great,’ Nick said. ‘She wants to speak to you. I’ll hand her over.’
‘Fran, you won’t believe how tiny they are,’ Caro gushed with maternal pride. ‘I can’t wait until you see them. Nick’s going to send you some photos via his phone. We haven’t decided on names yet. We can’t quite make up our minds—silly, isn’t it? We’ve been arguing about it for the last ten minutes. We’ve called Mum and Dad, they’re in Italy right now, Florence, I think, or maybe it was Venice. Oh, Frannie, I’m so happy.’
‘I’m happy for you,’ Fran said, trying to ignore the tiny pang of envy that trickled through her. Caro was only two years older than her and here she was happily married with two gorgeous babies while she had nothing but a career she was too frightened to return to and no man in her life to love her the way she longed to be loved. She chided herself for being so bitter. Stuff happened in life, and it wasn’t always the white picket fence and roses spilling over stuff. It was hard stuff, challenging stuff, stuff that changed everything in the rapid rise and fall of an eyelid.
When the photos of the babies came through a few minutes later, Fran allowed herself a few self-indulgent tears. She had so rarely given in to tears. Her training had toughened her up, perhaps too much, or so her mother thought, and her gruff show-no-emotion father, too, when it came to that. But now alone in a big seaside house with just a ragamuffin dog for company, Fran sobbed for her lost life, for the carefree girl she had once been and might never be again.
She didn’t hear the doorbell at first, but then Rufus began to bark and scratch at the door. The doorbell was ringing continuously, as if someone was repeatedly stabbing at the button. Then someone was thumping on the door. Annoyed at the intrusion, Fran blew her nose, stuffed the tissue into her bra, and cautiously opened the heavy front door.
One of Caro and Nick’s neighbours from two doors away practically fell into the hallway, his face marble white, his body shaking. ‘Dr Nin? Caro told me you’re a doctor. Quickly—come on, you’ve got to save her. My daughter…‘ He started to cry, great heaving sobs, each one sounding as if it was shredding his chest. ‘My d-daughter, Ella, my baby fell into the pool. She’s not breathing.’
Fran pushed Rufus back indoors, stepped onto the verandah and shut the door. ‘Who is with your daughter now?’ she asked, her heart thudding as adrenalin kicked in.
‘My wife,’ he said, choking back another sob. ‘She’s done first aid but nothing’s working. You’ve got to help us. Please, quickly. Come on.’
‘Have you called an ambulance?’ she asked as she hurried after the distressed man into the neighbouring property, her stomach knotting with dread at what she might find.
‘Yes, yes, yes, but they won’t get here till it’s too late. They’re way out of town, on some other call. Jane thought of you. You’ve got to help us, please, please, come on!’
‘It’s all right…Joe, isn’t it?’ Fran said, recalling his name. Caro had said what a lovely family the Pelleris were, new to the town but fitting in well with everyone. Joe was a mechanic at the local service station, Jane a stay-at-home mum with three children—a toddler and two boys.
It was only a hundred metres to the Pelleris’ house but Fran felt her heart rate escalating with sickening speed. A brain without oxygen couldn’t survive for long. Children might last a bit longer, but even if revived, it might only be the heart and lungs that functioned. The brain could be damaged or even worse—the child might be dead. The child some parents brought into the hospital was not always the child they took home.
Every second was vital.
Every second counted.
Every second hammered at Fran’s chest as she pushed through the garden gate towards the house.
Jane Pelleri was trying her best to do CPR on the baby in the family room just off the pool area, with the two little boys distressed and crying in the background.
‘Jane, I’ll take over now,’ Fran said in a calm, doctor-in-control tone, even though her stomach was roiling with doubts and fears that she wouldn’t be up to the task. This was no well-equipped A and E department. This was a family’s home with baby and toddler photographs on the walls, not lifesaving resuscitation gear. Fear gripped at Fran’s heart with cruel claws. What if she couldn’t do this? What if she failed? Her stomach churned with nausea, her skin broke out in a sheen of perspiration and her hands shook almost uncontrollably as she tried to assess the situation.
The child was on the very springy sofa, which had made the mother’s efforts at cardiac compression largely ineffective. Fran placed the infant, who looked about eighteen months old, onto her back on the carpeted floor, and tilted her head slightly back to open the airway. There seemed to be the remains of a biscuit in the child’s mouth, which Fran swept out with her finger. The child was clearly not breathing and appeared cyanosed. Supporting Ella’s head, Fran covered the nose and mouth with her mouth and gave five puffs, then felt for a pulse over the inner arm, then the neck.
Either there was none, or her lack of recent clinical experience was letting her down and she just wasn’t sensitive enough to feel it, she thought as another pang of doubt stung her. She had to assume the child’s heart had stopped. Using two fingers, Fran gently compressed the child’s chest over the lower sternum, twenty rapid compressions for each couple of breaths.
Was that the right ratio? she thought in panic. It was higher in adults, lower in children and lower in infants. Oh, God, what was the ratio? Had her skills and training been punched out of her along with her confidence in A and E that day? Her brain became foggy with fear, dread and doubts. She couldn’t do this. She was failing. She was not going to be able to save this child. How would she face the parents? What about those two little boys? Oh, God, even the photos on the walls seemed to be staring down at her in accusation. You are a failure. You are no good at this. Look at what you have done.
Fran vaguely registered a siren sounding and it seemed mere seconds before Jacob Hawke was kneeling beside her, talking to her, but it was as if it was in a vacuum. She couldn’t hear him; she saw his lips moving but it was as if the sound had been muffled by her fear.
‘For God’s sake, Dr Nin,’ Jacob bit out roughly, finally shaking her out of her stasis. ‘Help me here. Keep her steady while I do the mouth-to-mouth.’
Fran blinked herself into action and held the child in position, watching in numb silence as Jacob determinedly worked at the breaths and compressions for what seemed like hours, made worse by the howling boys and now hysterical mother. Had the child’s colour improved, or was it Fran’s imagination?
Unexpectedly, the infant coughed, then seemed to convulse. She vomited up some water, coughed again, and then started wailing, the colour of her face turning from lavender to cherry red.
In the distance another wailing sound could be heard, this one the reassuring whine of the ambulance approaching at speed.
‘Mummy-y!’ the toddler croaked over another cough.
‘Keep her on her side,’ Jacob directed the child’s mother. ‘She’ll be fine but she needs to go to hospital for a proper check of her airways and lungs.’
Fran sat back on her heels, her breathing hurting her chest as cautious relief flooded through her. Ella was alive. Ella was breathing. Ella was alive…
Jacob met her eyes, something in his ice-cold gaze ripping through her like shards of ice.
