‘Run!’ she’d screamed at the two guys who’d been carrying him, and she still seemed to hear the echoes of that yell.
They’d run.
She hoped they’d made it. Fallen rock was blocking the way she’d come. Please, let them have made it to the other side.
It was no use hoping. First things first. She was raking the rubble-strewn floor with her torch beam, searching for Malu. The combined beam of torch and phone only reached about three feet before the dust killed it.
He must have pulled himself back.
‘Malu?’
‘H-here.’
A pile of stone lay between them. She was over it in seconds. It hurt, she thought vaguely. She was eight months pregnant. Climbing over loose rock, knocking rock in the process, was maybe not the wisest...
She didn’t have time for wise.
He was right by the pile. He was very lucky the rocks hadn’t fallen on him.
Define luck, she thought grimly, but at least he was still alive. And still conscious.
Dust and blood. A lot of it.
He had a deep gash on his thigh where his pants were ripped away. The guys had tried to tie a tourniquet but it had slipped. Blood was oozing...
But not pumping, she thought with relief. If it’d been pumping he’d be dead by now.
She was wearing a light jacket. She hauled it off, bundled it into a tight pad, placed it against the wound and pushed.
Malu screamed.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she told him, but there was no time to do anything about the pain. She had to keep pushing. ‘Malu, I have drugs but I need to stop the bleeding before I do anything else. I need to press hard.’
‘S-sorry. Just the shock...’
‘I should have warned you.’
Go back to basics, she reminded herself, desperately fighting the need to cough, and the need to breathe through the grit. Desperately trying to sound in control. Don’t start a procedure before explaining it to the patient, she reminded herself, even if she was trapped in a place that scared her witless.
Malu had relapsed into silence. She knew Malu. He was a large, tough islander from the outermost island of the M’Langi group.
He had a wife and two small children.
She pushed harder.
She had morphine in her bag. If she had another pair of hands...
She didn’t.
His pants were ripped. Yes! Still pressing with one hand, she used the other and tugged the jagged cloth. The cloth ripped almost to the ankle.
Now she was fumbling one-handed in her bag for scissors. Thank heaven she was neat. There was so much dust... Despite the torchlight she could hardly see, but the scissors were right where she always stored them.
One snip and she had the tough fabric cut at the cuff, and that gave her a length of fabric to wind. The miners had tried to use a belt as their tourniquet but it was too stiff. The torn trouser leg was a thousand times better.
She twisted and wound, tying the pad—her ex-jacket—into place. She twisted and twisted until Malu cried out again.
‘Malu, the worst’s over,’ she told him as she somehow managed to knot it. ‘The bleeding’s stopped and my hands are now free. I’ll make us masks to make breathing easier. Then I’ll organise something to dull the pain.’
And get some fluids into you, she added to herself, saying silent prayers of thanks that she had her bag with her, that she’d had it beside her when the collapse had happened, that she’d picked it up almost automatically and that she hadn’t dropped it. She had saline. She could set up a drip. But in this dust, to try and keep things sterile...
Concentrate on keeping Malu alive first, she told herself. After so much blood loss she had to replace fluids. She’d worry about bugs later.
Malu was barely responding. His pulse... His pulse...
Get the fluids in. Move!
Five minutes later Malu had morphine on board and she had a makeshift drip feeding fluids into his arm. She’d ripped her shirt and created makeshift masks to keep the worst of the dust from their lungs. She sat back and held the saline bag up, and for the first time she thought she might have time to breathe herself.
She still felt like she was choking. Her eyes were filled with grit.
They were both alive.
‘Doc?’ Malu’s voice was a whisper but she was onto it.
‘Mmm?’
‘Macca and Reuben... They were carrying me.’
‘I know.’
‘Reuben’s my uncle. You reckon they’ve made it?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was no point lying; Malu would know the risks better than she did. She grasped his hand and held. There was nothing else she could do or say.
The thought of trying to find them, trying to struggle out through the mass of rubble... Even if she could leave Malu, the thing was impossible. The rubble around them was unyielding.
Malu’s hand gripped hers, hard. ‘Don’t even think about trying to dig out,’ he muttered, and she thought that even though his words were meant as protection to her, there was more than a hint of fear for himself. To be left alone in the dark... ‘It’s up to them outside to do the rescuing now. Meanwhile, turn off the lights.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The lights. We don’t need ’em. Conserve...’
‘Good thinking,’ she said warmly, and flicked off her torch. Then she flicked off the torch app on her phone. But as the beam died, a message appeared on the screen. When had that come in?
She wouldn’t have heard.
The message was simple.
Maddie? Tell me you’re not down the mine. On way with Cairns Air Sea Rescue. Josh.
Josh.
Josh was coming.
Her phone was working. Help was on its way.
