Dr Blake's Angel

by Marion Lennox

  She should be praying for all of them, she thought. She was. But mostly she was praying for Blake. She’d only known him for two days. The way she was feeling didn’t make sense but, sense or not, that was the way it was.

  A sudden image of Blake’s paper angels sprang to mind. As she turned her car down toward the harbour she felt tears stinging at the back of her eyes. ‘You look after him,’ she commanded, and it was a direct order to his three paper angels, their crazy haemorrhoid cream included.

  ‘Dear God…’ Things weren’t destined to get any easier. Nell pulled up at the jetty and what she saw made her feel sick all over again.

  ‘The tide… Oh, no…’

  Sandy Ridge harbour was formed by a river mouth, and behind the town the river broadened into a massive tidal lake. Tides were, to say the least, impressive. The water movement was massive.

  Local fishing boats would normally wait until ebb tide before attempting to come back into harbour. To attempt anything else in weather like this was almost suicidal. As she pulled up, she could see waves breaking over the rocky entrance. Help!

  And then she saw a face she knew. ‘Grace!’ Here, at last, was someone who was capable of sharing responsibilities.

  Grace Mayne had fished with her father and then her husband since she was ten years old. She was now well into her eighties, she was fiercely intelligent and if anyone could help Nell it was Grace.

  The old woman had been standing on the jetty, eyeing the harbour mouth with disfavour. She turned to Nell as she approached, gave her a flicker of a welcoming—and assessing—look and then went back to staring at the sea.

  ‘The coastguard boat…’ Nell managed.

  ‘We’ve heard.’ Grace didn’t turn back as Nell reached her. She was staring out to sea with eyes that had seen it all. In her dingy overalls, with her weathered skin and her washed-out green eyes and faded copper hair, the old lady seemed almost a part of the sea itself. ‘The coastguard radioed in to say they picked up Aaron Gunner. He’s in a pretty bad way, but they can’t get in. Not yet. They’d be pushing against the tide with the water breaking forward. I wouldn’t try right now. No one would.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘It’ll be a good two hours before the ebb.’

  ‘Do they say what’s wrong with Aaron?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Leg’s a mess. Bone sticking through the skin. Bleeding like a stuck pig. He was unconscious when they hauled him out of the water but he’s coming round now. Screaming, they say.’

  Dear God…

  ‘The chopper’s coming from Sydney,’ Grace told her. ‘Marion’s been on the radio to the ambulance, trying to find out what’s going on, because Doc Sutherland’s phone’s out of range. The ambulance boys told her you were coming here. She said to tell you the chopper’ll be an hour or maybe a bit longer, but they’ll need it for the men on the cliff first.’

  Grace paused and surveyed Nell’s face with care. ‘Looks like Aaron mightn’t make it?’ And it wasn’t a statement. It was a question.

  ‘Mmm.’

  Silence. Nell shaded her eyes and both women stared out to the river mouth. There was a wash of white water, almost like rapids, bursting out toward the open sea. To try and fight that current to bring a boat in… Impossible!

  But maybe there was another way. The tidal flow seemed at maximum so the surge of water outward was massive, stronger than the incoming rush of breakers. Nell turned to Grace, a sudden flare of hope in her eyes.

  ‘Grace, I know getting into harbour’s impossible, but could you get me out?’

  Grace stared. ‘What, through that?’

  ‘I remember you fought a tide like this a few years back,’ Nell told her, and managed a smile. ‘Mind, that was a real emergency. There was a bushfire, the road was cut off and the town was out of beer. Half the fleet took off for Bay Beach.’

  ‘Wasn’t like this, though.’ Grace went back to assessing the river mouth. ‘It was later. The flow wasn’t as strong and there wasn’t as much wind.’ She wrinkled her already massively wrinkled face. ‘Going out now’d be like riding the rapids.’

