The Bachelor Doctor

by Judy Campbell

  ‘I should think his BP’s pretty low,’ she said to Jake. ‘We’ve got to stop this bleed—there may be internal injuries as well, causing blood loss.’ She started to form a pad of some gauze bandaging she’d found in Jake’s medical bag and pressed it firmly to the site of the wound, pushing her rolled-up jacket under the man’s leg to elevate it slightly. Jake and Robbie finished strapping Seth to the door as best as they could.

  Jake leant back on his heels, and puffed out his cheeks in relief. ‘Now, let’s pray that the air ambulance gets here soon.’

  Almost as he said the words, the rumble of an engine was heard overhead. Robbie scrambled to his feet.

  ‘I’ll go to the clearing,’ he said. ‘They should see it easily with the downward beams they’ve got, and I’ve got quite a good fire blazing. I’ll direct them to you.’

  The clatter of the helicopter became deafening, and the leaves stirred in the branches.

  Seth’s eyes opened. ‘What’s happened?’ he whispered. ‘Where the hell am I?’

  ‘You’re about to go on a pleasure trip,’ said Jake with a grin. ‘I hope it’s not as exciting as your paragliding today. Don’t you remember landing in the tree earlier?’

  Seth smiled weakly. ‘Yes, I do—not very softly either.’ He screwed his eyes up and looked at Jake. ‘Did you get me down?’

  ‘It took three of us,’ said Jake. ‘I wouldn’t like to do it again!’

  ‘Thanks…I’m very grateful.’ Seth’s voice faded away again.

  ‘His pulse is pretty low,’ murmured Cara, holding Seth’s wrist between her fingers. ‘He’ll need blood substitute and cross-matching in the helicopter before they reach the hospital. Whatever other injuries he’s sustained, he’s probably cracked some ribs—his breathing’s very shallow.’

  They both looked up as two men in green and yellow suits came running through the undergrowth with Robbie, his old lungs wheezing with the effort.

  ‘Here’s your passenger,’ said Jake.

  ‘Sorry we took so long—we were just in the process of taking a pregnant mum from a farm in the hills to St Cuthbert’s. They couldn’t get past the snow on the hillside.’

  ‘He’ll need some haemacel and, of course, oxygen.’ Jake informed them briskly.

  One of the men looked doubtfully at the door on which the man lay. ‘Think we’d better keep him on that—don’t want to fling him around too much. We’ll put a proper neck brace on, I think—good though that contraption is that you’ve got on him now!’

  ‘It’s a work of art!’ protested Cara, as she watched the paramedics slip on the brace.

  ‘OK, then, let’s go!’ yelled one of the men.

  The improvised stretcher was lifted with great care, the men moving as quickly as they could through the woods with Robbie guiding them.

  Cara and Jake followed the paramedics to where the helicopter had landed, like some giant insect in the clearing. They watched as a platform was lowered from the door and Seth’s makeshift stretcher was loaded gently onto it.

  ‘Good luck, Seth,’ yelled Cara, going up to the platform. ‘We’ll come and see you in hospital!’

  Then they watched as the machine lifted off the ground and clattered away, lights flashing, into the distance.

  ‘That was a rum do,’ said Robbie as they strolled over to his cottage. ‘If I hadn’t been taking the dogs round the island I doubt if I’d have seen him till the morning.’ He shook his head in wonderment. ‘I always said something like this would happen, the way they hurl themselves off the mountainside like that—and I was right! Now, come in and have a wee dram—do you good after all that!’

  The walk back to the boat was dark—even with the torch it was hard to see the path. The weather had deteriorated even more, large waves washing the shore of the loch and the wind howling eerily through the trees.

  ‘Do you think this is wise?’ Jake remarked doubtfully. ‘Perhaps we should go back and beg a bed from Robbie for the night.’

  ‘It’ll be all right—it’s not very far across from here. I’m really exhausted after all that exertion, and I don’t fancy kipping down on one of Robbie’s truckle beds!’

  Jake shrugged. ‘OK. Let’s go!’

  They’d reached the water’s edge now and expected to see the boat still moored to the little stump of wood they’d hooked the rope to.