It was amazing that the signal had reached down here, but this was a shallow tunnel, with ventilation shafts rising at regular intervals. The simple knowledge that she had phone reception made her feel better. And Josh was coming... All of a sudden she felt a thousand per cent lighter. She told Malu and felt the faint relaxation of the grip on her hand. Cairns Air Sea Rescue would be the forerunners, she knew. The cavalry was heading this way.
She gripped her phone hard, as if it alone was a link to the outside world. Help. Heavy machinery. Skill, technology, care. All the things needed to get them out of here.
Josh was coming.
It shouldn’t make one scrap of difference that Josh would be one of the rescue crew. Their marriage had been over for years. They talked occasionally as casual acquaintances. Friends? Probably not even that.
But still... Josh was coming.
‘So you still got reception?’ Malu whispered, sounding incredulous, and she looked at the one bar out of five signalling a really weak link to the outside world.
‘Just.’
‘Tell ’em to hurry,’ Malu muttered. ‘And tell them if there’s one single camera at the mine mouth then I need a new pair of trousers before they bring me out.’
She even managed a chuckle. He was so brave.
His pulse was so weak...
‘I’ll tell them,’ she said and ventured a text back.
Yeah, we’re underground. There’s a bit of rock between us and the entrance. We’re not very respectable. If you’re coming in we’d appreciate a change of clothes. There’s a distinct lack of laundry facilities down here.
She read it to Malu and he managed a chuckle. She should say more, she thought. She should give a complete medical update but for now it was enough that she was breathing and Malu was breathing.
She just had to keep it that way until Josh...
Until the cavalry arrived.
* * *
The plane was taxiing out onto
the runway. ‘Phones off now,’ the pilot snapped, and Josh went to flick off his phone—and then paused as a message appeared.
If you’re coming in we’d appreciate a change of clothes. There’s a distinct lack of laundry
facilities down here.
He swore. Then he swore again.
‘Josh?’ Beth was watching, all concern.
‘She’s down there,’ he said grimly. ‘Maddie’s trapped.’
‘Then all the more reason to turn your phone off so we can take off.’ But she took the phone from his hands and stared at the screen, and her face tightened. This team were used to horror, but when it affected one of their own...
‘Wait thirty seconds,’ she told the pilot, and she started texting.
‘What?’ He tried to grab his phone back, but she turned her back on him and kept typing. Then the text sent, and she handed it back.
He looked down at what she’d written.
We’re on our way. With Josh in the lead. He’ll be in there with you, even if he has to dig in with his bare hands.
‘Beth...’ He could hardly speak.
‘Truth?’ she queried, and he tried to swallow panic. And failed.
‘Truth,’ he muttered, and he flicked his phone off and they were on their way.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT BLESSED FAIRY had made her run into the mine with a fully loaded medical bag?
What bad goblin had made her run in at all?
In the hours that followed, Maddie tried to get a grip on what had happened.
There should have been systems in place to stop her, she decided as the darkness seemed to grow blacker around her. There should also have been barriers to stop the mine’s ex-employees gaining access in the first place.
But who was in control? Where was Ian Lockhart? He owned this mine, or at least his brother did. So much on this island was running down. Lockhart money had dried up. There’d even been mutterings that the medical service would have to close.
At least the service had still been operating this morning, she thought, grasping at any ray of light she could find in this nightmare. The good news was that she’d been here. Yes, she’d been dumb enough to run into the mine, but she’d carried three units of saline and she’d only used two on Malu. The bleeding had slowed to nothing and his blood pressure was rising and...
And she was still trapped underground. A long way underground.
Her telephone beeped into life again. Ringing. Not a message.
A real person! But first she frantically sought settings to turn the volume down. The dust was still settling around them, and it seemed to her that any little sound might cause more rock to fall.
Malu was no longer aware. She’d given him more morphine and he’d fallen into an uneasy slumber. The ringtone hadn’t woken him.
‘H-hi.’ It felt eerie to be calmly answering the phone in such conditions. She had to stop and cough. ‘H-hold on.’
Let it be Josh.
Why did she think that? Josh was coming from Cairns. He couldn’t be here yet. The coughing eased and she managed to focus again.
‘Maddie?’ The voice at the end of the phone was growing frantic. Not Josh.
She recognised the voice—Keanu, one of the other two island doctors. Sam, the island’s chief permanent doctor, had decided to take leave before she had her baby, which meant she and Keanu were currently the only doctors on the island.
‘What’s happening?’ he demanded. ‘Are you okay?’
‘We seem to be trapped but we’re okay.’ She glanced down again at Malu. ‘You and me both, aren’t we, Malu?’
Malu didn’t respond but she didn’t expect him to. The wound on his thigh was ugly. Without morphine he’d be writhing. She released the pressure from his makeshift mask a little, trying to get a balance between stopping the grit and making it harder for him to breathe.
