Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption

by Lennox, Marion

  It was lust, he decided as the Ferris wheel gondola rose ponderously up to the peak, hovered for them to enjoy the view and then started its descent again. It was a mighty fine view, he conceded, but the view in front of him was better.

  Somehow Zoe Payne had wriggled under his defences.

  Somehow Zoe Payne made him doubt his own plan for isolation.

  She was saying something to Luke, something that made the little boy giggle. She glanced up and caught his gaze...and blushed.

  She was adorable.

  ‘Do I have fairy floss on my nose?’ she demanded, a little bit breathlessly. ‘Luke, Sam’s staring at me. Do I have fairy floss on my nose?’

  ‘Just freckles,’ Luke said. ‘He’s staring at you ’cos you’re pretty.’

  ‘Really?’ Zoe demanded, looking immeasurably pleased. ‘You think I’m pretty? Wow.’ She grinned and hugged him. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘No,’ Luke said. ‘That’s silly. You can be Dr Webster’s girlfriend, though.’

  ‘He already has Bonnie. Have you met our Bonnie?’

  ‘She visited Ryan when he came into hospital the first time,’ Luke told her. ‘She’s nice, but she’s not as nice as you.’

  And that was a hard call, Sam thought as the Ferris wheel started to rise again. Who was nicest? His dog or Zoe?

  The heart expands to fit all comers. He’d read that somewhere and he hadn’t believed it, but now...

  Now, though, a tiny niggle was building to a huge doubt. How could he resist?

  And then a scream ripped apart the peace of the late afternoon and he needed to turn his thoughts in another direction entirely.

  * * *

  ‘Sit down, madam, sit down now.’

  The voice through the megaphone boomed out as the Ferris wheel came to an abrupt, shuddering halt.

  Sit down?

  They were all sitting. They were harnessed, belted in by the operator with instructions not to undo the harness under any circumstances.

  Then came another scream, from a gondola above them.

  ‘He’s dead. He’s not breathing. Do something. Reg...Reg... Get us down!’

  Marjory.

  It was the end of a glorious beach day. People were packing up and going home. The Ferris wheel was therefore almost empty. Reg and Marjory were right up the top, two gondolas away from theirs.

  Marjory had undone her harness. She was leaning right out of the gondola, screaming hysterically to anyone below.

  ‘Get us down. He’s not breathing. Get us down.’

  Any minute now she’d fall out, Sam thought incredulously. If the operator started the wheel again she could hit a strut and be knocked out.

  ‘Sit down and do up your harness,’ the voice boomed. ‘The wheel can’t move until you’re sitting.’

  But Marjory wasn’t listening. She was lurching from one side of the gondola to the other, leaning right out as if she could grab someone from below to help her.

  ‘Marjory, sit down,’ Sam roared upwards at her, putting every ounce of command he could muster into his voice. ‘We can’t help you until you sit.’

  ‘He’s dying. He’s dead.’ It was an agonised wail of terror, and Sam realised she wasn’t hearing a thing.

  ‘A heart attack?’ Zoe whispered, holding Luke close, and Sam looked at both of them and then looked up at the hysterical woman, his mind racing.

  Reg had looked to be in his mid-fifties. He was a bit overweight. He’d had flu.

  He’d looked...he’d looked like Sam should have intervened, only he’d been distracted by Zoe.

  The wheel had come to a dead stop now. Nothing was happening.

  ‘Nothing’s moving until you’re in your harness,’ the voice boomed through the loudspeaker, and Sam looked up at the hysterical Marjory and thought there was no chance of any harness going on.

  He unclipped his own.

  ‘Take care of Luke,’ he said, tight and hard, and he swung himself up, out and on top of his gondola before Zoe could react.

  ‘Sam!’ She didn’t scream. She stayed still, she stayed holding Luke, but her face lost its colour.

  ‘I was a monkey in another life,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘The light cables make it safe. Luke, hold onto Zoe. She’s a bit scared, but you know that this is just like climbing the jungle gym at school. See you soon.’

