The London Consultant's Rescue

by Joanna Neil

  Rhys went to examine the woman.

  ‘Was she thrown from the horse?’ Emma asked. ‘Do we know anything about how this came about?’

  ‘Only that she was unseated as she tried to jump a fence. We think the horse must have been startled by something and he reared up, causing her to be jerked backwards. She landed on her back and smacked into that fallen tree branch.’ He indicated a bough that had been removed from beneath the woman and tossed to one side. ‘We’re still trying to locate her husband so that we can tell him what’s happened.’

  None of it sounded good, and Emma could see that Rhys was beginning to look concerned. He murmured softly, ‘Her pulse is thready. I think there’s been some bleeding into her lower back, so I’m going to give her corticosteroids to try to reduce the swelling.’

  Emma knelt down beside the woman and set about putting up two intravenous lines for saline and crystalloid solutions, so that they could allay any onset of shock and replace vital fluids.

  ‘I want to get her moved onto the stretcher,’ Rhys said, after a while, ‘but we need to take care that her whole spine stays in the neutral position. We’ll do a four person lift, on my count.’

  Emma nodded, and they worked together, with Martin and Simon lining up alongside Melanie and helping to carefully move her onto the stretcher. ‘Let’s get some sandbags on either side of her head and secure them with tape,’ Rhys said, when they had finished.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked the young woman a short time later, looking at her with compassion and checking for any immediate signs of discomfort.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Melanie said, her voice breaking. She fought for control. ‘What will happen to my baby? Will it be all right?’

  ‘Your baby?’ Rhys’s eyes widened a fraction, and though he tried not to show that he was disturbed by this new piece of information, Emma knew him well enough to know that he was worried. He glanced at Simon, but the paramedic shook his head, showing that this was news to him, too.

  ‘How far along is the pregnancy?’ Rhys asked.

  ‘Twenty weeks.’ Melanie’s voice was strained. ‘I really want this baby. Please, don’t let anything happen to it.’

  Rhys pulled in a quick breath, but then stopped to reassure her. ‘We’re doing everything that we can to make sure that you’re safe,’ he said.

  ‘No, you don’t understand…’ Melanie’s face crumpled. ‘I’m not worried for myself. I can’t lose this baby…I can’t.’

  ‘I know,’ Rhys said quietly, ‘but you must try to stay calm. We need to get you to hospital now, but once we’re in the helicopter, I’ll examine you again to make sure that you’re doing OK.’

  He supervised her transfer to the helicopter, and then turned to Emma. ‘We had better check for any bleeding,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and we should take some blood for cross-matching. I’ll ask the copilot to call ahead so that they have an obstetrician standing by.’

  Once they were airborne, they examined Melanie once more, and Emma said, ‘There’s some bleeding and the foetal heartbeat is fluctuating. If there’s any chance that the placenta could have been torn away from the uterine wall, even partially, perhaps we should tilt the stretcher so that Melanie’s feet are higher than her head.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do it…and we’ll keep a careful eye on her pulse oximeter readings as well. We need to be sure that the foetus is getting enough oxygen.’

  They touched down on the hospital’s helipad a few minutes later, and Emma hurried alongside the trolley as Rhys and Martin wheeled their patient to the lift. There they handed her over to the waiting medical team, reporting swiftly on her condition.

  ‘Thanks, we’ll take it from here,’ the neurologist said, and Emma felt a sense of letdown, a feeling of a job only half-done. She didn’t want to leave Melanie.

  Their work here was finished and so they walked back to the helicopter and started to head back to base. Rhys was silent on the journey, his features tense, and she guessed that he was battling with more than straightforward concern for his patient.

  From the straight set of his mouth, she had the idea that he was thinking back to how his sister’s fate had been similar to Melanie’s. Two years ago Amy had suffered more than a broken pelvis. She had also lost her baby, and the tragedy had affected the whole family.

  ‘What are her chances, do you think?’ Martin asked, cutting into her thoughts as they arrived back on firm ground and started to walk towards their headquarters.

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ she answered. ‘It depends what the ultrasound scan shows and to what degree the placenta has been dislodged. If there’s only a small amount of bleeding, things may settle in time. As for the spinal injury, she’ll need an MRI scan to show what damage has been done. Things look pretty bleak at the moment, but there might just be a chance that it’s not as bad as it seems.’

  She went over to the filter machine that was housed to one side of the room, and helped herself to coffee. Rhys was already there, his expression bleak as he nursed a mug in his hand and took a long swallow of the hot liquid.

  ‘Are you thinking about Amy?’ Emma asked. It took all her courage to bring up the subject, and she half expected to be rebuffed for her trouble, but she had to know. There had to be some way she could break through the barrier of silence that had sprung up between them. ‘Seeing Melanie in that state must have brought things back to you.’

  He nodded. ‘It was hard, seeing her go through that, hearing her plead with me to save her child. Amy said the same thing to me at the time of the explosion. She begged me to help her. “I can’t lose this baby,” she said. I can still hear those words in my mind now.’

