Finding His Wife, Finding A Son

CHAPTER TWO

‘MESS’ DIDN’T BEGIN to describe what was beneath them.

From the air Namborra looked what it was, a small, almost-city situated in the middle of endless miles of wheat fields. There was a railway line and station, and a massive cluster of wheat silos. A group of commercial buildings formed the town centre, with a mammoth swimming pool and sports complex to the side. But Luc’s focus was on the largest building of all—a vast, sprawling undercover shopping plaza.

The scene of disaster.

The plane seemed to have skimmed across the rooftop, bringing part of the roof down and then smashing into the sports oval next door. That was some consolation, he thought, but not much. He couldn’t see the plane—what he saw was a smouldering mess.

And the plaza... There was a local fire engine on site, with men and women doing their best to quench a small fire smouldering a third of the way across the smashed roof. There were two police cars.

There were locals, visibly distressed even from where Luc gazed from the chopper, some venturing out onto the collapsed roof, others clustering around people on the ground. Some were simply clutching each other.

They circled first. Gina, the team’s pilot, knew the drill. Even though seconds counted, there was always the need to take an aerial assessment. Calculate risks.

‘Hard hats. Full gear. You know the drill,’ Kev, the burly chief of the SDR fire crew, barked. ‘Anyone going in under that mess, watch yourself.’ He was including Luc in his orders. SDR medics were supposed to stay on the sidelines and treat whoever was brought to them but it often didn’t work that way. In truth firefighters often ended up doing emergency first aid and the medics often ended up digging or abseiling or whatever. No one asked questions—in a crisis everyone did what they had to do.

‘Obey orders and keep your radios close,’ Kev ordered as the chopper landed. ‘Back-up’s on its way but it’ll take time. For now there’s just us. Okay, guys, let’s go.

* * *

Toby was recovering from the initial shock. Blessedly he didn’t seem hurt. One little hand wriggled free, up through the neck of her T-shirt. Tiny fingers touched her neck, reaching up to her cheek. She wiped the grit away as best she could. Toby was making sure it was her.

‘M-Mama...’

There were car alarms sounding all around her, a continuous screaming she couldn’t escape from, but she heard...or maybe she felt him speak. Toby had been calling her Mama for two months now and every time she heard it her heart turned over. Now, in the midst of noise and pain and fear...no, make that noise and pain and terror, it still had the capacity to ground her.

This little person was the centre of her universe and she wasn’t about to let a crushed leg and a shopping centre fallen down around her make her forget that.

‘It’s okay, Toby, love.’ Could he hear above the cacophony? She had to believe he could. Maybe like her, he could feel her voice. She fought to fumble her way into her bag, until her fingers closed on a scrappy, chewed rabbit.

Robert Rabbit was incongruously purple, so garish that even Beth could usually make him out in dim light. She couldn’t make him out now—the darkness was absolute—but she felt his scrappy fur and he gave her inexplicable comfort.

She’d be okay. They’d be okay.

If only her head didn’t feel...fuzzy. If only the noise would stop and the waves of pain would recede.

She pushed them away—the pain and the faintness—and focussed hard on Toby. And Robert. She put the scraggy rabbit into the little hand and tucked both hand and rabbit back down her T-shirt.

There was one blessing in all this. Because she’d been delayed at childcare, one of the women had given Toby warm milk and changed him into his pyjamas. She’d intended to heat spaghetti at home. Toby would have eaten a few ‘worms’ and then he’d have crashed. He didn’t really need the spaghetti, though. He’d had a full day of childcare. It was dark, he was well fed and he was tired. With luck he’d sleep.

‘Heydee, heydee-ho, the great big elephant is so slow...’

The simple child’s song was one she used to settle him in the middle of the night, rocking him, telling him all was well in his world, all was well in her world. She forced herself to croon it now.

The car horns were blaring but he must be able to feel her singing. He was so close. A heartbeat...

‘He swings his trunk from side to side, as he takes the children for a ride...’

Her throat was caked with dust but somehow she managed it. And she managed to rock, just a little, with both hands cradling Toby.

‘Heydee, heydee-ho...’ Oh, it hurt. Dear God... If she fainted. ‘Heydee...’

