Minutes ticked past swiftly. Mac could feel exhaustion biding its time, waiting for an opportunity to ambush him, and he knew that Julia had to be a long way further down that track. Not that she was slowing down, of course. She never did. Mac was proud of his partner. Not just for her endurance or the way she had crawled into the cramped space by the window to hold Ken’s head to support his neck but for the way she effortlessly turned her skills to emotional support for their patient.
‘Glasgow’s home for you, isn’t it, Ken?’ she asked.
‘Aye. I was just going up to Inverness on business for the day.’
‘What do you do?’
‘My company makes umbrellas.’
Julia chuckled. ‘You must be doing really well. I’ve never seen so much rain as I have in the three months I’ve been here.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘That’s a country I’ve always wanted to visit. Is it as beautiful as they say it is?’
Mac found himself nodding. He felt exactly the same way. He’d love to get down to the bottom of the world for a visit. Always had, but the urge had got a lot stronger in the last few months. Funny, that.
‘It is,’ Julia was saying. ‘Parts of it are very similar to Scotland but I think we get a bit more sunshine.’
‘You going back?’
‘Yes. I work with an ambulance service that has a rescue unit back home. I’m here for six months for advanced training.’
‘What part of New Zealand do you live in?’
‘Christchurch. Middle of the south island. We’ve got the Alps to the west and the sea to the east. I grew up there.’
‘You’ve got family to go home to, then.’ Ken’s voice wobbled. He was obviously thinking of his own family and feeling alone right now.
‘Only my big sister,’ Julia told him.
Mac was busy pulling the extrication device they needed from its case but he was listening carefully. This was personal information. The kind that Jules had kept from her colleagues. He might have been left with questions that would never be answered but Ken wanted distraction from his situation. And Julia was so involved, she probably hadn’t registered that others might be able to hear.
‘She’s like a mum, really,’ she told Ken. ‘My mother died shortly after I was born. Anne’s nearly seven years older than me and she just took over from the various nannies. When Dad died I was only eleven but Anne was old enough to take care of me. She’s amazing. Managed to raise me and get through med school at the same time. I love her to bits.’
There was a short silence then. Julia appeared to be checking Ken’s pulse. Or was she holding his hand?
‘When you get to New Zealand,’ she said then, ‘make sure you visit Christchurch. It’s a very English city but don’t hold that against it, will you?’
Something suspiciously like a sniffle could be heard from Ken. ‘Nay, lassie,’ he said. ‘I won’t.’
He hadn’t missed the conviction in Julia’s tone that he would, someday, be well enough to travel to the other side of the world. She had deepened the connection between them by sharing personal information and now her confidence was a boost. She was his anchor right now. Nothing more personal was said because she shifted to professional responsibilities, making sure Ken was fully informed and understood everything going on around him to keep his fear at bay.
‘We’re getting something called a KED around you now, Ken. You’ll feel us tipping you a bit so we can slide it underneath.’
‘But I’m not supposed to move!’
‘I’ve got you. Relax. I won’t let anything happen to your alignment.’
‘What did you say it was?’
‘It’s like a body splint. It goes right round your chest and waist and up behind your neck and then we do up a whole bunch of straps. Then it’ll be safe to get you on the stretcher and out of here.’
‘It’s dark now, isn’t it?’
‘Pretty much. Don’t worry. We’ll have lights all over the place out there now. We can see what we’re doing.’
Sure enough, massive lights had been put in place both on the ground and the bridge and, despite drizzle that was determined to become rain, the visibility was excellent. It was still a slow job extricating Ken. He had pain relief on board and was completely immobilised but even the tiniest movement hurt. Angus joined them inside the carriage but it still took an age to inch the stretcher carefully upwards. Julia stayed as close as she could to Ken’s head. Talking to him. Reassuring him. Sympathising with the amount of pain he was in. It needed extra help to get the stretcher out of the door and attached to the winch and while that was happening Mac checked the harness he still wore in preparation to accompany the stretcher.
But Julia had other ideas.
‘I’ll go up with him.’
What he could see of her face looked very pale. Pinched, almost, as though she had been doing more than reassuring Ken and had actually taken some of his pain on board. Mac shook the thought off but whatever the cause she was reaching the limits of her endurance and steadying a stretcher being winched to make sure it didn’t catch on obstacles, not to mention helping to lift it over the lip of the destination, was no mean feat.
‘I think I should,’ was all he said.
But then he looked down from Julia’s face to where her hand was holding Ken’s. To the way Ken was looking up at Julia, his fear only just contained. And, for a weird moment, Mac felt envious. Of that connection. Of that touch.
‘OK,’ he amended a little hurriedly. ‘If you’re sure.’
Julia gave a single nod. ‘I’m sure.’
There were hand-held television cameras on the bridge now. Journalists eager to interview Julia as Ken was transferred to waiting paramedic crews who had a helicopter ready to evacuate him.
‘You’re going to the best spinal unit in Glasgow for assessment,’ Julia was able to tell Ken as she said goodbye. ‘I’ll come and visit you very soon.’
