Page 99 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘Poppy’s won a prize at a student art exhibition. Vera and I were making a long weekend of it, treating it as a mini honeymoon. Can’t you get the old man medevacced out?’
Tom closed his eyes. ‘There’s a storm here, Josh. No-one’s lifting off in this weather.’
‘There’s a guy I know works for the Air Ambulance out of Canberra, they service the Snowies. Bill Hooper. He’s a good guy.’
‘It doesn’t matter how ace your flyboy is, Josh. There’s a storm overhead feels like hell’s just upended its dirty laundry over us. Road’s flooded and the gate’s been crushed by a giant oak. There’s branches and debris blowing all over the paddocks. There’s no helicopter getting in here at the moment.’
‘Hell, man.’
‘Yeah. I was thinking you could pick me up some oxygen and tow a horse float as far as the floodwater, then take a horse up the bridle trail to the east of the road. Drink a well-earned beer by the fire, then lose your shirt in a poker game.’
‘You’ve got a stable full of excellent horses up there at the stud. Why don’t you ride down? Get an ambulance to meet you where the tree’s over the road?’
Yeah. That’s what a real man would do. Too bad he wasn’t a real man anymore.
‘Tom? You still there?’
‘I’m here.’ He huffed out a breath. Really, if he couldn’t tell his best mate since primary school, now, in a goddamn emergency that might just kill his father, who could he tell? ‘I can’t ride.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve got an injury.’ He rattled it off like he was giving a report to his commanding officer. ‘Shrapnel, lodged up next to my lumbar vertebrae, between the psoas major and the erector spinae. Certain activities are on the no-go list while the surgeons work out which direction it’s going to travel in. It goes the wrong way, my chances of paraplegia become high.’
‘Tom, my god.’
‘I know.’
‘Tom, we should have been having this conversation over a beer, man. In person. I’m sorry. How long are the surgeons going to leave you wondering?’
‘I’m having weekly check-ups with Dr Novak down in Cooma. But no time frame. No promises. Just this damn waiting.’ He caught his hand wandering to the scar the shrapnel had left as it tore its way through him. Could he put his own future ahead of his father’s if the oxygen ran out?
He couldn’t. He only had one option left.
‘Suppose I find a rider,’ he said. ‘Here’s the question: if the ambulance is on a callout, who do we know who could drive up the mountain with a bottle of oxygen in this weather?’
‘Hannah will do it,’ said Josh.
Tom caught his breath. No, he couldn’t ask it of her, not after everything. Especially not in her beat-up old car.
The sergeant. Meg King had a police cruiser equipped for all-weather mountain terrain and she’d track down an oxygen bottle in a heartbeat. The difficult part would be meeting her at the flooded crossing. What if the shrapnel were to shift mid-ride and sever his spinal column? Meg would be having a long wait in rough conditions for him to crawl his way down a mountain and through a flooded stream.
‘Hannah can ride the bridle trail,’ said Josh when Tom remained silent.
Tom’s heart quickened, just for a second. Long enough to remind him that a broken heart could still hope. ‘No, Josh.’
‘She’s a better rider than me and you’re not going to be a damn fool and risk your back by doing it. Besides, Skipjack’s a hell of a horse.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Sure I do. You need help and there’s a Cody on hand to help you. I’m calling her now.’
The phone went dead in his hand.
CHAPTER
37
‘You have got to be kidding.’
