Stormbound Surgeon

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS as bad a situation as Joss could imagine.

The harbour entrance was formed by two lines of rock stretching out from the river mouth. In calm water boats could slip through with ease, but this wasn’t a fishing port. It was a fair-weather harbour, maintained by the millionaires to house their magnificent yachts in the summer season. In winter the yachts were taken up to the calmer waters of Queensland where the élite could use them at their pleasure.

Now the harbour was empty, and with good reason. The rain had stopped but the wind was wild. Surf was breaking over the entrance. There were occasional clear gaps as waves receded but they were erratic. The rocks were jagged teeth waiting for the unwary, and what had come through…

It was certainly the unwary.

Jeff was there, and Tom Conner. The old fisherman and the policeman were identically distressed-and identically helpless.

‘I’ve rung the Bowra coastguard,’ Jeff told them. ‘But it looks hopeless. We can’t get a boat out there and it’ll take a couple of hours to get a chopper here. If a chopper can operate in this wind…’

‘Where…?’ Amy was trying to see through the spray being blasted up by the wind. When she did she gasped in horror.

Right in the neck of the harbour was a tiny rocky outcrop. It formed a natural island, forcing boats to fork either right or left. Normally it was a darned nuisance but nothing more. If the harbour had been used for commercial fishing it might have been dynamited away but because this was a fair-weather harbour built for pleasure craft only, it wasn’t worth the expense to remove it.

‘It almost got through.’ Tom Conner was literally wringing his hands. ‘I saw him come and I was yelling, “Damned fool, go back” but he didn’t hear. Then a wave picked him up and threw the boat like it was a bath toy. I still thought he was going to make it but the wave surged into the island and it hit hard and the guy was thrown out. He’s still there.’

He was. Horribly, he was.

The boat was a splintered mess, half in and half out of the water. Its glossy red fibreglass hull was smashed into three or four pieces and as they watched it was being sucked down into the water.

There was a body on the rocks.

‘He’s been thrown further up,’ Tom told them, and the old man was close to weeping. ‘He hasn’t moved.’

The man-whoever he was-looked like a limp rag doll. He was wearing yellow waterproofs and he was sprawled like a piece of debris across the rocks. While they watched, a wave smashed across the tiny island. The water surged almost up to his neck, shifting him, and they thought he’d slip.

He didn’t. He must be wedged.

‘Hell.’ Joss said what they were all thinking. The island was about two hundred yards out. Impossible to reach him.

‘He’ll drown before the chopper reaches him,’ Jeff said, and he sounded as sick as they all felt. ‘That is, if he’s not dead already.’

‘Was he the only one on board?’ Joss asked, his eyes not leaving the limp figure.

‘Yeah,’ Tom told him. ‘The boat didn’t have a cabin, and it was him doing the steering. I would have seen if there was someone else.’

Another wave crashed into the rocks and Amy’s hand went to her mouth as the body shifted slightly in the wash. She felt sick. ‘I can’t bear this.’

‘We need rope,’ Joss said, and they all stared.

Jeff was the first to recover. He shook his head. ‘Rope? No way. You go in that water and you’re a dead man. You can’t swim against that current.’

‘I’m not going in that water,’ Joss snapped. ‘How much rope can we find? I want a rubber dinghy and I want five hundred yards of rope-or more-and as many able-bodied people as we can find. Are there any families living within calling distance on the other side?’

‘There’s a few farms,’ Jeff told him.

‘Contact them and tell them I want as many people as possible on the opposite shore. Then I want Lionel and his biggest kite.’

‘Lionel’s kite…’ Amy stared at him, seeing where his thoughts were headed. ‘But…’

‘But what?’ His eyes met hers, challenging her to find objections.

She was starting to see what he was thinking. ‘The wind’s a south-easterly,’ she said slowly. ‘It’d take a kite straight across the river.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Maybe it could carry a rope. Maybe.’ Despite the drama of the situation Amy felt a twinge of pleasure. Using Lionel’s kites for such a plan… The old man would be delighted.

If it worked.

‘Will a kite hold that weight?’ Jeff sounded as if he thought the idea was crazy, but Amy was nodding.

‘I bet it will. Lionel reckons a big box kite would hold a man, and in this wind…well, maybe the wind can work for us rather than against us.’

