Georgie's Big Greek Wedding?

Despite the fact they’d been working to stabilise a patient, he was able to recollect every one of her curves. The curve of her waist as it had flared out to her hip. The curve of her bottom at the top of her thigh. The curve of her cleavage where the Lycra of her halter-neck top had pushed her breasts together.

He’d known he couldn’t stand there talking to her while those images had been flashing through his mind, that wouldn’t have been a very professional start to their working relationship. He had no plans to get involved with anyone during his six-month stint; but if there were more women like Georgie Carides in town, his time in Cairns was looking more promising.

Georgie swapped her singlet for a T-shirt with ‘Paramedic’ stencilled across the back and swapped her skirt for her jumpsuit, before pulling on socks and lacing her boots. Her hands were shaking as she tied her laces. She took a deep breath. Although she’d said she didn’t mind working with the new recruit, she was nervous.

But it wasn’t Josh that made her nervous. It was her reaction to Josh.

She knew plenty of cute guys but she’d never had the sense that they could affect her physically. She certainly hadn’t expected to have such a strong reaction to him. Yesterday she’d put it down to adrenaline but today she knew it was more than that. She’d never experienced an instant, powerful physical attraction to a man and now it had happened twice in a matter of hours. It was unexpected and surprising, pleasant but scary—and it was making her nervous.

She wondered how she was going to be able to work with him. Would they work together smoothly? Would their styles be harmonious? Would she be able to concentrate? Questions buzzed through her mind as she zipped up her overalls. There was no way of knowing all the answers.

She’d have to rely on her skills and expertise. She was an experienced intensive care paramedic; Josh was an experienced emergency specialist. In theory she knew they should be fine. But in reality she was the one with experience in pre-hospital emergency medicine. She was the one who would need to take the lead, which meant she needed to be able to concentrate. Josh was used to working in a well-organised hospital environment and she knew, from her days as an emergency unit nurse, that hospitals were a long way from the chaotic, cramped, hot and dusty locations the emergency retrieval team often worked in. She needed to make sure she kept a cool, calm head. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. A lapse in concentration could put her patients at risk. She couldn’t afford to get sidetracked by cute doctors.

She closed her locker and headed out.

Josh was waiting. He held the door for her as they left the building and his stride matched hers as they crossed the tarmac and headed for the helicopter.

‘Are you feeling okay? Ready for this?’ she asked. She wondered if he was nervous, although he certainly didn’t look it. He looked completely at ease. If anything, he looked calmer than she felt.

He nodded his head. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a complete novice.’

He’d obviously guessed the reason for her question or knew what she was thinking. It would make her job easier if he had a vague idea of what he was in for. ‘This isn’t your first retrieval?’ she queried.

‘I’ve done a couple of transfers before but no primaries and no S&R.’

The most common retrieval for the QMERT team was an inter-hospital transfer or IHT, which was what they were heading to now. Often, but not always, this was a fairly straightforward exercise and Georgie hoped that would be the case today.

Josh’s prior experience of IHTs was a bonus and she was comforted knowing that his confident walk wasn’t just window dressing, but, still, it was probably a good thing that their first callout wasn’t for a search and rescue.

They were almost at the chopper now and she could see Pat in the pilot’s seat, doing his pre-flight checks. Isaac, the air crew officer on duty, was stowing equipment. He closed the final hatch as they approached so it looked as though they were just about ready for take-off. She might just have time to introduce Josh to the rest of the crew but they’d have to check their equipment and run through their procedures in flight. She would have liked a little time to establish some rapport first before they were sent out on a job but, as often happened, the calls dictated their day and they’d just have to get on with it. She prayed it would go smoothly.

‘Have you met Pat and Isaac?’ she asked.

‘Yep, first thing this morning,’ he said as he raised a hand in greeting and Isaac nodded an acknowledgement.

‘G’day, Georgie, Doc,’ Pat greeted them, pointing backwards over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating they should board the chopper.

Georgie let Josh climb in first and she dragged the door shut behind them both, securing it with a flick of the lock. There were four forward-facing seats across the width of the chopper and another two rear-facing seats behind each of the flight deck seats. Josh had taken the third seat across. She could sit beside the door but she preferred one of the middle seats so she slipped into the seat beside him.

‘Baptism by fire,’ she commented as Josh strapped himself in.

