The Recovery Assignment Page 6

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Jones?’

  Charlotte caught the ironic glance she received from Hawk. The message was crystal clear. Of course he wasn’t all right. He’d just been told his only daughter was dead. Charlotte ignored the look and crouched beside the armchair. It was an automatic gesture to pick up the man’s wrist and feel for a pulse.

  ‘He’s got a bad heart.’ Mrs Jones latched onto the potential distraction. ‘He had triple bypass surgery only last year.’ She clutched at her husband’s other hand. ‘Stan? Are you all right, love?’

  ‘Do you have any chest pain at the moment?’ Charlotte didn’t like the erratic rhythm her fingers detected. Frequent missed beats could herald a medical emergency.

  Stan Jones nodded slowly. His eyes were closed and tears trickled down to join the perspiration on his face. His colour was awful and Charlotte noted the increasing effort he was making to draw breath. She glanced up at Hawk.

  ‘Could you get my kit from the car, please, Hawk?’ Her query was calm but Hawk’s nod showed his instant comprehension of the actual message her gaze was delivering. ‘Perhaps you could call for an ambulance as well.’

  Mrs Jones gaped. ‘Oh…dear! Do you think it’s that bad?’

  ‘Let’s just be on the safe side.’

  Charlotte’s words to Mrs Jones had been reassuring but Hawk moved rapidly. He called through to the control centre on the squad car radio.

  ‘Can we have an ambulance to this address?’

  ‘Nature of call?’

  ‘There’s a paramedic with the man and she thinks he needs one. He could be having a heart attack, I guess.’

  ‘Is it urgent?’

  Hawk remembered the alarm he had detected in the depths of Charlotte’s quick glance despite the calm tone of her voice. ‘Yes,’ he said decisively. ‘It’s urgent.’

  Pulling the bulky kit from the back of the car, Hawk hoped his assessment had been correct. Walking back into the living room of the Joneses’ house, he wished he had been wrong.

  Stan was slumped forward. Charlotte had her arms under his shoulders and was pulling him from the chair.

  ‘Help me get him onto the floor, Hawk.’

  Mrs Jones was in the way. Hawk put a hand on each of her shoulders and moved her firmly but gently to one side. She resisted.

  ‘Stan! Stan, what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Jones,’ Hawk said. ‘Charlie here is a paramedic. She’ll know how to help Stan.’ Hoping like hell this statement was correct, Hawk moved even more swiftly, picking up Stan’s legs and helping Charlotte place him face up on the incongruously cheerful floral carpet.

  Charlotte checked his mouth briefly, then tilted his head back. She put one ear close to his mouth and nose, one hand resting on his diaphragm. ‘He’s not breathing,’ she told Hawk quietly. ‘Can you open my kit, please, Hawk? You’ll find a mask with a soft bag that looks like a rugby ball attached to it.’

  She had her hand on Stan’s neck now, feeling for a carotid pulse. Hawk saw the imperceptible shake of her head and the way her lips set into a determined line. He didn’t mind that she was describing her equipment in terms a three-year-old might understand. This was serious and he was way out of his comfort zone.

  Charlotte took the ambubag from Hawk, held the mask firmly on Stan’s face and pressed the bag. His chest rose and fell. She gave him another breath and glanced up at Hawk. ‘Do you know how to do chest compressions?’

  ‘Kind of.’ Hawk’s mouth felt suddenly dry. ‘I did a first-aid course.’ The thought of doing it for real was terrifying. No wonder the bystander at that first crash they had attended together had looked so shaken. Somebody’s life might depend on his input here. ‘It’s a few years ago, though.’

  ‘Look.’ Charlotte was using some heavy-duty scissors to cut Stan’s clothing. A woollen jersey, plaid shirt and a singlet separated to reveal his chest. ‘Here’s the bottom rib.’ She ran her fingers up the prominent curve on the skinny chest. ‘Go to the sternal notch in the middle here and then measure two finger widths up. Place the heel of your other hand at that point, then lace the fingers of both hands together. Like this.’

