Ross nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do from underneath first.’
He waded into the water, making his way towards the boy. The stream wasn’t too deep, and he could reach the child’s shoulders and support them, bringing his head up a little. But he couldn’t reach his foot.
It was an easy scramble, up the sloping trunk of the tree. The huge branch that stretched out over the water was as steady as a rock, but she didn’t put any weight on it. If the boy was okay where he was, it might be better to wait for the emergency services.
‘What do you reckon, Ross? This branch isn’t going to go anywhere.’
Ross’s gaze flipped from the boy, lying listlessly in his arms, to the branch above his head. Laurie knew this was a difficult decision to make.
‘We need to get him down now.’
‘Okay. I’ll slide out there.’ She got down on her hands and knees to spread her weight a little, and crawled out. It was a journey of trust. Trust that Ross had read the situation right, and that they couldn’t wait. His trust in her, that she’d take her weight off the branch if it seemed at all unstable.
The rope seemed to be caught in a complex arrangement of knots, and she couldn’t see straight away which one would free the boy. But, stretching down, she could run her hand along the rope twisted around his ankle and find the right one. She tore at the knot, feeling her nails break and the warm, slipperiness of blood.
‘Uh... Got it.’ The knot unravelled and the tension of the ropes around the boy’s ankle loosened, but his foot was still trapped.
‘Can you get his shoe off, Ross?’ Without the heavy, thick-soled trainers his foot would slip through the gap.
‘Can’t reach. Can you manage it?’
‘I think so. You’ve got him?’
‘Yeah, he won’t fall.’
There was a second mess of ropes around the branch. Laurie tugged at them and they held, and she looped one around her leg.
Carefully she edged forward, reaching for the boy’s foot. Tugging at the hook and loop fastenings on his shoe, she eased it off. The boy’s foot slipped through the gap in the rope, leaving his sock behind. When Laurie looked down, she saw Ross making for dry land, with the boy cradled in his arms.
Now she just had to make sure she didn’t end up suspended upside down. The rope was holding her, but she’d had to shift for
ward until most of her body weight was over the water. She puffed out a breath, inching sideways until she was lying along the branch again. A moment to let her muscles recover from the strain, and then she unwrapped the rope from her leg and slithered down the trunk of the tree to the ground.
Ross had laid the boy carefully down on the grass, and was trying to gently rouse him. His eyes fluttered open but he seemed disoriented.
That could be from shock, or the pain of his swollen ankle. Or it could be from some other injury as he’d fallen. Or from hanging upside down. Asphyxia caused by the internal organs pressing down on the lungs didn’t usually happen this quickly but it was so unusual that there wasn’t a lot written on the subject.
Ross was taking the most devastating of those possibilities first, and after checking his breathing, he pulled up the boy’s T-shirt to see his back and chest and then applied gentle pressure to his ribs and stomach. No reaction. Laurie found the boy’s pulse and nodded to him.
‘No sign of internal bleeding.’
Laurie nodded. ‘Let me check his hips and legs.’ Children of this age were more prone to dislocations than adults.
Ross shifted to one side, turning his attention once more to rousing the boy. Laurie ran her hands carefully around his hips and down each leg. Apart from the swelling in his ankle, she could find no evidence of anything wrong.
‘Hey... Josh. Open your eyes...’ Ross had found the boy’s name stitched into the back of his T-shirt. ‘That’s good. Can you take a deep breath for me?’
Josh took a breath. So far so good. ‘My leg hurts.’
‘Yeah, I know. We’re taking care of that. Anything else?’
Josh shook his head. He was looking much less red in the face now, and more alert. When Laurie checked his pulse it was pretty much normal, which was probably more than could be said about hers.
A clatter at the gates in the fence made her look up, and she saw Jo unlocking them. She hurried towards them, kneeling down next to Josh. ‘How is he?’
‘We can’t find any serious injury. But he needs to be checked out.’
‘Okay. We have a stretcher coming from the medical room.’