Buch lesen: «Emergency Baby»

CHAPTER ONE

IT HAD finally happened.

Echoes of all the voices that had ever informed Samantha Moore she was crazy; the expressions on the faces of people who learned what a young, intelligent and perfectly presentable looking young woman did for a living; memories of physical pain and the aftermath of trying to deal with experiencing real fear—all came home to roost in a single moment.

She was crazy.

She was also stuck.

Don’t panic, Sam reminded herself automatically. Don’t fight the rock. You can’t win.

It was easy to close her eyes for a moment. To breathe evenly and wait for a well-rehearsed protocol to override the jangled messages her brain was flashing as some basic survival instinct tried to take control. It was easy because Sam felt indescribably weary.

Fed up.

Having reached this point, Sam realised that the normal adrenaline rush had been missing ever since the start of this mission. The call to scramble SERT—Specialist Emergency Response Team—for the second time that day had been less than thrilling. The fact that this was an unusual call for a team that could be deployed to anything from an armed police operation to a shipboard emergency on the high seas hadn’t even been enough to spin Sam’s wheels today.

Abseiling down the sinkhole in an area popular with cavers had been a breeze. It would have been enjoyable had it come earlier in the shift. Crawling through increasingly narrow spaces in the underground rock formation was a lot less fun, however, and trying to squeeze through the ridiculously narrow gap that Sam was now firmly stuck in was just plain crazy.

She tried to inch herself back the way she had come. A trickle of water on the rock beneath found a way to breach the flap of her overalls that covered the front zip and the measure of environmental discomfort slipped into a new level. Sam’s helmet scraped on the rock above and her knuckles dug painfully into her ribs as she tried to free the hand wedged under her body.

‘You OK, Sam?’

The deep rumble of the male voice came from beyond this tunnel designed for some nasty, slithery underground creature. How the hell had Sam’s partner, Alex, managed to get through here, anyway? He was well over six feet in height and his shoulders had to be twice as wide as hers. It simply wasn’t physically possible.

Sam’s response was a noncommittal grunt. She turned her head to point nose down again as she tried to flatten and relax her body and wriggle back another few millimetres. The tip of her nose touched the icy runnel of water and she jerked up, only to crack her helmet on the unyielding ceiling.

‘Does it ever occur to you, Alex,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘that we might be nuts?’

A deep chuckle was amplified by the confined space. ‘All the time, mate.’

He was still enjoying himself, though, wasn’t he? Getting a kick out of overcoming the odds to render assistance to someone in trouble. More than one person in this case. The reminder of why they were here was enough to make Sam try again. And try harder. The effort and pain of a scraped elbow elicited a grunt this time.

‘You’ve got your elbows too far behind your shoulders.’ The light from the lamp on the front of Alex’s helmet was reflecting off wet rock as he peered back at Sam. ‘Wriggle back and extend one arm in front of you.’

Sam resisted the impulse to tell him he wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know. It would only provide justification for some smart rejoinder that underlined the fact she hadn’t been focussed enough. That she wasn’t firing on all cylinders right now. It could well come back to haunt her for weeks, too. As the only female member of an exclusive team, Sam had to make sure she kept up. The incentive to try to get one step ahead at least occasionally was always strong but the extra adrenaline that always kept her thinking fast enough and capable of physical feats that had long since made her ‘one of the boys’ was just…gone.

Why now?

The painfully slow backward movement finally reached a successful turning point. Sam eased her arm free and then pushed it forward, finding she now had plenty of space to move in the desired direction. There was room to get onto all fours after the short squeeze and Sam found herself crawling, like some overgrown infant, with the light from her helmet illuminating the shape ahead of her.

‘How on earth did you fit through that gap, Alex?’

‘Sheer skill,’ he responded easily. ‘I’m just too good.’

‘Huh!’ Sam’s snort was not without an element of affection. Alex Henry might well be the best in their team of elite paramedics but she wasn’t about to encourage any personal trumpet blowing here. ‘I suspect you’re some kind of shape-shifter,’ she told him. ‘You can turn into a snake any time you like.’

Another chuckle. ‘Funny you should say that. My last girlfriend said something rather similar.’

The corner of Sam’s mouth lifted into a private, wry smile. Sonia must have tried too hard to pin Alex down, then. She must have been given the brush-off, probably in the nicest possible way, but women did tend to get rather passionate about staking a claim on Alex Henry.

Hardly surprising given the combination of dark, good looks, a very sharp intelligence, humour and a career that was dramatic enough to make most females go at least a little weak in the knees.

