Hijacked Honeymoon

CHAPTER ONE

SAPPHIRE COVE, Australia, was definitely the loveliest place in the world for a honeymoon.

Pity about the bride.

Dr Ryan Henry eased his foot from the accelerator and gazed across the headland. What he saw was magic.

The sea below was the sapphire blue that gave the town its name. A yacht with white sail and crimson spinnaker stood out against the distant islands. The wind was warm and laced with salt and sunshine, and tropical growth surged between coconut palms all along the roadside.

Magic, indeed.

His mother hadn’t thought so.

‘Sapphire Cove is the end of the earth,’ Ryan’s mother had told him when she’d taken him to the States seventeen years ago. Ryan had been fifteen years old and his parents’ marriage had collapsed. ‘Don’t ever let your father talk you into coming back.’

His father had never tried, and Australia was no longer part of Ryan’s life. But the idea of Far North Queensland for a honeymoon appealed to Felicity, and the fact that Ryan hadn’t seen his father for seventeen years intrigued his intended bride.

‘Ryan, I didn’t know you still had Australian citizenship. Hey, I have a conference in Hawaii in November. What if we meet in Australia straight afterwards? We can marry and honeymoon there, and maybe you can visit your father before I arrive.’

‘We should arrive there together,’ Ryan insisted. ‘If I make my flight the day after your conference ends…’

Felicity arched her beautifully pencilled eyebrows and decided to humour him. Well, why not? Ryan Henry was certainly worth humouring. Tall, dark and drop-dead handsome, as well as being one of the country’s most promising young surgeons, Ryan was a hunk in any woman’s eyes.

‘Scared of meeting your father on your own, then?’ she teased. ‘OK, Ryan, I’ll come with you.’

But she hadn’t. Ryan might have known she wouldn’t. Emotional family reunions weren’t Felicity’s scene. Ryan had landed in Cairns this morning to be met by a message from Felicity. She was still in Hawaii.

‘There’s a post-conference meeting it’s imperative I attend. Ryan, these people are so important careet-wise. I’ll join you when I can. Go on to Sapphire Cove and I’ll meet you there.’

Yeah, great…

‘Damn you, Felicity,’ Ryan said savagely. The beauty of his home town faded in the face of his anger, and he shoved his foot on the pedal with more force than it deserved.

Mistake.

A bicycle flew out from a gravel side road straight across his path. Ryan hit the brakes hard, but he couldn’t stop in time.

The bicycle ended up right beneath his car.

The world stopped.

There are some moments so awful that to replay them in memory or to try and describe them is unbearable. This was one of those moments.

For two seconds Ryan sat, stunned and frozen, while the sound of metal against metal faded to nothing. It seemed a lifetime that he sat there. In fact, it was two whole seconds.

Then he was out of the car and launching himself around the front of the bonnet to find the unimaginable horror that lay beneath.

There was a bike-or what had been a bike. A tangled heap of metal was buckled right under his car. For one awful moment Ryan thought the rider must be there too-beneath the twisted bike.

He wasn’t. No. She wasn’t. Dear God…

The rider-a girl-was crumpled and motionless on the verge of the road. She’d been thrown clear.

She was… dead?

As white as a ghost himself, somehow Ryan moved to see, and as he did the girl stirred and moaned.

The moan was a tiny sound. Her stirring was a tiny movement. But it was enough to shove Ryan back into medical mode-to lift him out of the nightmare a little, back to a mental framework where he’d been trained to cope. A medical emergency.

‘Don’t move,’ he snapped urgently, and knelt down beside her on the gravel. His strong hands moved swiftly to press the girl back on the verge to stop her from rising. If her spine was fractured… Or if she had head injuries…

He removed her bike helmet gently, half-afraid of what he might find To his relief, the short, dark curls were unbloodied. Then he put all the authority he could muster into his voice in a vain attempt to override his shock. ‘Don’t try to move.’

Silence. The girl did as he ordered and lay absolutely still. Or maybe that initial movement had been his imagination.

At least she was breathing. Ryan ran his hands over her body to check her, his eyes taking her in. The girl’s eyes were closed. She was young but not a child-maybe twenty or so. Slight. Five feet four or five. Black curly hair, close-cropped and shining. Finely boned with a wide, generous mouth and a neat little nose. In other circumstances she might be described as lovely. Very lovely. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt that said NO FEAR.

