MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO (9 page)

‘We’ll get through this.’

‘Oi!’ It was a soldier, one of the many patrolling the streets. ‘You guys need to get to the evacuation centre. That way. This street’s not safe.’

‘Doctors,’ Ben said briefly. ‘We need to be at the hospital.’

And all of a sudden they had a military escort and Ben held her hand tighter and it seemed even more...right that she held his. And held and held.

It was so silent, so dark—and then they rounded the bend and the hospital was in front of them and it wasn’t dark at all.

Kaimotu Hospital was a small weatherboard hospital up on the headland, looking over the town. Once it had been a gracious old house overlooking the harbour. Over the years it had been extended, with a brand-new clinic at the rear, a doctor’s apartment to the side, the rooms expanded to make a lovely ten-bed hospital with most rooms looking out over the veranda to the harbour beyond.

It had been expanded even more now. Some sort of camp hospital had been set up on the front lawns overlooking the sea. It was a vast canvas canopy, lit by floodlights on the outside and by vast battery-powered lanterns inside. A huge red generator was humming from the side of the tent, and the lights were on inside the hospital.

Ginny, who’d thought bleakly of dealing with casualties in third world conditions, felt herself relax. Just a little.

‘Docs,’ the soldier escorting them said briefly, as yet another soldier came forward to greet them. ‘Two of ’em. You can use them?’

‘Doctors?’ A fresh-faced kid who looked about eighteen pushed aside the canvas door and looked at them. ‘Real doctors?’

‘Ben McMahon and Ginny Koestrel,’ Ben said, and held his hand out in greeting. ‘I’m a family doctor with surgical training and Ginny’s an anaesthetist.’

‘Whew.’ The guy whistled. ‘I’m Dave Marr, doc with New Zealand Search and Rescue. We have Lou Blewit here as well but I want to send her back with the next chopper. I have a guy with a crush injury to his chest—breathing compromised. He needs a thoracic surgeon. If you guys can help...’

He was dressed in green theatre garb. He might look young but he didn’t sound young, Ginny thought. He sounded every inch a doctor, like he knew exactly what he was doing.

Thank God for emergency personnel. Thank God for helicopters. If she and Ben had been on their own...

‘You guys swear you’re doctors?’ Dave said, his tired face breaking into a slight smile. ‘You look like chimney sweeps to me. Was that what kept you?’

‘Digging the odd person out,’ Ben said. ‘We got here as fast as we could.’

‘Well, thank God for it,’ Dave said bluntly. ‘From now on...yeah, we need diggers but we need doctors more. I have a truckload of casualties coming in now. You ready to deal with them?’

‘Yes,’ they said in unison, and Dave grinned.

‘Excellent. You guys use the theatre inside the hospital—that’s what you’re familiar with. I’ll stay on triage out here—this is my territory. By the way, you might need to wash. We’ve set up a washroom over there—we’ve attached hoses to the garden tanks out back but use a bit more antiseptic than usual because Abby tells us the tank often holds the odd dead possum. We’re working on a safe water supply now.’

He glanced up as a battered farm truck turned into the car park. ‘Here’s the next load,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

* * *

For the next eight hours Ginny and Ben scarcely had time to breathe.

Luckily most of the injuries were minor, caused by flying debris and masonry. The most common presentation was lacerations. Most of the island homes were weatherboard with corrugated-iron roofs. If they’d been brick homes with slate or tile roofs, the injuries would have been more severe, but corrugated iron, crashing down in sheets, could slice to the bone. Added to that, people had crawled out of collapsed buildings, trying to get out as fast as they could, often unaware that they had been crawling over shattered glass and crockery.

The wounds were caked with dust, and they couldn’t be stitched fast.

Some people needed to be transferred to the mainland. Some would need plastic surgery to stop scarring for a lifetime, but there was enough work to hold Ben and Ginny in Theatre, working as hard and fast as they could.

They worked side by side rather than together, seeing two patients at a time. They shared a nurse—Prue, the youngest of the island’s nurses—and they helped each other.

It was hardly best medical practice to operate on two patients in the one small theatre but it meant help was always on hand. If one of them got into trouble, Ben helped Ginny or Ginny helped Ben. Ben’s surgical skills assisted Ginny, Ginny’s anaesthetic skills assisted Ben...