And blessedly she felt him relax. This had been scary for a few moments but now...maybe it was no worse than being put into his own cot in his own room. He had his mama. He had his rabbit. He was...safe?

If only she could believe that.

Toby snuggled deeper as she held him and tried to take comfort in him. The shards of pain were growing stronger. The faintness was getting closer...

Do not give in.

‘Heydee...’

* * *

He needed his team!

There was a local paramedic team onsite, plus another from a small town twenty minutes’ drive away, but they didn’t have the skills, equipment or know-how to try and go underneath the mess. There seemed to be only one available local doctor. She was working flat out in the nearby hospital. That meant triage and immediate life-saving stuff was up to Luc.

A café at the outer edge of the plaza had collapsed, with a group of senior citizens inside, and that’s where the firefighters centred their early rescue efforts. One dead, two injured. Luc was in there until the café was cleared, crawling under the rubble to set up intravenous IVs and pain relief.

He was filthy. A scrape on his cheek was bleeding but as the last gentleman was pulled from the rubble he was already looking around for what needed doing next.

There were still no-go areas, smouldering fires, a mass of collapsed tiles where the plaza proper started.

Where to start...

‘We’re going into the car park.’ Kev had been supervising the final stages of freeing the senior cits and he was now staring out at the flattened roof of what had been the undercover parking lot. It was a mass of flattened sheets of corrugated iron and the remains of concrete pillars.

‘How the hell did that collapse?’ Luc muttered, awed.

‘Minimal strength pillars,’ Kev commented. ‘Concrete that looks like it’ll last for ever but turns to dust. The plane’s gone in across the top and they’ve come down like dominoes.’

‘Any idea how many under there?’

‘We hope not many.’ At Luc’s look of surprise he shrugged. ‘Tuesday’s not a busy shopping day. It’s too late for after-school shopping, too early for the place to be closing. Most were either in the plaza itself or had gone home. The locals pulled a couple out from the edges but there’s reports of a few missing. Don and Louise Penbroke, mah-jong players extraordinaire, had just left the café when it hit. Bill Mickle, a local greyhound racer. One of the local docs...’

‘A doctor...’ It shouldn’t make a difference. It didn’t, but still...

‘Young woman doctor, works at the clinic,’ Kev told him. ‘Just picked her kid up from childcare. Her driver was supposed to meet her at the entrance—he’s yelling to anyone who’ll listen that she’s trapped under there. So that’s four definites but possibly more. Hell, I wish we could get those car alarms off. To be stuck underneath with that racket...they won’t even hear us if we yell.’

* * *

Her world was spinning in tighter circles where only three things mattered. Taking one breath after another. That was important. Cradling Toby’s small warm body. If he wasn’t here, if she’d dropped him, if she couldn’t feel his deep, even breathing, she’d go mad. And the pain in her leg...

But she would hold on. If she fainted she might drop Toby. He might crawl away. He was her one true thing and for now she was his.

Dear God, help...

Please...

* * *

The firefighters were lifting one piece of iron after another, working with infinite care, taking all the trouble in the world not to stand where people might be lying underneath, not to cause further falls, not to cause dust that might choke anyone trapped.

They found Don and Louise Penbroke first. The third sheet of iron was raised and the elderly couple looked like the pictures Luc had seen of petrified corpses from Pompeii, totally still, totally covered, the only difference being they were covered in concrete dust and not ash.

But as the first guy to reach them touched a debris-coated shoulder there was a ripple of movement. Still clutching each other, the couple managed to sit up. Louise had her face buried in Don’s chest and Don’s face was in Louise’s thick white hair.

Within seconds Luc had their faces cleared. They still clutched each other, their eyes enormous.

‘Th-thank...’ Don tried to speak but Luc put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head. And smiled.

‘You two should thank each other. That’s the best way to survive I’ve seen. What hurts?’

But amazingly little did. They’d been by the ramp leading up to the car park, protected by the concrete sides. They were both shocked but fine.

One happy ending.

A couple of the firies steered them out into the afternoon sunshine where they were greeted with tears and relief.

