Marion Lennox - Hijacked Honeymoon

As the publican moved to do her bidding Abbey glanced up as another car roared across the beach and stopped in a shower of sand, its tyres spinning.

Ryan, too, had beaten the ambulance.

Ryan… She wasn’t alone.

There was no time for Abbey to do more than glance upwards and say a tiny thankful prayer that Eileen had been able to locate him. All her concentration was on getting enough pressure on the pad to stop Steve bleeding.

Where on earth was the ambulance? She had to have plasma. Now!

And what about the injured children?

‘Ryan, I haven’t done triage,’ she gasped as Ryan reached her side. She was pushing down as hard as she could on Steve’s leg and she couldn’t move. ‘There are two others hurt but I can’t leave this.’

‘There’s a girl with a gashed arm. My boys are dealing with her,’ Rod told her briefly. He was hauling another towel tight around Steve’s upper leg. He glanced up at Ryan. ‘But Leith Kinley’s just over there, Doc, and she’s hurt bad. We carried her out of the water on a surfboard because she wasn’t feeling her legs. Caroline-the nurse who was with Doc Pryor-is with her but she looks… I dunno…’

Leith Kinley… Their little asthmatic. Ryan’s swimming pupil.

Ryan took one long, hard look down at the nearunconscious Steve and turned to where Leith was lying ten yards away. Abbey felt her heart give a sickening lurch. Leith… But she had to leave Leith to Ryan. If she didn’t concentrate on what she was doing Steve would bleed to death under her hands.

Where on earth was the ambulance?

And what had happened? It seemed inconceivable that someone just ride a jet ski into the swimming beach.

And then the ambulance screamed across the sand, followed by the local police car, the fire truck and the State Emergency Services van for good measure. Eileen had clearly decided that the more people helping the better.

And Eileen herself arrived in the hospital car.

With plasma. Eileen had plasma.

For Steve, plasma meant the difference between life and death, and he’d lost so much blood now that the line between the two was growing very close indeed.

For the next few minutes Abbey couldn’t think past getting the plasma running into Steve’s body and the flood of blood from his leg completely stopped. Finally, with the combined effort of Abbey, Rod, Don and Eileen, they achieved success.

Abbey sat back in the sand and looked down. She took three deep breaths, as if she hadn’t had time to breathe until now. Steve’s leg was no longer bleeding. The tourniquet would have to be loosened every few minutes to let the blood flow through but she’d tied towelling pads across the wound so tightly that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Plasma and intravenous fluids were flowing into Steve’s veins. And adrenalin to counter shock. His pulse was thready but still there. He was young and strong. He’d need a decent surgeon to repair the damage to his thigh but, barring complications, Steve should live.

‘You’ll make it, Steve,’ Abbey whispered as she saw his eyelids flutter open. She gripped his hand and held tight. She’d only known this young doctor for three weeks but he was already a friend.

‘He’s a bloody hero,’ Don said faintly. Despite his initial protest, Don had worked like a Trojan, building Steve up with towels and sand so his thighs were at a thirty degree angle to his torso. It had made Abbey’s job of stemming the blood loss much easier, and Don hadn’t fainted once. Now, though, with urgent needs over, Don shoved his head between his knees and took a few deep breaths himself. When he finally raised his head he looked better.

‘You know he saved the kids?’ Don said.

‘How?’ Abbey was looping a vast strip of Elastoplast around the pad of towels pressing down on Steve’s leg. She didn’t want the pad coming loose before he reached Cairns. Steve would have to go to Cairns, she knew, and probably on to Brisbane. He needed plastic surgeons skilled in reconstruction for this leg.

‘There was a bloody kid on a jet ski,’ Don told her roughly, glaring around the beach as if trying to locate him. ‘Showing off outside the nets. In bathers and no other protection, mind.

‘Then the obvious happens. He gets stung by a stinger of some sort and assumes it’s a box jellyfish. Panics and starts screaming and then comes haring through the nets to the beach. Forgot the nets would foul him. Got all tangled up and wrenched out of it-straight into a group of kids.

‘Steve here saw him coming,’ Don added, staring down at the injured doctor in awe. ‘Faster than the rest of us put together, I reckon. He lunged across and shoved the kids out of the way. If it wasn’t for Steve, it’s my guess we’d have half a dozen dead kids.’

‘Oh, Steve…’

‘And then Caroline-the only qualified nurse on the beach-tried to stop his leg bleeding and Steve made her go to Leith,’ Rod added. The lifesaver had fixed the tourniquet to his satisfaction and now was wiping some of the blood from his hands with an already bloodied towel.

