by Tina Beckett
Trapped.
‘Margaret?’ he yelled. ‘Margaret!’
There was no reply except sobbing.
His phone... Where the hell was his phone?
And then he remembered. He’d done a cursory check on Margaret. She’d been sobbing and shaking when he’d arrived. She was suffering from shock, he’d decided. It had been an instant diagnosis but it was all he’d had time for, so he’d put his jacket across her shoulders and run to the truck.
His phone was still in his jacket pocket.
‘Margaret!’ he yelled again, and the truck rocked again, and from up on the cliff Margaret’s sobs grew louder.
Was she blocking her husband’s need with her cries? Maybe she was. People had different ways of protecting themselves, and coming near a truck ten feet down a cliff, when the truck was threatening to fall another thirty, was possibly a bad idea.
Probably.
Definitely?
‘That hurt!’ Horace was groaning in pain.
‘Sorry, mate, I need to push hard.’
‘Not my shoulder, Doc—my eardrum.’
Great. All this and he’d be sued for perforating Horace’s eardrum?
‘Can you yell for Margaret? We need her help.’
‘She won’t answer,’ Horace muttered. ‘If she’s having hysterics the only thing that’ll stop her is ice water.’
Right.
‘Then we need to sit really still until help arrives,’ he told him, trying not to notice Horace’s pallor, deciding not to check his blood pressure because there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. ‘The truck’s unstable. We need to sit still until Donald arrives with his tow truck.’
‘Then we’ll be waiting a while,’ Horace said without humour. ‘Donald and his missus have gone to their daughter’s for Christmas. Dunno who’s got a tow truck round here. It’ll have to be a tractor.’
‘Can you get Margaret to ring someone?’
‘Like I said, Doc, she’s useless.’
* * *
There was an SUV parked right where she wanted to drive.
It was serviceable, dirty white, a four-wheel drive wagon with a neat red sign across the side. The sign said: ‘Wombat Valley Medical Service’.
It blocked the road completely.
She put her foot on the brake and her car came to a well-behaved standstill.
The road curved behind the SUV, and as her car stopped she saw the collapse of the verge. And as she saw more, she gasped in horror.
There was a truck below the collapse. Over the cliff!
A few hundred yards back she’d passed a sign declaring this area to be Wombat Valley Gap. The Gap looked to be a magnificent wilderness area, stretching beneath the road as far as the eye could see.
The road was hewn into the side of the mountain. The edge was a steep drop. Very steep. Straight down.
The truck looked as if it had rounded the curve too fast. The skid marks suggested it had hit the cliff and spun across to the edge. The roadside looked as if it had given way.
The truck had slipped right over and was now balanced precariously about ten feet down the cliff, pointing downward. There were a couple of saplings holding it. Just.
A woman was crouched on the verge, weeping, and Polly herself almost wept in relief at the sight of her. She’d escaped from the truck then?
But then she thought... SUV blocking the road. Wombat Valley Medical Service... Two vehicles.
Where was the paramedic?
Was someone else in the truck? Was this dramas, plural?
Help!
She was a city doctor, she thought frantically. She’d never been near the bush in her life. She’d never had to cope with a road accident. Yes, she’d cared for accident victims, but that had been in the organised efficiency of a city hospital Emergency Room.
All of a sudden she wanted to be back in Sydney. Preferably off-duty.
‘You wanted to be a doctor,’ she told herself, still taking time to assess the whole scene. Her lecturers in Emergency Medicine had drilled that into her, and somehow her training was coming back now. ‘Don’t jump in before you’ve checked the whole situation. Check fast but always check. You don’t want to become work for another doctor. Work out priorities and keep yourself safe.’
Keeping herself safe had never been a problem in the ER.
‘You wanted to see medicine at its most basic,’ she reminded herself as she figured out what must have happened. ‘Here’s your chance. Get out of the car and help.’
My, that truck looked unstable.
Keep yourself safe.
The woman was wailing.
Who was in the truck?
Deep breath.
She climbed out of her car, thinking a flouncy dress covered in red and white polka dots wasn’t what she should be wearing right now. She was also wearing crimson sandals with kitten heels.
She hardly had time to change. She was a doctor and she was needed. Disregarding her entirely inappropriate wardrobe, she headed across to the crying woman. She was big-boned, buxom, wearing a crinoline frock and an electric-blue perm. She had a man’s jacket over her shoulders. Her face was swollen from weeping and she had a scratch above one eye.
‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’ Polly knelt beside her, and the woman stared at her and wailed louder. A lot louder.
But hysterics was something Pollyanna Hargreaves could deal with. Hysterics was Polly’s mother’s weapon of last resort and Polly had stopped responding to it from the age of six.
She knelt so her face was six inches from the woman’s. She was forcing her to look at her and, as soon as she did, she got serious.
‘Stop the noise or I’ll slap you,’ she said, loud and firm and cold as ice. Doctor threatening patient with physical violence... Good one, Polly thought. That’s the way to endear you to the locals. But it couldn’t matter. Were there people in that upside down truck?
