Rescue Heat (9 page)

One, two, three, four chains were quickly attached and pulled taut.

Brigid kept up her task of keeping Roger talking until she heard Matt call out ‘secure’. She immediately slid her long legs into the narrow void under the tractor. The rest of her body went after. Luckily, she had a modest C-cup because double-Ds would probably be an impossible fit.

She ignored the wetness of the ditch. In fact, the bogginess reassured her. If there was some give in the ground, Roger’s crush injuries might be less horrible than previously feared.

Not wanting to disturb the still precarious balance of the tractor pressing on Roger, Brigid slid across slowly.

Matt and a young SES officer squeezed their way through from the other side, at a similarly slow pace. Their current task was to get air bags on either side of Roger, ready to inflate. “So Roger, finally we manage to meet face-to-face,” Brigid quipped.

She had finally managed to wedge herself close enough to be able to grasp Roger’s wiry arm. Before the men started shifting the tractor, Brigid knew, he needed fluids. Once the pressure was off Roger’s legs, potentially fatal toxins that had built up could start coursing through his body.

Brigid was glad she wasn’t claustrophobic. To stick a needle in a vein, while five tonnes of metal hovered above your horizontal body, five centimetres from your nose, was not for the faint hearted.

Once the line was in, Brigid had to retreat, so that Matt could shove in the last of the high-pressure air bags.

“Out,” was the non-compromising order from Matt’s mouth.

Brigid had to crawl the last metre into the fresh air. The men were right behind her.

The inflation of the air bags was perhaps the most hazardous moment of the whole operation. Brigid held her breath. If one of the mechanisms failed, Roger could be instantly killed.

One, two, three. The metal lifted and steel creaked as stress was placed on the metallic connections.

“Chris, Dave, Brigid. Take spinal precautions, but we have to be quick.”

Matt’s words were barely out of his mouth before the team swung into action. Crawling in on her hands and knees, Brigid needed to get past the bags and get a visual on Roger. They were all aware that the extraction needed to be rapid; if an airbag was punctured a mountain of steel could come down on the entire team but Brigid knew no-one would make any moves involving Roger without her explicit consent.

Within seconds, she was looking down on the farmer, shooting his body full of drugs to counteract to release of toxins. Lying vulnerable and prone, his legs were not as damaged as she had first feared. They were certainly fractured and badly cut but they had been partly protected by the soft ground. No major bleeds were obvious and moving him was absolutely urgent, for everyone’s safety.

“Spinal precautions, let’s move,” Brigid said.

After fitting the neck brace, Brigid counted in the roll to place Roger on the spinal board.

“Okay Roger, this is probably going to hurt,” Brigid apologized to her patient.

Crawling out on their hands and knees meant they would have to drag him.

Eager hands from the other services were offered once they were out into the clean air and Roger was quickly placed on an elevated stretcher, waiting metres from the tractor.

The waiting ambos were attaching monitors as Brigid reached his side. The next few minutes were spent checking circulation, vitals, and strapping together Roger’s legs in temporary plastic casts.

The rhythmic beat of Roger’s pulse monitor went some way towards reassuring Brigid. If the toxic build up from crushed muscles was going to cause cardiac arrest, it would have done so by now. However, the tenderness at his side indicated an internal bleed. It looked like the general and orthopaedic surgeons at Cairns hospital were going to be putting in some serious time in the operating room.

Brigid called out her thanks to the emergency services there on the ground. She was sure Roger would echo her thanks, in normal circumstances, but with the morphine she injected, he was far, far away. Considering his injuries, this was definitely a good thing.

Back at base, Brigid slammed shut her locker door. Roger had remained stable through the transfer to Cairns Hospital, but his probable positive outcome didn’t lessen her annoyance at Matt.

The whole team was in the locker room, ducking in and out of shower stalls, changing uniforms. Crawling through the dirt left a pretty disreputable look.

Chris and Dave exited the room and Matt made as if to follow.

“Hey Matt, can you stay? I need a word,” Brigid asked.

