Читать книгу Medical Romance January 2017 Books 1 -6 - Marion Lennox - Страница 19
ОглавлениеRHONDA RETURNED THE next day. Hilda was arriving later, with their father. ‘There’s been a hitch in his visa arrangements but he should be here in two weeks,’ Rhonda told Tasha, and Tasha thought that was excellent. That’d give her two weeks to finalise things here and find somewhere to live in Summer Bay.
‘How’s Tom?’ Rhonda asked, and Tasha thought of all the things she could say—but didn’t.
‘His recovery’s remarkable,’ she said instead. ‘He still has left-sided weakness but it’s fading almost to unnoticeable. Another month and he should be back to normal.’
‘But you’re only staying for two more weeks?’ Rhonda looked at her sharply. ‘And you’ve moved in here. Conflict? Tom’s women?’
‘He’s not dating at the moment but that’s part of it,’ she agreed. ‘I didn’t want to get in the way of his lifestyle.’
‘You do know he doesn’t enjoy his lifestyle very much,’ Rhonda told her. Rhonda’s luggage was still in the hall and the cats were tangling themselves round her legs in ecstasy, but she was homing right in on Tom as if she’d been worrying the entire time she’d been away. She probably had.
‘There are lots of good women in Cray Point,’ Rhonda told her. ‘Our Dr Tom is quite a catch. He’s always been a looker, and he’s lovely. Clever and skilled and kind. But even when he was a teen he dated girls who were older, more experienced, less likely to be clingy. His mother used to worry. Why didn’t he find himself a nice girl who wanted to settle down and have babies? We could see it, though. His mother was a watering pot. She never disguised the fact that Tom’s father broke her heart, and she never let Tom forget the fact that he looked just like his father.
‘“Don’t you ever do that to a girl,” she’d say over and over, and she’d say it to everyone. “I do hope he doesn’t turn out like his dad.” She was a beautiful ninnyhammer, our Marjorie, and I reckon it’s affected Tom all his life. If you say something to a child often enough, he’ll believe it. At least no one’s saying it to him now but it’s probably too late. How can we get our Dr Tom to commit?’
She already had, Tasha thought bleakly. He had committed.
But she’d done just what his mother had done.
She’d accused him of being like his father. And his brother.
Worse, she’d believed it. A part of her still did believe it and she wasn’t brave enough to walk away from that belief.
* * *
For the next few days things seemed to slow down. Life felt in slow motion. It was a strange sensation but that was how she felt. She had slight morning sickness but not much. She kept waiting for the signs of miscarriage but none came. She kept feeling the pregnancy was some sort of dream, but a week later, when she went to see the charge doctor of the Summer Bay medical group about a job, she confessed that her work would be part-time. And because Adam Myers’ specialty was obstetrics, she confessed why and ended up having a full examination.
‘Lovely and normal,’ Adam told her, and when she told him what she was most afraid of, he pulled the stats up on the internet and told her what the chances were of it happening again.
‘Somewhere between infinitesimal and none,’ he told her. ‘We’ll scan at twenty weeks. A good paediatric cardiologist should pick up on any problems then, but I’m willing to bet my new employee’s monthly wage cheque on a good outcome.’ His kindly face creased into a smile of concern. ‘It’ll be great to have you on board, Tasha. Having a new emergency physician will be amazing. But tell me...’ He hesitated. ‘Why are you leaving Cray Point? I hear Tom Blake’s desperate for a partner.’
‘Tom’s my ex-brother-in-law,’ she said, trying to sound diffident. As if it was of no moment. ‘That’s why I came here in the first place, to help him while he was ill. But I don’t want to work with him.’
Adam nodded and then looked studiously down at Tasha’s notes. ‘And your baby’s father?’ he said gently. ‘Would he be on the scene?’
And there was no use hiding it. If things went to plan, this man would be delivering her baby, and Tom had made it quite clear he wanted to be there for her.
‘Tom’s the father.’
She waited for shock. She waited for condemnation but none came. Instead, Adam searched her face with concern. He was a man in his sixties, with the air of a doctor who’d seen it all, and was surprised by nothing. ‘I know Tom well,’ he said at last. ‘I suspect he’ll make an excellent father, if he’s involved.’
‘That’s what he wants,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not sure it’s what I want. This pregnancy...wasn’t exactly planned.’
