eyes travelled up from the foot, following the line of a jeans-clad leg.
‘Over here.’
Max was beside her.
The top half of the body was partially hidden by a straggly shrub and Phoebe stepped forward. It was a girl. She was lying on her stomach but her face was turned towards them, her head at an unnatural angle, her sightless eyes staring into the sky.
‘Her neck’s broken.’
Phoebe squatted down beside her, force of habit making her check for a pulse even though she knew it was futile. She took her fingers from the girl’s neck, reaching up to close her eyelids.
Max looked back to the tree and the destroyed car. ‘She must have been flung out on impact.’ He stretched out his hand, offering to help Phoebe up. ‘Come on, there’s nothing you can do for her now.’
Phoebe took his hand. The contact was comforting, his warmth reassuring after touching the lifeless body of the young girl at their feet. In the background Phoebe was aware of the noise of the jaws of life crunching through metal as Mitch cut open the car.
‘Are you OK?’
She nodded, an automatic response, but actually she was far from okay. Unnecessary deaths always gave her a mix of emotions. She couldn’t remember the last time any of her colleagues had asked if she, or anyone else, was affected by what they dealt with at work. Death was an inevitable part of their job but it didn’t mean they were unaffected by it. It never got any easier but no one really talked about it. She didn’t need—didn’t want—to talk or think about it either. She knew from experience she just needed to keep moving. To stay busy.
Despite the heat of the day she felt a chill as she moved away from Max’s side. Keep moving, stay busy. Max was right. There was nothing she could do for this girl but hopefully they’d be able to save the driver.
The firemen had peeled back the roof of the car along the driver’s side and were just removing the front door. Steve was still talking. ‘Just about there, mate. Hang on.’
The moment the door was gone Steve was back in place, his hand under the driver’s chin, supporting his head, feeling for the carotid pulse. The youth’s face was surprisingly undamaged. He had a cut above his eye but that had stopped bleeding and Phoebe knew why even before Steve spoke.
‘We’ve lost him.’
Now the car had been opened up they could see the massive abdominal injuries the lad had suffered. Looking at those, Phoebe was surprised he’d still been alive when they arrived.
Steve let the driver’s head go and stood, turning to speak to the policemen who’d just arrived. Max and his crew began gathering their equipment, preparing to return to the fire front. Returning to their task of saving the living.
Phoebe climbed back up the slope with them, part of her wishing she could leave too. Leave this scene of death and destruction. Leave with Max.
Instead, she dragged a Jordan frame and a sheet from the ambulance and made her way back down the slope, waving a hand in farewell to the firies.
With Steve’s help she lifted the girl onto the Jordan frame and covered her with the sheet. Two policemen helped them carry her to the ambulance where they put her on a stretcher and slid her into the van. The police would arrange to collect the car later—the driver would have to be cut out of the wreckage and their resources were already stretched because of the bushfires. Phoebe didn’t like leaving the driver behind but with the fire crew gone she didn’t have any way to get him out of the car. She had no choice.
She closed the ambulance doors and climbed into the passenger seat beside Steve. Ash was falling around them as they drove away, coating everything with a fine layer of grey, a suitable colour in the circumstances, and how many more fatalities they’d see before the fires were extinguished.
The atmosphere in the ambulance as they left the hospital was subdued. Neither of them liked delivering casualties. Steve was driving so Phoebe picked up the handset of the two-way to notify the station they were back on the road.
‘This is Hahndorf 81—we’re just leaving the Hahndorf Hospital. Where would you like us to head? Over.’
‘Hahndorf 81, please return to the station. The fire has broken containment lines and all non-essential units are being withdrawn from the area. I repeat. Please return to the station. Over.’
Phoebe glanced at Steve. ‘Fat lot of good we’ll be, sitting at the station,’ he said.
‘My thoughts exactly, but I don’t suppose we have much of a choice.’
‘No. But I’d rather be out doing something than sitting around, twiddling our thumbs,’ Steve said as he turned into the main street.
‘I guess people either get out to us or they don’t. They won’t risk more lives by sending us into a no-go zone,’ Phoebe said, as Steve parked the ambulance and she hopped out. ‘I’m just going to the control room. I want to see what the situation is for myself.’
The control room was crowded. It seemed as though many people had had the same idea. If they couldn’t be at the scene of the emergency they still wanted to feel involved. Knowing what was going on, even if it was only via a telephone and a fax machine, was preferable to feeling totally useless.
One wall was covered with a large-scale map showing an aerial view of the Hills zone, red markings indicating the area where bushfires were burning. Three separate fires were marked and if the north wind kept up, two of the three fires would be threatening their region, two too many. One fire was already within ten kilometres of Hahndorf, albeit on the other side of the Onkaparinga River.
Phoebe turned to leave the control room. There was nothing she could do there. She saw Steve beckoning to her over the heads of the crowd.
‘What’s up?’ she asked as she met him in the corridor.
‘A call’s just come through. An eighteen-month-old child with breathing difficulties. His parents are too frightened to move him because of his condition so they called for us.’
‘I didn’t hear anything over the loudspeaker.’
‘We’re not being dispatched.’
Phoebe frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Where’s the house?’
‘Six k’s out of town, this side of the river but in the direct line of the fire.’
‘Can we get to them?’
Steve nodded. ‘The road’s still open but—’
‘We’ve been told to stay put.’ Phoebe finished the sentence and Steve nodded. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
‘I’m in. Are you?’
Phoebe wasn’t the type of person who regularly broke the rules but this wasn’t a rule as such, more a recommendation. She nodded at Steve, both of them already heading to their ambulance, the decision a foregone conclusion.
Minutes later, after being berated over the radio by their team leader for disobeying orders, Phoebe pulled into a dirt driveway lined with tall dark firs. The ambulance’s suspension took a beating as they bounced over the potholes in the approach to the red brick cottage. It was a pretty house, surrounded by large lawns and well-tended garden beds that pressed hard up against its walls, but with the dark clouds of smoke rolling in over the bush, like the wolf lurking in the shadows of a story book cottage, the atmosphere was sinister.
Phoebe parked the ambulance in the curve of the driveway. A blast of hot wind caught her in the face as she opened her door. Tiny particles of dust and pollen blew into her eyes, forcing their way behind her sunglasses. She narrowed her eyes as she and Steve grabbed their gear and headed for the porch, the crunch of gravel underfoot barely