was underneath before the iron was clear. He was stooping, feeling his way in, reaching her. He was lifting a cloth she’d obviously used to protect her face, wiping her face free, clearing her airway. He had a mask on her almost instantly. The initial need was clean air, more important than anything else.
She was matted with grey-white dust. Her eyes were terrified. ‘My...my baby...’
And then she faltered as she stared wildly into his eyes. Even with his mask, even with the dust, she knew him.
‘Luc?’
* * *
He felt as if all the air had been sucked from his body.
Beth!
His wife.
Not his wife. She’d walked away eight years ago. For a while he’d tried to keep in touch but it had been too hard for both of them.
‘Stay safe.’ That had been Beth’s last ask of him. ‘I know you can’t keep out of harm’s way but, oh, Luc, don’t you dare get yourself killed.’
And she’d touched his face one last time, and climbed aboard a train bound for Brisbane.
Stay safe. What a joke, when here she was, trapped by a mass of rubble, so close to death....
The nearest car alarm stopped abruptly. In reality its battery had probably died, but to Luc it felt like the world had stopped. Instinctively his hand came up to adjust his own mask, a habit entrenched by years of crisis training.
His mask was fine. His breathing was okay.
And he wasn’t hallucinating.
Beth...
‘Leg trapped,’ Kev at his side murmured, and just like that, the doctor in Luc stepped in. Thankfully, because the rest of him was floundering like a stickleback out of water.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ he told her, in a voice he could almost be proud of. It was the voice he was trained to use, strong, sure, with a trace of warmth, words to keep panic at bay.
He needed to get the whole picture. He leaned back a little so he could see all of her.
She was slumped against the remains of a pillar. There was a mound under her shirt, and she was cradling it with both hands. A slab of concrete had fallen over her left leg. Her right leg was tucked up, as if she’d tried to haul back at the last minute, but he couldn’t see her left foot.
His gaze went back to her face, noting the terror and the pain, then his gaze moved again to the mound at her chest. A child?
He put a hand on the mound and felt a wash of relief as he registered warmth and deep, even breathing. He slipped a hand under her T-shirt and located one small nose. Clear. Beth had managed to protect the airway.
Beth’s child?
This was sensory overload, but he had to focus on imperatives.
‘Your baby?’ he said, because the fact that a child was breathing didn’t necessarily mean all was well.
‘T-Toby.’
‘Toby,’ he said, and managed a smile. ‘Great name. Beth, was Toby hit? Do you know if he’s been hurt?’ He lifted the mask a little to let her speak.
‘I felt... I felt the fall.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper, muffled by the mask. ‘I crouched. Toby was under me. He seems fine. He’s fallen asleep and I’m... I’m sure it’s natural. It’s been...it’s been a big day at childcare.’
‘Huge,’ he agreed. He was acting on triage imperatives, taking her word for the child’s safety for the moment as he moved his hands down to her leg. The dust was a thick fog the light was having trouble penetrating. He winced as he reached her ankle and could feel no further.
‘It’s...stuck...’ Beth managed.
‘Well diagnosed, Dr Carmichael,’ he said, and she even managed a sort of smile.
‘I’m good.’
‘I suspect you’ve been better. Pain level, one to ten?’
‘S-Six.’
‘Honest?’
‘Nine, then,’ she managed, and then decided to be honest. ‘Okay, ten.’
And she wouldn’t be exaggerating. He looked at the slab constricting her leg and he felt sick. She’d been under here for more than an hour. Maybe two. What sort of long-term damage was being done?
There was no use going down that road. Just do what came next.
‘Relief coming up now,’ he said, loading a syringe. There were workers all around them now, shoring rubble. Kev was making his workplace as secure as he could, but Luc was noticing nothing but Beth. If he couldn’t block out fears for personal safety then he shouldn’t be here. ‘No allergies?’ He should know that. He did but he wasn’t trusting memory. He was trusting nothing.
‘N-no.’
‘What else hurts, Beth?’
‘I... My back...’
She was sitting hard against concrete, as if she’d been slammed there. She had full use of her arms and fingers, he could see it in the way she cradled the bundle on her breast. But what other damage?
First things first.
He should get the child... Toby...away to where he could be examined properly, where he was safe, but for now she was clutching him as if her own life depended on that hold. She was holding by a faint thread, he thought, and he wasn’t messing with that thread.
His priority was to do what he must to keep her safe.
And suddenly he was enveloped by a waft of memory. Ten years ago. He and Beth were newly dating, med students together. She was little, feisty, cute. Messy chestnut curls. Big brown eyes. Okay, maybe cute wasn’t a good enough description. Gorgeous.
He’d asked her out and couldn’t believe it when she’d said yes—and a month later they’d spent a weekend camping.
A week after that she was in hospital with encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus.
The day he most remembered was a week after that. She was still in hospital, fretting about missing her next assignment. He’d brought her in chocolates and flowers—corny but it was all he could think of. He was twenty-two years old, a kid, feeling guilty that she was ill.
But she was recovering. She was laughing at one of his idiotic jokes. Opening the chocolates.
And then, suddenly, she was falling back on her pillows.
‘I can’t... Luc, I feel so dizzy... My eyes...’
It was optical neuritis, a rare but appalling side-effect of encephalitis. It had meant almost instant, total blindness.
