Milieu Dawn

by Malcolm Franks

This was an emergency, so there was no time for the niceties of flying by the book. Matt pushed hard at the controls and the yellow machine dipped sharply towards the ocean. Ahead lay the scene of the incident.

  The coastguard vessel moored some distance away because of the shallow waters, and a couple of passing sea vessels had also stopped to offer assistance. Matt saw a competitor’s plane sitting on the surface, ready to lend a helping hand. When an accident happened everyone pitched in; one of the unwritten laws of the island, people always came first.

  “Donna, what’s the latest?” he said as the yellow machine bumped against the gently rippling water.

  “Details are sketchy,” said her voice through the headset. “Andy’s okay, but the plane is submerged. Left wing struts gave way under the impact of the landing and she keeled over before sinking.”

  Matt could hardly believe his ears. Floatplanes don’t sink; that’s why they have floats.

  “Passengers?” he asked.

  “Everyone’s accounted for. All got out though there is one casualty, head trauma caused by the impact. No details on the extent of the injury,” she said.

  He should have been grateful for this small mercy. For some reason he felt apprehensive.

  “Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

  “At least they’re all safe,” said his passenger.

  “That’s nothing to celebrate, William.”

  “Will,” he replied. “I prefer Will.”

  Matt looked right to acknowledge the female pilot of his competitor’s plane as they neared the scene. Nervous activity was being played out in the rescue dinghy. Matt spotted Andy among the three figures tending to the injured passenger. A sense of foreboding started to gnaw away at his increasingly ragged nerves. Instinct was insisting all was not right. They inched forward towards the gently motioning yellow dinghy and he felt his heart rate gather pace. There was no real logic to the mounting apprehension, only a growing certainty something was wrong.

  Edging closer, he could see the back of the patient’s head, cradled against the rim of the inflatable raft, and his grip on the controls tightened. Then he spotted the tight fitting white dress patterned with thin purple streaks.

  “God!” he heard himself say.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Will.

  Matt couldn’t reply. He eased them closer and leapt from his seat to clamber down onto one of the floats.

  “How is she?” he yelled out to Andy.

  “Don’t know, but it doesn’t look great,” was the bellowed reply. “Where is the freaking medical unit?”

  The sharp splash into the water took everyone by surprise. Matt twisted round to see what had happened and caught his forehead against one of the wing struts. Resisting the desire to curse out an obscenity he recognised Will, swimming at pace towards the dinghy.

  “I’m a trained medic,” he yelled to the team inside.

  Hands reached over the side and frantically grabbed at his wet clothes. Like a pack of sharks in an eating frenzy they reached for him from all angles, unceremoniously dragging his drenched body from the water to allow him to examine the prone figure.

  “How is she?” called out Matt, the anxiety in his voice now more obvious.

  The lack of an immediate answer only served to magnify his concern. Time slipped agonisingly by as he watched on in seeming helplessness, knowing he would now have to stay where he was.

  “She needs a hospital,” Will said, and Matt’s reaction was instant.

  “We’ll take her,” he yelled and clambered back into his seat to nudge the plane a little closer.

  Arms paddled furiously to bring the plastic boat alongside. Will leapt onto the float, jumped up to the open door and turned to accept the human parcel from the dinghy.

  “No,” said Matt. “You’re wet. There’s a pair of overalls at the back. Get changed first.”

  The young man disappeared into the fuselage and Matt took over his position. Hurriedly, the helpers worked themselves into some sort of human chain and gradually managed to gently lift the injured passenger into his arms.

  “Thank you. We’ll take it from here,” he said.

  At first, Matt hoped it was another woman wearing a similar dress. As soon as she was in his arms he knew, without even having to look at her face. He’d had tactile contact with this body on so many occasions and her scent was all too familiar. His worst fears were confirmed.

  It was Jenna.

  The muscles of the small frame felt stiff and heavy as he studied the hardening stream of blood running from the top of her scalp. The wound looked deep, which he thought unusual. He couldn’t recall any internal fitting on the plane being sharp enough to cause this sort of injury. Her eyes flickered open to reveal a blank and empty stare, as if her mind were lost to a dark and frightening place.

  “Hold on, Jenna.”

  The blank stare remained in place. Her unblinking, almond shaped eyes were empty, drained of meaningful life. If Jenna had recognised him, she offered no acknowledgement to his presence.

  “I’m ready” said Will, reappearing with the green overalls in place.

  “There’s something not quite right. Her body feels hard and strange.”

