Sent. Delivered. At least she hoped it had been delivered. Josh would be on his way from Wildfire’s tiny airstrip, and he had to cross the mountains to get to the mine. There were places up there where there was no phone reception at all.
How long before he saw it?
Did it matter? She was pretty sure there was nothing more she could do medically for Malu, except make him comfortable.
Comfortable? Rock pillows. Ha!
Josh will text when he can, she told herself, and the thought was comforting.
Why? Why Josh rather than anyone else?
She had lots of friends on Wildfire Island. She’d been working as a fly in, fly out doctor here for five years now, spending two weeks here, one week in Cairns. She was doing okay. She’d put her marriage behind her. This next stage of her life … Well, it was a gamble but it was something—someone—she desperately wanted.
Unconsciously her hand went to her belly. She’d been hit as the rocks had flown, but surely she’d protected her baby enough?
Why on earth had she risked her baby? It had been a split-second decision but now … it seemed almost criminally stupid.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to the little one in her belly, and she felt like weeping.
She had to talk to someone.
Maybe she could text Hettie. Hettie, Wildfire’s charge nurse administrator, was a real friend, whereas Josh was now merely a contact, someone she’d put to the back of her mind like she’d put old school photos to the back of her wardrobe. One day she’d throw them out.
But not yet, she decided as she told herself she couldn’t phone anyone and started groping her way around the floor. She was shoving loose rocks to the side, clearing space so she could make Malu as comfortable as possible.
Photos. The thought was suddenly weirdly front and centre. Pictures of her mother before the stroke. Photographs of her wedding day.
They were all history, she told herself. She should get rid of them all. She touched her belly again, lightly, a touch that, all at once, seemed to be almost a prayer.
‘I don’t need any of it,’ she said out loud, even though speaking was impossibly hard through the dust. ‘The past is just that. I have a future now.’
But still …
Text soon, she pleaded silently to her phone. Please, Josh?
And she went on clearing rocks.
A truck met them at the airstrip. A chopper would have been more sensible, Josh thought grimly as they transferred gear from the plane to the truck, but the instructions had been explicit. ‘We used to keep a solid clearing around the minehead but there’s been cost-cutting,’ Hettie had told them. The charge nurse at the hospital had put herself in charge of communication. ‘The jungle’s come back and even the parking lot got so rutted in the last rain it’d take hours to clear a landing site. We’ll get you from the airstrip to the mine by truck.’
If they couldn’t land the choppers, the injured would have to be trucked back to the airstrip for evacuation.
The injured …
Maddie?
The thought of where she was made Josh feel sick. He couldn’t think of her. He had to concentrate on the job at hand—but it was taking too long to reach her.
To reach it. To reach the mine.
Maddie.
With the gear loaded he jumped into the front passenger seat of the lorry. Another jeep took Beth. They turned off the coast road, skirting the plateau to the other side of the island.
He checked his phone.
Nothing.
‘There’s no reception, mate,’ the lorry driver told him. ‘Not with the plateau between us and transmission.’
‘Do you know anything more?’
‘Not more’n you, probably.’ The guy’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but it wasn’t because of hard driving. His face was grim as death. ‘We haven’t heard from Macca and Reuben. They’re mates. We know Malu and Doc Haddon are alive but they’re trapped.’ The man’s knuckles gripped even tighter. ‘Bloody Lockhart. Rips all the money from the mine and what does he do with it? He’s been told those shoring timbers needed replacing or the mine sealed. And where is he? Not here facing what he’s done, that’s for sure. It won’t be him crawling down the mine trying to get them out.’
‘That’ll be Max Lockhart?’ Josh ventured, trying not to think of anyone crawling down the mine to get … Maddie out. He was dredging up stuff he’d seen in the press about this island group. ‘Isn’t Max Lockhart the owner of Wildfire?’
‘Yeah.’ The guy spat out the window of the moving truck. ‘But we’ve hardly seen hide nor hair of Max for years. Ian’s his brother. He took over day-to-day running of the mine a few years back. He’s supposed to be running the island for his brother, but as far as we can see he’s just out for what he can get. He’s somewhere overseas now. The mine got dangerous, the money stopped and he left. And now this mess … How the hell are we going to get ‘em out?’ There was a moment’s silence and then he swore with an intensity Josh had never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
‘And … Doc Haddon?’ Josh ventured, not because he wanted to but because he was almost forced to say it.
The knuckles kept their death grip but the lines on the man’s face softened. ‘She’s a great kid. Well, maybe she’s not a kid any more but I’m sixty, mate, so she’s a kid to me. She’s been on the island for five years now. The wife got shingles last year. Doc saw her in the market, saw the bumps. We’d thought they were just bites but before we knew it Doc had her at the clinic. She gave her this fancy medicine right on the spot. The shingles was bad enough but Ally—that’s our daughter—she looked it up on the internet and said if Mum hadn’t taken the stuff it could have been ten times worse. And every day Doc found an excuse to pop in. When she was off island she got Caroline or Ana to come instead. You know that nerve pain they get? Real bad, it was, but Doc Maddie was right onto it. She cares for everyone like that.’
And then his face hardened again. ‘They say she just ran in. Everyone else was running out and someone shouted that Malu was bleeding so hard the guys carrying him had to stop. She grabbed her bag and ran. She’s a hero.’
And his voice cracked with emotion as he swiped his arm across his face and sniffed.
Josh’s phone pinged. He glanced down, trying not to hope, but the word on his screen read Maddie.
He couldn’t read the message. For some dumb reason his eyes were blurry, too. He had to do a matching swipe before he could make it out.
I’m not going anywhere. Just trying to decide which rock pillow to use. It seems I have a choice. Have given Malu morphine. He’s suffered major blood loss. Have given two litres of saline. I only have one more and want to hold it in reserve. Heart rate a hundred and twenty. Only