  The demonstration was as swift and smooth as her speech. ‘Straighten your arms and lean forward. You need to press hard enough to reach a depth of three to five centimetres and it needs to be this fast.’ The compressions were far more rapid than Hawk would have thought necessary.

  ‘Count…silently,’ Charlotte advised Hawk as she moved aside, indicating her expectation that he would take over. ‘Every fifteen compressions, pause, and I’ll get a couple of breaths into him.’

  Hawk knelt beside Charlotte, his thigh pressing against hers for a few moments as she watched to make sure he remembered her directions. He didn’t notice the tiny shake in his hand as he traced the line of the bottom rib and positioned his hands. He started compressions, taken aback by how different a human felt to the plastic dummy he vaguely remembered from the first-aid course. He concentrated hard.

  ‘Good. You’re doing well, Hawk. Don’t forget to count.’ Charlotte was pulling equipment from her kit. She attached a small oxygen cylinder to the bag mask for the next two breaths she gave Stan, but the next time Hawk paused she was ready for a more complicated manoeuvre. She had a silver instrument in her hand and a tube lying on top of its opened sterile packaging beside her.

  ‘I’ll get you to press on Stan’s Adam’s apple for a second here, Hawk.’ Charlotte had levered Stan’s mouth open with the blade of the laryngoscope and was peering in as she inserted the tube. ‘It helps me visualise the vocal cords and get this endotracheal tube positioned correctly.’

  It took only seconds to complete the intubation and Hawk had to trace Stan’s ribs again to find his hand position and restart the compressions. Charlotte had attached the bag mask and oxygen to the tube protecting Stan’s airway by the time he was due for another two breaths and then her hands were into the kit again, pulling IV gear out.

  ‘Where’s your defibrillator?’ Hawk was pleased he’d remembered the name of the life-saving cardiac equipment. This man’s heart had stopped and it was clearly what they needed right now.

  ‘I don’t carry one. We’ll have to keep up the CPR until we get back-up.’

  Hawk bent to his task again but a sense of hopelessness was creeping in. She had a miniature oxygen cylinder in her pack. Surely it was big enough to hold a small version of a defibrillator? The physical effort involved was making itself apparent now as well. This was hard work and they were some distance from the city. How long would it take for an ambulance to arrive? Trying to reassess the depth of his compressions, Hawk pressed a little harder on Stan’s chest. To his horror he felt something crunching under the heel of his hand. His gaze flew up to meet Charlotte’s. She continued attaching the tourniquet to Stan’s arm but her brief glance was reassuring.

  ‘It was just a rib,’ she murmured. ‘It happens. You’re doing just fine, Hawk.’

  And suddenly Hawk didn’t feel tired or hopeless any more. He was proud of what he was doing to help and he was proud to be with Charlotte who clearly knew what she was doing. Having inserted an IV line into Stan’s arm, she then startled Hawk by turning to speak to Mrs Jones. He’d been focussed enough to forget he wasn’t alone with Charlotte and their patient. He glanced up to see Stan’s wife perched on the arm of her husband’s chair, her hands clasped and pressed against her mouth, her eyes wide and terrified.

  ‘We’re doing all we can to help Stan,’ Charlotte told her quietly.

  ‘Wh-what’s happening?’

  ‘His heart has stopped. What we’re doing is helping him breathe and keeping his circulation going until some more help arrives.’

  ‘Is…is he going to be all right?’

  ‘He’s very sick,’ Charlotte said carefully. ‘But we’re not going to give up just yet. Can you go and make sure the front door is open? The ambulance shouldn’t be too far away now.’

  It was fu
rther away than Hawk would have wished. The contact with Mrs Jones had reminded him of why they were in this situation in the first place. This woman had just been informed that she had lost her daughter. And now her husband was possibly dying right in front of her. The relief that the arrival of the ambulance crew and all their gear engendered was almost enough to make Hawk feel light-headed. He moved aside as an ambulance officer took over compressions and another slapped electrodes and gel pads to Stan’s chest.

  ‘Extensive cardiac history,’ Charlotte told the paramedic in charge of the crew. ‘Sudden collapse after being informed of the death of his daughter in an MVA.’

