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Mack slammed on the brakes. “Where?”

She pointed behind them and grimaced. “Back there. I didn’t see it until it was too late.”

He let out a short sharp curse and put the car into reverse, his left arm stretched out along the back of the seat close to the back of her neck. “Has anyone ever told you you’re absolutely hopeless at navigating?” he asked.

She glared at him in affront. “Has anyone told you you’re a complete and utter bastard for pointing out such obvious inadequacies?”

He suddenly smiled as if her rapid fire response had totally disarmed him. “It’s not such a great map,” he acceded. “And the sign is rusty.”

Alex settled her ruffled feathers back down with a little shuffle of her shoulders. “It’s all right,” she mumbled. “I can’t read in a moving vehicle without getting car sick. You were lucky I didn’t upload my lunch all over your lap.”

He frowned as he put the car into forward gear. “You should have told me.”

Alex squinted as the sun hit her full on. “I think I can see something,” she said pointing to the left. “Is that them over there?”

“Looks like it,” Mack said as he turned the car off the driveway towards the small cluster of people in the distance. There was a farm vehicle as well as two motorbikes, one of which was lying on its side next to a straggly gum tree.

“Should we have called an ambulance or something?” she asked.

Alex looked yet again as if she had failed some sort of test. “I hope he’s not already dead,” she said. “I will never be able to forgive myself...”

Mack felt his gut tighten. “I’m sure it won’t come to that.” He did his best to reassure her as well as himself. “He’s probably woken up by now and wondering what the fuss is all about.”

Mack was partially right, Alex decided a few moments later. Brad Ellis was now conscious but hyperventilating, and complaining of severe pain in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. His parents and younger brother hovered close by, their faces ravaged with their worry.

“I’ll run the assessment, Alex,” Mack said taking control as he examined the patient after quickly gloving up. “Airway’s fine, he’s talking, but he’s struggling to breathe. Steady his neck while I open my trauma bag.”

Alex noted Mack’s trauma bag was a Thomas Pack, which opened out to reveal colour coded equipment for each component of the primary survey. He had obviously done his homework, which made her feel hopelessly ill-prepared for her stint in the bush given her bag was just a standard model.

Mack reached for his stethoscope and listened to Brad’s chest. “Reduced air entry on the left,” he said, “and that side’s hyper-resonant to percussion.”

“Pneumothorax,” Alex said, feeling for Brad’s trachea while holding his neck steady. “His trachea’s deviated to the right, it’s a tension pneumothorax.”

Mack reached into the blue section of his bag and pulled out a 14 gauge IV canula. “Brad, you’ve probably cracked a rib and punctured a lung. I’m going to put a needle in your chest to help you breath, okay?”

Brad panted shallow puffs of air, grunting agreement, his dusty face screwed up in pain as Mack began to cut away his T-shirt.

Alex could feel the distress of the young man’s family; the hot thick dusty air seemed full of nothing but their anguish. Even the crows in the trees overhead, which moments ago had been cawing incessantly, had now grown eerily silent; their glossy black feathers seeming to Alex to be just like the somber dark suits of undertakers...