Towel sales in Sapphire Cove were due to go through the roof in the next few days, Abbey thought grimly.

‘Caroline showed us how to get Leith out of the water without moving her back but, meanwhile, Steve here was bleeding like a stuck pig.’ The lifesaver shoved his hand on Steve’s shoulder and gripped hard. ‘You’re all right, mate. A bloody hero.’

Bloody was right. No one smiled.

‘Leith,’ Steve said faintly. ‘Abbey, Leith…’

‘Ryan’s with Leith,’ Abbey told him.

‘You go too… I’ll be right. You go…’

Abbey stooped and gave him a quick hug, sent a silent message to Eileen with her eyes to look after him-and then went.

Once Steve’s bleeding had stopped, Leith was in more trouble than Steve.

She was conscious and there seemed little blood, but as Abbey approached she could tell things were serious by the look of grimness around Ryan’s mouth.

‘Ryan?’

Ryan looked up and saw her and then looked down again. He was injecting morphine into Leith’s lateral thigh and it took his entire attention.

He signalled to Caroline to keep holding the little girl’s hands.

‘That’ll stop the pain, Leith,’ Ryan said gently. ‘Just don’t move one inch. You hear? I want the painkillers to work and they can’t work if you move.’

He rose to greet Abbey.

‘Steve?’ There was no disguising the anxiety in Ryan’s voice.

‘I’ve stopped the bleeding and I’ve set up a line for plasma. He should be OK.’

‘The leg?’

‘Retrievable. Not by me, though. I’d imagine he’ll have to go to Brisbane. The air ambulance service is sending a helicopter. It should be here any minute. They’ll take him to Cairns, stabilise him and send him on. Leith?’

‘I’d guess fractured spine.’

‘Oh, Ryan… ’

‘I’m not sure of the damage,’ Ryan said grimly, ‘but she’s not feeling her legs. What else is there?’

‘I’ll find out,’ Abbey said grimly. ‘Oh, God…’

The other two casualties were a child with a gashed arm-it’d need stitching but Abbey could do that at Sapphire Cove-and a boy with a bluebottle sting. The rider of the jet ski.

‘I thought I must have been stung by a box jellyfish, like that boy was a couple of weeks back,’ Paul muttered over and over again. Bluebottles were tiny air-filled sac-like jellyfish that trailed along the water’s surface. They stung, but the pain eased after thirty minutes or so with no lasting damage. Paul was all of twelve years old and what had happened had him appalled. ‘I never meant… I never…’

‘It’s not your fault, Paul,’ Abbey said wearily, and she gave him a hug as she washed down his leg with fresh water. She was right. It was his stupid parents for letting him have such a powerful machine in the first place.

Abbey badly wanted to kick someone-and she couldn’t kick a twelve-year-old. His parents were just as appalled as Paul. They were being punished enough, without Abbey kicking.

Which didn’t ease Abbey’s desire to kick one bit.

She went back to check Steve and found him drifting in and out of consciousness. She’d given him as much morphine as she dared.

And then the helicopter roared in overhead and came in to land on the firm, damp sand at the water’s edge.

‘You go with them,’ Abbey yelled at Ryan over the noise of the chopper as Steve and Leith were skilfully loaded onto stretchers. She glanced down at Leith and her mouth tightened in fear. A broken back. Was Leith facing paraplegia-or worse? Maybe… maybe with Ryan the child had a chance. Spinal injuries were so unpredictable. But if Ryan was there…

‘Please, Ryan. I want you to go.’

Ryan looked down at Abbey with an unreadable expression on his face.

And he went.

RYAN was away for five days.

For those five days Abbey hardly had time to blink. She was thrust back into her old workload with a vengeance.

Steve Pryor was undergoing massive reconstruction of his thigh. He wouldn’t lose his leg, but it would take months before he was able to use it in anywhere near a normal fashion.

Caroline, the night sister who’d spent the day at the beach with him, travelled to Brisbane so there’d be someone with him during major surgery. It turned out Steve had no family. Caroline was it. And, by the look of her haggard face as she arrived back in Sapphire Cove, Abbey knew Caroline wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘He’s such an owl,’ Caroline sniffed into Abbey’s arms. ’Such a gentle, loving person. And he saved those kids. I don’t think I can bear it.’

‘You’re in love with him,’ Abbey said on a note of discovery, and that produced more sniffs and a fast retreat into a handkerchief.

‘Yes. but now… I mean it all happened so fast. I only went out with him the once and how’s he supposed to believe I love him already? And now he’s in Brisbane and I’m here and he was only here on a locum anyway and I’m never going to see him again.’