Hijacked Honeymoon Read online

  ‘She has an ulcer on her leg that needs dressing.’

  ‘Surely you have a district nurse who can do that? Or are you the sole medical provider for the whole district?’

  ‘We have district nurses,’ Abbey said defensively. ‘Three of them. But Marg wants to see me.’

  ‘But not urgently.’

  ‘No,’ Abbey said thoughtfully. ‘But there’s something wrong. Not just the ulcer. She wouldn’t have asked me to come unless she was worried. There’s something troubling her.’

  Ryan sighed. His hands gripped the wheel tightly.

  Good grief! It had been a long flight from New York and he’d worked at full pace right up to the minute he’d left. He’d just had the fright of his life-he’d thought he’d killed her-and now Abbey was suggesting that they go and dress an ulcer that could probably be dressed by the nurse at any time over the next couple of days.

  ‘No,’ he said in a voice that was implacable. Head-of-surgical-team implacable. ‘If you really are a doctor then you know basic triage. Abbey. I have two patients. One has a dislocated knee which may have a fracture running through it, a grazed face, possible injuries I don’t know about yet and possible delayed shock. The other has an ulcer that needs dressing. I’m sorry, Abbey. You win. Or you lose. I’m not sure which it is, but either way you’re going to hospital.’

  They didn’t make it

  Abbey submitted to Ryan’s plans-after all, she had no choice as she was hardly in a position to hike off to Marg Miller’s under her own steam-but halfway down the hill to the hospital a phone rang.

  A mobile phone. Ryan started at the sound and looked at where his phone lay on the seat beside him. It wasn’t his. Then he looked in the rear-vision mirror and found Abbey removing her phone from her belt.

  ‘Dr Wittner.’ Her voice sounded professional and sure.

  She really was a doctor, then.

  But… Had she said Dr Wittner? Ryan frowned as he listened to her speak. His memory hadn’t got her name wrong. Surely she was Abbey Rhodes?

  Now wasn’t the time for questions. Abbey was snapping out her own questions.

  ‘How bad? Still on the beach? OK, send the ambulance and tell them to pull out all stops. No, they don’t have to collect me on the way. I’m in a car now and we’re closer than the ambulance. I’ll tell you why later, but the driver’ll take me straight there. Ring the surf club back and tell them to keep pouring vinegar-as much as they can and just keep it coming. Prepare ICU and make sure the ambulance has anti-venim and oxygen and adrenalin on board.’

  Abbey leaned forward to touch Ryan on the shoulder.

  ‘Ryan, turn around. Now.’

  Ryan slowed and stared.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a child been stung by a box jellyfish down on the south beach. He sounds bad.’

  ‘Abbey…’ Ryan was rendered almost speechless. ‘Abbey, you’ve just been hit by a car. It’s you who’s the patient-remember?’

  ‘No.’ Abbey’s voice was hard and firm. ‘Same rules of triage, Ryan. This is urgent. I don’t have time to be a patient. I’m the only doctor in this place and unless we get there fast this child could die. Now turn around or let me out and I’ll tell the ambulance to pick me up on the way.’

  ‘Abbey…’

  ‘Ryan, surely you remember box jellyfish stings. We’ll be lucky if he makes it. Argue later but just go.’

  The child was on the beach a little way south of the surf lifesaving club. Ryan had spent the three minutes it took to reach there working out just how Abbey would cope. He finally figured she couldn’t. And he couldn’t either. Box jellyfish stings were right outside his realm.

  Box jellyfish-Chironex fleckeri-were lethal. Almost invisible in the water, their tentacles stretched up to five metres in length and clung with sticky tenacity to everything they touched. Their venom was lethal. What had Ryan read? You either got enough venom to kill you or you didn’t. There was no in between.

  Fortunately, the jellyfish were only around in the hottest of the summer months, Ryan remembered, and the popular beaches had stinger nets to keep them at bay. But there were always tourists who preferred to risk swimming outside the nets. That’s what must have happened here, Ryan thought. The beach south of the lifesaving club was just as beautiful as the netted area, and when it was deserted it looked much more enticing.

  And the current treatment of jellyfish stings? Ryan couldn’t think. There wasn’t a lot of call for current treatments where he now worked.

