‘Miss Pascoe?’ interrupted the incident commander, clearly ready for the next round in the battle. ‘I know you mean well, but I really must insist that you don’t put yourself in any further danger. You must realise what the consequences could be for your employment.’
Maggie took a moment to promise Mandy that she would be told as soon as there was any more news about her son, then she turned to face the man who was rapidly becoming her number-one adversary.
She knew he was only doing his job, but it wasn’t making things any easier for her. It was taking everything she had to stop herself thinking about the danger she was returning to. She would be only too delighted to stay up here and keep the man happy, but she knew she didn’t really have a choice but to go against his advice. There were two young lads down there, one of whom might still be bleeding from a wound she still hadn’t found, and the other was probably counting every second and every eerie creak and groan while he was waiting for her to return.
‘If losing my job is what it takes, so be it,’ she said stubbornly, her conviction that she was doing the right thing strengthened immeasurably by the thumbs-up signal Mike gave her as he delivered the supplies she needed, and the fact that Adam was once more standing right behind her.
In fact, he was so close that she could feel the heat of his body radiating towards her and his breath teasing the vulnerable skin left exposed on the back of her neck by her eminently practical haircut. For one mad second she even contemplated leaning back against him, desperately needing to borrow just a little of his strength. Then she remembered, barely in time, that he was a married man and that she had no right to take anything from him, even on loan.
That realisation was enough to stiffen her spine and her resolve to do what was right.
‘Feel free to report me for going against your advice if you must, but at the moment I’m not even on duty,’ she explained, almost ashamed how smug she felt. ‘My shift ended several hours ago, so now I’m just a member of the public who has a bit more training than most and just happens to be small enough to squeeze through very small spaces.’
The man sighed heavily, reluctantly conceding that he wasn’t going to win the argument, especially with Adam and Mike backing her. ‘Well, if you’re that determined, you should be wearing one of these…’ he handed her a bright yellow safety helmet and checked that it fitted her head properly ‘…and you might as well have one of these, too,’ he said, and offered her a radio. ‘It’s the latest issue communication system—the new one that actually works for some distance underground—so hopefully you’ll be able to keep us updated on how the lad’s doing.’
‘And you’ll be able to let me know when your lot’s on the way down to get us out,’ she said, and tightened her grip on the neat piece of equipment as though it were a lifeline, realising that this one high-tech gadget might actually make what she was about to do just a little more bearable.
‘By the way…’ A sudden thought struck her as she was about to thread herself through the rough-edged gap in the rocks. ‘Make sure you tell your team to take it slowly as they come along the adit. Part way along, one of the roof supports is hanging down. I hit it on my way in the first time, but I’m short enough not to have knocked myself out on it. Your team mightn’t be so lucky. Then, just a bit further along, the ground drops away completely into a series of steep, ragged-edged steps. Apparently, it’s called a stope, and if you’re not expecting it…’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ he said with a wintry smile. ‘We’ve actually got a contact from the Camborne School of Mines tracking down underground maps of the area. We were worried that we might have to find another way in if the entrance kept crumbling, but we’ve got the temporary shoring in place now, and it seems to be holding. In fact, we’re hoping to have you all out before anyone at Camborne has the time come up with the goods.’ He paused a moment and gave his head a single shake. ‘I still don’t approve of what you’re doing, but…good luck.’
‘Thank you…and thanks for this, too,’ she said holding up the radio, then threw him a distracted smile, suddenly aware how quickly time was passing. It was totally dark now, and she had absolutely no idea how long ago it had been since she and Mike had driven into the field in their ambulance.
More to the point, how long had it been since she’d left Jem down there with Tel? However long it was, she knew it would feel a thousand times longer to a young boy, no matter how brave he was.
Adam was waiting patiently to help her climb back into the awful blackness and the fact that his was going to be the last face she saw was the only thing that gave her courage when her claustrophobia once more tightened its grip on her throat.
‘Be careful, Maggie,’ he murmured as he held her with rock-steady hands. ‘Don’t take any risks.’
‘As if climbing down a mine isn’t risky,’ she retorted wryly. ‘And you’re the one who persuaded me to go in the first place.’
‘Well, don’t do anything to make me regret it,’ he demanded, his voice suddenly fierce. ‘It was different when you were under the train. I was there with you, close enough to pull you out in a hurry if it became necessary. If anything happens to you this time…’ He shook his head.
‘Then you’ll have to get hold of one of these gadgets so you can keep tabs on me,’ she said as she waved the new communication link at him, not wanting to think about how much distance she would be putting between them as soon as she entered the adit. Anything beyond arm’s length might as well be a million miles because he wouldn’t be able to reach her; he wasn’t as bulky as Mike, but his shoulders were still far too broad and muscular to fit through the entrance yet. ‘That way you’ll be able to talk me through it, like you did before.’
‘I’ll do that…even if I have to mug someone to get it,’ he promised with a grin, then his smile faded and his dark blue gaze became suddenly intent. ‘Maggie, we need to talk,’ he said, his voice heavy with unexpected meaning that made her heart give an extra beat.
