Meredith Webber - Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

Lauren understood her role and moved through the crowd, urging the panicking locals back from the stands, helping injured people across to Jo, telling the others to stay clear, comforting tearful women and shocked men, telling children they’d be safe, just to wait over by the tree and their parents would find them soon.

She was doing okay until she found Bobby Sims, rubbing furiously at tears he obviously felt embarrassed about shedding.

Bobby Sims, easily the most disruptive of all the children who were given temporary shelter at the women’s refuge, crying?

‘I’ve lost Mum,’ he told Lauren, at first shaking off her comforting arm but eventually accepting it, and accepting a hug when she knelt in front of him and folded him in her arms.

He pressed close against her for a moment, then he lifted his head to say, ‘She was right there.’

He pointed to where the jumble of metal scaffolding lay heaped with wood and people.

‘Right near it. Greg was under there and he called out to her and she went and then it all fell down.’

Would Joan Sims have responded to a call from the man she was in the refuge to escape?

Lauren didn’t know. She’d been running the women’s refuge for the three years since it opened, and still couldn’t tell which women would go back to the partners who abused them, and which wouldn’t.

In the meantime, there was Bobby …

‘We’ll find your mum,’ Lauren assured him, ‘but while we’re looking, will you help me?’

Bobby’s startled ‘Me?’ suggested no one had ever asked him for help before.

‘Yes, you. You know most of the kids around here from school. A lot of them will be like you—they’ll have become separated from their parents. Go through the crowd and bring any kids who are lost or crying over near the tree. Once you get them there, they can look at the lights and decorations until their parents turn up to find them.’

Bobby seemed to consider objecting to this plan, then he straightened his shoulders and took off, hopefully to do something useful, not set fire to the Christmas tree or try some other devilment.

Lauren continued to herd people away from the stands, but the cries of pain and distress had her turning back towards the scene, checking, seeing Tom there in the thick of it, clambering over twisted metal to tend the injured.

Could the stand collapse further? Tom wondered about it as he lifted people trapped by the metal struts or wooden planks of seating. And had anyone been caught underneath?

Kids often played under scaffolding …

He sent a plea to the fates that this hadn’t been the case and knelt to reach a man caught between two metal seats, apparently trapped.

‘Can you hear me, mate?’ he asked, leaning further in to press his fingers to the man’s carotid.

The man didn’t respond, but his pulse was strong, and movement of his chest told Tom the trapped man was breathing.

Tom used his hands to search for blood. If it wasn’t pulsing out from any part of the man’s body, then the best thing to do was to leave him so the paramedics could stabilise his spine before they shifted him.

‘Can you give me a hand here?’

Tom glanced around to see Cam higher up in the wreckage, bent over another victim—male again.

‘His legs are trapped,’ Cam explained as Tom clambered cautiously across the tumbled seating.

Tom took one look and was about to tell Cam to leave it for the rescue crew when he saw the blood on the man’s thigh. There was no doubt the man’s femur was broken and his femoral artery damaged. They needed to get him out now .

While Cam supported the man, Tom began, cautiously, to shift debris from around him, trying to get at whatever was pinning the man’s legs and trapping his feet.

A twisted prop lay one way, a wooden seat caught beneath it, and below both some scaffolding that hadn’t moved, holding steadfast to its job, just when they needed it to bend a little.

Tom eased himself into a gap he’d found close by until his feet were on the solid scaffold, then he peered down to see if any unfortunate person had been caught below him and found the area was clear.

‘I’m going to jump on this bit and see if I can shake the twisted part free,’ he told Cam. ‘Hold the bloke in case it all gives way.’

Cam didn’t bother with a caution—they both knew if they didn’t get the fellow out he could die before the jaws-of-life equipment arrived and the safety crew made the scaffolding secure enough for them to do their work. They were governed by all kinds of workplace safety regulations but Tom wasn’t.

He grabbed the twisted bar and held it in his hands, then jumped, both feet rising then thumping back on the solid bar. Nothing happened, although he thought he might have felt a faint give in the bar in his hands.

He jumped again and felt the whole tottering edifice sway to one side then the other—sickeningly!

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, but looking down he’d seen a lot of the scaffolding still holding in the section directly beneath him so he didn’t think bending the piece beneath his feet would do much more damage than had already been done.

‘One more go,’ he said to Cam, moving so he could stand above the bar he needed to move and jump down onto it. Praying he wouldn’t miss as coming down on it could do him a very painful injury.

Putting that wince-causing image out of his head, he jumped and felt the scaffold give, felt the bar in his hand tear away, so the seat was released and they could get at the man.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing up there? Don’t you know there are experts for that kind of thing? Have you got a hero complex, or perhaps a death wish?’

He turned to see Lauren standing far too close to the devastated stands, hands on hips, the fury in her words visible on her face.

‘Lovely Lauren, don’t tell me you’re concerned for my welfare?’

Lauren didn’t need to look around to know that plenty of locals had heard the exchange. She was sure Tom had known that too, and had said it as revenge for her demented ‘date’ ploy and the encyclopaedia reference. She’d kill him! She’d climb up there and do it now if not for the fact that another person up there might endanger him.

Him?

No, she meant the other people still up there. Cam and whoever he and Tom had been tending.

Didn’t she?

She didn’t have a clue, she just knew that seeing Tom up there jumping on the already damaged scaffolding had sent cold chills through her body and clamped a band of steel around her heart.

‘The kids are all gone now.’

The voice, laden with doom although obviously the message was good, made her turn. Bobby Sims was right behind her, fear and apprehension making his usually bright, mischievous face pale and tense.

‘And I still can’t find Mum.’

The way he said it melted Lauren’s heart. For all his exasperating devilry, Bobby was still a little boy who loved his mother and had been with her through her string of abusive boyfriends.

‘You stay with me, we’ll find her,’ she told him. ‘If she’s not around here, maybe we’ll find her at the hospital. I have to go up there to talk to the people waiting to find out about their friends and family. We’ll get something to eat and drink up there as well. The canteen will be open.’

To Lauren’s surprise, she felt a small hand slip into hers, making her very aware that this wasn’t Bobby, the torment of her life, but a little boy who couldn’t find his mum.

She gave the little hand a squeeze, then knelt in front of him.

‘I’ll look after you, whatever happens, Bobby,’ she promised, drawing him into her arms to give him a comforting hug, repeating the promise that she’d take care of him, rocking him slightly as she offered comfort beyond words.