  ‘Surely you can’t blame yourself? You did everything you could for your sister—no one could have done anything more. She was hurt too badly.’ Emma’s gaze was stricken as she watched him. Her voice faded. ‘We all know how desperately she wanted that baby. She and Elliot had been through so much, for so long, in order to be able to conceive, and it was a terrible blow when she lost it.’

  She tried to keep her voice on an even keel. ‘I keep asking myself why she was the one who had to suffer, but there’s never any answer to that question, is there? I wish I could make it up to Amy in some way, but I can’t, and that leaves me feeling helpless. We can’t turn back the clock and make things work out differently.’

  ‘I don’t blame myself.’ Rhys’s voice was terse. ‘You’re not at fault either. We all did what we could for her, but the fact is the explosion should never have happened in the first place. My sister’s marriage is on the rocks simply because your father didn’t take adequate precautions to keep his restaurant safe for everyone who used it.’ He looked at her, his gaze steady. ‘That’s what none of us is able to come to terms with. That’s what my family can’t forgive.’

  ‘Her marriage is failing?’ Emma’s brow furrowed. ‘I didn’t know it had come to that. I thought Elliot would support her through all this—he was just as upset as she was.’

  Rhys’s jaw was clenched. ‘I’m just telling you how it is. Losing the baby was the last straw. Amy can’t reconcile herself to it, and Elliot couldn’t cope when she sank into a deep depression. He didn’t know what to do, or how to react, and in the end she seemed to distance herself from him and withdrew into a shell. He couldn’t reach her.’

  Emma moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I didn’t realise that. I’m sorry it has turned out that way. I wanted to help her through all this, and I tried to talk to her on a number of occasions, but she snubbed me and I thought it was just me that she had turned against. We were such friends, and then…then there was nothing. Our friendship seemed to fizzle out and there was nothing I could do to prevent it happening. I didn’t realise it had affected all other areas of her life.’

  Rhys put down his coffee-cup and straightened up. ‘We’ve all had to cope with the aftermath. My parents have always been optimists, and they tried to encourage Amy to look to the future a
nd hope for some silver lining, but no good has ever come out of this situation. Just this last month Amy and Elliot have decided to go their separate ways. Elliot is looking around for a place of his own.’

  Emma absorbed that and was silent for a while, thinking things through. Rhys was bitter, and she could see why he would feel that way. He had a strong bond with his sister.

  For her part, Emma had grieved for a long time because the explosion had wrought tragedy in so many ways and had touched so many lives. Those who had been less severely injured would bear the psychological scars for years to come.

  Even so, there was a bit of her that rebelled against her father being continually made the scapegoat. She knew him better than anyone, except for her mother, and instinctively she was convinced that he hadn’t been responsible for what had happened that day.

  ‘My father did what he could to help your sister. He was devastated by what happened to her, and he stayed with her throughout, waiting until the emergency services arrived and trying to keep her safe. Then he helped to lift the beam that had fallen on her. Do you think he could go through all that and not be affected by what happened?’

  ‘I’m sure he was, but that doesn’t change anything, does it?’

  Frustration washed over her. ‘You think he hasn’t suffered, too? He lost everything that he had built up and worked for over the years. It was his dream to own a restaurant, to follow on with what his father had started before him. It was destroyed that day and his world fell apart. The insurance company wouldn’t pay out because everyone accused him of negligence, of not following health and safety rules. He had to start all over again.’

  Rhys gave a wry grimace. ‘I heard that he was doing all right for himself, and you said yourself that he has managed to buy another property—I even heard rumours that he wants to start up another restaurant on the ground floor of the place he’s doing up.’

  ‘That’s true, but he’s had to pay a heavy price for all that. My parents had to lose the house that they loved. Now he’s mortgaged to the hilt, and at his time of life that isn’t a good place to be. It was a question of sink or swim, and he chose to take a deep breath and do his utmost to rise above the tide. I admire him for that. Things have gone badly for him, and it shouldn’t have turned out that way, because he didn’t do what he was accused of…he wasn’t responsible for what happened.’

  Rhys’s brow rose. ‘Then who was responsible?’

  Emma subsided in defeat. ‘I don’t know.’ She stared up at him. ‘Someone must have put the gas cylinder in place. Perhaps one of the workers got it out and dislodged the safety valve—but no one would admit to it. My father tried to make sure that he employed people who were trustworthy and who could be relied on, but there was always bound to be a steady turnover of staff in that kind of business.’

  She frowned, thinking things through. ‘He had the gas cylinders stored away under lock and key, and he thought he had done everything to safeguard the place, but a number of people knew where the keys were kept. When the restaurant was busy, any one of them could have gone and replaced the gas cylinder if it was needed.’

  She hesitated. ‘In fact, the kitchen doors were open that day because of the heat and there was a lot of coming and going to the barbecue out on the terrace. As I recall, we were rushed off our feet. It wouldn’t have taken much for anyone to have come in from outside to take a look around, and I doubt the key cupboard was too difficult to find.’

  She looked at Rhys but his expression was sceptical. ‘Wasn’t all that looked into at the time? I didn’t hear of anything coming of that.’

  Emma winced. She wasn’t going to make any headway with Rhys, was she? He simply wasn’t open to persuasion, and that distressed her, but there was no point in banging her head against a wall any longer.

