Marion Lennox - Bride by Accident

Damn, why hadn’t Jake done this before anything? he thought as he realised just how precariously the bus was balanced. The man must be more shocked than he’d thought.

Maybe he was lucky Jake had had the capacity to call him at all.

The kids were still emerging, sliding out into his arms as he lifted them down. Some were crying, but most were so shocked they were simply following instinct. They were from the local primary school—kids aged between six and twelve.

He needed help. He had to get more help.

He had to keep pulling kids out. The bigger ones were out now but someone inside was handing the littlies out to him. The teacher?

‘Come on, you can do it. You must.’

Yeah. The teacher. Colin Jeffries. Devlin recognised his voice, giving shaky directions from inside.

‘I think…I’ve got all I can,’ Colin called, his voice wavering. ‘There’s a couple more trapped but I can’t…I can’t…And Jodie’s in real trouble.’

‘OK, come out yourself,’ Dev called.

Colin did, sliding awkwardly backwards out through the bus’s rear window—the emergency exit that was the only way anyone could get out. Dev moved to help him. In his mid-fifties, his suit ripped and spattered with blood, Colin was bleeding profusely from a deep gash on his face, and he was hauling a kid out after him.

‘Jodie needs help,’ he told Dev, and he laid Jodie down at Devlin’s feet before sitting—abruptly—himself.

There was blood everywhere. Far too much blood.

Some of it was the schoolteacher’s. More than enough to tip him over into unconsciousness, Dev thought grimly.

But the child’s blood was pumping. Triage. Jodie.

‘Get some pressure on your head,’ Dev snapped at Colin. ‘Put both hands against the bleeding and push—hard.’

He was doing the same himself, pressing hard against Jodie’s shoulder. Hell, he had to stop this.

But there was so much need.

Priorities.

There were kids all around him, milling, seeing him as the only authority figure.

‘Jake?’ he called, but the bus driver didn’t respond. The driver was staring at the bus as if he was seeing something he’d never seen before.

Dev didn’t even have time to shake him back to reality.

OK. There was only him. He raised his voice as he worked over Jodie. Most of these kids had been his patients for the three years he’d been practising medicine in the town. He knew their parents from childhood. They knew him.

‘Can the oldest—Katy and Marty, that must be you—collect the kids together? Sit everyone down well away from the bus. We’ll get your parents here soon. But first, Marty, can you run and get my bag from the back seat of my car? It’s not locked. Run.’

That was all he had time for. He wasn’t looking at the kids. Or at the teacher. This was Jodie—Jodie McKechnie, a tiny ten-year-old who he knew well, and her situation was desperate.

There was blood pumping from her shoulder. Bright arterial blood.

It had to be a torn artery.

Jake was still standing immobile. Helpless.

There was no time here for helplessness.

‘Jake, grab my phone.’ He gestured to his belt and then as Jake stared at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about, he yelled. ‘Jake, grab the phone. Now!’

Jake moved. Trancelike.

There was no time for sympathy. ‘Call the hospital,’ he snapped. ‘I want every available person at the hospital out here now. Tell them that. And then help get those kids clear. Colin says there’s still kids on the bus. You have to get them off. You must.’

But that was all he had time for. Jodie. He was losing Jodie.

Hell, he needed pressure. He’d have to clamp blood vessels. He had to stop this bleeding.

There was still chaos around him.

But he could only do what he could manage now. If he didn’t stop the bleeding within minutes, Jodie would be dead.

Marty appeared at his side with his doctor’s bag—already open—and Devlin blessed him.

‘Help Katy now,’ he told him.

That was all he had time for. He blocked out the remaining chaos. He had one child to care for.

He had one life in his hands and he could think of nothing else.

Emma lifted her head with extreme caution. What on earth had happened?

Where was she?

She stared around her, stunned. Cautiously she pushed herself to a sitting position, willing the fog to clear so she could finally figure out what must have happened.

There’d been a crash. There must have been a crash.

But she couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she was sprawled on the road. She remembered lying still, trying to make her head work, exploring every piece of her body, unable to believe that she was still alive.

Until the voice had arrived. The face. She remembered the face.

The face above her had cemented her feeling that she was in some other space. Not here. Not in reality. The face was her husband’s.

And Corey was dead.

No. He wasn’t dead. He was here.

Maybe she was dead.

No, she told herself fiercely, trying hard to get a grip on reality.

Corey was dead. She wasn’t.

Someone was snapping orders, fast, harsh. The man she’d thought was Corey?

Someone was crying. A child. It was a thin, fragile sobbing and it helped her haul herself together. It helped ground her.

The fog receded, just a little.

She’d definitely been in a car smash. This was real.

Somewhere a child was terrified. Did that mean she had to pull herself together and do something about it?

She put her hand to her head and felt, gingerly, all over. Ouch. OK, she’d been hit on the head and maybe she’d been out of it for a minute or so. But she was OK. She was fine.

She moved her head a little and paused.

All right, not fine. But she was OK, and OK was all she had to be going on with.

But this wasn’t just her. She put a hand on her bulge and thought in sudden fierce anxiety, My baby has to be OK, too.

As if in response she felt a kick, for all the world like an indignant reminder that she should take more care of her precious cargo.

‘Hey, this wasn’t my fault,’ she told her bulge as she pushed herself up onto knees that were decidedly jelly-like.

She used the car—her mangled car—to haul herself higher. To her feet.

Her car was a mangled wreck. She’d been lucky to get out alive.

She was alive. What next?

The face had said to lie still.

How could she?

The child’s sobbing was a trickling stream of fear. What had the professor said at the kids’ hospital where she’d done her medical internship? If a kid comes through the front door screaming, he can usually be put at the end of the queue. It’s the quiet ones you look at first. Don’t ignore the quiet ones.

Did that mean she could ignore the sobbing?

No. This sobbing wasn’t a hysterical scream. It was a sound of pure terror.

Where was the face? Where was the man she’d thought was Corey?

What had happened?

She stared around her, growing more appalled by the minute.

There were logs everywhere, vast, bare trunks, each maybe two feet thick and twenty feet long. They were sprawled over the road like bowled ninepins.

A guy—maybe the truck driver?—was retching over on the verge.

Another guy—a little man with a white face and a ripped shirt—was frantically punching numbers into a mobile phone.

A third adult was crouched by the lorry, clutching his head. There was a crimson stain blooming under his hands.

And then there were the children.

One of the children was lying on the road and someone else—another man, the face?—was working frantically over him. Over her?

Her. A girl.

The little girl was wearing pink tights, stained crimson. There was a medical bag spread open and she could see the face was trying to attach clamps.