by Lucy Clark
‘Hi. I’m Phemie. I’m a doctor. I’m here to help.’ She’d said those words, or a variation of them, time and time again. It was true, too. She’d become a doctor so she could help people, patch them up and support them in their time of need.
This poor man required her attention now and she soon realised he was having difficulty remembering his name. After a brief examination, she could see a large bump already forming on his head. She needed him to keep as still as possible until the ambulance arrived. Phemie looked around his car in the hope that she could find something to keep his head supported.
She found a newspaper and a towel amongst his belongings in the back seat and was able to fashion a neck brace. All the while she worked, she continued talking to him, asking him questions, getting him to say the alphabet and count to twenty—anything to stop him from resting too much and falling asleep. Keeping his mind active was very important if he’d suffered a brain injury.
Carefully, she came from behind him and managed to manoeuvre the makeshift neck brace into place with little fuss. ‘There. That should help but you must stay as still as possible,’ she instructed. She looked around them outside and realised a few more people had left their cars and were wanting to help out.
She climbed from the car and called to a woman who was standing not too far away. ‘Hi. What’s your name?’ Phemie asked.
‘Nora.’
‘Great. Nora, can you come and talk to this man? He’s sustained a head injury and I need him to keep still but not to go to sleep.’
‘OK. What’s his name?’
‘He can’t remember at the moment. That’s not important. Just ask him to say his times tables or count or spell words, things like that.’
‘OK. I can do that.’
‘Good.’ Phemie took a deep breath, then headed towards the next car. Gil was striding purposefully towards her.
‘How are you doing?’
She pointed. ‘Patient in this car has an elevated pulse, sluggish pupils and a bad bump to the head. I’ve fashioned a neck brace to keep him stable and have a lady talking to him to keep him lucid.’
‘You fashioned a neck brace?’ Gil took a few steps closer and peered into the car, then turned back to Phemie and shook his head in wonderment. ‘Good improvising.’
‘Thank you. What’s next?’
‘Ground zero car is a mess. Both front passengers are dead. I think, but I’m not entirely sure, that there may be another person in the back of the car. Even if I’m right, it’s all so mangled, I’m presuming they would have died on impact.’
Phemie shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Any idea what may have caused the accident?’
‘I’m too busy right now to figure out the whys and wherefores. Let’s just help as many people as we can.’
As they headed off to check on other vehicles, they both stopped for a moment when they heard the sounds of sirens heading in their direction.
‘A welcome sound,’ Gil murmured.
It wasn’t long before they received help, the paramedics attending to Phemie’s head injury patient and fire crews sorting through the wreckage. The police took over from Jim and his son, thanking them for their assistance, and soon a very slow parade of cars passed by as they continued to work.
Two women, both in their thirties, had escaped unharmed except for seat-belt bruises. ‘We still need you to go to the hospital to be evaluated,’ Phemie said firmly to one of the women who was eager just to go home and lie down. ‘Sometimes, in situations such as this, your body can be in shock and other symptoms can present themselves a few hours after the initial accident. Please,’ she urged. ‘Go to the hospital, let them monitor you for the next few hours. It’s a necessary precaution.’
‘Dr Grainger is absolutely right.’ Gil spoke from behind her, pulling off a pair of gloves. At the sound of his soothing English accent, Phemie felt a mass of tension leave her body. How was it he could have such a calming effect on her? Perhaps keeping him around at the Didja base for a week wasn’t such a bad idea after all. They could do clinics, assist with house calls and emergencies then at the end of the day they could sit out on the verandah. Gil could talk to her in his normal easy-flowing tones and her body would instantly unwind. So rich, so deep, so…Gil.
‘Wouldn’t you agree, Dr Grainger?’
It was then Phemie realised she was standing there, staring up at him as though he’d just hung the moon. She gave herself a mental shake and nodded. ‘Absolutely, Professor.’ She honestly had no idea what she was agreeing to but if Gil had said it, it must be correct, right? When she turned to look back at the two women, Phemie realised that they, too, appeared to be under Gil’s thrall.
Both women were looking at him as though he was the most perfect male specimen they’d ever come across and they would be more than willing to do as he’d suggested on the proviso that he was the doctor who looked after them during their time of investigation.
‘You’re a professor?’ The first woman preened. ‘English, handsome and a professor.’
‘Are you married?’ the second woman asked, fluttering her eyelashes at him.
Whilst Phemie thought the question gauche and impolite, it was only then that she realised that even she didn’t know the answer to that question. All this time she’d been looking at him, mildly flirting with him, enjoying his company—as he had obviously been enjoying hers, given that a few times she’d been positive he’d wanted to kiss her—and yet she hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might be married. It was so unlike her not to be sure. She planned everything. She was Miss Hospital Corners!
Even more surprisingly, she realised she was holding her breath, along with the other two women, as they waited for his answer.
‘No,’ he replied politely, but the firmness in his tone indicated there was a lot more to what he was not saying. His back had become more rigid, his shoulders were firmly squared and he was clenching the used gloves tightly in his hands. It was as though he was channelling all his frustration, his annoyance, his pain into the gloves in order to keep himself under control.