Funny that it had the opposite effect the other way around. The same skills Sam possessed in the way of courage, assertiveness and determination were always enough to scare men away remarkably fast.

‘You guys OK?’ The shout came from well ahead. From one of those strange people who actually did this sort of underground thing as a sport. He was the member of the group who had been left uninjured by the passage collapse and had been able to return to the surface and summon help.

‘We’re fine,’ Alex called back. ‘Minor hold-up in that last stretch.’

‘Yeah. Bit tight, isn’t it? You can see why the other teams need to go the long way with their gear.’

The skills and tools needed to deal with people buried under rock were being brought in by the team of Urban Search and Rescue technicians whose helicopter had landed in this remote part of the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island only minutes after the SERT team’s arrival.

‘You’ve got a bit of deeper water coming up and then the pit’s round the next bend after that.’

‘How deep’s the water?’ Sam tried to sound casual but there was no way she was in the mood for any underground diving.

‘Only a couple of inches. No big deal.’

It felt like a big deal for Sam. The water was running swiftly enough to splash continuously into her face. The volume was enough to make the waterproofing of her overalls inadequate and within seconds the leather gloves she wore felt like concrete mittens. In a few minutes she was going to have to negotiate a tricky climb down a narrow, flexible aluminium ladder that was a permanent fixture on this caving route. Doing it with frozen hands and wet boot soles was not going to be fun.

But who’d ever promised that her chosen profession would always contain elements of pleasure, anyway? And had she ever really enjoyed pushing herself to such limits or had it simply evolved into a way of life? With three older brothers competing for the attention of a father who’d been a legend in the police force, achieving something beyond expectations had been the only way to get noticed.

Sam had been far too young when her mother had died and not being noticed had made for a lonely existence. Maybe the real pleasure to come from testing herself had been in the approval of others and she had merely swapped one tribe of males for another in adulthood.

It was not a pleasant revelation. If the thrill had come from chasing that approval and for some reason that was suddenly no longer enough, then Sam was about to face a major life crisis comparable to the childhood trauma of losing her mother. What did she have to show for her thirty-four years on earth apart from an impressive array of pre-hospital emergency medical skills and a passion for practising them under the most difficult conditions imaginable?

Nothing, that’s what.

It was her life. And for the last five years, since leaving a road-based ambulance job, Sam had lived and breathed SERT. Her friends were her fellow team members and their partners, so her social life revolved around people who shared her passion. Her sport and recreation consisted of training in whatever area of skill was deemed useful and any spare time was taken up with minimal attention to life’s chores in order to gain opportunities to improve her knowledge base.

She was a SERT geek!

Proud of her status as the only female to make the grade. Happy to be one of the boys and eager to hurl herself into whatever dangerous mission she was lucky enough to score on her shifts.

The appreciative whistle from Alex broke the downward spiral of Sam’s thoughts that were trickling beneath what she needed to focus on as she carefully made her way down the ladder. Sadly, it wasn’t her skill in managing to keep the ladder so steady during her descent that he was admiring.

‘Will you look at that?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m beginning to understand why you guys do this stuff.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ But the agreement from their guide was perfunctory. ‘Come on, we need to go this way.’

Sam had only a few seconds to scan what had impressed Alex so much. The vertical drop from the higher-level tunnel ended in a huge cave festooned with stalactites over a black pool of water where massive stalagmites protruded like islands in an alien seascape. Shadows from her lamp cast shadows that accentuated the eerie scene but there was no time to do any more than register and file away the new experience. Not far into the tunnel leading away from the other side of the pool was where the accident had occurred. One man lay unable to move, thanks to a badly fractured leg. Two other men lay either beyond, or beneath, the rockfall, which had been caused by a minor earth tremor. It was fortunate there was no time to dwell on the possibility of another earthquake.

‘Bruce! How’re you doing, buddy?’

‘Thought you were never coming back, Mike.’

‘Sorry, mate. I had to wait for the chopper to get here so I could show them where you were. This is Alex and that’s Sam. They’re paramedics.’

‘Hope they’re good at shifting rock. My leg can wait.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’ The beam from Sam’s lamp revealed an ominous pool of blood glistening on the dark rock beneath their patient. She stripped off her leather gloves and flexed her fingers repeatedly, but they were still too cold not to fumble with the zip on the pack Alex had brought with them.

‘I heard someone calling. I think it was Tim.’

‘Really?’ Mike’s relief was evident. ‘How long ago?’

‘A while back. I dunno. I’ve kind of lost track of time a bit. Arrrgh!’

