Lily's Journey

by Tania Crosse

I followed them on wobbly legs out into the car park. Somehow Edwin sprang up into the back of the open lorry like a jack-in-the-box and as I stood on the tarmac gazing up at him, I saw him freeze.

  ‘Jesus.’

  The word barely breathed from his white lips. Oh, dear God. It was Daniel. My stomach corkscrewed as if it was being clamped down in a vice, and I thought I was going to be sick.

  ‘Lily, get the porters. Tell them to bring a trolley and a collar. And then get Matron.’

  Edwin’s voice came to me as if from another planet. No. Oh, no. The words echoed tauntingly in my head. Daniel, who I had once intensely disliked, had become part of my life. I couldn’t bear it if—

  ‘Lily! Hurry, girl!’

  My brain clicked back into gear. My legs found a fleetness they had never had before as I shot back inside, shouting for the porters. Then I flew upstairs to Matron’s office, rapped on the door and went in without waiting for a reply. She looked up in severe disapproval but I didn’t give her time to reprimand me.

  ‘Sorry, Matron, but there’s been a serious accident,’ I panted. ‘And it’s a friend of ours. A very close friend.’

  She nodded calmly as she rose to her feet. ‘All right, Miss Hayes. Take some deep breaths or you’ll be no use to anyone, especially your friend.’

  I don’t know how she did it but Matron always managed to glide everywhere without apparent haste and yet she arrived ahead of anyone else. I caught her up back in the car park where Daniel was being lowered with infinite care onto the waiting trolley, Edwin and the porters being assisted by John Giles and his son who was just as colossal as he was.

  ‘Keeps passin’ out, like,’ he was telling Edwin. ‘An’ when he do come to, he don’t make no sense. Keeps mutterin’ summat about chinks an’ sergeant, I thinks.’

  I saw Edwin glance up darkly. ‘He was in Korea. A POW.’

  ‘Ah’, father and son answered in unison.

  Matron had disappeared and the men were guiding the trolley carefully across the car park. As I rushed ahead to hold open the doors, I caught a glimpse of Daniel and the cumbersome collar Edwin had fixed about his neck. My mouth was as dry as sand. I opened the doors to the examination room next, and then I leant back against the wall for support. What use was my white coat now?

  Matron was back with two nurses while issuing instructions. One of them was cutting off Daniel’s clothing, while the other was collecting equipment.

  ‘Hello, old chap,’ I heard Edwin say. ‘Stay calm. We’ve got you now.’

  I crept forward, wanting to assure myself that Daniel wasn’t too badly hurt, despite the grim expression on Edwin’s face. But when I saw him, I pulled back in appalled horror. His eyes were half open but glazed and wandering, his mouth drawn wide in a grimace of agony as he struggled to breathe. Every tiny, snatched intake of air seemed to increase his pain. I could see the panic in his eyes and his shoulders, one of which was covered in blood, were heaving rapidly as he fought for breath.

  Edwin was tapping Daniel’s chest, his own forehead pleated, and then was listening with his stethoscope while Matron studied the falling level in the sphygmomanometer as she released the inflated cuff around Daniel’s left arm.

  ‘BP sixty over forty and heart-rate a hundred and forty,’ she reported, and my own heart buckled. I wasn’t medically trained but I knew that was hellishly dangerous.

  ‘Tension pneumothorax on the right side,’ Edwin pronounced. ‘Hang on in there, Danny. We’ll get you relief in a minute. Lily, do you know how long ago it happened?’

  His question took me by surprise but I only took an instant to collect my thoughts. ‘Mr Giles said he found him up on the moor so it must have been some time ago.’

  Edwin was standing by with a massive needle while Matron was swabbing the right side of Daniel’s chest with antiseptic. ‘Now, keep still, Danny, old boy. This is going to hurt a bit, but you’ll feel better afterwards.’

  Daniel’s groan made me shudder and I instinctively took his left hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘It’s all right, Daniel,’ I soothed, not knowing where my voice came from. ‘It’s me, Lily.’

  ‘Carrots?’ His eyes opened a little wider, searching, and I watched them focus on my face. I forced a reassuring smile.