She was relieved to see he was able to shrug into his harness, adjust the straps and snap it closed without difficulty. He seemed comfortable enough in the close confines of the chopper and she knew he’d flown before. Yesterday, in fact. She also knew he would have undergone the escape training course. All the rescue crews had to pass HUET—Helicopter Underwater Escape Training—because a lot of their flying could be over water. So transport wasn’t a problem, but what she didn’t know was how much medical experience he’d had outside a hospital situation. A few inter-hospital transfers wasn’t much.

Pat had started the engine and the rotor blades were spinning. The noise made it impossible to continue a conversation until everyone was wearing headsets. She and Josh both grabbed sets and flicked the comms switch on so they could talk to each other and the air crew.

The chopper was lifting off its trolley. It tilted as it left the ground and the movement threw Georgie against Josh. There wasn’t a lot of room to move and she could feel his thigh, firm and muscular, where it rested against hers. His body heat radiated through the fabric of their jumpsuits and into her thigh. She’d never experienced such a visceral reaction to someone before. It was as though her body recognised him despite the fact they were strangers. On some level she knew him. She could feel her knees trembling but she couldn’t break the contact. There was nowhere to go.

There wasn’t much room to move in the back of the chopper. She often felt as though she only just fitted in between all the medical gear and Josh was several inches taller than she was. He was really jammed in. She was five feet six inches. He’d be six feet at least. The stretcher was locked in place in front of them. It ran the width of the helicopter, from one door to the other, between their seats and those opposite. Josh’s knees were crammed between the seat and the stretcher and now he had her practically lying on top of him as well. There was no escape for him, he was well and truly stuck.

‘Sorry,’ she said through the headset as Pat straightened the chopper and she was able to shift back into an upright position and away from Josh’s firm thigh. Perhaps she should have taken a different seat. Squeezed up against him in the back of the chopper, she was a bit too aware of him.

‘No worries.’ He looked at her and grinned, apparently completely unfazed by the lack of room. Her stomach did a lazy somersault in response to his smile and the look of mischief in his grey eyes made her blush. Her body was overheating, from her thighs to her cheeks. She was stifling and she wondered if she could ask Isaac to turn the air-sconditioning up higher but everyone else looked comfortable enough. She’d just have to put up with feeling as though her cheeks were on fire.

‘How did things go with Nigel yesterday?’ Josh’s voice was cool and relaxed, in sharp contrast to her flustered state. If he’d been surprised to find himself working with her he hadn’t shown it, and if their close proximity in the back of the chopper rattled him he wasn’t showing any outward signs of that either. Looking at him, one imagined that things were going exactly according to plan. ‘Did he get back safely?’

She decided she needed to chill out. She nodded. ‘No further dramas,’ she said as she filled him in on the outcome of the English tourist’s medical emergency from the previous day. ‘He was admitted to the Cairns hospital overnight but when I checked on him this morning he’d had an uneventful night and they were expecting to discharge him.’

‘The hospital doesn’t mind you following up?’

Georgie shook her head. ‘As you said, it’s a small world.’ She shrugged. ‘Cairns isn’t a big town, everyone seems to know everyone else and that’s especially true in the medical field. I think the hospital staff expect us to ring. Most of the QMERT doctors work in the hospital too, and we all like to know what happened to our charges. Will you be doing any shifts at the hospital while you’re here?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll do one or two a week but I’m in Cairns to get as much experience as I can with retrievals, particularly primaries. I imagine it’s vastly different from working in a first-class A and E department.’

Georgie finally relaxed. This was her area of expertise and discussing this topic kept her mind focussed. ‘You’ll find you’ll have to strip your medicine back to basics. The principles and the goals are the same, you just won’t have the same state-of-the-art equipment at your fingertips or the specialist services you’re probably used to. We become everyone from anaesthetist to scout nurse out here.’

‘Luckily I like a challenge,’ he said. ‘So what should we expect when we get to Tully?’

For the remainder of the flight they ran through possible scenarios that might greet them on landing, including the possibility that they might need to intubate the baby. Together they checked the medical kits to make sure they had everything they might need. Small regional hospitals would have standard supplies but they might not always have the less commonly required equipment.

Josh was methodical in his checking but that wasn’t surprising. It was a character trait attributable to most of the team—organised, meticulous and logical would describe almost all of them—and by the time they circled over the landing site in Tully Georgie was feeling confident that they would be able to work together comfortably.

