Air Ambulance

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Then, suddenly, she saw the sea immediately beneath them.

  Aware of a strange constriction in her throat, as if her heart had suddenly got there by mistake, she sat frozen into immobility in her seat and waited. It was not in her to panic or even to attempt to ask a needless question. They were in trouble and she knew it, but she would add nothing to their efforts by losing her head.

  Their powerful landing lights were switched on, and somewhere beneath them a lighthouse flashed, revealing the curl of white on the breakers beneath it. She heard Ronald curse and mutter something beneath his breath as they tipped at a crazy angle and she could see all the starboard wing-span beneath her.

  “We’re too damned near the sea,” he said involuntarily, “and I can’t make any height. I’ll have to ditch her and hope for the best.”

  “There’s something over there!” Ginger strained his eyes in the first pale flush of dawn which came between the clouds. “Skipper—it’s an island—and hills!”

  “My God! Heimra!”

  The words were tense and clipped, and Ronald appeared to rise over the controls, although he was firmly strapped to his seat. For a moment they seemed to be gaining height, swerving away from the blackness of the hills. There was no sound in the plane. Nobody spoke, and there was no time for fear. Alison clenched her teeth and waited, while coolly, calmly, Ginger MacLean spoke once more over the radio transmitter to his base, giving his position and direction of flight. Then, once again, the fateful words: “Mayday!” “Mayday...!”

  In a silence which could almost be felt they began to lose height, and for a single, devastating moment Alison saw Ronald’s face in the bright flash of the lighthouse beam. It was tense with strain, but it was also calm.

  “I’m putting her down,” he said. “Fasten yourself in and hold on to everything. If I’m lucky I might make Heimra Beag.”

  Alison felt her fingernails biting into her flesh as they banked again, and a white stretch of sand came racing up to meet them.

  “Dear God!” she murmured twice before they touched something solid and the whole bottom of the plane seemed to be wrenched away.

  At least, she thought, they’ll send another plane through for the emergency.

  When she was aware of light again two hefty arms were pulling her out of the sea. Ginger, with his coat torn and a blackened face, peered down at her with anxious eyes.

  “The skipper’s hurt,” he said. “We struck something on the sand—pot-hole, probably. Are you all right? We’re ashore, thank God!”

  Alison attempted to struggle to her feet, only to be driven back on her knees by a wrenching pain in her side, high up over the diaphragm.

  Ribs, she thought automatically, hoping that that might be all.

  “Don’t mind me,” she commanded breathlessly. “See what you can do for Ron.”

  Ginger looked at her doubtfully, and then back towards the sea.

  “I’ll need help,” he told her without further ado. “The tide’s coming in.”

  And who was to help him, apart from herself? Pain racked her as she struggled to her feet, but she bit her teeth into her lower lip and followed Ginger across the sand.

  The fuselage was still intact, but in there, somewhere, Ronald Gowrie lay unconscious.

  “I’ll have to go up round the other side,” Ginger shouted to her against a rising wind. “She’s tipped this way and the door’s jammed. There’s nothing we can do from here.”

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” she shouted back. She was shivering. Reaction had set in, and they still did not know whether Ronald Gowrie was alive or dead. “I’ll try to come with you.”

  “Maybe you’d better, if you can.”

  Ginger was already scrambling over the rocky headland beneath which the Heron had come to rest, holding on to the side of the fuselage where he could, and soon he was knee-deep in water and liable to slip from his precarious foot-hold at any moment.

  They had, however, to get into the plane somehow.

  Alison threw off her cloak. It was already wet and she would manage better without its hampering weight dragging her down.

  The darkness had lifted, as if the storm, having done its worst had paused to draw breath, and she could see the outline of the cliff above her and, out to sea, stretching like treacherous tentacles from the island, a line of skerries with white surf breaking over it. That, at least, they had avoided by Ronald’s skill.

  From time to time there was the dismal clanging of a bell-buoy, and she found herself listening for its reiterated warning as she climbed.

  Seagulls rose and swept over her head, crying bitterly. It was the most doleful sound she had ever heard. Like lost spirits wheeling out above the world.

  Ginger was in the plane now.

  “O.K.!” he yelled. “I’ve got him.”

  In that moment Alison slipped and fell. Clinging desperately to the edge of the wing, she plunged waist-deep into the lifting tide, with no foothold anywhere, and it seemed as if her legs were floating away from her among the heaving, treacherous yellow weed. In no time, she realized, her hands would become too numb to hold on, but she could not call out.

  Gradually she became unaware of any feeling other than a growing numbness which deepened into a sense of security. It would be easy and kind, she thought, to drift away on this slow-moving tide...

  “All right! I’ve got hold of you!”

  The voice had been slow, measured, calm, and she recognized it immediately. Fergus Blair was up there somewhere, above her on the rocks, and before she could speak, before she could make any sign, he had lifted her bodily into his arms.

  Tension snapped in her as she lay against him, feeling the numbness and the cold ebbing away, aware of nothing very much in these first moments but a strange, vague unreality and the hard pressure of his encircling arms.

