CHAPTER NINE
LAURIE’S LITTLE JOKE had well and truly backfired on her. Two weeks ago she’d chosen the egg costume for Ross in an attempt to stop him from following her around to make sure she wasn’t overdoing things. But so much had changed since then. And as it turned out, the yellow feathers were a bit more than she could handle, flying around everywhere and making her sneeze.
Ross glanced up and down the obstacle course, and then lifted the egg over his shoulders. Laurie put her chicken mask on, and they lined up with the others at the start of the course.
‘What’s he going to do about the skipping ropes?’ Sam was in the next lane to Laurie.
‘Goodness only knows. Improvise?’
Sam laughed. ‘Yeah. We should finish as quickly as we can, so we can watch him.’
‘Hey!’ Ross’s voice sounded from inside the egg. ‘I heard that...’
Laurie rolled her eyes as the parent who had been given the starting pistol walked along the line to make sure everyone’s toes were behind it. That was taking it all a bit too seriously. But as she looked down the course, she couldn’t help feeling her heart beat a little faster. Couldn’t help weighing up the opposition. Sam was the strongest of the bunch, and while Laurie was pretty confident she could beat her in normal circumstances, a chicken suit and a hip that shouldn’t be overstressed would give Sam an advantage.
‘Ready... Get set...’ The starting pistol sounded and Laurie started to run. She and Sam got to the upturned gym benches, which were serving as balance beams, at the same time. Something was amusing the crowd, she could hear ripples of laughter.
‘Oh, no!’ She heard Sam’s exclamation and looked round. Somehow the egg had got dislodged and Ross had become disorientated, veering blindly off course.
‘I’ll go and get him. You go.’
Sam hesitated.
‘Go! You can still win. Honour of the clinic, eh?’
Sam grinned. ‘Okay.’ She jumped onto the beam, making her way adroitly along it, just as the man who had just passed them overbalanced and stepped off his.
Laurie started to run back towards Ross. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Laurie Sullivan. The most focussed, competitive member of any team. She flung her arms around the egg, and Ross stilled suddenly.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Laurie. Come along, it’s this way...’ She tried to adjust the egg so that he could see through the eye holes, but it wouldn’t go all the way. That would have to do.
They made their way over to the beams, and once Ross found his he made a good job of traversing it. Then she ran for the slalom, checking that he was still with her.
‘Crawl tube’s next.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ She heard him chuckle. ‘You go...’
From inside the plastic tunnel she could hear the crowd’s reaction. Ross was obviously playing this for laughs, and when she emerged from the other end she saw him bending over to mimic an egg-shaped crawl. The skipping ropes were out of the question as well, but as she picked hers up and started to skip, he copied the motion with his legs.
Her father would have been screaming his disapproval. All her life Laurie had been taught to compete, no matter what the context or whether the race was supposed to be fun. She’d left her father behind, but the guiding principle was so ingrained that it had turned into an instinctive reaction. Something she couldn’t throw off.
But her father wasn’t here. Ross was. There was a long straight run to the finish line, and she saw Sam at the other end, cheering and clapping. As Ross made his way at a slow canter, she ran behind him, stretching her arms out to make it look as if she was pushing him.
Everyone laughed. And the feeling was... Freedom. She felt free.
But as Ross made the finishing line, he tripped, staggering to one side and making a half-turn before he lost his balance completely. Laurie held out her hand to save him, but grabbing hold of a papier-mâché egg to stop the fall of a six-foot man was never going to work. He went down in a cloud of paper and dried glue, and Laurie only just managed to keep her footing.
‘Ross! Are you okay?’ She bent back the paper that was still covering his face.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. You didn’t fall, did you?’ The tenderness in his eyes was all-consuming. People were crowding round, and she didn’t even see them.
‘No. Just managed to stop myself.’
‘Coming through...’ She heard Sam’s voice. ‘Coming through!’
