burning.
Even then fogginess about the sequence of events distanced her from the horror. All her instincts focussed on the baby’s cry despite the smoke and the noise of people shouting and the creaking of hot metal.
The woman tried to move her arm but her whole system seemed sluggish. Or maybe she was faint because, apart from a pounding pain in the side of her head, blood squirted impressively under her broken watch. By the size of the increasing pool beside her arm she knew that wasn’t normal.
Fuzzily she watched the puddle grow until her thoughts sharpened and slowly she dislodged the broken seat rail where it pinned her wrist. Strangely, it didn’t hurt at all. She felt for the deep gash and slid her fingers over the site, wincing at the return of feeling. The urge to lie down, to invite the blackness that hovered at the edge of her mind to settle over her and fall asleep, ached like a suppressed yawn inside her.
With more pressure from her fingers, the rhythmic pulse of blood slowed to a trickle and somewhere in the fog of her brain she became conscious that if she let go there was a strong chance she would bleed to death. The thickening smoke made her cough and other fears crowded her mind.
Lost for the moment, from time, place of origin or destination, the woman knew she didn’t want to die.
There was another reason she had to live but right at that moment she couldn’t pin the incentive, just concentrated on the fact that live she would.
The baby cried weakly again and she turned her head. There was someone else who needed her but she had to stop the bleeding from her wrist or she wouldn’t be any use.
She threaded the thin pink pashmina from around her neck and thought fuzzily what a pretty colour it was. She wadded one end of the soft fabric and wrapped the other end awkwardly around her wrist and tucked it in as tightly as she could. The blood seeped through but not as fast as she’d expected.
Then she pushed herself upright so she could crawl forward over the wreckage. She winced at the lance of pain from her damaged arm as she began to search for the crying baby.
Low moans and weak cries began to drift from beyond the door of her carriage and a few strong shouts suggested help was on the way.
Her carriage seemed ominously silent but she couldn’t remember how many people had been seated. She hoped the silence was due to the lack of passengers.
‘Come on, baby, cry again,’ she muttered, glancing around, then almost toppled off a seat that wasn’t as balanced as she’d thought it was.
The baby cried weakly again and the woman’s arm caught on a small leather backpack with a for mula bottle spilling from a rip. She knew the bag belonged to the baby, she couldn’t remember why, but it seemed important so she slid the pack over her shoulders and continued her search.
Then she saw her. The baby lay pinned in her pram, seat belt fastened and her frightened little face screwed up. She looked about a year old.
‘Well, hello, there, little one. It looks like you had the best seat in the house.’ Her voice cracked as the chill of deep coldness encased her.
The baby whimpered and blinked. Her bright blue eyes were damply lashed and the woman smiled when the infant gave a wobbly grin and held out her hands.
The resilience of children, she thought longingly, as she dug for more strength. There was no way she’d be able to lift the carriage seat that trapped the pram but maybe she could ease the baby from the restraint and drag her out.
The difficulty would be to juggle a baby with one arm while she crawled.
She sat back on her heels and fumbled to undo the top two buttons on her shirt. She lifted the hem of her stretchy knitted shirt and struggled to inch the baby inside next to her skin until the infant was tucked tummy to tummy against her body with her little face popping out under the neckline of her shirt. The woman’s neck and shoulders ached with the weight but the baby seemed to like it.
When she began to crawl again each movement seemed harder than the last and the weight hanging under her enticed her to lie down and sleep. The infant clung like a small limpet with her frightened whimpers goading her rescuer on.
She crawled clumsily towards the crazily angled steps of the carriage but the smoke became so acrid the steps seemed much further than she’d anticipated. Her strength ebbed as she coughed.
An old lady lay crumpled, eyes open, staring sightlessly past the window. She didn’t blink. Her purple hair looked incongruous at an awkward angle. With sudden clarity, she realised the woman was dead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled to the woman as she crawled past and the fog thickened inside her head. Blood pulsed from her wrist again and when a man’s face appeared above her he seemed to fade in and out of focus.
His eyes were incredibly blue and incredibly kind as he reached towards her with strong arms, and she prayed the baby would be safe now. As she lifted her face to his, she knew she could go to sleep now. He wouldn’t let them die.
Relief blossomed until a huge ripping pain burst from low down in her stomach and the fear of what else could be happening made her lift her face to his.
‘Save my baby,’ she whispered, and then she felt herself lifted from the carriage as if she were a feather.
Stewart had never seen such willpower to live before and he saw plenty of life-and-death struggles in his work.
In that first moment, when she’d hovered on the edge of losing consciousness, the woman’s eyes had glowed, fierce with determination as she’d dragged herself across the wreckage of the carriage through the smoke. How she had navigated the carriage while weighed down with a dangling infant and her life seeping away through the blood-soaked material around her wrist, he could only guess. But she had and had still saved enough energy to demand that he save them.
He knew he would be able to recall her expression any time he closed his eyes. Stewart couldn’t believe she had survived the carnage. ‘Desiree?’
He lifted her in his arms when she collapsed against him and turned to place her gently on the ground behind him.
Her pulse was thready and far too fast from loss of blood. ‘She’s critical. I need to find her injuries. We’ll triage the baby so I can get to the mother.’
He eased the shocked baby from Desiree’s shirt and tried not to see the family resemblance as he placed the baby gently beside her mother for assessment.
Time was important and he needed to do this without emotion—and do it quickly.
The infant had no external bleeding, no obvious limb deformity or head injury. Possibly some abdominal tenderness and tautness, he thought as he ran his fingers lightly over the baby’s stomach, but nothing immediately life-threatening—unlike the mother.
He passed his niece to a paramedic, who passed her into another waiting pair of hands, then moved to crouch over the unconscious woman.
Stewart rested his fingers on Desiree’s throat to feel her carotid pulse. Her heartbeats fluttered frantically beneath his fingers and his own pulse leapt. ‘She needs fluids then blood, urgently, or we’ll lose her.’
The paramedic had already opened his kit to assemble the equipment while Stewart briefly ran his hands over Desiree’s temple and scalp, then quickly down her body, grimacing at the small but unmistakable bulge of her stomach, before clamping his hand around the blood-soaked scarf on her wrist.
Heaven knew what condition the unborn baby would be in.
‘This seems to be the only bleeder, but it’s arterial, plus a lump on the side of her head.’ The paramedic shone a small torch, and with his free hand Stewart lifted heavily lashed eyelids one at a time to allow the man to shine the light into her pupils.
‘The reaction is sluggish but present on both sides,’ the paramedic said as he taped the intravenous cannula and line into place on Desiree’s arm.
‘We