by Joanna Neil
He nodded. ‘Yes, I used to come down here when I worked at the Royal. I did some of my training around here, so I’m used to visiting all the local places of interest.’
Had he come here with Cheryl? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, but she resisted the urge, and then he took her hand in his and led her over the bridge, pointing out the swans in the reeds on the far side of the water.
‘They don’t have a care in the world, do they?’ he murmured. ‘I used to come here and gaze out over the water from time to time. It made me feel peaceful inside whenever I’d had a bad day.’
She glanced at him, her gaze drinking in his strong features, the confident way he stood, tall and strong, looking out over the landscape. ‘You never give the impression that anything bothers you,’ she said. ‘You always seem to brush off any difficulties that crop up, but I expect you keep it bottled up inside and hide your feelings from everyone around.’
‘We all have bad times,’ he said. ‘The key is to find ways to get over them.’
‘Is that why you brought me here?’ she asked softly. ‘So that I could forget my troubles?’
‘I guess it is.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘You’ve had a hard time lately, with one thing and another, and I thought you could do with a break. Islay isn’t the only place where you might find peace and calm, you know. You just have to know where to look.’
‘You’re right. This is lovely, and I’m glad you brought me here.’ She liked the way he held her hand in his, his fingers wrapped firmly around hers, his arm keeping her close by his side. His actions made it seem as though he cared for her, and that made her feel warm inside. But by allowing herself to fall for him, wasn’t she setting herself up to be hurt? What was she to make of him? Was he everything she thought he was, or was there a side to him that he kept hidden from her? It grieved her that she didn’t know, and it hurt that she wasn’t able to put her trust in him.
‘Perhaps we should start back,’ he said on a reluctant note after a while. They had been strolling along the pathways of the park for around half an hour, and Rebecca was beginning to relax in his company. She didn’t want to go back to normality, to the rush of everyday life, but of course there was no avoiding reality. Chloe would be coming out of surgery by now, and she wanted to know how things had gone.
She had been able to snatch a few moments alone with Craig, and they had been blissful while they lasted, but she was all too conscious that they might not be hers to treasure.
They might have been stolen from someone else.
CHAPTER TEN
‘SO YOU had to leave the wee bairn at the hospital?’ Heather asked in the halting tone that Rebecca was becoming used to by now. She was sitting in a chair by the side of her bed, trying to exercise her leg, but it was a slow and difficult process, and Rebecca was standing by, ready to lend a hand by directing her movements.
‘Yes, we did, poor little thing. She went straight into Intensive Care, and we were hoping that she would be fit enough to travel within a day or two, but it doesn’t look as though that’s going to happen. The doctors are worried about complications with her lungs and blood pressure.’ Rebecca’s mouth turned down sadly. ‘She’s so tiny. Her mother must be beside herself with worry.’
‘Aye, it can’t be easy.’ Heather struggled from her sitting position to move her foot forward and back, but her face suddenly drained of colour, and Rebecca could see that she was exhausted by her efforts. She carefully helped her to settle back against her cushions.
‘I think that’s probably enough exercise for today,’ she told her aunt. ‘You’ve done really well.’
Her aunt sighed, looking thoroughly disgruntled. ‘I don’t feel as though I’m getting anywhere.’
Rebecca smiled. ‘I know it might seem like nothing very much to you, but you’ve come on tremendously in these last few days. Your speech has improved by leaps and bounds, and you’re gaining strength in your limbs every time you exercise. Don’t be discouraged. You’re doing fine.’
‘You’re a good girl. I know you’re trying to cheer me up.’ Heather sent her a brief, assessing look. ‘How are things with you? Are you still living with that good-looking doctor who comes around every day?’
She was using hand gestures to help make her speech understood, and Rebecca laughed. ‘You make it sound positively sinful. I’m not living with him, not really. It was just that I had nowhere else to go at the time. As it turned out, we work different shift patterns and I haven’t really seen an awful lot of him back at the house. I see more of him here, at work. And, anyway, I’m looking around for a place of my own, somewhere near the hospital.’
Heather was thoughtful for a second or two. ‘There’s my parent’s old cottage out of town, here on the mainland. It’s not up to much and it’s a bit run down, but you could see what you think.’ She indicated her bag on the bedside table. ‘Help me find the key.’
Rebecca did as she asked, and Heather used her good arm to rummage for the key. ‘I knew I still had it somewhere,’ she said at last, handing it over to Rebecca with a lopsided grin of triumph. ‘You take it.’
‘Thanks.’ Rebecca remembered the old cottage from years ago when she had visited occasionally with her mother when her grandparents had still been alive. It was small and very basic, but at least it would be a roof over her head. She pushed the key into her pocket and concentrated on making her aunt comfortable.
Heather looked as though she was washed out from her efforts, and Rebecca tucked a blanket around her legs and gently patted her shoulder. ‘You should try to get some rest. I have to go back to work now—I’m on callout with the ambulance—but I’ll drop by to see you later, when I get back.’
Heather nodded, her eyelids already closing, and Rebecca quietly left the room.
