Bride by Accident. Marion Lennox

didn’t have time to listen to buts. ‘The ballpoint’s secure enough,’ she said grimly. ‘For now. But we need to work fast.’

      A stunned pause.

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. He cleared a flat spot to put his bag and hauled it open, with another fast, incredulous glance at Emma. Then he started work.

      ‘It’ll be a couple of minutes before we have Suzy ready to shift,’ he told Helen. ‘Go ahead and lift Kyle free. I’ll manage here. I think. Or rather, we will.’

      It was a dreadful place to work. An impossible angle. Far too much broken glass. Seats that were upside down. Suzy was lying on the outside wall of the bus, jammed against the bus wall and two seats. Over the last half-hour Emma had wiggled so she was right in there beside her, supporting her head as best she could. It was impossibly cramped.

      Dev had taken the situation in at a glance. Emma underneath the little girl, her fingers holding the ballpoint tube.

      ‘I can’t move,’ Emma said—unnecessarily—and Dev nodded.

      ‘Don’t.’ He smiled down at Suzy, a slow, lazy smile that almost reassured Emma. Almost. ‘You guys just stay still while I do my stuff,’ he told them. He wouldn’t be sure if Suzy was hearing him but he wasn’t taking chances.

      ‘Suzy, I’m giving you something for the pain right now,’ he told her. ‘Then I’m going to put a little tube in your arm so we can replace some of the blood you’ve lost. As soon as you stop hurting so much, we’ll lift you out of here. Your mum and dad are waiting on the cliff.’

      Of course they would be. Emma winced. All the mums and dads would be frantic. By now the rest of the kids would probably have been taken back to town, she thought, and reunited with their parents.

      Except for Kyle.

      Don’t go there.

      She was close to breaking, she thought, suddenly fighting another wave of nausea. It was adrenaline that had kept her going until now. But Dev was here and…

      ‘Don’t give in now, Emma.’ Devlin’s voice jerked her back. To the urgency of what she was doing. The dizziness receded. ‘Suzy needs you too much.’

      ‘I wasn’t planning on giving in,’ she said with what she hoped sounded like indignation. ‘Only wimps give in.’

      ‘And you’re no wimp.’

      He sounded teasing, she thought. Nice.

      That was another crazy thing to think. Just because he had Corey’s face…

      No.

      He had a syringe prepared now. Swiftly he swabbed Suzy’s arm and injected what must be morphine. He wasn’t touching her throat. He had too much sense.

      ‘I don’t think a stretcher’s going to work in here,’ he said, glancing at the chaos around them as the morphine slid home. ‘That ballpoint needs to stay absolutely still. I don’t think taping’s going to work.’

      ‘I don’t see how it can.’ She was lifting the tube a little so it wasn’t hitting the far wall of the trachea. A proper tracheal tube would go down, past the damage and the swelling. But to put a proper tracheal tube in now…To remove the ballpoint and to take such a risk…

      No. She needed to keep it in place until they got somewhere with decent theatre facilities, where they could operate fast. Where they’d have oxygen to compensate for faltering breathing.

      She couldn’t leave her ballpoint.

      ‘I think the only way is if we inch her out,’ Devlin was saying. He was setting up an IV line, knowing they had to get fluid in. It’d make it more complicated to lift her but they could place the bag on her chest and she needed the fluid so much… ‘Literally inch by inch,’ he continued. ‘If I lift her, can you come with me every step of the way? Can you do that?’

      ‘I can.’

      He was looking at her—really looking at her—and there was concern in his face. ‘You’ve been in the accident yourself. You were concussed. You shouldn’t be here.’

      ‘I am here. Let’s get on with it.’

      ‘I can ask Helen to take over.’

      ‘You can’t.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘It’s taken me time to figure out where this has to lie,’ she told him, motioning with her eyes to the ballpoint. ‘If I wobble even a fraction from where I’m holding it, it’ll block, but I’ve figured out now how to get it back. I’m the only safe person to hold it.’

      He stared at her for a long moment—and then nodded. There was no choice and he knew it.

      He went back to fitting the intravenous line. Above them came the sound of scraping, of broken glass being scrunched.

      Kyle’s stretcher was being hauled from the bus.

      ‘Do you want any more help in here?’ Helen sounded subdued—as well she might. She’d helped the stretcher out and then had paused at the window.

      ‘We’re going to have to do this on our own,’ Devlin told her. ‘Just clear a path, Helen, and cross every finger and every toe. And then some.’

      He shouldn’t ask her for help.

      He didn’t have a choice.

      Dev lifted the little girl carefully, so carefully, inching his way backwards out of the bus. Every move had to be measured so the woman—Emma—could keep up with him. Her hand was holding the ballpoint steady so air could enter Suzy’s lungs. She looked so battered he’d been afraid she’d faint, but that battering wasn’t affecting her hand. It was rock steady.

      Could she keep it up?

      Maybe they should stay, he thought. Maybe they should try and stabilise the airway.

      To operate in these confines, to remove the ballpoint and try and replace it here…

      They couldn’t.

      It was a huge risk to move Suzy, but it was a risk they had to take. He was forced to depend on this woman he didn’t know. This woman who should be a patient herself.

      She must be a doctor. She had to be. To perform a trach-eostomy in these conditions, with such a result—it was an operation that was little short of miraculous.

      But where had she come from? She wasn’t a local. Yet tourists didn’t tend to travel alone, not when they were six or seven months pregnant.

      Now was not the time to ask questions, he decided as he kept inching out. He had Suzy cradled in his arms and Emma was with him every inch of the way.

      Just as long as she held up.

      He glanced at her face and it was sheet-white. She had the baby to consider, he told himself savagely. She’d been almost unconscious when he’d found her. She should be in hospital herself.

      If she were in hospital, Suzy would be dead.

      He needed her. Suzy needed her.

      He kept inching out backwards.

      Emma kept following.

      They emerged to a scene that made Emma blink.

      The children were gone—all of them. The bus driver, the truck driver, the injured teacher—they were gone, too. They must have been ferried away from the scene at some time while the bus had been in the process of being stabilised. There were two steel cables running from the bus’s chassis to the trees on the opposite side of the road.

      Since those cables had been attached, they’d been safe.

      What else?

      Kyle was still there. His tiny, blanket-covered body lay to one side and there was a fireman