  ‘I hope Melanie’s problems have a better outcome,’ she said softly, starting to turn away from him.

  ‘Whether or not she loses the baby is probably the least of Melanie’s troubles. She has to wait and see if she’ll even be able to walk after this.’

  That was certainly true, and it wasn’t something that Emma wanted to contemplate. She had taken up a career in medicine because she had hoped above all to save lives, but the downside of her work was altogether too heartrending.

  She went over to the table, where James, the pilot, was studying a maintenance procedures checklist. He looked up as she approached, and ran a hand through his dark hair.

  ‘Is there something wrong between you and Rhys?’ he ventured in a low tone. He studied her, his hazel eyes gently probing.

  Emma frowned. ‘Why do you ask that?’ She glanced over to the corner of the room where the coffee-machine was housed, but Rhys was no longer standing there. It appeared that he had gone outside to take a breath of air.

  ‘It’s just that there seems to be some tension between the two of you. I noticed it yesterday when you first met up in here, and it was there again just now. How well do you know one another? Is it going to be a problem for you to work together?’

  ‘There are just some matters that we disagree on. I’m sure we’re both professional enough that we’ll be able to ignore our differences and concentrate on the job in hand.’ Her green eyes were troubled. Things were pretty bad if a colleague had noticed that there was friction between them.

  She said carefully, ‘We used to live in the same village, so I suppose it was inevitable that my sister and I would come to know Rhys and his sister. We often went around together, on country walks and to village functions, though, of course, they were from a different world to us, both financially and socially. His family was very prominent in the village, and his parents were into all kinds of fundraising and community issues.’

  ‘So you’ve known each other for a long time?’

  She nodded. ‘We haven’t seen much of each other in the last few years, though. He left to go and do his medical training, and then, once he had qualified, he went on to specialise. I was a few years behind him when I started my own medical career, so we tended to only meet up when either of us went home for the weekend or for longer breaks.’

  She had missed him dreadfully when he had gone away, but she wasn’t about to tell James that.

  Rhys had meant the world to her. Throughout the years she had known him, he had always been affectionate and teasing towards her, and she had begun to cherish the times when she had been alone with him.

  Despite this, she had known for a long time that Rhys wanted to work in A and E, and it had come as no surprise when he had eventually left home. Her heart had gone with him, but all the same she had wished him well.

  He was quick thinking and intelligent, full of energy and determination, and she had known that he would succeed wherever his ambitions led him.

  Her one consolation had been that she believed she would be able to see him from time to time. She winced. Who could have foreseen that things would take a downward turn? After the accident their friendship seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and that grieved her. Everything had changed and she didn’t know how to bring things back to how they had been before.

  Would she and Rhys ever again experience the rapport that they had once shared?

  CHAPTER THREE

  SAMSON’S ears were pricked up, on the alert, and he was barking again, the pitch getting louder and more insistent by the minute.

  ‘Something’s definitely rattling him,’ Lindsey said, casting a troubled glance over her dog. ‘This is the third night in a row that he’s been spooked. I wish I knew what was causing him to behave like this.’ She frowned. ‘You know, earlier today I thought I saw someone hanging about near the hedge.’

  ‘Did you?’ Emma frowned, twitching back the living-room curtain and peering out into the darkness. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she could gradually make out the shapes of the trees and shrubs in her small front garden.

  She couldn’t see anything untoward. Beyond the garden, the street was empty and there
was no movement as far as she could tell. ‘Everything seems quiet enough, and there’s no sign of anything or anyone out there now.’

  Lindsey came to join Emma at the window. ‘It’s strange, though, isn’t it? I wonder what’s causing him to act like this? Maybe it’s that journalist. Could it be that he’s following you in the hope of getting another angle on the story? Or maybe he’s not given up on that date he wanted.’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’ Emma let the curtain fall back into place and walked over to the spaniel, stroking his silky smooth head. ‘What’s troubling you, lad? Are you hearing things?’

  ‘Perhaps he needs his ears cleaning out,’ Lindsey said with a laugh, and Emma smiled.

  ‘You’re probably right at that.’ She picked up the bottle of wine from the table and inspected its contents. ‘There’s a glass or two left in here. Do you want some more?’

  Lindsey shook her head and looked over to where Kayla was sitting, playing with her doll on the soft rug. ‘No, thanks. I really should be getting back to my own place. It’s past Kayla’s bedtime.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps when Tom gets back from Switzerland in a week or so, we’ll be able to have a proper girls’ night together.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Emma started to clear away the wineglasses, placing them on the kitchen drainer at the far side of the room. Her flat was compact, made up of a bedroom, a bathroom and a living room with an open-plan kitchen. It wasn’t huge, but it was neat and clean, and the windows were placed to let in lots of light during the daytime.

  She saw Lindsey and Kayla out a few minutes later. French doors led out from the living room into the tiny courtyard, and all they had to do was walk from there to their own garden and in through the back door of their own flat. Emma watched them go, and when she saw that they were safely inside, she went back into her living room and locked the doors. Samson was quiet as he followed them, but Emma wasn’t taking any chances.