The slogan wasn’t appropriate. Ryan was so fearful he could hardly breathe himself.

There wasn’t a vestige of colour on the girl’s face. She had a faint smattering of freckles across her nose and they only made her lack of colour look worse.

He had to see what damage there was. But to turn her…

‘Do you think I might move just a bit?’ a voice said cautiously. ‘There’s gravel sticking into my cheek.’

Ryan practically yelped.

Then he grinned, relief washing over him like a tidal wave. No brain damage here, then.

There were other sorts of damage.

‘Wait a bit…’

‘I think my spine’s intact, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Still with her eyes closed and still motionless, the girl’s voice seemed somehow disembodied. ‘I can feel everything.’

The girl’s voice wasn’t as sure now as it had first sounded. It held a distinct tremble. And Ryan found himself putting medical imperatives aside and moving to touch her face. To comfort her.

‘Hey. It’s OK.’ He stroked the soft, black curls as one might have reassured a frightened child. ‘You’re OK. I’m a doctor. You’ll be fine.’

She opened her eyes at that, and stared straight up at him.

And he knew her.

Ryan Henry would have known those eyes anywhere. They’d taunted him as a child. Haunted him for years.

Abbey Rhodes had been eleven years old when he’d left Sapphire Cove. She was four years younger than he and his mother had hated her. ‘White Trash’ his mother had termed Abbey, and when she’d seen Abbey, trailing home alongside Ryan, she’d let loose with both barrels.

‘Ryan, that child’s mother’s not married. Worse, she never has been married. She’s poor as a church mouse and scrubs floors for a living. If that woman thinks you’re going to waste time talking to her child… Well, that’s why we’re leaving, Ryan. This whole place has no class at all.’

Sapphire Cove didn’t have ‘class’, Ryan acknowledged, and it was one of the things he remembered about Australia with affection. The Abbeys of the town, the poor, the immigrants, the local Koori kids whose parents thought houses were a waste of time-and Celia Henry’s son-were all treated exactly the same by the locals. And, despite what Celia thought, Abbey had definitely regarded herself as the equal of Ryan. Or better.

‘If you’re going to be a world-famous doctor then so am I,’ she’d declared, puffing out her eleven-year-old chest and snapping imaginary braces. ‘I’m just as good as you, Ryan Henry, even if my mum does think your mum’s snooty.’

Abbey’s mother had house-cleaned for Celia Henry and, for a while, Abbey had followed Ryan around like a devoted little shadow. That was, until Celia had put an end to it for ever by moving Ryan away.

And all Ryan remembered of Abbey were her eyes. Her fabulous eyes…

Vivid blue. Direct. Honest. And clear as two big pools of water from the sapphire ocean.

Gorgeous!

They’d changed, though.

Ryan had assessed the slim girl lying on the road as being twenty or so. Well, if his figuring was right Abbey had to be more like twenty-seven or -eight now. And her eyes told him he was right, even if his arithmetic couldn’t. Abbey’s eyes were lined-creased from accustomed laughter. And from something else. Suffering?

‘Well, I never…’ Abbey managed, staring up at the man kneeling over her. ‘It’s Ryan Henry…’

It was a pain-filled whisper and it brought Ryan up with a jolt. She’d recognised him, too-but, damn, he was a doctor and she was injured.

‘Hey, Abbey…’ He touched her curls again and they were warm and soft to touch. ‘Yeah, it’s Ryan. But let’s see what the damage is.’

‘You were driving too fast.’

It was the same voice he remembered from years ago. ‘You are walking too fast, Ryan Henry. Wait for me!’

And he always had.

‘You want to have me arrested?’ Ryan’s stern face quirked into a smile. ‘Hey, Abbey, I’m a doctor and I might just be useful here. Let me examine you before you have me hauled away in handcuffs.’

‘I think…’ Abbey cautiously raised her head a little and winced in distress as Ryan helped her into a sitting position. There was still pain in her voice. ‘I think there’s gravel stuck in my cheek.’

‘There is.’ Ryan looked at her face and he hardly saw the gravel rash. Abbey had had the promise of beauty when she was eleven. The promise had been fulfilled, and more. ‘It’s not too bad, though. It’ll scrub out and shouldn’t scar. What else hurts, Abbey?’

‘My leg. Yikes, my leg…’ Abbey grimaced. Ryan’s arm was around her shoulders now and she found herself putting her face against the soft linen of his shirt. Finding comfort in the solidness of him.