‘Sorry.’ Sam had cut and pulled away the remnants of protective clothing over Bruce’s leg. Alex ripped open the packaging for a large gauze dressing and emptied a saline sachet to dampen it. He was ready to cover the open wound with the protruding bone on Bruce’s thigh.

‘We’re going to splint this leg, mate,’ Alex said. ‘We need to control the bleeding. We’re also going to give you something for the pain and start a drip to give you some fluids. Anything else hurting?’

‘No!’ Bruce pushed himself up onto his elbows. ‘Forget my leg. What we need to do is shift some of this rock. I couldn’t manage it by myself but with four of us…’ He fell back with a groan of frustration but the wave of his hand showed the others where he’d been shifting small pieces of rubble despite his injury.

‘There’s another crew coming in to deal with the rock,’ Sam said reassuringly. ‘They’ve got the equipment they’ll need.’

‘Where the hell are they, then?’

‘They have to come in the long way, Bruce,’ Mike said. ‘They couldn’t have got their gear through the “squeeze”. They’ll be a wee while yet.’

It had taken an hour for Sam and Alex to make their way through the underground maze to reach their patient. Another hour had been used in getting to the site after the call had come in and it had taken Mike over an hour to get out by himself and raise the alarm. Bruce had to have lost a significant amount of blood from his fractured femur in that period of time, and he could well have other injuries he wasn’t admitting to due to concern for his missing friends.

The tunnel they were in now was by no means large enough to make for easy working conditions and loose, jagged pieces of rubble from the collapse added to the difficulties presented. Sam bruised her knee when she knelt to try and establish IV access. She shredded a surgical glove and grazed her knuckles a short time later as she slipped a hand behind Bruce to check for any rib injuries.

Alex was as cheerful as ever. You could put that man anywhere and he would still function with a far higher than average level of competence. He would also remain cheerful and establish a rapport with any patient. Bruce relaxed noticeably with the distraction of conversation and became a lot less anxious when Mike decided to use his waiting time pushing as much rubble as he could back towards the cave end of the tunnel in preparation for the upcoming phase of the rescue effort.

Periodic calls to the trapped men quickly became part of the routine.

‘Tim? Can you hear me, mate? Steve? Are you OK?’

‘Keep calling,’Alex advised into the silence. ‘They may be able to hear us and it’ll help if they know there’s a rescue effort under way.’ The lamp beam swung away from Bruce. ‘Check this for me, Sam?’

‘Morphine, ten milligrams,’ Sam confirmed, holding the ampoule up to catch her own beam of light. ‘Expiry date’s fine.’

‘This might make you feel a bit sleepy,’ Alex informed Bruce, ‘and I’m going to give you something else so it doesn’t make you feel sick.’

‘Right. Hey, what’s the time?’

‘A bit after 6 p.m.’

Bruce swore softly. ‘The girls will be frantic.’

‘Girls?’

‘My wife, Lauren. And Steve’s wife, Courtney. They were going to come back and meet us at the tunnel entrance. Hey, Mike!’

‘What’s up, buddy?’ Mike had crawled back ready to start rolling a new piece of rock away.

‘What’s happening up top? Did you call the girls?’

‘They were here already when I went up. It was Lauren’s phone we used to call the emergency services.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s worried,’ Sam told him, ‘but she’s OK. I had a word with her before we came down. She’ll be doing her best to look after her friend. She’s due to have a baby pretty soon, isn’t she?’

‘Courtney? Yeah, she’s due in about three or four weeks, I think. That’s why we took a week off work to come caving. Steve’s not going to get away much for a while after that. He might never get away again after this. Courtney worries enough at the best of times.’

‘Hmm.’ Sam had been concerned about the level of distress the pregnant woman waiting near the sinkhole had been in. How much worse was it going to be to know there were no signs of life yet from the father of her baby? She made a mental note to spend some time with Courtney after they had accompanied Bruce to the waiting helicopter. It was quite likely that it would be rather a long time before they could reach the trapped men and Sam could only hope that when they did, medical intervention would still be of benefit.

It was going to be a long night.

The more easily negotiated route to the underground cave took ninety minutes longer than the path Sam and Alex had taken. By the time the extra personnel and equipment arrived, they were more than ready to secure Bruce into the Stokes basket stretcher and start the long trip back. They had done what they could to stabilise their patient. His leg was in a traction splint, which helped control both internal bleeding and pain. He had received some fluid replacement to help counteract blood loss but he was showing signs of shock with raised respiration and heart rates. The sooner they got him into a hospital’s emergency department the better.

There were plenty of people to help with the difficult task of hauling the stretcher through the tunnels leading back to the surface but there was no way to avoid the more precarious start to the journey by having to pull their patient up the vertical wall beside the ladder.

