Bushfire Bride. Marion Lennox

Their fear reached the group on the ground before they did, but Kim had drifted into unconsciousness. The combination of shock, blood loss and painkillers had sent her under. Good, Rachel thought as her mother disintegrated into tears, sobbing onto her chest. The horror on her parents’ faces would only have made things worse.

      Enough. There was nothing more she could do now. One of the paramedics had taken her position, keeping pressure on the wound. She rose. A buxom woman in floral Crimplene put her arm around her and held. Rachel wasn’t complaining. She was grateful for the support.

      ‘Who are you?’ Hugo asked. He was adjusting a bag of plasma, the ambulance officers were helping. Rachel wasn’t needed.

      ‘Rachel. Rachel Harper.’

      ‘You’re a doctor?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You’re not a vascular surgeon, I suppose?’

      ‘I wish.’ She knew exactly what he was thinking. A vascular surgeon was what they needed, urgently. The chances of saving Kim’s leg were incredibly slim. ‘But Michael has the skills. And he’s still in range.’

      He’d be upset at being called back but he had no choice.

      ‘OK.’ He stared up at her for a moment longer, his intelligent eyes assessing. Each knew what the other was thinking. They couldn’t voice it here—not in front of Kim’s parents—but if the femoral artery wasn’t repaired fast, Kim would lose the leg if not her life.

      They needed the helicopter. They needed Michael. Kim’s future depended on it.

      There was nothing Rachel could do, though.

      For now she was no longer needed.

      Mrs Keen, the lady in the Crimplene, ushered Rachel into the showground caretaker’s residence. As the ambulance screamed its way to the hospital she was already under hot water while Mrs Keen tut-tutted about the state of her clothes.

      ‘And the clothes in your bag are no better,’ she told Rachel through the bathroom door. ‘One of the men brought your bag over but you’ve dropped it, and then used everything to stop the bleeding. Oh, my dear, there’s blood on everything.’

      That was a minor worry. For now Rachel couldn’t care. She let the hot water steam away the gore and she worried about the girl. Worried about the leg.

      Michael would be really angry at being recalled. He’d hate to miss out on the Witherspoon case.

      It couldn’t matter. He wouldn’t have heard the dogfight, she decided. Michael Levering saw only the things that affected him. He was needed in Sydney for a prestigious patient and Rachel wasn’t doing what he wanted. He’d have simply turned on his heel and stalked away. As for Rachel and Penelope—others could pick up the pieces. If Rachel didn’t take his expensive dog and his expensive car back to Sydney, well, Michael had the money to send a lackey to the country to collect them later in the week. Dog-show organisers were hardly likely to let Penelope starve and even if they did …

      Penelope was just a possession.

      ‘Damn the man.’

      She was shaking, a combination of anger and reaction to the whole situation. They’d been really, really lucky to save Kim’s life.

      Michael would be back. The helicopter would have returned by now and, dislike Michael as she did, she had to concede he possessed the skills she didn’t. He was an incredibly competent vascular surgeon. He might not have noticed the dog fight but if they planned to evacuate Kim on his helicopter, he would, of course, treat her. And with Hugo as back-up …

      She washed the last trace of blood from her arms as Mrs Keen’s face appeared around the door. Her cheeks were crimson with embarrassment and distress.

      ‘My dear, I’m sorry to disturb you but you’re needed back at the hospital. Dr McInnes has just rung. The helicopter’s refused to turn around,’ she told her. ‘Dr McInnes says he has to operate now or she’ll lose the leg, and you’re all the help he has.’

      ‘It’s not a publicly owned chopper.’ Harold Keen, the showground caretaker, drove her to the hospital in grim-faced anger. ‘It seems it belongs to the chap that had the heart attack—Hubert Witherspoon. His man’s the pilot. He’s under instructions to take your young man to Sydney and there’s no way he’s turning back.’

      ‘But Michael’s on board. Surely he can overrule.’

      ‘I don’t think he has any say in the matter.’

      Rachel stared straight ahead. She was wearing one of Doris Keen’s Crimplene dresses. She’d hauled a comb through her hair, but her curls were still dripping. She was wearing a pair of Doris’s sandals. She was heading to a tiny country hospital where they were facing surgery that was a nightmare.

      Help!

      ‘I suppose someone’s looking after Penelope,’ she said in a small voice, and Harold looked her over with evident approval.

      ‘Your dog’s fine,’ he told her. ‘There’s any amount of folk looking after her. You look after Kim and we’ll look after you.’

      ‘Thank you.’ She felt like she was about to cry. Damn Michael. Damn him. He had the skills she didn’t. He had the helicopter she needed.

      He was gone.

      ‘It’s no use being angry. We just have to get on with it.’

      Hugo was already kitted out for surgery in green theatre gown, cap and slippers. The nurse had ushered Rachel straight through to the theatre. She glanced around and her heart sank. This was a tiny surgery, set up for minor procedures. Not the major trauma that was facing them now.

      She swallowed and looked up, and some of her panic must have shown in her face.

      ‘What’s your background?’ he asked, his voice gentling a little.

      ‘I’m a registrar at Sydney Central. Emergency medicine. I don’t … I don’t have the surgical skills to cope with this.’

      ‘But you’re the reason we were able to clamp the arteries so fast,’ he told her. ‘So you saved Kim’s life in the first place. It’s just a matter of finishing what we started.’

      Yeah, right. ‘You’re planning on rejoining the femoral artery?’

      ‘If we can—yes.’ He shook his head. ‘It may be unlikely we’ll succeed but we have to try. I’ve been on the phone to specialists in Sydney and we don’t have a choice. By the time we get her evacuated to Sydney the leg will be dead. If we don’t try then she loses the leg. It’s as simple as that. I’m assuming you can give an anaesthetic?’

      He wasn’t expecting her to operate. That was such a relief her knees almost buckled right then.

      ‘Yes.’ If he was prepared to be heroic then so was she. This was heroic surgery, she thought. Damn fool surgery. The outcome seemed almost inevitable but he was right. They had to try.

      ‘It’s not as bad as it seems,’ he told her. ‘We have a video link to Sydney. Joe Cartier, one of the country’s leading vascular surgeons, has agreed to help us every step of the way. I’ve hauled in Jane Cross, a local who plays at being a film-maker. She’s setting up computer equipment and she’ll video while we operate. She can do really intricate close-up stuff so everything I do goes straight down the line to Sydney and I get immediate feedback.’

      He’d organised all this while she’d been in the shower?

      ‘I … You’re not a surgeon?’

      ‘I’m a family doctor,’ he told her. ‘I’m two hours away from back-up. I’m everything. If you weren’t here—if I didn’t have an anaesthetist—then I’d count this impossible. But we have enough going for us now to hope. So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.’

      Afterwards, when Rachel was asked to describe