by Joanna Neil
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked, stopping alongside a couple of the rescue workers. They were carrying an elderly lady between them, clasping their hands together in a kind of cradle, aiming to keep her above the water.
The older man shook his head. ‘It’s best if you stay out of harm’s way,’ he said. ‘Leave it to us.’
‘Are people trapped in their cars?’ she asked.
He nodded, and then moved on. Sarah kept on going to the place they had come from, peering into the cars that she came across. In one, a little girl, around six years old, was crying, huddled in the back of a vehicle next to her mother. Sarah tried to open the door to get to them. She guessed the mother had gone into the back seat to comfort her child.
The door wouldn’t move. ‘Trypushing from your side,’ she shouted to the woman, but even though they both tried their best, the door wouldn’t budge. ‘Can you wind the window down?’
The woman tried the handle, but then shook her head. ‘It won’t move.’
‘What about the sunroof? If you can open that, you can pass the little girl out through the sunroof to me.’
The woman was shaking, but she did as Sarah had suggested, and after a moment or two Sarah was reaching up to hold the little girl safe in her arms. ‘I’ll take her to the rescue vehicle and come back for you,’ Sarah told the mother.
The mother nodded, but just then the car seemed to lift and sway, and the woman sent Sarah a petrified look. Sarah thought that she looked ill, but perhaps it was just that terror had made her feel faint.
‘I’ll come back for you, I promise,’ Sarah said again.
Wading through the swirling water, she made her way back the way she had come. By now an ambulance had arrived, and the old lady was sitting inside it, being tended to. Sarah handed over the little girl into the care of the paramedics and then started back towards the girl’s mother.
Catching up with one of the rescue workers, she told him about the woman in the car, pointing out the vehicle through the lashing rain. ‘The car’s beginning to move with the force of the water,’ she told him, as she waded beside him through the flood water. ‘She must be terrified.’
‘Yes, Iimagine she is.’ He winced, and she guessed he was trying to prioritise the situation. ‘The trouble is, a number of people were caught unawares, and it’s taking time for us to get to them all. We’ve called for more people to come and help.’
He frowned. ‘The doctor’s working up ahead. If he’s finished attending to his patient, I’ll see if we can rope him in to help out.’
‘You have a doctor here?’ She shot the man a quick, alert glance. ‘Do you happen to know his name? It’s just that I’m looking for someone—he’s a doctor working with the cave rescue team.’
Suddenly she swayed with the pressure of the water and toppled over. A moment of sheer panic rippled through her, but then the man by her side reached out and grabbed her arm, lifting her clear of the icy water.
‘Thanks,’ she said, gasping and trying to catch her breath. She could see that he, too, was battling against the current.
‘This would probably be your man.’ The rescue worker pointed up ahead, and Sarah saw that someone was approaching the woman’s car. ‘It looks as though he’s finished with his patient. That’s him, going over to the car.’
Sarah felt a rush of relief surge through her when she saw that it really was Ben. He was using all his strength to divert the movement of the car, trying to push it towards the trunk of a huge tree, and she guessed that he was hoping the tree would act as a buttress.
‘Thank heaven,’ she muttered under her breath. A warm feeling wrapped itself around her heart. Was this love that she felt for him, this overwhelming feeling of joy that swept over her now that she had found him? ‘He’s safe.’
They both went to help him, and between them they managed to steady the car and stop its sideways motion. Ben glanced at her, a look of shock passing over his features, and she guessed he was alarmed by her wet state. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his tone curt. Then, ‘No, don’t answer that. Let’s try to get the door open. We need to get this woman out of here.’
Together they worked on the door, and in a minute or two they were able to reach inside to lift the woman out. Sarah could see that she was in a bad way. Her breathing was coming in short gasps, and her head lolled back as though she was faint.
Ben and the rescue worker carried her back towards the dry ground, and Sarah found herself struggling to stay upright as she went with them.
‘Hold onto my jacket,’ Ben said in a taut voice. ‘The last thing we need is for you to get swept away.’
Back at the ambulance, Ben settled the woman into a seat and started to examine her.
‘Her blood pressure’s way off the scale,’ he said. ‘It looks as though she’s going through a hypertensive crisis.’
‘That’s bad, isn’t it?’ Sarah whispered, aware that the little girl was near tears at seeing her mother in this state. She gave the girl a reassuring hug.
‘It’s not good.’ He opened up a medical case and started to draw up medication into a syringe. ‘This will help to calm things until we can get her to hospital,’ he said.
It took a while for the injection to work, but he stayed with the woman until she appeared to be breathing more normally and then nodded to the ambulance driver to say that it was all right to start the engine.
He stepped down from the ambulance, leaving the people inside to the care of the paramedics, and reached up to help Sarah down onto the road.
The ambulance moved away, and Ben’s gaze flicked over her, his expression tense. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t brought Emily out in this weather, have you?’
‘No, of course not.’ Sarah pulled in a ragged breath. ‘She’s with your mother.’
He frowned. ‘I’ve already said that my mother isn’t well enough to look after Emily. Why would you leave her to cope with a small child?’