As she’d found comfort in his company all those years ago.

She peered out from the folds of his shirt, along the line of her leg. ‘Ryan, it’s dislocated,’ she whispered. ‘Just look. The patella’s way out of line.’

‘The patella’s way out of line… ’

That wasn’t what a non-medical person would say. They’d have said the leg was broken or that it looked funny, with the kneecap sitting out of line with the rest of the leg.

Had Abbey done nursing, then? Ryan wondered briefly. The Abbey he remembered would have made a good nurse. Cheerful and bouncy and never one to let life’s knocks get her down.

‘Let me see.’

Making sure she was able to sit unaided, Ryan shifted so he could examine her leg. One look told him it was out of position. Ryan’s hands moved gently down over the injured limb and he knew she was right. It was at least dislocated. She’d be lucky if there wasn’t a break as well.

He looked up at her face again and swore as he saw the deep pain in her eyes.

‘You need morphine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Abbey, but I don’t have anything with me. We’re just going to have to get you to the hospital as fast as we can.’

‘Let me be,’ she said weakly, and tried to bend over to put her hands on her leg. ‘I’ll try and get it back in… ’

‘You!’ Ryan caught her hands and held them. ‘Abbey, you can’t…’

Abbey bit her lip, closed her eyes and curled her fingers into fists within Ryan’s hold. For all her strength, the pain in her leg was building to the stage where she couldn’t bear it. ‘Ryan, let me try. I must…’

‘But… I don’t understand.’ Ryan’s grip on her hands tightened. ‘Are you the district nurse? Doing house calls on your bicycle?’

‘Close enough.’ Abbey opened her eyes again then and met his look with a touch of defiance. ‘I knew you didn’t believe me all those years ago, Ryan Henry. I told you what I was going to be. I’m the local doctor.’

‘You’re the…’

‘Look, I hate to be rude,’ Abbey said wearily, ‘but let’s get my leg back to a straight line and catch up on career paths later, shall we?’

Abbey couldn’t. Ryan didn’t let her make the attempt, but a comprehensive examination of Abbey’s leg told him he couldn’t do it either. Not without a really hefty dose of morphine and sedative to relax her. The patella had twisted way out of position. She’d been incredibly lucky that the leg hadn’t snapped.

‘There’s morphine in my bag,’ Abbey told him. Abbey’s bag, by some miracle, was hardly damaged. Ryan retrieved it by simply reversing the car off the bicycle. At least there was something he could do then. Ryan injected subcutaneous morphine into Abbey’s thigh, considered trying to manipulate the leg then and there and decided against it. He wanted an X-ray first To try and manipulate it and then discover that there was a break…

He splinted the leg as best he could with crepe bandages and newspapers he had in the car, and then gathered her carefully into his arms.

Abbey hardly spoke as he worked. All the energy seemed to have gone out of her, and Ryan found himself growing increasingly worried about just how hard she’d hit her head.

‘Thank you, Ryan,’ she whispered. She put her arms unselfconsciously around his neck to help him lift her, and the feel of her made Ryan feel distinctly strange.

‘My pleasure.’ Ryan winced as he heard himself say it. lnane. That was how he felt. Young and gauche. Looking down at this slip of a girl was like looking at his childhood all over again.

It made him remember with a vengeance the things he had once loved. Memories came flooding back. The things and the people his mother had torn him front

Abbey…

‘Come on,’ he said in a voice rougher than he’d intended. ‘Let’s get you to the hospital. I assume there’s a hospital in this place now. Do you have another doctor who can patch you up?’

‘We do have a hospital, but I’m afraid it’s a case of “Physician, heal thyself ‘,’ she quoted wryly.

Ryan didn’t respond. He steadied himself, made sure his grip was sure and the splint was supported by his arm and then lifted her into his arms and across to the car. She was a featherweight. She put her arms around his neck in a subconscious gesture of trust that made him feel even more odd.

‘It’s me, me or me,’ Abbey added shakily as he set her down. ‘Or-alternatively-me.’

Ryan gave himself a mental shake. What was it about this girl that was making emotions and memories he’d forgotten flood right back?

‘Well, you can’t put your own leg back into place,’ he said brusquely.

‘I probably can,’ Abbey said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. Let’s get me X-rayed and then we’ll see.’

‘You have to be joking.’

