her ears and took a deep breath. Just keep moving forward. She turned and walked toward the coffee cart, needing the java jolt and sweet taste of hazelnut more than ever.
The queue for coffee was long and congenial and she chatted to people about the weather, signed a petition to save the old bridge, and listened to concerns about how the new fishing quotas would affect the town’s main industry. Getting to know Port was all part and parcel of being a country GP.
‘There you go, Doc. One skinny hazelnut latte, super-sized.’
‘Thanks, Jade. It smells divine.’ Kirby gripped the cup and headed toward a free table. She put her tomatoes and coffee down and slid into the chair. Carefully easing the tight-fitting plastic lid off the top of the cup, she admired the foamy froth, took a deep anticipatory breath and lifted the coffee to her lips.
The frantic barking of a dog and yelling voices stalled her sip and she turned sharply toward the commotion.
Jake, Gaz’s ten-year-old son, came running toward her, his chest heaving and his face pinched and white. ‘Dr Kirby, Dad can’t breathe!’
She leapt to her feet and yelled out to Jade in the coffee cart, ‘Get the St John’s kit from the hall.’ Then she ran, following the boy back toward his father. The crowd opened up around them, easing their passage through the closely lined stalls. She hurdled some packing cases and in the distance she could see Gaz leaning forward, coughing violently and trying to breathe.
His solid height and weight obscured the person who was helping him. Someone had his right arm around Gaz’s waist and his hand pressed firmly against the fisherman’s chest. Thankfully someone who obviously knew first aid. Kirby hoped he was giving a sharp blow to Garry’s back at chest level.
Kirby ducked around the craft stalls, concentrating on her feet missing cables and desperately wishing for a more direct route to get to her patient. She looked up again. Gaz continued to cough, but his colour was fading from bright red to white.
As she got closer she saw the first-aider was her farmer. He’d just placed both his hands under Garry’s armpits and thrust inwards. Surprise washed through her that he knew this newer and less damaging technique. Most first-aiders still used the older Heimlich manoeuvre. She prayed that whatever was choking Garry would be projected out of his mouth soon.
Just as she reached them, Garry slumped forward, his face blue. Instinctively, Kirby threw herself at him, her shoulder catching him on the chest, preventing him from falling. ‘I’m—’
‘Help me get him down.’ The farmer’s voice held an unexpected authoritative command and a tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’m a doctor, just do as I say.’
Kirby staggered under the unexpected words and Gaz’s weight as she tried to grab his arms. A farmer-cum-doctor? But she had no time to think about that strange combination. All her concentration was on the fisherman who struggled for every life-sustaining breath.
‘Doctor!’ Jade ran up clutching the first-aid backpack which Kirby immediately put on the ground and opened.
‘I need the pocket mask,’ the doctor and Kirby both said at the same time.
Questioning green eyes framed with thick brown lashes appraised her as she helped him lower Garry onto the ground. ‘I’m Kirby Atherton, the town’s doctor.’
‘Excellent. I’m Nick. Let’s get him onto his side and I’ll try more lateral chest thrusts.’ He knelt next to their patient, placing his hands firmly over the ribcage. Using his weight, he pressed with a downward and forward movement.
‘I’ll check his airway.’ Kirby rolled a now blue Garry onto his side and put her finger inside his mouth, hoping desperately to feel a foreign object.
‘Anything?’ The word held hope and dread.
‘Nothing.’ She rolled him back, checked his carotid pulse and chest movements, and called out to Jake. ‘What was Dad eating when he started choking?’
The trembling boy tried to speak. ‘St-stra-strawberry. He threw it in the air and catched it in his mouth.’
‘It will have lodged in his trachea.’ Nick voiced her exact thought.
‘Starting mouth-to-mouth.’ She applied the pocket mask over Garry’s mouth and lowered her head. He needed air but she had no idea if she could she manage to force any past the obstruction.
‘Find me something I can put down his throat that will grip. Try the jewellery stall.’
Kirby heard Nick’s mellow voice instructing Jade as she counted and puffed five breaths into the unconscious man.
The moment she raised her head, Nick applied the same pressure again over Gaz’s ribs, thrusting downward and forward.
Kirby rechecked Gaz’s airway, hoping to feel the firm fruit. Her stomach rolled. ‘Still nothing.’ She gave Gaz another five breaths, panic starting to ripple through her. If they couldn’t secure his airway soon, he’d go into cardiac arrest.
‘I’ve got these.’ Jade came running back and handed Nick a pair of long, thin pliers.
Kirby’s fingers detected a faint beat. ‘Pulse, weak and thready. He’s going to need an emergency tracheostomy to bypass the blockage and avoid arresting. Jenny, pass me the scalpel blade.’
‘Hang on a mo.’ Nick spoke quietly but decisively. ‘Give me half a minute with these sort of forceps and see if I grab the strawberry.’
Kirby didn’t want to waste any more precious time. ‘But we don’t have a laryngoscope for you to visualise the trachea.’
Green eyes flashed with ready understanding. ‘I’ve done it before in EMD.’
A blurry image played at the edge of her mind but immediately faded, overtaken by her focus on the emergency. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘Steady his head for me.’
‘Will do.’ His confidence reassured her and she placed her hands over her patient’s ears, two fingers still resting on his carotid pulse.
The scream of the ambulance’s siren broke over the tense crowd, the sound both urgent and comforting as it brought the medical equipment they really needed.
‘Here goes.’ Nick shot her a look that said, Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and lowered the thin, silver pliers into the slack throat of the unconscious man. ‘Can’t feel anything, damn it.’ His long fingers carefully controlled all the minute movements with stunning expertise.
Kirby kept her gaze on Nick’s hand, willing it to find the obstruction. Time spiralled out, each second an agonising wait. Garry’s pulse suddenly faltered under her fingers. ‘No pulse. Get out now. I’m starting CPR.’
Nick immediately pulled his left arm back, and a soft, half-dissolved strawberry hung limply from the tip of the forceps. ‘Got it. Roll him over.’
Kirby moved her patient’s head to the side as he started coughing violently and vomited up a stream of pale pink liquid onto the ground.
Relief surged through her as she checked