Going out with the ambulance had been Dr Bradshaw’s idea. He thought it would be a good way for her to reacquaint herself with the whole area of emergency work, and at the same time allow her to get to know everyone who was involved in their patients’ care.
Since Craig had helped her out with the baby’s transfer, he’d decided it would be a good idea for him to go on keeping an eye on her for a while. She didn’t have any objection to being watched over—after all, she was new to the job—but she was finding it hard being thrust into Craig’s company all the time. The way she felt about him, it would have been easier for her if there had been some distance between them.
‘We’ve had a call about a road accident,’ Craig said, coming over to her as she was flicking through files at the nurses’ station some time later. ‘It’s a major accident on the main highway, several cars have collided, and they’re calling for as many doctors to attend as possible.’
‘I’ll get my bag.’ She sent him a hurried glance. ‘Do we know how the accident happened?’
‘From what I’ve managed to piece together, it looks as though someone was trying to overtake a slow-moving vehicle, and another driver had to take evasive action to avoid hitting him. That caused a third driver to swerve, and his car overturned. Then someone went into the back of him. I don’t think that was the end of it.’
Rebecca winced, gathering together all her belongings and hurrying along beside him. ‘That sounds really bad. Do the police have the road closed off by now?’
‘Yes. We’re clear to go in.’ By that time they had arrived at the ambulance bay, and the driver already had the engine of the vehicle revved up and ready to go.
The paramedic slid in beside them and then they were off, heading towards the scene of the accident.
Rebecca glanced at Craig as they sped away. He wasn’t saying anything and he looked as though he was preoccupied, his jaw taut, his gaze fixed on the passing landscape, but she doubted he was seeing any of it.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
It was a second or two before he realised that she had spoken to him. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he said, and when he looked away again his face held a shuttered expression and she th
ought better of asking him any more questions.
‘Everyone has their own way of psyching themselves up to attend emergencies,’ the paramedic confided. ‘You don’t know what you’re going to come up against, and it’s not like receiving patients in a hospital. It can be disorientating if you’re not ready for it.’
Rebecca nodded. He was trying to be helpful, and she knew that what he was saying was right in some instances, but she didn’t think that was the case with Craig. He was always prepared, always ready for any eventuality. This occasion was somehow different.
‘Is this an accident black spot?’ she asked as they drew close to their destination. The road curved at this point, and there were areas where the highway up ahead might not be clearly visible to a driver. Perhaps Craig had been here before.
The paramedic was nodding. ‘Yes, there are often problems along this stretch, particularly in winter,’ he said quietly. ‘There was an especially nasty accident up here a couple of years ago. I didn’t attend back then, but I heard about it. A young man was caught up in the carnage and died from his injuries. It turned out he was only there by chance, on his way back from a job interview and he’d taken a detour to miss the snowdrifts that were pilng up on the other road. It was very sad.’
The ambulance came to a stop, and they all left the vehicle, taking time to look around and assess the surrounding area before moving to where they might be needed. There was wreckage of crumpled cars all around, and there were police vehicles parked at intervals, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. The smell of petrol pervaded the air, and there was smoke coming from one of the car engines. Firemen were already on hand, and an ambulance crew was attending to some of the injured people.
At least it was only late afternoon, and the sky was clear, giving them enough light so that they would be able to see clearly for the next hour or so. Craig was already striding forward and Rebecca followed him, going over to talk to the doctor who was leading the team. ‘Where do you want me to go?’ she asked, when Craig had moved away in the direction of the overturned vehicle.
‘We have a woman with head and chest injuries in the middle vehicle,’ the doctor told her. ‘She’s been stabilised, but we’ve had to wait while the fire service try to release her. Once they give you the go-ahead, you need to assess her condition once again and prepare her for transport. Then there’s a man with a broken arm over there by the side of the road. He’s been assessed briefly, and given pain medication, but he’ll need a splint to protect the fracture before he’s ready to travel.’
‘All right. I’ll see to it.’
Rebecca made a hurried examination of the young woman, and established that she was receiving adequate ventilation through intubation. She was unconscious and bleeding from a chest wound, and once she had been freed from the wreckage Rebecca was able to apply a pressure pad to the injured area to reduce the bleeding.
She quickly gave the woman intravenous fluids to make up for blood loss, and then briefly checked her responses. The head injury was a worry, but all she could do for now was to ensure that she was sent on her way to hospital in the shortest possible time.
The paramedic was working alongside her, and now he said, ‘I’ll immobilise the cervical spine, and then we can ease her into the scoop stretcher.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘Yes, we’ve done all we can here.’
When the patient had been transferred to the ambulance, she went to attend to the man with the broken arm. Once he had been made comfortable and was passed into the care of the ambulance crew, she went to look for Craig.
She found him taking care of a man who was trapped in the overturned vehicle. The fire crew had cut part of it away so that he could reach the patient more easily. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked.
Craig sent her a fleeting glance. His face was ashen and his answer came through tight lips. ‘See if you can do something to restore the circulation to his foot. His ankle was wedged under the metalwork, and the firemen have only just managed to free it.’
