Which was precisely when one of them started to scream and soon the whole lot were screaming.
And pointing.
Emma turned to see a man race down the beach and dive into the water, her fleeting impression one of blackness.
‘He was on fire,’ one of the children said, as they left the water and clustered around their teacher, too diverted by the man to be bothered with screams any more.
Emma waded in to where the man was squatting in the water, letting waves wash over his head, her head buzzing with questions. How cold was the water? How severe his burns? Think shock, she told herself. And covering them...
‘Can you talk to me?’ she asked, and he looked blankly at her.
Shock already?
‘I’m a doctor, I’d like to look at your burns. I’ve got pain relief in my bag on the beach.’
She touched his arm and beckoned towards the beach but he shook his head and ducked under the water again.
Time to take stock.
He was young, possibly in his twenties, and very fair. His hair was cut short, singed on one side and blackened on the other. The skin on his face on the singed side was also reddened, but not worse, Emma decided, than a bad sunburn.
If the rest of his body was only lightly burned then maybe waiting in the water for the helicopter was the best thing for him. She tried to see what she could of his clothes—now mostly burnt tatters of cloth. At least in the water they’d have lost any heat they’d held and not be worsening his injuries.
But shock remained an issue...
‘Can I do anything?’ the teacher called from the beach.
‘If you’ve got towels you could spread a couple on the beach—just shake any sand off them first.’
Not that shaking would remove all the sand, but if she could get him out, lay him down and cover him loosely with more towels, she could take a better look at him and position him to help with possible shock.
The low rumble of the helicopter returning made them all look upward, and Emma was pleased to see the children running back to the rocks.
Pleased to think she could avoid the difficulty of examining him here on the beach, she was also relieved to have help getting the man out of the water.
‘Rescue helicopter,’ she told him, hoping the words might mean something. ‘It will fly you to hospital.’
This time she got a nod, but as she reached out to take his arm and help him to stand upright, he pulled back again.
She didn’t argue—he was probably better staying where he was rather than risk getting sand on his burnt skin.
Marty saw the two heads bobbing in the water below him and wondered what was happening. At least the kids were all over in the rocks.
He hovered for a minute before touching down, checking the seemingly minute area of sand that was still above the incoming tide. It would have to be a really quick in and out.
As soon as he jumped down, the children hurtled towards him, all talking at once. Jumping waves, man on fire, doctor might drown...
He thought the last unlikely but had pieced together the information by the time the teacher arrived to explain.
‘He won’t come out,’ the teacher told him. ‘And every time Emma tries to take his arm, he dives away from her. He might be a foreign backpacker and not understand she’s trying to help him.’
Marty nodded.
Most of the backpackers roaming Australia had some knowledge of English, but the shock of being caught in the fire could have been enough for this poor bloke to lose it. He pulled a couple of space blankets out of the helicopter and gave them to the teacher to hold.
He turned to the kids.
‘Now, all of you sit down on the sand, and the one sitting the stillest gets to fly up front with me, okay?’
The children dropped as if they’d been shot and although Marty doubted they’d stay still long, it should be long enough to get Emma and the man out of the water.
And work out what he was going to do next.
Maybe the man was very small...
Emma had apparently finally persuaded her patient to move towards the shore so Marty had only to go into knee-deep water to reach the six-foot-plus young man.
‘I haven’t been able to get a good look at his burns but I’d say some of them are serious,’ Emma told him, her face pale with worry about this new patient.
She took one of the space blankets from the teacher, who had unfolded the silver material, and wrapped it around the man’s shoulders, looking across him so Marty saw the worry in her serious grey eyes.
Grey, huh?
‘I’ll give him some morphine for the pain, and start a drip.’ She turned to the teacher. ‘Could you manage the fluid bag on the trip back to the hospital? It’s just a matter of holding it above his body and making sure the tube doesn’t kink.’
‘And just why are you asking that?’ Marty demanded as they both helped the man into the chopper and settled him on the stretcher.
She turned and touched his arm, just above the wrist—a simple touch—getting his attention before saying very quietly, ‘Because there’s no way you can take him and me, given how tight your take-off load was already. I’ll just wait until the tide goes down and someone can come for me. I’ll be all right, although you’ll have to phone my dad and let him know what’s happening.’
Marty stared at the small hand, still resting on his arm, then studied the face of this woman whose touch had startled him. She met his gaze unflinchingly.
‘Well?’ she said, removing her hand and concentrating again on their patient.
He shook his head, unable to believe that she’d figured all this out and delivered it to him as naturally as she might tell someone she was ducking out to the shops.
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ she continued, as she calmly inserted a cannula into the man’s undamaged hand and attached a line for the fluid. ‘The children are upset already, so the teacher has to go back with them. I’m the obvious choice to give up a place.’
‘And you’re happy to stay alone on the beach?’
Grey eyes could flash fire, he discovered.
‘I didn’t say I was happy about it, but as I can’t fly the helicopter I can’t see any other solution. You’ll have some chocolate bars in the helicopter—I’ve never been on one that didn’t—so you can leave me a couple, and some water. I’ll be fine as long as you phone my dad.’
Much as he wanted to argue, there was little point. He couldn’t take off with both of them on board—not safely...
He went with practical.
‘There’s a cellphone signal here, you can phone your father yourself.’
It seemed a heartless thing to say to a small woman he was about to leave on a deserted beach with bushfires raging all around her, but his mind wasn’t working too well.
Something to do with grey eyes flashing fire?
Impossible...
She half smiled as she drew up a calibrated dose of morphine and added it to the drip.
‘I could if my phone hadn’t been in my pocket when I went into the water.’
‘Well, of all the—’
He stopped. Of course, she wouldn’t have considered her phone when there was a man in the water who needed her help.
Realising