‘I’ll go up with Bruce,’ Alex told Sam. ‘You get up top and direct the rope work.’

Having ascended the ladder, Sam looped a rope around a solid piece of rock and clipped a carabiner on her belt to the anchor. She fed another length of rope through a belay brake on the wall that had clearly been used as a means of descent before the ladder had been installed and this rope was secured to the Stokes basket. She stationed another person beside her to control a rope attached to Alex’s harness and they both pulled in the extra length as the stretcher slowly moved upwards.

Sam watched the strength Alex displayed, climbing the ladder with only one arm, hooking his legs around the thick edge wires to put his feet on the rungs heels first and help prevent any sway. He had his other hand through one of the gaps cut near the rim of the heavy plastic of the Stokes basket and Sam had the silly impression that if their ropes failed for some reason, Alex would simply keep hanging on and save their patient from plummeting to the floor of the cave.

Totally impossible, of course, but that was the kind of confidence Alex exuded. Normally, it inspired Sam to push herself a lot harder in the hope that Alex would be as proud of his partner’s abilities as she was. Sometimes she actually got the impression that Alex was doing the same thing but they had become so closely welded as a team over the last few years that it was hard to tell just who inspired whom.

What if the thrill was permanently gone for Sam? A lack of passion would be reflected almost instantly in her performance. Maybe it had been already, the way she had allowed herself to get stuck. Alex hadn’t seem perturbed, however, and that was both a relief and a warning. The thought of seeing concern—or, worse, disappointment—reflected in those dark eyes was not a pleasant one.

‘Almost there, Alex,’ she called. ‘It’s well over the lip. We’re going to start tipping the basket back and then drag it onto flat ground.’

Even with help, the effort required was enough for Sam to have to catch her breath for a moment. Bruce was not a small man.

‘You OK?’ Alex was unclipping his rope.

‘Absolutely. You?’

‘Nothing a strong coffee won’t cure. Let’s get moving, eh?’ He dropped to a crouch. ‘How’re you doing, Bruce?’

The response was a mumble that Sam couldn’t make out. ‘Is his GCS dropping?’ she asked with concern. A drop in consciousness could be a sign that the level of shock was worsening rapidly.

‘He’s a bit drowsy. I topped up his morphine before we started up the wall.’

Sam nodded. ‘Probably a good way to be. It’s not going to be a very comfortable trip being dragged over rock.’

It was uncomfortable for everyone and it felt like the longest three hours Sam had ever experienced. Only two things prevented it from being unbearable. One was that Bruce’s condition remained stable and he wasn’t too distressed by the trip even on some rougher patches.

The other was that Sam managed to maintain her usual stoicism and kept the growing dismay that she had turned some corner in life and was about to fall into a void completely hidden.

Or so she thought.

Right up until Bruce had been despatched in a rescue helicopter with a new paramedic crew to accompany him to hospital. Until Sam had spent time trying to offer what comfort she could to the pregnant wife of one of the men still missing and until she had been given a hot meal and drink and directed to sit down and rest near the fire roaring in a concrete barbecue area of the campground that marked the entrance to the caving network.

Alex folded his long legs to sit beside her a few minutes later, balancing a heaped plate of hot casserole and potatoes on his knee.

‘What’s up, Sam?’

The habit of doing anything necessary to live up to the privilege of being Alex Henry’s partner was not something Sam could easily relinquish. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to the sensation that she was standing on the edge of some emotional precipice. Alex was unlikely to be able to understand, let alone sympathise with, such a situation.

Or would he?

‘You look tired,’ he said succinctly. ‘Let’s hope our relief team arrives before they summon us underground again.’

‘Yeah.’ Sam was grateful for a believable reason for any odd vibes she might be emanating. ‘It was a hard one, wasn’t it?’

‘Cool, though.’ Alex spoke between mouthfuls of the savoury meat dish. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of caving that didn’t have the pressure of being a rescue situation.’

Sam’s smile felt a bit strained. A year ago—even a week ago—she would have encouraged such an interest. Would have felt the same way, in fact, and angled for an opportunity to accompany Alex on a new venture.

‘So?’ Alex couldn’t have satisfied his hunger enough to explain the way his fork hung halfway between his plate and his mouth. The intensity of the glance that came Sam’s way wasn’t diminished by the flickering firelight, and she found it unnerving.

‘“So”, what?’

‘Are you up for it? Shall we see if we can hook up with a caving expedition when we’ve got a few days off?’

‘Maybe.’ Sam pushed a piece of food around her plate, her appetite fading rapidly. What on earth was wrong with her?