  “She’s suffering from Post Trauma Shock by the look of it,” replied Will. “I’ll do what I can.”

  There wasn’t time to discuss the matter in any detail. Matt eased Jenna into his companion’s arms and darted towards the cockpit.

  What have I done? Matt thought as the engine kicked into life. Why didn’t I just stay and wait for her?

  Matt’s oft and furtive glances into the fuselage, as he pleaded with the yellow flying machine to go faster, betrayed his anxiety. Jenna’s injured body lay astride Will’s lap. Matt watched as the young man cleansed the drying blood from around the open wound to her scalp, talking in encouraging tones to the still figure. It was an impressive performance. The man’s presence had proved to be a real godsend, and one for which Matt was grateful. He glanced again and noticed the young man’s gentle smile had stopped. Will leant forward and whispered something into the patient’s ear. Immediately, her body responded to his words by trembling and shaking uncontrollably.

  “What the hell’s going on back there?”

  The absence of any answer caused Matt to panic. All he could think to do was to land on the surface of the still sea and retreat into the back to help Jenna. The plane dipped steeply down from the sky in response to his urgent manipulation of the controls.

  “No,” shouted Will. “Keep her steady.”

  It was more of a command than a request. Matt made the instant decision of putting his trust in the stranger, levelling their flight path as ordered. He glanced worriedly to see Will tighten his firm hold on Jenna, forcing her arms to cross over her chest so he could pin them down. The shaking increased in intensity as Jenna fought the vice like grip, her efforts to break free countered by an additional surge of pressure from Will’s strong and powerful arms. Transfixed, Matt could do nothing other than watch in horrified silence as the fierce struggle reached its peak. Not being able to help ate away inside him, further torturing his already guilty conscience. He told himself he should be the one at Jenna’s side, helping her through this crisis, not this other man.

  Then her resistance stopped. The young man pressed her against him, whispering into her ear while stroking at her hair. Matt couldn’t hear what he said but her body resembled that of a discarded rag doll, limp and lifeless.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled.

  “Just get us to shore as quick as you can,” was the urgent response.

  Matt was impotent, unable to make any kind of meaningful contribution to Jenna’s safety. Those last images in his mind filled him with worry.

  What the hell happened back there?

  Beginning the descent, Matt’s mind found it impossible to dismiss the guilt that had taken a firm grip on his emotions. Were Jenna not to make a full recovery, he would never be able to forgive himself. T
his incident was his responsibility, and his alone. He should never have driven off and left Jenna to make her own way back to Vancouver. It was a selfish act for him to drive off the way he had to try and catch up with Rosa, without any consideration for Jenna.

  Worse still, he had no idea what had gone wrong with the machinery. Proper maintenance of the hardware was like a religion to Matt. Not only did his livelihood depend on it, he took the health and safety of all his passengers to heart. They paid Matt for a service, trusted him and his pilots with their lives and welfare every time they boarded one of the company planes. The minimum they should expect in return was their individual safety. Matt tried to console himself they were headed back into Victoria. Access to hospital here would be much easier for him to manage. He had to be close to Jenna, to be near if she needed him.

  “How is she doing?” he yelled into the fuselage.

  “I really don’t know,” replied Will.

  “Don’t you dare take her away,” Matt whispered, glancing up towards the sky.

  “Help somebody. Please. It’s an emergency!” yelled the man at the on-duty staff loitering behind the hospital reception counter.

  Heads turned to locate the crazed voice bursting like a raging hurricane into their clean, safe environment. Their eyes fixed on the slumped mass cradled in his arms. They could see the petite figure’s life source dripping from the open gash on to the ground, colouring the disinfected floor around his feet with dark red droplets.

  “Oh my God,” cried a voice from his side.

  Several figures crowded forward from all corners of the area to surround him.

  “What happened?” said one voice.

  “Has she fallen?” asked another.

  “No, she hit her head during an emergency landing. Please help her,” he pleaded urgently.

  There was no time for further questions or interrogation, only action. A trolley pushed its way through the huddled throng to his side and he carefully laid Jenna’s stricken body onto the wheeled carrier. The medical mass jostled feverishly for position, forcing Matt away, and a strong hand gripped his wrist and tugged urgently at his arm.

  “Come away” said the firm voice. “Leave it to us.”

  At first he resisted, violently shaking the hand away from his arm. The hand grasped him again. Only this time it was even firmer, strengthening its grip around his wrist.

  “You’re in the way. If you want us to help then you must step away and let us do our job.”