  And he reached up, looped the light cable around his wrist and grabbed the next strut, then swung himself high, grabbed the gondola above, swung, steadied, and heaved himself higher.

  * * *

  Dear God...

  He made it look almost easy, Zoe thought as Sam swung himself up through the next gondola and reached for the strut to swing himself to the next one.

  It wasn’t easy. She couldn’t have done it even if it had been at ground level. As it was... How high were they? She wasn’t looking down.

  She clutched Luke and Luke clutched back.

  ‘Sit down!’ The voice below was a continuous roar of instructions but the voice below was as helpless as she was.

  Above, Marjory was sobbing, out of control, but Sam was steadily growing nearer. From the other gondolas people watched with horror.

  ‘He’s clever,’ Luke said, in a far steadier voice than Zoe was capable of. ‘My dad said he saved Ryan’s life that first night he got sick. He’s saving people again.’

  He’d reached Marjory. He hauled himself up, swung himself into the gondola and for one appalling moment Zoe thought Marjory would launch herself at him and hug him so hard she’d propel them both out.

  But it was Sam who propelled Marjory. He grabbed both her shoulders forced her to sit, and forced her to stay sitting.

  ‘You sit down and you don’t move or I won’t look at Reg,’ he growled, and it was a measure of the terror all around them that silence let Zoe hear every word. ‘Sit. Stay.’

  And finally, amazingly, Marjory subsided.

  So did Sam. He dropped to his knees, obviously to treat Reg, and was lost to sight.

  There was a long moment, or more than a moment—who could tell how long?—while Zoe forgot to breathe. She was clutching Luke’s hand so hard he yelped and she had to give him a shamefaced smile and release the tension. Just a little bit.

  Then...

  ‘We’re secure. Bring it down,’ Sam yelled, still unseen, but there was no mistaking he was yelling to the operator below and there was no mistaking the authority in his voice.

  ‘Are you in harness?’ the guy below yelled, and Sam told him where he could put his harness.

  ‘Move it. Now. I take full responsibility. Just do it,’ he yelled back, and finally the gondolas jerked and the wheel came to life and they headed towards the ground.

  ‘Luke, I’ll need to help Sam when we get to the ground,’ Zoe told the little boy by her side. She still couldn’t see what was happening—Sam was still working on the gondola floor—but she was making the same assumption that had made Sam risk his life by clambering up through the struts fifty feet above the ground. Cardiac arrest.

  ‘I know that,’ Luke said. ‘You’re a nurse and Sam’s a doctor. I’ll be good.’

  ‘You’re always good,’ Zoe said to him. ‘One day soon I reckon we need to organise you to be very, very bad. How about going to dodgem cars next Sunday and seeing how many cars we can crash?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Being good pays off,’ Zoe said, and thought Sam hadn’t fallen during his crazy climb so someone must have been good.

  And if Reg was to live...

  Yeah, well, that was to come.

  * * *

  The fairground’s ground crew proved extremely competent. Zoe would have thought the obvious thing to do when there was drama in a high gondola was to get it
to the ground as fast as possible, but the protocol was obviously geared to make people secure first. While someone was screaming, waving in and out of the gondola, the wheel didn’t move, but once Sam had Marjory secure, the wheel rolled straight down, not stopping until Reg and Marjory’s gondola was on the loading platform.

  Someone else had come running to assist the guy operating the wheel. He helped Sam lift Reg out then helped Marjory out as Sam started work on the seemingly lifeless Reg.

  Finally Zoe and Luke’s gondola was brought in to ground level as well. The attendant opened the gondola on the far side, away from Sam, but Zoe shook him off.

  ‘I’m a nurse, he’s a doctor, we’re a team,’ she said briefly, and she and Luke were ushered out to the right side.

  Marjory was crumpled on the ground, keening.

  Luke was clutching Zoe’s hand, but he had it figured.