A flash of blue satin on the grass beside her brought her to her senses. She could stay here on the grass with him for the rest of the afternoon, but that was sure to be remarked on by the teachers and the parents.
‘Ross. Stay down.’ Sam’s put her hand out to stop him from sitting up and he ignored her completely.
‘Too late.’ Laurie shrugged. Ross was getting to his feet, brushing pieces of papier-mâché from his hair.
Sam puffed out a breath. ‘Really, Ross. Laurie and I could have demonstrated all sorts of things to the kids. Neck braces, broken arms...’
‘Dislocated shoulders.’ Laurie grinned. She’d be very happy to inspect Ross thoroughly for bruises as well.
‘Yes, dislocated shoulder.’ Sam nodded sagely. ‘That’s a good one.’
‘Sorry.’ Ross chuckled. ‘Looks as if the egg’s the only casualty.’
‘And the chicken.’ Sam pulled the chicken mask out from under Laurie’s knee, disturbing a small cloud of loose feathers as she did so. ‘Think we’ll get a gold medal for making the most mess?’
Ross nodded. ‘Yeah. We came first on that one, at least.’
* * *
It was just as well that Laurie had thought to bring a pair of jeans along, in case she needed to change. Ross had fetched them from the car, along with his own change of clothes, and Laurie emerged from the changing tent with the remains of the chicken costume in a plastic rubbish bag, heartily glad to be rid of the feathers.
Ross was standing a few feet away, and the body language of the couple he was with screamed that now they had him in conversation, they weren’t going to let him get away. He was nodding and listening, his smile fixed, and Laurie wondered whether she should go and rescue him. Then the man looked straight at her.
‘Excuse me. Are you...?’ He frowned, clicking his fingers as if he was trying to place her. ‘The rower...’
No. She didn’t want to be Laurie Sullivan the rower today. She’d been having too much fun. Ross turned and must have seen the dismay on her face.
‘Laurie’s on my medical team at the clinic.’ He interjected quickly.
‘Ah. I could have sworn...’ The man frowned at her, and his wife shook her head.
‘Don’t, Brian.’
Okay. Maybe she was nothing like a winner today. Laurie gave a little shrug. ‘It’s okay. I get that a lot.’
‘About your son...’ Ross was steering the couple away now, and the thumbs-up gesture he made to Laurie behind his back told her that he had everything under control.
‘All the usual questions, I see.’ Laurie turned to find Jo, the headmistress, standing beside her.
‘Usual questions?’
Jo nodded. ‘Yes. Mr and Mrs Marshall have an older boy, nice lad, he’s in the senior school now. He’s very good at football, and when he was here they were very keen for me to get a special trainer along to the football club for him.’
‘He’s a little young for that, isn’t he?’ The children here were all aged from five to seven.
‘I thought so. But they wouldn’t listen so I called in my secret weapon.’ Jo smiled, nodding towards Ross. ‘Ross’s reputation meant that they accepted his advice a bit more readily.’
‘Not to be so pushy?’ Laurie wondered what her own teachers had thought of her father. What might have happened if someone had shown the good sense that Jo had
, and had called in someone like Ross. Nothing, probably. Her father didn’t listen to anyone.
‘Football’s a very lucrative career.’ Jo mused. ‘But at this age, our aim is to give pupils a broad range of basic skills that they can carry forward and that gives them choices. Ross has helped us to structure a good sports programme, and he’s worked with a number of our children who have special needs. And he’s very good with the odd pushy parent.’
‘He understands the issues?’ Maybe Ross understood her better than she’d thought.
‘Yes. And he’s very committed to giving the children a good start.’
‘I thought...’ Laurie smiled. ‘I thought we were here just for fun.’
Jo laughed. ‘Well, you are. But it doesn’t do any harm to let the parents meet him in a less formal setting. I liked your double act on the obstacle course.’
Double act? Laurie wondered if her growing friendship with Ross was that apparent. But that had just been a bit of fun, too.
