by Karen Swan
The sound of static was right outside now, briskly advancing footsteps making the floor vibrate, and the door swung open in the next moment, letting in the pounding staccato of rain. The ranger stopped in the door at the sight of them – a mismatched pair joined at the hip, muddy, soaked, beaten up. The hand holding the walkie-talkie dropped down from his mouth, his mouth dropped into a shocked ‘o’.
Tara felt the world cleave in two.
‘. . . Alex?’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Tara?’
Shockwaves shook the ground beneath their feet, uprooted the giant trees from their ancient roots, tossed clouds around the air, sent the birds flying for the stars.
Or maybe it only felt like that to her.
The silence that opened up between the two sides of the room felt yawning and endless, a void she might fall into and never climb out from. She didn’t even notice that Jed was leaning on her now, that she was half bent and broken by the weight of him. She couldn’t process what her eyes were showing her: Alex, right here, in the room, in this hut, in this jungle.
Ten years had passed since she had last seen him but it felt like a time-slip; it could have been yesterday. Only, how was it possible that he looked better than that last night in London? His wan, urban pallor was now replaced by a deep tan; his hair was longer, shaggier, and with a few sun-tinted caramel highlights; he had always been lean but he had broadened in the shoulders and thighs. He was a man now and not the man-child she had known.
Jed slumped suddenly, his knees buckling from the effort to remain standing, and she felt her own go too. Alex lurched forwards, moving from hologram to three-dimensional truth as he went to catch Jed, who cried out from the pain of his arm and shoulder jolting.
‘Sorry, bud. I’m sorry.’ Alex winced as, in a stroke, Tara felt Jed’s weight being lifted off her as he was helped towards the chair.
‘. . . What happened?’ Alex asked her, his pale eyes burning with alarm.
‘He was attacked by someone,’ she said, watching now as he manoeuvred her old friend carefully into sitting down, taking care not to jog his broken arm again.
Alex looked back at her sharply. ‘And you?’
She shook her head. ‘Jed was ahead of me. I don’t think they knew I was there.’
Alex stared at her with narrowed eyes for a moment as though debating whether he believed that. He looked back at the patient. ‘. . . Jed? Can you hear me, buddy?’ Alex crouched down in front of him, looking more closely at the crudely splinted arm. For the first time, Tara realized she was standing there in just her bra and jean shorts.
‘His arm’s broken in two places, shoulder was dislocated. And he’s badly concussed. We need to get him to a hospital asap. He needs a CT.’
Alex thought for a moment, then stood up, bringing his walkie-talkie back to his mouth. His thumb pressed on a button and the room filled with static again, like the swarm of a million mosquitoes. It was not an enticing thought and Tara scratched herself mindlessly, realizing a miniature army had feasted on her in the oppressive humidity, her shirt off, as she helped Jed stagger along.
‘Base to Torto One, over.’ Alex walked across the room, towards the door, waiting for a response. It came within moments.
‘Torto one, responding to Base, over.’
‘Medical emergency,’ he said in easy Spanish. ‘Mora and Jimenez back to Base asap. Bring the stretcher. Over.’
‘Roger that. Over and out.’
Alex turned back to them, glancing at the pitiful scene, but he didn’t say anything. He reached for the phone on the desk and punched some numbers in. Tension infused every movement. He looked almost angry, his jaw set in a firm position.
‘Hello, yes,’ he said, lapsing into Spanish again as though he was a native. He seemed so . . . at home here. ‘This is Alex Carter at the rangers’ base station in Tremain Talamanca Park. We have a medical emergency. One man, late-thirties, arm broken in two places, dislocated shoulder, head injury and concussion. Arm is splinted and stabilized. Requesting ambulance at Marzano Highway, junction nine, in . . .’ His gaze went up to a clock on the wall as he made a mental calculation. ‘Two hours twenty minutes.’
Tara felt her stomach clench at his words. Another two-and-a-half-hour wait before Jed could even be transferred to an ambulance. And then how long would it be to the nearest hospital? And what facilities would it have? Did it even have a scanner? Every minute counted with head injuries.