Matt turned and slouched against the wall, before nodding for her to continue. She imagined, from the look of reluctance on his face, he had some idea of what was to come.

“We have to respect each other’s expertise, so I’m going to forget that you threatened to put me on report,” Brigid said, deliberately keeping her voice even. “But, Matt, you can’t play macho man with me out in the field.”

Matt did not change his posture, but Brigid could see his shoulders tense under the fabric of his clean uniform.

“How the hell did I play the macho man with you?”

The depth of emotion took Brigid aback. The cool, collected former soldier seemed to have momentarily vanished from the room and in his place was simply a man with quiet anger in his voice.

“You’re the scene co-ordinator,” said Brigid. “So you choosing your judgement over mine is something I can and will resent, but I will deal with. What I won’t put up with though is your assumption that any dangerous tasks are your domain. I’m very fit and I have a lot of very expensive training behind me.”

Brigid could see his mouth open with what she was sure was an indignant answer, but still she continued. “Sometimes I’m the best person for a dangerous task and if you don’t realise that, we’re going to be going another round very soon.”

Brigid stopped and for one long moment silence hung heavily in the air between them.

Matt finally spoke and the coolness in his tone showed more fury than his previous anger. “You got to go under the tractor in the end, didn’t you?”

“Only after I had been assured that if it was truly necessary, you would take on the dangerous task.” Brigid walked towards the door. “If you find it too hard trusting a female doctor, something is going to have to change.”

With that final statement, Brigid exited the room.

Matt got out of bed to the cool crispness of the Cairns spring morning. Wearing just his briefs and absently scratching his chest, he walked out onto his bedroom balcony. Once out, he stared, unseeing, at the empty beach before him.

Last night’s sleep had been restless, mainly due to yesterday’s scene with Brigid. That woman wound him up, in a way that was completely unfamiliar. She was one of the few people outside of his family who could actually cause a well of emotion, with a single accusation.

No other job had come up, so they had largely been able to avoid the other. Matt had no doubt that both were professional enough to work well together but if they had been forced into closer quarters, he was sure Chris and Dave would have noticed an icy undertone.

Matt replayed the words in his mind, “If you find it too hard, working with a female doctor, something is going to have to change.”

Matt was unused to such an out-and-out challenge of his authority. It made it clearer than anything else previously had done, that he was back in the civilian world. In combat, the chain of command was clear.

Was it true? Had he been overprotective because of Brigid’s sex?

Matt didn’t think so; he had worked successfully with women in the past, but this morning, when he replayed the conversation in his mind, he could see how his words could have seemed patronizing to her.

“Dammit,” said Matt to himself. He had only said it to alleviate that frustration he had felt. That he had the impulse to explain himself in the field was truly what had him worried.

Matt stood by his decisions and had never needed to make excuses in the past. Maybe it was time that he admitted his attraction to Brigid was blurring some important professional lines in his mind. It was hurting his ability to do his job; so keeping his distance from her had become doubly important. Maybe letting her stay angry would be a blessing.

Five days later, Matt was re-evaluating his strategy. In keeping his professional distance, today on his day off, he had to organize his day around not running into Brigid. Instead of the gym, he had gone for a run under the hot sun. When he had come home, he had even used his pool instead of the private beach. This non-avoidance technique did not sit well with a man who had often braved sniper fire in Iraq.

His ringing phone startled Matt out of his contemplation. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and no one called him on the landline.

He picked it up. It was Jo, the dispatcher.

“Hi Matt,” said Jo cheerfully. “Guess who drew the short straw. We have a bush-walker, who is injured in an inaccessible area. So, we need a doctor and paramedic to drop in and join the SES crew. They’ll need to spend the night and walk them out in the morning.”

“So I guess I’m the designated paramedic,” said Matt.

“Hope you didn’t have any exciting plans,” Jo replied. “Don’t worry, I’m going to be ruining Brigid’s day next. So can you be at base in twenty minutes?”

