was so bored with solitaire he’d resorted to cheating to finish each game faster. It defeated the purpose, but he’d read every journal he could get his hands on. He’d checked and rechecked equipment. He’d paced. He was driving the rest of the staff at Cairns Air Sea Rescue Service nuts. He was going out of his mind.
No one in Northern Queensland seemed to have done so much as stand on a spider for the whole week. He’d been rostered for patient transfers, and every one of them had been routine. Patients had either been heading home, or were being flown from the city hospital to the country hospitals where they could continue recuperation among friends. There’d not been a single emergency amongst them.
‘If this keeps up I’m joining the army,’ Josh grumbled to Beth, his paramedic colleague. ‘Maybe there’s a place for me in the bomb squad. Do you suppose there’s any call for bomb disposal any place around here?’
‘You could try cleaning our kitchen as practice,’ Beth said morosely. ‘School holidays and three teenage boys? I’d defy a hand grenade to make more mess. You need to try a touch of domesticity if you want explosions. Consider marriage.’
‘Been there, got the T-shirt,’ he muttered.
‘That’s right, with Maddie, but that’s ancient history.’ Beth and Josh had joined the service at the same time, and after years of working together there was little they didn’t know about each other. ‘You hardly stuck around long enough to feel the full force of domestic bliss.’ And then her smile faded. ‘Whoops, sorry, Josh, I know you lost the baby, but still … It was so long ago. You and Karen, you think you might …?’
‘No!’ He said it with more vehemence than he’d meant to use. In fact, he startled himself. They were in the staff office, in the corner of the great hangar that held the service planes. The door was open and Josh’s vehemence echoed out into the vaulted hangar. ‘No,’ he repeated, more mildly. ‘Domesticity doesn’t interest either of us.’
‘And you’re seeing less of each other,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘Moving on? Seeing we’re quiet, you want to check some dating sites? We might just find the one.’
‘Beth …’
‘You’re thirty-six years old, Josh. Okay, you still have the looks. Indeed you do. It drives me nuts, seeing the way old ladies melt when you smile. But your looks’ll fade, my lad. You’ll be on your walker before you know it, gumming your crusts, bewailing not having a grandchild to dandle …’
‘I’m definitely applying for the bomb squad,’ he retorted, and tossed a sheaf of paper at her. ‘Just to get away from you. Sort these for a change. They’re already sorted but so what? Give me some peace so I can download a bomb squad application.’
And then the radio buzzed into life. They both made a grab, but Beth got there first. She listened to the curt instructions on the other end and her face set.
The tossed papers lay ignored on the floor. Josh was already reaching for his jacket. He knew that look. ‘What?’ he demanded as she finished.
‘Trouble,’ Beth said, snagging her jacket, as well. ‘Mine collapse on Wildfire Island. One smashed leg, needs evac to the orthopods in Cairns. Plane’s leaving in ten.’
‘Mine collapse?’ He was snapping queries as he got organised. ‘Just the one injury?’
‘He was injured at the start of it. One of the supports collapsed. Fell on this guy’s leg but the rest of the idiots didn’t see it as a sign they should evacuate. But now …’ She took a deep breath. ‘The collapse looks serious. We’re working on early information but one of the local doctors is trapped, as well.’
One of the local doctors.
Wildfire.
And something inside seemed to freeze.
Beth stopped, too. ‘Josh? What is it?’
‘You said Wildfire. Part of the M’Langi group?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s where Maddie’s working.’
‘Maddie?’ Her eyes widened as she understood. ‘Your Maddie?’
‘We’re not married.’ It was a dumb thing to say but it was all he could think of.
‘I know that. You haven’t been married for years. So how do you know she’s there?’
‘I sort of … keep tabs. She’s working fly in, fly out, two weeks there, one week on the mainland. Her mum’s still in a nursing home in Cairns.’
‘Right.’ Beth started gathering gear again and he moved into automatic mode and did the same. There was a moment’s loaded silence, and then …
‘You mean you stalk her?’ she demanded, but he knew it was Beth’s way of making things light. Making a joke …
‘I do not stalk!’
‘But you keep tabs.’ There was little to add to their bags, only the drugs they kept locked away or refrigerated. ‘It sounds creepy.’
‘We keep in touch. Sort of. Christmas and birthdays. And I take note of where she’s registered to work. In case …’ He hesitated. ‘Hell, I don’t know. In case of nothing.’
Beth’s face softened. She clipped her bag closed, then touched his shoulder as she straightened. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married twice, remember. Once your ex, always your ex. Unless it’s nasty there’s always a little bit of them under your skin. But, hey, there’s a sizeable med centre on Wildfire. The trapped doctor doesn’t have to be Maddie.’
‘Right.’ But suddenly he was staring into middle distance. He knew … Somehow he knew.
‘Earth to Josh,’ Beth said, not so gently now. ‘The plane’s waiting. Let’s go.’
The crash had come from nowhere. One minute Maddie was working efficiently in the dim light, worried but not terrified.
Now she was terrified.
She needed to block out the dust and dark and fear.
Where was her patient?
She’d lost her torch. She’d fallen, stumbling in terror as the rock wall had crashed around her. She was okay, she decided, pushing her way cautiously to her knees. There was still breathable air if she covered her mouth and breathed through a slit in her fingers. But she couldn’t see.
Somewhere in here was a guy with a life-threatening bleed.
Where was the torch?
Phone app. She practically sobbed with relief as she remembered an afternoon a few weeks ago, sitting on the hospital terrace with Wildfire’s charge nurse, Hettie, while Caroline had shown them apps they could put on their cell phones.
Most she had no use for, but the torch app had looked useful for things such as checking it was a gecko on her nose and not a spider in the middle of the night. The disadvantages of living in the tropics. But now … Yes! Her phone was in her jacket pocket. She grabbed it and flicked it on.