He put the phone down and turned back to them. ‘Help’s coming.’
Tara felt a burst of irritation. Help was coming? Like he’d done the hard part? He’d saved them?
He stood there for a moment, staring at her again like she was the one who’d been beaten up, then left the room.
Tara stared after him in bafflement. Now where had he gone?
Beside her, Jed groaned, his head rolling back.
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ she said, taking his good hand and squeezing it lightly. ‘Help’s on the way. We’re safe now.’
‘Paco—’
‘Paco’s . . .’ What could she say? ‘Paco’s okay. He’s the same as he was. Let’s just concentrate on you for the moment.’
‘Nnnn . . .’ Jed protested, his eyes fluttering. Without warning, he pitched forward and began to vomit.
Tara grabbed the desk bin and positioned it beneath him as he retched and heaved. This was a bad sign. ‘It’s okay,’ she soothed him, slowly rubbing his back.
Alex came back in with a pile of uniforms, neatly folded. He took in the latest development in silence.
‘Is there somewhere we can lie him down?’ she asked.
‘Yes, there’s a bed in the back.’
‘That would be better.’
She stepped back, allowing Alex to support Jed’s weight and lever him back to standing again. She felt so weak now, her muscles stiff and sore from having supported eighty per cent of the weight of a ninety-five-kilo man for two hours.
They went through to a tiny room at the back of the building. It had no windows at all and was only big enough to accommodate a single mattress and a chair. They got Jed sitting down on the bed.
‘We need to get these wet clothes off him,’ Tara said. ‘Hypothermia’s a complication we could do without.’
But with his arm strapped and bound, there was only one way to do it. Alex went back to the office, returning moments later with a pair of scissors and a towel. They cut his shirt off and Tara dried him carefully. Then, lying him down, they took off his boots, socks and trousers. Covering him with the towel, she cut off his soaking-wet underpants too and covered him with the blanket. ‘We need to keep him warm.’
‘And you.’ Alex swept a cautionary look over her, reminding her she too was soaked to the bone – and half-dressed. ‘There’s some dry clothes out there.’
Without another word, she went back to the office and rifled through the stack of ranger uniforms he’d left on the desk. They were the same as he was wearing, and exactly what she and Jed had been planning to beg/borrow/steal when they got here – utilitarian ripstop khaki trousers with useful cargo pockets, long-sleeved shirts. She stripped off her sodden clothes. She dried herself with the hand towel and changed into them, having to roll over the waistband of the trousers twice to get them to stay up.
She went back to the desk for her rucksack, then walked back into the small bedroom, to find Jed throwing up again. Alex hadn’t been quite so ready for it and it was all over the floor.
‘Mop?’ she asked.
He looked up, hesitating at the sight of her dressed in the too-big ranger’s uniform; she knew she must look feral. A Jungle Jane. ‘There’s some cleaning supplies in the cupboard beside the—’
She arched an eyebrow, stopping him.
‘I’ll get it.’ He rushed past as she reached into her bag and pulled out her small doctor’s kit. She put the stethoscope back on and listened to Jed’s heart. It was labouring hard. She put the cuff on his good arm and too
k his blood pressure. Too high.
‘Have you got a torch?’ she called through to Alex, able to hear his footsteps coming back down the corridor, stop, retreat again.
‘Here,’ he said, a few moments later.
She took it in silence. It was far too big for what she needed, but better than nothing. She shone the beam into Jed’s eyes. He winced, the pupils restricting.
‘Good, that’s good,’ she smiled, rubbing his uninjured arm encouragingly. ‘You’re doing well, Jed.’
Alex began mopping the floor around her and she stepped out of the way. The smell of bleach was a welcome alternative to that of vomit. She watched blankly for a moment as he squeezed the mop head in the wringer. It seemed completely ludicrous that any of this was happening. That of all the people to have come into this remote outpost, it should be him. Or rather, them.
