Rescue Heat (10 page)

“No plans to ruin, although Moby might disagree,” said Brigid, momentarily pausing to adjust the straps on her backpack. “He’s being terribly spoilt though by my very accommodating neighbours.”

“I’m much the same. I was staying pretty low key,” Matt said. “Do you think we’ll be back in time for Dave’s BBQ?”

The burly helicopter pilot had invited the entire team to his house.

“Don’t worry. By tomorrow afternoon, we should be drinking beer around Dave’s family patio,” said Brigid.

Matt pulled out his pocket GPS and consulted it. “Not far now.”

“Hopefully the only injuries we’re going to find are confirming the closed fracture,” said Brigid. “Anything like heart problems or head injuries and we’re in for an uncomfortable night.”

They tracked the remaining half kilometre in silence. The humidity in the late afternoon air was gradually making the effort of speech less appealing.

Matt tried not to focus on the heat. Instead, he concentrated on the exotic beauty of the rainforest. It was lushly tropical and amazingly untouched. The tall trees threw off a heavy shade with occasional flecks of intense sunlight decorating the path and surrounding palms. Matt was sure he would be enjoying the walk more if he was not carrying a twenty-five kilo backpack.

Soon they could see flashes of colour that signified the SES team up ahead.

Brigid let out a very Australian sounding ‘coo-eee’.

The yellow uniformed men raised their hands in reply. They were sitting on some rocks, next to a patient, who was lying in what looked like an uncomfortable horizontal position on the bare ground.

Matt could see why the chopper had not even attempted to land here. Trees and branches criss-crossed the sky, making it almost impossible to see the dying sun. A man on a rope would be very hard pressed to make it up or down safely, so Matt really hoped their patient did not look like deteriorating.

“Hi guys, I’m Brigid and this is Matt. We’re the doctor and paramedic from rescue. What’ve you got for us here?”

“We have a fifty-five year old Greg Janowitz here. He’s a tourist from the US. We found him two and a half hours ago and he set off his EPIRB at about 13.00.”

While the SES volunteer was talking, Matt was helping Brigid remove her backpack.

“Hey it’s Ben, isn’t it, from Port?” Brigid said to the man who Matt guessed to be the unit leader. “Well I better take a look before we lose the light.”

When Brigid crouched down next to the older man, Matt started unpacking the supplies they would need to keep the patient comfortable. The SES had obviously used what supplies they had, which seemed mainly to have consisted of a silver space blanket and a backpack shoved under his head.

The pale, shocky look of the middle-aged man indicated he was experiencing high levels of pain. Matt almost winced when he saw Greg’s leg. No matter how many times you see it, a bone displaced under the skin always looks painful enough for you to grit your teeth in sympathy.

“Well I don’t need an X-ray to diagnose this break,” Brigid said. “Greg I’m going to give you the green whistle. So suck on it slowly and it will really help.”

Brigid turned to Matt, “We better give him a few minutes to get some pain relief and then we’ll splint the leg.”

While Brigid prepared the splint and bandages, Matt turned to the three-man SES crew. They were sitting down looking remarkably relaxed. Seeing the scared, frail demeanour of Greg, Matt guessed they were relieved to have the responsibility of the patient off their hands. He quickly learnt the names of all three men, as they figured out what resources they could combine to make their patient comfortable and their own night bearable.

Darkness was falling as Matt and Brigid finished setting Greg’s leg.

The high visibility lanterns threw a vibrant pool of light onto the damp, rocky ground. They had bedded Greg down on the seven feet of flat cleared ground they had found. He was resting now that they had wrapped him in blankets, given him the one camp mattress and dosed him with morphine.

The painkillers had kicked in, so Matt and Brigid had agreed to take shifts monitoring the patient.

“I think I’m used to a drier heat,” said Matt, as he stripped off his long sleeved button up, to reveal his t-shirt.

“At least they aren’t predicting rain,” Brigid said, smiling. “There’s quite possibly nothing more miserable than a night in the rain with not enough tents.”

“Nah, far worse is sleeping out after fighting fires during summer,” said Ben, the SES unit leader. “Miserable is when you’re out between two fire fronts and have to sleep in the paddock in the sweltering heat.”