  Jake was the first to speak. ‘I thought we left it here,’ he murmured. ‘Where the hell is it?’

  Cara clutched his arm and pointed to the shore opposite. ‘Look,’ she shrieked. ‘The boat’s slipped its moorings—it’s halfway back!’

  Sure enough, fast bobbing away from them could be discerned the shape of the rowing boat. Almost at the same time another tremendous crack of thunder reverberated across the mountains and as if a bucket had been upturned on them, a downpour of tropical dimensions started to lash down.

  Cara spun round and buried her head in Jake’s shoulder. ‘I hate thunder,’ she moaned. ‘Let’s get back to Robbie’s—the thought of the truckle bed sounds much better now!’

  Jake stood stock still. ‘I hate to tell you this, Cara,’ he said, ‘but I’ve dropped the torch. If we can’t find it, I doubt if we can find our way back to Robbie’s!’

  ‘What? I don’t believe it! We can’t spend all night in the pelting rain. What are we going to do?’ Cara’s face was almost comical in its expression as she looked in a horrified way up at Jake’s pale face.

  ‘We’ll have to scrabble down in the shelter of those bushes—can’t go under a tree in a thunderstorm. We’ll wait for the storm to pass. I’ll ring Annie on my mobile and let her know we’re all right.’

  Cara was horrified. ‘This is ridiculous!’ Another crack of thunder sent her flying again against Jake. ‘Oh, no…let’s go, then!’

  She grabbed Jake’s hand tightly in the almost total blackness of the night, and together they stumbled towards the low bushes that fringed the shore. Jake pulled her down behind one of them. ‘If we lie low here we won’t come to any harm from lightning, and it’s surprisingly dry.’

  ‘I’m cold.’ Cara shivered. ‘I forgot to pick up my coat when I put it under Seth’s leg. It’s probably in the helicopter now.’

  ‘Here—take this.’ Jake pulled off his oilskin and wrapped it so that it almost enveloped them both. ‘Best to keep close together—we don’t want to get hypothermia.’

  She relaxed against him, suddenly exhausted from the tension of the evening. ‘Thank heavens we got Seth out safely,’ she murmured.

  For answer he pulled her slightly more towards him. ‘I know—it was a very near thing. Another half-hour and it might have been too late.’

  Cara shivered again—but this time it wasn’t from the cold, it was for a very different reason. Every nerve in her body suddenly seemed on fire, she was so close to Jake, his body hard against hers, the male smell of him assailing her nostrils. Slowly she felt his arms wrap round her, binding her helplessly hip to hip with him, felt his head bury itself in her neck.

  ‘Is that comfortable?’ Jake’s voice was soft, slightly slurred, and she could feel his lips move against her skin as he spoke.

  ‘Y-yes,’ she whispered breathlessly. ‘It’s all right. I feel quite warm now.’

  ‘I know you do—you’re radiating heat.’ His hands moved to her neck and then her hair, and all at once she was lying under him on the ground, his strong body straddling hers.

  ‘Jake…’ Cara’s voice was a feeble protest, and she heard him give a low chuckle.

  ‘I’m trying to keep you dry,’ he murmured.

  Then suddenly his mouth was covering her face with kisses, his lips fluttering down to the hollow in her neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t damn well help it. Your hair shouldn’t smell so sweet, you shouldn’t feel so soft and beautiful. It’s driving me mad…’

  She struggled against him, then fell back as she felt his fingers slipping their way under her jumper, caressing her breasts with the lightest of
touches. Her mind whirled with a thousand contradictory messages—she wanted him to make love to her, this complex man who seemed so aloof in many ways. There was a passion inside him that she realised would be difficult to quench—but where would it end? In broken dreams and lost love like it had been with Toby?

  A warning shiver went through her. ‘Jake,’ she whispered. ‘Should we be doing this? I…I don’t know if this is right.’

  ‘It feels very right to me,’ he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers again and teasing her lips apart. She felt her insides liquefy with longing and her own arms wound round his neck and pulled him close against her, giving in to the insistent clamour of her own desire.

  ‘Now, what could be wrong about this?’ she heard him murmur.

