Rescue Nights (2 page)

At the clearing, Andrew looked up at the chopper still providing a thunderous soundtrack overhead. From it, a metallic wire was descending. For Andrew, this would be the first time he had been airlifted outside of training.

The closeness of the chopper’s blades to the tree canopy reminded Andrew why they had decided that abseiling to where Colin was injured was less risky than arriving in this way.

‘I’ll take Colin first and be back for you.’ Kate’s voice broke into his thoughts.

The masculine spirit inside of Andrew wanted to protest at this sort of babysitting, but he had been strictly drilled in the chain of command of rescue scenario planning. He was not on top of that pyramid.

Kate carefully strapped four clips to the spinal board, and harnessed herself to the same wire, before waving her hand in the universal ready signal.

‘Now that is a hot woman.’

Andrew heard the statement from the hiker standing close, despite the noise from the rain and the helicopter dominating. Somehow, he didn’t think the focused paramedic would appreciate the sentiment, much less the fact that he secretly agreed. Luckily for all concerned, Kate was out of hearing range. She was currently fifteen metres in the air, leveraging their patient through the chopper’s open door.

Minutes later, as she was being lowered again, Andrew could see that some of the tension had left her frame now she wasn’t guiding their patient’s body through the air. When her feet touched the ground there was a friendly challenge in her eyes as she motioned him closer, clipping their harnesses together.

With water trickling inside his collar and his feet suddenly weightless, Andrew experienced a rush distinctly different from training. Although that might have been because, instead of a spotty twenty-five year old guy, he was now tethered to the startlingly pretty Kate. The charge that came from their physical closeness, as well as the sensation of soaring through rain, was unexpectedly pleasurable.

The approaching helicopter door had both him and Kate reach out, in unison, to the interior rail and swing inside. A wave to the trekkers below was their only concession to pleasantry as they pulled on their headsets and focused in on their patient.

Andrew stripped off his wet-wear layer and put his hand out to gently probe his patient’s chest for any broken ribs. He had already done so at the accident scene, but chest fractures were notoriously hard to accurately identify without an x-ray. If he was going to have to deal with a punctured lung mid-flight, he would like some warning.

‘Colin, pity you can’t sit up. We are doing a very scenic flight over the rainforest. Have you seen it from the air before?’ Andrew asked.

The view was certainly spectacular. They were flying low below the cloud cover to avoid turbulence, but Andrew’s question had an ulterior motive. He wanted a close eye on the young man’s answer. All of Colin’s friends had sworn that he hadn’t lost consciousness, but any fall meant it was absolutely necessary to keep an eye out for concussion.

While Andrew was making these more subtle judgement calls, Kate was taking down the more standard observations and hooking Colin up to the helicopter’s monitoring equipment.

‘Cairns Base Hospital ETA is fifteen minutes,’ their pilot, Joe, reported through the intercom.

‘Are we able to land at the hospital helipad today?’ Andrew asked. He knew they sometimes had to transfer patients via ambulance from the helicopter base.

‘We are going straight to the hospital, Doctor. Kate passed on that you were observing Level Four Spinal Precautions, so we are taking him the most direct route.’

Andrew was glad that, although he had he been left out of rescue operational decisions, it seemed that in the medical field, at least, his word was law.

He switched back to the patient’s channel and asked, ‘Colin, are you sure that you didn’t throw yourself down that ledge, to avoid walking back in that bloody rain?’

Colin smiled. His face had regained some colour, as the painkillers banished some of his earlier stress.

Reassured about his patient’s prospects, Andrew was able to relax back into the helicopter’s jump seat. He looked across to where Kate was busily updating their handover file. In repose, she was again looking appealing. Andrew cursed himself once he realized his train of thought.

Dammit, he had left London after he had ended an engagement with a co-worker. Anyway, Kate just screamed hard work.

The next words out of her mouth seemed to prove his thoughts right. ‘I’ll come with you to the hospital, barring any immediate call-outs,’ she said.

It looked like she was determined to keep Andrew’s training wheels forcibly on.

