He put one foot on the hook, and swung her around so she was facing him.
‘Step up on my foot,’ he said. ‘Come on. There’s nothing of you, you won’t even bruise it. Good. Now put your weight against me, and your arms around me and hang on.’
She had no choice, especially once his free hand dragged her hard against his body, an arm as taut as the steel rope holding her there. Her face was pressed against his chest, her nose buried in the camouflage fatigues, and as they swung up and out, across the ruined building, she felt his warmth and strength seducing her body into thinking how comforting it was.
He’s holding you so you don’t panic and fall off the stupid hook! she reminded herself as they were lowered back to earth to the accompaniment of a chorus of catcalls from the onlookers.
‘Way to go, Doc!’ one of the locals called to her.
‘Flying high!’ another wit offered, but the noise died down when the rescuers realised the two missing men hadn’t been found. While Harry deployed his troops, and sent the locals back to filling sandbags, Kirsten crossed to her car and opened the front door, slumping into the driver’s seat as reaction once again took the strength from her knees.
She was sitting there, debating whether to drive back up to the hospital or wait here, when Meg and Libby came racing down the hill, Anthony trailing behind.
‘It’s Grandad,’ Libby told her. ‘We’ve searched and searched. He’s nowhere in the convent.’
Kirsten felt the coldness of certain knowledge ice her blood.
‘He’ll be OK,’ she assured the frightened children. ‘He probably felt well enough to go for a walk. You know how he feels about this town. He’s been coming up with ideas of how to save it the whole time he’s been at the hospital.’
Three small heads nodded their agreement, while three sets of dark eyes looked solemnly at her, waiting for her to tell them more.
She realised all three were wet, raincoats forgotten in their anxiety to find their grandfather.
‘Hop in the car, I’ll drive you back. Bella can make some hot chocolate while you get into dry clothes, and you can all stay in the kitchen with her—near the phone—so as soon as I track down Grandpa, you’ll know.’
‘Should we ring Mum and tell her?’ Meg asked.
Kirsten shook her head, more to rid herself of the thought of more pain for Elizabeth than in answer to the child’s question.
‘No. It would only worry her and he’s probably safe and sound somewhere. But if he’s down there filling sandbags in the wet, I’ll give him what for!’ she added sternly, and the children all laughed.
She drove them back to the old convent, hustled them upstairs and went through to the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry, Bella, but I’ve promised them hot chocolate and then suggested they stay in here with you.’
In an undertone she shared her fear that the second man missing at the council chambers was the children’s grandfather.
‘Oh, the poor lambs. As if they haven’t been through enough already. I’ll keep them by me. We can make gingerbread men. I might have some hundreds and thousands—we could make gingerbread houses as well.’
She patted Kirsten on the arm.
‘Now, don’t you fret about the kids. You have more than enough on your plate. You could probably do with a hot drink yourself before you go back down there. You look like something the cat dragged in.’
Kirsten gave wry thanks and looked down at the dust embedded in her jeans.
‘I guess there’s no point putting clean clothes on.’ She sighed. ‘As soon as I do I’ll have to crawl through a small space again. Speaking of which, I won’t stop for a drink.’
She gave Bella a quick hug.
‘The sooner we get to the men, the more chance there is of finding either or both of them alive.’
She looked in on Captain Woulfe, and was pleased to see he was feeling well enough to be flirting with Mary, then she found Ken and explained what was happening, leaving him in charge while she headed back to the town.
‘We’ve lifted the ceiling and the collapsed wall,’ Harry told her when she returned to the scene where men worked with careful efficiency. ‘And we’ve been propping the lower level of the building from the outside in case we have to tunnel. The floor in that room seems relatively intact, apart from a hole in one corner. There’s a chance they went through in that area but nothing much followed them.’
‘So they could be sitting snugly down there in the cellar, waiting for us to come?’ Kirsten asked, disbelief colouring her words. ‘Why haven’t they called out? Why haven’t we heard them?