‘Not now,’ he added hastily when she stared up at him in surprise and caught a glimpse of secret-filled shadows she hadn’t noticed before. Were they something new or had she been so focused on her hurt over the way he’d treated her a year ago that she just hadn’t seen them?
‘There isn’t time now,’ he continued. ‘I know you need to get back down to those boys, but promise me that as soon as this is all over…There are things I should have told you a year ago…about Caroline…’
‘Caroline?’ she frowned, not recognising the name immediately and resenting the intrusion of another woman into a moment that somehow felt as if it had been exclusively theirs despite the noise that surrounded them.
‘My wife,’ he said quietly, and the illusion of intimacy was shattered with the reminder that, apart from the imaginings of a teenager’s rose-tinted summer fantasies, Adam had always belonged to someone else.
Adam watched Maggie’s petite form disappear into the darkness and had to curl his hands into tight fists to stop himself grabbing hold of her to prevent her from going through that torture all over again.
That last glance she’d thrown at him over her shoulder had been enough to break his heart.
He knew just how terrified she was of going back into the mine—knew how hard it was for her to fight the irrational fear of being trapped in a confined space. The fact that she had been willing to jeopardise her job to return to the two boys she’d left down there was a prime example of the woman she was, and he couldn’t be any more proud of her.
‘Bloody woman,’ muttered the incident commander, the two of them standing to one side while a serious start was made on clearing the blockage from the entrance. ‘Give them a bit of training and they think they can take on the world.’
‘So you think she’d be better off sitting at home, darning someone’s socks and cooking his tea?’ Adam asked blandly when he’d rather be ripping the man’s throat out. How could he not respect what she was doing when it was so much a pa
rt of who she was?
‘Well, you know as well as I do that there are proper ways of doing things,’ the man agreed. ‘Proper protocols that women seem want to ignore just for the sake of it…probably because their brains aren’t built to see the logic of rules and regulations.’
‘You think so?’ Adam was seething now and it was a real effort to keep the lid on his temper. The man didn’t sound as if his ideas had progressed beyond the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth and into the twenty-first. ‘So you’re incapable of admitting that without Maggie’s guts and determination you’d still have five kids down there? Are you so hidebound by your rules and regulations that you can’t see that one of those kids could have been well on the way to bleeding out if she’d tamely waited while you worked out the proper way to gain access?’
He turned on his heel and positioned himself as close to the entrance of the adit as he could without getting in anyone’s way in the hope that it would help with the reception of the radio signal when he spoke to the brave woman already forcing herself to confront her greatest fear for the second time that day.
He’d probably already said far too much, but the thought that such an arrogant idiot was casting aspersions on Maggie’s courage was enough to make him see red. She deserved praise, not condemnation for bending a few rules, and if the man thought he would win any points by criticising her for doing what she thought was right, he certainly didn’t know how much that pintsized paramedic meant to him.
Maggie’s spirits were low as she forced herself to squeeze through the entrance without disturbing the temporary supports, and she’d barely set foot inside the adit when she was seized by the almost unbearable need to get out as fast as possible.
It didn’t seem to matter that she’d already spent time in there, finding and taking care of the trapped youngsters, and had climbed out again virtually unscathed with three of them. This feeling was something different—a gut-deep conviction that something dreadful was going to happen if she went back down the rough slope ahead of her into the depths of the mine.
There was another torch in her hand to replace the one she’d left with Jem, but she knew just how puny the beam would seem once she left the light at the mine entrance behind and was surrounded by utter blackness.
‘Hey, Maggie. How are you doing?’ Adam’s voice echoed strangely around her from the radio in her hand and she gave an involuntary sob of relief. She’d had her reminder that he belonged to somebody else, but she was so very grateful that he was there for her at the moment.
‘You know that expression, “It’s just a walk in the park”?’ she asked as she ducked under the timber hanging down in her way. ‘Well, this is more a walk in the dark, and it’s not nearly as pretty down here.’
‘So, just imagine the flowers,’ he suggested, and she could actually hear a smile in his voice, could picture the way it always accentuated the lean planes of his face and made his dark eyes gleam.
There was a teasing, light-hearted edge to his voice as he continued. ‘Don’t tell me you do all that driving around and hadn’t noticed that there are already daffodils out in most of the gardens around Penhally? Don’t you just love living in Cornwall?’
‘I’d love it better if they went round and filled all these holes up,’ she muttered as she reached the top of the stope and her heart contracted with renewed fear as she contemplated the fact that this time she’d be making her way down hampered by the extra equipment she’d brought with her. She really didn’t want to have to make the climb twice if she didn’t have to—it would waste so much time and energy—but was it too risky to make it in one journey, laden as she was?
‘Maggie?’ Adam prompted, but his voice surrounding her was suddenly a distraction she couldn’t cope with, not for the next few minutes. It was such a comfort knowing that he was close enough to be able to speak to her, but now she needed every ounce of concentration focused on getting back down to Jem and Tel.
