The Doctor's Bride by Sunrise

by Josie Metcalfe

  ‘Can’t see anything that looks like a mine,’ Mike called back down. ‘We must have the wrong bikes for a different set of kids. Perhaps someone’s been stealing them and stockpiling them up here, and is going to collect their stash at some time.’

  ‘Where do you think we should look next?’ Adam said as he leapt lightly from one rock to another until he landed almost at her feet, apparently unhampered by the second awkward bag of equipment he’d taken from Mike.

  ‘I have absolutely no…’ Maggie paused and turned her head from side to side. ‘Shh! Did you hear that?’

  ‘What?’ Mike’s footwear was clattering on the granite as he completed his descent to join them by the gorse bushes. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘There it is again,’ Maggie insisted, and turned the beam of her torch towards the bush. ‘It sounded almost as if a kitten’s caught in that gorse.’

  Except it hadn’t sounded exactly like that, because the noise was fainter and seemed much further away. Perhaps it was nothing more than the weak bleat of an early lamb in a nearby field. Perhaps…

  ‘Perhaps it’s the kids?’ Mike suggested. ‘Perhaps they’re somewhere nearby and they can see the light from our torches and the flashes on our uniforms. Hey!’ he shouted loudly, startling Maggie for a second. ‘Is there anybody there?’

  This time there was no mistaking the sound they heard because it was louder, as though someone was shouting with renewed energy now that there was someone listening.

  ‘We’re here!’ called a distant childish voice that definitely came from the middle of the gorse bush.

  ‘But I looked there and couldn’t see anything,’ Maggie pro tested as Adam dropped to his knees beside her.

  ‘Neither can I,’ she heard him mutter, then stifle a curse when there was the unmistakable sound of ripping cloth as he tried to force a path through the sturdy stems and branches. ‘Unless…Got it!’ he exclaimed, and she and Mike heard the sound of splintering timber.

  ‘What have you found?’ Maggie demanded as she dropped to her knees behind him, grateful for the sturdy fabric of her uniform.

  ‘I think it’s the entrance to an adit,’ Adam said tersely, then there was the sound of more splintering timber and a muttered, ‘Ouch!’

  ‘What’s an adit?’ Maggie demanded, even as she wondered what he’d done to hurt himself.

  ‘It’s a mining term for a horizontal—or nearly horizontal—shaft into a mine,’ Mike explained distractedly as he took the broken pieces of wood Adam was passing back to him and stacked them aside. ‘It was used for access or drainage, if I remember what my grand father told me. He was a born and bred tin miner before the bottom dropped out of the international price of tin.’

  ‘Yes! It is an adit!’ Adam exclaimed over the screeching sound of rusty nails being dragged out of wood. ‘It was obviously boarded up some time ago, either when the yield became uneconomic for the man hours needed to extract it or when the price of tin took that tumble. I certainly don’t remember it ever being worked.’

  ‘Is there anybody there?’ called a young voice from the depths of the entrance Adam had uncovered.

  ‘Yes!’ Adam called back, his head stuck into the hole he’d enlarged by tearing the board away. ‘I’m a doctor. Who are you and where are you?’

  There was the sound of other voices far in the distance, but the one closest to them shouted back to his companions with a swift, ‘Shut up, you lot! I won’t be able to hear what they’re saying with you making that racket!’

  ‘One at a time, please,’ Adam roared, and everything went quiet.

  ‘There are five of us,’ the young voice came again, and Maggie was impressed by how calm and controlled he sounded. If she’d been in the same situation…well, there was no chance of that. Her claustrophobia was a very good reason to steer clear of anything in the least bit mine-like. ‘We’re mostly all right,’ continued the young voice, ‘except Tel. He fell on the stope and then some rocks fell down and he’s stuck under them… And there’s wet on the floor under him, so we think he’s bleeding, but we dropped our torch and the bulb broke so we can’t see.’

  ‘And who are you?’ Adam asked, while Maggie itched to get the talking over and get those kids out of there. They’d been missing for over an hour now and…

  ‘My name’s Jem…Jeremiah Althorp, and my mum’s… She used to work at the doctors surgery.’