  The paramedic swore under his breath and shook his head, but his gaze was fixed on the screen of the life pack. He caught Charlotte’s gaze. ‘What do you reckon?’ he queried. ‘Fine VF?’

  Charlotte’s expression was grim. ‘Barely more than asystole.’

  ‘Worth a shot?’

  Charlotte nodded. She rocked back on her heels as the paramedic called for a clear space. Hawk stepped further back as he watched the convulsive jerk.

  ‘It’s asystole now.’

  ‘Let’s get some adrenaline on board.’

  ‘Sure. Oh, great—you’ve already got an IV in.’

  Hawk looked away from the rapid actions of the paramedics as they continued CPR and started drawing up and administering drugs. His gaze found Mrs Jones, back in her position by the armchair but looking as though she herself might fall over any second. Hawk moved. At least there was something useful he could still do. He put his arm around the older woman and encouraged her to turn away.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said gently. ‘I think we should give the experts a bit of space for a minute.’ He led Mrs Jones towards the kitchen. ‘They’re doing everything they can for Stan.’

  ‘But that’s a police officer,’ Mrs Jones said anxiously. ‘How does she know what to do?’

  ‘She’s a rather special police officer,’ Hawk heard himself say. He hoped the emergency personnel behind them were too preoccupied to overhear his reassuring statement. ‘She’s a paramedic as well.’

  If Charlotte had overheard the remark she gave no indication of it and any new appreciation Hawk might have for her diverse talents were buried over the next few days by the heavy workload the team was under. The victory Charlotte felt in finally persuading Hawk to take the time to accompany her to the Joneses’ funeral service was dampened by his obvious discomfort in being there. He was still looking less than happy when they had left as soon as could be considered courteous.

  ‘We shouldn’t have gone. It was an intrusion.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Charlotte felt the gears change as she accelerated in their departure from the funeral home car park. ‘It’s not as if we’re going to the graveside ceremony. We were simply paying our respects to the family of a case we’re involved in.’

  She glanced at Hawk’s profile after a minute’s silence. ‘I know how you feel,’ she offered. ‘I used to feel the same way but Jamie persuaded me. He always attended the funerals associated with his cases and he convinced me that the benefits outweighed the less pleasant aspects.’

  The grunt Hawk made suggested he was not likely to be easily swayed. ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘He reckoned it gave a more personal connection to a case.’

  ‘That’s not something I would consider a good thing. If we get too involved, we can’t do our jobs properly.’

  ‘More open communication with other people involved, like relatives and friends, can be a good thing, though. Besides, you can’t argue that it doesn’t give a more human element to our job.’ Charlotte expelled her breath in a huff that could have signified mirth. ‘On second thoughts, I’d guess that you could argue about anything. So feel free, Hawk. Tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree or something.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Hawk said pleasantly. ‘Far be it from me to contradict any wisdom you inherited from Jamie.’

  Silence fell again in the car and Charlotte gritted her teeth. OK, maybe she did mention Jamie quite often but Hawk was just being immature if he let it get up his nose. It was tit for tat, anyway. He talked about Cam just as often. And Charlotte couldn’t help making comparisons. That disturbing level of awareness she had of Hawk, both physically and professionally, had made her inward comparisons an almost automatic habit by now. And three weeks of close professional contact with Owen Hawkins had highlighted huge differences between the two men. The example of Hawk’s reaction to attending the funeral had been another biggie.

  Jamie wouldn’t have thought of doing otherwise but then, he had been a people person. Enormously popular, he’d been able to establish an instant and lasting bond with virtually everyone he’d met. He had been laid back to the point where simply his presence had lightened an atmosphere and generated good humour and laughter.

  So much laughter. Charlotte had fallen in love with him because of the way he’d always been able to make her laugh, no matter how bad she’d been feeling. If it had been Jamie sitting beside her in the car now, he would probably have found something to make her laugh even in the wake of attending the tragic double funeral of the whole of Eileen Jones’s immediate family. She stole another sideways glance at Hawk. Almost an accusatory glare that he couldn’t be more like Jamie.

  Her passenger was massaging his forehead between the thumb and fingers of one hand and Charlotte’s resentment faded.

