Marion Lennox - The Doctor’s Rescue Mission

‘Was it you who rang the bell?’ Judy asked, and when Morag nodded she was hugged all over again.

‘Thank God for you, girl. There we all were, like sitting ducks, huddled in the main street waiting to be washed away.’

‘Who was left behind?’

‘God knows,’ Marcus said frankly. ‘I was just climbing into the fire truck, thinking after the tremor I’d pull it clear in case it was needed. I heard your bell, but I was trying to get the engine started. It seemed…important. Then as the bell kept ringing I came out-just as the water surged up. I ran. Even so, I had to grab a fence or I’d have been washed away. Judy, you…’

‘I was with most of them,’ Judy told them. She was still clutching the kids-Wendy, aged fourteen, and Jake, who was sixteen. Normally they wouldn’t be seen dead clutching their mother but they were clutching her just as much as she was clutching them. ‘Most of us got to the bush. If we made it to safety, then I’d guess most people would have. Then I thought you’d be at the fire station, Marcus, so I came.’ She hugged her husband again, and her teenagers hugged, too.

‘There must be casualties,’ Morag whispered, and Marcus nodded.

‘Yeah. Thank God it’s Sunday so the school’s empty.’

The school was on the foreshore. The thought of what might have happened-and hadn’t-was almost enough to steady her.

‘OK.’ Deep breath. Somehow she had to figure out a way forward, though the extent of the calamity was overpowering. But she had four able-bodied people-five, counting herself-and, by the sound of it, the bulk of the townsfolk were safe. She needed to gear up. She needed to think.

‘Let’s get everyone safe first,’ she told them. ‘The cricket ground is on high ground and we can set up the pavilion as a clearing house. Marcus, I want you and Jake to start a house-to-house search-get others involved if you can-and send everyone to the cricket ground. I want everyone settled on high ground as fast as possible. Judy, I want you to make a register so we can see who’s missing. Every person has to report to you.’

She paused and gazed across the village where she could see the roof of her tiny, four-bed hospital. Thankfully it was on high ground but she knew at once that it’d be too small for what lay ahead. Plus, even though it was on high ground, it was low enough for a higher wave to do damage. It’d have to be evacuated.

‘I’ll set up a medical centre in the cricket pavilion,’ she told them. ‘On the way I’ll go past the hospital and make sure everyone’s out and safe. Judy, can you and Wendy come with me and help me carry things? I need supplies, plus the files holding every islander’s records. Wendy, are you able to cross-match names with the list Judy’s making?’ She gave them all a tiny, watery smile. ‘I know. I’m sounding bossy when all we want to do is hug each other. But we need to move. Marcus, that cut-’

‘Can wait,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve a feeling that’s the least of our problems.’

As if on cue, there was a yell from below them. An elderly man-the village grocer-was running toward them, and his terror reached them before he did.

‘Doc. Doc, thank God you’re safe. Doc, Mavis got caught under water. She’s so cold and limp… Oh, God, Doc… She looks awful. I’ve taken her to the clinic but there’s no one there who can help. Can you come?’

Morag started work right then, and she didn’t raise her head for hours.

So many injuries… She didn’t know how many injuries. She could only focus on what was before her.

She worked first at the clinic, as that was where Mavis was. Morag worked over Mavis with fierce intensity, blotting out the sound of evacuation going on all around her, and blotting out the fact that another wave could come at any time.

But despite her best efforts, the outcome was tragedy. There’d been twenty minutes between immersion and the time Morag saw the elderly grocer’s wife. When Morag reached her, one of the nurses had started CPR but it was no use. The ECG tracing showed idioventricular rhythm. Idioventricular rhythm was almost always irreversible-the last sigh of a dying heart-and this was no exception. Finally Morag stood back, defeated, and she put her arm around the grocer’s shoulders in silent sympathy as he wept for his wife.

But there was no time for Morag to weep. The clinic was almost empty. Every patient and almost all the equipment was gone. They covered Mavis and left her there.

‘This…this place can be the morgue,’ she told one of the men who’d tried to help.

He nodded. ‘We’ll start bringing them in.’

Them? How many? She couldn’t bear to ask. ‘I need to see…to make sure…’

‘If there’s any doubt at all, we’ll bring them to you,’ he told her. ‘But there’s those…well, there’s those where there’s no doubt at all.’

Dear God.

Grim-faced, Morag made her way to the cricket pavilion. Here she found her surgery set up in miniature. Any villager not totally occupied with searching for survivors or helping the injured had been hauled in to help. Marcus and his family were working like a miniature army.

There was no time to wonder. Work was waiting everywhere.

Louise, a middle-aged nurse who usually acted as Morag’s receptionist, had decreed herself triage sister and nothing got near Morag unless she said so. That meant Morag nearly missed seeing tiny Orlando Salmon. Her next tragedy.

Orlando had been held in his mother’s arms when the water had slammed them from one side of the road to the other. Angie Salmon was left with bruising, but her tiny son was dead in her arms. Louise would have deflected her from Morag-Morag had so much on her hands that the clearly dead could no longer be her business-but Morag saw them out of the corner of her eye as she was treating a compound fracture, and the look on Angie’s face had her move instinctively to help.

Once again, there was nothing constructive she could do. But Angie had to hear from a doctor that her little son was really dead. She had to watch as Morag took the time to examine the tiny child with love, and show Angie what had killed him. It had been fast. He’d died instantly in his mother’s arms.

Explaining was all Morag could do, and it was all she had time for. There was no time for comfort. There were urgent cases waiting, but as Morag turned away she found herself choked again with tears. She and Angie had gone to school together. Angie had been the biggest tomboy on the island. She had four more kids, and each one was loved to bits.

Damn.

She needed Robbie, she thought bleakly. She desperately needed to hug her own little Robbie, but there was no time.

And she was depending on Robbie. They all were. He was the village eyes. Someone else had gone up on the ridge now, carrying the strongest field glasses they could find, but she knew that Robbie’s sharp eyes would be behind those glasses.

Searching for another wave.

She couldn’t think of another wave.

Morag worked and worked. Every time she turned around there was more need. Fractures, lacerations, grief…

Then about four hours after the water hit, they brought Sam Crane in, carrying him in on a brightly painted door that looked like it had once been entry point to one of the village’s more substantial houses.

Louise saw Sam as the stretcher bearers reached the top of the stairs, and this time she had no hesitation in bringing him to Morag’s immediate attention. Morag turned from the man she’d been treating and flinched. Dear heaven. So much blood.

‘We found him round the back of the harbour,’ Marcus told her. ‘He was working on his boat when it hit. The boat ended up smashed on the harbour wall and we found him underneath. It’s taken six of us to get the boat off him. As soon as we got the boat off, he started bleeding like a stuck pig. We’ve applied pressure but…’