  Ryan glanced back at Abbey. He was driving fast and the roads were bumpy. The morphine was working but only just. She’d started to regain her colour but was now losing it again.

  Ryan’s hands whitened on the steering-wheel, saying a silent prayer that her condition wouldn’t deteriorate. What if she did have a head injury?

  Triage… The box jellyfish victim…

  Over the next hill the surf beach lay before them as a wide ribbon of sand, bordered with coconut palms. Ryan saw the group of people clustered on the shore, decided that the worst thing that could happen was that he could bog the car in the sand-and gunned the car right down to where the child lay.

  The hire-car people would have a fit if they knew, but Ryan didn’t stop until the tyres started spinning in soft sand about three yards from the child.

  They’d beaten the ambulance.

  Ryan’s guess had been right. The child had been swimming in unprotected water. The main beach was two hundred yards further north. This section of beach was deserted, apart from a family group in various stages of hysteria and two lifesavers who must have run from the patrolled beach. They were bent over the child, working hard.

  The lifesavers looked up as the car approached, and there was real relief in their eyes.

  ‘Dr Wittner…’ One of them breathed Abbey’s name as he saw her, and then paused as he registered that Abbey wasn’t driving.

  Ryan was out of the car almost before the car stopped, hauling the back door open so that Abbey could see and then stooping quickly over the child.

  ‘Abbey, don’t try to get out,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t. Just tell me what to do,’ he ordered brusquely, moving as he spoke to check the child’s airway and vital signs.

  The child-a boy of about thirteen-was unconscious and limp. He’d been wearing a brief costume that only covered his hips. His chest and arms and legs were a mass of angry red weals, and there were traces of tentacle still clinging to his skin.

  ‘Vinegar…’ Abbey hauled herself upright on her seat so she could see. Despite Ryan’s orders, she’d be out of the car if she could make her damned leg work. She couldn’t. ‘How much have you used?’ she asked the onlookers. Then, as no one answered, she looked down on the sand to where there were two empty flasks and two full ones. She took a deep breath, pushed her faintness aside and raised her voice to command.

  ‘Get all that vinegar on,’ she ordered. ‘And get the remaining tentacle off.’ She was speaking to everyone within hearing distance. ‘All of you. Get down on your hands and knees and rub every trace of tentacle off his body. There’ll be more venom going in while we watch.’

  ‘You…’ She pointed to a gangly boy of about sixteen. ‘Pour vinegar over everyone’s fingers while they work or you’ll be stung yourselves. You…’ She pointed to the youngest child-a girl of about twelve. ‘Run to the lifesaving club and say you need more vinegar. Scream it. Tell them Dr Wittner says she needs it and she needs it now! There’s a shop behind the club. Go up there and yell it, too. Tell them to bring all they’ve got Ryan, his breathing…’

  ‘Yeah…’ Ryan already knew. The child was half-dead from shock and likely to stop breathing at any minute. ‘Is there antivenom?’ He was trying to remember. Had there been antivenom available when he’d lived here as a boy? He didn’t think so.

  ‘Yes,’ Abbey snapped, and if her painful leg was causing her any problem Ryan couldn’t hear a trace of it in her voice. ‘It’s coming in the ambulance. Just
keep him alive until then. Rod…’ Abbey looked across at the senior lifesaver and then winced as a shaft of pain fiercer than the rest shot up her leg. She shoved away her faintness as irrelevant. ‘Stand by to do mouth-to-mouth if-’

  She didn’t have time to say more. The boy stopped breathing at that moment.

  Ryan swore, shot an urgent look up at Rod and moved to the cardiopulmonary massage position. His hands linked on the boy’s chest and he started thumping down.

  ‘Breathe for him, Rod,’ he ordered harshly, hoping Australian lifesavers still had the training he remembered undergoing himself as a teenager here.

  They did. Rod had a mask at the ready. Standard equipment for a lifesaver at the beach. Now Rod started breathing-two breaths for every fifteen of Ryan’s heart compresses. Ignoring everything else.

  ‘Move! All of you,’ Abbey yelled in a voice that would have woken the dead. It was a voice designed to do just that. Ryan’s eyes widened as he worked. This was an Abbey Ryan had never met before-accustomed to emergencies and accustomed to authority. Any doubts as to her medical training disappeared right then and there.