And at least it was a plan. It was something! Better than sitting waiting helplessly for the body to slip.

Jeff needed no more telling. Like them, he was desperate for action. Any action! He was already reaching for his phone.

‘Great. Let’s move.’

One thing Iluka was good at was mobilising. It was a small community. Most people were indoors because of the filthy weather. Jeff made one call to Chris and in ten minutes the telephonist had organised half the population of Iluka at the river mouth with enough rope to fence a small European country. Plus there were three rubber dinghies, one enormous box kite-Lionel attached-and ten or so men and women standing on the other side of the river.

‘How much weight can that kite hold?’ Joss demanded, and Lionel scratched his chin and looked upward. There wasn’t a trace of his dementia.

‘In this wind? As much rope as you like. I reckon it could lift me.’

‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Joss told him, and he managed a grin. ‘No, Lionel, I’m not planning to sky-ride on your kite. But I’m depending on it just the same.’

There was a delay of a few minutes while ropes were securely knotted together-a delay where all eyes were on the prone figure sprawled on the island rocks. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe this wasn’t worthwhile.

But… ‘I think I saw him move.’ Someone had brought binoculars and Amy was focussing on the yellow waterproofs. ‘I think his hand moved.’ She couldn’t see his face. She could see very little but a mass of yellow.

It was enough. ‘Then we try,’ Joss told her. He’d been deep in discussion with Lionel. Lionel had shed his years like magic and was talking to him as an equal.

Amy was still confused. ‘I don’t know how…’

‘Just watch. Lionel and I have it under control.’ He hesitated and then conceded a doubt. ‘I think.’

The kite was launched. In this weather it was dead easy. Lionel and a couple of his mates simply held it to the wind and it lifted like magic, its huge trail of rope acting as if it were a piece of string. It soared skyward, a dozen men feeding the rope out. Lionel held a lighter string, as if he needed to anchor it to himself.

They needed a stronger anchor than Lionel. They’d fastened the end of the heavy rope to rocks-just in case the men couldn’t hold it. In weather like this they could end up with the kite sailing on to Sydney.

‘How do we get it down?’ Amy asked.

But Joss and Lionel had the operation under control. The kite was over the river now, sailing past the heads of the crowd gathered on the other side. Lionel motioned to the lighter cord he was holding-a cord that on closer inspection turned out to be a loop. ‘We tug hard on this and she collapses,’ he said diffidently. ‘Watch.’

They watched. He pulled the cord and the fastening on the kite came unclipped. The box kite soared upward-next stop Queensland-and the snake of rope and the looping cord crumpled across the river, the ends coiling downward to be seized by the people on the opposite bank.

They had a rope bridge now, with men and women on either end pulling it tight.

‘With teams holding the rope over the island, I reckon I can reach him,’ Joss told them. At Amy’s horrified look he shook his head. ‘I’m not swinging Tarzan style. I might be brave but I’m not stupid. Lionel and I worked it out. I fasten the dinghy using a slider that moves along with me. I loop a slider around my belt and I fasten the dinghy to me. The lighter cord Lionel was holding forms a loop so we can use it as a pulley, with the teams at both ends controlling as I work myself along the heavier rope. Easy. When I reach the rocks I haul whoever he is into the dinghy. I take a couple more ropes with me to make him safe on the way and Bob’s your uncle.’

Amy was just plain horrified. ‘And if you fall in?’

‘I told you,’ he said patiently. ‘I’m attached to the rope and I’m attached to the dinghy. If worst comes to worst I can come back hand over hand-but if it’s all the same to you I’ll stay in the dinghy.’

‘If it’s all the same to me, you’ll stay here.’

‘And let him drown? I can’t do that.’ He stared into her appalled eyes, and something passed between them. Something.

That something was deeper than words. He put out a hand and lifted her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. Their gazes locked for a long, long moment. Someone was looping a rope through Joss’s belt but he had eyes only for Amy.

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You’d better be.’ Her voice was choked with emotion and he thought, What the hell-if he was going to be a hero, surely he was allowed to kiss a fair maiden?

In truth he didn’t feel all that brave.

But he was here. The body on the rocks was about to be swept out to sea. The average age of those around him was about seventy or maybe older-even the policeman was over sixty-so he was the youngest man there by almost thirty years.

