Dr Lily Cyprano buried her head in her pillow and she wept.
Breakfast the next morning was dreadful. None of them seemed to have appetites. Doug had refused to stay in bed but he was grim-faced and silent. He looked strained and ill, Lily thought, and even though it meant Ben would leave, she was relieved for Doug’s sake. Doug needed specialist medical intervention urgently. She even found it in herself to be grateful Ben was going with him. That must give some reassurance to Rosa. Rosa trusted Ben implicitly.
Maybe she did, too.
‘When will everyone be coming back?’ Benjy asked in a small voice, pushing his toast away uneaten.
‘Doug will be back here in a couple of weeks,’ Lily told him. ‘After the doctors have fixed him up.’
‘What about my dad?’
They all waited for Ben to answer that, but he didn’t. He concentrated on buttering his toast and Lily stopped thinking she trusted him implicitly and instead allowed anger to surge. She glowered across the table at Ben. Low life, she told herself, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t produce anger.
He wasn’t someone she could be angry with, she thought miserably. He was just Ben. A man so wounded by life that he could never make a recovery.
‘We’ll be gone by the time Ben gets back,’ she told Benjy gently. ‘But he’s promised to visit us on Kapua.’
That was something, but not enough. Benjy sniffed and sniffed again, heroically holding back the tears Lily had shed the night before.
‘Come out with me to see how Flicker is this morning,’ Rosa suggested, rising from her own uneaten breakfast and casting an uncertain look at her husband. ‘You’re ready?’
‘Bring on the chopper,’ Doug said morosely. ‘You’ve packed everything I could possibly need.’
‘While you cleaned the kitchen,’ she snapped. ‘He got up at dawn and scrubbed out the cupboards,’ she told Ben and Lily. ‘Of all the obstinate, pig-headed…’
‘Go out with the boy,’ Doug said. ‘Please, Rosa. You’re making me nervous.’
‘Fine,’ Rosa muttered. There was still half an hour before the helicopter was due and she looked strained to the point of collapse.
‘I’ll check on the chopper time,’ Ben said, and Lily knew he wanted the chopper to be there now. Just for Doug? Or was he running, too?
Of course he was running.
‘Lily, I need to run through what has to be done here while we’re away,’ Doug told her, dragging his eyes from his wife’s strained face. ‘If you’re to stay here until Ben sends help then I need to make a list.’
‘Fine,’ Lily told him. Rosa and Benjy went out one door. Ben went out the other. She stared at the closed door for a moment-and then turned back to Doug.
Doug had turned to the bench to find a pad and pencil. He lifted the pencil a couple of inches from the pad.
‘Oh,’ he said, in a tiny, startled voice, and he dropped the pencil.
‘Doug?’
Nothing. She saw his eyes focus inward.
‘Doug!’
By the time Lily reached him he was sliding lifelessly onto the floor.
‘Ben,’ Lily was screaming even as she broke Doug’s fall. She lowered him to the floor, taking his weight. He’d slumped between a chair and the bench. She shoved the chair out of the way with her feet. It crashed into another and splintered.
She didn’t notice.
Doug wasn’t breathing. She had her fingers on his neck, frantically trying to find a pulse.
None.
‘Ben,’ she screamed again. She’d been three weeks away from medicine but she was all doctor now. She hauled Doug onto his back, ripping his shirt open.
‘Ben!’
He’d heard. The door slammed open and Ben was with her, shoving the mess of furniture out of the way so savagely that the chair leg Lily had broken splintered off and skittered over the linoleum.
‘Check his airway,’ Lily snapped, and Ben was already doing it, feeling in Doug’s mouth, turning his face to the side as Lily thumped down on his chest.
Ben stooped and breathed into Doug’s mouth, then straightened. ‘Let me,’ he told Lily, and she knew at once what he meant. CPR needed strength and he had more of it than she did.
‘Do we have any oxygen?’ she demanded.
‘No.’ His hands were already striking Doug’s chest, over and over, trying desperately to put pressure on his heart as Lily gave the next breath. ‘Come on, Doug. Don’t you dare die. Come on, Doug. Please. Come on.’ His eyes didn’t leave Doug’s face as the CPR continued, strong and sure and as rhythmic as Lily could possibly want. ‘Please.’
Please. Lily couldn’t talk but she could pray, over and over. Please. She breathed and she waited and she breathed and she prayed and she breathed and prayed some more. There was a roaring overhead and it was the backdrop to her prayer, building in volume as she breathed and Ben swore and pushed downward over and over.
Please…
The door swung inward. ‘Doug, it’s the helicopter…’
It was Rosa. She took one step inside the door and stopped dead as she saw what was in front of her. Her hands flew to her face, her colour draining. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Rosa, is that the Medivac chopper?’ Ben’s voice was curt and hard, slicing across her terror.
‘Doug-’
‘Rosa, tell me.’ His order was almost brutal. ‘Is that the Medivac chopper? Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. Her face was as ashen as Doug’s and she clutched for the table for support.
But Ben would have none of it. Terror was an indulgence they had no time for. ‘Then run,’ he told her. ‘We need oxygen and a defibrillator. They’ll have them on board. Run, Rosa. We’ll save him yet.’
Rosa gave a gasp of sheer dread-and turned and ran.
There was no choice but to continue. Lily kept on breathing. She’d never done artificial respiration without an airway, but there was no hesitation. Doug felt like family.
It had to work.
Please.
Then…
At first she thought she was imagining it. It was the air she was breathing in for him that was making his chest rise.
But no. She drew back as Ben kept applying pressure, and she saw it again. Chest movement she wasn’t causing.
‘Ben,’ she screamed and he drew back, just a little.
And she was right. Doug’s chest rose imperceptibly, all by itlsef. A weak shudder ran through his body and his eyes flickered.
Then Rosa waas back, bursting through the door with a man and a woman behind her. They were dressed in the uniforms of the Australian Medivac Service. Rosa must have been coherent enough to make herself heard, for the woman was carrying a medical bag and the man was carrying a defibrillator.
But maybe, blessedly, a defibrillator wouldn’t be needed.
‘Oxygen,’ ben snpped, not taking his eyes off Doug. ‘We have a pulse.’
Dear God…
One of the newcomers-the woman-was hauling open her medical bag. lily grabbed an oxygen mask and was fitting it to Doug’s face before the girl could make a demur.
The man was carrying an oxygen cylinder as well as the defibrillator. he set it on the floor and Ben fitted it swiftly to the tube attached to Doug’s mask. he watched Doug’s chest every minute. As did they all. They had no attached monitor-all they could go by was the rise and fall of Doug’s chest.