‘Miss... Miss...’ A little girl was tugging at Jo’s dress and she shot Laurie an apologetic look.
‘What is it, Lisa? I’m talking...’
‘But Josh has fallen up a tree!’
Jo mouthed an apology to Laurie and squatted on her heels next to the child. ‘Which tree, Lisa? Has Josh fallen down?’
‘No. Up! Over the stream.’
None of that made any sense to Laurie, but it clearly did to Jo. She straightened up suddenly, looking around and waving to a couple to catch their attention.
‘Run to Mum and Dad, Lisa. Now, please.’
As Lisa scampered away, Jo’s face took on a look of urgent concern. ‘Would you fetch Ross, please, Laurie? I’m going to see what’s happened.’
Jo hurried away as fast as her heels would allow her on the grass. Laurie ran towards Ross, catching his arm to drag his attention away from the Marshalls.
‘Jo needs you. Something about a kid falling up a tree by the stream?’
‘What?’ Ross apparently knew what that meant too, and he set off at a run, leaving the Marshalls staring open-mouthed after him.
‘Sorry.’ Laurie shot them an apologetic look. ‘We’ll be back...’
She followed Ross. He’d overtaken Jo, who was now running barefoot, and Laurie set her gaze on his back and ran, feeling her hip complain as she picked up speed. That wasn’t important right now. Ross and Jo’s reactions had left no room for doubt that something was badly wrong, and that a child was in danger.
Ross skirted the corner of the school building and Laurie followed him. Up ahead she could see a small knot of children pressed against a plastic mesh fence that bordered the edge of the school playing field. And beyond that...
A little boy seemed to be hanging upside down from the branch of a huge tree that overhung a stream. He was screaming, a mixture of fear and pain in his voice.
Ross had already reached the fence and was clearing the children to one side, looking up at the plastic mesh, obviously wondering if he could clamber up it. But the fence was obviously designed to deter climbers and afforded no footholds. Laurie put on a spurt of speed, and as she reached him he was bending down to the children.
‘How did he get in?’
One little boy’s hand shot up. ‘He crawled under it. There.’
Ross looked round, and Laurie saw that the fence had been cut at the bottom. She might be able to wriggle through, but she doubted it. She bent down to try, but the hole was too small.
‘That’s not going to work...’
Ross knelt down, digging with his hands at one side of the hole, and uncovering a steel spike that was driven into the ground, holding the bottom of the fence down. That would do it. If they could just free a bit more, they could get under. She started to dig on the other side of the hole.
‘Steady. These are driven in pretty hard...’ He gripped the curved top of the spike and heaved, expelling a grunt of effort as it came free.
His words didn’t sting, the way they once would have. Laurie cleared the earth and found another spike, giving it a tentative pull. It was driven deep into the earth and it didn’t move.
‘Will you give this one a try?’
Ross grinned, but didn’t say anything. He heaved the spike up, and Laurie set about uncovering a third one.
‘Is that going to do it?’
Ross glanced at the fence. ‘One more, on the other side. See if you can find it while I get this one up.’
Laurie cleared more earth while Ross concentrated on getting the spikes out of the ground. Jo had arrived, barefoot and gasping for breath, and was speaking into her phone as she herded the children away from the fence.
‘Can you get under there?’ Ross pulled the fence up as far as it would go, and Laurie wriggled underneath it. He was a tighter fit, and she had to put all her weight into pulling the edge of the fence out of the way.
The boy had seen them coming and was quieter now. Either that or he was beginning to suffer the effect of inversion asphyxia, but that would be unusual unless he’d been hanging there for hours. There was a tangle of ropes hanging from a large tree branch that hung over the river, and one of his feet was caught up in it. Ross was quickly taking in the situation.
‘I’ll wade out and see if I can reach him.’
‘Yeah, okay. It looks as if I can get up the tree, but if the branch goes we’re in a whole world of trouble.’ The idea of the wide, heavy bough crashing down on top of both Ross and the boy didn’t bear thinking about.