And he knew damned well that if he didn’t go then it’d be Amy who roped herself to the dinghy. She was accustomed to taking the weight of the world on her shoulders.

This time it would be him. If this was all he could do for her-then so be it.

He had no choice.

He bent and he kissed her, a swift demanding kiss that was more about grounding himself, somehow, making sense of what he was about to do.

A month ago, maybe he would have thought what he intended was madness-risking himself for someone who might even now be dead. But Amy was watching him with eyes that shone. Amy was holding him. Amy’s mouth was pliant and soft under his and she knew what he was doing. She might hate it but she expected it because he knew without doubt that if he didn’t go then she would.

Amy, who gave her all.

He…loved her?

Now was not the time for such crazy thinking. Now was the time to put her away from him and loop the rope at his waist around the massive rope that now swung across the river.

They were waiting for him.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. He gently put his hands on Amy’s shoulders and put her away from him. It was like a physical wrench.

As it was for Amy. She lifted her hand and touched his cheek-one fleeting touch-and then stood back.

Her life had been about hard choices and she knew more than most that Joss didn’t have a choice at all.

He had to go.

There was nothing for her to do but watch.

The dinghy was fastened to the stronger cable so it couldn’t be pulled off course, and they’d attached the dinghy to the looping lighter line so those on either side could pull. Joss, therefore, had only to keep his little craft stable.

It was easier said than done. The water was a maelstrom of surging surf. He lay back in the boat to give him maximum stability, his hands holding the thicker cable as he was pulled carefully, inch by inch, across the river. Each time a breaker surged he stopped and concentrated on keeping the boat upright. It was a mammoth task.

A couple of times the breakers almost submerged the boat but Joss emerged every time. He’d done his preparation well. The two teams had control of the boat as much as they could, and Joss was attached to the boat and to the cable. He had the best chance…

He just had to keep upright.

Amy’s heart was in her mouth. There wasn’t a word from the team on her side. Joss’s father was here-he was head of the team feeding out rope after the dinghy, helping to guide it. Daisy was in the team holding the main cable. Margy and Harry Crammond were here, and with a shock Amy recognised at least eight inmates from her nursing home.

They might be old but when there was work to be done they weren’t backward in coming forward.

They were her people.

She loved them so much. She looked out to where Joss was fighting the waves and the impossibility of what she was thinking broke over her yet again. She was falling in love-no, she’d fallen in love-but her choice was bleak indeed.

No. She had no choice. Her place was here, with her people. Joss belonged to another place. Not Iluka.

He was not her man.

But…dear God, she loved him.

All Joss could think of was staying afloat. Of staying alive. But he wasn’t alone.

The teams on either side were manoeuvring his boat, trying as best they could to keep it steady as they inched it toward the island. He was alone, but not alone.

They had another dinghy and he didn’t need to be told that if he fell someone else would try.

Maybe Amy…

No! He had to reach the island.

Somehow he did. The dinghy reached the island just as the waves had backed off. Those holding the ropes had timed it brilliantly. He unfastened himself-even that was hard-and stepped out onto solid rock. The boat was immediately dragged away. For a moment he panicked-but only for a moment. Of course. They’d drag it away from the rocks to keep it from being punctured. Another wave broke and he had to kneel and cling to keep a foothold.

As the wave receded, he looked up. The figure was still sprawled face down on the rocks. As Joss scrambled to reach him, he stirred and moaned.

He was alive!

Just. He’d come close to drowning, Joss guessed. His eyes were glazed and not focussing. He was barely conscious.

Joss worked fast. The guy was trying to breathe but it was shallow and laboured. Was the airway clear? Carefully he manoeuvred the injured man onto his side, conscious all the time of the damage he could do himself. It was no use making the man’s breathing easier if he destabilised a fractured neck in the process.

Another wave surged but the man’s head was just above the water line. Joss moved his own body to take the brunt of the wave’s force. The guy muttered and groaned again.

‘You’re OK, mate,’ he told him. ‘Just relax.’

There was no response.

The man was about Joss’s age, he guessed-in his early thirties, maybe? He was dressed in waterproofs but his clothes underneath were neat and almost prim. He wore a white shirt and smart casual trousers-or they had been smart. They were smart no longer.

This was no fisherman.

