The blinds were drawn, so the apartment was too dim for morning light to disturb her. What did wake her was the sound of her phone vibrating and jerking across the laminate surface of the kitchen bench where she had left it charging.

She saw a missed call from Anita, then immediately the phone started vibrating again, this time with the caller ID Hospital, and Paula picked up.

She was still only half awake, but she could hear that the woman ringing from the hospital front office was flustered, not used to handling emergencies.

A truck driver had called 000 from the highway. He’d found a badly injured person, hit by a vehicle, and he was now bringing them to the hospital. A rescue helicopter was on its way down but Paula was needed to stabilise the patient before transfer.

Paula yanked on clothes and jumped in her car. She hadn’t done trauma stuff for years, not since her residency days, and she wasn’t sure she was up to it, especially on almost no sleep.

She turned into the hospital’s drop-off zone at the same time as the semitrailer pulled over on the street outside, the brakes hissing. When the driver jumped down from behind the wheel, calling for help, Paula ran across the car park towards the truck. She saw Jye peering out of the small window in the rear section of the cabin, then she realised it was Nicole Wigney lying along the front seat.

The nurse on weekend duty hurried out into the car park with a backboard and a gurney.

‘You’re Dr Kaczmarek?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Paula.’

‘Carol,’ she said, tapping the name tag on her chest. She was in her forties, experienced, sturdy, unruffled.

Together, Paula, Carol and the truck driver eased Nicole out of the truck and onto the board. Her face was battered and raw, one eye swollen shut. She looked so limp that for a moment Paula thought she might be dead, but as they moved her, very gently, she moaned with pain and her eyes fluttered open.

‘Reckon she might have a broken pelvis but I dunno,’ the truckie said. The guy sounded distressed but determined to hold it together. ‘The little kid flagged me down on the highway, took me up to his mum. I found her outside the house, lying next to the water tank.’

‘Was she conscious when you got there?’ Paula asked.

He nodded. ‘She said her husband drove the car into her.’

‘Was there a teenage girl at the house? Did you see a girl there?’

‘No.’

As they lifted Nicole onto a gurney to wheel her into the hospital, she asked, ‘Where’s Jye? Is he okay? Where’s Jye?’

‘He’s right here,’ the truck driver assured her. ‘Don’t worry. He’s a brave kid. He’s a hero, this one. He’s right here.’