The firies—and Luc—worked methodically on.

There had to be some way to turn those damned car alarms off, Luc thought. There were fractions of time between the blaring but never enough to call and receive a warning.

At least batteries were starting to fail. The barrage of sound was lessening.

Another sheet came free.

Hell.

This guy hadn’t been so lucky. A sheet of iron had caught him. He’d have bled out almost instantly, Luc thought, and wondered how many others were to be found. They were waiting for proper machinery to search the crumpled part of the plaza itself. How many...?

And then...a cry?

The sound was from their left, heard between car sirens.

Kev demanded instant stillness. The sound had come from at least three sheets of iron across. If they went for it, they risked crushing others who lay between.

They waited for another break in the alarms. Kev ordered his team to spread out to give a better chance of pinpointing location.

‘Call if you can hear us?’ Kev yelled.

‘H-here.’

A woman’s voice. Faint.

A roofing sheet was pulled up, the rubble lifted with care but with urgency. It revealed nothing but crushed concrete. These pillars were rubbish.

Someone’s head would roll for these, Luc thought. They looked as if they’d been built with no more idea of safety standards than garden statuary.

He was heaving rubble too, now. By rights he should be out on the pavement, treating patients as they were brought to him, but with the local doctor working in the nearby hospital he’d decided the urgent need was here. If there was something major the paramedics would call him back.

All his focus was on that voice. That cry.

‘Stop,’ Kev called, and once again he signalled for them to stand back and locate.

And then... The voice called again, fainter.

This area held the worst of the crushed concrete. Sheets of roofing iron had fallen and concrete had crumpled and rolled on top. They were working from the sides of each sheet, determined not to put more weight on the slab.

‘Please...’ The sirens had ceased again for a fraction of a moment and the voice carried upward. She must be able to hear them. She was right...here?

Others had joined them now, hauling concrete away with care. Half a dozen men and women, four in emergency services uniforms, two burly locals, all desperate to help.

‘Reckon it’s the doc.’ One of the locals spoke above the noise. ‘Hell, it’s the doc. We gotta get—’

His words were cut off again by the car alarms, but the urgency only intensified.

And finally the last block of concrete was hauled clear. The sheet of iron was free to be shifted.

Willing hands caught the edges. Kev was there, taking in the risks, assessing to the last.

‘Lift,’ he said at last. ‘Count of three, straight up...’

And the iron was raised and moved aside.

Revealing a woman huddled underneath.

Luc was underneath before the iron was clear. He was stooping, feeling his way in, reaching her. He was lifting a cloth she’d obviously used to protect her face, wiping her face free, clearing her airway. He had a mask on her almost instantly. The initial need was clean air, more important than anything else.

She was matted with grey-white dust. Her eyes were terrified. ‘My...my baby...’

And then she faltered as she stared wildly into his eyes. Even with his mask, even with the dust, she knew him.

‘Luc?’

* * *

He felt as if all the air had been sucked from his body.

Beth!

His wife.

Not his wife. She’d walked away eight years ago. For a while he’d tried to keep in touch but it had been too hard for both of them.

‘Stay safe.’ That had been Beth’s last ask of him. ‘I know you can’t keep out of harm’s way but, oh, Luc, don’t you dare get yourself killed.’

And she’d touched his face one last time, and climbed aboard a train bound for Brisbane.

Stay safe. What a joke, when here she was, trapped by a mass of rubble, so close to death....

The nearest car alarm stopped abruptly. In reality its battery had probably died, but to Luc it felt like the world had stopped. Instinctively his hand came up to adjust his own mask, a habit entrenched by years of crisis training.

His mask was fine. His breathing was okay.

And he wasn’t hallucinating.

Beth...

‘Leg trapped,’ Kev at his side murmured, and just like that, the doctor in Luc stepped in. Thankfully, because the rest of him was floundering like a stickleback out of water.

‘You’re going to be okay,’ he told her, in a voice he could almost be proud of. It was the voice he was trained to use, strong, sure, with a trace of warmth, words to keep panic at bay.

He needed to get the whole picture. He leaned back a little so he could see all of her.