  ‘I’ll stay still and be good,’ Luke said bravely, and he let her go. Zoe thought, Wow, what a kid, and hugged him. She left him standing by Marjorie and went to see how she could help.

  ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yep,’ the attendant told her. ‘And Joe’s gone to get the first-aid pack.’

  She nodded, focussing now on Reg. And on Sam.

  Sam had him on his back. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Heart massage. He had his hands linked, pushing down with fierce, dogged strength. Fifteen beats, then breathe.

  She stooped and knelt beside him. ‘I’ll breathe,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no mask.’ He was out of breath. He’d climbed, he’d have had to roll Reg, clearing his airway, getting him into position, then getting him out of the gondola, all while trying to breathe and pound.

  ‘Tell that to someone who cares,’ Zoe said, and bent and breathed, long, strong breaths that’d make Reg’s lungs expand, while Sam pounded with all the strength he had.

  She heard a rib crack.

  ‘Breathe, damn you, breathe,’ Sam was saying over and over, but he was talking to Reg and it was now Zoe who was breathing.

  He’d seemed nice, Zoe thought. Marjory had been voluble and gushing, but Reg had spoken to them a few times during the day. He’d been kind to Luke, and Zoe thought there were probably kids and maybe even grandkids somewhere. People who wanted this man to live.

  Come on, Reg...

  ‘You want a defibrillator?’ It was the attendant, standing over them, sounding almost apologetic at interrupting, and Sam kept pounding but glanced up and saw what he was offering.

  Yes! A decent, comprehensive first-aid pack complete with the portable defibrillators that were increasingly common at large venues.

  And masks.

  He handed Zoe the mask, she slid it into place and kept right on breathing while Sam shoved the defibrillator into position.

  ‘Three, two, one...’ he said, and she pulled back as the defibrillator did its work, then went back to breathing.

  Nothing.

  ‘Three, two, one...’

  And this time...

  Reg’s chest heaved, all by itself. He took a ragged, weak breath but it was definitely a breath, air drawn in all by itself.

  ‘Come on...’ Sam muttered. ‘Live, damn you.’

  Zoe breathed a couple more times, then Sam put his hand on her shoulder and she paused.

  ‘Let him take over.’

  Would he?

  She’d almost forgotten to breathe herself.

  CPR hardly ever worked. She knew that. It was supposedly the medical wonder: get to a heart-attack victim in time, administer CPR and, lo, the victim lived. In reality cardiac arrest was almost always fatal and part of medical training incorporated coping with low expectations—coping with the reality that death wasn’t caused by lack of expertise.

  They’d done all they could. They needed luck now.

  They’d already had it in that one shaky breath. They needed more.

  Please...

  And they had it. Another breath. Another. Another.

  Reg’s pallid, grey face received a wash of tepid colour.

  Please...

  And then, blessedly, here came the cavalry. Ambulance, paramedics, oxygen, adrenalin—all the things to make a slight chance a good one. All the things to make Zoe suddenly redundant.

  Sam was still working, in charge, taking total control, but Zoe could back off, slipping out of the medical cluster and backing to where Marjory and Luke huddled, together but not together, seemingly both as terrified as each other.

  ‘He’s breathing,’ Zoe said to both of them. ‘Reg is breathing. Marjory, he’s still in danger, but he has a good chance.’

  And then, because there was nothing else to do and woman and child were white-faced and shocked and seemingly without speech, she did the only thing left to her.

  She took them both into a group hug and held them hard.

  * * *

  Sam had to go with the ambulance. There was no choice. Reg was drifting back to consciousness. His breathing was almost regular but Sam was under no illusions. The most dangerous time after cardiac arrest was the next minute, and the next minute after that. The block that had caused the arrest would still be there. There was no relaxing until Sam got him into the cardiac care unit with blood thinners on board and he could see what he was dealing with.

  ‘Go,’ Zoe said, snagging his car keys. ‘I’ll take Luke home.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’re thinking I can’t drive it?’