‘Who’s in the truck?’ she demanded. ‘Take two deep breaths and talk.’
‘I...my husband. And Doc...’
‘Doc?’
‘Doc Denver.’
‘The doctor’s in the truck?’
‘He was trying to help Horace.’ Somehow she was managing to speak. ‘Horace was bleeding. But then the ground gave way and the truck slid and it’s still wobbling and it’s going to fall all the way down.’
The woman subsided as Polly once again took a moment to assess. The truck was definitely...wobbling. The saplings seemed to be the only thing holding it up. If even one of them gave way...
‘Have you called for help?’ she asked. The woman was clutching her phone.
‘I called Doc...’
‘The doctor who’s here now?’
‘Doc Denver, yes.’
‘Good for you. How about the police? A tow truck?’
The woman shook her head, put her hands to her face and started loud, rapid breathing. Holly took a fast pulse check and diagnosed panic. There were other things she should exclude before a definitive diagnosis but, for now, triage said she needed to focus on the truck.
‘I need you to concentrate on breathing,’ she told the woman. ‘Count. One, two, three, four—in. One, two, three, four—out. Slow your breathing down. Will you do that?’
‘I...yes...’
‘Good woman.’ But Polly had moved on. Truck. Cliff. Fall.
She edged forward, trying to see down the cliff, wary of the crumbling edge.
What was wrong with Christmas in Sydney? All at once she would have given her very best shoes to be there.
CHAPTER TWO
TRIAGE. ACTION. SOMEHOW POLLY made herself a plan.
First things first. She phoned the universal emergency number and
the response came blessedly fast.
‘Emergency services. Fire, ambulance, police—which service do you require?’
‘How about all three?’ She gave details but as she talked she stared down at the truck.
There was a coil of rope in the back of the truck. A big one. A girl could do lots with that rope, she thought. If she could clamber down...
A police sergeant came onto the phone, bluff but apologetic.
‘We need to come from Willaura—we’ll probably be half an hour. I’ll get an ambulance there as soon as I can, but sorry, Doc, you’re on your own for at least twenty minutes.’
He disconnected.
Twenty minutes. Half an hour.
The ground was soggy. If the saplings gave way...
She could still see the rope, ten feet down in the back of the truck tray. It wasn’t a sheer drop but the angle was impossibly steep.
There were saplings beside the truck she could hold onto, if they were strong enough.
‘Who’s up there?’
The voice from the truck made her start. It was a voice she recognised from the calls she’d made organising this job. Dr Hugo Denver. Her employer.
‘It’s Dr Hargreaves, your new locum, and you promised me no excitement,’ she called back. She couldn’t see him. ‘Hello to you, too. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can jump from the cab and let it roll?’
‘I have the driver in here. Multiple lacerations and a crush injury to the chest. I’m applying pressure to stop the bleeding.’
‘You didn’t think to pull him out first?’
There was a moment’s pause, then a reply that sounded as if it came through gritted teeth. ‘No.’
‘That was hardly wise.’
‘Are you in a position to judge?’
‘I guess not.’ She was assessing the saplings, seeing if she could figure out safe holds on the way down. ‘But it does—in retrospect—seem to have been worth considering.’
She heard a choke that might even have been laughter. It helped, she thought. People thought medics had a black sense of humour but, in the worst kind of situations, humour was often the only way to alleviate tension.
‘I’ll ask for your advice when I need it,’ he retorted and she tested a sapling for strength and thought maybe not.
‘Advice is free,’ she offered helpfully.
‘Am I or am I not paying you?’
She almost managed a grin at that, except she couldn’t get her sandals to grip in the mud and she was kind of distracted. ‘I believe you are,’ she said at last, and gave up on the shoes and tossed her kitten heels up onto the verge. Bare feet was bad but kitten heels were worse. She started inching down the slope, moving from sapling to sapling. If she could just reach that rope...
‘I’d like a bit of respect,’ Hugo Denver called and she held like a limpet to a particularly shaky sapling and tried to think about respect.
‘It seems you’re not in any position to ask for anything right now,’ she managed. She was nearing the back of the truck but she was being super-cautious. If she slipped she could hardly grab the truck for support. It looked like one push and it’d fall...
Do not think of falling.
‘I need my bag,’ Hugo said. ‘It’s on the verge where the truck...’
‘Yeah, I saw it.’ It was above her. Quite a bit above her now.
‘Can you lower it somehow?’
‘In a minute. I’m getting a rope.’
‘A rope?’
‘There’s one in the back of the truck. It looks really long and sturdy. Just what the doctor ordered.’
‘You’re climbing down?’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘Hell, Polly...’
‘Don’t worry. I have really grippy toenails and if I can reach it I might be able to make the truck more secure.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then... ‘Grippy toenails?’
‘They’re painted crimson.’
He didn’t seem to hear the crimson bit. ‘Polly, don’t. It’s too dangerous. There’s a cord in my truck...’
‘How long a cord?’ Maybe she should have checked his truck.