Of course it wasn’t a fisherman. A fisherman would have known it was crazy to take a boat out on a day like today.

With Joss’s body deflecting the water from his face, the man’s breathing was deeper, his colour returning. Joss took a quick blood pressure and pulse reading-blood pressure ninety, heart rate a hundred and twenty.

Why the low blood pressure? Was he bleeding?

He’d groaned. He must be close to surfacing. What else?

Swiftly Joss ran his hands over his patient’s body, doing a fast physical examination. There seemed little to find on his upper body. He’d copped a blow to his head-there was a haematoma already turning an angry red-purple on his forehead but it didn’t look too bad. The bone structure seemed intact. If there were fractures, they were minor.

His hands moved lower. The guy’s waterproof pants had been ripped and his knee was bleeding sluggishly. He lifted the leg and a gush of blood met his hand from below.

Hell.

With the man’s breathing stable, this was a priority.

Joss grabbed a pressure bandage, pushed it down hard until the bleeding eased and then taped it into position, but the pool under the man’s leg was bright with blood. He must have lost litres.

There was nothing he could do about it here. The waves were still surging over him. He had to get the man back into the dinghy but he was trying to assess if anything else needed urgent attention before he did.

One leg seemed shorter than the other.

Joss frowned and did a visual measurement, but it wasn’t his imagination. He was sure.

The hip was either fractured or dislocated-or both. The blow to the leg must have shoved the femur out of position. Joss flinched again as he saw it.

He had to move fast. Dislocated hips were a time bomb. The muscular capsule, the lining inside the cup holding the major bone to the leg, should provide blood to the ball of the thigh joint. Disrupt that for too long and the head of the femur would begin to die. He had a couple of hours at most.

He couldn’t do anything about it here. He needed help. An orthopaedic surgeon? An anaesthetist?

Amy.

He’d make do with what he could get and Amy was a darned sight better than nothing. He glanced toward the shore and he could see her. She had on a pale blue raincoat and she was staring at him through the spray…

Amy. It was enough to give a man strength to move on to the next thing.

These rocks were sharp! They were stabbing into him as he knelt.

He needed to get them both out of here.

He moved back to the guy’s head. He was breathing in fast, jagged rasps. His eyes were starting to open, confusion and pain making him struggle.

Joss held him still. ‘It’s OK. You’re fine.’

Well, sort of fine. But it seemed a good thing to say, as much to reassure himself as his patient.

And maybe it was the right thing to say. The guy’s eyes opened a bit more, as if the light hurt at first, and then they widened.

‘What…?’

‘You’ve had a spot of an accident,’ Joss told him. A spot. There was an understatement. ‘Your boat hit a rock.’

‘Who…?’

‘I’m Joss Braden. I’m the doctor at Iluka.’

‘I’m Malcolm,’ the guy said. His eyes widened and Joss saw agony behind them before he passed out.

Malcolm?

Amy’s Malcolm?

Maybe he’d been desperate to see his love, Joss thought, but as he looked down at the guy he knew that it didn’t make sense.

He’d passed out from the pain, he thought. His breathing was easier now. It’d be his leg…

If you were measuring pain levels, dislocated thighs would take you off the scale. If he regained consciousness he’d be a basket case.

Once more he checked the guy’s breathing and then he signalled to the teams to bring in the boat.

This was the hardest part of all, but it had to be done now. If Malcolm had been conscious he’d have been screaming in agony. He had to try while the guy was out of it. Waiting wasn’t going to make this easier.

Swiftly he tied a rope, harness fashion, around Malcolm’s chest and shoulders, then attached it to the cable that the teams had manoeuvred above his head. It meant if Malcolm was to fall from the dinghy he’d be swinging head up from the cable until somehow Joss could haul him in again. Joss flinched at the thought of it. Maybe it wasn’t satisfactory-there was an understatement again-but it was the best he could do.

Then he had to drag the inert man into the dinghy-which was probably the hardest thing he’d done in his life. The term dead weight meant something, and Malcolm was just that. A dead weight. Joss slipped a couple of times, crashing into the rocks as he hauled Malcolm into the water. He’d hurt his own leg, he thought grimly, feeling the warmth of his blood dripping down his sodden leg.

But finally he had Malcolm in the bottom of the dinghy, and he was pushing the craft away from the rocks while the guys with the cables pulled him outward.