  He intended to bark fiercely at the insistent voice, to scare its owner away from his presence. His scowl was set, his eyes armed ready to pierce the thoughtful gaze cast upon him. He turned his head to deliver the sharp and vicious response the thoughtful intruder did not deserve.

  Perhaps sanity returned to his damaged senses, perhaps the mist of rage lifted from his panicked mind, or perhaps the voice of reason had finally managed to penetrate his confused emotions. Whatever the case, he held his response and stared blankly at the concerned expression of the round, middle-aged face.

  He followed the uniformed angel, and she guided him to a set of empty seats opposite the reception counter. Matt turned to see the medical scrum rushing the trolley away from view. His desire to pursue the urgent mass was short lived once the nurse’s hand slipped into his and tugged gently for his co-operation.

  “There is nothing more you can do. It’s down to us now,” she soothed, easing him into the middle of the three vacant chairs.

  Falling into the seat he allowed his head to drop backwards and he stared at the impossibly clean ceiling, eyes squinting furiously. The fingers of both hands brushed through his head of fine, light-brown hair in an attempt to distract the facial muscles from breaking free from his mental control. Inside, Matt wanted to scream in rage at the heavens above, as though this were somehow their fault the day’s events had unfolded as they had.

  “She has to recover,” he heard himself mutter to no-one in particular, straightening his gaze to focus in the direction the medical team had just left.

  “I’m Esther,” said the nurse patiently.

  Matt’s head half turned to look into the slightly cherubic face belonging to the voice. Her narrow brown eyes filled with sympathy.

  “How long?” he asked, “before we know anything.”

  “Quite some time I would have thought. Better to ready yourself for a longish wait.”

  He exhaled deeply.

  “Okay,” he replied with a sigh.

  “I’ll be back later. We’ll let you know as soon as there is any news.”

  He nodded in mute acceptance of the situation, turning his view back to the now empty corridor. The nurse rose slowly to her feet and prepared to leave.

  “She doesn’t have any family living in the area,” he said. “So if you need any special consents or anything you’ll have to talk to me.”

  The colour in his eyes darkened with menace as he spoke, intent on impressing upon her there was to be no question of negotiation. Esther offered a trained smile, the one all nurses seem to possess, and left without speaking. As her solid frame paced towards the treatment rooms Matt’s mind began to fill with pessimism, recalling the disheartening pallor of Jenna’s complexion as he placed her onto the trolley. He’d seen that colour in other faces before, the look of impending death.

  “She has a chance,” said the man’s voice, now sitting to his left.

  Matt vigorously rubbed his forehead unable to agree with the statement.

  “What did you say to her in the plane before, that made her shake so violently?” he scowled.

  Will hesitated.

  “I was trying to get some of the trauma out of her system. A little something I picked up in Afghanistan.”

  “You get around.”

  “That’s the whole point of enlisting, to see the world.”

  “I thought you said you were in the Navy?” questioned Matt.

  “I started there.”

  Matt wasn’t sure what to think.

  “Tell me about trauma,” he asked.

  “It can sound pretty complicated.”

  “Try me,” Matt insisted.

  A couple of moments passed, whilst Will gathered his thoughts.

  “You’ll be familiar with the phrase about people getting caught like a rabbit in the headlights.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”

  “When an animal is faced with life-threatening danger, like a fast approaching car it can’t avoid for example, its natural biological response is to trigger a surge of energy to help it cope with the fear. This surge is so sudden and powerful it usually results in the animal freezing or becoming immobile. Once the danger has passed the animal’s biological system quickly returns to normal. It does this by surrendering to an involuntary mechanism that allows the nervous system to discharge this excess survival energy, usually by maniacally running around like a headless chicken. Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “The initial human response to unexpected danger is much the same, a sudden and powerful surge of energy, paralysing the body. But as our brains have the capacity to rationalise events, the mind tends to automatically suppress the instinct to release pent up energy thereby blocking its escape from the body. The muscles remain rigid with fear. Until it is released a human’s nervous system never fully recovers, as the natural biological cycle has been interrupted.”

  “So you were unblocking her system?”

  “Yes, in a manner of speaking. If the energy stays trapped inside, it disturbs the body’s natural equilibrium. That’s what causes post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. It can result in all sorts of psychological problems. Sometimes it manifests as anxiety or insomnia, maybe mood swings or other phobias.”

  “And this works?”

  “Sometimes it does.”

  “Sometimes, what kind of answer is that?”

  “Not everybody is the same, post traumatic shock impacts on people in different ways.”