She was slumped against the remains of a pillar. There was a mound under her shirt, and she was cradling it with both hands. A slab of concrete had fallen over her left leg. Her right leg was tucked up, as if she’d tried to haul back at the last minute, but he couldn’t see her left foot.

His gaze went back to her face, noting the terror and the pain, then his gaze moved again to the mound at her chest. A child?

He put a hand on the mound and felt a wash of relief as he registered warmth and deep, even breathing. He slipped a hand under her T-shirt and located one small nose. Clear. Beth had managed to protect the airway.

Beth’s child?

This was sensory overload, but he had to focus on imperatives.

‘Your baby?’ he said, because the fact that a child was breathing didn’t necessarily mean all was well.

‘T-Toby.’

‘Toby,’ he said, and managed a smile. ‘Great name. Beth, was Toby hit? Do you know if he’s been hurt?’ He lifted the mask a little to let her speak.

‘I felt... I felt the fall.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper, muffled by the mask. ‘I crouched. Toby was under me. He seems fine. He’s fallen asleep and I’m... I’m sure it’s natural. It’s been...it’s been a big day at childcare.’

‘Huge,’ he agreed. He was acting on triage imperatives, taking her word for the child’s safety for the moment as he moved his hands down to her leg. The dust was a thick fog the light was having trouble penetrating. He winced as he reached her ankle and could feel no further.

‘It’s...stuck...’ Beth managed.

‘Well diagnosed, Dr Carmichael,’ he said, and she even managed a sort of smile.

‘I’m good.’

‘I suspect you’ve been better. Pain level, one to ten?’

‘S-Six.’

‘Honest?’

‘Nine, then,’ she managed, and then decided to be honest. ‘Okay, ten.’

And she wouldn’t be exaggerating. He looked at the slab constricting her leg and he felt sick. She’d been under here for more than an hour. Maybe two. What sort of long-term damage was being done?

There was no use going down that road. Just do what came next.

‘Relief coming up now,’ he said, loading a syringe. There were workers all around them now, shoring rubble. Kev was making his workplace as secure as he could, but Luc was noticing nothing but Beth. If he couldn’t block out fears for personal safety then he shouldn’t be here. ‘No allergies?’ He should know that. He did but he wasn’t trusting memory. He was trusting nothing.

‘N-no.’

‘What else hurts, Beth?’

‘I... My back...’

She was sitting hard against concrete, as if she’d been slammed there. She had full use of her arms and fingers, he could see it in the way she cradled the bundle on her breast. But what other damage?

First things first.

He should get the child... Toby...away to where he could be examined properly, where he was safe, but for now she was clutching him as if her own life depended on that hold. She was holding by a faint thread, he thought, and he wasn’t messing with that thread.

His priority was to do what he must to keep her safe.

And suddenly he was enveloped by a waft of memory. Ten years ago. He and Beth were newly dating, med students together. She was little, feisty, cute. Messy chestnut curls. Big brown eyes. Okay, maybe cute wasn’t a good enough description. Gorgeous.

He’d asked her out and couldn’t believe it when she’d said yes—and a month later they’d spent a weekend camping.

A week after that she was in hospital with encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus.

The day he most remembered was a week after that. She was still in hospital, fretting about missing her next assignment. He’d brought her in chocolates and flowers—corny but it was all he could think of. He was twenty-two years old, a kid, feeling guilty that she was ill.

But she was recovering. She was laughing at one of his idiotic jokes. Opening the chocolates.

And then, suddenly, she was falling back on her pillows.

‘I can’t... Luc, I feel so dizzy... My eyes...’

It was optical neuritis, a rare but appalling side-effect of encephalitis. It had meant almost instant, total blindness.

For weeks she’d had no sight at all, and his guilt had reached stratospheric proportions.

Beth’s parents were...absent, to say the least. Suddenly Beth seemed solely dependent on him.

The next few weeks had been a nightmare, for her and for him. His carefree existence was finished. He’d dated her because she was gorgeous, vivacious, funny. Now she was his responsibility.

Blind and bereft, with no other options, she’d agreed to come home with him. He’d cared for her, protected her...and loved her? He still wasn’t sure where care ended and love started but her need filled something inside he hadn’t been aware was missing.