He was still thinking, his hectic brain in overdrive. Maybe he could signal them to haul the dinghy to the mainland side of the river. That side meant expert help. An ambulance ride to Blairglen and specialist orthopaedic surgeons, who were what this guy needed.

But on that side lay a reach of jagged rocks, both submerged and out of the water. The men on the mainland side were having trouble holding the cable free of the rocks. He didn’t like their chances of getting the boat over them.

On the Iluka side the breakwater rose steeply out of deep water. It was much, much safer.

So…back to his prison?

Back to Amy.

Fine. He held up his hand to signal that he was ready to go, and they started to pull.

It was a nightmarish journey but somehow he did it. With Malcolm crumpled in the base of the dinghy Joss somehow kept the boat stable as the men on the bank hauled him in. Often the breakers surged over the boat. Each time he had to lean over and make sure Malcolm was still breathing. He hadn’t gone to all this trouble to let him drown!

Finally the dinghy was nearing the rock face of the harbour wall. There were men clambering down the rocks. Eager hands were reaching out to hold the boat steady-old hands, but willing.

And Amy.

‘Joss,’ she said as she took his hand and helped haul him up onto the safety of the rocks. She held him for just a fraction of a second too long. A fraction of a second that said she’d been scared out of her wits.

He held her, too-to draw comfort and give it.

Amy. His home…

But she was already turning away to look at the man in the bottom of the dinghy. They were lifting him up the rock wall, using the dinghy as a stretcher, and her eyes widened in stunned amazement as she saw who it was.

‘Malcolm?’

There was no time for questions.

‘I want him back at the nursing home-fast,’ Joss snapped as he helped haul the boat up the rocks. ‘I need to get the hip X-rayed. What’s the story with the helicopter?’

‘The wind’s too fierce to bring the chopper in. The forecast is for it to ease. Maybe in a couple of hours…’

‘That’s too long. Amy, I probably need to operate. Can you…?’

She took a deep breath.

‘Of course I can.’

‘Amy…’ Malcolm was drifting in a pain-induced haze but as they loaded him into the back of Jeff’s police van he seemed to focus. Joss had administered morphine but with that hip the pain would still be fierce.

‘Malcolm.’ Amy took his hand and Joss was aware of a stab of…what? Jealousy? Surely not. He had nothing to be jealous of. This guy was Amy’s fiancé. He had every right to hold her hand. Even if he had the brain of a smallish newt.

‘What on earth were you doing out in the speedboat?’ Amy asked.

And Joss thought, Maybe she’s thinking the same thing. Brain of a newt. The thought gave him perverse satisfaction.

Malcolm was struggling to speak. ‘Wanted to see…’ he whispered, and closed his eyes.

‘I’m here.’ She stroked back the wet strands of his blond hair. The man was seriously good-looking, Joss decided-not entirely dispassionately.

He ought to be. If Amy loved him.

‘Hush,’ she was saying. ‘Just relax. We’ve given you something to help the pain.’

‘My leg…’

‘It’ll be fine. Don’t try and fight it. Close your eyes and see if you can sleep.’

Malcolm seemed to think about that for a while as Jeff eased the van onto the main road. Then his eyes widened and he stirred, fighting the fog of pain and morphine and shock.

‘I crashed my boat.’

‘Mmm.’ Amy was still holding him.

‘What…what are you doing here?’

‘You’re in Iluka,’ she told him. ‘You tried to bring the boat into the harbour. Can you remember?’

He frowned in concentration. ‘I wanted… I wanted to see…’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Amy told him, wiping a trace of blood from his forehead. ‘You’ve hurt your leg and we need to fix it. Just lie back and relax and we’ll get you to sleep.’

Moving back into medical mode was a relief. Joss was more confused than he cared to admit. It must have been the danger of the whole thing, he decided, but he was having trouble concentrating on what needed to be done. It was a relief to pull up at the hospital.

No. It wasn’t a hospital. It was a nursing home, he reminded himself, but the way it was going they’d need to apply for twenty beds of acute care. Maternity, orthopaedics, kids’ ward-take your pick.

Iluka Base Hospital. It had a good ring to it.

It had a crazy ring. He was trying to think about something other than the way Malcolm’s hand was gripping Amy’s.

He was losing his mind!