urgent cases waiting, but as Morag turned away she found herself choked again with tears. She and Angie had gone to school together. Angie had been the biggest tomboy on the island. She had four more kids, and each one was loved to bits.
Damn.
She needed Robbie, she thought bleakly. She desperately needed to hug her own little Robbie, but there was no time.
And she was depending on Robbie. They all were. He was the village eyes. Someone else had gone up on the ridge now, carrying the strongest field glasses they could find, but she knew that Robbie’s sharp eyes would be behind those glasses.
Searching for another wave.
She couldn’t think of another wave.
Morag worked and worked. Every time she turned around there was more need. Fractures, lacerations, grief…
Then about four hours after the water hit, they brought Sam Crane in, carrying him in on a brightly painted door that looked like it had once been entry point to one of the village’s more substantial houses.
Louise saw Sam as the stretcher bearers reached the top of the stairs, and this time she had no hesitation in bringing him to Morag’s immediate attention. Morag turned from the man she’d been treating and flinched. Dear heaven. So much blood.
‘We found him round the back of the harbour,’ Marcus told her. ‘He was working on his boat when it hit. The boat ended up smashed on the harbour wall and we found him underneath. It’s taken six of us to get the boat off him. As soon as we got the boat off, he started bleeding like a stuck pig. We’ve applied pressure but…’
But what? She was lifting the rough blanket way, searching for the source of the bleeding. And here it was.
‘Boat crushed his leg,’ Marcus told her. ‘What’ll we do?’
His leg was lost. That much was unmistakable. What was left was a mash of pulp and splintered bones. The only positive thing was that his leg had been crushed so thoroughly that the blood vessels themselves must have been crushed. With a wound like this she’d expect spurting blood and almost immediate death, but somehow, hours after the wave, he was still alive.
Not for long, though. Blood was oozing across the door and onto the pavilion floor.
‘We need blood. Plasma. Saline.’
‘We’re just about out.’ Irene, the island’s midwife, turned from applying a pressure bandage to a small boy’s thigh. ‘I could use some here.’
‘We need to set up a blood bank.’ Morag was staring down at Sam’s leg in dismay. She had two trained nurses: Louise and Irene. That meant there were three people with medical skills on the entire island. That was it. How could she cope with this? Sam needed his leg amputated right now if he was to live-but she had no anaesthetist. Her nurses would be needed to take blood. The sort of surgery she was envisaging was horrific, but if she didn’t start now, Sam would die almost straight away.
Triage. Priorities. Someone else was calling out for her from below. The child Irene was working on really needed Morag’s attention. Maybe Sam would have to be…
‘Just cut it off, Doc,’ Sam said weakly, reaching out and taking her hand. ‘I know it’s a mess. I can get by on one leg.’
‘You can do anything, Sam,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t the least bit steady. She gripped Sam’s hand and she wasn’t sure who was gaining strength from who. ‘Sam, I’m going to give you enough painkiller to block things out until we can sort out how best to cope with this.’
‘But the leg has to come of?’
‘Yes, Sam. The leg has to come off.’
‘Let’s get on with it, then.’
‘Sure.’ She loaded a syringe and injected morphine. She set up an IV line and watched as Sam drifted into sleep. Or unconsciousness. The combination of shock, blood loss and morphine meant he could no longer stay with them.
Irene was watching her. As Sam’s hand loosened its grip and she stepped back, she found everyone was watching her.
The huddle of people in the pavilion were shocked past belief. Any islander who was fit and not needed to take care of their own family had been co-opted into helping with medical care. But in this tiny settlement everyone knew everyone, and the entire island was like an extended family.
So far the death count from this afternoon was ten and rising. They’d worked so far in numbed disbelief but suddenly that numbness had disappeared. Every single one of them knew what Morag was facing now.
She needed to turn away from Sam and give her attention to someone she could save.
She needed to give up on the impossible.
She couldn’t. She just…couldn’t.
‘Irene, if I talk you through the anaesthetic…’ she managed, and Irene nodded.
‘I’ll try.’
They both knew it was hopeless.
‘Is this the medical centre?’
The voice from down on the cricket ground was strong and insistent, different to the frantic cries for help they’d been hearing. Morag turned, momentarily distracted, knowing she’d reached the end of her resources.
But this was no islander calling for help. They’d been so caught up in the appalling drama that no one had noticed the approach of a small group of yellow-overalled outsiders.
Outsiders.
Help.
Morag looked down at the cluster of people below her. They looked unreal. Like aliens from space. Every islander was mud-coated, battered and torn, either from their own meeting with the wave or from hauling others from the rubble. But these newcomers were clean, purposeful, dressed to work and work hard.
Where had they come from?
‘The helicopter,’ someone whispered. ‘The fishing boats radioed the mainland for help. A helicopter landed ten minutes back.’
Morag hadn’t heard any helicopter, but she had been so focused on urgent need that she’d heard nothing.
She stared down at the group of six. From this distance she couldn’t tell what sex they were-who they were- but they were the first glimmer of the outside world. The first glimmer of sanity.
‘Is anyone a doctor?’ she called without much hope, but a tall, yellow-overalled figure separated from the bunch and strode up the stairs three at a time.
‘I’m a doctor and so is Jaqui,’ he called as he climbed. ‘Ron and Elsey are paramedics and Doug’s here to assess priorities so we can get the personnel we need from the mainland. Who’s in charge?’ His words were cutting through the confusion and the chaos, and his tone was measured to command.
‘I guess I am,’ Morag said unsteadily, glanced despairingly down at Sam. ‘If you’re a doctor…I need help. So much help…’
‘You have it.’ The man passed the group clustered round Sam’s wife at the head of the stairs-and she looked up from Sam and saw who it was at almost exactly the moment he registered who it was he was talking to.
Morag saw shock-absolute stunned amazement. His amazement matched hers, and then she couldn’t register any expression on his face at all.
Just for a moment her vision blurred. Just for a moment her knees sagged.
Then Grady was beside her. His arms were holding her against him, and just for a moment she let herself give way. The shock and horror and fear of the last three hours all culminated in this one moment of total weakness. This man was here where she’d never imagined. At such a moment.
Grady…
Enough. Of course it was Grady. Why should she be shocked? Grady was always dashing to Australia’s disaster areas. That was what he did.
This was a disaster. He was here.
‘Three deep breaths,’ Grady was saying into her hair. ‘Hell, Morag, I’d forgotten… But you’re not by yourself.
