Saving Lawson, Part 2: The medical rescue mission to bring Lawson Rankin home after Bali scooter accident during schoolies

This is part two of a special Newcastle Herald series about Lawson Rankin's accident, rescue and recovery. Part one published in the pages of the Newcatsle Herald on Saturday, March 7. Part three published on March 10.

AT 6am on a Sunday in December, Phillip Rankin dropped to his knees in a Sydney driveway and cried.

His boy, Lawson, was home.

He was unconscious, in a critical condition, but he was in the best possible hands at the Prince of Wales Hospital.

Sagging with relief and exhaustion, Phillip unloaded. Crashed.

"Stand down soldier," he told himself.

"We're home. If we lose him now, well, he was never going to stand a chance."

Just a week before, Phillip and Therese Rankin, of Redhead, had been woken by a phone call at 4am.

The kind every parent dreads.

Their 18-year-old son Lawson had been in a serious accident in Bali.

It wasn't looking good. A second call from one of Lawson's friends offered more detail, but no relief.

Lawson had come off his scooter. There was a stolen phone. A concrete drain. A broken helmet. Water. Blood.

They did CPR. Called an ambulance.

Lawson was alive but their boy was in a bad way.

Therese fainted, hitting her head as she collapsed to the floor.

When she came to, she was in a state of disbelief, shock and fear.

"It was a nightmare," she said. "An absolute nightmare."

There were phone calls. Messages. Tears. Then action.

"It was 4am that we got the call," Phil said. "At 6am I was in the car on the way to Sydney. At 9.30, I was leaving on a plane. My son, Nelson, arranged the airfares for me while I was on the way down.

"I got over to Bali, and entered the war zone."

Prior to Lawson flying to Bali with his best mates for schoolies, the Rankins had sat around the dinner table, talking through some of the dangers to be mindful of in Bali.

Pickpockets. Alcohol. Drugs. Drink spiking. The importance of staying together. Looking out for each other.

Scooters.

They didn't want to water down any excitement or enthusiasm but they wanted to remind Lawson to be careful.

"The day he left, I remember giving him a hug before I went to work and saying, 'Come home safe,' Therese said. "I'd had a message from Lawson on the day of the accident. He'd said, 'Sorry I haven't got many photos mum, we're not taking our phones out much because we're getting pick-pocketed'.

"That was the last message I had from him."

Now, the Rankins' were living on a prayer.

Lawson was unconscious. Stable, and sedated, but in a critical condition. They did not know if he was going to make it.

They knew Lawson had a head wound, a brain haemorrhage, and a nasty infection from the drain water that had entered his lungs.

Later, they would learn his condition was far worse. He had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, and had also picked up an antibiotic-resistant "superbug".

In the intensive care unit at Bali International Medical Centre, Phillip sat by Lawson's side.

With a lump in his throat and his head in his hands, Phillip watched and waited and willed his son to live.

Lawson had bloodied grazes all over his face. He had a dressing on the bridge of his nose. A bandage wrapped firmly around his head.

An oxygen mask covered his nose and his mouth. Machines beeped and whirred. Cords and tubes and wires were running in all directions.

Phillip's identical twin brother, David Rankin, arrived in Bali to lend a hand. As did Lawson's brothers, Nelson and Campbell. The Rankins sprung into action.

"The first 48 hours was minute-by-minute, medical test-to-medical test," David said.

A family friend, Cristina de Leon - an awarded former intensive care nurse - was in Bali on a work contract. Night and day, she was by their side. Offering guidance and comfort. Support and advice.

"Christie was an angel. She was instrumental in interpreting Lawson's status, and subsequently, conveying medical messages to Sydney," David said. "Then Christie converted the medical speak to us in layman's terms.

"Lawson was in a coma and sedated, and even the local doctors were unable to establish the extent of his injury."

Lawson had a license to drive in Australia, but because he did not have an international driver's license to ride a scooter in Bali, his travel insurance would not cover his extensive medical expenses.

The bills were quickly adding up.

The Rankins needed to get Lawson home. Back to his support network, and back to some of the best medical specialists in the world.

"With no insurance, we were totally in the dark on where to start," David said. "But by now we knew his best chance of surviving was to get him home."

They started building a list of options.

"I literally Googled 'medical evacuation teams' while sitting outside Lawson's ICU room," David said. "I built a matrix of companies, names, contacts, phone numbers - not knowing the first thing about the world of carting the sick and injured, the terminology, the fair and reasonable costs involved.

"Figures of $80k to $150k were used like it was loose change."

There were concerns about the effects of altitude on Lawson's brain injury, as well as transferring "big amounts" of money to unknown people - mostly agents and brokers.

They feared putting Lawson's life into the hands of strangers. They feared scammers.

There were so many big decisions to make in a small amount of time.

The pressure was immense, and mounting.

Therese had not yet left for Bali.

"After collapsing initially, I was very unsure of myself and how I was going to react," she said.

"I didn't book a flight straight away. The hospital bills were coming in, so I was at home arranging payments for those."

Therese said Lawson's care was costing between $7000 and $8000 a day.