  ‘Yes. Carrots,’ I answered, and he seemed to relax for a second but then he was back to battling for those ever shallower, agonising breaths. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Edwin feeling his breastbone, measuring with his fingers, feeling again and then working his fingertips to about halfway across the right side of Daniel’s chest. He seemed to find the spot he was searching for and went to insert the needle. And then he stopped, his right hand shaking so that the point was quivering in the air. In that moment, Edwin was suddenly no longer the knight in shining armour he had always been to me.

  ‘Hurry, Dr Franfield,’ Matron instructed, her voice for once taut with agitation. ‘You must have done this before.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s my best friend,’ Edwin mumbled.

  ‘Then pull yourself together and do it. I’ve called in your father, but there’s no time to wait for him. You know that.’

  My own jaw was trembling so I knew exactly how Edwin felt. I saw him take a deep breath and guide the needle to where the first two fingers of his left hand were still firmly on the spot he had sought. I couldn’t look.

  ‘Come on, Daniel,’ I crooned, as much for my own sake as his. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Daniel looked up at me and his eyes narrowed as Edwin inserted the needle. And then as he drove it in deep, Daniel screamed.

  ‘There, got it!’ Edwin cried in triumph, and I heard a soft hissing of air. ‘Hang on there, Danny. Your breathing will be easier in a minute. Matron, can you draw me up some procaine now, and can I have a BP and pulse check, please.’

  I squeezed Daniel’s hand even more tightly. His face was creased with pain and he was trying to thrash his head from side to side, but it was being held steady by the collar.

  ‘Stop it, you bastard,’ he moaned. ‘Leave him alone!’

  I glanced up questioningly at Edwin and he dipped his head as he took the syringe from Matron and injected around where he had inserted the needle.

  ‘Rambling again,’ Edwin murmured back. ‘It’s the concussion. See the lump coming up on his forehead. Try talking to him again, Lily. It might help to calm him down.’

  I don’t know what I said, but I kept up some banal one-sided conversation, shuddering as Edwin made a small incision. Daniel didn’t appear to react this time, so the local anaesthetic must have done its work, but I was still horrified when Edwin eased the sharp end of a metal rod through the incision and drove it deep into Daniel’s chest. I watched in appalled fascination as the inner metal tube was removed from the shaft and this time a massive rush of air escaped from it. Almost instantly, Daniel’s breathing was greatly eased. He seemed to gaze up at me, his eyes plunging into mine. The tight muscles of his face slackened, his shoulders relaxed and he drifted into unconsciousness again.

  ‘Right, what’ve we got? Good God! It’s Daniel!’

  I turned my head with a thankful sigh as William strode in to join us in the examination room. I could clearly see the relief on Edwin’s face as he glanced up from feeding a long rubber tube through the metal one into Daniel’s chest.

  ‘Tension pneumothorax,’ he told William as he carefully withdrew the metal tube leaving the rubber one in its place.

  ‘You seem to have dealt with it pretty well. Well done.’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to examine him for anything else yet. He’s concussed, this shoulder’s a mess and that shin doesn’t look right. Fractured tib and fib, I expect. Suture, Staff, please.’

  I stood back out of the way, feeling weak at the knees. Edwin was stitching the tube into place while at his feet the staff nurse was connecting the other end to an underwater seal apparatus of the sort I had seen before on the wards. Matron was doing her checks, announcing that Daniel’s
blood pressure was coming up and his pulse gradually slowing. William was looking in his ears and listened to his chest again, and when the other nurse finished cutting away his torn clothing, William and Edwin examined his entire body by feel.

  I watched, stunned, feeling as if I was witnessing a film, not a real life drama. Daniel, who I had once detested as my reluctant saviour but with whom I had recently shared some deep, surprising emotion, was lying, unconscious and stripped naked, on a hospital trolley, his life in William and Edwin’s hands. I didn’t know why, but it made me feel guilty. And I wanted to cry.

  ‘I’ll take over now so you can get back to your clinic,’ William was saying. ‘I’ll just get a line in and then we’ll take him for a full set of X-rays to see what else we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. Come on, Lily. You were great, by the way. Really helped. It isn’t always easy to think of what to say.’

  We were out in the corridor now and I shot Edwin a sideways glance. There was a time when I would have basked in the approving smile he had turned on me, but now it meant nothing.