Pain? Gil glanced at Phemie and, yes, there it was. A deep, unabated pain in his eyes, and it only confirmed her feeling that there was a lot more going on. What had happened to him? Had he lost a loved one? Had some tragedy struck his life? Perhaps he had been married and it had ended in divorce? A bad marriage wasn’t something anyone liked to talk about with random strangers. Was Gil’s life in turmoil? Could that possibly be one of the reasons why he’d embarked on the travelling fellowship? Was he running away from his life?
‘Let’s get you ladies over to the ambulance.’ Gil turned and called for one of the police officers to come and escort the women to the paramedics. ‘Phemie,’ Gil said when they were alone again, ‘I was just talking to Kirk, the lead fireman, and he said there is someone in the back of the centre car.’
‘Oh, no.’ Phemie had looked at the wreckage and hadn’t been able to see anyone but, then, the rear of the car had been so bent and pushed out of shape, it had been impossible to see everything.
‘They have specialised equipment to pick up heat signatures, which tells them how many bodies—that sort of thing. They found a heat signature in the back.’
‘Wait, but that would mean—’
‘The person’s still alive.’
‘Oh, my gosh. All this time. If we’d known…’ Compassionate pain filled her eyes and Gil marvelled at the woman before him. She’d handled herself so professional, so brilliantly with the emergency and even though he knew that working with the RFDS, she’d often be called to assist in all kinds of different and unique situations, to see her actually working her way methodically through what was required filled him with pride. It was an odd sensation, feeling proud of this woman he barely knew, but each different facet of her personality she allowed him to see only enhanced the gravitational pull he felt towards her.
‘Is there anything we can do to help with the ex
traction?’ Phemie started walking towards the centre car.
‘Better leave it to the fire crews. They have the equipment to cut the person out. They’ve already peeled back the roof, which gives them better access.’
‘To the people in the front,’ she pointed out. ‘But the rear of the car is so mangled it’s going to take them a lot longer to get to that person. It might end up being too late.’ Phemie stood back from the centre car, watching the emergency services team do their jobs.
They were in the process of shifting the two deceased bodies from the front of the car, hoping it would give them better access to the rear. The ground had already been sprayed with foam to ensure no leaking fuel ignited. This, however, made the area quite slippery, especially as she was only wearing a pair of flat boots beneath her jeans. Her light green shirt was covered by her navy jumper and Phemie was glad she’d dressed comfortably that morning. Then again, she’d anticipated already being at her hotel by now where she would have showered and changed into clothes more befitting a medical presenter at the conference.
Gil was dressed in a suit and had discarded his jacket before they’d left the car, his tie was now missing and she wondered whether he’d used it as an improvised tourniquet or whether it was rolled up in his trouser pocket. His crisp chambray shirt was no longer crisp, but was streaked with grime, blood and dirt.
It didn’t matter. What they wore, how they looked, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the trapped person and as Phemie looked on, she wondered if there wasn’t a way to extract the patient from the rear of the car rather than going through the front.
‘The only place that person could be is lying on the back seat floor of that car.’ Phemie spoke clearly.
With the way the car seemed to have folded in on itself, she had a point. ‘That’s not a lot of room.’
‘A child?’
‘A teenager? I think we can safely surmise it’s not a six-foot man.’
‘Agreed. He simply wouldn’t fit into such a tiny space. A woman?’
‘That’s more likely, but how did they get to the floor? With her seat belt on, it would have been an impossibility.’
‘Maybe the seat belt snapped. Maybe they unbuckled it just for an instant to pick something up off the floor.’
‘Too many scenarios and no need to puzzle our way through them. What we need to focus on is the best way to extract the person.’
‘Or at least to get medical aid to them so that whilst the extraction process continues, they’re at least getting analgesia and fluids.’
‘If it was possible to…’ He stopped and thought some more, trying to study the mess before them.
‘Cut through the rear? That’s what I was thinking but then the petrol tank poses a problem.’
‘What about going in—?’ Gil broke off and growled with impatience. ‘The only way is what the crews are doing now. Removing the front passengers so we can get to the person in the back.’
‘Frustrating.’
‘I don’t usually attend accident sites,’ Gil murmured. ‘Not in the last few years at any rate.’
‘Prefer to stay in the hospital and wait for the patients to be brought to you?’
‘Something like that.’ Gil frowned at the slow, meticulous way the emergency crews were doing their best to get to the trapped person. It made him think about the plane accident that had taken the life of his wife and baby daughter. Had she panicked as the plane had plummeted? Had she felt any pain? Had she felt alone? Had she been thinking of him?
Gil hadn’t thought about his wife’s death in this much detail since the funeral. After he’d buried his family, he’d walked away, determined not to look back, determined to lock his heart up and never open himself up for so much pain ever again. He’d thrown himself into his work, wanting to make a difference with his research, with his developments. He’d lost weight, was hardly sleeping and, as William had termed it, was ‘becoming a shadow of his former self’.
The travelling fellowship had seemed like a good idea. He could step outside his comfort zone whilst still remaining firmly in it. When you travelled, when you met new people every week, when you spoke in lecture theatre after lecture theatre on similar topics, you could still feel very alone.