After spending the morning in the rain, Kate’s muscles were melting under the welcome warmth of a hot shower. Unfortunately for her sense of comfort, she was all too aware of the new doctor who was showering in the next stall. A thin section of painted chipboard was all that stood between their naked bodies. Three years working at this rescue base, and never had Kate felt so hyper-sensitive about any man she had worked with.

Kate had been particularly annoyed when she had heard they were getting a doctor on their team who was new to rescue medicine. Not only an ordinary doctor but a successful English surgeon.

From the moment Kate had set eyes on Dr Andrew Wentworth, she had known he was going to be very difficult to properly train. He had walked in, secure in the aura that surrounded men used to bending the world to their will. A tall blond man with dark eyes, Andrew Wentworth’s reputed mountaineering skills were made more believable by his fit rangy body.

Doctors were at the centre of the hospital system. Attractive doctors were the centre of the hospital universe, and took their treatment as superstars as their due. At the Cairns Base Hospital patient handover, Kate had been inundated by nurses mouthing, ‘Who is that?’ After the hospital rumour mill had experienced a good look at Dr Andrew Wentworth, Kate was convinced that the next time the rescue chopper landed at the Cairns Base helipad, there would be double the usual number of willing hands to greet them.

Realizing she had been standing under the warm spray for longer than she intended, Kate turned off the taps and quickly dried herself off. Respecting the unisex space, she dressed in her spare flight suit before she made to leave the shower stall.

Kate had never been able to bring herself to produce a hairdryer here at base, so the best she could do was slick her wet hair back in a ponytail. You didn’t prove yourself in a male dominated rescue team by spending time in front of the mirror.

Taking a deep fortifying breath, Kate pushed open the shower stall door. She had to swallow a surprised curse when she almost collided with Andrew. She had been sure that he had already left the change room.

‘When did doctors learn to move so quietly?’ she asked, immediately hoping he didn’t register the harshness of her tone.

Andrew loosened his hands, which he had placed on her upper arms to steady her, and took a step back.

‘The clever ones like me learn to move quietly so we can check on our patient’s charts without waking them.’ He smiled as he continued, ‘Rounds go a lot faster when the patients aren’t conscious enough to ask questions.’

Considering it was the first time Kate had seen his almond coloured eyes light up with genuine humour, she bit back a peevish response. Confused by the way the barrack-like change rooms seemed to contract in Andrew’s presence, she stowed away her wet uniform and towel and headed to the door. However, Andrew stayed close as she moved out into the cavernous space that was the main area of the helicopter rescue base.

‘Do we usually get an update about our patient after we drop them off at the hospital?’ Andrew asked.

Because his question was about patient care, Kate slowed down her fast gait before answering.

‘If you call the hospital, any of the doctors or support staff will be happy to give you an update. We are a relatively small medical community up here in the Far North, so most of us stay helpful to one another.’

‘Colin looked relatively happy when we dropped him off at the hospital,’ Andrew observed.

‘Probably less happy once they started manipulating and stitching up his leg,’ Kate replied. ‘Although he did look particularly relieved when he realized we weren’t going to leave him with his mates. I don’t think that that band of brothers would have provided the gentlest of medical care.’

Turning into the helicopter staging area, Kate and Andrew were hailed by the pilot Joe Robinson. ‘Do you guys want coffee or tea?’

‘Give me fifteen minutes for the resupply,’ Kate replied, smiling at the middle-aged pilot.

Andrew wandered past her to take a seat at the table, while Kate went to the opposite wall ready for the meticulous process of resupplying their med bags. She needed to replace the supplies that they used on Colin.

She couldn’t help but resent the way the new doctor didn’t offer any help. It was looking like he was going to treat her as if she was a junior hospital nurse, rather than a valuable partner with vast experience in pre-hospital care.

She took a deep breath to restrain a dirty look. At least he had been able to keep up on the rescue site. The doctor they had rostered on last week would no sooner have abseiled down a cliff face than he would have cut off his hand. They were finding it hard to get appropriate doctors for any length of time, so they had been making do with short stints. Getting a six-month contract out of Dr Andrew Wentworth had been a boon. In fact, it was so unusual that Kate had her suspicions. Was this a doctor running away from a malpractice suit? For the first time, Kate wished she had the London connections to find out the dirt.