  ‘Have you got a headache?’

  ‘No.’

  They lapsed into yet another silence as Charlotte tried to concentrate on the route she was taking. She had to stop comparing Hawk to Jamie. It wasn’t fair on Hawk and it wasn’t helping her to settle into this new job. There was no comparison anyway. The two men were simply too different. The thought of describing Hawk as laid back would make Laura hoot with laughter and Charlotte would concur. There was an intensity about Owen Hawkins that made him capable of generating tension without even trying.

  And Charlotte could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d seen him really smile. Aloof, that was the word for it. She didn’t believe it was because he didn’t have a sense of humour or that he lacked compassion. He was probably just very careful about who he let close enough to share it.

  It was Hawk that broke this silence. ‘Bit rough, wasn’t it?’ he said quietly. ‘She’s lost her whole family.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Maybe he wasn’t so aloof at the moment. That head-rubbing gesture might have signified an emotional reaction deeper than Charlotte had credited. Or maybe he had decided to let Charlotte a little closer. The amount of pleasure the thought gave was not warranted, however, and it wasn’t welcome. Charlotte flicked on her indicator and checked her rear-view mirror, effectively excusing any further comment. She did not crave Owen Hawkins’s acceptance on anything more than a professional level.

  ‘At least that truck driver didn’t turn up. He said he was going to, didn’t he?’

  ‘He was very upset at the time.’ Charlotte began to slow the car as she checked house numbers on letterboxes. ‘I scheduled this interview so he wouldn’t have the chance to attend, though, just in case. I didn’t think his presence would have helped anyone—including him.’

  ‘It’s been a week. He should be pulling himself together by now.’

  Charlotte decided she might need to revise her opinion of Hawk’s level of compassion. ‘He’s lost his job and he has a court appearance pending. It must be pretty tough when you’ve got four young children to support.’

  ‘Let’s hope he feels more communicative than he did the last time we tried to talk to him.’

  Steve Poulsen was, in fact, nowhere to be seen when Hawk and Charlotte knocked at the door of his modest house in an outlying suburb of Wellington.

  ‘He’s still in bed.’ Steve’s wife, Jane, looked embarrassed but Charlotte could see her underlying distress. ‘He won’t get up. He says there’s no point.’

  They ended up talk
ing to Jane in the tiny kitchen, with Ben and another pre-schooler playing nearby and a baby in a high-chair banging a half-chewed rusk on the tray.

  ‘He sounds very depressed,’ Charlotte said when Jane had let her worries flood out. ‘Has he seen his doctor?’

  ‘He won’t.’ Jane shook her head unhappily. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’ Tears began flowing again. ‘He says…he says he’s a murderer and he can’t live with knowing that.’

  The baby started howling in sympathy with his distressed mother and Jane reached to pick the infant up. ‘I don’t believe it could have been Steve’s fault,’ she said brokenly. ‘He’s just so careful.’

  Charlotte waited until she was back in the car with Hawk to announce her decision.

  ‘I’m going to take another look at this job. If there’s some way of clearing Steve, I want to find it.’

  ‘We’ve completed the investigation.’

  ‘That witness from the office block isn’t reliable. He decided Steve was at fault and that was that. He couldn’t even see the bend from his window so he can’t know whether Katrina’s car was visible when Steve started his turn.’

  ‘She wasn’t speeding. The line of vision wasn’t obscured by the hoardings. There was nothing wrong with her car. If the road had been clear when he started his turn, there was no reason she couldn’t have had time to stop.’

  Charlotte was silent. They had spent hours over the last week conducting the tests. They had done skid tests in a car similar to Katrina’s and measured the friction marks to confirm her speed as being within the limit. They had used a truck to measure turning times and Hawk had been as close as she had suspected he would be in his estimation. It took between 4.6 and 6.3 seconds for the turn. They had measured the visibility distance to the bend at the start of the turn. Eighty-two metres. They had made a scale plan for sight lines. A car travelling at 70 kph would have taken just over four seconds to cover the distance. Less than the time for the turn but plenty of time to stop if the brakes had been applied earlier.