‘No.’ Abbey perched on the car’s back seat as Ryan lowered her. Then, as Ryan held her leg steady, she hauled herself backwards so that her leg was stretched out straight on the seat. Her voice still wobbled but there was a trace of defiance in the tone. Like-‘Don’t mess with me. I can handle myself!’

‘I stitched up my gashed arm last year,’ she told him. ‘Ten stitches, all by myself. I don’t see that this is any worse. Look, would you mind if we made a house call on the way to the hospital?’ She took a deep breath. The morphine was beginning to cut in and the agony was receding.

‘A house call…’

‘I was on my way to see a patient,’ Abbey told him. Her voice was growing stronger by the minute and Ryan frowned in disbelief. This was one tough lady and she was recovering fast from the shock.

‘You were going on a house call on a bicycle?’

‘Well, why not?’ Abbey settled against the squabs of Ryan’s luxury car and gave a sigh of relief. Once again, there was defiance in her voice. ‘It’s a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. I don’t have anyone really sick in hospital. Mrs Miller’s a non-urgent case and using my bicycle saves petrol.’

‘Abbey…’ This was getting crazier by the minute. Ryan climbed behind the wheel and looked over his shoulder at the girl on the back seat. There was blood on her face and her colour was still sickly. The ‘No Fear’ on her T-shirt looked crazy. Defiant. Like she was. Apart from the life creases around her eyes, she looked about ten. ‘You’re not really suggesting we do a house call before we take you to hospital?’

‘I’d like to do it while the morphine’s still working,’ Abbey said seriously. ‘I’ve been thinking. At a guess, I’m going to find it hard to get around for a day or two now, and Marg Miller wants to see me.’

‘What about?’ Ryan shook his head in bewilderment. ‘You said it wasn’t urgent.’

‘She has an ulcer on her leg that needs dressing.’

‘Surely you have a district nurse who can do that? Or are you the sole medical provider for the whole district?’

‘We have district nurses,’ Abbey said defensively. ‘Three of them. But Marg wants to see me.’

‘But not urgently.’

‘No,’ Abbey said thoughtfully. ‘But there’s something wrong. Not just the ulcer. She wouldn’t have asked me to come unless she was worried. There’s something troubling her.’

Ryan sighed. His hands gripped the wheel tightly.

Good grief! It had been a long flight from New York and he’d worked at full pace right up to the minute he’d left. He’d just had the fright of his life-he’d thought he’d killed her-and now Abbey was suggesting that they go and dress an ulcer that could probably be dressed by the nurse at any time over the next couple of days.

‘No,’ he said in a voice that was implacable. Head-of-surgical-team implacable. ‘If you really are a doctor then you know basic triage. Abbey. I have two patients. One has a dislocated knee which may have a fracture running through it, a grazed face, possible injuries I don’t know about yet and possible delayed shock. The other has an ulcer that needs dressing. I’m sorry, Abbey. You win. Or you lose. I’m not sure which it is, but either way you’re going to hospital.’

They didn’t make it

Abbey submitted to Ryan’s plans-after all, she had no choice as she was hardly in a position to hike off to Marg Miller’s under her own steam-but halfway down the hill to the hospital a phone rang.

A mobile phone. Ryan started at the sound and looked at where his phone lay on the seat beside him. It wasn’t his. Then he looked in the rear-vision mirror and found Abbey removing her phone from her belt.

‘Dr Wittner.’ Her voice sounded professional and sure.

She really was a doctor, then.

But… Had she said Dr Wittner? Ryan frowned as he listened to her speak. His memory hadn’t got her name wrong. Surely she was Abbey Rhodes?

Now wasn’t the time for questions. Abbey was snapping out her own questions.

‘How bad? Still on the beach? OK, send the ambulance and tell them to pull out all stops. No, they don’t have to collect me on the way. I’m in a car now and we’re closer than the ambulance. I’ll tell you why later, but the driver’ll take me straight there. Ring the surf club back and tell them to keep pouring vinegar-as much as they can and just keep it coming. Prepare ICU and make sure the ambulance has anti-venim and oxygen and adrenalin on board.’

Abbey leaned forward to touch Ryan on the shoulder.

‘Ryan, turn around. Now.’

Ryan slowed and stared.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a child been stung by a box jellyfish down on the south beach. He sounds bad.’