  ‘Kate!’ Maggie exclaimed, suddenly remembering that the poor woman was waiting for news of her son.

  Well, she thought as she speed-dialled the surgery, the number still in her phone from when her mother had been so ill, they might not know the full extent of everybody’s injuries yet but, apart from an understandable tremor in his voice, Kate’s son at least seemed to be relatively safe.

  ‘Penhally Bay Surgery,’ said the familiar reassuring voice of Hazel Furse. ‘Can I help—?’

  ‘Hazel, it’s Maggie…Maggie Pascoe. Will you tell Kate that we’ve found the boys and that we’ve been talking to her son?’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Hazel exclaimed, then obviously pulled the receiver away from her ear to call across the reception area, ‘They’ve found them!’

  Maggie smiled when she heard the sudden hubbub and cheering at the other end, then Hazel was back on the line.

  ‘Kate wants to know if you’re coming straight back to Penhally with them…well, with Jem,’ she added in a quieter voice.

  ‘We won’t be back for a bit, Hazel,’ Maggie confessed. ‘I wanted you all to know as soon as possible that we’ve located the lads, but we haven’t got them out yet. I didn’t want everyone to think that we were still looking for the right mine.’

  ‘OK.’ Hazel’s tone was more subdued this time. ‘So where are you and how difficult is it going to be to get them out? Are you going to need other emergency services to help? How many of the kids are injured and how badly?’

  ‘We’re on the road out of the valley, past the junction between Bridge Street and Dunheved Road, on the way to St Piran Hospital,’ Maggie explained, trying to make the directions as simple and as clear as possible. ‘There’s a field on the left, just past a little lay-by, with the gate propped wide open. The ambulance is parked just inside the field facing towards some piles of rocks, with Dr Donnelly’s car beside it. We’re probably going to need a fire crew with ropes and ladders—oh, and another ambulance in case any of the lads need to travel on backboards. Apart from that, we won’t really know until we can get close enough to them to see what we’re dealing with.’

  She shuddered at the thought of getting any closer to that mine entrance than she was now. Just the idea of going into that dark, dank opening was enough to make her claustrophobia send her pulse sky high and double her respiration rate.

  ‘I’ll pass all that on,’ Hazel promised. ‘Keep in touch, Maggie.’

  ‘Will do,’ she promised.

  ‘Hey, Maggie, we need you here,’ Mike called over his shoulder before she’d even cut the call.

  ‘OK. Which set of equipment do you need?’ she said as she squatted beside the prickly bushes that looked as if they were devouring the two men whole. All she could see of Mike was his legs and Adam was nothing more than two obviously male feet clad in a totally inappropriate pair of polished leather shoes.

  Even as she watched, that pair of feet started to squirm back wards out of the gorse bush towards her and she could see that his smart suit trousers were already stained and snagged and probably damaged beyond any hope of repair.

  ‘We’re not ready for our boxes of tricks yet,’ Mike was saying as Adam straightened up and walked the two paces that put him right in front of her.

  Pride made her stand her ground, even though the man’s presence had a disastrous effect on her nervous system, and she forced herself to look him straight in the eye.

  ‘Maggie…’ he began, then it seemed as if he couldn’t hold her gaze any more and he paused so long that she just knew she wasn’t going to like what came ne
xt. ‘Look, I know what I’m asking will be…very hard for you but… The thing is, the entrance to the mine is almost completely blocked by debris—loose rocks and suchlike—and neither Mike nor I will fit through it until it’s been excavated.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just been in contact with Hazel at the surgery,’ she told him hastily, not liking the direction that her vivid imagination was taking her. ‘She’s going to let the emergency services know exactly where we are so they shouldn’t be long. Then we’ll have all the equipment and manpower we need to—’

  ‘Maggie,’ he interrupted gently. ‘I managed to shine a torch far enough along the adit for Jem to be able to see it reflected off the walls, so he’s absolutely certain that we’re here. Didn’t you hear him tell me that there’s a puddle of blood under one of the lads…the one trapped by the rockfall? From what he said, I don’t think that boy can afford to wait for anyone else to turn up because we don’t know whether he’s bleeding out, or heading for crush syndrome, or what. It’s entirely probable that his only chance of staying alive is for one of us to go down there and take care of him. Mike and I are just too bulky to get through that gap, so that just leaves you.’

