in pitch as if it had been jerked free of wood. The wood was rotten. If Tom was pressing against solid wood and met rot …
Even as Luke thought it, the chainsaw motor cut out as it was meant to do the moment pressure was released from the hand hold.
And as the motor died … a scream.
Luke was running almost before his brain had processed the sounds.
They’d been replacing fence posts. The old ones had been hauled out and stacked.
Tom had balanced the first post against the pile, then started slicing it for firewood. Now he was sprawled on the damp grass, the chainsaw tossed beside him. The dogs were whimpering in fear.
A pool of bright scarlet was blooming out from Tom’s leg.
Lily wasn’t as fast as Luke. By the time she reached the clearing Luke had rolled Tom from curled and clutching his leg onto his back so he could see the damage.
In that one instant, she knew what had happened. He’d swiped the chainsaw downward. Maybe the wood was more rotten than he’d expected—maybe he hadn’t needed as much pressure as he had exerted. For whatever reason the saw had sliced far further than he’d intended, smashing into his upper thigh.
He must have hit the femoral artery. It had to be cut, she thought with horror. There was no other explanation for this amount of blood.
Luke was searching for pressure points, one hand pressing, the other ripping at his shirt to try and get a wad, a tie, anything.
Her shirt was off in an instant, folded, handed to him. Then she grabbed Luke’s sleeve and ripped with a strength she hadn’t known she had. She ripped the sleeve right off, then ripped again from shoulder to cuff.
It gave them padding and a tie.
‘Let me … let me…’ Tom was gasping, trying to see.
‘Lie still,’ Luke snapped. There was no time for reassurance, not while the blood was pumping as it was. ‘Tom, lie still. You’ve cut an artery and we have to stop it.’
‘Bloody fool,’ Tom muttered, and subsided.
His face was ashen.
So much blood.
The pad was doing nothing, no matter how hard Luke pressed. Lily was twisting the tie above the wound but making no difference at all to the blood flow. Already Tom was looking clammy, a sheen of cold sweat on his face.
He’d bleed out in minutes.
If they were back at the hospital they’d have tools to cut down, to find the artery and clamp it off. Here they had nothing.
‘I can’t locate it,’ Luke snapped, and the agony in those words was desperate. ‘Your hand’s smaller. You try.’
It was a desperate request. He had nothing else to try.
He took the tie, while she shoved her fist into the wound, hard, as tight as it’d go. Was her hand small enough? She was searching for the source of the blood, pushing with a desperation born of terror.
Harder …
The blood welled around her fingers … and slowed.
Slowed more.
But in time?
She had to be in time.
‘Hey, she’s stopped the bleeding,’ Luke told his uncle. Until now it had been impossible to disguise the panic. ‘Lily’s hit the spot. Don’t you move, not a whisker.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Tom whispered. ‘Oh, girl, I’m making you all mucky.’
‘I love horses and I love nursing,’ Lily told him, trying to match Luke’s reassurance, trying to keep the strain from her voice, as if holding back blood like this was routine. Knowing how close to disaster they still were. ‘I like a bit of muck.’
Tom tried to laugh but it didn’t come off. He looked …
Like he could go into shock at any minute.
It was a real possibility.
Lily couldn’t move. Her fist was a ball curled tight against damaged tissue, pressed hard against the pulsing artery. Somehow she’d hit the spot, somehow she’d blocked the blood supply. If she moved a fraction …
Luke was tightening the tourniquet with one hand, holding his phone in the other. Snapping details to an emergency service.
‘Air ambulance, helicopter, code blue. GPS co-ordinates …’ He lifted his uncle’s phone from his pocket—a new model, Lily saw, and read the positional co-ordinates off. Thank goodness for technology. ‘There’s a clearing a hundred yards to the north. I’ll secure it before you get here. If you can break the sound barrier I’d appreciate it. Move.’
He flicked the phone off.
There were sheets of paper-bark hanging from the massive gums along the river. While Tom—and Lily—stayed motionless Luke hauled a dozen of the soft bark sheets, folded them into a wedge and manoeuvered them with extraordinary care underneath Tom’s hips and legs. He had to be careful; there was no way he was interfering with Lily’s position. But it had to be done. Any available blood needed to flow to Tom’s head and not to his lower limbs. His hips had to be higher than his heart.
Done. He twisted the shirt tighter around Tom’s thigh and Tom grunted in pain.
‘I have emergency gear in the car,’ he told Lily. ‘Catheters. Saline. Morphine.’
‘Then why are you here?’ She was impressed by how calm she sounded. Luke needed to get an IV catheter in now, if not sooner. If Tom’s veins collapsed, resuscitation would no longer be possible.
They both knew that point was close.
‘I’m going.’ Luke sounded agonised. He’d hate to leave but he couldn’t stay. He touched his uncle’s face, then he touched Lily on the shoulder—a feather-light brush.
Then he was gone.
They were the longest minutes of Lily’s life, keeping pressure on the wound, praying Tom’s condition wouldn’t worsen. Trying not to let Tom see she was terrified.
The dogs, Border collies, lay and watched and she sensed their fear as well.
‘I hope Luke can run,’ she ventured, and Tom tried a smile.
‘Like the wind,’ he whispered. ‘He spent half his childhood running on this farm. Most weekends. All his school holidays. Ran all over this farm.’
‘Did he never go back to Singapore?’
‘Parents sent him to boarding school to get rid of him,’ Tom muttered. ‘He had a ruddy big birthmark on his face. His parents hated looking at it. My brother was too mean to get it fixed, though. Told the kid it was character building but in truth he was fixated on money. Like that bloody wife of his …’
He broke off and gasped and Lily wished she could hug him, wished she could move. Selfishly she also wished she could alleviate the pins and needles in her hips.
She could do nothing.
They were totally dependent on Luke. He needed to fetch equipment. He needed to check for a safe place for the helicopter to land. It was maybe a ten-minute run back to the house. Ten minutes there, ten minutes back, time to get land cleared …
All she could do was sit.
It was killing her. It was killing Tom. With every moment his chances grew slimmer.
Then, before she imagined it was possible, she heard the roar of a motor revving through the trees, crashing … and Luke’s Aston Martin broke into the clearing, bush-bashing like he was driving an ancient SUV rather than a sports car. No matter, he was here. He was out of the car almost before it stopped, hauling his bag with him.
‘Tom