  ‘But we’d be going with the flow of the water.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I want you to take me out there,’ Nell said urgently. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You know I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Yeah. Just like your grandpa.’ But Grace’s eyes narrowed. ‘Though maybe not like your grandpa if you want to take these sort of crazy risks for Aaron.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m eighty-three,’ she said at last. ‘Everybody I care for’s dead. It doesn’t matter if I go down with the boat. But you’ve got a baby aboard.’

  ‘And I’ll bet Aaron has a family.’

  ‘He has,’ Grace said grudgingly. ‘Three littlies. Nice wife. Stupid, but nice.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ Nell swung back to her car. ‘I’ll grab some equipment and then let’s go.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Grace told her, but she was speaking to no one. Nell was heading for her car, and for a long moment Grace stared after her.

  There were more fishing boats lined up on the wharf. If she didn’t take Nell, Nell would persuade someone else to take her, she thought.

  What had she told the girl? Everybody I care for’s dead.

  It wasn’t quite true. Not now.

  With a sigh Grace climbed aboard her boat—and then she grinned, the dreary blanket of depression that had been hovering over her since the death of her husband lifting like magic. ‘We’re both mad,’ she muttered. ‘But who dares wins. Right?’ She chuckled as Nell came running back with her equipment. ‘Welcome to town, Dr McKenzie. We’re very pleased to see you home.’

  In the end they didn’t do it alone. As soon as Grace gunned her motor they had every fisherman not already at sea rushing to their boatside.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘You know Aaron’s dying and they can’t get him into the harbour,’ Grace said curtly, motioning to Nell who was storing equipment in the cabin. ‘So we’re going out. I’m taking Dr McKenzie out to see if there’s something she can do.’

  ‘Not alone, you’re not’ was the consensus, and when they finally slipped their moorings they had a crew of four. All of them were as old as Grace or older, but they had no intention of taking unnecessary risks. Each of them was weighed down with safety gear.

  ‘Because we might be old but we’re still good for a few years yet,’ the ancient fishermen told Nell, grinning at her as they slipped through the last patch of calm water. ‘Between us we must have more than three hundred years of seagoing experience. Let’s hope some of it pays off.’

  They told Blake what was happening and he nearly had them winch him up straight away.

  ‘They radioed from the harbour,’ Bill told him from the clifftop. The wind had eased just a bit—enough for them to hear themselves speak. ‘Grace Mayne has taken her boat out to meet the coastguard, and she’s taken Nell with her.’

  ‘Through the outgoing tide?’ Blake’s voice was incredulous. ‘In these conditions?’ They had to be mad.

  ‘Yeah.’ Bill sounded as sick as Blake felt. ‘Can’t say I like it.’

  Like it? The man was a moron. Blake turned back to his patient and it was just as well the fisherman took most of his attention or he would have gone crazy. Once more he checked on Dan’s airway, clearing the blood that filled his mouth almost as soon as he swabbed it away. He had Dan lying on his side. The blood came from fractured teeth that had torn his gums. It wasn’t life-threatening—as long as Blake concentrated—but Bill’s news made that almost impossible.

  Damn the woman. She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake!

  She’d gone out with Grace… And Grace was suicidal. He knew it. The elderly woman had told him so herself. She was refusing to take antidepressants, and here she was, pushing her boat at something that was likely to kill her. And she wouldn’t care.

  She’d take Nell with
her.

  The thought was savagely, piercingly dreadful. He felt sick, so much so that the other fisherman on the ledge leaned toward him with concern. ‘You all right, Doc?’

  He caught himself. ‘Yeah. Never better,’ he muttered, and reached for another swab.

  Dear God. Nell…

  Which was pretty much exactly what Nell was thinking. Crossing the harbour entrance was the most hair-raising thing she’d done in her life. It was white-water rafting at its most dangerous—not on a raft, but on a bathtub of an ancient fishing boat. All the decent boats with more powerful motors were already at sea, so it was Grace’s ancient tub or nothing.

  Nell was strapped into a lifejacket, clipped to a lifeline and told to stay put.

