‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Tension pneumothorax?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
The new medics on scene arrived moments later.
‘Want me to get an IV in, Fizz?’ one of the paramedics asked.
‘We’re good for the moment. You’ve got that, haven’t you, Cooper?’
‘Yep.’
It was someone else’s turn to look startled. Fizz gave him a brief nod. ‘Cooper here is an advanced paramedic, Jack,’ she told the new arrival. ‘I was lucky he was here. We nearly didn’t get to save this woman. And right now, I need to decompress her chest and I want to do a finger thoracostomy rather than a needle decompression. Can you draw up some local?’ She looked at the second crew member. ‘Could you get the monitor on, please? I’d like to know what her oxygen and CO2 levels are.’
All four of them were kept very busy for the next fifteen minutes but Fizz was satisfied that it was safe to transport their patient by that point. The chest decompression had dealt with the breathing emergency and both the pulse and breathing rate had dropped to an acceptable level. Blood pressure was coming up and the airway was controlled.
‘Good job.’ She nodded, as the paramedics secured their patient in the basket for the journey up the steep bank. ‘I’ll come with you in the ambulance and get a police officer to get my car back into town.’
There were plenty of fire officers ready to help lift the basket stretcher and pass it up the chain of people on the bank. Fizz shoved things back into her pack and zipped it shut. She could tidy and restock it at the hospital. Cooper was collecting his own kit.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she told him. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘It was a pleasure.’ Cooper smiled at her and, to her surprise, Fizz found her breath actually catching in her throat.
Wow...that was some smile...
‘Yeah...thanks, mate.’ Jack, the paramedic, was slipping the straps of his large pack over his shoulders. ‘You here on holiday or something?’
‘No. I’m actually starting work here tomorrow. At the Aratika Rescue Base?’
‘Oh, wow...choppers?’
‘And the rest.’ Cooper’s shrug was modest. ‘Coastguard work. Police operations. Specialist Emergency Response Team stuff.’
The glance Jack threw over his shoulder, as he went to catch up with the progress of the stretcher, was impressed.
Fizz had to admit she was pretty impressed herself. The members of that team on the rescue base were an elite group of people. She’d love to be an official, full-time member of that team herself but she loved her hospital work too much to give it up. Right now, she had arranged her life to give her the best of both worlds, by devoting her spare time away from ED shifts to the base and she got to work with some amazing people in both arenas.
It looked as if a new and very interesting person had just arrived in one of her worlds.
‘Guess I’ll be seeing you around,’ she told Cooper. ‘I try to be available to help on as many shifts as I can with the base.’
‘Good to know,’ he said. ‘I’ll be able to find out the end of this story. I hope it’s a happy ending.’
‘I specialise in happy endings wherever possible.’ Fizz threw him a grin as she headed towards the bank. The stretcher was more than halfway up already. They would be on the road and heading for the biggest emergency department in the area within a few minutes.
She turned her head once more as she stepped onto the first rung of the ladder that was now secured to the bank.
Cooper wasn’t that far behind her.
‘Hey,’ he called.
‘What?’
‘Just wanted to say that your name suits you. See you around, Fizz.’
She didn’t say anything in response. She didn’t look back again as she climbed to road level and then into the back of the ambulance. It was time to put the big, Scottish paramedic right out of her mind and focus on keeping her patient stable until they reached the hospital and got her to Theatre, if necessary, as quickly as possible to sort out that chest injury.
Fizz knew she would see him around sooner or later.
Hopefully, it would be sooner...
‘IT’S A FANTASTIC LOCATION.’
Cooper was standing in front of the glass wall that made up this central, third-floor office area of the Aratika Rescue Base. He could see the helipad directly below them with people working around two bright yellow aircraft. It looked as if one of the helicopters was being refuelled and someone—presumably a pilot—was walking around the other one, doing a detailed external check.
‘They’re Kawasaki BK117s, yes?’
‘With every bell and whistle you could wish for.’ Aratika’s manager, Don Smith, sounded proud. ‘We’ve got a backup Squirrel in case both the BKs are out at the same time and there’s no way of getting to another job by road or sea, but that’s actually never happened during my time here.’ He rapped his knuckles on the window sill. ‘Touch wood. If I needed saving I’d want it to be a BK showing up. They’re awesome rescue aircraft.’
‘They’re exactly what we used at the base in Scotland. Love working in them.’
‘You’ll be very familiar with the layout, then, which is a bonus. How many years have you got under your belt now? Ten?’
‘Close enough. I got into helicopter work as soon as I could after I graduated as a paramedic. It was always my burning ambition. Ever since I saw a crew at work when I was a teenager, up in a mountain range in Scotland.’
But it hadn’t been the overwhelming relief of seeing the helicopter arrive at that accident scene that had instilled an unwavering determination to be like the members of that crew. It hadn’t even been the astonishingly technical level of care that had been provided for the victim of that horrendous fall that had made him feel like he was in an episode of some high drama medical television series. No...what had stayed with Cooper and made him so determined to be like those heroes had been the way he had been cared for. The absolute compassion in the way they had done their best to support him as he’d dealt with the horror of his brother’s death and the respect they had shown to both himself and to Connor—even after they knew there was nothing more they could do for him.
‘And you’ve added a string of other accomplishments as well.’ Don’s words cut into the memory that had flashed into his mind. ‘I have to say your CV was pretty impressive. Urban and Land Search and Rescue qualifications, with mountain experience. Disaster management. Coastguard training...’
Cooper shrugged modestly. ‘I like to keep busy. And I like the challenge of learning new stuff. Or being in a new environment—and from what I’ve seen of New Zealand so far, it’s got a lot to offer.’
He knew how impressive his CV was but there was a downside to the kind of ambition that had driven him to achieve so much in his career already. It came from a single-minded devotion to that career that had meant there’d been no room for anything else in his life. Here he was in his mid-thirties—all of twenty