‘Adam, I’ll need my hands free for the next part,’ she told him, loath to cut the connection between them. While he was talking to her she could almost imagine that he was down there with her. ‘I’ll speak to you again when I reach the bottom of the stope and find out how the boys are,’ she promised, then cut the signal and stowed the radio safely in her pack.
It was every bit as awkward as she’d expected and felt as if it took twice as long, but with Jem watching from the mouth of the other tunnel and carefully shining the torch at each step of the stope to help her on her way, anything other than continuing until she reached him wasn’t an option.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘How’s Tel?’ asked as soon as she reached the pile of rocks almost obscuring the tunnel mouth, her legs shaking so much that she had to pause a moment before she could attempt to clamber over the mound.
‘He groaned a couple of times just after you took the others up,’ Jem reported, sounding worried, ‘but he hasn’t woken up yet. Oh, and the saline’s nearly all gone.’
‘Hey, Jem, it’s probably a good thing he hasn’t woken up yet, otherwise he’d be in a fair amount of pain,’ she reassured him, as she deposited the more cumbersome items of her load outside the tunnel, hoping that she wouldn’t have to make any decisions about administering analgesia to a patient in severe pain before his head injury had been properly analysed. As it was, her initial conviction that he didn’t have a significant brain injury was being tested the longer he stayed unconscious, but until they could get him out of there, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Her first job when she joined the two of them in the cramped space again was to wrap an arm around Jem’s shoulders and give him a hug. He’d looked so utterly relieved to see her again that she’d known just how terrified he must have been to be left down here alone with his unconscious friend. And it wouldn’t have made any difference to his level of fear that staying had been at his own insistence. It had still been an amazingly courageous thing for an eight-year-old to volunteer to do.
‘You’ve been brilliant,’ she said simply. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be down here by myself, so I think you thoroughly deserve these.’ And she handed him a couple of the energy bars someone had given her up at the mouth of the adit.
She smiled when she saw the way his eyes lit up, suddenly seeing him for the little boy he was. ‘At least those should keep the wolf from the door until we can get to some proper food.’
‘Great! Thanks! I should have been home for my tea hours ago,’ he said, already tearing at the first wrapper, then sat out of the way with his back against the rough wall of the tunnel while she checked Tel over again and decided that she didn’t yet need to replace the bag of saline with a fresh one.
Once reassured that his condition hadn’t deteriorated in her absence, it was time to decide exactly how she was going to accomplish the next stage of her task—to get him clear from the rockfall and safely strapped onto the backboard.
Really, there was only one way…she was going to have to use the borrowed crowbar to lever the last of the big rocks aside—preferably without doing any further damage to his legs—then log roll him and slide the two halves of the backboard under him from either side before he could regain consciousness and start trying to move.
‘Right, Jem, if you’ve finished fuelling up your engines, I’m going to need a bit of help here,’ she announced. ‘I’d like you to take the bag of saline as far away up the back end of the tunnel as you can without pulling the needle, and then keep an eye on the tubing so it doesn’t get knocked about.’
‘And I’ve got to make sure it’s still high up enough so that the stuff runs down into Tel, right?’
‘Exactly right,’ she agreed, and saw him settled safely out of the way before she began to attack the remaining rocks, frustrated that she was going to have to leave the largest till last, when she’d have the least energy.
It was hard, dirty, painful work, especially as she laboured to shift the final boulder away from be
tween Tel’s legs, and she was close to tears by the time she hit her shoulder on the same rocky outcrop for the dozenth time without apparently shifting the lump of granite more than an inch or two.
‘Would it be safe for you to move Tel’s leg a bit that way?’ Jem suggested, gesturing with his hands after a moment’s pause in which she tried to control the urge to scream her frustration. ‘The rock looks a bit of a weird shape and that’s stopping it moving the way you want it to go, but if you could shift his good leg over to the side a bit, you’d be able to tip the rock over like that, and…what do you think?’
Maggie rested her hands on her knees while she weighed up the pros and cons of Jem’s suggestion. She would dearly have loved to ask Adam’s opinion—the way she had when the two of them had been battling to staunch the bleeding of the young woman under the train—but this time the decisions were all hers. She would have to balance the possibility of doing further damage by moving Tel against the probability that she’d finally be able to release him and get him safely immobilised on the backboard.
‘Let’s try it,’ she said and, suiting her actions to her words, angled Tel’s uninjured leg out into the limited space in the tunnel, hopefully without moving his injured leg or his pelvis, to give herself the chance to attack the boulder from a different angle.
‘Yay!’ Jem cheered when her renewed effort with the crowbar finally sent the stubborn rock flipping over in the new direction as easily as though it were one of the fake polystyrene rocks seen on children’s television programmes. Not content with rolling over once, the granite rolled a second time, only stopping when it cannoned into the opposite wall with a resounding crunch.
Maggie barely stopped herself from shrieking when the impact sent a shower of dust and rock clattering down onto the three of them, but luckily there weren’t many pieces and the ones that hit them weren’t particularly large.
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