He looked up and caught her staring.
‘There’s some in the office too, remember,’ she said.
‘Right.’ His eyes narrowed slightly.
‘How much longer before help gets here?’
Alex checked his watch. ‘Five minutes? Ten? We’ll hear them.’
Hear them? ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘When the other two get here, they’ll stretcher him down to the road, where an ambulance can get near enough to intercept.’
‘And the hospital?’
‘Is about half an hour away from there.’
‘Do they have the equipment? He’s going to need a CT scan.’
‘They’ve got good doctors there.’
It wasn’t an answer. ‘Good doctors still can’t see a bleed inside a skull,’ she said flatly. ‘Do we need to have a helicopter on standby to get him to San José?’
He stared at her and she realized he’d never heard her speak this way before, referencing her easy access to resources that were out of reach of almost everyone. When they’d been together – so very long ago, now – it had been something she had gone to great lengths to keep hidden. As well they both knew.
‘Probably. Yes.’
‘Then I assume you can sanction that.’ She stared at him levelly. ‘Or would you prefer I do it myself?’ She was pulling rank and they both knew it.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, walking out.
Tara felt the room decompress as he went down the hall and made the call; all the air seemed to leave with him. She looked back at her patient. Jed was lying stretched out, eyelids fluttering as he stared, unseeing, at the pitched ceiling.
‘Just don’t go to sleep on me, Jed. You must stay awake. For Paco’s sake, and Sarita’s, and all your beautiful children – stay awake.’
He groaned. ‘Pah—’ His lips pushed out, making the sound but not quite able to finish it.
‘Paco’s okay,’ she soothed him. He wasn’t okay, of course, but neither was it a lie. The child was technically in the same condition as when they’d left, the same as if they hadn’t ever embarked upon this quest in the first place. She knew it had always been a long shot anyway, a desperate attempt to just do something.
Alex came back ten minutes later. ‘Okay. Everything’s arranged. There’s a chopper landing in town that will take him straight to San José.’
‘Good.’
His expression changed as he looked back at Jed. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘His GCS score is nine, which I’m not happy about.’
‘GCS?’
‘Glasgow Coma Scale. It’s a way of grading head injuries.’
‘Oh.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to pace at the doorway. The room stank of bleach and her initial relief to be free of the stench of vomit was fading fast. The air felt toxic and chemical; she had a growing urge to stand outside and turn her face up to the rain.
The sound of something outside made them both turn their heads. It was a distant whirring, high-pitched and insistent.
‘That’s them,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s help him up.’
He came over and pushed Jed to a sitting position.
‘Let me just get him covered up,’ she said, wrapping the towel around Jed’s hips and securing it. Dignity mattered, even at times like this.
Alex draped Jed’s good arm over his shoulder and managed to get him to stand. Tara grabbed the blanket and held the doors open as the two men staggered and limped through the narrow corridor, coming through again into the office. She opened the door onto the deck outside and saw with relief that the rain had finally stopped. A hazy sunshine now lit the sky, a gentle steam lifting up off the ground, the trees and bushes . . . The animals had come back out again too, birds trilling and shrieking from on high, insects buzzing and skittering furiously.
She could almost believe that the events of the past few hours had been some strange delusion – the shock of seeing Jed crumpled on the ground, administering first aid in a jungle setting, staggering through the streaming mud, Alex . . .
She looked up, not sure what the sound was that she could hear and was astonished to see a microlight coming through the sky. She watched as it approached at speed, then hovered at a point just above the station, before lowering into the trees.
Alex looked at Jed and patted his chest reassuringly. ‘Nearly there, buddy. Hang tight.’
In a matter of mere moments, two rangers appeared, dressed in the same clothes Alex and now Tara herself were wearing. They were Indigenous men, well-built – she knew her father had made a point of ensuring the ranger jobs were offered to the Indigenous people first; they knew the terrain better than anyone – and they came running down through the trees and onto the deck.
‘What’ve we got?’ they asked in Spanish.
‘Jed Alvarado.’
