Flight to Coorah Creek Read Online Free PDF

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    Jess woke suddenly, her breath coming in shallow gasps as she tried to shake herself free of the nightmare. Her pulse raced and she felt the tears pricking the back of her eyes. The boy had been just sixteen years old. Dead of a drug overdose. There was no way of knowing if the drugs that killed him had ever been on her plane. But for a grieving mother, that was irrelevant. She sat in the courtroom every day, her haunted eyes following every moment of the high profile trial. And when it was over, facing a life without her child, the woman had struck out at the only target within reach. Jess. The prosecutor told her not to take it personally. But how else was she to take it? What was more personal than a dead boy?
    She pounded her fist into the bedclothes in a mixture of anger and pain. Would the ghosts of the past never leave her?
    As her heartbeat slowed, Jess became aware of her surroundings. She lay in an unfamiliar bed, staring up at a fan circling slowly to stir the warm air against her sweat soaked body. Still struggling to regain her grip on the daylight world, she heard a baby cry. It took a second cry for her to realise it wasn’t a child at all. Somewhere not far away, a crow was crying … a long mournful sound that in her mind was somehow associated with loss … and death.
    Not the young drug addict. Another boy. The injured jackaroo.
    Suddenly fully awake, Jess slipped out of bed. She pulled on her jeans and T-shirt as the events of the day before came flooding back with a little too much clarity. She had to find out how the injured boy fared. She had to know that the mad dash from Coorah Creek to this remote outpost hadn’t been in vain. She had to know that this time, she had helped. That this boy would live.
    She walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Almost opposite her, the door to another room stood half open. Through it she could see the foot of a bed and a figure draped in a white sheet. Silently on her bare feet, she entered the other room. The jackaroo was stretched on the bed, a drip attached to one arm. His eyes were closed, but she could hear his slow deep breathing. In a chair beside the bed, his back to her, sat Adam. His head was bowed forward and he was rubbing his neck. She couldn’t see his face, but his weariness surrounded him like a cloak.
    â€˜How is he doing?’ Jess whispered, as she approached the bed.
    Adam looked up at her. His brown eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. Jess realised he must have been sitting with his patient all night.
    â€˜He’s stabilised,’ Adam spoke in a whisper, too. ‘We’ll take him back to Mount Isa today. They can do more for him there.’
    Jess looked down at the boy on the bed. ‘But he will …?’ Jess couldn’t put the thought into words.
    â€˜Yes. He will.’
    Jess felt a profound sense of relief. ‘Thank God.’
    â€˜I’m sure Sister Luke already has.’ The slow smile on his tired face softened the words.
    Silence fell between them as they watched the sleeping boy, and brought with it a strange sense of intimacy. Together they had saved a life. In this moment, Jess felt closer to Adam than she had to any human being for such a very long time.
    â€˜Adam …’ It was the first time she had called him by name. Without really thinking, she reached out to lay a hand gently on his shoulder. Afterwards she wasn’t sure why she had done it. The need to touch him, to make human contact was just so strong.
    Her fingers were like burning embers on his skin. Adam flinched away from her. He felt her snatch her hand back, and that was even more painful than her touch. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault. That the problem was his. But he couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see her face. Instead, he reached for the drip line attached to the boy’s arm. As if it needed checking.
    â€˜I want to get him to the Isa as