  He carried her in silence towards the beach, sure-footed even on the treacherous stretches of seaweed, and put her down at last on the firm sand.

  She brushed the hair out of her eyes to look at him, and his sense of shock was immediately evident.

  “I had no idea,” he said harshly. “I heard the plane, and guessed that you were in trouble.”

  “I—we didn’t mean to land on Heimra. We wouldn’t have done, but there was no other way.”

  Her voice had sounded high-pitched and aggressive even in her own ears, and she hadn’t really been thinking of Heimra Beag as the prohibited island. It was just that some subconscious urge had put the accusation into her voice.

  Without answering her he peeled off the thick sheepskin jacket he wore and put it securely about her shoulders.

  “Stay where you are,” he commanded. “It looks as if I may be needed on the plane. Is the pilot still aboard?”

  She nodded dumbly.

  “Yes. It’s Ronald Gowrie.” She seemed to be speaking in an odd sort of trance. “He didn’t want to land on Heimra...”

  He gave her a quick, searching look, striding off almost immediately to plunge waist-deep into the water beside the Heron, and in seconds, it seemed, the door had been forced open and Ginger’s small, puckish face appeared in the aperture. It was red with exertion.

  “He’s pretty badly hurt...”

  The remainder of the sentence was whipped away by the wind, but she saw Fergus Blair forcing his way into the cabin and thought that all might now be well.

  Trying not to crumple up ignominiously on the sand, she stood waiting with the warmth of the sheepskin-lined jacket penetrating her whole body and enabling her to think clearly again.

  The faint tang of a good tobacco hung around it, and when she thrust her hands into the vast pockets for extra warmth, her fingers fastened over the bowl of a pipe.

  An eternity seemed to pass before there was any further movements from the plane, but at last Ginger backed through the doorway, and she drew a swift breath of relief.

  He stood hunched for a split second, blocking the exit, and then he let himself down sl
owly into the water. Above him Fergus Blair appeared, carrying a heavy burden, and final relief poured over her like an engulfing tide. They were bringing Ronald Gowrie out.

  “Is he all right?”

  Her words were no more than a whisper, and Fergus Blair answered them in the only way he could.

  “He’s alive,” he said.

  Alive! Alive, anyway, she thought. Not trapped out there where he could have drowned in unconsciousness.

  She could not really help them. Blair and Ginger carried Ronald between them easily enough once they had reached the beach, and she could only trudge behind them and pray that he would live.

  Subconsciously her mind filled with all the odd little things he had ever said to her, his sarcasm and the idle quips he made, the sting of which was obliterated by his laughter. He wasn’t really hard-boiled and cynical, she thought. Not deep down. He wore it as an armour because of what had happened in the past.

  And the past was here. Here on Heimra Beag, where fate had now forced him to play the role of trespasser.

  The two men laid their heavy burden down on the edge of the machar in the shelter of a ridge of rough grass, and Fergus Blair began his examination. It was as thorough as he could make it in the circumstances, and when he stood up he looked straight at Alison.

  “I’ve given him a shot of morphine which will last him till we can get him to shelter,” he said. “He’s quite badly broken up.”

  She drew her breath in but did not speak, waiting for him to tell her what to do.

  “We must find some sort of improvised stretcher in case there are other internal injuries,” he added. “You’d better come with me. I think we can leave MacLean in charge here till we get back.”

  “But...”

  The protest she had tried to make died on her lips as the sand and the sea and the angry, violent sky swam dizzily before her eyes, but she knew that she must not faint—not now, when Ronald Gowrie’s life hung so precariously in the balance.

  “I—can follow you,” she said, biting her teeth into her lower lip.

  For a moment longer he searched her pale face for the signs of collapse, and then he led her gently by the arm over the rough grass and the clumps of little, half-awakened flowers that edged the shore.

  “Where were you going?” he asked.

  He was making conversation to help her to cover the distance to their destination and she was determined not to fail him.

  “To Benbecula. There was an emergency.”

  “Did MacLean manage to get word back to his base?”

  “I think so. I think Ron knew we would have to come down even before we knew we were near Heimra. We had to fly high and ice began to form on the wings, forcing us down.”

  “But what about the de-icing system, the rubber affairs on the edge of the wings?”

  “Something went wrong. Perhaps it was the rain freezing so quickly as it touched us.”

  She shivered involuntarily, and his fingers tightened over her arm.

  “They’ll send out another plane.” He looked up towards the northwest, where already the clouds were beginning to disperse. “All this is clearing up.”

  Alison did not think it was clearing. The day seemed to be growing steadily darker, but she stumbled on by his side. Strange, she thought, how much confidence he gave her. His strength seemed to reach out and buoy her up. The pain in her side had intensified, stabbing relentlessly, but she could not tell him about it. Not yet. He would leave her somewhere, and go back for Ronald. That was the important thing.

  They came to a road, a narrow, winding pathway across low fields, rising at last to a gently-wooded slope. She felt as if she had been walking for hours, and she had been answering his questions automatically for the past five minutes.

  “I’m going to leave you here, at the lodge, for the present,” he told her. “You’ll be all right. I’ll get someone to look after you.”

