‘It is, isn’t it?’ Her beam returned in full. ‘For one stray dog and one wimpish doctor we’ve done very well for ourselves. So maybe I should even be grateful to my muggers. Now…how’s that popcorn going? Nearly threaded?’
‘No. I—’
‘Well, hurry up. There’s more here.’ And then she frowned. ‘You did eat, by the way?’
‘I ate over at the hospital.’
‘Really?’ She sounded as if she thought he was a dope for doing such a thing. ‘Ernest and I made chicken pie. And chocolate pudding.’
He’d had cold mutton and salad. Damn.
Maybe he was a dope.
Maybe he didn’t know what the hell he was any more.
So he sat and threaded popcorn, because that was all he could think of to do.
The nights were the longest. Would he ever be able to close his eyes at eleven and wake at seven with eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep? Blake lay in the darkness, listening to a rising wind. His hands were linked behind his head and he stared up into the night with all the old familiar demons doing their haunting.
Curiously, though, tonight they were changed. Different.
He could still see Sylvia’s face. That’d stay with him for ever. But tonight he wasn’t seeing her as he’d seen her at the end. He was watching her as he’d first noticed her. At Christmas…
‘Not the orange ones. You dingbat, can’t you see I have a pink and white theme?’ Her gorgeous face had laughed down at him from the ladder as she’d attached baubles to the ward Christmas tree. ‘Yes, that’s lovely,’ she’d approved. ‘Now, just stand there and hand them up, there’s a lamb. But nothing that clashes.’
Sylvia would have hated Nell’s tree, Blake thought. There wasn’t a thing on the branches that went with anything else. It was a garish, outlandish jumble of everything she’d been able to scramble together.
‘Well, you don’t seem to have boxes of Christmas decorations lying around and I don’t have cash to splash,’ Nell had told him when he’d fingered the decorations in amazement. ‘So a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.’
What a girl had to do had stunned him. She’d fetched his waiting room’s collection of magazines to the apartment and she’d ripped them into pieces. Now they were reassembled as masses of paper chains, looping through her threaded popcorn, and she’d made scores and scores of tiny paper lanterns to hang all over.
‘Look,’ she’d said, laughing and motioning to the highest lantern. ‘This one’s a lantern made with Brad Pitt’s six-pack. What a way to make a Christmas lamp.’
He grinned into the night at the thought of it.
But Sylvia would have had a fit.
Damn Sylvia.
The thought came from nowhere, astounding him. It was the first time he’d thought it. Up until now the guilt had been all-consuming. But now…
It was a great Christmas tree, he decided, and then he gave the image of his dead wife a grimace. ‘Don’t you spoil it for me.’ As she’d spoiled everything else…
He sat up and flicked on the light, as he’d done every night now for over three years. But now it wasn’t Sylvia he was thinking of.
The top of the tree was bare.
‘We need an angel,’ Nell had said sadly just before they’d retired for the night. She’d stood back and stared at the tree’s tip with regret. ‘We’ll never find one now. I’d splash out and buy something as important as an angel, but the shops will have sold out long ago.’
And now, in the dark, a memory crept back—a long-ago memory from when he’d been about five years old. Back to kindergarten days.
‘Fold here. Now cut. See, if you leave just a little bit on either wing, they’ll join.’ He’d made paper angels. Chains of paper angels.
They’d run out of paper.
He stared down at his bedside and his medical journals mocked him. Hmm. He could but try.
It was four in the morning. Nell had slept for five hours, but then she woke. The surf was starting to crash in the rising wind, and junior was kicking in no uncertain terms.
‘Cornelius,’ she threatened, but it was no good. Cornelius or Brunhilda kicked on. Finally she sighed, threw back the covers and emerged to the living room.
There were angels circling the top of her tree.
For a moment she thought she was dreaming, but then she looked again.
