LITMIR.BIZ

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think. She just sat on her bottom, holding a branch of the nearest shrunken tree and let herself slide, very slowly, until her feet reached the first rock below her. The foot of her bad leg touched it first and a spear of pain lanced upwards to reach her thigh but her leg didn’t crumple and, as soon as she transferred to her weight to her good foot, the pain receded. When she did it again, she made sure it was her strong leg that found a solid object first. Now she was several metres below where Harry had started running back and forth on the flat area, barking encouragement, and the enormity of what she’d started was enough to make her head spin for a moment or two.

      At least this incarnation of Lassie was someone to talk to.

      ‘I’m not sure that this was such a good idea,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to have to crawl sideways to reach that next tree. Do you reckon it’s got strong roots?’

      Harry the dog seemed to think so.

      She had to cling to the next rock for a minute, to get over the fright of her foot slipping a little in the scree. She didn’t look down. Instead, she looked up at the black head that was getting smaller every time she looked.

      ‘What you don’t know,’ she said casually, ‘is that until very recently I was wearing a pretty hard-core brace on my leg. Because I had a rock that landed on it a while back and it was so squashed they almost had to chop it off. Yeah... I know dogs can manage quite well without one of their legs but it’s a bit more of a problem for a person.’

      The sound of the waves was getting louder and Harriet knew perfectly well that the dog couldn’t hear what she was saying and wouldn’t understand if he could but it seemed to be helping her.

      ‘But look at me right now... It almost feels like I’m back in the SDR team and I don’t mind telling you that that’s the thing I miss the most about my old life.’

      Except that if this was a team callout, she’d be appropriately dressed in heavy-duty overalls and with a hard hat and gloves for more protection. And she’d be on the end of a rope with people who knew what they were doing holding the other end to prevent a fall that would have meant two victims instead of only one.

      If she’d done anything this irresponsible as a team member, their leader, Blake Cooper, would have probably sacked her, and Kate and Sam would have been watching her with horror. But she wasn’t a team member any more and she never could be, with the disability that was highly likely to be permanent now. A weak leg. Pain levels that could be hard to manage. A mindset that was very different from the passionate and adventurous person she’d been all those months ago.

      Maybe she was going to get stuck herself and the rescue crew would have to winch two people off this cliff and she’d cop an awful lot of flak. But...

      But the fact that she was even trying to do this—that she wanted to do this so much—made her feel like the real Harriet Collins had finally stepped out from the black mist she’d been shrouded in for so long.

      And she was more than halfway down now. That ledge was starting to look bigger and hiding the terrifying drop below it. Another controlled slide on her bottom, a careful climb over a tumble of rocks without trusting her weight to her bad leg and then a downward, sideways crawl and she could almost stand up to push her way past rough bunches of tussock and through the stunted trees onto the ledge.

      Harry’s owner was probably in his sixties, his grey hair matted with a stain of blood and a badly bruised and grazed arm. And he was groaning.

      ‘Hey...’ Harriet crouched beside him, picking up his hand and then feeling for his pulse. ‘My name’s Harry. Same as your dog...’

      The man’s eyes opened. ‘Harry...’

      ‘He’s fine. He’s up on top of the cliff. He came to find me and get help for you. Just like Lassie.’

      The man’s eyes closed but his lips twisted into a smile. ‘Not so much. It was Harry who went over the edge. Got...stuck on a rock and I went down to help. I lost my footing and...argh...that really hurts...’

      ‘Your leg? Or is it something else?’

      ‘My leg...and...and my head doesn’t feel great.’

      ‘What’s your name?’

      ‘Eddie. Eddie Denton.’

      ‘Okay, Eddie. Take a deep breath for me. Does that hurt?’

      ‘No. Feels okay...’

      ‘That’s great. We don’t need to worry about your breathing then. And you’ve got a good pulse so that means your blood pressure’s still okay.’

      ‘You a doctor, Harry?’

      ‘No, I’m a nurse. I worked in the Intensive Care Unit at Bondi Bayside, although I’m somewhere else at the moment. But I’m also a member of a specialist rescue team there.’

      She was checking Eddie out as she kept talking. ‘I’m just going to have a feel of your tummy, okay? Does that hurt?’

      ‘No. It’s just my leg.’

      The pain from an obvious femoral fracture could well be masking something happening internally but there was nothing Harriet could do other than keep Eddie company and make sure he didn’t move and fall further. There was no time to do anything else, anyway. She could see the dot of the approaching helicopter now and only seconds later the sound of the rotors drowned out the faint barking she could still hear from the top of the cliff.

      This was one of the bright red and yellow helicopters of the ambulance service here in Sydney and the crew member she could see leaning out from the skid and preparing to be winched down would be one of the elite, intensive care paramedics that dealt with calls like this. It was a relief to see the big pack of gear being attached to the winch line along with a stretcher but she expected nothing less from a team who were well used to dealing with emergencies on the shorelines of this huge coastal city.

      What she would never have expected was to be addressed as if this paramedic knew her.

      ‘Harry? How did you end up on this ledge?’ He pushed up the visor of his helmet as he unhooked the gear and then held the winch line clear, giving the winch operator the ‘thumbs up’ sign to retrieve the hook. ‘I thought the job had been called in from up at the track.’

      ‘Oh, my God...’ Harriet’s jaw dropped. ‘When did you start working on the choppers, Jack?’

      ‘Months ago.’ His tone was clipped. Cold, even? ‘Fill me in, Harry.’

      ‘This is Eddie Denton. He’s sixty-three. He slipped and fell after trying to get his dog out of trouble.’

      There was a nagging voice at the back of her head telling her that she deserved the brush-off. How many times had she done that to Jack after the accident, when he’d tried to visit her?

      But not being part of the team any more had made it too painful to be reminded of how devastating the loss of this part of her life had been. And he’d given up eventually, just the way everybody else had stopped talking about it. Harriet couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d heard Jack’s name mentioned.

      ‘Hiya, Eddie. I’m Jack Evans. I’ve come to get you out of here, mate. How are you feeling?’

      ‘Gotta sore leg.’

      ‘Fractured mid-shaft femur,’ Harriet put in. ‘Limb baselines are intact.’

      ‘Anything else I should know about?’

      ‘Head injury. I’m pretty sure he was unconscious when I arrived on scene and he’s been complaining about a headache.’

      ‘And that arm?’

      ‘I don’t think it’s fractured but it’s badly bruised and there’s a fair bit of skin missing. Blood loss was minimal as far as I can tell.’

      It could have been worse. If Eddie had been bleeding badly, she could have stopped that.

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