Lilian Darcy - The Australian's Desire - Their Lost-and-Found Family / Long-Lost Son - Brand-New Family / A Proposal Worth Waiting For

‘But—’ Lizzie said, and Georgie answered her fears.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told her. ‘Look where we put you. Smiley would have to walk through two wards to reach you, and the whole town knows his story. He’ll be too busy saving his own skin to worry you now.’

‘Do you care about him?’ Alistair asked, and Lizzie flashed him a look of astonishment.

‘Of course I care. He’s the kids’ father.’

‘And you don’t want to waste your time worrying about him,’ Georgie said, understanding the young woman’s fear. ‘Which you would if you knew he was in danger. So now you can put him aside.’

‘So where’s your Max?’ Lizzie asked.

Georgie froze. She’d been watching Alistair in the doorway. Looking at the way his shirt clung wetly to his chest. Just looking. But her thoughts were dragged sideways to her little brother.

‘One of the nurses said Max was in trouble,’ Lizzie said shyly. ‘It’s only … Davy got into a fight at school last year and Max stood up for him. I hate to think of him out there in this.’

‘He’s not out there.’

‘No, but the nurse said you didn’t know where he was.’

‘He’s with his father.’

‘And his father’s on the run? Oh, Georg …’

‘We do get ourselves into trouble,’ Georgie said, and gave her another hug. ‘Who needs men? What a shame Max and Davy and Thomas will grow into the species.’

‘They’ll be nice,’ Lizzie said stoutly. ‘My Davy and my Thomas will be nice, caring men. I won’t let Smiley turn them into thugs. And I bet your Max will be great, too.’

‘He will be,’ Georgie said.

‘Georg, where do you want the extra stretchers?’ Alistair asked, and if his voice sounded strained she was going to ignore it. Back to work.

‘In the corridors. We’ll stack them near the entrance so they can be grabbed easily by whoever needs them.’

‘You think it’s going to be big?’ Lizzie asked.

Georgie shrugged. ‘I hope not. We should miss the brunt of it.’

‘But you think—’

‘I think we have to be prepared. Do you need help with the stretchers, Dr Carmichael?’

‘No.’ He looked at her for a long, hard moment. ‘I’m fine by myself.’

He disappeared the way he’d come.

‘He’s sweet on you,’ Lizzie said, and Georgie felt herself change colour.

‘No.’

‘He is.’

‘It’s no matter whether he is or not,’ she snapped. ‘Like you, I always fall for losers. So if he’s falling for me, he’s a loser by definition.’

And then the casualties from the bus came in.

This was no minor accident. The driver was dead. The first grim-faced paramedics told them that, and told them also to expect more deaths and more life-threatening injuries.

It seemed they had a major disaster on their hands before the cyclone even hit.

The first ambulance brought in a woman with multiple fractures and major blood loss and an elderly man who was drifting in and out of consciousness and showed signs of deep shock. Query internal bleeding? X-rays, fast.

X-Ray was in huge demand. Mitchell Caine, their radiologist, was supposedly on holidays, but his locum had been delayed by bad weather. Mitch had been dragged in that morning to assess Megan’s scans, and now he was back again.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said as he worked his way through the queue of patients needing urgent assessment. ‘I’m so tired I’m not dependable. Just double-check any results I give you before you operate. If I say right leg, check I’m not talking about an arm.’

But his X-rays and reports were solid and dependable. Nothing like a code black to make a man forget about holidays.

Hell, this situation was impossible, Alistair thought. One overworked radiologist and no one else for three hundred miles?

‘No one’s going to sue here,’ Georgie told him as they worked on. ‘Everyone does what they have to do.’

Which was why twenty minutes later Alistair, a neurologist, was in Theatre, trying to set a fractured leg well enough to stabilise blood supply to the foot. With Georgie, an obstetrician, backing him up.

There was no time to question what they were doing. They just did it.

With the blood flow established—Alistair had worked swiftly and efficiently and their patient could now wait safely until a full orthopaedic team was available to fix the leg properly—they returned to the receiving ward to more patients.

The second ambulance was there now, and a third, and there was a battered four-wheel-drive pulling in behind it.

There were patients everywhere, some walking wounded, suffering only bruising and lacerations, but others serious.

For all the chaos, the place was working like a well-oiled machine. Maximum efficiency. Minimal panic. Charles had divided his workforce into teams, but the teams were fluid, doctors and nurses moving in and out of teams as an individual needed specific skills.

Every medic in Croc Creek was on duty by now, including a nurse heavily pregnant with twins.

‘Don’t mind my bump,’ she said cheerfully as they worked around her. She was cleaning and stitching lacerations with skill. ‘Yeah, I’m ready to drop but I’ve told them to be sensible and stay aboard until this is over. Just hand me the stuff that can be done sitting down.’

There was more than enough work to hand over.

This was emergency medicine at its worst. Or at its best.

‘You know, if this had happened in my big teaching hospital back in the US, I doubt if we’d do it any better,’ Alistair muttered as they worked through more patients, and Georgie felt it was almost a pat on the back.

For all of them, she said hastily to herself, but it didn’t stop a small glow …

She was carefully fitting a collar to a man who’d been playing it hardy. ‘I’m fine, girl,’ he’d said. He’d come in sitting in the front of one of the cars but now he was white-faced and silent. Georgie had noted him sitting quietly in a corner and had moved in. Pain in the neck and shoulders. Query fracture? Collar and X-rays now, whether he wanted them or not.

There was a flurry of activity at the door and Cal was striding through at the head of a stretcher. ‘Alistair, can we swap duties?’ he called across the room, and Georgie intercepted the silent message that crossed the room with his words.

Uh-oh. Alistair was a neurosurgeon. If Cal wanted him, it’d be bad.

It was.

‘Head injury,’ he said briefly. ‘We had to intubate and stabilise her before bringing her in. Mitch has already run her through X-Ray. His notes and slides are here. Georgie …’ She was near enough for him not to have to call her. ‘Can you assist here?’

‘Mr Crest needs X-rays.’

‘I’ll take that over,’ Charles called. He’d just finished a dressing and he wheeled over to take Georgie’s place. He glanced across at Cal’s patient and saw what they all saw. A laceration to the side of her face. Deeply unconscious. ‘Jill,’ he said to their chief nurse, ‘you work with this one, too. That’s all I can spare. Do your best.’

‘She’ll need you all if she’s to pull through,’ Cal said gravely. ‘The notes are there, guys.’

Jill was already wheeling the trolley swiftly into a side examination cubicle where they could assess the patient in relative privacy. Alistair was working as the trolley moved, while Georgie skimmed through Mitch’s notes.

The woman—young, blonde, casually dressed but neat and smart by the look of it—was limp on the trolley, lying in the unnaturally formal pose that told its own story. Her breathing was the forced, rasping sound of intubation. Such breathing always sounded threatening, Georgie thought as she read. As it should. It meant the patient wasn’t breathing on her own.