Blake had cut them with care. These were kindergarten angels cut by a man who’d trained as a surgeon. You could see the skill of surgeon’s fingers in the way he’d cut the gorgeously intricate wings.
They were identical—well, they would be as he’d folded the pages into three and cut them as a chain. Then he’d joined the wing of the first and the third to form a ring. Now the ring of winged angels circled the tip of pine, and they beamed down…
How had he done the faces? How had he made them smile?
He’d cut them! The deep green of the tree made the intricate cuts in the glossy paper stand out as beaming smiles. Wondrous smiles. Smiles of blessing…
Nell stood back, stunned. They really were very, very good, and they completed her Christmas tree magnificently.
But he’d cut them from his medical journals.
There was an advertisement for haemorrhoid cream running around the base of the first angel!
Haemorrhoid cream advertisements on Christmas angels?
He was a nut, she thought, and found herself giggling. A nice nut. Underneath that grumpy, repellent shell she was starting to discover a very nice person.
She’d just have to struggle to expose it.
Which posed a dilemma. Why would you bother exposing anything? she asked herself. You’re not interested in men.
It’s just I’m interested in him as a person, she said to herself defensively. Not as a male.
Yeah, right. You dope, Nell.
I’m not a dope. I know what I’m doing. I can take care of myself.
Maybe she needed to go back to bed and stop thinking about it. Hmm.
The phone went at six, blasting through the sounds of wind and surf and waking both doctors. The hospital staff had been told to ring Blake again during the night, and the phone was by his bed, but Nell heard it. She’d left her door wide open and she saw him as he walked out of the bedroom, still talking on the mobile handset.
Well, why wouldn’t she look? He was only wearing pyjama pants, and there was that chest again…
For heaven’s sake, Nell McKenzie, she told herself as he flicked on the living room light and his body was clearly delineated in the frame of her bedroom door. Get a grip! And listening to him, her concentration on his chest faded immediately. She did indeed get a grip.
‘How many? Right. You’ve contacted the ambulance? What about the coastguard?’
That was enough. Nell’s covers were thrust aside and she padded out fast to see what was going on.
Ernest was there, too, awake and alert and looking only slightly hungry. Woman and dog stood beside the Christmas tree, and waited for Blake to finish. Blake’s voice was curt and incisive, but mostly he listened.
‘Yeah. Right. OK. Tell the ambulance to pick me up in two minutes. You might be able to winch me down from the top.’
And then he clicked off the receiver and headed back to his bedroom. Leaving the door open, he was throwing on his clothes regardless of the fact that Nell was standing by his bedroom door. He simply didn’t notice.
This, then, was real trouble.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Nell asked.
‘No.’ That was to the point. He was zipping his trousers and hauling on his shirt almost in one motion.
‘What’s happened?’
‘A group of locals fishing from the clifftop.’ He shoved his shirt into his trousers and reached for a sweater. ‘Damn fools. They know these cliffs are unstable.’
‘There’s been a slide?’
That made him frown. He’d forgotten she was a local. She’d know what the problem was. The sandstone
cliffs were notoriously unstable here, yet time and time again he’d seen fishermen edge closer to get their cast to land inches further out into the surf.
‘Yes.’
‘To be out in this wind…’ She thought fast and knew they’d have selected this morning especially. With the wind behind them they could cast their lines further out to where the fish ran. ‘How many fell?’
‘Three. One’s in the water. The coastguard’s on the way, but God help him. Two are stuck on a ledge halfway down and one seems badly hurt.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘You’re seven months pregnant,’ he said explosively. ‘You’ll only be in the way.’
And that was that. He hauled his sweater over his head, grabbed his boots and headed for the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU’LL only be in the way.’ How often had she heard that? All her life, Nell thought bitterly, and it made no more sense now than it had all those years ago. ‘Get out of my kitchen. Leave your grandfather alone. Go to your bedroom, Eleanor.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re in the way.’
That statement was now a red rag to a bull, Nell decided as she hauled on her clothes. Damn the man! Who did he think he was?
