Page 1 of Where the Wattles Bloom

One

It didn’t bode well for Rowena Murray’s sparkly new beginning, late on this Sunday afternoon, when the car she’d been following at a safe distance suddenly swerved erratically several times before veering off the road. In that weird slowing-of-time way, she watched in horror as its front end found the only tree in a fifty-kilometre radius.

Until the tree there’d been nothing of any note. Just low scrub, brown dirt, some occasional scraggly-looking sheep and a scattering of pink galahs grazing on the edges of the outback highway.

‘Holy shit.’

Heart hammering, Rowena braked heavily, pulling her sporty Mini to a halt on the side of the road. She picked up her phone from the console and jumped out of the car, stopping only to grab the first aid gear from the boot. Crossing the deserted road, she was only vaguely conscious of the cool bite in the air through the cotton of her white turtleneck skivvy.

The car had crumpled, as modern cars were designed to do. There was a hissing noise coming from the engine, and a plume of what she hoped was steam rather than smoke rose from under the buckled bonnet. The driver, who’d been travelling under the speed limit anyway, had braked as the vehicle had left the road, so at least the speed with which the car hit the tree hadn’t been calamitous.

Still. Big old gum tree—one. Shiny new SUV—zero.

She reached the driver’s door, which was thankfully undamaged. The only occupant was a man who looked to be in his fifties. His head was slumped back, his eyes shut, the inflated airbag squashed against his significant girth. There was no blood or apparent damage to his face.

‘Mister?’ she called as she yanked on the door handle.

Locked. Shit!

‘Mister,’ she called again, banging against the window. His lips had gone dusky. The kind of colour lips went before they turned blue.

Still no answer. Double shit.

Rowena whipped quickly around the car, trying all the doors. All locked.

Triple shit!

Crouching beside her first aid kit, she thanked god for her anal-retentive tendencies as she grabbed the emergency window breaker. She’d seen a paramedic use it once at a crash site and had immediately purchased one for herself.

If the man had been conscious she’d have told him to shield himself, but he wasn’t, and those lips were giving her the heebie-jeebies.

‘Sorry about the window, dude,’ she muttered.

Of course, a broken window was nothing compared to the bigger problem of the massive gum tree embedded in the vehicle’s engine, so …

Rowena struck the glass, as she’d seen the paramedic do years before, turning her face away. It shattered and she almost whooped, except it was too early to celebrate. Although the tempered glass had broken into fragments, there were large sections still in situ and she knew she’d cut herself reaching in to unlock the car for sure. The gloves from the first aid kit were meant to keep germs and bodily fluid out, not be a defence against sharp objects, so they wouldn’t be any help.

‘Hold on, mister.’

Without a second thought, she yanked her skivvy off over her head. By now, Rowena was so jacked on adrenaline, neither the brush of cold June air on her exposed torso nor the fact she was flashing her bra registered.

The guy in the car was hardly in any state to notice.

Wrapping her shirt around her fist, Rowena gently knocked out enough of the fragmented glass to give her free passage. When she was satisfied, she reached her arm in and blindly groped for the unlock button. Finding it, she pushed it, the locks releasing with a resounding thunk.

Yanking the door open, she ignored the chunks of glass lying like ice cubes around the intact interior of the car. With one hand she reached for the man’s carotid pulse, while with the other she gave his arm a hard shake.

‘Mister.’

Still no answer. And no pulse. Unlike hers, which was fibrillating like crazy.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Rowena’s thoughts raced. There were no respiratory noises that might indicate he had some kind of airway blockage, so what was it? A stroke? Or a heart attack? That would certainly explain his abrupt swerving. And by the size of his gut and jowls, he wasn’t the healthiest specimen of manhood.

How long had it been since the car had crashed? It felt like an age but it hadn’t been. More than a minute. But not quite two. Maybe even less since he’d lost cardiac output?

Ignoring the horrifying stats on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and the fact she was in the middle of nowhere, Rowena mentally prepared herself for what she’d been trained to do—saving lives.