Walking back to the table, Kate was in time to hear Joe say, ‘Hope you don’t mind that we use first names around here?’

Kate had to hide a smile. Too bad if he did mind, seeing they had been using his Christian name all morning. She waited to see if he pointed that out.

Instead, he said, ‘Joe, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you keep the chopper steady while I’m below it.’

Looking at the way Andrew’s eyes crinkled as he shared laughter with the boys, Kate wished he was a little less attractive. Having a good-looking co-worker was a sharp reminder of her been-single-for-too-long status. Because it didn’t matter how physically appealing he was, Kate had a very serious policy about going out with the men she worked with. She hadn’t worked as hard as she had, to be one of Australia’s few female helicopter rescue paramedics, to ruin it by dating any of the doctors who passed through Cairns, especially any doctors in the rescue teams.

Shaking her head to clear the thoughts running through it, Kate clued back into the conversation. Andrew was talking to the men about the time he had recently spent in the Himalayas. However, as soon as her coffee-filled mug touched her lips, Andrew turned to her.

‘I have some questions about how we pack the med bags,’ he said. ‘I have a preference with how it works.’

Suddenly Andrew was looking much, much less attractive. Kate could feel the muscles in her face tightening, as she managed what she was sure looked distinctly like the half-hearted smile it was.

‘Sure, Andrew. We can do that.’

Obviously, he couldn’t have brought this up before she had tightly stowed and inventoried each item.

With a palpable twinge of resentment, Kate put her coffee down on the table and walked with Andrew to the equipment area. He knelt down on his haunches and pulled the large med bag towards him. Kate rolled her eyes, behind him, before mirroring his actions.

‘I like the stethoscope and blood pressure cuffs on the top of the bag, along with the gauze and bandages,’ said Andrew, the authoritative tone in his voice clear.

‘Your bag, your choice,’ she said. She couldn’t help herself from adding, ‘As long as you don’t remove any equipment in the shuffle.’

Andrew looked up with one eyebrow raised. ‘Your bag. Your choice,’ he echoed. ‘But just so you know, if you are assisting me, I like pulse and BP reported first. And if there is any bleeding it is my role as the primary medic to deal with it, unless I ask you to do otherwise.’

Kate couldn’t help but be taken back. All doctors specialized in arrogance but not many would lay down the law like this on their first day. Especially if, unlike her, they didn’t have a specialty in pre-hospital care.

‘I’ll give you some time with the med bag,’ she said. ‘That way you can familiarize yourself and organize it exactly the way you like.’

This time, she didn’t mind if he heard the bite in her voice.

Kate easily straightened her legs and rose from the floor. She settled in the seat that Andrew had been sitting in.

‘So Ben, how was the fishing yesterday?’ she asked.

When the shift change came, Kate welcomed it with far more enthusiasm than usual. Her battered silver station wagon seemed an oasis of calm as she drove away from the helicopter base.

Working with Andrew today had created an unusual kind of claustrophobia in a job she usually loved. For the last hour, she had fantasised about being alone, just her, her television and her reality television programming.

She drove home on automatic pilot, making her way through the Cairns streets. The rain, which had been so heavy this morning, had lifted, leaving the streets looking freshly washed. It was only when she pulled into the resort’s car park that she noticed headlights in her rear-view mirror. As she pulled into number thirty-three, the other car pulled in the adjacent car park.

She only needed to glimpse the profile of the other driver.

‘Damn, damn, dammit,’ echoed through the car’s interior.

Kate swung her legs out of the car and climbed out.

‘Andrew, when did you check in here?’ she asked the man who was getting out of his car, only a metre away.

She didn’t, for a second, regret the ungraciousness of her question.

‘I rang the Commander a few days ago, looking for a recommendation. He gave me the number of this place,’ Andrew said laconically. ‘I must say I feel lucky that I was able to get a three-month booking. It really lives up to its five star reputation.’