>   “What happens when it doesn’t work?”

  Will hunched his shoulders to suggest he didn’t know.

  “The mental recovery time is longer,” he said.

  “You gambled?”

  “A little bit, I suppose.”

  “You reckless bloody fool, you could have made things worse!” hissed Matt angrily.

  “She was in shock, and it was affecting her body’s natural defences to cope with the wound. I had to do something. It was a calculated risk.”

  “Calculated, you could have done her untold harm!”

  Matt jumped from his seat, feeling as though he wanted to punch a hole through the nearest wall. Will saw the anger and waited for a few seconds.

  “The fact she began to shake violently is a good sign. It suggests her body had started the process of releasing trapped energy,” he said.

  Matt spun round and stared blackly at the seated man.

  “You had better be right, for your own sake as much as Jenna’s.”

  Will’s eyes widened. The sudden knowledge Matt knew this woman caused him to think back to something Donna had said.

  “Was she the passenger who left the key?”

  The question went unanswered.

  “Was ... is she your girlfriend?”

  He noticed the muscles in Matt’s faces tense.

  “You ask too many questions,” Matt spat back.

  Will straightened his posture in the chair, uncertain as to what to say next.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. Guess I’m trying too hard to create the right sort of impression and find my way around this place, that’s all.”

  “Find a different way,” Matt hissed.

  The angry silence between the two men lasted for some time. Never one to sit or stand with an unoccupied mind Matt made over to the coffee dispenser, returning with two hot drinks.

  “She’s my friend,” he said to Will, offering up a plastic cup as he sat down.

  “I didn’t know,” said Will.

  “There’s no way you could have known.”

  “I was only trying to help her,” Will said defensively.

  “Yeah, I know,” he replied, peering down the corridor. “Look, thanks for all your help but there’s no need to stay.”

  “I’d rather hang around, if it’s okay with you. Find out how she gets on. It’s not like I’m pushed for time. Besides, don’t you have a business to run or something?”

  “The business can wait.”

  “That’s hardly very corporate of you,” grinned Will.

  His words caused Matt to force some kind of a smile, though it probably resembled more of a grimace given his current anxious mood.

  “People come first,” said Matt.

  His companion sank back into his seat.

  “This stuff is better with sugar, isn’t it?” he said, sipping at the brown liquid.

  The quip made Matt laugh out loud. Perhaps he had been too quick to judge, basing his assessment as he had entirely on the previous night’s encounter. The man had a range of skills few others possessed, and an apparent even temperament to match. People with those sorts of qualities were hard to find, were like gold dust. And he asked about settling on the island. Matt considered it would be foolish to reject such expertise out of hand.

  “What makes you think Victoria is the right place for you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know really. It’s hard to explain. The place just sort of feels right, like it’s where I should be.”

  “You’ll need to have more of an explanation than that for the authorities to let you stay here. They don’t accept any old waif and stray.”

  “I don’t know; they took you in and there isn’t much of an age difference between us. How hard could it be?”

  Matt felt as though he should laugh. The worry over Jenna prevented it.

  “I’m not sure using me as an example would give you an advantage. You’ll need to do better than that.”

  Will thought for a moment.

  “I had a bit of luck a while back, on the lottery. Not a huge amount but enough to buy me out of the service. I’d grown tired of living on the edge and watching mates lose limbs, or worse. When I did get out it didn’t take long to realise life back in the UK wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The place is claustrophobic, overrun by the greedy and the self absorbed. There’s no camaraderie to the place, only a raging desire to consume anything and everything in sight. I want to live in a different world. One where there’s room to breathe and no pressure to consume for the sake of it.”

  Matt was warming to his new companion, amused by his inability to conceal apparent frustration with the frailties of modern humanity in general.

  “I didn’t mean to get all preachy,” said Will.

  “Don’t worry about it. There’s no harm in letting off a bit of steam every now and again.”

  The conversation paused, enabling Matt to reflect on the day. After a short while, the silence seemed to unsettle Will.

  “You’re in deep thought, what’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “The unexpected,” was the reply. “It’s been a very eventful few hours.”

  It certainly had. First it was the unexplained disappearance of money from the business account; then the inexplicable crash of one of his aircraft and the injury to Jenna. Days don’t get much stranger than this. Matt could be forgiven for thinking he was coming under attack from every possible angle. He didn’t believe in random anymore. Everything happened for a reason, caused by either the actions or reactions of people to circumstance.

  What were the odds for all this activity to be unconnected?

  Chapter Six

  Night Callers