‘You’re OK, mate,’ he told him. ‘Just relax.’

There was no response.

The man was about Joss’s age, he guessed-in his early thirties, maybe? He was dressed in waterproofs but his clothes underneath were neat and almost prim. He wore a white shirt and smart casual trousers-or they had been smart. They were smart no longer.

This was no fisherman.

Of course it wasn’t a fisherman. A fisherman would have known it was crazy to take a boat out on a day like today.

With Joss’s body deflecting the water from his face, the man’s breathing was deeper, his colour returning. Joss took a quick blood pressure and pulse reading-blood pressure ninety, heart rate a hundred and twenty.

Why the low blood pressure? Was he bleeding?

He’d groaned. He must be close to surfacing. What else?

Swiftly Joss ran his hands over his patient’s body, doing a fast physical examination. There seemed little to find on his upper body. He’d copped a blow to his head-there was a haematoma already turning an angry red-purple on his forehead but it didn’t look too bad. The bone structure seemed intact. If there were fractures, they were minor.

His hands moved lower. The guy’s waterproof pants had been ripped and his knee was bleeding sluggishly. He lifted the leg and a gush of blood met his hand from below.

Hell.

With the man’s breathing stable, this was a priority.

Joss grabbed a pressure bandage, pushed it down hard until the bleeding eased and then taped it into position, but the pool under the man’s leg was bright with blood. He must have lost litres.

There was nothing he could do about it here. The waves were still surging over him. He had to get the man back into the dinghy but he was trying to assess if anything else needed urgent attention before he did.

One leg seemed shorter than the other.

Joss frowned and did a visual measurement, but it wasn’t his imagination. He was sure.

The hip was either fractured or dislocated-or both. The blow to the leg must have shoved the femur out of position. Joss flinched again as he saw it.

He had to move fast. Dislocated hips were a time bomb. The muscular capsule, the lining inside the cup holding the major bone to the leg, should provide blood to the ball of the thigh joint. Disrupt that for too long and the head of the femur would begin to die. He had a couple of hours at most.

He couldn’t do anything about it here. He needed help. An orthopaedic surgeon? An anaesthetist?

Amy.

He’d make do with what he could get and Amy was a darned sight better than nothing. He glanced toward the shore and he could see her. She had on a pale blue raincoat and she was staring at him through the spray…

Amy. It was enough to give a man strength to move on to the next thing.

These rocks were sharp! They were stabbing into him as he knelt.

He needed to get them both out of here.

He moved back to the guy’s head. He was breathing in fast, jagged rasps. His eyes were starting to open, confusion and pain making him struggle.

Joss held him still. ‘It’s OK. You’re fine.’

Well, sort of fine. But it seemed a good thing to say, as much to reassure himself as his patient.

And maybe it was the right thing to say. The guy’s eyes opened a bit more, as if the light hurt at first, and then they widened.

‘What…?’

‘You’ve had a spot of an accident,’ Joss told him. A spot. There was an understatement. ‘Your boat hit a rock.’

‘Who…?’

‘I’m Joss Braden. I’m the doctor at Iluka.’

‘I’m Malcolm,’ the guy said. His eyes widened and Joss saw agony behind them before he passed out.

Malcolm?

Amy’s Malcolm?

Maybe he’d been desperate to see his love, Joss thought, but as he looked down at the guy he knew that it didn’t make sense.

He’d passed out from the pain, he thought. His breathing was easier now. It’d be his leg…

If you were measuring pain levels, dislocated thighs would take you off the scale. If he regained consciousness he’d be a basket case.

Once more he checked the guy’s breathing and then he signalled to the teams to bring in the boat.

This was the hardest part of all, but it had to be done now. If Malcolm had been conscious he’d have been screaming in agony. He had to try while the guy was out of it. Waiting wasn’t going to make this easier.

Swiftly he tied a rope, harness fashion, around Malcolm’s chest and shoulders, then attached it to the cable that the teams had manoeuvred above his head. It meant if Malcolm was to fall from the dinghy he’d be swinging head up from the cable until somehow Joss could haul him in again. Joss flinched at the thought of it. Maybe it wasn’t satisfactory-there was an understatement again-but it was the best he could do.

Then he had to drag the inert man into the dinghy-which was probably the hardest thing he’d done in his life. The term dead weight meant something, and Malcolm was just that. A dead weight. Joss slipped a couple of times, crashing into the rocks as he hauled Malcolm into the water. He’d hurt his own leg, he thought grimly, feeling the warmth of his blood dripping down his sodden leg.