‘We were worried about you,’ Sarah said, alarmed by his terse reaction. ‘We thought something might have happened to stop you from getting home.’
‘Well, you were right about that, but it wasn’t anything that needed to bring you out here.’
Sarah took a step backwards, uncertain about his mood. ‘I’m sorry if you feel that way.’ A shiver ran through her. Now that she was back on firm ground, it was beginning to dawn on her that the whole experience of being out here had been horrifying. She was soaked through to the skin, her body was clammy with cold, and Ben was angry with her.
Why was he acting this way? Why had she ever thought that she loved him, or that he might in some small way care for her?
But the truth was, no matter how foolish it might be, no matter that she should have known better, she had lost her heart to him, but he didn’t seem to care about that. He was throwing her feelings back in her face.
She blinked, trying to brush away the tears that pricked her eyes, and she pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. She would not cry. She wouldn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I DON’T understand what could have possessed you to come out here,’ Ben said, a cutting edge to his voice. ‘You were perfectly safe at home, but look at you now. You’re wet through, shivering with cold, and all for nothing.’ He glowered at her. ‘I thought you told me that you had a bad feeling about being near stretches of water? So why put yourself through something like this?’
‘I’ve already tried to explain,’ Sarah answered in an equally taut manner, spoiled only by the fact that her teeth were chattering. ‘I don’t much care whether you approve or not.’ She returned his glare. ‘I’m going back to my car.’ Before she started off in that direction, though, she threw him one last look. ‘You should phone your mother. She’s worried sick about you.’
‘Sarah, you can’t just walk off like that,’ he said, coming after her and stopping her in her tracks. ‘For one thing, you’ll
catch your death of cold, and for another, you might run into difficulties. You don’t know which of these roads is passable.’
‘And you do? How is it that you ended up here, then?’
‘I had a call from the rescue services to say that a man was having a heart attack. They had just pulled him from his car. I expect it was the sight of the river bursting its banks that sent him into shock.’
‘Oh.’ Sarah’s response was subdued, her voice small as all the fight went out of her. She felt thoroughly miserable, and now her whole body was racked with shivers. ‘Is he all right?’
‘He should be. I managed to get to him in time.’ He frowned. ‘We should get you into the rescue vehicle,’ he said. ‘They have blankets in there and flasks of hot chocolate. We need to get you warmed up before the cold makes you ill.’
She was tempted to ignore his suggestion, given that he had been so offhand with her, but the thought of hot chocolate and blankets undermined her resolve. She turned towards the vehicle.
‘You should take off your wet clothes and wrap yourself in these,’ Ben said, handing her a couple of blankets once she was safely inside the roomy van. There was no one else around, and she guessed the men were still helping the stranded motorists.
‘I can’t do that,’ she murmured. ‘I still have to drive myself home.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll take you in my car. We can come back tomorrow and fetch yours.’ He studied her briefly. ‘I’ll stand guard outside the van while you change, and when you’re ready I’ll move your car to a place where it will be out of reach of the floodwater. Do you want to pass me your keys?’
Reluctantly, she reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved them. He was taking over, and she was too drained to put up any more of a fight, so she handed them to him and waited while he climbed out of the van and closed the doors behind him.
A few minutes later, he was rapping on the metal. ‘Are you ready for me to come in?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She was as ready as she would ever be. This whole episode was turning out to be a disaster.
He opened the doors once more and climbed in beside her. ‘Would you like some hot chocolate?’ he asked.
She nodded, and waited while he unscrewed the cap from the flask and poured the hot liquid into a cup.
‘Here you are,’ he said, holding out the cup to her and gently pressing her hands around it. He didn’t let go but supported the cup, and she guessed that he must realise that her hands were trembling so much she might drop it. ‘I don’t know how hot it is, so be careful. Sip it slowly.’
He sat beside her on the bench seat in the van, and waited until she had finished drinking. Then he took the cup from her and put it to one side.
She stared around her in a disconsolate fashion, feeling warmer inside, but still there was this chill of isolation that surrounded her.
He slid an arm around her, drawing her against the warmth of his body. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he said on a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t leave you to your own devices, because I never know when you’re going to land yourself in trouble of some sort.’
‘I would have managed perfectly well,’ she said, her tone grumpy. ‘Anyone could have fallen over in those conditions.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said. ‘The whole point is, you didn’t have to be here.’ He shook his head. ‘If you’re not getting stuck climbing into people’s houses, or nearly drowning yourself in floodwater, it’s that you’re quite likely to take it into your head to do something beyond your capabilities—likemoving house when you could have stayed with Carol.’
‘I thought you understood about that,’ she said, giving him an accusing stare. ‘Anyway, it worked out just fine.’
‘It did, but it might just as easily have gone wrong.’
‘Why should that worry you?’ she muttered in a tight voice. ‘You’re not my keeper.’
‘Maybe not, but I feel responsible. I feel that I need to watch over you…you and Emily.’
