LITMIR.BIZ

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how about carpet bowls?’

      ‘That’s a good idea.’ At least it was active. Amy was climbing walls. ‘Let’s set it up.’

      ‘But you’ll play bridge with us tomorrow, won’t you, dear? If it doesn’t stop raining…’

      Please, let it stop raining.

      ‘You’re wanted on the phone, Amy.’ It was Kitty calling from the office. ‘It’s Chris and she says it’s urgent.’

      Hooray! Anything to get away from the carpet bowls—but the local telephonist was waiting and at the sound of her voice, Amy’s relief disappeared in an instant. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Chris was breathless with worry. ‘All I got was that the bridge is down. There’s been a crash and they want an ambulance. But, Amy, the ambulance has to come from Bowra on the other side of the river. If the bridge is down… If there’s a medical emergency here…’

      Amy’s heart sank. Oh, no…

      Iluka wasn’t equipped for acute medical needs. The nearest acute-care hospital was at Bowra. The nearest doctor was at Bowra! Bowra was only twenty miles down the road but if the bridge was down it might just as well be twenty thousand.

      ‘I don’t know any more,’ Chris told her. ‘There was just the one brief message and the caller disconnected. I’ve alerted Sergeant Packer but I thought…well, there’s nowhere else to take casualties. You might want to stand by.’

      It was a woman and she was in trouble.

      Joss managed to wrench the door open to find the driver slumped forward on the steering-wheel. Her hair was a mass of tangled curls, completely blocking his view. She was youngish, he thought, but he couldn’t see more, and when he placed a hand on her shoulder there was no response.

      ‘Can you hear me?’

      Nothing. She seemed deeply unconscious.

      Why?

      He needed to check breathing—to establish she had an airway. He stooped, wanting to see but afraid to pull her head back. He needed a neck brace. If there was a fracture with compression and he moved her…

      He didn’t have a neck brace and he had no choice. Carefully he lifted the curls away and placed his hands on the sides of her head. Then, with painstaking care, he lifted her face an inch from the wheel.

      With one hand holding her head, cupping her chin with his splayed fingers, he used the other to brush away the hair from her mouth. Apart from a ragged slash above her ear he could feel no bleeding. Swiftly his fingers checked nose and throat. There was no blood at all, and he could feel her breath on his hand.

      What was wrong?

      The door must have caught her as it crumpled, he thought as he checked the cut above her ear. Maybe that had been enough to knock her out.

      Had it been enough to kill her? Who knew? If there was internal bleeding from a skull compression then maybe…

      She was twisted away from him in the truck, so all he could see was her back. He was examining blind. His hands travelled further, examining gently, feeling for trauma. Her neck seemed OK—her pulse was rapid but strong. Her hands were intact. Her body…

      His hands moved to her abdomen—and stiffened in shock. He paused in disbelief but he hadn’t been mistaken. The woman’s body was vast, swollen to full-term pregnancy, and what he’d felt was unmistakable.

      A contraction was running right through her, and her body was rigid in spasm.

      The woman was in labour. She was having a baby!

      ‘Amy?’

      ‘Jeff.’ Jeff Packer was the town’s police sergeant—the town’s only policeman, if it came to that. He was solid and dependable but he was well into his sixties. In any other town he’d have been pensioned off but in Iluka he seemed almost young.

      ‘There’s a casualty.’ He said the word ‘casualty’ like he might have said ‘disaster’ and Jeff didn’t shake easily. Unconsciously Amy braced herself for the worst.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘It’s a young woman. We’re bringing her in to you now.’

      ‘You’re bringing her here?’

      ‘There’s nowhere else to take her, Amy. The bridge is down. We’d never get a helicopter landed in these conditions and Doc here says her need is urgent.’

      ‘Doc?’

      ‘The bloke she ran into says he’s a doctor.’

      A doctor… Well, thank heaven for small mercies. Amy let her breath out in something close to a sob of relief.

      ‘How badly is she hurt?’

      ‘Dunno. She’s unconscious and her head’s bleeding. We’re putting her into the back of my van now.’

      ‘Should you move her?’

      ‘Doc says we don’t have a choice. There’s a baby on the way.’

      A baby.

      Amy replaced the receiver and stood stunned. This was a nursing home! They didn’t have the staff to deliver babies. They didn’t have the skills or the facilities or…

      She was wasting time. Get a grip, she told herself. An unconscious patient with a baby on the way was arriving any minute. What would she need?

      She’d need staff. Skilled staff. And in Iluka…. What was the chance of finding anyone? There were two other trained nurses in town but she knew Mary was out at her mother’s and she didn’t have the phone on, and Sue-Ellen had been on duty all night. She’d only just be asleep.

      She took three deep breaths, forcing herself to think as she walked back out to the sitting room.

      Thinking, thinking, thinking.

      The vast sitting room was built to look out to sea. Mid-morning, with no one able to go outside, it held almost all the home’s inhabitants. And they were all looking at her. They’d heard Kitty say the call was urgent and in Iluka urgent meant excitement.

      Excitement was something that was sadly lacking in this town. These old people didn’t play carpet bowls from choice.

      Hmm. As Amy looked at them, her idea solidified. This was the only plan possible.

      ‘I think,’ she said slowly, the solution to this mess turning over and over in her mind, ‘that I need to interrupt your carpet bowls. I think I need all hands on deck. Now.’

      Fifteen minutes later, when the police van turned into the nursing home entrance, they were ready.

      Jeff had his hand on his horn. Any of the home’s inhabitants who hadn’t known this was an emergency would know it now, but they were already well aware of it. They were waiting, so when the back of the van was flung wide, Joss was met by something that approached the reception he might have met at the emergency ward of the hospital he worked in.

      There was a stretcher trolley rolled out, waiting, made up with mattress and crisp white linen. There were three men—one at each side of the trolley and one at the end. There was a woman with blankets, and another pushing something that looked blessedly—amazingly—like a crash cart. There was another woman behind…

      Each and every one of them wore a crisp white coat and they looked exceedingly professional.

      Except they also all looked over eighty.

      ‘What the…?’

      He had barely time to register before things were taken out of his hands.

      ‘Charles, slide the trolley off the wheels—that’s right, it lifts off. Ian, that’s great. Push it right into the van. Push it alongside her so she can be lifted… Ted, hold the wheels

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