  As if in a dream she felt his hands gently unzip her jumper down the front and peel back her T-shirt, then his head bent down and he was covering her with butterfly kisses that made her arch her back against him with desire. His hands, so expert in their caresses, explored her body with a tantalisingly gentle touch. How easy it would be to give in to her needs—to let Jake take her completely. She lay back in a kind of dream, allowing him to cover her with soft, insistent touches that made every erogenous zone in her body scream with pleasure.

  The flash of lightning that split the sky above the loch made her jerk back with surprise, and a jolt of common sense ran through her mind. Was it entirely wise to get this heavy with a man she had known so short a time and who undoubtedly carried baggage from the past with him?

  A niggling little voice said inside her, Why complicate your life again when you’ve just managed to get it straight? Surely you’ve had enough heartache to last you several years?

  She was a fool to respond so easily to this man she hardly knew, to lead him on when she’d been betrayed by Toby whom she’d thought she’d known so well.

  ‘No, no, Jake…not yet,’ she gasped, firmly wriggling away from him. He knelt back, sensing her unwillingness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  She leant back against the stump of a tree and closed her eyes. Suddenly, as it did so often, a horrible picture from the past flashed into her mind. She was opening the door of the flat in London, holding onto Dan’s hand. For a second the picture was hazy. She couldn’t quite understand what was happening before her—two figures were writhing together on the carpet. Then with sickening clarity she realised that one of them was Toby, doing to a woman what he had done to Cara so lovingly before…Although Cara was shielding Dan from the scene, he was turning his head up towards her. ‘Mummy, what’s Daddy doing?’ he was saying in his soft baby voice. The picture faded. Somehow it would be very difficult to trust a man again.

  She opened her eyes and saw in the half-light that Jake was watching her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I got a little carried away there—perhaps it was Robbie’s whisky!’

  Cara kept her voice light and inconsequential—best not to make this too big a deal. She smiled up at him. ‘You and me both! You haven’t phoned Annie yet—perhaps we’d better do that. She’ll send someone over for us in another boat now the storm seems to be passing. Remember, I’m on call in the morning!’

  There was a short silence, only broken by the light sound of the rain as it pattered on the ground, and Jake suppressed a sigh as he took out his mobile. Why the hell had he allowed himself to give into his longing to hold Cara, when common sense had told him to keep well away? It must have been relief at the end of a stressful evening—how else to explain the way he’d given in so easily to his feelings?

  Cara had had her heart broken once, although Jake couldn’t understand how anyone could have betrayed someone as beautiful, feisty and fun as she was and leave her to bring up that dear little boy by herself. But his longing for Cara must be firmly suppressed. How could a poor boy from the slums of Glasgow hope to form a relationship with a girl from a privileged and wealthy background and, even more pertinent, how could he expect a young woman who already had a child to bring up take on the weighty responsibility he had to carry? It was too much to ask of her.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, getting up and brushing the leaves from his clothes. ‘Best to try and get home before we forget the time entirely!’

  Cara watched as he phoned Annie, his strong face a white blur in the darkness. She’d seen a different side of Jake Donahue this evening—a glimpse of a warm, humorous and passionate personality too often submerged by a remote outer shell. Shock waves of desire still rippled through her body, but she had been right to have stopped their love-making—she needed more time for her scars to heal. And wouldn’t it be wrong to start a steamy affair with a colleague, even one as good-looking as Jake? She smiled to herself—it was good that they had kept it light-hearted. Whatever had happened, she was sure they could laugh about it the next day. She knew that after this evening things would be more relaxed between them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CARA covered a yawn with her hand and tried to look alert. She’d been on call since seven a.m. that morning and had had to cover any emergency visits until the surgery started at eight-thirty. All in all, after the adventures of the night before, she hadn’t had much sleep. She’d had an emergency call from far out in the countryside at seven-thirty—a distressed farmer whose wife had bad abdominal pains. Cara had decided the woman needed hospitalisation for further investigation. Now, sitting at a morning meeting with Jake and the Ballranoch Area Director of Technology, she felt as if she’d already done a day’s work.

