Saving Maddie's Baby

Her fingers were on Malu’s wrist. His pulse was settling. There was no need to turn on the torch.

She flicked the torch on anyway, just for a moment. Just to see.

Their chamber was about eight feet in diameter. The roof was still up there, and there were shoring timbers above them. Where their tiny enclosure ended, the shoring timbers had splintered like kindling.

The floor was rock-strewn. She needed to clear it a bit to get Malu more comfortable.

She could do it without the torch. She had to do it without the torch. She flicked it off again and the total darkness was like a physical slap.

Her phone gave a tiny ping and the screen lit momentarily. She took three deep breaths—because she had been close to panic—and she let herself look.

Landed. You nice and safe down there? Got a couple of good rocks you can use for pillows or are you thinking you might like to come on up? Josh.

She could have kissed him. Except she didn’t kiss Josh. Not any more. He’d always been uncomfortable with overt displays of affection. Even when they’d been married … Affection had been an effort, she thought, seizing on the excuse to get her mind off the dust. She’d never been in any doubt that he’d wanted her, but affection had been for behind closed doors. It was almost as if he’d been ashamed to admit he’d needed her.

He didn’t need her. He’d figured that five years ago when he’d walked away from their marriage. But right now she needed him. She texted him.

I’m not going anywhere. Just trying to decide which rock pillow to use. It seems I have a choice. Have given Malu morphine. He’s suffered major blood loss. Have given two litres of saline. I only have one more and want to hold it in reserve.

For drinking? She didn’t say it. She couldn’t.

Heart rate a hundred and twenty. Only just conscious. Worrying.

Damn Keanu and his ban on using her phone, she decided, as she hit Send. Okay, her battery life was precious, but Josh was a trauma specialist, a good one, and she needed advice. If she was going to be stuck down here with Malu, then the least she could do was keep him alive.

Which meant texting Josh. Didn’t it?

She didn’t get the little whoosh as her message sent. She stared at the single flickering bar of reception on her screen and willed it to send. Send. Send.

The screen went blank again and she was left with darkness.

Whoosh.

Sent. Delivered. At least she hoped it had been delivered. Josh would be on his way from Wildfire’s tiny airstrip, and he had to cross the mountains to get to the mine. There were places up there where there was no phone reception at all.

How long before he saw it?

Did it matter? She was pretty sure there was nothing more she could do medically for Malu, except make him comfortable.

Comfortable? Rock pillows. Ha!

Josh will text when he can, she told herself, and the thought was comforting.

Why? Why Josh rather than anyone else?

She had lots of friends on Wildfire Island. She’d been working as a fly in, fly out doctor here for five years now, spending two weeks here, one week in Cairns. She was doing okay. She’d put her marriage behind her. This next stage of her life … Well, it was a gamble but it was something—someone—she desperately wanted.

Unconsciously her hand went to her belly. She’d been hit as the rocks had flown, but surely she’d protected her baby enough?

Why on earth had she risked her baby? It had been a split-second decision but now … it seemed almost criminally stupid.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to the little one in her belly, and she felt like weeping.

She had to talk to someone.

Maybe she could text Hettie. Hettie, Wildfire’s charge nurse administrator, was a real friend, whereas Josh was now merely a contact, someone she’d put to the back of her mind like she’d put old school photos to the back of her wardrobe. One day she’d throw them out.

But not yet, she decided as she told herself she couldn’t phone anyone and started groping her way around the floor. She was shoving loose rocks to the side, clearing space so she could make Malu as comfortable as possible.

Photos. The thought was suddenly weirdly front and centre. Pictures of her mother before the stroke. Photographs of her wedding day.

They were all history, she told herself. She should get rid of them all. She touched her belly again, lightly, a touch that, all at once, seemed to be almost a prayer.

‘I don’t need any of it,’ she said out loud, even though speaking was impossibly hard through the dust. ‘The past is just that. I have a future now.’

But still …

Text soon, she pleaded silently to her phone. Please, Josh?

And she went on clearing rocks.

A truck met them at the airstrip. A chopper would have been more sensible, Josh thought grimly as they transferred gear from the plane to the truck, but the instructions had been explicit. ‘We used to keep a solid clearing around the minehead but there’s been cost-cutting,’ Hettie had told them. The charge nurse at the hospital had put herself in charge of communication. ‘The jungle’s come back and even the parking lot got so rutted in the last rain it’d take hours to clear a landing site. We’ll get you from the airstrip to the mine by truck.’

If they couldn’t land the choppers, the injured would have to be trucked back to the airstrip for evacuation.

The injured …

Maddie?

The thought of where she was made Josh feel sick. He couldn’t think of her. He had to concentrate on the job at hand—but it was taking too long to reach her.

To reach it. To reach the mine.

Maddie.

With the gear loaded he jumped into the front passenger seat of the lorry. Another jeep took Beth. They turned off the coast road, skirting the plateau to the other side of the island.

He checked his phone.

Nothing.

‘There’s no reception, mate,’ the lorry driver told him. ‘Not with the plateau between us and transmission.’

‘Do you know anything more?’

‘Not more’n you, probably.’ The guy’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but it wasn’t because of hard driving. His face was grim as death. ‘We haven’t heard from Macca and Reuben. They’re mates. We know Malu and Doc Haddon are alive but they’re trapped.’ The man’s knuckles gripped even tighter. ‘Bloody Lockhart. Rips all the money from the mine and what does he do with it? He’s been told those shoring timbers needed replacing or the mine sealed. And where is he? Not here facing what he’s done, that’s for sure. It won’t be him crawling down the mine trying to get them out.’

‘That’ll be Max Lockhart?’ Josh ventured, trying not to think of anyone crawling down the mine to get … Maddie out. He was dredging up stuff he’d seen in the press about this island group. ‘Isn’t Max Lockhart the owner of Wildfire?’