  “Please don’t worry. Please go back as quickly as you can.” Her lips had gone dry, and she had to force the words out. When they came to a high iron gate she almost stumbled against it.

  Blair caught her, lifting her bodily for the second time and striding with her into the lodge.

  “Mrs. Cameron!” he called through the half-open door, and instantly a small, dark-haired woman came from an inner room. She gasped something in Gaelic, and held the door wide. “There’s been an accident,” Blair explained. “A plane has come down over beside the skerries—the Air Ambulance. Will you see what you can do for Miss Lang? I shall have to get Dougal and something we can use as a stretcher. There’s no time to go on to Garrisdale,” he added. “It would be impracticable, anyway. I don’t think the children heard anything amiss. They would have been asleep. Try to keep them out of the way, if you can.”

  “I will that!” The little Highland woman followed them into the room from which she had come. It was a large, cheerful-looking kitchen with a peat fire already burning in the grate and a black kettle steaming on the hob, suggesting a perpetual welcome. “Is the lassie badly hurt?”

  Alison shook her head, trying to smile her acknowledgement of the little woman, although all she wanted to do was to sink down on the velvet sofa against the wall and allow the blessed relief of oblivion to envelope her.

  Blair put her down on the sofa, and stopped to take her pulse. “Will you find Dougal, Mrs. Cameron?” he asked without looking around.

  “Ay. It won’t take me long. He’s over at the peats.” Mrs. Cameron hesitated at the door. “You’ll be needing blankets and plenty of hot water when you get back,” she suggested. “There is a kettle on the boil if you are needing it now.”

  “I don’t think so.” Blair was still looking down at Alison. “Where’s the pain?” he asked.

  “My ribs, I think.”

  He ran his hands gently and expertly over her diaphragm, pressing a little, and she tried not to cry out when he came to the seat of the pain.

  “I see,” he said, straightening. “I think we might be able to put that right without a great deal of trouble. What about the arm?”

  “It’s rather painful—yes,” she admitted. “But I don’t think there’s anything broken. It’s only that I can’t move my fingers very well.”

  “We’ll look at that too, when I’ve got Gowrie up to the house,” he decided. “You must promise me to stay where you are.”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “There must be no doubt about it,” he told her as he turned away.

  “Well, then, I promise.”

  “That’s better. Mrs. Cameron will be back in a second or two. She’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  He went out, leaving her alone in the warm room, and she closed her eyes, allowing her senses to swim, but just not passing into unconsciousness. The kitchen was the sort of room Ronald Gowrie had described to her when he had spoken of his mother’s home on Heimra Mhor, the real living-space of the house. Everything about it was warm and scrupulously clean, with brass gleaming from every corner to reflect the orange glow of the peat fire. There was a dresser with white and blue china along one wall and a “set-in” bed on the other, veiled by lace curtains and covered by a hand-made counterpane of fine crochet work. A loom and a spinning-wheel stood near the window, and a large black cat sat in the hearth gazing implacably at the two china dogs on the high chimneypiece above him.

  When Mrs. Cameron came back into the kitchen Alison opened her eyes.

  “I’m really quite able to get up,” she began, but the older woman shook her head.

  “You lie where you are, and I’ll make you a cup of tea in no time,” she commanded, disappearing into an inner room. “Just let me get Mr. Blair a blanket or two and a wee drop of brandy, in case he needs it.”

  “He’s given morphine,” Alison murmured automatically.

  She could hear voices outside, Fergus Blair’s and another, possibly Dougal’s. He was no doubt Mrs. Cameron’s husband or her son. Neither of the
men came back into the house, and she supposed that they must be improvising some sort of stretcher to carry down to the beach.

  I wish I could go, she thought. I ought to be there with them, helping. But all she could do was to lie back and close her eyes again and try not to breathe very deeply because of the pain in her chest.

  She might have drifted into sleep or even a brief semi-consciousness, because, when she looked up again, Blair of Heimra was standing in the room. It was full daylight, and the lamp which had been burning on the round table beside the window had been extinguished.

  “Ronald?” she questioned rather desperately. “Have you brought him in?”

  He came across to the sofa, standing between her and the light so that she could not see his face very clearly.

  “Half an hour ago. We took him straight to Garrisdale. It was the best thing to do.” She thought that he spoke with pity, but she could not be sure. “He’s pretty badly damaged, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh...”

  All the blood had left her cheeks, and she clenched her hands by her side as she said:

  “You think there isn’t a lot of hope?”

  “Good gracious, no,” he said. “There’s always hope. What I was trying to say was that he may have to remain here for some time.”

  Out of the blue, the memory of Ronald Gowrie’s voice came to her, fierce with bitterness:

  “Seclusion is necessary to some people, and Blair of Heimra guards his assiduously!”

  “And that would annoy you?” she heard herself saying with reflected bitterness. “Your island’s privacy would be hopelessly violated if we stayed.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said briefly, frowning down at her. “There can be absolutely no question of personal feelings in this. I am a doctor, and my first duty is to a badly injured man. Surely you understand that? You’re a nurse.”