Oxygen would be good. Why hadn’t she lugged in an oxygen cylinder, as well?
She should have brought a wheelbarrow.
‘Maddie?’
She jerked herself back to focussing on the call. ‘Keanu? Malu has an impact injury, thigh.’ She suspected broken ribs, possible internal injuries as well, but it was no use saying that in Malu’s hearing. ‘I suspect he’ll need surgery when we get out of here, evac to Cairns, but I’ve stopped the bleeding and he’s stable. Two litres of saline, five milligrams of intravenous morph...’
‘You had that stuff down there?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘I was a girl scout,’ she said dryly. ‘I’m prepared.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then...
‘Are Macca and Reuben with you?’
‘They ran when the second collapse came. They’re not with us now.’
He must have her on speaker phone. She could hear sobbing in the background. He’d be in the operations room of the mine, she thought. The sobbing would be Macca’s and Reuben’s families.
Malu’s family would be there, too.
No one belonging to her.
But then...Josh was coming. He’d said he would.
Josh wasn’t her family, she reminded herself. In truth, he never had been.
‘That last rockfall...’ She was almost afraid to ask, but she had to. ‘Was anyone else hurt?’
‘Everyone’s clear but you four.’
‘Kalifa?
‘Maddie, worry about yourself.’
‘Should I worry?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘It might take a while to reach you,’ Keanu said at last. ‘How’s the air down there?’
‘Dusty.’
‘But?’
‘But otherwise okay.’ She sniffed. ‘I can feel a bit of a draught. Do you reckon there might be some sort of escape hatch?’
‘It’s probably from a ventilation shaft. Thank God that’s still working.’ He hesitated. ‘Maddie, we need to bring experts and machinery from the mainland.’
‘The mainland...Cairns.’
‘Yep.’
‘Is that coming on the mercy flight?’
‘How do you know about the mercy flight?’
‘Josh told me.’
There was another silence. ‘Your Josh,’ he said at last.
‘He’s not my Josh.’ And then... ‘How do you know he’s my Josh?’
‘Hettie told me. She relayed the message from Cairns Air Sea Rescue. But... You’ve been talking to him yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maddie?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You need to conserve your phone. It’s probably not the time for chats with your ex.’
‘He texted. I also have three battery backups in my bag. That’s enough for two days.’
‘That might not be enough.’
‘You have to be kidding.’
‘I hope I am,’ he said. ‘But for now...two days or not, conserve your phone.’
* * *
Two days or not, conserve your phone.
Maddie sat back on her heels and tried—really hard—not to panic.
Two days?
There’d been an incident, not so long ago, where miners had been trapped...where? Tasmania? The miners had been successfully brought to the surface after how many days? Fourteen? She couldn’t remember the details but she remembered watching the rescue unfold on television. She’d been mesmerised by the tragedy of the mine collapse but even more mesmerised by the courage shown by the miners trying to keep their sanity as the appalling endurance test had stretched on.
Neither of them had been badly injured.
Malu was suffering from shock and a deep laceration, she thought, but what else? She wanted X-rays. She wanted him in hospital. She wanted a steril
e environment and the necessary surgery for his leg.
She couldn’t even see him.
Two days...
The darkness was absolute.
Her fingers were on Malu’s wrist. His pulse was settling. There was no need to turn on the torch.
She flicked the torch on anyway, just for a moment. Just to see.
Their chamber was about eight feet in diameter. The roof was still up there, and there were shoring timbers above them. Where their tiny enclosure ended, the shoring timbers had splintered like kindling.
The floor was rock-strewn. She needed to clear it a bit to get Malu more comfortable.
She could do it without the torch. She had to do it without the torch. She flicked it off again and the total darkness was like a physical slap.
Her phone gave a tiny ping and the screen lit momentarily. She took three deep breaths—because she had been close to panic—and she let herself look.
Landed. You nice and safe down there? Got a couple of good rocks you can use for pillows or are you thinking you might like to come on up? Josh.
She could have kissed him. Except she didn’t kiss Josh. Not any more. He’d always been uncomfortable with overt displays of affection. Even when they’d been married... Affection had been an effort, she thought, seizing on the excuse to get her mind off the dust. She’d never been in any doubt that he’d wanted her, but affection had been for behind closed doors. It was almost as if he’d been ashamed to admit he’d needed her.
He didn’t need her. He’d figured that five years ago when he’d walked away from their marriage. But right now she needed him. She texted him.
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.
For drinking? She didn’t say it. She couldn’t.
Heart rate a hundred and twenty. Only just conscious. Worrying.
Damn Keanu and his ban on using her phone, she decided, as she hit Send. Okay, her battery life was precious, but Josh was a trauma specialist, a good one, and she needed advice. If she was going to be stuck down here with Malu, then the least she could do was keep him alive.
Saving Maddie's Baby Page 2
