LITMIR.BIZ

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truck had been parked so that the winch gear at the back could be deployed. It was going to take a lot more than wedges or chocks to stabilise a car that was rocking on its perch with every wave. There was no sign of an ambulance crew yet. One of the fire officers reached the water’s edge at the same time as Cooper. He held his arms out to take the child.

      ‘Is she injured?’

      ‘Haven’t checked. Her airway’s certainly clear.’ And children who were crying that loudly were generally not badly injured. It was more likely to be the quiet ones you had to worry about. ‘Are there any medics on scene yet?’

      ‘Not yet. Traffic’s snarled up badly for miles. They’ll deploy a chopper soon, if it’s needed.’ The fire officer stared past Cooper. ‘How many others are in the car, do you know?’

      ‘Apparently there’s a baby in the back. There’s a crazy woman who’s trying to get her out.’ Cooper turned his head but all he could see was an undeniably shapely, denim-clad bottom poking out of the back door of the car. Wriggling, as she moved backwards and then turned, a baby’s car seat in her arms.

      ‘Good grief...is that Fizz?’ Another fire officer had joined his senior colleague and was shading his eyes against the glint of the afternoon sun on the sea, trying to assess what they were about to deal with.

      ‘Trust her to be first on the scene.’ The older fireman shook his head, heading into the water to help rescue the baby. ‘Why doesn’t it even surprise me?’

      ‘Fizz?’ This was getting even weirder, Cooper decided. Who had a name like some sort of party drink?

      ‘She’s an ED doc,’ he was told. ‘But give her a chance to get out in an ambulance or helicopter and she’s in, boots ’n all. Everybody in this business knows Fizz.’ His tone was admiring. ‘Don’t worry, she knows what she’s doing.’ But he was watching the handover of the baby seat to the fire officer. ‘Uh-oh...’

      ‘Oh, no...’ Cooper couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There were experts on scene now. Equipment to make any further rescue attempts a lot safer. This woman with the odd name and an unbelievable attitude had already saved two children but it seemed that that wasn’t enough. She was heading back to the car yet again.

      ‘Fizz!’ the younger fire officer yelled. ‘Hold your horses. We need to get a cable onto that car, at least.’

      Either she didn’t hear him or—and this seemed more likely to Cooper by now—she was choosing not to hear him. He wasn’t the only person to be appalled by her recklessness and, as he automatically moved to try and prevent another casualty, he found himself part of a group of rescue workers, armed with ropes and tools and protective clothing. There were police officers here now, as well as the fire crews, but he still couldn’t see any paramedics arriving.

      ‘Stay back, mate,’ one of them told him. ‘This isn’t a spectator sport.’

      ‘I’m a paramedic,’ Cooper replied. ‘With specialty training in disaster and scene management.’

      And this looked like it was about to become a disaster, on a small scale, anyway. A wave large enough to reach his waist rolled in and one of the firemen lost his footing. The crashed car also lost its grip on the rocks beneath it, tipping and then sliding sideways with a chilling, metallic screech. A second wave rolled right over the top of its roof.

      Where was that adrenaline junkie emergency department doctor?

      Cooper couldn’t see her anywhere and, just for a heartbeat, he was aware of something that felt like...grief?

      He didn’t even know this woman and she had taken stupid risks here, so if she was injured or had been killed—perhaps knocked out and then pinned underwater by the car—everybody would know it was her own fault but...

      But how incredible a person was she? Cooper had met a lot of courageous people in his lifetime, both as his colleagues and amongst the patients he had treated, but this woman stood out as being something quite astonishing. Fearless. Concerned only about people other than herself.

      Or maybe it was something much deeper than that. Much darker. A flashback to a moment in time he could never undo and would never forgive himself for. A moment that he could have used to try harder to stop someone doing something foolhardy. A moment that could have meant he wouldn’t have lost the person who’d been everything to him.

      A chain of people was in the water now and a plastic basket stretcher was being carried towards where the car had settled, but Cooper was ahead of them and he could see that the driver’s door had stayed open as the car had been washed sideways. He could see movement as the foam of a wave cleared. The doctor was still alive...but she was inside the vehicle and it looked like she was struggling to release the catch of the safety belt.

      Cooper had a cutting device on his multi-tool that was in a pocket of the first-aid kit he kept in the small backpack but he’d left that back on the beach before he’d climbed that first rock. Because he’d known he wouldn’t be able to treat anybody until they were out of the sea. Not that he spared more than a split second of thought to how useful that device would be right now. In fact, he wasn’t thinking anything particularly coherent. If he had been, he’d never have done what he did right then, which was to take a deep breath, reach down to take hold of the car door and pull himself beneath the surface of the water.

      It was useful to have the outline of the door as a guide because it took more than a second to be able to see past the sting of salt water in his eyes. And it kept him from being washed away by the swirling current of the waves coming past. The car was more stable now than it had been on top of the rocks but it was still moving. How long had it been since the first wave had rolled over its roof and started to fill the interior? How long had it been since this mysterious woman had taken a breath of her own? Her hair had come undone from its knot and was now floating around her head, making her look like a mermaid and probably obscuring her vision as she wrestled with the seat-belt catch.

      Cooper caught her hand and pushed it away from the catch. Then he held the bottom and felt for the release button. Pressing it down hard didn’t seem to be enough, so he held the button down with one hand and took hold of the upper part of the strap with his other hand and pulled. Hard.

      He felt the driver of the car slump towards him as the belt was released and he caught her under her armpits, pulling her free of the vehicle and then pushing up through the water. He just had to hope that she didn’t have any kind of spinal injury but there was no way she could have been left in the car long enough for a more careful extrication process because she would have drowned.

      He wasn’t even sure that she was breathing now as he lifted her head clear of a breaking wave but there were others taking over. Taking the woman from his arms and putting her into the rescue basket to carry her towards the shore. Beside him, his fellow rescuer had already emerged from beneath the surface and she was dragging in great gulps of air as she tried to catch her breath.

      ‘Thanks...’ she managed. ‘I was having a...bit of trouble...there.’

      Not that she looked at all bothered by the fact that her ‘bit of trouble’ could have actually put them both in danger. She wasn’t looking directly at him, either, as she pushed her hair back from her face and swiftly braided it to get it under control but he could see that her whole face had a glow about it—as if it had been so exciting, she’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

      Wow...there was something inspirational in that kind of passion. But Cooper had always known that, hadn’t he? She reminded him of...

      No. He wasn’t about to go there. Even the nudge in that direction was discomforting, which was probably why his tone was distinctly sharp when he spoke again.

      ‘It’s lucky I didn’t have to rescue you as well,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

      The reprimand in his tone was wasted on her. She didn’t seem to even be listening. She was watching the progress of the fire officers who were carrying the driver back to shore.

      ‘I

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