  They were discussing the networking of the computer systems of all the GP practices in the area and the local hospital. Cara glanced across at Jake, leaning forward earnestly to put his case to Bernard Lewis. She noticed rough scratches on his face where the branches had caught him during the rescue—had it been only a few hours ago that they had been entwined in an intimate embrace, and that firm mouth had been pressed to hers? She touched her lips with her finger as if she could still feel the tingle from his kiss, and closed her eyes as she remembered again how closely he had held her.

  She looked forward to dealing with a more approachable, relaxed Jake now, but so far he’d barely looked at her—just nodded a brief greeting.

  ‘We need to be able to e-mail referrals to consultants at St Cuthbert’s much more quickly,’ Jake was saying. ‘Rapid access is especially important for cancer patients—it’s important that they’re seen by a specialist as soon as possible.’

  Bernard nodded. ‘That shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll set up a meeting for this to be discussed next month at the hospital.’

  ‘It would be good if we could book patients directly in for their surgery,’ suggested Cara. ‘At the moment we don’t know for ages how long someone will have to wait. It would help forward planning enormously.’

  Jake nodded approvingly. ‘Good idea!’ He stood up and shook Bernard’s hand. ‘We’ll be hearing from you soon, then, regarding the agenda.’

  Bernard snapped his briefcase shut and smiled at them both. ‘Fine! By the way, I hear there were a few dramas on the island last night. You were heroes, I believe, rescuing a man who’d fallen into a tree—it’s the talk of the town!’

  Cara felt the colour rise in her cheeks and she flicked a look across to Jake, but he seemed unperturbed and answered in a level voice, ‘Quite exciting really—when you go paragliding, make sure you land in a soft spot and not when it’s dark and there’s a storm blowing!’

  ‘Sounds like a fun evening.’ Bernard laughed as he left the room.

  Cara’s eyes locked with Jake’s for a moment, expecting him to say something droll, but he merely started gathering up his papers and walked to the door.

  ‘That went fairly well,’ he observed briskly. ‘By the way, thanks for all you did last night. It was a great effort.’ Then he went out.

  Cara gazed dumbfounded after him. Was that it? Was that all the reference he would make to what had gone on after they’d rescued Seth—not even a humorous comment? She shook her hea
d in disbelief. Surely he couldn’t be that cold—the moment of passion they’d shared together couldn’t mean that little to him. Why the sudden change from affection to complete chill-out?

  Cara frowned and sat down for a moment in her office, as she gathered her thoughts together. She hadn’t imagined that Jake was the sort of man who’d forget entirely about their little episode last night! Gloomily she chewed the end of her pen. The sad fact was that she couldn’t get it out of her mind—every tingling nerve and electric response came back to her when she thought of their bodies twined together and his demanding lips on hers…OK, so she had brought their love-making to an abrupt end last night—she wasn’t ready yet to commit herself after Toby’s betrayal of her—but surely it had been worth a mention?

  The buzz of the intercom on the desk made her jump, then Karen’s voice floated over the room.

  ‘Hello, Cara, I’ve a journalist, Pete Marbury, here from the local paper. He wants a word with you and Jake about the accident you attended last night—have you a minute some time?’

  ‘I could see him now if you want. I don’t know how Jake’s fixed.’

  ‘He says he can give him a few minutes—they’ll come into your room.’

  Pete Marbury had the look of an eager young puppy, thought Cara as he bounced into the room after Jake.

  ‘I only wish I’d managed to get across during the rescue operations,’ he lamented. ‘We could have got some great pictures. Was it difficult to get the man down from the tree?’

  Jake nodded. ‘It certainly was. We had to try and keep his body as rigid as possible in case he had injured his back badly.’

  ‘And had he?’ asked Pete, pencil poised above notebook.

  ‘He’d sustained a serious injury and will need an operation to stabilise it. Good job we got him to specialist help within the golden hour.’

  ‘The “golden hour”?’ repeated Pete, looking puzzled.

  ‘If the patient can get to hospital where all the latest technology is available to him within an hour of injury or, say, heart attack, it’s been found that the chances of survival are increased by a huge percentage,’ explained Cara. ‘That’s why it’s called the golden hour—and that’s why the air ambulance is so invaluable.’