Matt was surprised to find himself joining in. “Worse than that is lying in the dark in the sand, between two checkpoints, hoping neither the guy with the spotlight nor the guy with the machine gun sees you.”

Instead of a shocked silence following these remarks, the company was macho enough to descend into laughter. They took Matt’s comment as the joking one-upmanship that it was intended to be. This wasn’t a group to be cowed or surprised by military service.

Matt was fascinated at Brigid’s ease as she shared her chocolate stash with the SES crew. Here she was talking to a twenty-year-old mechanic (who had a vivid sleeve of tattoos) and gossiping with a forty-year-old farmer. Matt didn’t know many conventional doctors who would happily converse with emergency services crews, all the while perched on a low, dirty rock.

After finishing their dehydrated meals, the exhausted SES crew set up their swags and retired for the night. As the SES leader Ben had said, “there’s no point in staying up without any booze or even a camp fire.”

A cheerful campfire was something that Matt would have to miss out on, National Park restrictions being what they were.

Brigid was sitting beside the patient on the first watch. Wrapped in a silver blanket, without her cap, she was so lovely he forgot to maintain his distance and went and sat just a metre away.

“So how is he going?” Matt asked, keeping his voice low, so as not to disturb Greg’s rest.

“He’s sleeping for now. He was in so much pain after the fall, that he exhausted himself,” said Brigid.

Brigid pointed to the small folder, where they were keeping Greg’s temporary file. “The splint has relieved the worse of the displacement, but he’s still going to need some pain relief. So it could be a restless night.”

“Don’t worry I won’t fall asleep, I’m used to keeping watch,” Matt said.

“What made you decide to leave the army?” Brigid asked.

Matt had many well-rehearsed, socially acceptable answers that he normally used to reply to that particular question but in the dark of the night, with the rainforest stirring around them, he suddenly wanted to give Brigid a grain of the truth. He could not tell her of the horrors that continued to live inside his head, but he could explain part of it.

“I knew that if I didn’t leave then, I’d never happily go back to real life,” Matt said. “The adrenaline, the trauma and the danger you live with each day is addictive. The work you do is so important, but after a while you realise there is a point where you lose yourself.”

Matt paused. “I was lucky to last a decade.”

“I won’t say I can imagine,” said Brigid. “I’ve worked in a major inner-city emergency room, so I’ve treated knife wounds and other violent injuries, but I’ve never had to face the kind of mass trauma injuries that occur in war zones.”

Brigid took a visible breath, before continuing, “I hope I never will.”

Matt found himself moved by the thoughtfulness of her remarks. So many people had either recoiled from his past, or boldly presumed to completely comprehend it.

He imagined Brigid was herself used to the slight separation that marked people exposed to the darker side of the realities of life.

Brigid watched closely the intensity of the expression on Matt’s face. She had surprised herself by asking him a personal question and was even more surprised by the honesty, she recognised, in his answer.

The soft light they were keeping by the patient highlighted the strength in both his face and body.

His reserve, since their fight, had been both complete and remote. Now, in the informality of the night, some of those walls seemed to be tumbling down. Her own animosity seemed also to have disappeared, in the practice of working together today.

Matt intrigued Brigid too much, for her to allow him to retreat again, so she pressed on with another question.

“Do you have any brothers and sisters?” Brigid asked.

“An older brother. He’s in banking, so I’m definitely the family black sheep,” Matt said.

“Do you talk often?”

“Yes, surprisingly we do,” said Matt. “We were a team; growing up bouncing between two households. So while we might find each other’s world increasingly bewildering, we still like each other.” Matt chuckled quietly, “And if all else fails we can always talk about the basketball season.”

Matt took a muesli bar out of his backpack and offered her a piece. “What about you, any siblings?”

“I’m the only child,” Brigid replied. She thought of leaving her answer there but couldn’t do it after Matt had been so candid with her.

“The problem with being the only child of invested parents is that you have to be the favourite and the black sheep rolled into one. I’m not the surgeon or the elite specialist like my dad wanted me to be. But, of course, I couldn’t help becoming a doctor. It’s definitely a blessing and a curse; loving the family business.”