Even as he replied positively to Jo’s request, Matt started pulling on his uniform. Luckily, his military training allowed him to switch into work mode on the turn of a dime.

His thoughts weren’t completely professional though. The task Jo had described would take at least fourteen hours, which meant fourteen hours with Brigid. With Brigid, and no Dave and Chris and busywork to act as a buffer. He was not sure that his wall of defiance, with his cool manner, could be maintained for that long.

“Why do tourists who probably don’t walk to the end of their own street, insist on coming out here and walking themselves miles off the beaten track?” asked Sam, the chopper pilot on the third shift.

The helicopter sped above the treetop canopy and Matt was strapped opposite a now laughing Brigid. She obviously appreciated Sam’s quip.

“You’re just upset that you’re missing out on the action,” Brigid said. “Anyway, sometimes a taxi driver‘s all that’s needed.”

As Sam’s co-pilot hooted, Matt relaxed back into his seat. That kind of teasing was part of his professional DNA and it had been severely lacking since his fight with Brigid.

“Taxi driver, am I?” said Sam. “Well I should put you down here and you can call the Black and Gold Cab Company and see how quickly they can get you into the rainforest.”

When Brigid rolled her eyes theatrically at Matt he felt a lightening of spirit. He was now included in the joke.

“OK, OK, master of the flying universe. Quiet in the front, while I organize the logistics back here.” Brigid turned her attention to Matt. “It’s going to take us half an hour to hike in tonight and certainly longer to get out tomorrow. But I do think it’s worth taking in the extra water and saline.”

“Remind me again why we aren’t going to try and bring him out tonight?” asked Matt.

He was not really questioning the operational decision but he somehow felt the need to distance himself from the enforced intimacy of teaming up together.

“The SES boys have only got a material stretcher and they need me to have a look at the closed fracture first. So by the time we hike in, it’s going to be dark.”

Matt looked at the dense rainforest canopy passing beneath them. “I guess I can see the point of not stumbling around in the dark down there.”

“Camping in the Daintree rainforest. Matt, we do aim to offer the ultimate Cairns experience,” said Brigid.

“Just remember not to trip over any snakes when you take a comfort break in the dark,” said Sam.

“Thanks,” Matt said, remembering only too clearly the fang marks they had recently seen on a little boy’s leg.

“I’m personally more worried about the crocs,” said Brigid.

Now Matt laughed.

When the helicopter touched down, Brigid and Matt pulled on their loads and said goodbye. Luckily, they had a walking track to follow. So after double-checking their GPS, they headed down the rocky, narrow path. After Brigid’s crack about crocs, Matt had double-checked his map and made sure the whole route was not near any waterway.

They were both carrying heavy backpacks and Matt had the extra burden of carrying the ‘ski’. At three kilos, the ingenious rolled plastic stretcher was pretty lightweight, but it poked out enough to get caught on trees.

Matt was following Brigid and trying not to admire the way her long legs ate up the distance, even as she shouldered a decidedly heavy load. He had watched her sticking extra water bottles in her pack and had bitten back any offers to help share the extra weight. This probably was not the time or place to open that particular door.

Matt decided that he couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “Do you know the guys on this SES team?”

“After a while you know everybody’s faces, or at least those of the core group members,” said Brigid. “The volunteers get called out to most major incidents in the rural areas and I’ve treated more than one of the members at flood or bush fire time.”

“I can’t get over how quickly the volunteers get mobilized out here,” said Matt.

“Outside of Cairns, most towns are lucky if they share a few police officers. So if anything happens that needs more hands immediately, the SES is usually the first drafted. At least this walker today had an EPIRB, otherwise we would’ve had hundreds of people out searching.”

Matt was genuinely impressed by this small army of volunteers. It took something pretty special to regularly give up work and personal lives to attend an emergency without the prospect of getting paid.

“So did coming out here ruin any of your plans?” Matt asked.

God, he was a man who could sit silently in the back of a crowded troop carrier for hours; now he was babbling like a giggling schoolgirl. Well, he could certainly blame the intriguing woman marching stoically before him.