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She had to be there.
Had to be sure he was safe…
She looked frantically around the ER—not busy but it could be any moment. She checked her watch. Still an hour before she was off duty. She checked the rosters. Paul was taking over from her and she knew, since his return to full-time work, he was always looking for overtime.
She phoned him, told him what was happening, and although she had no way to explain why she needed to be at the accident, he seemed pleased enough to cover for her.
‘Be there in ten,’ he said, and she blessed the closeness of everything in the small town.
By the time he arrived she’d found out exactly where the landslide had occurred and how to get there.
She raced home and was thankful to see their car was out front. Dad and the kids were probably down at the park. Once inside, she wrote a note explaining where she’d be, changed into jeans and boots, a tough checked shirt, and headed off towards the collapsed road.
She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, because onlookers—and that’s all she’d be—were a nuisance at any accident, to say nothing of what havoc vehicles could cause on an already weakened road.
A police car blocked the road long before she could see anything, except the helicopter hovering above the trees further ahead.
‘You can’t go further, miss,’ the policeman told her.
Emma hesitated for a second, then told her lie—a small lie but a lie nonetheless.
‘I’m a doctor, I was told I might be needed.’
‘You’ll have to walk and it’s a good mile, uphill most of the way.’
As if that mattered. She just had to be there.
She thanked the man, then, sneaking past, off the road now and through the bush above it, she eventually saw the back of Pop’s truck.
But the scene that eventually met her eyes was horrifying.
The cabin of the vehicle hung precariously, tilted downwards, over nothingness. The cattle in the trailer were restless, and getting increasingly so, making the prime mover shake, but it was obvious to Emma that if they were removed, the loss of their weight would send the whole thing plunging into the gully.
As well as police cars and fire service vehicles closer to the accident, she saw a large crane, although that had apparently been stopped from moving closer for fear its weight would make things on the unstable road worse. Men were uncoiling a thick wire from the crane, maybe intending to hook it to the rear of the truck as extra anchoring weight.
But more horrifying than all of it—the dangling truck, the increasingly restless cattle—was the sight of Marty, in his flight suit, half in and half out of the cabin.
Emma crept closer, unable to stop herself, willing the man she loved—yes, okay, that was finally sorted out—to stay safe.
Was Pop wedged in there somehow that it was taking so long to get him out?
A rumble beneath her feet gave warning that time was running out, and the rest of the road was about to follow the earlier slide into the gully. She could hear Marty’s voice but it was too muffled to hear the words, so she stood, hands clasped tightly, lips firmly shut so she didn’t make a noise and distract him.
* * *
Reaching Pop had been no trouble at all. Matt was holding the hover well, and he, Marty, had missed the worst of the tall timber branches on the way down but now Marty couldn’t work out how to extricate his father.
He’d leaned far enough in to release his seatbelt, but the old man—his dearly loved Pop—was only semi-conscious—shock possibly—and could do little to help.
Trapped as he was in the cabin, there was no way Marty could get a strop around him, so it would have to be a manual lift. The problem was, the door was jammed so it meant hauling a solidly built, seventy-something-year-old man through the window.
And a dead weight at that.
If he got a firm hold on Pop, and asked them to unload the cattle, the truck would plunge down the gully, and he could lift Pop free as it fell.
Or, and it was a big or, the combined weight of himself, Pop and the truck could pull the helicopter down with it, crashing it into the trees.
Couldn’t risk it.
He kicked at the door, more in frustration than in hope he might shift it, and to his surprise it flew open, Pop tumbling out.
Dave on the winch must have seen what had happened and dropped Marty lower, so he was able to grab at the only father he’d ever really known and hang on tight, wrapping his arms and his legs around Pop’s unresponsive body.
He signaled to lift, and as they rose said to Pop, ‘If you can, hang onto me, that way we’ll be doubly safe.’
But shock and maybe a head knock when the cabin tilted had the old man out cold.
They rose slowly with the double weight, the wire twisting so Marty thought he caught a glimpse of Emma by the roadside.