And besides...

It settled her, Ginny thought as she worked through the night. The day had been terrifying. Just the fact that she had Ben six feet away, a solid, reassuring presence, helped her to focus.

There was no question that she was a doctor now. She’d walked away from medicine six months ago but now she was in medicine up to her neck.

And for the first time in years she felt grateful to be a doctor.

She’d helped Ben save Henry but she’d been almost resentful that she’d been hauled out of her reclusive shell. Here there was no resentment.

She liked being able to help. She loved having the necessary skills.

The knowledge was almost like a lightning bolt. She remembered the early days of training, working as an intern. She remembered the almost terrifying sensation of making a difference to people’s lives. The dependence on colleagues. The gut-wrenching pain of loss and the mind-blowing feeling of success. She remembered heading to the pub after work with a group of colleagues to unwind, joking about the macabre, understanding each other, knowing she’d be working side by side with them the next day.

Like she was working side by side with Ben now.

It had all stopped when she’d met James. Her social life had centred on him from that point on. She’d started specialist anaesthetic training.

She’d still worked in a team in Theatre but the atmosphere had subtly changed. She had become the girlfriend of a senior consultant and James had often stopped by, to watch, to give a little advice, to make sure everyone in the theatre knew she was his woman.

Why was she thinking of that now? She was cleaning slivers of glass from Bea Higgins’s knees. Bea was seven years old, she’d been having a day off school when the quake had hit because she’d needed to go to the dentist, and had ended up crawling out of the Higgins’s lean-to bathroom.

‘And Mum says I still have to go to the dentist,’ she said mournfully.

‘Cheer up,’ Ben said from the other side of the room. He was stitching an elderly farmer’s arm—Craig Robb had been trying to get his pigs out of their sty when sheets of corrugated iron had fallen and slashed. Farmer, not pig. ‘Doc Dunstan’s front porch has collapsed,’ he told Bea. ‘You might not get a dentist appointment for months.’

‘Cool.’ Bea grinned happily as Ginny dressed her cuts and grazes. She’d hurt when the anaesthetic wore off, Ginny thought, but kids bounced back. For most of these kids this earthquake would end up being an adventure.

And for the rest of the island? The damage didn’t seem massive. There’d been no tsunami. There hadn’t been any reports of multiple deaths—three so far, and all of them elderly. Could the island get off so lightly?

But there might well be more casualties. There were still the islanders who lived in outlying areas, where searchers hadn’t been able to reach. There was still a trapped school bus.

There was still Henry.

‘Worry about what’s in front of you right now,’ Ben said.

She flashed a glance at him and thought again, He knows me as no one else does.

The thought was terrifying, yet she was suddenly no longer terrified. She was working side by side with him, and no matter what was happening in the outside world, she wasn’t terrified at all.

* * *

All his attention should be on his island. All his focus should be on deaths, injuries, damage.

Instead, he was working alongside Ginny Koestrel and it felt...okay.

As a seventeen-year-old he’d thought he loved her. Love was a pretty big word—a word he reserved for his family. There’d been a few women since Ginny, but not one he’d applied the ‘love’ word to.

His mother had been suggesting he could get together with Abby. Abby was competent, a caring professional, pretty, smiley, a great mum to her little boy. ‘Does the fact that she has a child stop you being interested?’ his mother had asked him recently, and he’d laughed. It made not one whit of difference. He’d lived in a household of twelve kids. If he didn’t like kids he’d have gone nuts long since.

So what had been stopping him? He and Abby had dated a couple of times—yeah, okay, just social functions like the hospital fundraiser where it was easier to have a partner—but they had still been dates.

There’d been friendship and laughter, but not a single spark.

And here was this woman, this stranger, really, as he hadn’t seen her for twelve years, working alongside him. She was a different person from the one he’d thought he’d been in love with all those years ago, yet sparks were flying everywhere.

How could there be sparks when he was so tired?

How could he hear her talk softly to Bea and crane his neck to hear, just to listen to her voice?

How could he get close? How could he brush away all the wounds that had been inflicted on her—for he knew there were deep wounds. How could he help her move on?

Move on towards him?

