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.
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