He shook his head in mock disgust. ‘Really? I have no idea what they teach medical students these days, but I’m thinking I need to write to the people who trained you.’ There was another silence while who knew what went through the obstetrician’s head, but finally he beamed. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Planned or not, you should make this work. You and Tom... Cray Point and Summer Bay aren’t so far apart. Barring complications, you can deliver here in Summer Bay hospital. We’re small but we’re good. You’ll find this a supportive practice and with Tom supporting you as well...’
‘I don’t need his support.’
‘There’s no one I’d rather have as my support person,’ Adam said gently. ‘As a doctor, Tom Blake is one in a million. I have no idea what he’d be like as a partner or a father but I’m guessing good.’ And then he shook his head. ‘But that’s none of my business, so all I’ll say is welcome to Summer Bay, Dr Raymond. We’ll be very happy to have you on board.’
* * *
She still had a week to go at Cray Point. She drove back feeling faintly ill but it wasn’t morning sickness this time.
Why was everyone telling her what a great guy Tom was? Why did she feel that everyone was seeing something she couldn’t see?
Or was it the other way round? Was it that she was seeing—fearing?—something that wasn’t there?
Tom wasn’t pressing her. After that one night on the back steps with the cat and the pregnancy stick he seemed to have retired into the background. He let her be.
She still saw him in morning surgery but she’d stopped going to rehab with him. As far as she knew he was back to setting candles and flowers on the veranda.
‘You really are a coward.’ She said it out loud as she drove back along the coast road but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her fear was too deeply ingrained.
‘I love him,’ she said out loud, but admitting it made the knot of fear tug even tighter.
‘So I’m a coward,’ she told herself. ‘I can’t take a chance, but to do anything else seemed impossible.’
Tom wouldn’t pressure her. He’d be there for her baby and that was lovely. Sort of.
If she only had the courage...
‘I don’t,’ she whispered. ‘And there’s not a thing I can do about it.’
* * *
Three more days.
Hilda and her father were due back on Tuesday. Tom still wasn’t operating at a hundred percent but he was coping.
There was a nice little hospital apartment waiting for her at Summer Bay.
She’d done what she’d come for. She needed to move on.
With baby.
But she was trying very hard not to think of baby. It was so early. She could still miscarry. Anything could happen.
‘You’re a wound-up ball of emotion,’ Rhonda told her. ‘Why not relax, dear? Tom wants to take over. Why not let him? Enjoy your last weekend. You could even go surfing. Tom reckons he’ll be back in the surf any day now.’
‘All the more reason for me not to relax,’ she snapped, and then she recovered and apologised.
What was happening to her? She was turning into a grouch.
Maybe that’s what terror did.
She spent Saturday morning thinking about packing but most of the time she sat and stared out the window to the bay beyond. She needed to organise her own car. She needed to organise her new home, to move on, but she seemed trapped in a fog of lethargy.
‘It’ll be fine,’ she told herself. ‘I have a great new job. I have a neat apartment and I can choose a lovely new car. I’ll...’
And then she paused because she couldn’t think past that.
I’ll what?
Carry this baby to term? Have a safe delivery? Live happily every after?
Without Tom.
Without courage.
She was feeling so bleak she was close to tears, but tears were stupid. When the phone rang she was so desperate for distraction she almost ran to it, but Rhonda beat her. And as Tasha reached the hall she saw Rhonda’s face lose colour.
‘It’s Tom,’ Rhonda said, putting the phone down, and the look on her face scared Tasha to the bone.
‘Another bleed?’ Please, God, not another bleed.
‘Tasha, no, sorry. I’ve scared you more than Karen’s just scared me. No, Tom’s okay.’
‘Karen?’
‘You know Karen, our taxi driver. She’s rung to say three lads have been bird-nesting on the cliffs above the bluff. Alex, James and Rowan. Of course, those three again! Of all the idiots... It’s loose shale and a sheer drop to the rocks and surf below. Stupid, stupid kids. It was Rowan who almost killed himself last time and came close to killing Tom with him. Rowan only suffered bruises but Tom ended up with a cerebral bleed. Now it’s James at the bottom of the cliff, and Tom’s saying he’s climbing down to help him. With his weak leg and arm. Karen says can we come because someone’s got to stop him, but the lad’s in trouble and Tom says he’s going anyway.’
* * *
It should take ten minutes to get from Rhonda’s to the bluff but Rhonda covered it in what seemed two, driving like someone in a James Bond movie and swearing all the time.