‘Abbey…’ Ryan was rendered almost speechless. ‘Abbey, you’ve just been hit by a car. It’s you who’s the patient-remember?’

‘No.’ Abbey’s voice was hard and firm. ‘Same rules of triage, Ryan. This is urgent. I don’t have time to be a patient. I’m the only doctor in this place and unless we get there fast this child could die. Now turn around or let me out and I’ll tell the ambulance to pick me up on the way.’

‘Abbey…’

‘Ryan, surely you remember box jellyfish stings. We’ll be lucky if he makes it. Argue later but just go.’

The child was on the beach a little way south of the surf lifesaving club. Ryan had spent the three minutes it took to reach there working out just how Abbey would cope. He finally figured she couldn’t. And he couldn’t either. Box jellyfish stings were right outside his realm.

Box jellyfish-Chironex fleckeri-were lethal. Almost invisible in the water, their tentacles stretched up to five metres in length and clung with sticky tenacity to everything they touched. Their venom was lethal. What had Ryan read? You either got enough venom to kill you or you didn’t. There was no in between.

Fortunately, the jellyfish were only around in the hottest of the summer months, Ryan remembered, and the popular beaches had stinger nets to keep them at bay. But there were always tourists who preferred to risk swimming outside the nets. That’s what must have happened here, Ryan thought. The beach south of the lifesaving club was just as beautiful as the netted area, and when it was deserted it looked much more enticing.

And the current treatment of jellyfish stings? Ryan couldn’t think. There wasn’t a lot of call for current treatments where he now worked.

Ryan glanced back at Abbey. He was driving fast and the roads were bumpy. The morphine was working but only just. She’d started to regain her colour but was now losing it again.

Ryan’s hands whitened on the steering-wheel, saying a silent prayer that her condition wouldn’t deteriorate. What if she did have a head injury?

Triage… The box jellyfish victim…

Over the next hill the surf beach lay before them as a wide ribbon of sand, bordered with coconut palms. Ryan saw the group of people clustered on the shore, decided that the worst thing that could happen was that he could bog the car in the sand-and gunned the car right down to where the child lay.

The hire-car people would have a fit if they knew, but Ryan didn’t stop until the tyres started spinning in soft sand about three yards from the child.

They’d beaten the ambulance.

Ryan’s guess had been right. The child had been swimming in unprotected water. The main beach was two hundred yards further north. This section of beach was deserted, apart from a family group in various stages of hysteria and two lifesavers who must have run from the patrolled beach. They were bent over the child, working hard.

The lifesavers looked up as the car approached, and there was real relief in their eyes.

‘Dr Wittner…’ One of them breathed Abbey’s name as he saw her, and then paused as he registered that Abbey wasn’t driving.

Ryan was out of the car almost before the car stopped, hauling the back door open so that Abbey could see and then stooping quickly over the child.

‘Abbey, don’t try to get out,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t. Just tell me what to do,’ he ordered brusquely, moving as he spoke to check the child’s airway and vital signs.

The child-a boy of about thirteen-was unconscious and limp. He’d been wearing a brief costume that only covered his hips. His chest and arms and legs were a mass of angry red weals, and there were traces of tentacle still clinging to his skin.

‘Vinegar…’ Abbey hauled herself upright on her seat so she could see. Despite Ryan’s orders, she’d be out of the car if she could make her damned leg work. She couldn’t. ‘How much have you used?’ she asked the onlookers. Then, as no one answered, she looked down on the sand to where there were two empty flasks and two full ones. She took a deep breath, pushed her faintness aside and raised her voice to command.

‘Get all that vinegar on,’ she ordered. ‘And get the remaining tentacle off.’ She was speaking to everyone within hearing distance. ‘All of you. Get down on your hands and knees and rub every trace of tentacle off his body. There’ll be more venom going in while we watch.’

‘You…’ She pointed to a gangly boy of about sixteen. ‘Pour vinegar over everyone’s fingers while they work or you’ll be stung yourselves. You…’ She pointed to the youngest child-a girl of about twelve. ‘Run to the lifesaving club and say you need more vinegar. Scream it. Tell them Dr Wittner says she needs it and she needs it now! There’s a shop behind the club. Go up there and yell it, too. Tell them to bring all they’ve got Ryan, his breathing…’

‘Yeah…’ Ryan already knew. The child was half-dead from shock and likely to stop breathing at any minute. ‘Is there antivenom?’ He was trying to remember. Had there been antivenom available when he’d lived here as a boy? He didn’t think so.