She looked up, knowing that distraction would be readily available in the busy scene around them. The numbers of rescue personnel continued to grow steadily. Experts in all sorts of areas had been called in by now, even people from the army who dealt with explosives.

Alex ate in silence for a minute until he had scraped his plate clean. He eyed Sam’s half-eaten meal. ‘You going to finish that?’

‘Nah. I’ve had enough. Here…’ Sam handed him her plate. ‘You have it, Alex. You’re a bottomless pit.’

‘So are you. What’s the matter, Sam? You sick?’

She shook her head, carefully avoiding direct eye contact. ‘Just tired. And I’m worried about Courtney.’

‘The pregnant woman?’

‘Yeah. That’s her over there, sitting in the Red Cross tent.’

‘She looks as though she’s being looked after.’

‘I don’t think hand holding and offering cups of tea are helping much. She’s terribly withdrawn. I tried talking to her after Bruce’s wife went off in the helicopter with him. She’s absolutely distraught. I think she’s convinced herself that Steve is dead.’

‘She could well be right.’

‘She won’t eat or drink anything. She won’t rest. She won’t even talk. That kind of stress can’t be good for the baby.’

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed for some good news. The first rock-breaking crew must be due out for a break soon. They sent the second team in when we came out with Bruce.’ Alex pushed back a mud-encrusted overall sleeve to look at his watch. ‘They’ll be bringing in the next SERT watch in an hour or so. We might well escape having to go back in.’

‘It’ll be Angus and Tom on the next shift.’

‘Yeah. Gus will enjoy having something different to do.’

‘He’s going a bit hard out these days, isn’t he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Since Fliss left. I think he’s more miserable than he’s letting on. He’s covering up by giving a hundred and ten per cent of himself at work.’

‘Look who’s talking!’ White teeth gleamed in the firelight as Alex grinned but then his face softened. ‘Giving a hundred and ten per cent is what this job is all about. You know that probably better than any of us, Sam.’

‘Yeah.’ The subtle praise was as warming as the fire but Sam’s response came out as almost a sigh. It fell into a silence that felt as dark as the night pressing in on the edges of the brightly lit rescue base set-up.

Alex cleared his throat. ‘When you asked, down in that tunnel, if it had occurred to me that we were nuts…you were serious, weren’t you?’

He sounded wary, Sam decided, and no wonder. If your job was the most important thing in your life—which it had to be if you were going to cut the mustard as a SERT member—and the partner you depended on started having doubts, the repercussions could be huge.

They did work with other partners sometimes, when illness or injury or holidays interfered with roster placements, but it was never quite the same. Communication could seem awkward. The level of trust just a shade not deep enough. And the combination added a tension it was much better not to have given the type of work they could be required to do.

A curious restraint hung between them now. Sam had always been more than happy to talk to Alex about anything. She had no secrets from someone who was closer to her than any of her brothers even. A ‘best friend with attitude’ was how she’d once described their relationship. How would it affect that relationship if she kept her current emotional state bottled up? Could that, in fact, be more destructive than a confession? Maybe she should test the waters.

‘There are moments,’ Sam admitted cautiously, ‘when I do wonder whether there should be more to life than what we do.’

She could actually feel Alex blink in astonishment. ‘Like what?’

‘Like…relationships.’

Alex sounded smug now. ‘I get my share.’

Sam snorted. ‘True.’ The amusement faded from her tone. ‘They don’t last long, though, do they?’

‘They would if I wanted them to.’

‘Would they?’ Sam tipped her head sideways trying to ease a crick in her neck. ‘Angus was all set to settle down with Fliss, wasn’t he? Do the whole marriage and kids bit. She was the one who decided she couldn’t take the stress of living with what he did for a career, and I can’t blame her.’

Sam looked past the fire to the Red Cross tent where Courtney could be seen, still sitting in a hunched position, her shoulders shaking again as she sobbed. ‘Imagine what it’s like, having someone you love go off to do dangerous things. Being left to wait and worry and wonder if they’re ever coming back.’

‘We’ve got the most amazing job on earth,’ Alex responded firmly. ‘That’s got to be worth a sacrifice or two.’

‘But what about when it stops?’ Sam could hear the warning but ignored it. ‘If we got injured or totally burned out or something? What would we have then?’

But Alex didn’t appear to be listening. He got to his feet in a fluid movement that belied the physical exhaustion he had to be suffering.

‘What you need,’ he declared ‘is another coffee. A good, strong one. You’re going weird because you’re too tired.’ He bent to collect their empty plates. ‘You stay here. I’ll be right back.’