Harry’s brown eyes looked down into hers and she sensed his impatience with her questions, but before he could answer her a shout from one of his men had him striding away from her.
She followed, almost trotting to keep up with him.
‘I think I know who the second man is,’ she told his soldier-straight rear view. ‘I think it’s Mr Graham—the children’s grandfather. He’s not up at the hospital and it makes sense that if he was feeling well enough to want to help, he’d have come to the council chambers. He was shire president for more than thirty years.’
Harry stopped abruptly and she slammed slap bang into the straight back, losing her balance and tilting dangerously to the side before he swung around and his hands once again caught and stabilised her.
‘Why would a sick old man put himself into danger like that?’ he demanded, and Kirsten, who’d thought he’d be pleased to have the second man identified, stared at him in total mystification.
‘Because he’s that kind of man,’ she said lamely. ‘Although all the town has been involved in the fight to save the hospital, he’s the one who bought the convent and donated it for that purpose. Murrawarra is his home, his town. Of course he’d try to save it.’
‘And die trying?’ Harry asked savagely, then he turned and strode away again. Only this time Kirsten didn’t follow.
He could darned well call her if he wanted her.
She picked up her bag and walked across to the military ambulance to check out its fittings, something she’d not had time to do while riding in it. It had all the standard equipment, including emergency resuscitation gear.
‘Like what you see?’
One of the orderlies she’d met earlier came around to the back.
‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘So compact. I’m glad you’re here. Our ambulance was seconded to duty in Vereton—the theory being that the ambulance should be where the people were.’
‘Typical bureaucratic thinking,’ the man replied. ‘At least in the army, the men come first.’
Anything else he might have been about to say was drowned out by the beat of helicopter rotors. One of the small government search and rescue helicopters was circling overhead.
‘Have we radio contact with that chopper?’
The major’s voice cut through the escalating noise.
‘I’ve got the pilot on line,’ a man called back.
‘Then tell him to get the hell out of here. He can land up near the old convent somewhere, but not so close to our tents that his downward thrust will blow them to bits.’
Kirsten held her breath until the helicopter lifted back into the air and swung away.
‘Bloody cowboys!’ she heard Harry mutter, and her heart quailed as she realised why he’d panicked.
They were close to rescuing the buried men, but any added disturbance on the ground, or in the air above the shattered building, could have altered the delicate balance and put his soldiers’ lives in danger, as well as spelling disaster for the rescue mission.
‘We’re almost through,’ he said to her, then he nodded to the ambulance attendant who slid the stretcher out of the back of the Land Rover and began to stack equipment they might need onto its lower level.
Kirsten accompanied the orderly back to the building, and saw with relief that a ramp now ran into the room where she and Harry had searched for survivors.
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‘They’re here, both alive!’
A loud cheer greeted the shouted news.
‘Stay here, I’m going down,’ Harry told Kirsten, and before she could argue that she should see the men before they were shifted, he was gone.
She moved closer, then realised she’d be in the way of someone coming up the flimsy-looking ladder the soldiers had secured to a beam and then slung down into the darkness beneath.
Then Harry’s hand appeared, his knuckles white with strain as he gripped the rope and hauled himself upwards. As more of him came into view, she realised why his climb had been so difficult. He was carrying another man slung across his shoulders—his elderly namesake, old Martin Graham.
Kirsten stood back, making room for him to set down his burden, watching the gentleness in the soldier’s hands as he lowered the frail old man to the ground.
‘We need a stretcher down there for the other man. Doctor, could you see to this chap? My men will bring the other fellow up. He’s unconscious but breathing.’
Kirsten needed no second bidding. Grabbing a blanket off the army stretcher, she dropped to her knees beside Mr Graham and smiled reassuringly into his faded brown eyes.
‘Is the other man all right? The soldier?’ the old man asked, and Kirsten, her hands busy fitting a mask and tube to her emergency oxygen tank, assured him the captain was in good hands.