She avoided the media, pushing back to watch anxiously as her SERT colleagues brought out the man with the serious head injury, who was, amazingly, still clinging to life, and were then winched up themselves, one by one. By the time Mac joined her on the bridge, they had been on scene for nearly five hours and their official shift had finished some time ago.
Not that any of them were about to leave just yet. The weather was closing in and the transport that had taken Ken to Glasgow had been the last that would be leaving by air. Joe was grounded so they would have to organise road transport to get back to station and the people who could do that for them were otherwise occupied because the crane had finally arrived and the last stages of this rescue were under way.
Things hadn’t quite ended. It made no difference that they had started this shift well over twelve hours ago and that they were both exhausted. This had become ‘their’ job and they would see it through to the bitter end.
Had she known how bitter that end would be, Julia thought later, she would never have been so willing to accompany Mac back to the carriage for a final check. She would have found some way to ensure that someone other than them were the last people present.
The dead body was sprawled flat on the floor now, debris strewn under, around and over him. Julia edged in beside a seat to give the men in orange overalls room to load the man onto a stretcher and carry him to the temporary morgue set up in one of the huge tents. A space she knew already had fourteen occupants from this disaster.
She watched in silence as the stretcher was eased through the door and outside into the bleak night. Then she turned her head to see Mac also watching. Unguarded for an instant as the beam of her headlamp caught his face, she could see his exhaustion and the kind of defeat that went with every life lost on their watch.
Then he stooped and picked something up from the debris that had been pushed into piles to make way for the stretcher. Julia focused on what he held. It was a soft toy animal of some kind. Probably well loved and sha
bby to start with but it now had stuffing coming from a ripped-off leg and it was covered with bloodstains.
‘Carla’s, do you think?’
‘Probably. We didn’t have any other children in the carriage, thank goodness.’
For a long moment, she held Mac’s gaze. Watching the wheels turning in a brain shrugging off how tired it was. For a moment she wondered if he was thinking her statement was another indication of her aversion to working with paediatric cases but then she saw the grim lines in his face deepen and a haunted look appear in the way he frowned. There was another possibility.
They both turned to look back at the space the dead man had filled.
At the door that had been blocked by the body.
It was Mac who moved to open it. He had to put his shoulder against it and push because it was blocked from the inside. And then Julia heard him curse, softly but vehemently, as he dropped instantly to a crouch.
Her view was limited to what she could see over his shoulder because Mac filled the narrow doorway. She could see narrow shoulders and the back of a head covered with long, blonde hair. A woman, then. Had she been thrown to hit her head against the basin during the violent change of direction as the carriage had tipped? Except that there was no obvious injury to be seen from this angle.
Mac had his hand on her neck, searching for a pulse.
‘She’s too cold.’ Mac’s voice sounded raw. ‘Been dead for a fair while.’
At least there hadn’t been a child in here as well. Julia still had to swallow hard as she reached for the portable radio clipped to her belt. ‘I’ll let the guys know to bring the stretcher back.’
‘Wait!’ Mac was examining the woman, looking for an indication of what might have killed her. He found nothing.
‘Pelvis?’ Julia suggested.
Mac put his hands on the woman’s hips and pressed. Julia knew it would have been a gentle test but she could see the movement. There were major blood vessels running through that area. If one was cut it was quite possible to bleed to death in a short space of time.
It was also possible they might have been able to save her if they’d got to her first.
Mac was pressing a hand to the woman’s abdomen now. It was distended. Even more distended than they might have expected from all the internal bleeding.
‘Oh, God!’ Mac groaned.
Julia didn’t ask. She didn’t need to. The shape was too regular and obviously too firm to be simply an accumulation of blood. The woman had probably only been in the early stages of her pregnancy but there had been two lives lost here.
Mac straightened. He didn’t meet Julia’s horrified gaze.
‘It’s time we went home,’ he said heavily. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here.’
CHAPTER THREE
SOMETHING wasn’t right.
They should have been able to debrief and put things into perspective on the long road trip back to headquarters courtesy of a military vehicle. They could have talked through how impossible it would have been to save that young woman. Even if they’d known she was there, they would still have had to evacuate all the mobile people and the time needed to shift the dead man and then extricate her would have put Ken in more trouble. And they couldn’t have known. There wasn’t even a window that Julia could have looked into from the outside.
These were things that should have been said aloud. Dissected and come to terms with. And maybe then they could have congratulated themselves on a job well done. The fact that ten people had made it out alive when it could have gone in a very different direction and claimed even more victims.
But Mac, for the first time Julia had known him, didn’t want to talk and that was confusing. He was the strongest, bravest man she had ever met. Six feet tall in his socks and without an ounce of fat on his body. His strength alone was enough to inspire confidence Julia couldn’t hope to impart as soon as he arrived on scene. But there was more to Mac than physical attributes. He was so open and honest and always smiling. Smiling so much that he had deep crinkles around his eyes and grooves on his cheeks. She had seen him tired beyond exhaustion. Frustrated enough to be angry. Sad, even, to the point of his voice sounding thick with tears, but she’d never seen him quite like this.
