keep the boys occupied.
Ginny returned on one of the quad bikes. She had the medical chest strapped to the back of the bike and a blanket thrown over her lap. She carried the medical chest over and put it down beside Mitch before draping the blanket over Lila. Mitch hadn’t thought of the blanket, the temperature was nudging thirty-four degrees Celsius, but if Lila went into shock he might need it.
‘The plane is on its way and the base is holding for you,’ Ginny said as she handed him the satellite phone.
Mitch knew that depending on where the plane was coming from it could take an hour to reach them. He took the phone as he instructed Ginny to get his head stockman and pilot to prepare the runway for the plane.
He spoke to the doctor at the Broken Hill base and relayed the information he had while he opened the medical chest and found the few things he needed. He checked her blood pressure, kept her warm and gave her some pain relief and then he waited.
And waited.
Time stood still as his daughter lay in the dirt, in pain.
Lila looked so like her mother that Mitch’s heart ached every time he looked at her. Dark hair, dark eyes. All three of the children had his dark eyes but the boys were much more like him. They had the same white blond hair he’d had as a child. His hair had darkened with age and had even gone a little grey with stress.
He’d been trying his best not to let his feelings show over the past two years. He didn’t want the children to grow up sensing his pain. His loss. It was their loss too but he knew they felt it differently. They were so young, so much more resilient than he felt, but he’d vowed to do his best by them.
He’d become very good at disguising his feelings, an expert at pretending everything was okay. But he didn’t know if he had the strength to get through another tragedy. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did he’d have to find the reserves somewhere. The children were all he had and he was all they had.
He knew he had to keep his composure, had to stay calm, and he was grateful that no one else had been injured. He’d seen more than his fair share of injuries, and even a couple of fatalities, from accidents with horses. But being around horses was a way of life on the station and Mitch knew it was important that the children were familiar with them. Of course, he’d always insisted that they wear helmets when they were riding and fortunately that was a rule they’d never broken. Lila’s accident could have been much worse; it wasn’t as bad as it got but it was close.
In the distance he heard the sound of an engine. The familiar whine of the flying doctor plane. It was coming from the west and he looked at the sky, searching for a flash of silver and white. There. The plane was silhouetted against the endless, clear blue sky. He watched as it dropped lower, heading for the dirt landing strip behind the outbuildings, and waited again for the doc.
Darren, the head stockman, pulled up in a dusty four-wheel-drive and the doc and the flight nurse piled out. He recognised Doc Burton. Mitch reckoned he’d worked with all of the doctors over the years. He nodded in acknowledgement and then relayed what he knew of the events, what he’d given Lila for pain relief, and her medical history and then he stepped aside to let them examine his daughter. He wasn’t one of them any more, he was just Lila’s father.
Lila was alert and talking as they checked her pupils, got her to move her fingers and toes and gradually worked their way up her limbs. She seemed to be able to move her upper limbs reasonably comfortably but her legs were a different story. Doc Burton gently palpated Lila’s neck before removing her helmet. He moved to her abdomen as the nurse retested her blood pressure.
Lila cried out in pain as the doc pressed on her pelvis and Mitch had to restrain himself from leaping in and stopping the examination right there. He couldn’t stand to see Lila in more pain.
‘Temp thirty-six point two degrees, pulse one hundred, respirations twenty-two, BP ninety on sixty, oxygen ninety-eight percent.’ The flight nurse relayed Lila’s vital statistics.
‘Can you run five hundred millilitres of normal saline and draw up five milligrams of morphine? I want to give her a shot before we move her.’ The doc finished speaking to the nurse before turning to Mitch.
‘I agree with you,’ he said, ‘there’s no apparent head injury and her spine seems okay but it looks like she has a fractured pelvis so we’ll need to take her with us to the base.’ Back to Broken Hill, to the hospital. ‘I don’t think she has major internal injuries, her observations are quite reasonable, which suggests that there’s no excessive internal bleeding but I won’t really know until we get her to Broken Hill for scans. She may need to go to Adelaide but you know the drill.’
The doc took the syringe from the nurse and injected the morphine into Lila’s abdomen. ‘This will sting a little, Lila, but it will work fast to take the pain away,’ he told her.
Mitch knew the drill all too well. Doc Burton would take away the pain and then he’d take Lila. Mitch had known that would be the case. He’d known her injuries were too severe to be treated out here. He’d known she would need to go to hospital and he would follow. He hadn’t set foot in a hospital for two years but that was all about to change. He’d known the day would come when he’d have to face up to the past and that day was now. He would have to cope, for Lila’s sake.
He picked up Lila’s hand, holding it, not sure whether he was comforting her or himself.
‘All right, we need to get her in the plane.’ Doc Burton looked at Mitch and Mitch knew his face would be pale under his tan. ‘You’re coming?’
Mitch nodded as the doc and the flight nurse wrapped a brace around Lila’s pelvis and rolled her onto a spinal board. He’d managed to avoid the hospital for two years but deep down he’d wondered what it would take to get him back there. Now he knew. This was it.
Mitch looked at the length of the stretcher and then at the four-by-four utility parked nearby. The ground was dry, hard and corrugated, he didn’t want to drive Lila over it to the airstrip.
‘Can we carry her back to the plane?’ he suggested. ‘Three of us should manage it easy.’
Jimmy had taken the horse back to the stables, leaving just the three men and the flight nurse. Mitch put himself at the foot of the stretcher where he could keep an eye on his daughter. Doc Burton and Darren took one side each at the head and the flight nurse loaded the equipment back into the four-by-four and drove it back to the airstrip. The boys came running from the kitchen as the procession headed to the runway. Charlie tagged at Jed’s heels, doing his best to keep up with his older brother.
Ginny fell into step beside Mitch. ‘You’re going with her.’ Her words weren’t a question. He nodded and Ginny took the boys’ hands as they reached the airstrip, keeping them under control, one on each side of her. Thank goodness he had Ginny to help out. But not for much longer. Ginny was leaving soon, heading off to travel the world with her boyfriend. Mitch needed to do something about finding a replacement but that was a problem for another day. He had enough to worry about for the time being.
Once Lila was loaded onto the plane Mitch bent and kissed the tops of his sons’ heads. ‘Ginny will look after you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Lila too?’ Charlie asked. He adored his sister and followed her around constantly. The boys would be lost without Lila. So would he. He couldn’t imagine losing all the women in his family.
‘Lila too,’ Mitch replied, hoping he could keep his promise.
Shirley, the cook, had appeared from the kitchen and she pressed a paper bag into his hands. He knew the bag would contain food and although he couldn’t imagine that he’d feel like eating he took the bag anyway, he knew it was her way of coping. He climbed into the plane, choosing a seat from where he could keep watch.
Lila was drowsy now, the pain relief was working, and as the engines started up her eyelids fluttered and closed.
Through the window Mitch watched the station fall away