‘Yes,’ Abbey snapped, and if her painful leg was causing her any problem Ryan couldn’t hear a trace of it in her voice. ‘It’s coming in the ambulance. Just keep him alive until then. Rod…’ Abbey looked across at the senior lifesaver and then winced as a shaft of pain fiercer than the rest shot up her leg. She shoved away her faintness as irrelevant. ‘Stand by to do mouth-to-mouth if-’

She didn’t have time to say more. The boy stopped breathing at that moment.

Ryan swore, shot an urgent look up at Rod and moved to the cardiopulmonary massage position. His hands linked on the boy’s chest and he started thumping down.

‘Breathe for him, Rod,’ he ordered harshly, hoping Australian lifesavers still had the training he remembered undergoing himself as a teenager here.

They did. Rod had a mask at the ready. Standard equipment for a lifesaver at the beach. Now Rod started breathing-two breaths for every fifteen of Ryan’s heart compresses. Ignoring everything else.

‘Move! All of you,’ Abbey yelled in a voice that would have woken the dead. It was a voice designed to do just that. Ryan’s eyes widened as he worked. This was an Abbey Ryan had never met before-accustomed to emergencies and accustomed to authority. Any doubts as to her medical training disappeared right then and there.

The family and onlookers were frozen to immobility in their horror. ‘Do what I said,’ Abbey ordered harshly. ‘Now!’

They moved.

That is, everyone moved except Abbey. She had to stay on the back seat of the car, watching as everyone else did her work.

It was driving her crazy, she thought desperately. She’d never felt so helpless in her life.

Ryan was good, though. Thank God for Ryan…

But, then, if he hadn’t been here her leg wouldn’t have been damaged in the first place. At least he was good There was no way she could fault what he was doing now.

Four minutes… Five… Ryan worked on, hardly pausing for breath, pumping the rhythm on the young boy’s heart while Rod breathed steadily through the mask into the boy’s mouth.

There was dead silence on the beach.

The child’s parents and the other lifesaver were working frantically, rubbing off tiny parts of tentacle from legs and arms and around Ryan’s pounding hands, while the older boy kept the affected area awash with vinegar. A small crowd had gathered around, but no one spoke. The parents’ faces were streaked with tears, but no one made a sound.

They just worked.

And then there was the sound of the siren. Moments later, the ambulance appeared across the headland and lurched across the beach. It stopped before it reached Ryan’s car, the driver clearly worrying more about being bogged down than Ryan had, and in seconds two ambulance officers were running across the sand toward them.

They had what Ryan most needed. Oxygen. Adrenalin. And antivenom.

‘Give it to Ryan,’ Abbey ordered, pointing at Ryan as the ambulancemen stopped, astounded at the sight of her. ‘Dr Henry. He’s in charge now.’

And two minutes later the boy started breathing again.

Despite their success, they still couldn’t relax. The fact that they had the child breathing again meant little yet in terms of whether he lived or died. The boy was still deeply unconscious but, breathing, he had a chance. That was all they knew. Keeping him breathing gave the antivenim time to work. It meant there was time for a miracle.

He was loaded speedily into the ambulance, and Ryan took charge.

‘I’ll go with the ambulance,’ he said crisply, with only a fleeting thought as to what he should be doing right now. Damn, this was his holiday-his honeymoon, for heaven’s sake-but there wasn’t a lot of choice here. He looked across at the lifesavers. ‘Can one of you bring Dr Rhodes in to the hospital? She has a dislocated knee, possible fracture and possible concussion.’ He’d like to take her in the ambulance but if the child stopped breathing again they’d need all the space they had and more.

‘Dr Rhodes…?’ The ambulance officers looked blank.

‘He means me,’ Abbey said wearily. ‘He’s about twenty years out of date. Go on, Ryan.’ She motioned to her mobile phone. ‘I’ll ring the hospital and tell them to expect you. Give you authority to act… ’

‘Gee, thanks.’ It was as wry as he was going to get. Ryan didn’t feel wry. He felt railroaded.

Still, this was no time for hesitation. With a last long look at Abbey, Ryan followed the boy’s mother into the ambulance. And he gave his last order concerning Abbey. ‘Whoever she is,’ he growled at the lifesavers, ‘take good care of her. And bring her in fast.’