‘These are my people,’ she told Ernest fiercely. ‘I was brought up here. If there’s fishermen stuck on the cliffs or in the water then I’ll have known them for ever, and I’m trained in emergency medicine.’
Ernest looked at her with understanding, and as she raced to the door he sniffed after her.
‘Sorry, boy,’ she told him, not without irony. ‘Not today. Believe it or not, you’d only be in the way.’
Someone—whoever had phoned—had obviously collected Blake. Nell had heard their vehicle accelerate away while she’d been throwing on her clothes—the same purple overalls Blake had first seen her in. They might be flamboyant but they were practical. Now she emerged to the windswept dawn to find no one.
The hospital residence was on a bluff overlooking the town and the wind across the bluff almost blasted her sideways.
The fishermen must be on the north cliffs, she decided as she headed for her car. They must be. At this time of year the tailor—a popular eating fish—would be running and the fishermen would be casting off the cliffs north of the river mouth. The cliffs were forty feet high, they were known to be dangerous and she knew about twenty men in the town who’d be stupid enough to fish there.
So she knew where to go. No thanks to Blake.
‘Damn the man,’ she muttered under her breath as she steered her Volkswagen northwards. ‘Who does he think he is?’
He thought he was a hero!
Nell pulled up on the clifftop, parking well back from the ambulance and other vehicles. There was a cluster of men gathered where the cliff dropped to the sea, and as she climbed from her car she caught sight of Blake’s dark sweater and gold-brown hair. He appeared to be sitting on the cliff edge.
He wasn’t just sitting. As she ran closer she saw that he was in a harness, and as she watched in horror, he was lowered over the face of the cliff. Her breath caught in fear but she was too late. He was gone.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Nell’s barked command had men turning toward her. She was striding toward the cliff with a fierceness born of fear, and the wind was tearing at her back, almost pushing her out to sea. She had to raise her voice to be heard above wind and surf.
‘Of all the stupid… Look how close you are! Will you get back?’ There were six of them standing right on the edge. ‘If the edge has crumbled already, don’t you realise it can go again? Bring Dr Sutherland back up. Now!’
‘We can’t do it, Nell,’ one of the fishermen said dully, turning back to stare down the cliff with eyes that had room for only one thing. ‘The only other way to reach them is with a helicopter and we can’t wait. Tom’s down there, and Dan, and Dan can’t breathe. Tom yelled up that he was turning blue. He’s unconscious and there’s blood coming out of his mouth, so it was send the doc over or have him die before we could reach him.’
Nell was forced to leave Blake on the ledge. A man could be dying of airway obstruction. Blake had gone down because he could focus on only one thing, so it was up to her to focus on others—like getting these fools back from the cliff edge before Blake ended up with more patients down there.
‘Where’s the fire chief?’ she snapped. When she’d left town twelve years ago the fire chief had been the man to turn to in emergencies. Allan had a fierce intellect, enough courage for a small army and, in times of drama, there was no one she’d rather rely on.
‘He’s in Brisbane for his daughter’s wedding,’ one of the men said helplessly, and Nell realised with a sinking heart that the trouble with having someone so competent in charge was the void it left with him gone.
And all the men were looking at her. Good grief! Ten years ago the townsfolk had looked at her like she was a scrap of an unwanted kid. Now, because she’d raised her voice in anger and because she was deemed a doctor, she was looked to for answers.
And of all the fishermen in the town, these were the stupidest. So the void had to be filled by her.
‘OK, move back,’ she told them. ‘Now!’ The rope they were holding had gone slack. Blake had presumably reached his ledge. Then, once the rest of the men were back from the edge, she ventured forward herself, crawling on all fours to see.
Yes, Blake had reached the ledge. A rocky outcrop fifteen feet down had caught the two men. Blake was there now, crouched over a prone figure while another watched with helpless dismay.
