“Thank you,” Cameron whispered and scanned the hallway outside the room. “Aimee,” she called to a woman holding the hand of a small boy. Neither appeared injured.
Aimee turned to her. Her dark eyes were wide. Terrified, like everyone else.
“Are you hurt? Do you need help?” Cameron asked.
The woman shook her head. “We were just so scared. I didn’t know what to do, so we came here.”
Warmth spread through Cameron’s chest. In the years since she’d moved to the island, people had worked to build a clinic they felt suited her abilities. From pieces and scraps they’d salvaged from the big island or mainland, they’d constructed a multi-room building where she could see to the health and well-being of her neighbors. But the clinic had become more than just a hospital. The building served as a kind of community center where people gathered for fellowship. Aimee and her son wouldn’t be the only uninjured islanders to come here seeking reassurance. Until further backup arrived, Cameron could use them.
“I need your help.”
Aimee’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t know anything about injuries or—”
“I don’t believe that. You’re a mother of an active little boy. You know injuries.”
The woman looked down at the boy clinging to her thigh and nodded.
“I just need you to help organize,” Cam explained. “Brodie and Ara need my attention, but so might others.” She looked around, spotting cuts and blood, even a bone splitting a forearm. This whole situation was an absolute fucking nightmare. And she was the only doctor.
“Here are some clothes.” Edmund appeared beside Aimee, thrusting a bundle of folded cloth her way.
She thanked him and took the proffered garments. “Edmund, can you help Aimee organize patients?”
The man nodded quickly.
“Assess their injuries. Let me know if there’s anyone I need to see right away. Anyone who only needs cleaned up and bandaged, try to do yourself or find someone else who can. If it’s too much, let me know. Stitches, bone-setting, anything like that, put them in the first open room and I’ll get to them when I can.”
Aimee’s face had gone ashen at the mention of bone-setting.
“Can you do this?” Cameron asked the two people in front of her.
Edmund nodded again. “We have this, Doc. We can do it.” He squeezed Aimee’s shoulder. “You take care of Brodie and Ara. We’ll see to the rest.”
Aimee clenched her jaw, straightened her spine, and nodded.
As Cameron slipped the oversized clothes on top of her swimsuit, her mind raced with the impossibility of giving everyone the help they needed. Still, she’d try. Maybe she could be a Band-Aid long enough for the team of doctors to arrive.
Maybe.
* * *
Ian took the last step off the plane, planting his booted foot on the cracked pavement of the runway. His gaze swung around the small airport. A metal hangar stood to his left with five airplanes under the cover of the tin roof. Each machine appeared just as small and insignificant as the tiny prop plane he and two members of his team had taken from the mainland.
Swinging his pack onto his back, he turned to Wes. “So, how far away’s the clinic?”
His friend gritted his teeth and offered a weak smile. Not good.
“What?”
“This isn’t the island.” Wes inclined his blond head toward a waiting chopper. “We have to heli over.”
“What the hell?” Wes knew he hated choppers. Every time Ian heard those blades rotating, he snapped right back to Bum Fuck Egypt and the hell he’d faced there. Glaring at his soon-to-be-former friend, he gritted out, “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Matt, the newest recruit for their team, came down the steps, a supply crate in his hands. “Do you know what we absolutely need? Not everything’s going to fit on that bird. Not the first time anyway.”
Wes glanced at the helicopter and back to their teammate. “Yeah. We’ll definitely need the x-ray machine, possibly the ultrasound.” He chewed on his lip, his eyes squinting as he ran through supplies and equipment in his head. “The cooler of blood and the bone saw.”
“Whoa. What?” Ian clutched his friend’s shoulder. “The bone saw?”
Wes nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“Fuck,” Ian muttered. He didn’t have Wes’s intel about what they were up against, but if they needed a damn bone saw, the situation couldn’t be good.
They loaded the chopper in silence, moving as quickly as possible. Seven hours had passed since the plane had exploded. The people who’d called for help had waited long enough.
Once they were loaded into the helicopter and rising into the air, Wes turned to Alec Jonson, the liaison for their program. “What are we dealing with?”
Jonson shook his head. “I’ve only got bits and pieces relayed through a third party. There’s a doctor on the island. An American. As soon as the accident occurred, she had someone contact the mainland and ask for a team, but no one has spoken directly to her. From what I understand, she’s worked her ass off today pulling people from the water and trying to save them.”
“Just one doctor?” Matt asked.
Ian shot the rookie a quelling look. Just one? A place like this was lucky to have that. She probably wasn’t even an actual doctor, just someone who knew more than others.
Instead of answering, Jonson barreled on, “So far, I’m gathering there’s two patients with significant injuries. One’s a child. A piece of metal impaled her when the plane exploded. Without x-ray or ultrasound, the doctor didn’t attempt to remove the debris.”
Ian’s stomach churned. A kid?Fuck. He hated working on kids. The pressure to save a life barely lived always weighed heavier.
“The doctor also pulled a man from the water. He was trapped in the boat wreckage.”
“Boat wreckage. I thought there was just the plane?” Matt again.
“Well, when parts of the plane hit the water, it took out at least two boats. One with tourists from the island we just left and a fishing boat belonging to a native of the smaller island. There were minor wounds on some of the tourists, but most were taken to the island just to get them out of the water. A few will need more extensive attention. The fisherman’s in bad shape though. His legs were crushed, keeping him submerged. The doctor thinks at least one leg is unsalvageable. Of course, considering she had to resuscitate him, the legs may be the least of our worries.”
“Son of a bitch,” Wes murmured.
“Yeah,” Jonson agreed. “Dozen’s others have cuts, breaks. The guy on the boat has a pregnant wife. She and their small daughter were in the water with him. I haven’t heard of any complications, but you never know when you have a pregnant woman involved.”