* * *

They ushered Craig and Bea out at the same time. Their two patients were welcomed into the arms of their relieved relatives, and there was a moment’s peace while they waited for Dave to direct them to the next need. The young nurse, Prue, was almost dead on her feet. ‘Go home,’ Ben told her. ‘You’ve done brilliantly.’

She left and Ben put his arms around Ginny and held her.

‘So have you,’ he said.

They stood at the entrance to the makeshift emergency hospital, and for a moment all was silent.

He kissed her lightly on her hair. ‘You’re doing a fantastic job, Dr Koestrel,’ he told her. ‘As a medical team, we rock.’

She didn’t pull back. She was exhausted, she told herself as he tugged her closer. It was okay to lean on him.

The queue outside had disappeared. Islanders were settling into the refuge centre or in some cases stubbornly returning to their homes. There’d still be myriad minor injuries to treat, she thought, but Dave hadn’t been waiting for them when they’d emerged this time.

There was this moment to stand in this man’s arms and just...be.

It couldn’t last. Of course it couldn’t. A truck arrived and a weary-looking Dave emerged from the back.

‘I need you to see two more patients and then I’m standing us all down,’ he said. ‘I’m dealing with a suspected early labour—I’ll stay with her until the team arrives to evacuate her. I think she’ll settle but I’m taking no chances.’

‘Who?’ Ben asked.

‘A tourist,’ Dave told her. ‘She was on a boat in the harbour when it hit.’ He grinned. ‘Which is something of a relief because the islanders want Ben first, Ginny as second best and me a poor last. But, as I said, it’s easing. We have paramedics who’ll stay on call for the rest of the night and I have another doctor flying in to take over from me. It’s four now. If anything dire happens we’ll call you out but you need to catch some sleep. The searchers will find more at first light so medically things will speed up again. Is there anywhere here you both can sleep?’

‘My apartment’s at the back of the hospital,’ Ben said. ‘If it’s anything like the rest of the hospital it’ll be unscathed. Ginny can stay with me.’

‘I can give you a bed in a tent if that’s not okay,’ Dave told her, but Ginny shook her head, even though the tent might be more sensible.

But she didn’t feel sensible. She was still leaning against Ben. She still wanted to lean against him.

But there were problems. She needed to focus on something other than this man’s arms.

‘Button...’ she started.

‘Whoops, I have a message about someone called Button,’ Dave told her, looking rueful. ‘One of the guys passed it on. The message is that Ailsa and Hannah said to tell you that Button and Shuffles are fast asleep and happy. They also said to tell you someone’s left a basket of kittens with Ailsa because their laundry’s collapsed and apparently Ailsa is a sucker for animals, so the message continues that Ailsa says Button would like a black one with a white nose. Button says she wants to call it Button, too.’

He grinned, pleased with himself for remembering the full gist of the message, and Ginny found herself smiling, too. It was exactly the kind of message she needed to hear. She found herself sniffing and when Ben’s arm tightened around her she didn’t resist. How could she pull away?

Weirdly, her world, which had been shaken to the core years before, the day James had got his diagnosis, or even earlier, she thought, maybe even the day her father and James had taken her to dinner and hammered into her that she was a fool not to specialise, a fool to keep working in the emergency medicine she loved, seemed, on this day of all days, to be settling.

‘You said...’ she managed. ‘You said...we have two more patients to see?’

‘Minor problems,’ Dave said. ‘The searchers have just swept the wharf. Brian Grubb was trapped in the co-op storeroom when the door shifted on its hinges. He’s cut his leg and needs an X-ray to eliminate a fracture to his ankle.

‘We also have a Mr Squid Davies—a venerable old gentleman. The search dogs found him under a pile of cray pots and they’ve brought him in, protesting. He’s had a bang on his head. I can’t see any sign of concussion but he didn’t have the strength to heave the pots off himself. He tells us he forecast the earthquake. He’s busy telling all and sundry, “I told you so.” Are you sure you can handle it?’

Squid and his end-of-the-world forecasting. Could she handle it?

She grinned at Ben and he grinned back.

‘It’ll be a pleasure to treat him,’ Ben said, and his smile warmed places inside her she hadn’t even known had been cold. ‘We might even concede we should have listened.’