Finding His Wife, Finding A Son. Marion Lennox
lower limb, forcing build-up of pressure in one section and loss of pressure in another. The long-term damage of sustained crushing was...unthinkable.
‘Do what you have to do,’ Beth said weakly, and Blake looked down into her face.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Blake Cooper. You are...’
‘This is Beth,’ Luc said hoarsely, and then he added, because it seemed absurdly important for Blake to know. ‘Blake, Beth’s a doctor. She’s also...my ex-wife.’
There was a moment’s stillness while Blake took that on board. He searched Luc’s face and Luc could see him reassemble priorities. And then it was business as usual.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Blake said, smiling down at Beth. ‘Though I could wish the circumstances were different.’ He took her wrist and felt her pulse, his face set in the lines of someone accustomed to triage, priorities. And Luc knew Beth was a priority. The risk of delayed treatment with compartment syndrome meant the possibility of a lifetime of pain, numbness or even amputation.
‘We need to get the pressure in your foot checked now,’ he said to Beth. ‘You know what’s going on?’
He’d accepted Beth’s medical background without question. ‘I... Yes,’ Beth managed.
‘Okay, I’m taking over,’ Blake told her, with another fast glance at Luc. And Luc knew the glance. It was an order.
Step away, Luc. You’re now a relative, too close to be objective and you need to let me take things from here.
‘Beth, we need Luc on triage,’ he told Beth. ‘You know there’s a small hospital here? I’m taking you through into Theatre. If I think there’s pressure differential—and by the look of it I suspect that’s inevitable—then I’ll make an incision to decompress. Your ankle will need to be stabilised. That can be done in Sydney but the pressure needs to be taken off now. Is that okay with you?’
‘I... Fine,’ Beth managed. ‘But... Toby?’
Blake looked a question at Luc and Luc managed to haul his attention from Beth to answer.
‘Toby’s Beth’s son. Twenty months old. He was brought out half an hour ago.’
Some of the tension on Blake’s face eased. ‘A toddler. I saw him. Sam did the assessment and he’s fine. He woke as she was examining him, demanding someone called Wobit...’
‘Robert,’ Beth said faintly. ‘Rabbit.’
‘Hey, we guessed right.’ Blake smiled down at her. ‘Apparently he was dropped, but one of the paramedics remembered and scooted over and rescued him.’
‘We’ve also found your bag and purse,’ Luc told her, still trying to keep his voice steady. ‘How good are we? But now... Is there anyone we can call to look after Toby?’
‘He has to come with me,’ Beth managed. ‘If I need to go to Sydney, Toby comes too. Luc, please... I need you to promise... I need...’
And something settled deep within.
‘It’s okay,’ Luc said, and touched her face. ‘I’ll take care of him. I’ll take care of you.’
And she managed a smile.
And then something odd happened. It was almost as if a ghost had touched him on the shoulder. He was looking down into Beth’s grimed, dust-caked, filthy face, but all he saw was the smile. And in that smile...strangely this wasn’t the Beth he’d remembered for the long years of divorce, the Beth who’d been his wife, the Beth he’d cared for for so long. Despite the filth, the fear, the pain, somehow this was Beth as he’d first seen her—a fellow med student laughing at him over a bench in the pathology lab. Her eyes had been sparkling with mischief. Someone must have made a joke. He couldn’t remember what it was now. All he remembered was how he’d been caught in that smile, almost mesmerised.
He’d forgotten, he thought. In all those years of need and care, and then the long separation, he’d forgotten what a beautiful woman she was. Stunning.
How could he be remembering now? What the...?
‘I’ll take it from here,’ Blake told him, looking at him strangely.
‘Thanks, Blake.’
He had work to do. He had to leave—but heaven only knew the effort it cost him to move away.
From...his wife?
THE SURGERY BLAKE performed was primitive and fast, making incisions to equalise pressure and ensure that blood supply wasn’t compromised before Beth could safely be transported. But Luc wasn’t involved. With Beth in Theatre, with Toby safe, he needed to be back in the plaza.
In a sense they were lucky, Luc thought as he worked on. The injuries stayed within the scope of what he and the team could handle. If there’d been compromised breathing of more than one patient or, as sometimes happened in these appalling situations, the necessity for amputation in order to get people out, Beth’s foot would have dropped on the triage list and Blake would have been needed out here in the plaza. But the efforts of Luc and the rest of the team were enough.
Not enough, though, for the five people pronounced dead at the scene, or the pilot of the plane, but Luc had worked in enough disasters to know how to block tragedy and keep going.
But he couldn’t block the thought of Beth. The thought of what was happening in Theatre. The vision of her trapped and wounded in the rubble. The feel of her hands clutching her child...her child! Had she remarried? Where had she been all these years?
How could he have let her go? There’d seemed no choice—she’d given him no choice—but the rush of memory from that smile was doing his head in. Did some other man have the right to that smile?
He was trying desperately to focus but when he finished treating a teenager with a lacerated arm, he turned and saw Blake and he almost sagged with relief.
‘O-okay?’ Hell, where was his voice? And what was he doing, asking if she was okay? She was suffering from an injured foot, not anything life-threatening.
‘She’ll live,’ Blake said, surveying him cautiously. Luc was known on the team for staying calm in any situation. He needed to get a grip now. Now!
‘I’ve done what I can,’ Blake told him. ‘She has a fractured ankle but seemingly no other significant injury. The main problem is crush syndrome—compartmentalising—but I’ve done what I can to equalise pressure and I’m optimistic. But she needs an orthopod and a decent podiatric surgeon to evaluate muscle injury. We’re evacuating her on the next chopper and I’m sending you back, too.’
‘If I’m needed...’
Once again he got that careful, appraising look. Blake and Luc swapped in and out of the role of chief medic on site. They were both accustomed to checking team members for stress, and maybe—definitely—Blake could see Luc’s stress now.
‘We have enough medics on the ground here,’ he said now, roughly.
And Luc thought, Dammit, he’s worried. About me?
‘I’ve been talking to the local doc. Apparently this town has three doctors. Maryanne Clarkson’s in her fifties, solid, unflappable. She’s working her butt off in Casualty now. There’s been an older doctor called Ron McKenzie, in his seventies, and your Beth. Ron and Beth run a clinic in the plaza, right by the car park. Ron’s one of the casualties. Maryanne tells me your Beth’s a single mum with no family here. Toby, her son, usually stays in childcare in the centre while she works. That’s in the plaza, too. The staff did a magnificent job getting the kids out but they’re all traumatised. Maryanne says that means there’s no obvious person to care for Toby, and no one’s stepped