But finally he had Malcolm in the bottom of the dinghy, and he was pushing the craft away from the rocks while the guys with the cables pulled him outward.

He was still thinking, his hectic brain in overdrive. Maybe he could signal them to haul the dinghy to the mainland side of the river. That side meant expert help. An ambulance ride to Blairglen and specialist orthopaedic surgeons, who were what this guy needed.

But on that side lay a reach of jagged rocks, both submerged and out of the water. The men on the mainland side were having trouble holding the cable free of the rocks. He didn’t like their chances of getting the boat over them.

On the Iluka side the breakwater rose steeply out of deep water. It was much, much safer.

So…back to his prison?

Back to Amy.

Fine. He held up his hand to signal that he was ready to go, and they started to pull.


It was a nightmarish journey but somehow he did it. With Malcolm crumpled in the base of the dinghy Joss somehow kept the boat stable as the men on the bank hauled him in. Often the breakers surged over the boat. Each time he had to lean over and make sure Malcolm was still breathing. He hadn’t gone to all this trouble to let him drown!

Finally the dinghy was nearing the rock face of the harbour wall. There were men clambering down the rocks. Eager hands were reaching out to hold the boat steady-old hands, but willing.

And Amy.

‘Joss,’ she said as she took his hand and helped haul him up onto the safety of the rocks. She held him for just a fraction of a second too long. A fraction of a second that said she’d been scared out of her wits.

He held her, too-to draw comfort and give it.

Amy. His home…

But she was already turning away to look at the man in the bottom of the dinghy. They were lifting him up the rock wall, using the dinghy as a stretcher, and her eyes widened in stunned amazement as she saw who it was.

‘Malcolm?’

There was no time for questions.

‘I want him back at the nursing home-fast,’ Joss snapped as he helped haul the boat up the rocks. ‘I need to get the hip X-rayed. What’s the story with the helicopter?’

‘The wind’s too fierce to bring the chopper in. The forecast is for it to ease. Maybe in a couple of hours…’

‘That’s too long. Amy, I probably need to operate. Can you…?’

She took a deep breath.

‘Of course I can.’


‘Amy…’ Malcolm was drifting in a pain-induced haze but as they loaded him into the back of Jeff’s police van he seemed to focus. Joss had administered morphine but with that hip the pain would still be fierce.

‘Malcolm.’ Amy took his hand and Joss was aware of a stab of…what? Jealousy? Surely not. He had nothing to be jealous of. This guy was Amy’s fiancé. He had every right to hold her hand. Even if he had the brain of a smallish newt.

‘What on earth were you doing out in the speedboat?’ Amy asked.

And Joss thought, Maybe she’s thinking the same thing. Brain of a newt. The thought gave him perverse satisfaction.

Malcolm was struggling to speak. ‘Wanted to see…’ he whispered, and closed his eyes.

‘I’m here.’ She stroked back the wet strands of his blond hair. The man was seriously good-looking, Joss decided-not entirely dispassionately.

He ought to be. If Amy loved him.

‘Hush,’ she was saying. ‘Just relax. We’ve given you something to help the pain.’

‘My leg…’

‘It’ll be fine. Don’t try and fight it. Close your eyes and see if you can sleep.’

Malcolm seemed to think about that for a while as Jeff eased the van onto the main road. Then his eyes widened and he stirred, fighting the fog of pain and morphine and shock.

‘I crashed my boat.’

‘Mmm.’ Amy was still holding him.

‘What…what are you doing here?’

‘You’re in Iluka,’ she told him. ‘You tried to bring the boat into the harbour. Can you remember?’

He frowned in concentration. ‘I wanted… I wanted to see…’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Amy told him, wiping a trace of blood from his forehead. ‘You’ve hurt your leg and we need to fix it. Just lie back and relax and we’ll get you to sleep.’


Moving back into medical mode was a relief. Joss was more confused than he cared to admit. It must have been the danger of the whole thing, he decided, but he was having trouble concentrating on what needed to be done. It was a relief to pull up at the hospital.

No. It wasn’t a hospital. It was a nursing home, he reminded himself, but the way it was going they’d need to apply for twenty beds of acute care. Maternity, orthopaedics, kids’ ward-take your pick.