A Love Against All Odds. Emily Forbes

her cheeks to fade. She needed something to occupy her mind; she couldn’t afford to fill it with thoughts of Henry.

      She heard the curtain move again. The sound of the plastic clips sliding in the rail made her look up. She was hoping to see Henry but it was a lady’s face that appeared.

      ‘Excuse me,’ the woman said as she ducked around the curtain. ‘Sorry to interrupt—I’m Amelia Cooper, the deputy principal at Canterbury Primary School.’

      Maia spotted an identification badge hanging around Amelia’s neck that had her photograph and the school crest printed on it. She hoped she wasn’t a journalist with fake ID. That had happened before, on more than one occasion.

      ‘Hello, Adam,’ the woman said, and Maia decided she would give her the benefit of the doubt, although she wasn’t sure what she was doing in her cubicle.

      ‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Maia asked.

      ‘I need to make sure all the children are accounted for,’ Amelia explained. ‘The school is contacting the parents. Some are already on their way to the hospital, but I was told we might need permission for some treatments. The school has all that information on file.’ She indicated the electronic tablet she held in one hand. ‘It’s all in here.’

      She put the tablet down on the end of Adam’s bed and took a thick marker pen from a clipboard which she had been holding in her other hand. ‘I’m also supposed to correctly identify the children,’ she said as she printed Adam’s name onto a sticky label which she peeled off and stuck to his shirt. Some things obviously still had to be done the old-fashioned way, although Maia knew her method of identifying the children was more secure. Adam’s arm would go wherever he went, unlike his shirt, which could easily be removed, taking his ID with it. But she kept quiet. The children could be identified at a glance and another form of ID wasn’t going to create any problems, as long as it was accurate.

      ‘And I’ll keep a list of their injuries so the parents can check in with me as their initial point of contact. I’ll be the liaison person, according to your ED director that will leave you all free to get on with treating the kids.’

      That made sense. Maia filled her in on Adam’s condition and Amelia flipped over the page of sticky labels and jotted a summary on another page of her clipboard.

      ‘Do you have authority to give permission for Adam to have an X-ray?’ Maia asked.

      ‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I spoke to Dr Cavanaugh who was in here before and told him.’

      ‘Okay. Do you have any news about Adam’s brother, Bailey?’

      Amelia ran her finger down the list on her clipboard. ‘He’s fine. He’s got some cuts and bruises and he’s waiting for some treatment to clean those up.’

      Maia could see Adam relax. ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’

      ‘I’ve got more good news, Adam,’ Amelia said. ‘The school has spoken to your mother and she is on her way.’

      The radiographer arrived and Maia left him to do his job while she went looking for Bailey.

      The waiting room had filled with parents and some of the less seriously injured kids who were still waiting to be treated. Maia scanned the room and spotted a boy who, despite the large dressing that was bandaged to the top of his head, looked similar enough to Adam that she walked closer to check the sticker on his shirt. It read, ‘Bailey Evans’.

      Maia sought out the ED Director next. She was standing at the whiteboard behind the triage desk, updating the list. ‘Brenda, have you got anyone urgent for me or can I take Bailey Evans?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got his brother having X-rays taken and I think they’d like to be together while they wait for their mother.’

      Brenda scanned the board quickly before she nodded. ‘Sure,’ she said as she added a note on the board beside Bailey’s name. ‘According to the ambos he’s got a head laceration that might need stitching. Your call, once you’ve cleaned him up.’

      Maia introduced herself to Bailey as she pushed his wheelchair into the cubicle beside Adam’s. They could talk to each other through the curtain while she cleaned Bailey’s cuts—she didn’t think Adam needed to watch that—but once they were both taken care of she could pull back the curtain and they could wait together.

      Maia gently lifted the dressing on Bailey’s head. It was soaked in blood from a nasty cut that ran along his hairline. The paramedics had been right; the gash would probably need a few stitches. She re-covered the wound with fresh padding and called for a doctor. The wound would need to be cleaned but she knew the doctor would administer a local anaesthetic and she preferred to wait for that before she started cleaning. She would make a start on his other more straightforward injuries while she waited. She could see several cuts on his hands and knees as well as on his face and head.

      ‘How did you get all of these cuts?’ she asked him.

      ‘Some of the windows in the bus exploded when the bus rolled over.’

      ‘The bus rolled over?’ Maia hadn’t been aware of that part.

      Bailey nodded his head.

      ‘The bus driver swerved so hard to miss the landslide that the bus crashed through the rail on the side of the road and rolled down the hill.’ Adam’s voice came through the curtain, explaining the sequence of events.

      ‘You didn’t tell me that part before, Adam.’

      ‘That wasn’t the bit where I hurt my knee,’ he said matter-of-factly.

      ‘The window next to me smashed,’ Bailey added. ‘And then some of us had to break the emergency window and crawl out that way. That’s how I cut my hands and knees.’

      Maia picked fragments of glass out of his wounds, disinfected them and bandaged them before she tackled his face and head. She cleaned the cuts and scratches on his face before she carefully unwrapped the dressing on his head.

      The curtain rustled on its tracking, flicking open to admit Henry. ‘This is Bailey, Adam’s brother,’ Maia told him. ‘He’s got a laceration on his head that needs cleaning and suturing.’

      She removed the dressing again for Henry to take a look. He nodded, agreeing with her assessment.

      Maia handed him the local anaesthetic, pre-empting his request, and then prepared a suture kit while they waited for the anaesthetic to kick in. They worked smoothly together, their moves practised as Henry chatted to Bailey about cricket and rugby. Maia loved rugby but didn’t really understand the attraction of cricket and she wasn’t interested in listening to them discuss their favourite teams and players. She was busy thinking about other things. She was standing beside Henry’s right shoulder, snipping the thread each time he finished a stitch. She didn’t need to focus; her mind was free to wander and she let it drift as she watched his fingers pinch and move as he deftly sewed up Bailey’s head wound.

      He looked like he was conducting a mini-orchestra. His hands moved to their own silent beat. His fingers were long and slender, his forearms were strong. He was wearing a short-sleeved surgical top, a dark blue one that made his eyes look even darker than usual, and his olive skin was lightly tanned, even though he’d just returned from a Northern Hemisphere winter. She wondered what colour the skin under his clothes was.

      That was a dangerous direction for her thoughts to take. She quickly tried to think about something else. She breathed deeply as she tried to refocus her mind. But all that happened was she breathed in Henry. She was standing so close to him that all she could smell was the scent of clean laundry and that citrus-and-cedar aftershave, and every breath she took filled her senses.

      ‘Henry?’

      Brenda stuck her head around the curtain and Maia jumped. She felt a guilty flush steal across her cheeks even though she was guilty of nothing more than wayward thoughts. But Brenda’s appearance was enough to break the spell. Maia took a small step back, putting a little bit of distance between