  ‘You’re under orders,’ Grace yelled at her as one of the fishermen helped her fasten herself her onto the sheets. ‘If the boat rolls, then you undo that clip. Fast. The line’ll keep you safe while we’re upright, but if the boat goes under then it’ll tie you there. You’ll drown.’

  ‘Gee, thanks…’

  They all had clips. They might be ancient and they might also be desperate to help, but they were taking minimal chances. Grace was taking minimal chances. She was using every ounce of skill she possessed to keep the boat safe.

  She was wonderful, Nell thought. Her geriatric saviour!

  And then they hit white water, and Nell thought of nothing but keeping alive.

  There was water all around her. The mass of water rushing out of the harbour was so great that it was seething into the stern of the boat. There were waves breaking in front of them, creating eddies and whirlpools like something out of a nightmare.

  It was a pretty wet nightmare! Maybe there was a better metaphor but she couldn’t see it. In fact, after the first rush of white water she couldn’t see anything at all. She was soaked and she was blinded and she was concentrating only on each sodden breath.

  ‘Go to it, Grace,’ she prayed over and over. But it wasn’t just Grace. There were three of them on the wheel, using their combined strength to hold the boat on course and stopping it slamming into the harbour wall. The other fisherman was monitoring the pumps, and it was only Nell who stood uselessly where she’d been clipped.

  ‘You’d only get in the way,’ Grace told her when she’d wanted to help, and she’d grimaced.

  That’s what Blake had said to her, and they were her grandmother’s words, echoing down through the years.

  But this time it was different. This time she knew it was true. Grace knew her boat and she didn’t, and it’d be little use to anyone if they managed to get through the harbour mouth only to have the doctor they were carrying washed overboard. So Nell accepted her role of idleness, but she felt very small and very vulnerable and, to be honest, she also felt very, very afraid.

  For the first time she wondered whether this was fair on her unborn baby, and she knew it wasn’t. She’d raced into it without thinking. They advised pregnant women to give up smoking because of the threat to the unborn child, but this… How much greater threat was this?

  She put her hand protectively on her stomach.

  ‘If I get through this I’ll never threaten you with Cornelius or Brunhilda again,’ she whispered to her little one. ‘I promise.’

  She hoped to God it was enough.

  And then they were through. The last rush of water shoved them forward like a cork from a bottle, and they emerged to sunshine and water that was rough but, compared to what they’d just been through, it was like a mill pond. Nell gasped and wiped water from her eyes and then proceeded to count heads. Her four wonderful geriatrics were all beaming at her like they’d won the pools.

  ‘Who said only the youngies know how to handle a boat?’ Grace chortled. ‘Well done, us.’ Her eyes rested on Nell for a moment, her old eyes meeting Nell’s young ones in a flash of triumphant recognition. Then it was back to business. ‘Adam, how much water do we have on board?’

  ‘Don’t take on any more,’ Adam advised. ‘A sparrow lands on this deck and we’re under.’ But the pumps were going full throttle, spurting the water out behind them, and for now things could only get better.

  They had to find the coastguard boat with the crew and Aaron.

  ‘They tried to come into harbour but when they couldn’t they went back to the shelter of the north cliffs,’ Grace told her. She’d left the wheel to one of the others and had checked the radio. ‘It’s calmer there and they’re standing off far enough to keep from getting pounded on the rocks. But Aaron sounds…’ She faltered, and this time her eyes didn’t meet Nell’s. ‘Well, he’s lost consciousness again and they can’t stop the bleeding. I hope to hell we haven’t come this far for nothing.’

  She was there. Grace’s old tub of a boat rounded the headland and Blake nearly stood up and cheered. He counted heads. There were five on board and he could see Nell’s crazy patchwork overalls from here. Bless the overalls. He hadn’t realised how much he loved them.

  Loved them? Liked, he corrected himself, and suddenly it mattered to him that he did. Liked. That’s what he did. He didn’t do love. Nell was a competent doctor; she was working alongside him and he owed her a responsibility. That’s why he’d felt sick—nothing more.