Ross nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do from underneath first.’
He waded into the water, making his way towards the boy. The stream wasn’t too deep, and he could reach the child’s shoulders and support them, bringing his head up a little. But he couldn’t reach his foot.
It was an easy scramble, up the sloping trunk of the tree. The huge branch that stretched out over the water was as steady as a rock, but she didn’t put any weight on it. If the boy was okay where he was, it might be better to wait for the emergency services.
‘What do you reckon, Ross? This branch isn’t going to go anywhere.’
Ross’s gaze flipped from the boy, lying listlessly in his arms, to the branch above his head. Laurie knew this was a difficult decision to make.
‘We need to get him down now.’
‘Okay. I’ll slide out there.’ She got down on her hands and knees to spread her weight a little, and crawled out. It was a journey of trust. Trust that Ross had read the situation right, and that they couldn’t wait. His trust in her, that she’d take her weight off the branch if it seemed at all unstable.
The rope seemed to be caught in a complex arrangement of knots, and she couldn’t see straight away which one would free the boy. But, stretching down, she could run her hand along the rope twisted around his ankle and find the right one. She tore at the knot, feeling her nails break and the warm, slipperiness of blood.
‘Uh... Got it.’ The knot unravelled and the tension of the ropes around the boy’s ankle loosened, but his foot was still trapped.
‘Can you get his shoe off, Ross?’ Without the heavy, thick-soled trainers his foot would slip through the gap.
‘Can’t reach. Can you manage it?’
‘I think so. You’ve got him?’
‘Yeah, he won’t fall.’
There was a second mess of ropes around the branch. Laurie tugged at them and they held, and she looped one around her leg.
Carefully she edged forward, reaching for the boy’s foot. Tugging at the hook and loop fastenings on his shoe, she eased it off. The boy’s foot slipped through the gap in the rope, leaving his sock behind. When Laurie looked down, she saw Ross making for dry land, with the boy cradled in his arms.
Now she just had to make sure she didn’t end up suspended upside down. The rope was holding her, but she’d had to shift for
ward until most of her body weight was over the water. She puffed out a breath, inching sideways until she was lying along the branch again. A moment to let her muscles recover from the strain, and then she unwrapped the rope from her leg and slithered down the trunk of the tree to the ground.
Ross had laid the boy carefully down on the grass, and was trying to gently rouse him. His eyes fluttered open but he seemed disoriented.
That could be from shock, or the pain of his swollen ankle. Or it could be from some other injury as he’d fallen. Or from hanging upside down. Asphyxia caused by the internal organs pressing down on the lungs didn’t usually happen this quickly but it was so unusual that there wasn’t a lot written on the subject.
Ross was taking the most devastating of those possibilities first, and after checking his breathing, he pulled up the boy’s T-shirt to see his back and chest and then applied gentle pressure to his ribs and stomach. No reaction. Laurie found the boy’s pulse and nodded to him.
‘No sign of internal bleeding.’
Laurie nodded. ‘Let me check his hips and legs.’ Children of this age were more prone to dislocations than adults.
Ross shifted to one side, turning his attention once more to rousing the boy. Laurie ran her hands carefully around his hips and down each leg. Apart from the swelling in his ankle, she could find no evidence of anything wrong.
‘Hey... Josh. Open your eyes...’ Ross had found the boy’s name stitched into the back of his T-shirt. ‘That’s good. Can you take a deep breath for me?’
Josh took a breath. So far so good. ‘My leg hurts.’
‘Yeah, I know. We’re taking care of that. Anything else?’
Josh shook his head. He was looking much less red in the face now, and more alert. When Laurie checked his pulse it was pretty much normal, which was probably more than could be said about hers.
A clatter at the gates in the fence made her look up, and she saw Jo unlocking them. She hurried towards them, kneeling down next to Josh. ‘How is he?’
Falling for the Brooding Doc Page 9