  The family and onlookers were frozen to immobility in their horror. ‘Do what I said,’ Abbey ordered harshly. ‘Now!’

  They moved.

  That is, everyone moved except Abbey. She had to stay on the back seat of the car, watching as everyone else did her work.

  It was driving her crazy, she thought desperately. She’d never felt so helpless in her life.

  Ryan was good, though. Thank God for Ryan…

  But, then, if he hadn’t been here her leg wouldn’t have been damaged in the first place. At least he was good There was no way she could fault what he was doing now.

  Four minutes… Five… Ryan worked on, hardly pausing for breath, pumping the rhythm on the young boy’s heart while Rod breathed steadily through the mask into the boy’s mouth.

  There was dead silence on the beach.

  The child’s parents and the other lifesaver were working frantically, rubbing off tiny parts of tentacle from legs and arms and around Ryan’s pounding hands, while the older boy kept the affected area awash with vinegar. A small crowd had gathered around, but no one spoke. The parents’ faces were streaked with tears, but no one made a sound.

  They just worked.

  And then there was the sound of the siren. Moments later, the ambulance appeared across the headland and lurched across the beach. It stopped before it reached Ryan’s car, the driver clearly worrying more about being bogged down than Ryan had, and in seconds two ambulance officers were running across the sand toward them.

  They had what Ryan most needed. Oxygen. Adrenalin. And antivenom.

  ‘Give it to Ryan,’ Abbey ordered, pointing at Ryan as the ambulancemen stopped, astounded at the sight of her. ‘Dr Henry. He’s in charge now.’

  And two minutes later the boy started breathing again.

  Despite their success, they still couldn’t relax. The fact that they had the child breathing again meant little yet in terms of whether he lived or died. The boy was still deeply unconscious but, breathing, he had a chance. That was all they knew. Keeping him breathing gave the antivenim time to work. It meant there was time for a miracle.

  He was loaded speedily into the ambulance, and Ryan took charge.

  ‘I’ll go with the ambulance,’ he said crisply, with only a fleeting thought as to what he should be doing right now. Damn, this was his holiday-his honeymoon, for heaven’s sake-but there wasn’t a lot of choice here. He looked across at the lifesavers. ‘Can one of you bring Dr Rhodes in to the hospital? She has a dislocated knee, possible fracture and possible concussion.’ He’d like to take her in the ambulance but if the child stopped breathing again they’d need all the space they had and more.

  ‘Dr Rhodes…?’ The ambulance officers looked blank.

  ‘He means me,’ Abbey said wearily. ‘He’s about twenty years out of date. Go on, Ryan.’ She motioned to her mobile phone. ‘I’ll ring the hospital and tell them to expect you. Give you authority to act… ’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ It was as wry as he was going to get. Ryan didn’t feel wry. He felt railroaded.

  Still, this was no time for hesitation. With a last long look at Abbey, Ryan followed the boy’s mother into the ambulance. And he gave his last order concerning Abbey. ‘Whoever she is,’ he growled at the lifesavers, ‘take good care of her. And bring her in fast.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT TOOK an hour and a half for Abbey to reach the hospital, and by the time she did Ryan was practically going round the twist.

  Not medically.

  Sapphire Cove had a beautiful little hospital, with every piece of modern equipment he could hope for. The nursing staff, forewarned by Abbey via mobile phone, greeted him with efficient courtesy, and there was little more Ryan could have done for his jellyfish victim if he’d been back in New York.

  Less, he thought grimly. There wasn’t a lot of call for jellyfish antivenom on Long Island.

  For the first half-hour after he arrived at the hospital his hands were full. The boy took all of his attention. He stopped breathing twice more. Finally, though, the antivenom took effect, his breathing stabilised and a few moments later his eyes flickered open.

  His mum burst into tears and, as the boy showed signs of recognising everyone and didn’t appear as if he would suffer long-term effects, Ryan felt like doing the same himself. It had been some afternoon.

  So where the hell was Abbey?

  ‘She rang in five minutes ago to check everything was OK,’ the hospital matron volunteered. A slim, competent woman in her early thirties, Ryan could vaguely remember Eileen McLeod as being a bright spark in his class at school. Only now she was Eileen Roderick.