  ‘W…will he be all right?’ I stammered.

  Edwin puffed out his cheeks. ‘Should be. It was touch and go for a minute there. It means he must have at least one broken rib that’s punctured the lung.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded, trying to steady myself with some deep breaths. ‘A pneumothorax is when air leaks from the lung into the pleural cavity where it’s not supposed to be.’

  I heard Edwin chuckle softly. ‘Make a doctor of you yet.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I grimaced. ‘But the tension bit?’

  ‘Ah.’ He was immediately serious again. ‘It means the hole must have a flap that’s acting like a valve so that most of the air passing through gets trapped. The cavity gets blown up like a balloon making it more and more difficult to breathe and squeezing the heart and the main vessels to it. So you can see why it’s a life-threatening emergency and why there was no time to put in some local anaesthetic. The quickest way to relieve some of the pressure is to stick in a needle and then do the proper chest drain afterwards. I’m just furious at myself for losing my nerve like that.’

  ‘It’s different when it’s someone you know and care for,’ I said, my brain working automatically like a machine. ‘And we’re all only human, after all.’ Yes. Only human. Edwin wasn’t the god I had worshipped. A young doctor. A very skilled and excellent one, but lacking the years of experience of his more mature colleagues. Admittedly, William wasn’t as close to Daniel as Edwin was, but look how unruffled he had been in taking over the situation.

  ‘True, but I’m still cross with myself. But let’s get this clinic finished and by then, Dad’ll have more details about Danny.’

  I found it difficult to concentrate. Mr Giles and his son were still waiting and seemed suitably pleased when I told them they had saved Daniel’s life by bringing him in when they did. The police arrived and, having interviewed John and Jonty Giles, they all went up onto the moor to investigate the scene and take the jeep away for examination. Apparently it had happened at a point a mile or so this side of Merrivale where there was a drop at the side of the road. The jeep had turned over and Daniel had been thrown out, but why it had happened was, so far, a mystery and the police would be appealing for witnesses.

  As I smiled at patients, took their details and generally oversaw the clinic, I felt unreal, as if I wasn’t really there. My heart was thrumming away like a drum, my stomach turning sickening somersaults, and all I could see in my head was Daniel’s broken body lying stretched out on the trolley. The minute the last patient left, Edwin and I went in search of William. We found him in the anaesthetic room, still keeping an eye on Daniel with the assistance of the staff nurse, and he smiled encouragingly as we came in.

  ‘How is he?’ we asked with one voice.

  ‘He’ll mend.’ William bobbed his head reassuringly. ‘Four broken ribs, one displaced that caused the pneumothorax. The X-ray showed you got the drain in perfectly, by the way, Ed. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness, but it doesn’t look like a bad concussion that’s going to cause any permanent damage. Most importantly, there’s no spinal injury, but we’ll have to reduce the leg fracture.’

  He picked up one of several X-ray films and held it up to the light, pointing something out to Edwin. ‘See that? There’s a pulse in his foot but it isn’t great, so I don’t want to wait, and his condition’s stable enough now for a short general. Matron’s preparing theatre. I’ll do the anaesthetic and you can set the leg, Edwin. And while he’s under, Matron’s going to clean up his shoulder. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’ll heal on its own. Now, Lily,’ he continued, turning to me. ‘I suggest you get off home and bring Deborah up to date. She was going to cancel all but the essential appointments at this evening’s surgery, and warn them they may have to wait. And she was going to ring Daniel’s parents and give them the bad news. I expect they’ll come down from London tomorrow.’

  Another part of my brain absorbed William’s words. All I was aware of thinking about was Daniel. I crept over to him, holding my breath. The rubber tube from the hole in his chest was sealed into the glass bottle fixed to the leg of the bed, and air was slowly bubbling through the water. A crisp white sheet was tucked over his bare chest, William had obviously put a temporary dressing on his shoulder and there was a drip into his left arm. He looked so helpless lying there so still, so different from the strong, forceful Daniel I knew.

  ‘Daniel, it’s me. Carrots,’ I whispered.

  His closed eyelids flickered but didn’t open, though the shadow of a smile twitched at his mouth. ‘Trojan,’ he barely breathed at me, and I took his hand.

