Always The Hero. Alison Roberts
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be scared stiff, he thought. She’d never been into the adrenaline rush of facing danger. She was the total opposite of someone like Fizz. Unlike any of the women he’d ever been attracted to or involved with—before or after Abby, in fact—and maybe that had been the attraction in the first place. It had also been the reason it could never have worked long-term. He needed to remind himself of that. Had to fight an undercurrent happening here that he didn’t even want to try and identify.
And Abby was not only facing potential personal danger here. This was her home now and people she knew well could be amongst the dead and injured. And her child was missing? Yet here she was, totally focused on what had to be done. Heading further into danger?
Tom felt a strong impulse to send her back up the hill when he and Frank had been delivered to where they needed to go. To keep her safe.
Except they needed all the medical assistance they could get. The whereabouts of the only other medics on the island were unknown. Sure, the volunteer fire brigade or civil defence guys here would be trained in first aid but he’d seen Abby in action in an emergency department. He knew she would be as capable as he was of getting an IV line in under difficult circumstances. Assessing someone’s injuries. Intubating them if necessary. She was more than capable. Abby was gifted. Working as a GP’s nurse on a remote island must be sadly underutilising her skills.
If hitting another bump wasn’t enough to bring his train of thought instantly back to his present surroundings, entering the main street of the village certainly was.
‘Oh … my God,’ Abby breathed. She slowed the vehicle, looking stunned as she took in the scene.
It must have been a very picturesque shopping centre with its old, heritage brick and stone buildings preserved and restored to enhance it as a tourist destination but they were always the type of buildings that came off worst in an earthquake. Shop facades and chimneys had toppled. Walls had crumbled, leaving skeletons of wooden framing and rooms exposed like an open doll’s house.
A car was buried under a crushing mound of bricks, with only the front wheels and bumper clearly visible.
‘Hope there wasn’t anybody inside,’ Frank said quietly.
A few metres on there was another mound of bricks and timber. There were several men here, frantically pulling at chunks of rubble. They flagged down the Jeep.
‘We need help. There’s someone under here.’
‘Are they calling?’ Tom asked.
The man shook his head, his face twisted with distress. ‘We can see her foot.’
Tom took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, mate, but there’s no chance she’ll be alive under there.’
‘I know …’ The man dragged in a ragged gulp of air. ‘But we’ve got to try.’
‘You need to keep yourselves safe.’ Tom pointed upwards. ‘Another aftershock could bring that lot down. Who directed you to dig here?’
He shook his head. ‘We just arrived.’
‘Follow us to the information centre. We’re going to get a plan in place for a systematic search and rescue effort. We’ll need all the help we can get.’
He turned to Abby, who was staring in horror at the gap the men were opening up in the pile of rubble. Could she see the part of the woman’s body being exposed? Was it someone she knew?
He wanted to reach out. To touch her arm and offer encouragement. Strength. Or comfort, maybe. But he would be crossing a boundary to do that. The same boundary that made it inappropriate to want to send her back to the hospital to protect her. They were no longer in any kind of relationship. Quite the opposite, and Abby would not want to reach out in any way. The boundary was an almost palpable thing. Like a glass bubble encasing Abby.
‘Drive on, Abby,’ Tom said quietly. ‘We can’t stop.’
This was far, far worse than Abby had anticipated, but it felt so unreal she knew she wasn’t going to fall apart. It was like being transported onto the set of a disaster movie and she was merely a character waiting to play her part depending on the instructions of the director.
Feeling as though she was on autopilot, she kept the vehicle going until they reached the other end of the main street. The wharf end, where the ferries berthed. She could see a police car among all the vehicles parked outside the information centre, a modern hexagonal structure that was central enough to make it an excellent choice as an operational hub.
The men who were currently the directors looked as though they were up against it.
The island had three police officers and Mike Henley was the most senior. The biggest ‘incident’, as Tom would call it, that Mike had had to deal with in recent years had been a private yacht that had gone aground in rough weather on Elephant Rocks, which were far enough offshore to have made the rescue fairly dramatic.
Mike’s best mate was Don Johnson, who was the chief fire officer for Kaimotu Island. He was also in charge of civil defence and the coastguard and, in fact, he’d been the one who’d dealt with the Elephant Rocks incident very competently.
Both men had come past the hospital on the way into the town’s centre as soon as this emergency had struck and they’d taken the time to check, as best they could, that the building that would be required for providing medical aid was safe to be inside. When the two men saw Abby come into the information centre with Tom and Frank, their relief was obvious. Expert help had started to arrive, at last.
And Abby was proud to introduce him to Tom. If anyone had asked her who she would want to turn up if she was ever in a dangerous situation and needed her life saved, Tom Kendrick would be at the very top of her list.
Even after they’d broken up.
Maybe even more so, because she knew that Tom still wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to save her, even if it meant he was putting his own life at risk. And it wasn’t because he was stupid and a cowboy, as some had accused him of being. Or that he had some kind of death wish. He could calculate those risks perfectly well. He was just prepared to push the boundaries further than most.
Abby was a born worrier. She could conjure up imaginary disasters with no effort whatsoever. The habit was as ingrained as the way she tied shoelaces or slept with her head cradled in the crook of her elbow.
What would Tom think if he knew about some of the fantasy situations she’d come up with over the years? The ones that always ended with his appearance to make everything okay? The ones where he saved her and held her in his arms afterwards as if she was the most precious thing on earth? Or the ones where he saved Jack and recognised his own son?
Oh … help …
This was no fantasy. Abby stood quietly to one side as the group of men taking control of this rescue operation made swift plans. The wall behind them was covered with the kind of brochures the tourists were looking for the moment they arrived on Kaimotu Island. Invitations to charter a fishing vessel or go scuba diving. Pictures of people happily abseiling, mountain biking or taking a vineyard tour. The kind of activities Kaimotu was famous for and which now seemed no more than fantasies themselves.
A map of the township was on a table and grids had been drawn on it. There were cans of spray paint in a box on the floor. They were going to be assigned areas and would spray information on the walls about what they found. Whether there were people trapped. Or needing urgent attention for their injuries. Or dead. If they came across serious injuries, they could only take the time for an initial stabilisation and then summon backup for transportation to the hospital. They had to keep moving as fast as possible.
There was no way Tom’s presence was going to be enough to make everything okay here, either. It was going to take a lot of people and a lot of time. They were facing a gruelling night of probably grim and possibly dangerous work.
There was also absolutely no chance of Tom taking her in his arms and holding her, and that was a good thing. She was over him. She’d spent