‘Idiot, idiot, idiot,’ she kept muttering. ‘He thinks he has to save the world. Where would this town be without him, and he risks it all for one stupid kid? Again.’
‘Do we know how badly James is hurt?’ Tasha asked in a small voice as Rhonda took the next turn on two wheels. Tasha hardly noticed.
‘Broken leg. Pete Simmonds has gone down—they called him first because he’s a climber. An abseiler. He went down, risking himself, but he says there’s hardly room on the ledge for one. Apparently he’s anchored James and come up again to let a medic go down. Karen says there’s something urgent needs doing with James’s leg that can’t wait for the rescue chopper. So Tom’s saying he’s going down and Pete’s just realised how weak Tom’s leg is and Karen says you need to talk sense into him.’
Talk sense into a Blake boy? She didn’t think so but Rhonda swung the car off the road onto the bluff and skidded to a halt beside the Cray Point fire truck, and Tasha was left with no choice but to try.
Tom was already kitted up. He was wearing a harness. He was kneeling by the cliff edge, sorting gear into a backpack, looking grim. He didn’t look up as Tasha approached. He didn’t see her until she put her hand on her shoulder and held. Hard.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, and she was a bit stunned by how her voice came out. She sounded angry.
But he kept right on packing. ‘I need to go down,’ he told her. ‘James has a compound leg fracture. Pete says it’s bent back at an impossible angle and the foot’s cold to the touch. He’s conscious, ten feet above the surf. The rescue chopper’s caught up with an overturned boat and might be an hour. I’m going down now.’
‘Have you abseiled this type of cliff before?’
‘Pete’s told me how.’
‘So that’s a no?’
‘I can do it.’
‘With a gammy leg and a gammy arm.’
‘There’s no choice and you know it.’ Still he didn’t look up. ‘If I don’t go down, he loses his leg. He might die.’
He was moving morphine ampules from his bag into the backpack. She stooped, took the ampoules from him and put them in herself.
‘Just pack the light stuff,’ she said. ‘You can lower saline, oxygen, anything heavy I need when I’m down there. I’ll need a thinner loop line attached as well so we can guide stuff down.’ She looked up at a man who must be Pete—he was big, burly and carrying a coil of businesslike rope. ‘Can we organise that?’
‘Sure, Doc,’ Pete said with an uneasy glance at Tom. ‘I’m so sorry I can’t do stuff myself but I never learned any first aid. Blood makes me want to pass out and the last thing the kid needs down there is me unconscious on top of him.’ He hesitated. ‘So you reckon you’re going down instead of Tom?’
‘Of course I am.’
Tom sat back on his heels and stared.
‘Of course you’re not. I can do this.’
‘You might be able to,’ she said, meeting his gaze square on, ‘if you’re lucky. But you have no climbing skills and you still have left-sided weakness. Pete, what are the odds on a first-time climber making it?’
‘I don’t like it,’ Pete said. ‘It’s loose shale. You can’t depend on footholds. The kids were damned fools to be here. It’ll take skill.’
‘I have skill,’ she said evenly, and then both men were staring at her.
‘You,’ Tom said, as if she’d suddenly grown two heads.
‘It’s called trying to keep up with Paul,’ she said. ‘He wanted to climb things, and for a while I tried to go with him.’ She managed a smile. ‘I gave up in the end—Paul was never happy unless the climb was dangerous and it turned out he didn’t want me with him anyway—but I learned from good people and I’ve climbed places more difficult than this. Take off the harness, Tom. This is my call.’
‘It’s dangerous,’ Tom said.
‘But you were going down.’
‘I’m not pregnant,’ he retorted.
And suddenly she grinned. Suddenly it seemed like she was back in her emergency ward in London, arguing responsibility with a macho colleague. Equal rights for women had come a long way in medicine but there were still male doctors with a deep-seated belief in their own superiority.
She’d learned to bypass them with humour, no matter how grim the situation. Now she simply reached out and tugged Tom’s harness. She took one shoulder, Pete took the other and the harness was removed from Tom before he could react.
‘You’re right, I’m pregnant and you’re not,’ she agreed equitably. ‘At least I hope you’re not. But I don’t exactly have a bulge big enough to get bumped. Next objection, Dr Blake?’
‘You can’t. Hell, Tasha...I’ll go nuts if you go down there.’