  ‘If you can drive your car, you can drive anything,’ he said, and then on impulse he tugged her into his arms and, for no good reason, astonishingly, seemingly to him as well as to her, he gave her a swift, hard kiss, then he lifted Luke and hugged him, too, and that was all he had time for.

  Two ambulances had arrived, a standard van and the MICA van, Mobile Intensive Care, so there was room for Sam in Mica, with Marjory following in the standard van. Marjory was still weeping.

  ‘I’ll catch up with you at the hospital,’ Zoe told her, and suddenly Luke tugged Marjory’s cardigan, forcing her to look down at him.

  ‘Dr Webster will make him better,’ he said. ‘He fixes people. He’s ace.’

  And Marjory sniffed and sniffed again and managed a watery smile and went to join her husband.

  ‘Sam’s really good,’ Luke said as Zoe ushered him into Sam’s car. ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘I... Yes.’

  ‘He says I can call him Sam but I like calling him Dr Webster.’ Zoe had thought Luke would be upset, but he was recovering fast, and his thoughts were heading off at a tangent. ‘Do you think I could be a doctor when I grow up?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘He climbed the Ferris wheel really fast.’

  ‘I don’t think all doctors climb Ferris wheels.’

  ‘No,’ Luke said. ‘But I will and Dr Webster does, too. He’s cool, isn’t he?

  And Zoe thought back to that hard, fast kiss—she could still feel it—she could still taste it—and she thought, yes.

  Yes, he was cool.

  Or hot, and getting hotter by the minute.

  * * *

  Reg had a blockage in the coronary artery. He’d need a stent to open the artery permanently and he was on the next morning’s surgical list. Even though Sam’s specialty was paediatric cardiology, Sam worked steadily, making sure the guy was stable, easing the fear, which was enough almost to cause another attack in and of itself. The jury was still out on the damage stress could do to the heart but Sam had his own opinions and he wasn’t about to let any of his heart patients face the night in terror.

  Then he needed to cope with Marjory—and four younger Marjories, just landed on the express flight from Perth. Reg had four daughters, aged from twenty-six down
. Every one of them was a younger version of their mother and every one of them seemed to need their own personal reassurance that their dad would be okay.

  They were terrified, and Sam thought back to Marjory’s behaviour at Sea World. Reg was the quiet one in this family, the guy who put himself in the back seat as his wife and daughters took the limelight with their extravagant personalities, he thought—and suddenly they’d realised their quiet mainstay wasn’t as rocklike as they’d believed.

  Sam allayed their very real terror and he thought as long as he got the stent right, Reg might just get a bit of the attention he deserved from now on. Would he like it?

  Love was a weird thing, he mused as he finally left them, and as soon as the lift hit his floor he found his feet turning left instead of right, to Zoe’s apartment instead of his.

  He knocked and she opened the door and she was in her gorgeous bathrobe again, and he thought...

  Actually, he didn’t think anything. He couldn’t, for Zoe reached up, twined her arms around his neck, tugged him down so his face was right by her face—and there was nothing in the world for a man to do but take her face between his hands and kiss her.

  He kissed her as a man coming home.

  She was warm and soft and yielding. Her kiss was generous, open, welcoming, and he held her and he felt his world shift.

  Shackles falling away?

  That’s what this felt like. He felt rigid control dropping away, the years of discipline, the years of solitude. This was a release that had seemed impossible but which now seemed totally, inevitably right.

  This was two becoming one.

  He’d heard that line at a friend’s wedding. He’d always been cynical. Even when he and Emily had decided to marry he could hardly remember asking—it had seemed like the sensible, practical thing to do. They had been friends, colleagues and lovers, but there’d been no real connection.

  But he hadn’t known there’d been no connection because he hadn’t felt what that was until now.

  So now he held Zoe and he kissed her and he felt like he’d come home. So much for shackles. So much for isolation. They stood in the corridor and nothing mattered except that they hold each other, that he had this woman in his arms and she seemed like she wanted to stay there for ever.