of them died under his hands five minutes after they arrived.
There was a moment’s appalled silence—a moment where she glanced across and saw Cal’s shoulders slump in defeat and despair—and then they all had to keep working.
How thick was his armour? she wondered. Not thick enough.
Head-on smash. Three dead now. One dreadfully injured. Three more with severe injuries, some of those injuries requiring skills that weren’t available in Crocodile Creek. One in such deep shock that she wasn’t responding.
There was a girl still trapped in the car. Cal was in the car with her, somehow inching his body into the mass of tangled metal, and he was fighting with everything he had.
All the emergency services had arrived now and machinery was being prepared to slice the cars apart. When floodlights lit the scene Gina saw that Cal was holding a tracheostomy tube in place. The second paramedic, Mario, was helping. IV lines had been established. A tow-truck driver had been co-opted into being a human intravenous stand.
She worked on. She had too many troubles of her own to be distracted by what Cal was doing.
‘Dr Lopez?’ Gina was splinting a compound fracture that was threatening to block blood supply when suddenly Mario was kneeling beside her. The too-young paramedic had the horror of the night etched on his face, but he was competent, moving swiftly to take over.
‘I can do this,’ he told her. She had the boy’s leg in position and was about to start binding. ‘Dr Jamieson needs you over at the car. Can you go?’
‘Sure.’
Do what comes next, Gina thought bleakly, trying not to flinch as she approached the wreck. Do what comes next.
Cal’s patient—Karen, a girl of about fourteen—was still firmly trapped and she wasn’t moving. The guys with the cutting machinery had paused.
Why did Cal need her?
She did a fast visual assessment of what she could see. Massive facial damage. What else?
‘Her leg,’ Cal told her as she reached him. ‘I can’t reach and I can feel blood. It was oozing, but we shifted her a bit when we tried to free her and now it’s spurting. Mario tried to get in but he can’t reach under me and I can’t move. You’re smaller. If we don’t get the bleeding stopped…’
She didn’t answer. She was already bending into the mass of twisted metal, crawling under Cal’s legs.
Someone—Frank?—handed her a torch.
‘There’s a tear.’ She could see it. ‘It’s pumping. I want pressure.’
Frank pushed a pad in her hands.
‘Can you stop it?’ The fear in Cal’s voice was unmistakable. Armour? He didn’t have any at all, she thought. It was all a façade.
She was right underneath him, her body somehow under his legs. There were pieces of metal digging into her from all sides as she bound the leg as best she could, hauling the jagged sides together and dressing it so the worst of the bleeding eased.
But had the bleeding eased because of what she’d done—or because the girl’s blood pressure had dropped so far the bleeding would have eased anyhow?
She wriggled back out, but she didn’t ask the question.
‘We’ll be getting you out of here now,’ Cal was murmuring to the girl, holding her as he supported the tracheostomy tube, his arm around her shoulders, willing her to hear him. She seemed unconscious but both of them knew there was no way they could assess her level of consciousness here. She might well be able to hear every word.
Gina stepped back, but her eyes stayed on Karen’s face. Was this a winnable battle? From what she could see, no.
But Cal wasn’t giving up.
‘OK, guys,’ Cal was saying to the men working around them. ‘Now Gina’s fixed the bleeding, there’s nothing stopping us cutting her out. Karen, we’re with you every step of the way. Gina and I won’t leave you.’
Gina and I.
Gina backed, moving out of the way of the men with the machinery, but the image of the girl Cal was treating stayed with her. The girl’s pupils weren’t responding to light. Her face was badly damaged, and there was a deep indentation behind her ear. Fractured skull. What damage was underneath?
Cal wasn’t moving clear. The cars were having to be wrenched apart to get her out. There’d be splintering of metal; there was danger in him staying where he was. It was probably a hopeless task—but he wouldn’t leave.
Gina and I.
She loved him. He was so desperately needful and she loved him so much, but he wouldn’t see it.
Numbly she went back to the kids who still needed her. Her girl with the punctured lung seemed to be stabilising. The boy with fractured legs was drifting into unconsciousness but part of that might well be the morphine she’d administered. The girl who seemed to be in deep shock wasn’t taking anything in, and Frank called her over to help. She went, but a part of her stayed achingly with Cal holding the girl to him, fighting against all odds.
Cal battling the odds as he’d done all his life.
Medicine. Concentrate on need.
‘The chopper’s on its way,’ one of the policemen told her.
That meant she could arrange to get the girl with the punctured lung and the one in shock into the road ambulance. She sent them off with the two paramedics. They’d need the helicopter for Karen. If…
If.
The vast pliers-like equipment nicknamed the Jaws of Life was working now, the noise blocking out any other. It stopped for a minute and she heard Cal.
‘Breathe for me, Karen. Come on, love. Breathe.’
Love. He was fighting with love, she thought, and he didn’t even know he was doing it.
She needed time to think things through.
There was no time here.
Then the helicopter landed, and Gina was so busy she hardly noticed. One of the boys was vomiting and it took all her skill to stop him choking. She had him on his side, clearing his airway, and when Cal’s hand settled on her shoulder she jerked back in surprise.
He was clear of the wreck, but she glanced up and saw that he wasn’t clear. Karen…
Not dead. Not yet.
Cal was looking at the boys she was treating, doing fast visual assessment, trying to figure priorities.
‘I’ll take Karen back to base in the chopper,’ he said, briefly, dully, as if he was already accepting the outcome. ‘Her parents will want to come with us, and by the look of…things, I think that’s wise.’ He stooped to feel the pulse of the boy who’d just vomited. Both boys were seriously injured but not so seriously that their lives were in immediate danger. But both of them needed constant medical attention. It wasn’t safe to leave either without a doctor.
Which left them with a dilemma. Only one of these kids could fit in the two-patient chopper, but if one of them went, Cal’s attention would be divided. Or Gina would need to go, too, leaving one boy untended.
Impossible. They’d have to wait.
‘I’ll send the chopper straight back,’ Cal told her, and she understood.
‘Fine.’
Fine? To be left on the roadside with three dead kids and two seriously injured kids and so many distraught relatives?
‘No one else can stay,’ Cal told her helplessly. ‘Damn, there should be another doctor. We’re so short-staffed.’
‘Just go, Cal,’ she told him. ‘Move.’