what was left of Bert Payne’s fishing shack ten minutes later. The road was impassable with Nikki’s little car, but just as they came to a halt three men in a State Emergency four-wheel-drive vehicle came racing up behind them. They moved Nikki’s equipment over to their Jeep and kept on going.
‘Good grief,’ Nikki muttered, holding on to her seat for dear life. The Jeep bucketed over the debris, strewn as if it were a deliberately placed obstacle course. ‘You’ll kill this car.’ She blinked forward, trying to see what was ahead in the pelting tropical rain.
‘Better the Jeep dies than Jim Payne,’ the driver said grimly and Nikki nodded. Jim…There was concern for the boy but not the father. Bert Payne had made few friends in this town.
Then what was left of Bert Payne’s house was in view and the condition of the Jeep was forgotten.
The house was flattened as if it had been a house of cards, blown flat. Nikki stared at the wreck in horror. There were the remains of a chimney-stack in one corner and nothing else. There was nothing higher than chest height. That someone might still be in there…
The driving wind and rain were almost blinding her, whipping her sodden hair around her face. Nikki pushed it back in frustration. Before the Jeep came to a halt Sandra was out of the vehicle, running to what was left.
‘Jim!’ she screamed. ‘Jim…’
‘Sandra…’ It was a hoarse cry from somewhere under the ruin, barely audible above the sound of the still whistling wind. ‘Sandra…’
‘I’ve got help,’ Sandra yelled hoarsely. ‘Dr Nikki. And men…’
Already the men were in action, following the sound of Jim’s voice. Nikki dragged her bag from the car and then stood helplessly. Where on earth were they?
‘They’re right under the tree,’ Sandra said hopelessly. ‘Oh, God…’
The tree was enormous. It was a vast strangler fig, which had grown originally around a coconut palm. The coconut palm had long since died and the fallen fig now resembled a huge hollow log after the rotting of its host. It was almost twenty feet wide at the base-a mass of thick, twisting wood, smashed down on the tiny house.
‘We’re going to have to cut through,’ the SES chief said grimly. ‘We’ll never lift the thing.’
‘It’s going to come down further,’ Sandra told him. ‘Look…’
They looked. Where the tree had snapped was about eight feet from the base. It had fallen but the base of its broken part had caught on the shattered stump. There was maybe a two-inch rim where the weight of the huge tree rested.
