Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike by Mark Abernethy Page B

a fucking camel.’
    Mac sat with Ari in a corridor at Kasih Ibu Hospital in west Denpasar
    - the closest medical facility to where they’d been. Quickly cutting off the leg of Ari’s jeans, the nurse swabbed the big bullet graze, which glistened and ran steadily with blood. The top layers of muscle tissue had been torn open yet although the Russian grimaced at being touched there, he didn’t say a word.
    The hospital was packed: people with burns, people blinded, people having amputations, kids lying on gurneys in the corridors, female burns victims having breasts removed, people wandering around with hastily printed pictures of friends, kids, spouses. Everywhere smelled of death and hope.
    Having seen her white AFP Commodore in the car park, Mac assumed Jenny was about and went for a look while the nurse started on Ari’s stitches. The second fl oor was less crowded and Mac moved past the private rooms, some of them two-bed, some three, all of them occupied. He wondered why there were so many women in the place. Neither the Sari nor Paddy’s had been particularly female drinking holes.
    Unable to fi nd Jenny, Mac returned as Ari got the last of his stitches.
    Looking down, Mac noticed a clipboard on the nurse’s station with Bronwyn in the name box. Below was the Bahasa word Australi , then a box that said ‘2-6’ and some clinical notes. Mac asked the sister where room two-six was, and she pointed upstairs. ‘Number six.’
    Mac sprinted up the stairs and tapped on the door of suite six.
    A local nurse opened it and Mac introduced himself, pulled his DFAT
    lanyard from under his overalls and said he was looking for a girl called Bronnie, or Bronwyn.
    The nurse smiled, nodded and opened the door wider for him.
    ‘She just woken up, Mr Alan.’
    Inside was a woman lying supine on a bed, bandaged like a mummy, wires holding her hands up in muslin slings. Her face seemed fi ne but there was a lot of bandaging and cotton netting around her head which suggested bad burning. Mac sensed from the profi le of the bandages that she’d lost her left ear.
    ‘Bronwyn Bruce?’ asked Mac.
    The girl nodded, whispered, ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Alan McQueen, Australian Foreign Affairs.’
    ‘Hello,’ came the whispered reply.
    ‘I met your brother and husband and mum this morning - they were looking for you. They thought the worst, so I’m going to tell them you’re here, okay, Bronwyn?’
    She nodded, and Mac let himself out into the hallway, fi shed for the card in his breast pocket, found David Bruce’s hotel number and called. The desk guy put the phone down and three minutes later David came on the line. He sounded empty, fl at.
    When Mac told him the news, he started crying.
    ‘Thank you, thank you, Mr McQueen,’ he managed when he got his breath back. ‘Thank you so much. Is everything fi ne? I mean -‘
    Mac told him as much as he knew, told him the suite number and let himself back into the room. ‘They’re on their way,’ said Mac.
    Bronwyn nodded slowly and Mac was going to let her get some rest but noticed her hands were moving about on the wires, trying to touch her belly. Then Bronwyn’s eyes darted down to her stomach and they went wide, like she’d been slapped. ‘My baby,’ she whispered, her bandaged hands straining to reach her belly. ‘My baby’s gone.
    My baby !’
    Mac didn’t understand and looked at the nurse.
    ‘Bronwyn come in with baby,’ said the nurse, making a shape of a pregnant woman.
    Mac looked down at Bronwyn’s abdomen, which was fl at, and the nurse gave him a look that said more than a million words.
    ‘ My baby, my baby, my baby, where’s my baby? ‘ Bronnie’s face was screwed up in anguish, her voice getting louder. ‘ I want my baby, oh God, God, oh my God, my baby, I want my baby! ‘
    Mac stood there feeling as sad and useless as he’d ever felt.
    He couldn’t do anything for the woman - couldn’t even hold her bandaged hands for fear of hurting her, and he