  ‘Me? But I can’t!’ she squeaked as panic tightened its grip around her throat. ‘Adam, you know I can’t. Y-you know that I’m—’

  ‘Maggie, stop! You’re hyperventilating. Take a breath!’ he ordered, his voice sharp even though it was barely above a whisper in the quiet of the Cornish country side. He held both her shoulders in warm, firm hands, his thumbs stroking her soothingly through the sturdy fabric of her uniform and sending a shower of shivers through her body. ‘You can do it.’

  ‘No! I—’

  ‘Shh!’ he soothed. ‘I know the whole idea freaks you out, but you’ve done it before. Remember?’

  ‘Remember? Of course I remember!’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t sleep properly for months after that nightmare of an afternoon. You can’t ask me to go in there when you know how bad—’

  ‘Maggie, I’m not asking you to do it for me,’ he reminded her, with a little shake of her shoulders. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about that lad trapped by the rocks.’

  That stopped her in her tracks.

  She’d been part of the medical profession long enough to respect her colleagues’ intuition about a situation. Often it flew in the face of logic, but it was uncanny how often it was right, so if Adam had a bad feeling about Tel’s condition…

  ‘How bad do you think it is?’

  ‘Well, we all know that youngsters like to exaggerate the gorier things in life but, from what Jem said, I’m almost certain that his friend’s leg has been badly broken by the rocks, and you know as well as I do that he’s likely to lose the leg altogether if he isn’t released soon. But it’s the blood loss that I’m most concerned about,’ he stressed, knowing she would understand the significance of such a situation. ‘There’s far too much of it, if Jem’s description is accurate, and I’m wondering if the bone was splintered by the impact and has done some major venous or arterial damage.’

  ‘So you think there’s a serious chance that he might be bleeding out?’ she whispered, suddenly understanding that there was something worse than being asked to face one of her worst fears. Being claustrophobic and having to go underground was nothing compared with the prospect of bleeding to death trapped under a pile of rocks. Then there was the prospect of the youngster developing crush syndrome, which could be equally fatal when the pressure was finally removed.

  For just a second, as she pictured herself crawling through into that awful darkness, she was certain that she couldn’t do it, but then she realised something more important. If she didn’t do it, and the lad died, she would never be able to forgive herself. The fact that the young woman she’d tended under the underground train had survived and was slowly getting on with her life had been one of the few things that had made all the nightmares worthwhile.

  ‘Adam, promise me you’ll stay close,’ she begged, the words already hovering in the chilly air between them before she’d realised she was going to say anything, her breath swirling around them like tortured wraiths.

  ‘Of course I’ll be here for you, Maggie. Like I was last time,’ he promised, and she knew that whatever else had gone wrong between them, he wouldn’t break his word to her.

  ‘So,’ she said, trying desperately to sound brisk but very conscious that her teeth were starting to chatter at the imminent prospect of climbing into the mine, ‘how are we going to do this? What do you want me to do?’

  ‘To put it at its most basic, you need to get in far enough to find out what’s happened to those kids. Start with basic triage, the way you would with every callout. Find out how many are injured and how badly and prioritise how you need to deal with them.’

  ‘Until I’m in there I’m not going to know how much kit I can take with me,’ Maggie pointed out, concerned that she might not have the right equipment to hand when she reached the boys. ‘A lot of our stuff is in portable boxes or bags because we often have to start work on a patient away from the ambulance. But if I’m the only one going in and I’m going to be climbing or…or squeezing through small spaces…’ She swallowed hard, her imagination already far too vivid for peace of mind.