‘Because?’
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘You’ve already said that. So you’d rather I sat up here and thought the same about you.’
‘Yes!’
She smiled again, then looked at the people clustered around them. ‘Okay, let’s make this democratic. Rhonda, Pete, Karen, we need to vote. On this side of the argument I give you an experienced emergency medicine specialist with solid abseiling skills. I’ve done much harder climbs than this. I’m fit and I’m prepared. I’ll admit I’m also in the very early stages of pregnancy but I have no side effects and that shouldn’t make a difference at all.’
‘But that’s my baby,’ Tom groaned, while the onlookers’ collective jaws dropped.
‘That makes a difference how?’ Tasha asked serenely. ‘It seems Pollywig’s about to have an adventure. You taught me with Emily to introduce my baby to life early. So... Pete, Karen, Rhonda, on the other side of the equation we have Tom, a skilled doctor admittedly, but with no experience in this sort of climbing and residual left-sided weakness. We need to vote. Now.’
But there was no voting to be done. Pete was clipping her harness on, and after a moment’s loaded silence Tom finished loading the bag. His face was drawn, his mouth grim.
He rose and helped her on with the backpack. ‘You dare fall...’
‘I don’t dare anything,’ she told him, taking the backpack and meeting his gaze square on. ‘It’s the Blake boys who dare. I’m using my skill set. There’s a difference.’
‘I shouldn’t let you.’
‘Sense, Tom, instead of bravado. Who’s the most sensible candidate for the job?’
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again she knew he agreed. He still looked grim but he also looked resigned.
‘I’m with you every inch of the way.’
‘I know.’
And then he smiled, a weary smile that said he was hating what was happening but he knew it was inevitable. Then he took her shoulders and tugged her forward and kissed her.
It was a fast kiss, as circumstances dictated it must be, but it packed a punch. It was hard and strong and an affirmation of worry, of fear. Of love?
And there was also something else. When he pulled away she saw an expression that could only be described as pride. ‘You’re one amazing woman, Tasha Raymond,’ he told her.
‘I’m a doctor doing her job,’ she told him, and only she knew just how much she wanted to sink back into his arms. But there was work to be done. ‘Let’s get me down there.’
* * *
She’d sounded confident when she’d talked her way into this job. In truth, she was a long way from confident. Climbs could be graded in difficulty and this was high on the scale. The shale and the lack of footholds, the knowledge that her feet could dislodge rock that could fall to the boy below, the steepness of the slope and the roar of the surf...they combined to make a climb where she had to use every one of her skills to keep herself safe.
Pete must have known but he hadn’t said, she thought as she manoeuvred herself down the cliff, and she thought Pete would probably prefer it was her risking her neck rather than Tom. Because Tom was the town’s doctor and the town loved Tom.
As she loved Tom. His image stayed with her, as did the look on his face as she disappeared over the edge of the cliff. There wasn’t a person there who didn’t look frightened, but Tom...
He looked haggard and she hated that he looked like that.
Every trace of her concentration was taken with climbing, keeping herself steady, not disturbing the shale, but deep within she was conscious of an almost subconscious undercurrent of thought.
Tom was almost as terrified for her as she’d once been terrified for Emily. But he’d let her go. He’d conceded she had the skills and he’d stepped aside, even if it had almost killed him.
She was suddenly thinking of Rhonda’s words.
‘It was Rowan nearly killed himself last time and nearly killed Tom with him. Rowan ended up only with bruises but Tom ended up with a cerebral bleed.’
And suddenly she was thinking of the meaning behind Rhonda’s words. Maybe she hadn’t asked enough questions. She’d assumed Tom had been injured doing his own reckless, Blake boy thing, but maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d been in the position she was in now, where he was the one with the skills. He’d been able to surf so he’d been the one to rescue Rowan.
Smashing his head might not have been because of reckless behaviour. It might not have been no more reckless than what she was doing now.
She’d categorised him as a Blake boy. A womaniser. A testosterone-driven risk-taker.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
She was two-thirds of the way down now, closer to the boy at the bottom than she was to Tom, but suddenly she felt so close to Tom it was as if he was physically beside her.
It had taken courage to let her go. She knew it had. How much harder to stand aside and let the one you love take the risks...
She was taking a risk now, she acknowledged as she fought to keep herself steady, fought to stop herself spinning and hitting the shale.