  ‘Yes. We’ll see to him. Mr Giles brought in your keys. They were still in the ignition.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured. ‘God, it hurts. There was a lorry, I think. I can’t remember… When are those bloody reinforcements coming? Christ, Tommy…’

  His voice trailed off into incomprehensible mutterings and William came up beside me. I bit my lip, glancing at him through tear-misted eyes, and turned my gaze back to Daniel’s ashen face.

  ‘He’s still confused, but he’ll be all right. It’ll be a long road, but I see no reason why he shouldn’t be as right as rain in a few months.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I choked, and I couldn’t understand why I was so distraught when there had been a time when I had never wanted to see Daniel again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A strange, hushed atmosphere settled on the house that evening, everyone treading around each other in stunned shock. Nobody wanted to eat much at dinner. Although William and Edwin were pleased with their reduction of Daniel’s fractured leg, they both went back to the hospital later to check on him. Wendy and Ian were away on holiday together and Deborah wanted to stay by the telephone in case Daniel’s parents rang back about any arrangements, so I drove up to Fencott Place on my own.

  It was really peculiar letting myself into the huge, empty house. Trojan barked like mad and I was a little apprehensive, but fortunately he seemed to recognise me and licked me all over. I let him out into the garden and watched him chasing after the ball I threw for him. Little did he realise that his master had nearly died earlier that afternoon and that it would be several weeks before he would be back on his feet.

  Dusk was drawing in, turning the still, oppressive evening to a misty purple. I reluctantly went back inside to feed Trojan and collected up some tins of dog food and some dog biscuits. A mournful silence echoed about the large rooms, and while Trojan wolfed down his dinner, I wandered into the drawing room. Yet again I found myself mesmerised by the portrait of Daniel’s great-grandmother. She was amazingly beautiful, with those disconcerting violet-blue eyes he had inherited. There were other family photographs, too, dotted about the room, some of them very old. I found one of the same lady in her more mature years. She was still lovely, and the man beside her was equally as handsome in a reserved sort of way eve
n though he must have been approaching sixty at the time, I should have thought. Daniel looked nothing like him.

  Trojan’s claws clicking on the polished wooden floorboards brought me from my study of Daniel’s ancestors. Trojan would need his bed so I put the dog food and his two bowls in the basket, clipped on his lead and struggled out to the car, managing to lock the back door on the way. I hoped Trojan would behave himself on the journey as I’d never seen him in Daniel’s jeep, but he jumped up eagerly into the passenger seat. I opened the window an inch or two and told him firmly to stay.

  To my relief, other than a few whines of uncertainty at first, he was as good as gold. I made a conscious effort to drive smoothly so as not to throw him off balance, and he seemed quite happy with his snout stuck out of the window. As we came down off the moor in the gathering twilight, the boulders at the side of the road were illuminated eerily in the headlamps. On the way up, I knew I had driven past the spot where Daniel had gone off the road. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was and had been on the opposite side, and the police had already taken the jeep away. But coming down, the headlights picked out skid-marks on the tarmac. They ended at a dislodged stone and gouged turf on the open verge where there was a drop of about eight feet onto the moor. I shuddered, my heart thumping in my chest. And then I realised there were actually two sets of tyre-marks on the road. The second, larger set swerved, converged with those of the jeep, but then continued on the road before petering out.

  I gasped aloud. So there had been another vehicle involved. Daniel hadn’t been driving recklessly or too fast. In his confused mutterings, he had mentioned a lorry, hadn’t he? A lorry whose driver had caused him to crash and then had callously left him for dead at the side of the road.

  I was incensed and ground my teeth in fury. If Daniel hadn’t received medical help when he had, he would have died. There hadn’t even been time to administer a local anaesthetic, for heaven’s sake! I allowed my thoughts to wander at will to give my rage the chance to subside. Edwin had undoubtedly saved Daniel’s life, but that moment’s hesitation had shown the less than perfect side to him that I had been blind to. I still loved Edwin, but that slight doubt seemed to have made the pain of his engagement to Sadie more bearable. Or was it that my head was so filled with my wrath for the driver of the other vehicle that I could think of little else? The accident had happened on one of the two main routes across the moor and Daniel would have been found before too long, but it could easily have been too late and I was ready to explode.