She watched out of the window as Pat landed the chopper on the cricket oval. Tully had the highest annual rainfall in Queensland and light drizzle was falling as they climbed out of the helicopter and into the ambulance that was waiting to transport them to the hospital. Within minutes of landing they were walking into the tiny hospital.

The local doctor, who looked like he must only be just out of medical school, gave them a rundown on the patient’s condition as they followed him to her bedside. ‘Carrie is four months old but she was born eight weeks prem so her adjusted age is nine weeks. She’s of Aboriginal descent and this is her third admission for breathing difficulties. The first two admissions we managed to control her and discharge her home with her mum. This time we can’t get her oxygen sats up—they’re actually falling.’

They were at her bedside now and Georgie and Josh both glanced quickly at the monitors showing Carrie’s vital statistics. Her heart rate was 98 beats per minute, low for a baby, and her oxygenation was below 88 per cent. That was dangerously low. The medical staff had a tiny oxygen mask over Carrie’s mouth and nose but the baby was listless and her chest was barely moving on inspiration. She was only just breathing.

‘What were her oxygen sats when she came in?’ Josh asked.

‘Ninety two.’ Even that was low, and if they hadn’t been able to improve her saturation since she got to hospital Carrie was in trouble.

Josh checked the monitor again. Carrie’s vital signs were unchanged. ‘Right, we need to get some improvement in her vitals. We’ll have to intubate to see if we can get her oxygen levels up and we’ll have to take her with us back to Cairns. I’ll need a straight blade laryngoscope, size one, and a 4.0 endotracheal tube,’ Josh told her.

Georgie unzipped the medical kit she’d carried in with her. It included all the items they’d need for intubating an infant. As they’d had no way of knowing whether the hospital would have equipment that was small enough, it had been safest to bring it from the chopper. She passed Josh the items he’d requested and he deftly inserted the tube. Carrie was so sick she didn’t resist and the moment Josh was happy with his positioning Georgie taped the tube in place and attached the ambubag. She would need to manually squeeze the air into Carrie’s lungs and she’d need to do this all the way back to Cairns. But if it kept Carrie alive she was happy to do it.

As Georgie squeezed the air in they could see the baby’s chest rise and fall with each pump. It looked like Josh’s intubation had been millimetre perfect. She looked up from the infant and her gaze met his.

She was impressed with his skills—intubating a child of this age was no easy task. ‘Nice work,’ she said, and was rewarded with one of his heart-stopping smiles. He looked incredibly pleased with himself but not in an arrogant way. His grin was infectious and she had to smile back. Things were good. They’d succeeded. Carrie’s oxygen sats and heart rate were climbing. She was stable enough to transport back to Cairns in the chopper. They would manage to keep her alive and get her to specialist care. Their first job together had gone smoothly.

By the time they were ensconced back at the Cairns base after transferring Carrie to the Cairns Hospital, Georgie had almost forgotten it was Josh’s first day on the job. She’d ducked across to the Cairns airport terminal building to buy a drink and when she returned she could see Josh chatting to Louise in the comms centre. He was perched on the edge of the desk, one leg swinging lazily, looking quite at home.

Georgie walked slowly towards him, taking a moment to admire the view. His jumpsuit was undone and his grey T-shirt, the colour an identical match to his eyes, hugged his chest. She could imagine the ridge of his abdominals underneath that T-shirt. That image was burned into her memory from the day before. He was rolling a pen through his fingers and his biceps flexed with the movement, drawing her eye to his arms. She could remember how his arms had looked as he’d pulled himself through the water, the sunlight bouncing off his muscles as he’d swum out to the reef. He was an impressive sight.

She was within a few metres before he noticed her but when he looked up he greeted her with a smile. Even though Louise was sitting right beside him Georgie felt as though they were the only two in the building. How could he make her feel as though the rest of the world didn’t exist with just one smile?

She was vaguely aware of the phone ringing as she smiled back at him. She forced herself to watch Louise answer the telephone, forced herself to concentrate on what was going on around her.

Louise was scribbling details onto a notepad. ‘Male patient, early twenties, he’s fallen from the back of a moving vehicle, severe head and chest injuries, possible spinal injuries. He’s on a cattle station about a hundred kilometres south-west of here.’