Tara saw the way the men’s eyes widened at the mention of his name and they looked at him more closely.
‘He’s been attacked—’
Tara saw a knowing look pass between the three men.
‘We need to get him off the mountain. There’ll be an ambulance at the Marzano cross-section, ready to get him to the helicopter to take him to San José.’
Both men nodded, glancing at the slumped figure leaning heavily on Alex.
‘We’ve got the stretcher,’ one of them said, unfolding a portable red heavy-duty plastic stretcher and two harnesses. The men shrugged the harnesses on as Alex and Tara helped Jed to lie down on the stretcher on the deck, but he was becoming increasingly confused and distressed now, sensing change.
‘Nnnno,’ he moaned.
‘Yes, Jed,’ Tara said, guiding him gently down, pressing on his good shoulder to get him to lie flat. ‘We must get you looked at properly.’
‘Nnno—’
She draped the blanket over Jed’s exposed body and fastened the straps to secure him in. ‘Alex, translate to these guys for me. They’ll need to pass it on to the paramedics.’ Her Spanish wasn’t good enough for medical jargon. ‘His arm is broken in two places along the radius,’ she said slowly, waiting for Alex to translate and pointing to Jed’s forearm to show the rangers what she meant. ‘His shoulder was dislocated and has been reset, but it will still be unstable and very painful . . . I’ve immobilized it but you must still be very careful . . . Tell the paramedics he’s scoring a nine on the GCS scale. They’ll know what that means,’ she added as the rangers looked back at her blankly, even after translation.
‘Have you got that?’ Alex asked sharply, seeing their vacant expressions too. ‘Tara is an ICU consultant at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. She knows what she’s talking about.’
Both men nodded and she felt a tightening in her chest that her word could only be trusted on Alex’s say-so. ‘Okay.’
‘Right, fast as you can then,’ Alex said, chivvying them to get on.
‘But steady,’ Tara added as both men squatted down and connected the stretcher to their harnesses, the man at the front needing Alex’s help to connect it to the back of his harness. They rose on a count of three.
Tara looked down at Jed; his head was lifting o
ff the stretcher as he felt the sensation of being lifted and carried.
‘Sar—’
‘I’ll tell Sarita, don’t worry,’ she said as Jed flailed to reach her. She grasped his good hand with hers, keeping him calm. ‘And I’ll get her over to San José to see you, don’t worry about any of that.’
‘Nnno . . . Paco . . .’
Tara swallowed, looking back apprehensively at her old friend. ‘Let’s just deal with first things first.’
‘Pahhh . . . co.’ He was staring at her now and she could see the effort it was taking him to fix his gaze, to keep her in his sights. ‘Paco.’
‘Who’s Paco?’ Alex asked.
She glanced up. ‘His son. He’s very sick. We had come out here to get a remedy for him for the Awa.’
Alex’s eyes narrowed. ‘What remedy? Where, exactly?’
‘We were heading for Alto Uren,’ she muttered distractedly. What did it matter now? She looked back at Jed. ‘The moment we know you’re all right, we’ll head off again,’ she lied.
‘Nnnno!’ The word burst from him, his body becoming tense, resistant. He was strapped down but he was a big man and the rangers both struggled to balance as he began to fight.
‘Jed—’ She faltered, trying to calm him. ‘I promise, we’ll get Paco what he needs, but we must look after you first. We need you to get us there, remember? You and the Awa are the only ones who know what we’re looking for and where.’
But Jed wouldn’t listen. He began trying to sit up, to undo the straps tying him in place with his good hand, even though his co-ordination had gone, his movements flailing and useless.
‘I know where Alto Uren is,’ Alex said suddenly, calming him with a steady hand on his chest. ‘I can go there.’
Jed stopped fighting. His head fell back on the stretcher as he looked back at Alex, and Tara wondered how well they knew one another. Alex had called him ‘buddy’, and Jed’s father worked with Alex all the time. The thought that they might be friends felt like another loss, something else Alex had stolen from her.