The smile that Matt gave her was full of warmth and a certain understanding.

“Hey, no nights in the jungle if you’d become a fashion buyer,” he said.

Brigid looked down at the heavy cotton uniform that was by now streaked with mud and felt a low laugh loosen from her chest.

“Fashion icon that I am,” she quipped.

Matt seemed relaxed enough for Brigid to dare ask another question. “Matt, why did you come to Australia instead of going home?”

“Ten years of military living meant home didn’t exactly feel like home anymore. I’m not the twenty-three year old who left and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life pretending the last decade didn’t happen.”

The silence following his answer was palpable between them. The strange intimacy of what they had shared, felt deeply meaningful to Brigid.

Suddenly, Matt stood. He rocked on his heels and for a long moment Brigid felt as if he was going to seize her in his arms. It was only when he turned his gaze away that she realised how desperately she wanted that connection.

“You still right to take the first shift?” Matt asked.

At her nod, he continued. “Well I’ll get what shut eye I can. Wake me up if his condition changes or if you need an extra pair of hands to administer pain relief.”

Brigid smiled, “Thanks but people with a displaced fracture are usually happy enough to keep their arms still enough for me to administer morphine.”

He moved out of her line of sight and she could only too acutely hear the sounds of him settling his body in a position comfortable enough to attempt sleep.

As dawn awoke the rainforest around her, Brigid moved her uncomfortable body. Sleep had been fitful and unsatisfying. The ground was hard and she was only too aware of the man who had been on patient watch.

Last night when it had been time to change shifts, she had only had to touch his arm for Matt to instantly awake. Their changeover had been quiet, conducted with murmured shorthand and sign language.

Now, Brigid could feel every individual bone in her body protest as she uncurled her spine. Even worse, she knew her immediate future only offered a bottle of water, dry muesli and a grumpy and in-pain patient.

Matt must have seen her head pop up, “Please tell me that you will ask Pete if we can have just one thin roll up mattress for ourselves. I’d do it but I don’t want to sound like the new boy who is also a whinging American.”

“I’ll put a word in with Jo,” she said, getting awkwardly to her feet. “She’ll just have to tell Pete that it’s an occupational health and safety issue.”

She looked over at Matt, sitting over their patient and couldn’t help noticing the rough bristles that appeared on his chin. Great, Matt looking even more like a bad boy was not going to help damp down the flaring attraction she’d felt last night.

“How’s Greg doing this morning?” Brigid asked.

“I wouldn’t say he’s peaceful but his obs are stable and he seems to be resting for the moment.”

“Good, because once we start moving, he’s going to be more than a little uncomfortable,” said Brigid.

By six am the whole SES crew was also up. Nothing about their setup encouraged a sleep-in. Matt organized the chopper pick up via satellite phone, as everyone else made short work of packing up their various backpacks.

Brigid went over to Greg and shook his shoulder, bringing him to awareness. “Hey Greg, your day is going to get a whole lot better once we admit you to hospital in a few hours. Until then, I promise you can swear as much as you like.”

“You won’t get an offer like that, from a lady like this, every day of the week,” said a cheeky Matt.

That remark brought a pale smile to Greg’s face. He looked like he appreciated the familiarity of Matt’s accent.

“What happens now?” Greg asked, faintly.

“First, I’m going to strap your leg in a temporary cast,” Brigid said. “The cast will protect it from the worst of the bumps and bruises. Then we’re going to put you on a stretcher and carry you to the nearest intercept point for a helicopter pick up.”

“Bet you’re all grateful that I went on a diet last year,” Greg said.

Greg wasn’t the only one suffering on the walk back to the helicopter landing spot. Hell, at least he had the benefits of morphine. Matt and the SES crew had to carry the stretcher as well as their own backpacks. Brigid thought they would be lucky if, by the end of the trip, she wasn’t treating dislocated shoulders. On top of that, walking two abreast on either side of the stretcher was no picnic. The narrow trail and heavy vegetation meant regular slaps across the face from greenery and wiry branches.