‘Twelve feet or so. You could use it to lower my bag. Horace needs a drip and fast.’
There was no way she could use a twelve-foot cord to secure the truck—and what use was a drip if the truck fell?
‘Sorry,’ Polly managed. ‘In every single situation I’ve ever trained in, triage is sorting priorities, so that’s what I’ve done. If I lower your bag and add a smidgen of weight to the truck, you may well be setting up a drip as you plummet to the valley floor. So it’s rope first, secure the truck next and then I’ll work on getting your bag. You get to be boss again when you get out of the truck.’
‘You’ve got a mouth,’ he said, sounding cautious—and also stunned.
‘I’m bad at respect,’ she admitted. If she could just get a firmer hold... ‘That’s the younger generation for you. You want to override me, Grandpa?’
‘How old do you think I am?’
‘You must be old if you think a ride to the bottom of the valley’s an option.’ And then she shut up because she had to let go of a sapling with one hand and hope the other held, and lean out and stretch and hope that her fingers could snag the rope...
And they did and she could have wept in relief but she didn’t because she was concentrating on sliding the rope from the tray, an inch at a time, thinking that any sudden movements could mean...
Don’t think what it could mean.
‘You have red hair!’
He could see her. She’d been so intent she hadn’t even looked at the window in the back of the truck. She braved a glance downward, and she saw him.
Okay, she conceded, this was no grandpa. The face looking out at her was lean and tanned and...worried. His face looked sort of chiselled, his eyes were deep set and his brow looked furrowed in concern...
All that she saw in the nanosecond she allowed herself before she went back to concentrating on freeing the rope. But weirdly it sort of...changed things.
Two seconds ago she’d been concentrating on saving two guys in a truck. Now one of them had a face. One of them looked worried. One of them looked...
Strong?
Immensely masculine?
How crazy was that? Her sight of him had been fleeting, a momentary impression, but there’d been something about the way he’d looked back at her...
Get on with the job, she told herself sharply. It was all very well getting the rope out of the truck. What was she going to do with it now she had it?
She had to concentrate on the rope. Not some male face. Not on the unknown Dr Denver.
The tray of the truck had a rail around it, with an upright at each corner. If she could loop the rope...
‘Polly, wait for the cavalry,’ Hugo demanded, and once again she had that impression of strength. And that he feared for her.
‘The cavalry’s arriving in half an hour,’ she called back. ‘Does Horace have half an hour?’
Silence.
‘He’s nicked a vein,’ he said at last, and Polly thought: That’s that, then. Horace needed help or he’d die.
She wedged herself against another sapling, hoping it could take her weight. Then she unwound her rope coil.
‘What are you doing?’ It was a sharp demand.
‘Imagine I’m in Theatre,’ she told him. ‘Neurosurgeon fighting the odds. You’re unscrubbed and useless. Would you ask for a commentary?’
‘Is that another way of saying you don’t have a plan?’
‘Shut up and concentrate on Horace.’ It was unnerving, to say the least, that he could see her, but then Horace groaned and Hugo’s face disappeared from the
back window and she could get on with...what...? Concentrating not on Hugo.
On one rope.
Somehow she got the middle of the rope looped and knotted around each side of the tray. Yay! Now she had to get back to the road. She clutched the cliff as if she were glued to it, scrambling up until her feet were on solid ground. Finally she was up. All she had to do now was figure out something to tie it to.
She had the shakes.
‘Are you safe?’ Hugo called and she realised he couldn’t see her any more. The truck was too far over the lip. ‘Dr Hargreaves?’ There was no disguising his fear.
‘I’m safe,’ she called back and her voice wobbled and she tried again. This time her voice was pleasingly smug. ‘Feet on terra firma. Moving to stage two of the action plan.’
‘I thought you didn’t have a plan.’
‘It’s more exciting without one, but I’m trying. Indeed, I’m very trying.’
Plans took brains. Plans required the mush in her brain to turn useful. To stop thinking about Hugo plunging downward...
It wasn’t Hugo. It was two guys in a truck. Take the personal out of it, she told herself.
Plan!
She needed a solid tree, or at least a good-sized stump. She had neither.
Attach the rope to her car? Not in a million years. Her little yellow sports car would sail over the cliff after the truck.
Margaret looked kind of buxom. How would she go as an anchor?
She gave a wry grin, wishing she could share the thought with Bossy In The Truck. Maybe not.
Bossy’s truck?
The thought was no sooner in her mind than she was running up the road to Hugo’s car. Blessedly, his keys were in the ignition. Yes! A minute later, his vehicle was parked as close as she could manage to the point where the truck had gone over.
It was an SUV. She’d once gone skiing in an upmarket version of one of these—her boyfriend’s. Well, her ex-boyfriend, she conceded. They’d been snowed in and the tow truck had had to winch them out.
Polly had been interested in the process, or more interested than in listening to Marcus whinging, so she’d watched. There’d been an anchor point...
She ducked underneath. Yes! She had the ends of the rope fastened in a moment.
