“Where did you get that from?” he asked.
“Paediatric ward. I noticed a box of clothes when I got the supplies we needed yesterday for the caesarean.”
“You know you won’t be jumping down into any collapsed buildings with that baby?”
“I’ve already thought of that.” Frankie answered, getting into the front of the vehicle. “If I need to do any rescuing, I’ll pass the baby over to you.”
She grinned and his heart skipped a beat. Her hand lay protectively against the baby’s small back as she adjusted the cap with her other hand. He was certain the media back home would go insane for a picture of Francesca Hamilton caring for a newborn baby as though it was second nature to her.
Jumping into the back of the jeep, he called to Henry to drive on. Only a few scant days before, he hadn’t believed she would cope with watching an operation. Now she was attending rescues with a baby swaddled across her chest.
She constantly surprised him. And, despite himself, he couldn’t wait to see what she would do next.
Moments later, Henry pulled the jeep to an abrupt halt. Lucas jumped out and rushed to see what had caused Henry to stamp on the brakes.
Before them an empty chasm snaked across the road like a deep, black river.
Lucas swore. This was the only road that led from the hospital to the main town. They were completely cut off. But, far worse, new casualties were also prevented from reaching the hospital. A steady line of people was approaching the other side, obviously hoping to get to the hospital.
“We need planks of wood.” Frankie said, coming up behind him. “Is there anything like that left on the island? Long planks of wood we can lay over the gap so we can at least walk people over.”
Lucas shook his head. He had no idea. Though, if he ever had his own charity, he’d know the answer. He’d know exactly what had been brought to the disaster zone, where it was, and how to utilise it. There wouldn’t be boxes and boxes of food standing in piles completely unused because they didn’t need more food; they needed facilities to cook the rice, medical supplies, and shelters that wouldn’t blow down the second the ocean breeze hit their flimsy tent poles.
“It could definitely work.”
“I wasn’t disagreeing with you.” Lucas held back a sigh. Now wasn’t the time to wish for things they didn’t have, it was time to surge forwards with what they did have and make a difference now. “Sometimes the sheer scale of what we need to do is overwhelming, you know?”
Frankie laid a hand across his arm. “I do know. And we’re doing everything we can to make a difference.”
He wanted to bury his face in her hair, kiss her mouth, and forget what was in front of him. Lose himself in her. But that wouldn’t solve a thing. All it would do was complicate an already difficult situation. And she’d already shown him that when she opened her eyes and remembered who she was touching, she jumped away as though his skin was radioactive.
“Okay, about this wood idea? You’ve done that before?” There was no way he could keep the surprise from his voice. She certainly wasn’t the type he could imagine hefting around wood and building bridges.
“It was a team-building exercise back during my nurse training. Not on this type of scale, of course, but we managed to ford a stream and get to the other side. I think that would work here.”
“Island’s full of wood and other materials from collapsed houses.” Henry commented. “I’ll go back to the hospital and round up every volunteer I can find and get as much in the jeep as we can.”
As soon as he’d finished speaking, he was gone, the jeep kicking up a cloud of smoke as Henry gunned the engine back up the slight incline to the hospital. Safe from flooding but not from other natural disasters.
Lucas called out to those on the other side of the chasm and told them their plan. “You know, what we could use is rubble. If we throw as many rocks, bricks, whatever into the hole, it’ll make it easier to situate the wood when we get it.”
Within minutes, every able-bodied person on the other side had begun filling the deep hole at its narrowest point. While his hopes soared as a way of getting across to the injured became more likely, his heart fell as he thought of the delay that many wouldn’t be able to live through.
Henry arrived back, his jeep laden with wood.
“Where did you get all that from so quickly?” Lucas marvelled at the other man’s efforts.
“We tore up the pier down by the beach.”
Lucas’s eyes met Frankie’s and he knew she was remembering their late night swim, which only brought his mind back to the night before and what they’d been doing right before she rejected him. His mouth felt extraordinarily dry and he could almost feel her hands on him again.