It was better than she’d dared hope. The ledge seemed solid. A mass of loose dirt seemed to have come from the top when it had crumbled, but the ledge itself looked as if it might hold.
She stayed where she was, lying on her stomach—with difficulty because of her pregnancy—and watched what Blake was doing. The way Blake was moving, she could tell that every ounce of his concentration was on the injured man. If Dan was dying of airway obstruction, it’d take every bit of Blake’s skill to keep him alive in such a situation.
‘Is Blake carrying his phone?’
‘There’s no reception out here,’ someone told her, and she bit her lip. Damn.
OK, she had to think for herself—and for Blake. She couldn’t yell down to him. From where she was he probably wouldn’t hear and it was too dangerous to lean right over.
‘Right.’ She inched back and stood up, walking away from the edge and pushing into the wind as she gazed swiftly around the remaining men. Three fishermen, two fire officers and one ambulance officer. She knew them all.
‘Bill, you inch forward and take my place,’ she ordered. ‘Stay on your stomach and put your weight as far back as you can.’ Then she explained her reasons to the others. ‘We need someone to direct the winch, and Bill’s the only one whose family are grown.’
They saw the sense in that. If anyone had to risk their life, it should be someone without dependants. ‘OK by me,’ Bill said grimly.
‘Blake’ll need oxygen,’ Nell told them. She’d seen that he’d carried his doctor’s bag down with him—he therefore had the means to do an emergency tracheotomy if he must—but he’d had no time to organise more. She didn’t want Blake wasting time now, calling up directions and waiting for equipment. She turned to the ambulance officer. ‘Henry, do you have a portable oxygen cylinder in the ambulance?’
‘Sure thing, Nell. I mean Doc…’
‘Give it to Bill before he goes close to the edge. And give him another rope. The fewer trips he has to make back and forth to the edge, the safer it’ll be. Send saline solution down, too, and the things Blake needs to set up a drip.’ She hesitated. ‘Bill, are you sure you’re OK with this? I can do it if you can’t.’
‘You can’t,’ Bill said heavily. ‘You’ve got a littly on board. Have a bit of sense, Doc.’
She nodded, but in her mind she’d already moved on. Apart from supplying Blake
with equipment, if Bill was willing to stay by the edge there was little more she could do here. So triage… Move to the next priority. They’d said there were three men.
‘The man who fell into the water…’
‘The coastguard’s reached him.’ One of the men gave a rueful grimace. ‘Their boat was out already—well, it would be if the fish are running, ’cause they always do a bit of fishing on the side—and they saw what happened. They damn near splintered their boat on the cliffs, getting him aboard, but they did it. But he looked unconscious when they hauled him in.’
‘And now?’ Nell looked out over the white-capped sea but she couldn’t see the brilliant orange of the coastguard vessel. ‘Where’s the boat now?’
‘It’s taking him back to harbour.’ The fisherman hesitated. ‘Dunno if they’ll get in until the tide turns, though, but they’re going to try.’
‘I’ll go down to meet them,’ Nell told them. She didn’t want to. She felt sick to the stomach at the idea of leaving Blake in these incapable hands—of leaving three men stuck on the crumbling cliff face—but there was an injured man being brought back into harbour who could well need her services more.
What else was needed here? The men were looking at her in helpless dismay and she wanted to knock a few heads together.
‘Get more men out here,’ she ordered. ‘I want the fire crew.’ Surely if the whole fire crew arrived there’d be someone with more intelligence than this lot. ‘But don’t let anyone but Bill go near the edge. Get long planking laid between here and the edge so when you’re winching equipment, the pressure’s not on the absolute edge. And, for heaven’s sake, wait for the helicopter to bring the men up. If you try and take their weight from here…’
She didn’t need to say more. The fear was in her voice and it was reflected in all their faces.
Oh, Blake, she thought as she ran back toward her car. She stopped at the ambulance and grabbed a few things she thought she might need herself.
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