The Midwife and the Millionaire

And on that note, surely there should have been more seat belts or harnesses or something? One belt didn’t seem enough.

Odette and Smiley chatted happily, ensconced in the rear out of sight and out of earshot. Once they got going, she thought bitterly, they’d be safe in their own little world.

Levi climbed in and she squashed herself back against the seat. He pointed to the bulky headphones hooked on the central support in front of her, and indicated she put them on.

‘Can you hear me?’ His metallic voice made her jump, and she looked across at him and glared. He nodded and she nodded facetiously back. He frowned, then went on. ‘It’s automatically switched to receive, so for you to be heard by everyone else just press this button to speak.’

He withdrew his attention from her and glanced in the back. ‘You guys all buckled up?’

Odette’s voice crackled. ‘Roger.’

Levi glanced around the deserted helipad and began the pre-flight sequence. ‘All clear,’ he said to no one in particular and started the rotors.

The next few minutes Sophie missed as her eyes were tightly shut. The distant noise through the headphones grew louder and she felt the shudder from the flimsy craft right through the backs of her knees, then the first sideways swish of movement through the air and then back the other way.

She opened one eye. It was too hard not to look. They swayed a little from side to side as they edged higher and she could see the downdraught from the rotors beating the bushes below.

Then she could see the river at the bottom of the gorge, the roof of the homestead, the tops of the trees, and it was all a little intriguing, though she still pushed herself deep into her seat. She tried to relax her shoulders but the fear she’d fall out kept her rigid in the chair.

They climbed higher, and despite the lack of doors, she was protected from the wind by the bubble of the front windshield, and actually it didn’t feel too bad.

She opened the other eye. There was a Perspex floor in front of her feet. What sort of sick person designed a helicopter with a see-through floor? If she’d had eyes in the bottom of her soles she’d be able to look through the Perspex to the ground.

Basically she was standing on a thin edge above certain death. Her eyes closed at the vertigo of that thought, then opened again to risk a glance towards Levi as he concentrated on the dials at the front of the cockpit. What was he looking at? Was everything OK? She studied the instrument panel herself for something familiar. Maybe she’d even find a reassuring needle. Shame the guy wasn’t more into smiling but at least he was taking the danger of the situation seriously.

Knots—they were doing eighty knots, and that was faster than miles per hour, so fairly fast. Fuel—there were seventy gallons of fuel; tank was full anyway. Guess that meant if they crashed she’d die in a ball of flame.

She looked away. Maybe don’t read the dials. They’d climbed higher while she’d been contemplating the manner of their deaths, and she could look down on the escarpment now.

This was pretty amazing. And when she looked back, carefully, towards the homestead and the serpentine river, it made her appreciate how remote the properties were out here.

She’d flown on jets from Perth to Kununurra but they’d been much higher and she’d never really noticed individual stations, though mostly because she’d chosen the aisle seat and not the window.

‘We’ll fly up and over the waterfall on the property.’ Levi’s voice crackled through the headphones. ‘Odette likes that and then over to Lake Argyle. We’ll pass over a couple of stations William asked to see, then in over the Bungles and back out over the Kimberley diamond mine and home.’

He was telling her this because…? Her stomach sank. She pushed the button to speak. ‘Sounds like a long flight. Do we land anywhere?’

His teeth flashed. He couldn’t possibly be concentrating enough on his job if he could smile about it, she thought sourly. ‘Anywhere you want,’ he said.

She resisted saying, Here, but not by much, and just nodded and turned away to glance at her watch. They’d be home in a few hours. She hoped.

Actually, the next hour passed fairly quickly. The waterfall looked surreal from above with sparkling drops at the side of the main body of water shimmering on the breeze to the gorge below.

Lake Argyle loomed indigo blue and stretched for ever, apparently seven times the size of Sydney Harbour, so that must be why it seemed to take seven times longer than she expected to cross.

When they flew over the isolation of the two cattle stations, Smiley asked Levi to circle again, so he could point out how they corralled their cattle using the land formations to form a natural bottleneck and arena. These were the stations Smiley had his eye on.

Sophie tried to concentrate on the implications of a station with no contact with the world for at least four months during the wet season, but all she could feel were the g-forces pulling her towards the open doorway. Her whole body seemed to be straining against the seat belt as they circled, and she had this horrible feeling that maybe Levi hadn’t fastened her buckle properly and she’d just pop out of it into spiralling space.

Now that was a dilemma. She hadn’t checked the belt herself but if she touched it now she might press the eject button.

Come on. Their aircraft was circling thousands of feet above the hard earth and Smiley was going on about the logistical difficulties of cattle to market.

It was no good. ‘Can we land soon?’ Sophie’s voice cut across Smiley’s, squeaky with distress, and she felt Levi glance at her.

The helicopter levelled out. ‘Bungles in fifteen minutes, you right with that?’ Levi’s voice was still tinny, but the strange thing was the lack of humour, just genuine understanding and concern in his voice and the reassurance she gained from that. His hand came across and rested on her upper arm as if to transfer calmness. From a man she didn’t trust it shouldn’t have helped that much. But it did. Like a lifeline.

Funny how she’d never felt that mixture of empathy and support from Brad’s touch and she’d been engaged to him.

Inexplicably steadied, she nodded, and allowed herself to sag more into the seat and close her eyes. Think calm thoughts. Take deep breaths. Everything will be fine.

That was when the engine spluttered, coughed and died. Her eyes flew open. Slow motion from that moment on.

Suddenly there was no background noise except the wind and the rotors turning without an engine. She watched in horror as Levi kept his hands glued to the controls, correcting the cabin’s inclination to yaw. Levi’s voice travelled down the tunnel of her frozen mind. ‘Have to land fast.’ His voice was much louder without the sound of the engine, then she couldn’t hear him at all because he’d switched the radio from the cabin to transmit the distress call. But she could watch his lips move, grimly, as he enunciated their position.

Unwilling to stare frozenly out of the Perspex beneath her feet she kept her eyes on Levi.

Glide. Helicopters can glide like planes but not as far. She remembered him saying that. She believed him. But he did lie. Had he lied then too? Surely not about this?

They weren’t falling like a stone at the moment, still going forward, but the altimeter was unwinding like a top, much, much faster than it had wound up. Then she remembered that Odette and Smiley were in the back but she couldn’t turn her neck to look. They’d all die. Odette’s baby too? No. They had to survive. That thought steadied her. She was the midwife. The only medical person. They’d need her. Odette’s baby needed her. She’d better survive in one piece.

She stared at Levi, who looked as if his face was hewn from the same stone as the escarpment they hurtled towards as he wrestled with the controls. No panic, just fierce, implacable determination to win. Thank God he’d decided to be the pilot. Even now he inspired confidence.

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