That’s what had happened to him. It was why he’d initially been looking forward to ending the tour and going back to London, even if it was only to attempt to have some sort of normal life. That was before he’d met the enchanting Euphemia Grainger.
She’d made him feel alive as he hadn’t felt in years. She’d made him think about personal issues he’d wanted to leave boxed up in the far recesses of his mind. She’d made him realise he was become more attracted to her the more time they spent together.
Watching her now, watching the way she was empathising with their unknown patient, how she was as eager as he was to get in there and provide whatever medical care they could, it reminded him of himself. He had a need to be there for people, to give help, to solve problems. It appeared Phemie was cut from the same cloth.
‘Dr Grainger, is it?’ One of the firemen walked over to where she and Gil were standing, watching silently.
‘Phemie, meet Kirk.’ Gil quickly introduced them.
‘Phemie, we need someone short enough to slide into the car and assess the patient as best you can. All of us…’ Kirk indicated the police and fire staff ‘…are too tall.’
‘Wait.’ Gil held up his hand. ‘You want Phemie to do what?’ He wasn’t sure he liked what he was hearing. All his English sensibilities started to bristle. Phemie was more than capable to doing what was asked, he had no doubt about that, but why her? So she was small. Surely there were other people who could do it. He would even volunteer to wedge himself into the small space but from Phemie’s decisive look she was more than willing to do what was asked. His heart began to pound a concerned rhythm as he visualised her in that car.
‘When we’ve finished clearing the front seats, we’ll be needing someone, preferably with medical knowledge, to climb in and assess the patient. Dr Grainger seems the obvious choice. She’s small enough and qualified.’
‘That’s fine.’ Phemie nodded. ‘How much room will I have?’
‘You’ll be able to get your arm through, possibly…’ Kirk looked at Phemie’s small hands. ‘Both your hands.’
‘Good. I’ll go and talk to the paramedics and get set up.’
‘Excellent.’ Kirk headed back to his crew. As Phemie turned to head over to the ambulance, Gil reached out and stopped her.
‘You can’t climb into that car. It’s not safe.’ He left his hand on her arm, the warmth of his touch causing her body to flood with tingles.
‘It’s all right, Gil. It’s not like I haven’t done things like this before.’
‘What?’ His tone was incredulous. ‘Are you completely insane? You’re willingly and knowingly putting yourself in danger.’ As he spoke the words, wanting desperately to change her mind, he also knew he had no right to ask, yet his protective urge towards her only seemed to be intensifying the more time they spent together.
It was insane. This wasn’t like him at all. He knew Kirk had been right to ask Phemie. She had all the qualifications and she was small enough to fit into the space. He was also sure that if Kirk hadn’t asked, Phemie would have volunteered. Still, the thought of Phemie climbing into that highly unstable vehicle made his stomach churn and his head whirl. But why?
‘I’m helping someone in need and it’s not really dangerous.’ Why was he so concerned about this? He seemed almost adamant that she not be involved in this situation. Providing initial medical care was all well and good but when it turned serious, did Gil really expect her to pull back? ‘I mean, I’m surrounded by emergency crew members who know what they’re doing, the area has been doused with foam so there’s little chance of the vehicle catching fire and, honestly, Gil, it’s not the worst situation I’ve been in.’
Gil continued to hold her arm, not wanting to let her
go. He took another step forward and then, to her surprise, placed his free hand on her cheek, caressing the soft skin there. Phemie froze, unable to move, unable to breathe, his soft, sweet touch creating havoc with her senses.
‘I’ve seen how you work under pressure, Phemie. You’re incredible. I’m not saying you’re not capable of doing the work, just that…’ He exhaled slowly and swallowed, his Adam’s apple working up and down his magnificent throat. ‘Be careful. Please. For me. Take extra care.’
Phemie was slightly puzzled at his soft, tender words, not sure why someone she hardly knew that well was so concerned for her well-being. Perhaps it was because he knew how much she was needed, especially after he’d met Anthony. Yes. That had to be it. Gil was merely showing this much concern because he was worried about Anthony. It was the only explanation she could come up with.
‘I promise,’ she remarked and tried not to nestle her cheek further into his palm. To feel him touching her like that, to be the recipient of such a caress, it made her mind jump all over the place and the last thing she needed right now was to lose her focus.
With strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Phemie forced herself to step back, breaking all contact between them. Resolutely she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘I need to focus.’
‘Of course.’ Gil also took a step back instantly berating himself for having shown her how much he’d come to care for her in such a short time. ‘Do what you need to do.’
With a brief nod, Phemie walked over to the ambulance, trying to push the memory of his touch into the far recesses of her mind. Gil had touched her before, he’d held her firmly in his arms and been so close, they could easily have kissed. This time, though, his concern had been more personal rather than simply physical. It was dangerous.
CHAPTER SIX
GIL watched as Phemie was helped into the front passenger section of the car the fire crews had cleared. She crammed herself into place and was able to reach through a small gap to insert an IV line and check on the patient.