How much greater a risk was falling for Tom?
How much greater a risk than falling was loving someone who loved her?
And then she found herself thinking of Iris and Ron and their appalling relationship, and then back to her own dreadful marriage. And suddenly she was swinging on a rope half way down a cliff, thinking she must have had rocks in her head until now.
‘Because Tom’s been my very best friend for almost two years,’ she whispered. ‘So how can I possibly compare? I think I must have been a little bit mad.’
* * *
He was going quietly crazy.
Pete was doing all the work, feeding out line, keeping in radio contact to give advice, keeping Tasha as safe as he could, so for the moment there was nothing Tom could do.
Pete’s face was grim. He knew the risks. He knew what Tasha was being asked to do.
James’s parents were clinging to each other. James’s friends were huddled against their parents, turned from defiant teens to children again, wanting comfort.
‘We were just trying to reach the easy nests from the top,’ Rowan was muttering, and his dad gave him a clout across the shoulders and then hugged him.
That was pretty much how Tom was feeling. Anger and love. Anger that Tasha should be in this position. Anger that she’d even offered to go. Fury and frustration that he’d had to accept that offer.
Pride and love that she was down there, working to save a life.
Tasha. The woman he loved with all his heart.
He’d never thought he could feel like this.
His father and his half-brother had walked out on women they’d sworn to love, betraying them in the worst possible way.
‘They didn’t really love.’ He said it out loud, not caring who heard, and suddenly Rhonda was beside him, putting her hand in his.
‘She’ll be okay.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘We all love her,’ Rhonda said. ‘And she’s amazing. You know that, too. All she has to do is climb down a few more feet, straighten one leg and wait for the chopper. What’s hard about that?’
But her hand tightened convulsively in his as she spoke and he glanced down at her and saw his fear reflected on her face.
We all love her.
Cray Point had taken her to their hearts. He’d taken her to his heart.
He wanted her.
‘Dear God, let her be safe.’ He’d wanted her for himself but it didn’t matter. He’d barter everything if she could be okay. She could go and live in Summer Bay. She could go back to England if she wanted.
Just let her live.
* * *
She made it.
James was huddled in a ball of fear and pain and hardly acknowledged her arrival. Apart from a brief murmur, a touch of reassurance, the first few moments had to be taken with finding herself safe footholds and attaching anchors. There was practically no room. How James had fallen onto what looked like the only outcrop that could hold him was a miracle.
Pete had anchored James as best he could, but he’d also placed a harness on the boy’s shoulders and attached a rope. He’d taken the other end back up to the top when he’d left.
That was worst-case scenario, Tasha knew. That was in case the ledge crumbled or James fell. Anchors were only as solid as the cliff face they were attached to.
That was the reason she stayed in her harness now and wouldn’t release the tension of the rope from above. It was her link to safety.
To Tom.
James was huddled hard against the cliff, as far from the edge as it was possible to be—which meant there was about eight inches between his back and the fall to the waves below. He stirred as she arrived but he didn’t turn to look at her.
She had to balance on the edge of the ledge to examine him, fighting an instinctive urge to cling to the cliff itself.
‘James, you know me,’ she told him, bending close so he could hear her over the sound of the surf. ‘Doc. Tasha. I saw you when you had a sore throat last month.’
‘T-Tom,’ James groaned. ‘Where’s Tom?’
‘Up the top of the cliff, where you should be.’ She was doing a fast visual assessment. The boy was scratched and bleeding from multiple lacerations. He must have hit shale all the way down. His clothing was ripped and bloodstained. He had a deep cut above his left eye but it was already congealing.
She felt his pulse. It was steady and strong, which was a small reassurance. If he had internal bleeding he’d be in shock by now. She felt his ribs, his abdomen and found nothing obvious. He was conscious, and the kids had said that he’d called out to them as he’d landed, so a head injury was unlikely.
But his leg was twisted at an impossible angle.
She touched the skin at his ankle and winced. Pete was right. His foot was blue and bloodless and cool. This was a compound fracture with compromised blood supply. The tiny amount of blood getting through wasn’t enough to keep the foot alive.
He had no massive haematoma or obvious bleed. That meant the vein was probably intact but kinked like a garden hose.
If he wasn’t to lose his foot, she had to straighten the leg.
Help.
She needed a theatre. She needed an orthopaedic surgeon, an anaesthetist and a full complement of theatre staff.