‘I lost my tank when the floor caved in, and the dust down there made me choke,’ Mr Graham admitted as Kirsten lifted him to a half-sitting position, propping his back against a lump of masonry, to make breathing easier for him. She slipped the mask across his mouth and nose and adjusted the pressure to deliver a low concentration of oxygen to his lungs.
‘You’ll be OK now,’ Kirsten assured him. ‘Just rest. As soon as we’ve got Jim out, we’ll take you up to the hospital.’
She could see two soldiers guiding the ropes as someone else used the crane’s power to haul the stretcher, with the second survivor strapped securely to it, out of the ground.
‘Compound fracture of the femur,’ the ambulance attendant said to her when he followed the stretcher out of the darkness. ‘And possible internal injuries. The major thinks the filing cabinets went through the floor with the two men, and one of them fell on this chap, injuring him with its weight.’
‘Can you take him straight up to the helicopter? They’ll have an A and E doctor on board who can do more than I can in these circumstances. Explain the man’s been trapped underground for some hours, with the possibility of hypothermia to complicate his injuries.’
The ambulance orderly issued orders and the stretcher bearers moved away, but no sooner were they out of earshot than Kirsten remembered she had two patients, not one.
‘I should have reminded them to come back for you,’ she said, kneeling down again beside Mr Graham. ‘But no doubt they will.’
She smiled encouragingly at him.
‘And now you’ve got your breath back, can you answer questions? Are you hurting anywhere? Head, arms, legs, torso? How did you land when you went through the floor? On your feet? Your backside?’
‘I’m fine, lassie.’ The old man lifted his mask away so he could reply. ‘We went down as slowly as a lift in a fancy city building. I only went to the city once and that was a mistake.’
Kirsten heard the echo of sadness in his voice and tucked the blanket more tightly around him. Shock or hypothermia could cause the mind to wander and she guessed that was happening now, although normally he was as mentally alert as a man half his age.
‘Although not entirely,’ he added, his voice sounding stronger. ‘I got Elizabeth, didn’t I? And the children.’
Kirsten felt his pulse, fast and erratic. She dug in her bag again and found a juice popper. It wasn’t a regular item in a doctor’s bag but something she usually carried. She prodded the straw through the hole and handed it to him.
‘Here, drink this,’ she ordered. He needed fluid faster than the popper would provide, but she wanted him settled in his own bed before she started a drip. If she put one in now, his veins were so fragile that the catheter was likely to tear out when they moved him.
‘Why’s he still here?’
The major’s demand brought her head up with a jerk, and she forgot her concern as she met the glowering look on Harry’s face.
‘I’m waiting for the ambulance to come back and take him up to the hospital, although if you could organise someone to carry him to my car, we could get going now.’
The glower deepened.
‘I don’t mean here here, I mean here in Murrawarra.’
Kirsten was battling to make sense of this second demand when the more distant roar of the helicopter’s engines told her it was taking off again.
‘This is his home,’ she said lamely, and was glad when the noise all but drowned out her reply. Not only was she repeating herself, but she knew instinctively that her answer wasn’t going to satisfy her inquisitor.
Although something must have got through to him. Two soldiers appeared and, with the major giving what seemed like unnecessary orders about care and gentleness, then taking charge of the oxygen bottle himself, they lifted the old man and carried him across, not to Kirsten’s car, but to one of the army vehicles.
‘I’ll drive him up and help your nurse lift him out at the other end,’ he told Kirsten, who was left with no option but to follow in her car.
She saw Mr Graham transferred safely to his room, started a drip, checked his pulse and blood pressure, switched the tube from his mask to humidified oxygen, again at a low concentration, organised a cup of tea and sandwiches to be delivered to him, then headed, rather wearily, back towards her office.
‘He shouldn’t be here. He should have gone with the helicopter.’
