on her breast and she could no longer get out the way she’d come in. She was as trapped as Ian. It was still OK. Just.
And finally Gemma heard the yells that signified the arrival of the crane.
Even then the danger wasn’t over. There was an interminable wait.
‘We’re attaching cables from above,’ Nate told her. ‘We need to secure the plane, but if we climb over the iron then we risk collapse with the extra weight. So we’re swinging men out on the crane hooks to attach cables from the air.’
Finally it was done.
‘It’s set,’ Nate told her, trying to keep his voice calm. Trying to stem the awful anxiety. ‘We’re taking the plane’s weight now.’
The iron creaked and groaned, but almost as soon as it moved there were men shoving in shoring timbers-at the entrance, then a foot in, then two feet, three feet-moving with a speed she hadn’t thought possible. They shored it up so as the iron creaked and shifted with the release of the plane’s weight it didn’t shift further down onto her face but onto the solid presence of the timbers.
The iron lifted. An inch. Two, then three, then…
Then Nate was crawling in beside her, before the iron was fully lifted.
She was horrified. ‘Get out. Only one of us needs to be here.’
‘There’s no danger now. The men will haul the iron off. Put this over you.’ He’d hauled in a plate of solid steel, heavy but effective. He shoved it between their heads and the roof of the cavity so that as the men worked steadily toward them from the outside they were protected from falling dust and debris.
‘Don’t stay…’
‘I’m staying.’ His arm was around her, holding her close. She was wedged tight against the farmer and Nate found Ian’s hand underneath her body so that Gemma was cradled between the two men. Ian had slipped into oblivion but Nate’s presence was all she needed. Nate…
‘Just wait.’
She could wait. All of a sudden the fear had been lifted. All she could feel was Nate.
There was a shout of triumph and then miraculously the sheet of iron was lifted away. Instead of staring into darkness, she was staring into the sunlight and the shock was so great she closed her eyes in disbelief.
Daylight…
There were men helping her to her feet-men taking the plasma and saline bags from her-holding them up while more men worked on the timbers trapping Ian.
Nate’s arm was steadying her, ensuring she was OK.
‘I’m fine.’ She wasn’t. She was shaking like a leaf but there were more important things to worry about than her wobbly knees. ‘Look after Ian.’
They were lifting the big beam holding Ian. He’d fallen face forward and the beam was lying over his back. No wonder he hadn’t been able to move. But…it didn’t look crushed, she thought. There was debris holding either end, so most of its weight wasn’t on him.
Maybe he’d been lucky. Or…relatively lucky.
Nate was kneeling beside him. The morphine Gemma had administered had taken hold and he was barely conscious, but he was aware of the men around him. As Nate took his hand he even managed a feeble smile.
‘It’s good to see you, Doc.’
‘It’s good to see you, too, Ian.’ Nate took a neck brace from one of the ambulancemen and fitted it with care. ‘Hold still. We’ll shift you just as you are.’ If there was a compression fracture of the spine the last thing they needed was for it to shift. ‘Ian, don’t move your legs or arms in any way-let us do the moving. Don’t try and help us. Can you feel your fingers and toes?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘OK, don’t worry about it. Let’s get you onto a stretcher.’
Gemma helped, and Nate let her. OK, she was slight but she knew what she was doing. Moving a patient with suspected spinal injuries was a skill in itself. Nate directed with care, until he had Ian safely onto a rigid stretcher.
‘Great.’
‘Do we need an air ambulance?’ Gemma whispered out of Ian’s hearing. ‘If there’s spinal compression…’
‘I’ve got one on standby.’ He hesitated and then took a knife from his bag and sliced off the man’s boots. He’s done this before, Gemma thought. As a country GP he’d be the one who had to cope with trauma. With the boots discarded he put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, prodding him into wakefulness.
‘Ian, can you hear me?’
‘Mmm.’ Ian opened his eyes. ‘Yeah. You sound a long way off.’
‘Can you wiggle your toes for me? Try.’
They all stared at the farmer’s grubby socks as if they were the most important things in the world.
And blessedly, miraculously, they wiggled.
‘That’s great,’ Nate said, and there was a tremor of raw emotion in his voice. They weren’t looking at quadriplegia here, then. ‘And your fingers?’
Once again, there was a shaky wiggle.
‘Geez, my back hurts…’ Ian whispered. He closed his eyes and was almost immediately asleep again.
‘Let’s keep the air ambulance on standby.’ Nate straightened. ‘We’ll take him in and give him an X-ray but with luck he’ll be more bruised than broken.’ He nodded to the men at the ends of the stretcher. ‘OK, boys, load him into the ambulance. And, Gemma…’
‘I’ll take your car if you want to go in the ambulance.’ The local ambulance was manned by volunteers-which was why it had taken so long to get there. The ambulance officers were a plumber and a schoolteacher respectively. They had first-aid training and nothing else.
But there was no way Nate was letting Gemma drive herself-or do anything herself. ‘Nope.’ He threw his car keys to the fire chief. ‘We both go in the ambulance,’ he told her. ‘And you, Dr Campbell, will go lying down.’
‘No.’
‘If you don’t lie down you’ll fall down,’ he told her, and she realised suddenly that what he was saying was the truth. Reaction was setting in and her knees were threatening to give way. ‘OK.’ He looked down at her and he smiled-and what a smile! It was a smile she’d never seen in her life before.
‘What…what?’
She was too tired, too battered to think. All she knew was that Nate’s arm was around her and she was where she most wanted to be in the world.
‘How’s my patient?’
‘You mean me?’ Gemma woke to confusion and found Nate smiling down at her.
‘Who else would I mean?’
For a moment she was thoroughly confused. She was lying in her gorgeous four-poster bed. Mrs McCurdle had taken charge when she’d arrived home, clucking like a mother hen. Then Jane had arrived. ‘OK, I’m on night duty but when something like this happens we all come in-and there’s enough staff without me sticking my oar in.’ Together they’d washed Gemma’s scratches, applied enough sticking plaster to provide a small assembly line with a week’s work and settled her under the bedcovers.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ she’d said, distressed, and Jane had fixed her with a look.
‘Dr Ethan says if you try and move we’re to sit on you.’
‘I should be helping.’
‘The pilot’s dead,’ Jane had told her bluntly. ‘He’s beyond help. And Ian’s being taken through to X-ray right now. If Dr Ethan needs you then he’ll call, but for the moment we’re under instructions to keep you where you are.’
So Gemma lay and fretted, wanting to get up but aware at the same time that she was trembling all over. Mrs McCurdle provided hot tea and hot-water bottles but Gemma still couldn’t get warm.
And then Nate arrived, crossing swiftly to the bed, and her heart started hammering even harder than it had when she’d thought she might die.
‘Gemma…’ There was such tenderness in his voice that it made her blink. He sounded…different.