  Like Abbey Rhodes was now Abbey Wittner.

  ‘You told her everything here was OK?’

  ‘Yes. And she’s been delayed. Apparently, they had to dig your car out of the sand.’ Eileen grinned. ‘The tide was coming in and they only just got it free in time. The lifesavers wanted to carry Abbey across to another car, but Abbey wouldn’t hear of it and supervised operations from the back seat.’ She grinned again. ‘That’s our Dr Wittner! Bossy to the core.’

  ‘So where is she now?’ Ryan asked in a voice of foreboding. He put his hand up to run long surgeon’s fingers through his thick brown hair. He was tired to the point of exhaustion. He had to fix Abbey’s leg. And he still had to face his father.

  ‘Rod-the head of the lifesavers-is driving her in, but she wanted to make a house call first.’

  ‘To Mrs Miller, I’ll bet!’ Ryan exploded. He crashed one hand against the door of the nurses’ station, making Eileen jump. ‘For Pete’s sake-the woman’s got a dislocated knee, if not a broken leg. She’s had a thump on the head that’ll give her a headache for a week, if not longer, and she’s haring round the country like there’s nothing wrong.’

  ‘She’s tough, our Abbey,’ Eileen said quietly, and then cast Ryan a doubtful glance. ‘She’s had to be.’

  Ryan didn’t take it up. He didn’t care how tough Abbey was. Twenty-six hours in the air-a car accident-a neardeath-and now…

  ‘She realises I’m waiting to set her leg,’ Ryan said darkly.

  ‘I don’t think she realises anything of the kind.’ Eileen looked at him doubtfully. Eileen was the same age as Ryan and she remembered him from childhood, but she’d always been a bit in awe of Ryan Henry, even when he’d been fifteen.

  Tall and dark, clever and aloof-that was how Eileen remembered him. His strong bone structure, dark skin and good looks, combined with the almost astounding intelligence and sportsmanship he’d displayed at school, had made him stand apart It had only been Abbey who’d refused to be intimidated by his solitary air.

  Ryan Henry…

  Fancy him coming back. Eileen chewed her bottom lip, trying to think how Ryan’s presence could help Abbey. Eileen and Abbey ran this hospital as a tight-knit team, and maybe only Eileen knew just
how hard-pressed Abbey really was.

  But local gossip had it that Ryan was here on his honeymoon. That figured. The wonder of it was that Ryan hadn’t married years ago. Ryan Henry was tall, dark and rangy. Despite his lean frame, he was strongly muscled and obviously used to the outdoors. His brown eyes crinkled in warm understanding.

  His twinkling eyes had even made the boy’s unfortunate parents smile a while back, and Eileen had been astounded. Ryan’s deep brown hair ran backwards in waves that almost made you want to put your hand up to touch it…

  Good grief! Eileen pulled herself up with a start. She was a married lady. What on earth was she thinking of?

  ‘Who does Abbey expect will set her leg, then?’ Ryan was saying savagely, and Eileen hauled her thoughts back to Abbey with a visible effort.

  ‘Oh…’ Eileen sighed. ‘I expect we’ll do it together.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘She and me. Or is that-I and her?’ Eileen frowned. ‘You tell me, Ryan Henry. You were always better at English than me. Than I.’

  Eileen tossed him her cheeky grin again, and Ryan stared. A nurse who threw back schoolday memories wasn’t something he was used to. He expected deference in the hospital where he worked-and he got it.

  But Eileen was smiling and he couldn’t take offence. Anyway, he had to concentrate. What Eileen was saying didn’t make sense.

  ‘Abbey said she stitched her arm herself,’ he said blankly, thinking it through.

  ‘She did,’ Eileen said. ‘Even I was a bit shocked at that one. There was a car smash. Abbey went with the ambulance to the scene and helped get them out. She cut herself badly but didn’t let on. There was so much blood no one noticed some of it was hers. She just wrapped it up, didn’t say a word and kept on working.

  ‘Afterwards, when we were all exhausted-there were two deaths, you know, and they were locals-Abbey just quietly went away and stitched herself up. It was her right arm, too, and she’s right-handed. She didn’t do too bad a job either, though it has scarred.’