Sarah straightened up and pushed her damp hair from her forehead, twisting the unruly locks behind her ear. ‘You don’t have to feel that way,’ she said, pride stiffening her back. ‘There are enough people looking out for Emily, with Carol and the health visitors and Social Services. If anything happens to me, she’ll be well looked after.’
He drew her close to him, wrapping both arms around her. ‘I didn’t mean it in that way. I worry about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
She looked up at him, and his gaze was moving over her, drinking in every part of her face—her forehead, her temples, the straight line of her nose, and the slope of her cheekbones. Then his glance shifted to the soft, full curve of her mouth, and he started to move towards her, lowering his head, his eyes darkening to a smoky blue grey.
He was going to kiss her, she knew it, she could feel it in every fibre of her being, and her body began to tingle in awareness, heat sweeping through her as she anticipated that heart-stopping moment.
But then he seemed to think better of it and he became still for a moment or two, before easing back from her.
Disappointment washed through her.
‘We should get you home,’ he said in a roughened voice. ‘You need to get into some warm, dry clothes.’
She nodded, swallowing hard. She didn’t have it in her to argue with him any more, and the thought of driving herself home filled her with dismay.
He told her that he would drop her off at the cottage, and when she demurred and said that she wanted to go and collect Emily he said, ‘I’ve already spoken to my mother about that. She says that Emily is tucked up in bed, fast asleep. It would be a shame to disturb her.’
‘But what if she has a nightmare and wakes up?’
‘I’ll be there to talk to her. I’m going to stay over at my mother’s house, to keep an eye on both of them. I’ll be sleeping on the sofa, so you have no need to worry.’
‘But I will worry.’ A steely glint came into her eyes. ‘I know that your mother doesn’t have a spare bed, but I could sleep in a chair in Emily’s room, couldn’t I?’
He began to chuckle. ‘My mother said that you would say that.’ He nodded, and held his hands up in a gesture of defeat. ‘OK, you win. We’ll do whatever you want.’
He dropped Sarah off at his mother’s house, and while she was talking to Jennifer he slipped away, saying that he had to go and collect something. Sarah frowned, wondering what it was that could be so important.
Some half an hour later he returned, and he had with him a put-you-up bed, along with a duvet and pillows. ‘I’ll set this up in Emily’s room,’ he said.
She went with him, anxious that he shouldn’t disturb the little girl. Jennifer had lent her a bathrobe, and now she pulled it more securely around her, tying the sash firmly.
‘That was thoughtful of you,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Well, I think you need a good night’s sleep,’ he murmured, ‘after your drenching today.’ He looked her over. ‘How are you feeling? Are you going to be all right? I’d hate to think that both of you were going to be having nightmares.’
‘I’ll be fine, thanks. It was a scary feeling, being out there near the river, as it was getting dark, especially when I went in the water. I thought I was going to give way to panic. I don’t know why I should feel that way. It’s something I can’t explain, but it isn’t a physical fear, it’s more an association that I can’t place. I do sometimes have bad dreams, but I don’t understand them, and I just hope that my subconscious will work it all out for me.’
‘There could be something in that,’ he agreed. He sent a quick look around the room. ‘If you need anything in the night, if you’re upset, or need to talk, I’ll be just downstairs in the living room.’
She nodded. ‘Thanks.’ She didn’t for a moment intend to call on him, but just the knowledge that he had offered was enough to warm her heart.
Fortunately, Emily slept through the night without w
aking, and in the morning she was her usual lively self, eager to be off to nursery where she could play with her friends.
‘I play in the home corner today,’ she told everybody. ‘I make the dinner on the cooker, and then I put the cups out and pour tea for everyone.’ She looked as though the prospect was a blissful one.
‘Isn’t it lovely to have the innocence of childhood?’ Jennifer said, looking on with amusement. ‘It must be good for you to know that she’s contented while you’re working,’ she added, glancing at Sarah.
‘It is.’ She squeezed Jennifer’s hand lightly before starting to clear away the breakfast dishes. ‘Thank you for looking after her so well last night.’
‘It was wonderful to have her here.’ Jennifer stood up and began to take crockery over to the dishwasher. ‘Are you sure that you feel up to going to work today? I’m sure that Ben would explain to the others if you feel that you need to take some time off. It must have been a shocking experience, to be carried off your feet by the water that way.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘No, it’s not necessary. I can manage perfectly well. In fact, I look forward to going out with the ambulance team. I suppose it takes me out of myself and keeps me busy and alert.’
‘That’s good,’ Ben said, looking at his watch. ‘If you’re sure you’re up to it, we should be getting ready to go in the next few minutes.’
She was still going out with him in the rapid-response car, rather than travelling with the ambulance, and they made several calls that morning to people who had been involved in various kinds of accidents, from falling off a horse to slipping down a rocky crag.
It was a joy to watch Ben at work. He was good at his job, and he had an easy manner with the patients, soothing their anxieties or cheering them up with his light banter.
In the afternoon, while they were with the paramedics, attending to casualties of a road traffic accident, Ben took another call. He listened carefully, and then frowned. ‘Yes, we should be able to manage that. It’s only about a mile away from here.’