  ‘Prioritise,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Most of all, we need to find out what we can do for the one who’s trapped. See if it’s possible to release him or will he just have to be stabilised as best you can until we can get some muscle or some serious machinery in there to free him and get him out?’

  ‘And in my spare time…’ she said ironically.

  Adam gave a short huff of laughter and she caught a brief glimpse of that grin again. ‘In your spare time, Maggie, you could keep up a running commentary so that I can be certain that you’re all right.’

  Then there was no more time to delay, not if that lad was bleeding as badly as Jem thought he was.

  ‘Coming through,’ she said to Mike as she threaded her way through the gorse. It wasn’t until she was almost at the dreaded black hole, framed now by the last remnants of the broken and rotted boards, that she realised that he’d spent his time while she and Adam had been speaking in ripping the jagged timber away so that she could see better to climb over the rubble blocking the entrance to the adit.

  ‘Maggie, just think about this for a minute,’ her colleague cautioned quietly when she reached out a shaky hand towards the rough rocks. ‘The first rule of rescue work is never to endanger yourself, and this definitely comes under the heading of—’

  ‘Don’t, Mike,’ she said with a single shake of her head, knowing he was right but also knowing that she had to be able to live with her own conscience.

  ‘Maggie, I know those lads need help,’ he tried again, holding onto her arm to prevent her moving any further forward. ‘But you could lose your job for going in there without the proper—’

  ‘Mike, you know how much I love my job, but I don’t think I’d want it any more if I let any of those kids die when I could have done something to prevent it,’ she said with an unexpected feeling of determination. ‘I’m not going in there because I want to but because I have to, and the best way you can help is to stand by with the bags of equipment ready to pass me the supplies I need when I get in there.’

  ‘Ready to go, Maggie?’ Adam prompted from close behind her, but she’d already known he was there, silently supporting her as she argued her case. ‘Take my torch,’ he offered as she nodded and took a deep breath. ‘It’s not as heavy-duty as yours but I think it gives out just as much light.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, gazing back for one last second into those shadowy midnight-blue eyes. Then she forced herself to begin squeezing though the awkward opening at the top of the rockfall that was blocking most of the entrance and preventing the two men from taking her place in there.

  Once inside, she put her hand back out again to be passed her emergency pack of basic equipment and then it was time to crawl into the blac
kness.

  For several paces she concentrated so hard on controlling her breathing and putting one hand and knee in front of the other that she didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings. It wasn’t until the heel of the hand holding Adam’s torch landed on a pain fully sharp piece of rock that she paused for a second to rub it and caught sight of something that surprised her.

  ‘Hey! Adam…Mike, it’s not just a tiny tunnel in here!’ she exclaimed with a definite feeling of relief. ‘I can actually stand up in it once I’m past the rockfall at the entrance!’ She suited her actions to her words and swung briefly back towards the entrance, suddenly uneasily aware that if she hadn’t been looking directly at it, she wouldn’t have known where it was. It was now so dark outside that the only light visible was from her own torch and the one held by whoever was immediately outside the entrance. The rough pile of rocks that were blocking the entrance made that part of the mine look no different from any other part.

  ‘Can you pass the other equipment packs through?’ she suggested. ‘It looks as if there’ll be plenty of room, and I might be able to carry them all the way to where the boys are. That would save time.’

  ‘Stick to plan A,’ Adam advised, his voice sounding strangely hollow as it echoed around her. ‘Just take your light weight emergency pack with the basics. It’s better to locate the boys and find out what you’re dealing with before you start loading yourself down unnecessarily. Then you can decide what’s the best way to proceed. You can always come back for more.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Mike’s disembodied voice added his twopenn’orth, ‘while you’re doing that, we’re going to be clearing as much of this rock away as we can, so we can get in there to help.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed, and turned back to the tunnel with a shudder.

  Adam was right, of course, but, then, he’d already worked as an emergency specialist in a big London hospital and had gained enough experience to be able to take over teaching the course she’d gone up to attend when the original lecturer had been taken ill.