‘Tasha?’
The voice in her headphones was Tom’s and it steadied her. She took a deep breath and answered, one doctor to another.
‘I’m down. James is conscious but in a lot of pain. I’m about to give him something to ease it. Five milligrams of morphine intravenously?’
‘Right,’ Tom said, and it helped to hear him agree. She knew she was right, but saying it out loud settled her. It was as if she had a colleague beside her.
She did have a colleague beside her. Tom was with her every inch of the way.
‘James, I’m giving you a shot of something that’ll dull the pain,’ she told him. ‘It won’t stop it completely but it’ll help.’ Then she spoke directly into the speaker attached to her headphones. ‘Fractured leg with almost nil blood supply to the foot. Tom, work with me. I need anaesthetist advice.’
‘Give me a moment.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, knowing he’d guessed, grateful that she didn’t have to say out loud that she was afraid the morphine wouldn’t be enough, that reduction in such circumstances might send James into shock, that she needed to talk to a specialist. He’d guessed she was afraid.
She injected morphine. She washed the worst of the grime from James’s face. She worried about how long that leg could stay viable.
And then Tom was speaking again.
‘The best option’s methoxyflurane,’ he told her. ‘It’s a rapid, short-term analgesic using a portable inhaler and it’s in a pack at the base of your backpack. Do you know it?’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said cautiously. ‘I haven’t used it.’
‘It’s mostly used by paramedics and people like me who operate outside the confines of a major hospital. We use it when we need to do acute procedures fast without an anaesthetist, or for high-dose pain relief during transfer. Relief begins after six to eight breaths. As long as James is haemodynamically stable...
‘He is.’
‘Then we can use it. Can I talk to him?’
‘Sure.’ She tugged off her earpieces and put one on James. Then she unashamedly stooped and held the other a little way back so she could listen.
‘James, this is Tom. How’s it going?’
‘B-Bloody,’ James managed, but Tasha could tell by his face that even this minimal contact with a doctor he trusted was a reassurance.
‘Tasha says you’ve busted your leg. Idiot,’ Tom said, but he sounded almost cheerful, businesslike, as if this was little more than a scratch that had to be disinfected. ‘She’s given you some morphine, which will make you nice and dopey, but the problem is that your leg’s a bit bent and the blood’s not getting through to the foot.’
‘I can’t...see.’
‘Nor would you want to,’ Tom said. ‘Bent legs aren’t pretty. So Tasha’s going to straighten it. She needs to do that before there’s long-term damage to your foot, so unless you want to limp for life you’ll need to put up with what she does. Sorry, mate, but it’s going to hurt. But not for long. Tasha’s good, she’s fast and we’ll get the leg straight and you up the cliff before you know it.’
‘I don’t want to be here.’
‘Yeah, well, you fell down,’ Tom said unsympathetically. ‘But we’re getting the chopper to lift you up. Your mum and dad are up here, ready to give you a good telling-off for bird-nesting in such a dumb place, but they want to give you a hug first. But first your foot. To ease the pain you need to breathe in through the inhaler Tasha gives you. After six to eight breaths the relief will kick in. What Tasha does will hurt but it’s just a momentary thing while she sets your leg in position. If you keep breathing through the mask, concentrating on breathing and not the pain, it’ll settle. Would you like me to keep talking as she works?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘Then let’s go for it,’ Tom said. ‘Tasha?’
How did he know she was listening? ‘Yes?’
‘Go for it, love,’ he told her. ‘You can do this. I’m with you both.’
* * *
She needed X-rays. She needed her patient under a general anaesthetic. She needed a nice clean hospital, and space to work. And an anaesthetic strong enough to hold the pain at bay so she could manoeuvre the fracture slowly, figuring out the best way to re-establish blood supply.
She had none of those things and Tom could only guess at the stress she was under. Pete had taken photos of the smashed leg on his phone before he’d come back up the cliff. The photos were not great quality but Tom could see splintered bone, a mess, a nightmare to try to straighten in these circumstances.
He wanted to tell Tasha not to beat herself up if she failed. He wanted to tell her he expected her to fail, that what she was doing was a long shot.
He couldn’t, though, because she’d put the earphones onto James and his role now was to keep James calm so Tasha could work. As well as that, James’s parents were within earshot, hanging on his every word.
He could say nothing at all.
* * *
She’d told Tom she could.
She had no choice.