‘I’m stuffed,’ he said, when she tried to get him to talk at the start of their road trip home. ‘I need sleep. Let’s leave the talking till later, OK?’
Which would have been fine, except that Mac didn’t sleep. Neither could Julia, Not after she’d noticed the way he was staring through the window on his side. Lost in thoughts he obviously didn’t want to share and looking so…bleak.
He closed his eyes, later, but he was feigning sleep. Julia could tell because she could see the way his hands were clenched into fists. So tense.
She wanted—badly—to touch him. To find out what was bothering him and—somehow—make it better.
She cared, dammit. Too much.
And so she said nothing. She kept to her side of the back seat and stared out of her window. Her body ached with weariness and more than a few bumps and bruises but her heart ached more.
For Mac.
Ten years.
It had been a decade ago and Mac hadn’t even thought about it for eons.
What was it about that moment that had brought it back so vividly?
The long blonde hair?
The early pregnancy?
Or was it because Julia had been standing so close to him?
It was like pieces of a jigsaw he hadn’t intended, or wanted, to solve had come together out of nowhere.
Mac could hear the suck of heavy-duty tyres on water-soaked roadways along with the rumble of the engine and the background buzz of the radio station the driver was listening to. Runnels of water coalesced on the window and then streaked sideways but Mac wasn’t really watching. He was seeing an altogether different picture.
No wonder he found Julia Bennett so damned attractive on so many levels. It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous and smart and brave. It was that full-on approach to life in combination with an ability to sidestep any hint of a meaningful personal relationship that did it.
Presented the kind of challenge any red-blooded man would find irresistible, it was almost a matter of honour to have a crack at winning such a prize. Or wanting to.
Why hadn’t he put two and two together before this?
Because he’d done his damnedest to forget Christine, that was why. To forget the heartache of absolute failure. To move on and make a success of his life.
‘You OK, mate?’ Julia had asked when they were on the main road and settling in for their journey back to headquarters.
‘I’m stuffed,’ he’d growled. And he was. Exhausted both physically and emotionally. In pain, actually, because something raw had been unexpectedly exposed deep within. He’d never talked to anyone about it. Ever. And if he did, Julia would be at the bottom of any list of potential listeners. He wasn’t about to admit the kind of failure he was on a personal level. Preferably not to anyone but especially not to a woman whom he doubted had ever failed at anything and who would be less than impressed with a man who was nowhere near her equal.
‘I need sleep,’ he’d added tonelessly, turning away from her. ‘Let’s leave the talking till later, OK?’
She accepted his withdrawal and why wouldn’t she? Today had been tough. This was the best job in the world but it took a day when they succeeded a hundred per cent to reinforce that. A job when no one died or got maimed for life. The way through feeling like that was to talk about it, of course. He knew that. Debriefing was ingrained in anyone who worked in careers that dealt with this kind of trauma and degree of human suffering. It was a part of the job, really, to analyse everything that had happened. To take a quiet pride in things that had been done well and to learn from anything else so they could go out and do an even better job next time.
But he couldn’t talk to Julia about this. Not yet. Not when he’d been blindsided by memories and
could see danger signs a mile high. Signs that warned him how easy it would be to fall in love with this woman. Hell, he was already quite a way down that track and hadn’t even noticed.
He couldn’t afford to let her anywhere near him right now, when the scab over that failure had been ripped off and he was feeling raw. Vulnerable, even, and Alan MacCulloch didn’t do vulnerable, thanks very much. Imagine if she wasn’t unimpressed with his history. If she accepted him, warts and all. He’d fall. Hard. In a way he’d managed to avoid for a whole decade. Nearly a quarter of his life, come to think of it.
She didn’t want that.
Neither did he.
Julia was looking at him. He could feel it. He could sense her concern, like a gust of warmth crossing the gap on the back seat in the back of this vehicle. She wanted to offer comfort but Mac didn’t want that either. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
Well after midnight, they got back to the outskirts of Glasgow and the station they shared with a road-based ambulance service. They collected their packs from the back of the truck.
‘Cheers, mate,’ Julia said to the soldier who’d been their chauffeur. ‘Hope you get to go back to base and get some shuteye now.’
‘Not a chance.’ The young soldier grinned. ‘I’ve got to get back to the scene. We’ll be there until it’s all cleaned up.’
Cleaning up was exactly what he and Julia needed to do. Mac picked up his pack and swung it onto his back. From the corner of his eye he could see Julia struggling to do the same. She was so tired she could barely stay upright, poor thing. The urge to look after her was far too strong to ignore.
‘Here,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll take them. You go and hit the showers.’
‘No, thanks.’ The tone was cool. ‘I can manage.’
She gave up on lifting the pack to her back and just held it in her arms instead, turning away without a glance in his direction.
It was a slap he deserved so he had no right to feel hurt. Julia had done nothing wrong and hadn’t deserved to be treated the way he had treated her. God, how selfish had he been? Maybe she’d been the one who needed the debrief. Praise, if nothing else, for her extraordinary courage and endurance.
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