Harry was standing just inside the door—still glowering.
‘I think you made that point earlier,’ she retorted. ‘But he didn’t and that’s that. Even if I’d suggested it, he’d have refused, and transporting patients by force has never been my scene.’
She was about to add a few more telling points when she remembered something else. ‘That will be up to you to do when you put your grand evacuation plans into place. The enforced removal of sick women and old men from Murrawarra. Where are your super-duper helicopters, anyway? Shouldn’t they be here by now?’
He looked uncomfortable, and she could almost imagine a flush beneath the smooth tanned skin of his cheek.
‘Our choppers are grounded for the moment,’ he grudgingly admitted. ‘Fuel problems.’
She began to chuckle, and then to laugh.
Harry looked down at her, torn between wanting to shake her till her teeth rattled and—No, surely he couldn’t want to kiss her!
For a start, she was a mess. She had plaster dust whitening the dusky brown curls and smeared all over her clothes. Her shirt was torn, and there was a smear of mud under her left ear.
But her blue eyes shone with merriment, and her lips and cheeks were pink…
‘Fuel problems?’ she managed to gasp. ‘You can’t get rid of us because you’ve got no fuel? How’s that for army efficiency?’
He frowned ferociously at her. Shaking her was definitely the option he’d choose—given half a chance!
Though kissing her quiet might work…
‘It isn’t that we don’t have fuel,’ he told her stiffly. ‘We just can’t use it! It’s this damnable rain—the flood.’
Now the blue eyes were raised mockingly to his.
‘Surely not the flood!’ she teased, and he stepped backwards as the temptation to put hands on her, for whatever reason, grew stronger.
‘The choppers use a form of high-grade kerosene which is stored in dumps around the country,’ he explained with stiff formality. ‘Unfortunately, when water gets into these supplies, a microbe called cladisporum can get in between the kerosene and water and it migrates through the fuel and makes gluey blobs which clog the fuel filter—’
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�And the helicopter falls out of the sky! What fun!’ the cheeky doctor said, still smiling at his discomfort. ‘And how long does it take for you to unglue your gluey blobs?’
Her smile had unsettled him to the extent that it took a minute for him to process the question.
‘Gluey blobs?’ he began vaguely. ‘Oh! We don’t unglue them—we get new fuel flown in. And before you ask what happens to the bad fuel, I have absolutely no idea. No doubt, someone somewhere has a process for rectifying it.’
Now that cheeky smile grew wider, creating an added sparkle to her eyes.
‘Well, tell them not to hurry with the new fuel, as we’ve no intention of leaving anyway.’
Harry had already guessed that, but it reminded him of something she’d said earlier. Something to do with the old man—
A loud ringing noise halted his mental scan.
‘It’s Chipper. Sometimes I regret giving him that old doorbell,’ Kirsten muttered, then she whisked away, leaving him staring down the passage after her, wondering what he’d wanted to ask.
Something about the closure of the hospital.
He stepped out of her office and looked around. The old man was two doors down. Harry stared in that direction and waited for the frantic beating of his heart to settle slightly.
He would ask about the hospital.
Nothing else.
He took one step, then stopped. Reminded himself he should be checking on his men, or visiting Woulfe if he visited anyone.
He took another step, and stopped again.
The slap of small bare feet on the stone floor broke him out of his indecision. Anthony came hurtling towards him.
‘My grandad’s back,’ he told Harry, seizing his hand and dragging him towards the room. ‘Come and meet him, sir. He’d like you. Since my dad died he doesn’t have any men to talk to. Only Ken, and he’s a nurse so he’s always busy and can’t stay to chat.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘AH, THE army!’ The old man greeted him in a voice hoarse with strain, then he nodded towards Anthony. ‘Don’t let the young scamp get under your feet.’
‘I won’t!’ Anthony protested, settling himself carefully on the edge of the bed and reaching out to touch his grandfather’s cheek.
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