"Earlier that week, I was on the phone to the bank, talking about withdrawing from our home loan to cover these enormous payments to the hospital," she said.

Initially, Therese rejected the suggestion of a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for Lawson's treatment and medical evacuation.

But in less than a week, their bill for the Bali hospital was already $32,000, and rising. The medevac from Bali to Australia was going to cost about $100,000.

As much as they did not like to ask for help, they needed support. Family members offered to set up a Go Fund Me.

Lawson's cousins, Taren and Connor, worked into the early hours of the morning to pull it all together.

By the time it was ready to launch, Lawson's friends had returned home from Bali. They went to see Therese.

"Four of them were the boys who pulled Lawson out of the drain, and the other boys were all staying in the same villas," she said.

"We face-timed Phillip, who was with Lawson.

"It was very emotional - for all of us. There were a few tears there."

About 18 young men surrounded her as she read out the blurb from their Go Fund Me campaign.

The room was charged with emotion.

"I read it to the boys. They were all around me. I said if you guys can do anything, please - share this around as much as you can," Therese said. "We just want to get Lawson home.

"It was like having this huge footy team around me. They all kind of cheered, and shouted, 'Yeah! Let's get Lawson home!', 'Let's get him back'.

"It was a beautiful, but bittersweet, moment. That night, after we'd launched the Go Fund Me, I had text messages at 12 o'clock saying that we had reached our target - that we were going to get him home.

"Everyone was watching the number go up. And it just kept going up as word spread."

Within the first 24 hours of the Go Fund Me campaign, they had raised $100,000.

A day later, it was at $200,000.

"You don't ever think you will be in this situation," Therese said. "This whole thing has been a huge shock. And it's not something that goes away. It is with you 24/7. Fortunately, the support has been overwhelming - not just from our family and the Newcastle community, but much further beyond that."

In Bali, the Rankins had been "ready to press buttons" to start the trip home.

But at the eleventh hour, via the Newcastle rugby league network, another medevac option - good operators with a great reputation - became available.

"A lady on the Gold Coast saw the Go Fund Me page and contacted her friend in Newcastle," David said.

"The friend contacted our family, and then rang me in Bali.

"We were literally feeling like we were handing over Lawson's life and putting him into the hands of a stranger. But the decision was made easier with crack professional operators."

Time was critical. Payments had to be cleared.

"We were able to pay the first $2000 on a plastic card to expedite the application of flight permits entering and exiting Indonesia," David said.

Despite having multiple offers of a lift, Therese had taken the train to Sydney that Friday.

She wanted some time alone to prepare before seeing her boy - her youngest son - fight for his life in Bali.

She was at the airport in Sydney, 20 minutes before check-in closed, when Campbell and Nelson called; told her not to get on the plane. The doctor had given the OK for them to bring Lawson home as early as tomorrow - and they needed her on the ground to organise the medevac payment.

Sitting at the airport in the departures terminal, Therese called the bank manager and explained she needed to access the money and arrange payment in the next 10 minutes.

"The bank manager I had been dealing with was so good, so helpful," she said.

Within 10 minutes, the finance was sorted. The money transferred.

"I didn't get on the plane. I got back on the train and came back to Newcastle," she said.

Aviation laws in Australia only allow pilots to fly 12 hours in one stint.

"It is six hours to Bali, refuelling at Darwin, and six hours home, refuelling again at Darwin," David said.

There was no time for delays. No room for error. The medical crew was dispatched on a commercial flight from Brisbane to Bali to prepare Lawson to fly before the Medical Rescue jet arrived.

Nelson and Campbell contacted the police in Bali, who arranged a police escort for the medical team - and Lawson - to ensure there were no delays in getting Lawson to and from the airport.

Every minute mattered.

"All this time we were talking to Lawson," David said. "It was the first moment that we let him know that he was going home, and that his mum was waiting for him. Ironically, his first medical sign of improvement was in the air, coming home."

There had also been discussions with the Prince of Wales hospital in Sydney.

"It sounds simple, but there are a lot of logistics to consider. They have to clear an isolation room - Lawson had a highly contagious infection - and timing and bed allocation was required," David said.

At 3.30am on Sunday, December 8, Lawson landed in Sydney and was taken to the Prince of Wales.

At 6am, Phillip walked out of the hospital - knowing Lawson was in good hands - and sank to his knees.

He released some of the pent-up stress and pressure that had been growing from the moment they got that 4am call a week earlier. Completely shattered, he let it all out.

"If you're under insurance, they take on the liability to make sure he's ready and fit to fly," Phillip said.

"But with no insurance, the decision came over to myself. I would have to live with myself if I made the wrong call. I had a thousand things going through my brain. I was trying to deliver one answer at a time."

It was a lot of pressure. Stress. Responsibility.

"Even though the hospital and the doctors are all doing the best they can, and they did, I felt obliged - being the person most responsible sitting there - knowing that no matter how good they are, this was on my watch.

"It was a moment by moment handling of the situation. At the end of the day, you do everything you can.

"I would have swapped with Lawson, in a second, if I could."

Read Part 3: The long road to recovery