  Under his hands Dan stirred and moaned and Blake adjusted his air-flow. ‘Take it easy, mate,’ he murmured, but it wasn’t quite a murmur. There was jubilation in his voice, and he felt like a kid who’d been handed a Santa sack all for himself.

  The men on the coastguard boat watched the geriatric crew approach with amazement, and when they saw Nell there was even more amazement.

  She must look a real sight, Nell thought ruefully—a half-drowned doctor, very pregnant, wearing soaking purple patchwork. But she had work to do. There was no time to think about her appearance.

  She sorted equipment to be taken on board and then, finally, she allowed herself one uneasy glance up the cliff face. Only one. She shouldn’t even take that. There was nothing for her to do even if Blake had fallen. It was the first rule of medicine in an emergency to not allow oneself to be distracted by things you could do nothing about, but…

  Please, God. Protect Blake…

  And blessedly, joyously, he was still there. He was still crouched over the injured fisherman, and that had to be a good sign. It meant his patient was alive, and there hadn’t been a further fall.

  But from underneath, the ledge didn’t look nearly as solid as it had from up top. In fact, from here the ledge looked as if it could give way at any minute.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Triage, Dr McKenzie. Concentrate on what’s important.’

  Which was Aaron, not Blake! Thinking of Blake only led to trouble—in more ways than one.

  And Aaron certainly needed her.

  Her transfer from boat to boat, tricky at the best of times, was achieved with Nell hardly thinking about it. She couldn’t. Her mind was already assessing what needed to be done. She took one look at the man lying on the deck and her heart sank. Back at Sydney Central she’d have had him in Theatre in minutes. She’d have had blood banks on the line, she’d have been cross-matching, she’d have had surgeons and…

  Well, here she had herself and only herself, and she was already kneeling beside him as her equipment was transferred after her.

  ‘Good luck,’ Grace called as the boats pulled apart, and Nell knew that she was going to need it.

  What she needed, in fact, was Blake—or at least another doctor—but she was all she had.

  Nell did a fast assessment which was harder than she’d thought on the rolling boat. There was no head wound. The lack of consciousness must be due to shock and loss of blood, she thought. The fracture was compound, and it bled sluggishly even though the coastguard crew had tied the upper leg with a tourniquet. And that couldn’t stay there. Nell felt his foot and flinched at the coldness of it. Soon he’d have tissue death.

  Or complete death. How much blood had he lost? The deck was awash wi
th it.

  The first thing to do was to stop the bleeding. There must be a severed artery. ‘There’s antiseptic in my bag. Do you have any more?’ Heck, she needed antiseptic by the bucket load. To tie off an artery in these conditions… She had no choice.

  ‘There’s a light in the bag. I want it held straight down at his leg,’ she ordered, shoving her bag into someone’s hands as she applied a fist to the pressure point above the wound. ‘And I want fishing line.’

  She was thinking fast as she ripped Aaron’s already shredded trouser leg. ‘You.’ She picked a random man of the half-dozen clustered around. ‘Hold yourself steady against the rail and hold the plasma. Don’t move. And, you… Kneel here and take over. See where I’m pressing? I want you to do the same.’

  She worked swiftly and incisively, her training allowing her to almost forget her surroundings. She’d used human dripstands before. This was the stuff Nell was trained to do. As doctor in charge of a busy city casualty ward—and at the scene of accidents when needed—she’d been at the coal face time and time again. When patients had been stuck in damaged cars and couldn’t be shifted, she’d been able to cope.

  She’d had back-up there, though, she thought. Trained ambulance crew. Paramedics. But here… Here there was no one. And Blake was still on that dreadful ledge.

  Don’t think of Blake! Think of what she needed to do.

  She’d only brought four units of plasma, she thought grimly as she searched through the damaged flesh, trying to locate the artery. Four units didn’t look nearly enough. And where was the artery?

  Ah, there it was, under her fingers, still spurting blood despite the tourniquet. She had no choice but to tie it off, even though it might mean losing the foot.

  The foot might be the least of Aaron’s troubles. She used fishing line to tie off the artery and allowed herself a few deep breaths. Then…