Rebecca knelt down to find a comfortable position where she could treat the man. He was in his early thirties, and he looked as though the life was draining from him. She turned her attention to his ankle, noting the abnormal dislocation that had turned his foot through a ninety-degree angle, and said anxiously, ‘How’s he doing apart from that?’
‘He’s not good. I think the injury to his chest penetrated the heart wall and it’s causing a pericardial tamponade. The fluid is building up and compressing the heart so that his circulation is failing.’
That was bad news, and possibly the worst, because few people survived that kind of injury out on the road. She concentrated on her own task, placing her hands over the man’s foot and trying to pull it back into a more normal state. It shifted into place with a loud click. Then she pressed her lips together and asked cautiously, ‘How long has he been like that?’
‘Since I arrived here. I’ve been trying to stem the bleeding.’
Rebecca searched her bag for a splint that she could use on the ankle. ‘I’ve done what I can to straighten the foot, but the circulation isn’t improving a great deal.’ It probably wouldn’t until his heart was working properly once more, and that eventuality looked to be some way off.
She taped the splint in place and then stared anxiously at Craig. He was determined to help this man to survive, but the odds were surely stacked against him. The man’s neck veins were distended, but his blood pressure was dangerously low and his heart sounds had decreased. He was hovering between life and death, and Craig was doing everything that he could to save him.
What was it that drove him on where others would have conceded defeat?
He was drawing up a needle, and she guessed that he was getting ready to insert it into the pericardial sac around the man’s heart, so that he could withdraw the fluid that was causing the build-up of pressure.
‘How can you do that without proper guidance…without equipment?’ She was faintly shocked by his daring, and her voice wavered. ‘We’re out in the open here. How do you know that you can position the needle correctly?’
‘I’ll use the portable ECG machine. I can attach the leads to the needle with a clip and use the information from the monitor to help guide me. Anyway, the way I see it, we don’t have any choice. If I do nothing, he’ll die for sure.’
He was already infiltrating the area with anaesthetic. His mouth set in a grim line and he continued with the rest of the procedure without further ado. Rebecca watched with bated breath as he pushed in the needle and inserted a guide wire. Then he removed the needle and replaced it with a catheter.
She quickly searched in the medical bag for a container, and handed it to him so that he could fix the other end of the tube in place and allow the fluid to be collected.
‘What about his other injuries?’ she asked. ‘He’s obviously had a sharp knock to the head.’
‘I’m doing what I can to keep the intracranial pressure from rising. We just have to take one thing at a time and hope for the best.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Help me get him onto the stretcher. We need to keep him as still as possible on the way to the hospital.’
They worked together with the paramedic to slide the man into the scoop, and then Craig made sure that all the various tubes and drains were in place before he allowed the paramedics to take him away.
‘OK, let’s get him to hospital as quickly as possible,’ he said. He climbed up into the ambulance and seated himself alongside the patient. Rebecca went with him. There were no more patients left who needed attention, and she readied herself to watch over this man and do what she could to see him through.
‘Where’s the paramedic who came with us?’ she asked, looking around.
‘He’s been seconded to another vehicle,’ Craig said. ‘The other team was struggling with a badly injured man and they needed an extra pair of hands.’
‘That’s unusual, isn
’t it?’
He shrugged. ‘We’re all going in the same direction. Besides, there are two of us.’
They set off along the road towards the hospital, but they hadn’t gone more than five minutes into the journey when the monitor started to bleep. ‘His heart’s slipped into an irregular, chaotic rhythm,’ she said, and immediately Craig was on his feet.
He started to charge the defibrillator. ‘Clear,’ he said. Rebecca stood back. He applied the paddles to the man’s chest and then waited a moment. ‘Charging.’ He waited until the machine was ready, and then he applied the paddles again.
It wasn’t working, and Rebecca bit her lip. ‘Craig,’ she said after a while, ‘you’ve done everything you can. He’s gone into cardiac arrest and I’m not sure that anything is going to work. He’s too weak and he’s lost a lot of blood.’
Craig’s face set in a mask of determination. ‘I’m not giving up.’ He drew up a syringe of epinephrine and plunged it directly into the man’s heart. Then he charged up the defibrillator once more. ‘Ready,’ he said. ‘Clear.’
There was a momentary lull. ‘We have a sinus rhythm,’ Rebecca said in wonder. Her eyes widened as she gazed at Craig. ‘You’ve brought him back. You’ve done it.’
He checked the monitors, then replaced the paddles and sat down as though there was nothing left inside him, as though all the energy had fizzled out of him. Rebecca went to sit beside him and then she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a hug. She rested her cheek against his, and after a moment or two she felt his trembling response. His head moved and his mouth searched for hers, and then he was kissing her, a long, hard kiss, as though her touch had been the catalyst to set free all the pent-up emotion that had been dammed up inside him.
Rebecca kissed him in return, her lips tingling, her head reeling with sensation, but after a moment or two sanity returned and she broke away from him. She was breathing raggedly, stunned by the vibrancy of that kiss, but even though it had shaken her to the core, she felt that she couldn’t let it go on. She didn’t understand what was driving him, and he clearly didn’t know what he was doing. Besides, they had an injured man to watch over.