Her sight gradually returned, not fully but enough to manage. If she was careful. If she was protected.

And as the months went by their relationship had deepened. She’d lain in his arms and he’d known she felt safe and loved. That felt good enough for him. He’d lost sight of the carefree, bubbly girl he’d dated but in her place he had someone who’d need him for ever.

They’d married. And here she was, half-buried in this mess—with a child who wasn’t his.

Was there a husband? Was someone else doing the protecting?

This wasn’t the time for questions.

He was pushing memory away, years of training putting him on autopilot. Beth was leaning back, her eyes closed as he inserted an IV line.

‘This’ll make you sleepy,’ he told her. ‘Relax into it, sweetheart.’

‘Toby...’

‘You want us to take Toby? Beth, I swear I’ll take care of him.’

‘How do I know you mean that?’ She even managed a smile. ‘Of course you will.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty months.’

‘Is there someone we can call who he’ll trust?’ Someone to sign papers if he had to be treated? Someone like the baby’s father?

She wore no wedding ring. That didn’t mean anything. Did it?

And once again his heart did this stupid lurch. This was Beth. His Beth. He wanted to gather her into his arms, hold her, keep her safe...

Which was exactly why she’d walked away from him eight years ago. Into...this.

‘Margie,’ she managed. ‘At the childcare centre. Toby trusts...’

The childcare centre at the plaza? He was pretty sure it had been safely evacuated, but he couldn’t be sure of every individual. Right now he could only focus on one trapped woman—a woman who was also his wife.

Ex-wife.

But no matter who she was, she was in trouble and she had no need to be worried by anything else.

Her voice was starting to drag and Luc thought the time for Beth to make decisions was over.

‘Right,’ he said, firmly and surely. ‘Let’s get Toby out of here, Beth, so we can concentrate on freeing your leg.’

‘You’ll look after him? If Margie can’t?’ Through the haze of pain and drugs, her voice was still fierce. ‘Luc, swear?’

‘I swear,’ he said, and something inside him hurt. Badly. That she could still ask this of him... That she could still trust him...

He’d wanted this, so much, but to happen here, in this way...

And despite the pain and the fear, Beth must have sensed it. Her hand caught his and held.

‘Luc, I swore I’d never need you again but I need you now. Thank you...’

His throat was so thick he couldn’t speak, and it wasn’t from the dust. He squeezed her hand back and then carefully lifted the sleeping child away from her breast. The little boy snuffled against Luc, recoiling a little as his face hit the repellent fabric of Luc’s high vis jacket, and then relaxing again as Luc hauled a cloth someone handed him around the little boy’s face. Luc tucked it in, giving him a soft place to lay his head as well as protection from the dust.

There were hands willing, wanting to take him, to carry him to safety, and Luc’s priority had to be with Beth. But still he took a moment to hold, to feel the child’s weight in his arms, to feel the steadiness of his breathing, his sleeping, trusting warmth.

He would take care of him. He’d take care of them both.

He must.

* * *

The next hour passed in a blur of medical need. The rest of the team was here now, with Blake in charge. They were panning out through the ruins, removing the need for Luc’s attention to be on anything but Beth. Still trapped, she needed constant monitoring.

She was semiconscious, drugged to the point where pain and her surroundings were a haze.

Finally, moving with infinite caution, aware that a break in the concrete over her leg could mean parts of it would topple and cause more damage, the slab was lifted. Finally Beth was extricated.

She’d been wearing pants and leather boots. That had been a blessing—it had stopped lacerations that might well have been serious enough for her to bleed out. There was no doubt there were fractures, but blood still seemed to be getting through. Luc knew the greatest danger was the fact that the leg had been compressed for so long.

He accompanied the stretcher across the debris to the makeshift receiving tent the team had set up.

‘Status?’ Blake Cooper, ER consultant, had been working on an elderly man as Luc brought Beth in. The sheet drawn up over the man’s face told its own story, as did the slump of Blake’s shoulders.

‘Lacerations, bruises, but priority’s a broken ankle and crushed lower leg,’ Luc told him.