It was incredibly difficult to balance on the tiny amount of ledge space she had. The rope attached to her harness was still taut, carefully played so that as she moved it was pulled out and reined in. She wasn’t alone. She had Pete holding her harness.
She also had Tom talking to James while James breathed through the mask. It was almost as if Tom was playing the role of anaesthetist.
She had a whole clifftop of people with her every step of the way.
It takes a village to raise a child. Where had that line come from? She couldn’t remember, but there was a village at the top of the cliff. A village who cared.
She’d worked in emergency wards for almost all of her professional life. She’d been surrounded by a team.
Now she should feel isolated, afraid, but strangely she didn’t. Her team—her village—was a little distant but it was still there. And Tom was with her. He was at the top of the cliff. He was talking to James but he was still with her.
He was her rock in all this. Tom.
Despite the circumstances, she forced herself to take her time, to think clearly about the way she’d do this. She knew that she had a tiny window to get the vein unkinked. The anaesthetic couldn’t mask such pain completely. After a first attempt James would react, his body would freeze and she’d be lucky if she could get near him for a second try.
But for now he seemed almost relaxed. He was trying out the inhaler, breathing steadily, listening to Tom.
She cut the last of his shredded pants away from his leg and spent a little time familiarising herself with every inch of the fractured limb.
The tibia and fibula were both broken. She could see the breaks. They’d been smashed hard across, splintering.
She could feel a pulse above the break but not below. There was little blood getting through.
She sat and looked for as long as she needed to steady herself, to figure how she should hold the leg, how she should pull.
‘Tom says how’s it going?’ James asked in a fuzzy voice, and she knew the anaesthetic was now as strong as it could be.
‘Tell Tom we’re set to go,’ she told him, and placed her hands firmly—confidently?—where she needed them. ‘Tell Tom to stay tuned; your leg’s about to be fixed.’
* * *
‘Tasha says we’re ready to go,’ James whispered between breaths, and Tom felt ill. He wanted to be there. He needed to be there.
‘It’ll hurt,’ he warned the boy. ‘But only for a moment. Hang on in there, mate, and whatever you do, don’t move. Can you do that?’
‘Y-yeah.’
‘I know you can. We’re all with you. Tell Tasha that, too.’
And then he listened as James murmured to Tasha. Then:
‘She says she knows,’ James whispered. ‘She says I gotta lie still and think of playing footy next year. She says if I lie still she’ll come and barrack for me.’
‘I bet she will,’ Tom said unsteadily. ‘And I’ll come, too. But for now just breathe through the inhaler. Deep breaths...’
And then James screamed.
* * *
Seconds felt like hours. She still held James’s leg firmly, so he couldn’t react by hauling back, twisting, possibly undoing what she’d hoped she’d done.
She could hear the faint sound of Tom’s voice speaking to James in the background. He was the one talking James down from the peak of pain.
He had to be. Her hands held James’s leg and every trace of her concentration was on the foot below the break. She was holding the leg steady and she was pleading. Please...
And when it came she could hardly believe it. A trace of colour...
I’m imagining it, she told herself, but a moment later she knew she wasn’t. She dared to touch his ankle and she felt...a pulse.
‘Oh, James,’ she said weakly, and then she forced herself to speak more strongly because even though she felt weak at the knees James had to see her as physician in charge. ‘Well done, you. Well done, us. Blood’s getting through to your foot. You’re going to be okay.’
‘Y-you hear?’ James managed, and she knew he was speaking to Tom.
And then James managed a wan smile.
‘Tom says to tell you you’re a bloody hero,’ he told her. ‘He says he knows Mum won’t let me swear but that’s what you are. But, strewth, Doc, that hurt.’
* * *
The chopper arrived twenty minutes later. It was a complex operation, getting James onto a cradle with his leg firmly fixed, securing him, then swinging him up to the top of the cliff.
For a while Tasha was left sitting by herself on the ledge, and almost as soon as the cradle swung outwards she started to shake.
When they finally came for her, they had to treat her as a patient. She was shaking too much to be of any assistance.
‘Got you, sweetheart,’ the cheerful paramedic said as he harnessed himself to her. They swung off the ledge and hung momentarily over the ocean. ‘You’re safe.’
She didn’t feel safe. She didn’t feel safe until she was lowered onto solid ground on the clifftop.
Until she was gathered into Tom’s arms and held.
Until she was home.
