Fiona Lowe - Miracle - Twin Babies

‘Help me get him down.’ The farmer’s voice held an unexpected authoritative command and a tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’m a doctor, just do as I say.’

Kirby staggered under the unexpected words and Gaz’s weight as she tried to grab his arms. A farmer-cum-doctor? But she had no time to think about that strange combination. All her concentration was on the fisherman who struggled for every life-sustaining breath.

‘Doctor!’ Jade ran up clutching the first-aid backpack which Kirby immediately put on the ground and opened.

‘I need the pocket mask,’ the doctor and Kirby both said at the same time.

Questioning green eyes framed with thick brown lashes appraised her as she helped him lower Garry onto the ground. ‘I’m Kirby Atherton, the town’s doctor.’

‘Excellent. I’m Nick. Let’s get him onto his side and I’ll try more lateral chest thrusts.’ He knelt next to their patient, placing his hands firmly over the ribcage. Using his weight, he pressed with a downward and forward movement.

‘I’ll check his airway.’ Kirby rolled a now blue Garry onto his side and put her finger inside his mouth, hoping desperately to feel a foreign object.

‘Anything?’ The word held hope and dread.

‘Nothing.’ She rolled him back, checked his carotid pulse and chest movements, and called out to Jake. ‘What was Dad eating when he started choking?’

The trembling boy tried to speak. ‘St-stra-strawberry. He threw it in the air and catched it in his mouth.’

‘It will have lodged in his trachea.’ Nick voiced her exact thought.

‘Starting mouth-to-mouth.’ She applied the pocket mask over Garry’s mouth and lowered her head. He needed air but she had no idea if she could she manage to force any past the obstruction.

‘Find me something I can put down his throat that will grip. Try the jewellery stall.’

Kirby heard Nick’s mellow voice instructing Jade as she counted and puffed five breaths into the unconscious man.

The moment she raised her head, Nick applied the same pressure again over Gaz’s ribs, thrusting downward and forward.

Kirby rechecked Gaz’s airway, hoping to feel the firm fruit. Her stomach rolled. ‘Still nothing.’ She gave Gaz another five breaths, panic starting to ripple through her. If they couldn’t secure his airway soon, he’d go into cardiac arrest.

‘I’ve got these.’ Jade came running back and handed Nick a pair of long, thin pliers.

Kirby’s fingers detected a faint beat. ‘Pulse, weak and thready. He’s going to need an emergency tracheostomy to bypass the blockage and avoid arresting. Jenny, pass me the scalpel blade.’

‘Hang on a mo.’ Nick spoke quietly but decisively. ‘Give me half a minute with these sort of forceps and see if I grab the strawberry.’

Kirby didn’t want to waste any more precious time. ‘But we don’t have a laryngoscope for you to visualise the trachea.’

Green eyes flashed with ready understanding. ‘I’ve done it before in EMD.’

A blurry image played at the edge of her mind but immediately faded, overtaken by her focus on the emergency. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Steady his head for me.’

‘Will do.’ His confidence reassured her and she placed her hands over her patient’s ears, two fingers still resting on his carotid pulse.

The scream of the ambulance’s siren broke over the tense crowd, the sound both urgent and comforting as it brought the medical equipment they really needed.

‘Here goes.’ Nick shot her a look that said, Nothing ventured, nothing gained , and lowered the thin, silver pliers into the slack throat of the unconscious man. ‘Can’t feel anything, damn it.’ His long fingers carefully controlled all the minute movements with stunning expertise.

Kirby kept her gaze on Nick’s hand, willing it to find the obstruction. Time spiralled out, each second an agonising wait. Garry’s pulse suddenly faltered under her fingers. ‘No pulse. Get out now. I’m starting CPR.’

Nick immediately pulled his left arm back, and a soft, half-dissolved strawberry hung limply from the tip of the forceps. ‘Got it. Roll him over.’

Kirby moved her patient’s head to the side as he started coughing violently and vomited up a stream of pale pink liquid onto the ground.

Relief surged through her as she checked his pulse. ‘Pulse back, patient breathing.’ She looked up into Nick’s face, as the worry lines on the bridge of his nose faded. She experienced a sense of déjà vu. ‘Lucky save.’

He nodded, a slow smile appearing through the stubble on his jaw. ‘Very lucky.’

‘Kirby!’

She turned to see Theo and Richard, the ambulance officers, running toward her. ‘Great timing, guys. We need all your gear.’ She grabbed the black oxygen cylinder with its distinctive white top and quickly unravelled the pale green tubing. Gently, she lifted Garry’s head and looped the elastic over his ears, adjusting the Hudson mask. ‘This will help you breathe.’

The sick and bewildered man gripped her arm. ‘Thanks, Doc.’ His voice rasped out the words. ‘I couldn’t breathe… It scared the hell out of me…worse than being on the boat in a storm.’

She smiled down at him. ‘I’m glad I was here, but really it was Dr…’ She realised she didn’t know his surname. ‘Nick? I didn’t catch your surname.’

He finished attaching the Lifepak electrodes and scanned the ECG tracing before looking up and speaking straight to Garry. ‘I’m Dr Nick Dennison, and I’m just glad I was two stalls over.’

Nick Dennison . Kirby did a double-take so fast she almost cricked her neck, the name having instant recognition in her brain. But the man in front of her looked nothing like how she remembered Melbourne City Hospital’s up-and-coming emergency care specialist. What on earth was he doing in Port Bathurst, selling organic fruit and vegetables?

CHAPTER TWO

NICK concentrated hard, keeping his gaze firmly on the cannula he was inserting into Garry’s arm, immensely glad of the distraction. Kirby Atherton’s sky-blue eyes sparkled hypnotically, like light dancing on water. It had been the first thing he’d noticed about her when she’d walked up to his stall, quickly followed by her willowy height and the way her running gear clung deliciously to every feminine curve.

But it had been her eyes that had really drawn him. He had the craziest sensation that if her eyes were deep pools of water and he dived into them, he would emerge changed somehow. He tried to shrug the irrational feeling away. Not even on his worst days last year, when he’d hardly been able to get out of bed and the drugs he’d been taking had made him despair, had he experienced such foolish thoughts.

And prior to being sick, when life had consisted of work and a revolving door of beautiful women, he’d never thought twice about a set of eyes. Perhaps his mother was right. Maybe he had been out of social circulation for too long.

Brushing away the unsettling thoughts, he released the tourniquet, watching the flow of saline, checking for problems, and refocusing on far more straightforward things. ‘We’re going start you on antibiotics, Garry.’

The exhausted patient just nodded from behind his mask.

The two burly paramedics lowered their stretcher in preparation to transfer Garry from the ground to the slightly more comfortable but narrow gurney.

‘Do you need a hand?’ Nick taped the drip firmly in place.

‘We’ll be right, thanks, Doc. We do this all the time so we’re in the swing. Best help you can give us is to just step back out of the way.’ Theo locked the brakes of the stretcher with his foot.

He stood up and moved to the side at the same moment as Kirby. Much of her fine blonde hair had escaped its pink elastic hair tie and strands blew across her flushed cheeks. Her scent tantalised his nostrils, a blend of exercise and glowing health overlaid with a swirl of flowers and berries. He breathed in deeply.