The London Consultant's Rescue Read online

  Matthew didn’t look too sure about that, but he gave a very faint nod. He was about seven years old, fair-haired and pale-looking, and although the paramedics had already treated him initially, Emma was worried about him. His face was tearstained, and he was shocked and obviously distressed about his father.

  ‘Are you from the helicopter?’ he asked, looking from one to the other.

  ‘That’s right…we are,’ Emma answered. ‘Do you fancy a ride in it?’

  He nodded, looking at her with wide-eyed uncertainty. ‘With my dad as well?’ He glanced at his father, lying just a short distance away from them.

  ‘Oh, yes. Definitely with your dad.’

  The boy appeared to relax a little at that, and once Emma had managed to gain his confidence sufficiently she checked his injured upper arm. It was a nasty break, a displaced and angulated fracture near the elbow, and straight away she could see that more problems were developing.

  Turning to Martin, she said softly, ‘There’s a lot of swelling, and there must have been considerable bleeding into the tissues. I’m afraid there may have been damage to the brachial artery. The whole area is very tense around the break, and even with the painkilling medication that he’s been given he’s having difficulty contracting the muscles. I’m afraid he’s suffering from compartment syndrome. We need to get him to Theatre fast.’

  Martin recorded the results as Emma continued to test the distal pulses and check for sensation. ‘I’ll immobilise the arm for now,’ he said, ‘and monitor his pulse and blood pressure.’ He looked at Matthew. ‘As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll put the blanket back around you, because we have to do our best to keep you warm.’

  Emma nodded agreement, and then smiled at the boy once more. ‘I have something for you,’ she told him. Delving into her medical bag, she brought out a teddy-bear sticker and colouring sheet, along with a ‘brave boy’ certificate. ‘You’ve been such a good patient—the best—so these are for you, though you’ll probably need to learn to colour with your other hand.’

  Matthew managed a faint lift at the corners of his mouth, and then he studied the certificate with interest.

  Emma spoke quietly to Martin. ‘We’ll top up his pain relief, and on our way back to the hospital I’ll refer him to the orthopaedic surgeon for open reduction and internal fixation.’ She hesitated momentarily. ‘I should go and see if Rhys needs any help.’

  ‘That’s OK. I can manage here.’

  She hurried to Rhys’s side and discovered that he was deeply concerned about his patient. He had intubated Matthew’s father so that his airway was protected, and he was being given oxygen.

  ‘He has a fractured skull,’ Rhys explained. ‘He’s been seizing and I’ve given him diazepam to control the fits, but we need to take measures to prevent any more. He’s slipping more deeply into unconsciousness, and his pupils are dilating.’

  Emma sucked in her breath. That was a sure sign of intracranial pressure, and it probably meant that there must be a haematoma, a blood clot, building up inside his skull. Things weren’t looking good for the man.

  ‘Do you want me to start an infusion of phenytoin to prevent any more fits?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to give him a bolus of intravenous mannitol to lower the intracranial pressure and hopefully buy us a little time, but we need to get him out of here, fast.’

  Emma understood that. It was imperative that the patient went for surgery to drain the haematoma before any more damage occurred.

  She started the intravenous infusion and was about to get to her feet once more when she was almost blinded by a sudden flash of bright light.

  ‘I know you from somewhere, don’t I?’ a man said, and as her vision cleared she looked up and saw that he was adjusting the setting of his camera. ‘Didn’t we meet up at another incident some time ago?’ he went on. ‘I don’t think you were wearing a medic’s outfit then, though.’ He frowned, as though he was trying to remember, and then he stared at her once more and his face lit up with a rush of realisation. ‘I know where it was…There was a fire, wasn’t there…and an explosion? Wasn’t it your father’s restaurant that went up in flames?’

  Emma did her best to shield her patient with her body. He didn’t need prying eyes looking at him in his vulnerable state. At the same time a hollow feeling invaded her stomach and she felt a shiver run through her body, a reaction to the second shock of the day that she’d had to endure.

  She hadn’t needed the journalist’s reminder. She recognised him all too well, and meeting up with him this way was more than she could handle right now.

  ‘We’re busy here,’ she said. ‘I don’t have time to stop and talk to you.’

  He didn’t seem at all deterred by her comment, and raised his camera once more. ‘It was a gas cylinder that did the damage, wasn’t it? Something about a back-up for the outdoor barbecues that your father used to put on for the customers. Only it was stored in the wrong place, as I recall.’

  Rhys intervened. ‘We have a job to do,’ he said in a brusque tone. ‘There are injured people here and they need our attention. Don’t take any more photos, and clear the way.’

  Grim-faced, he brushed past the man, forcing him to move to one side to let them pass. Then he manoeuvred his patient off the slipway, directing the stretcher trolley towards the waiting helicopter.

  Emma followed with Matthew and Martin. The experience had alarmed and thoroughly unsettled her. Did the journalist really think she needed any reminders of that awful day when her world had turned upside down?

  ‘Have you met him before?’ Martin asked, and she nodded.

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, I have.’

  Her thoughts were drowned out. The pilot had the helicopter’s engine turning over, ready for take-off as soon as they gave the word, and Emma looked down at seven-year-old Matthew once more and slowly came to her senses. Why was she worrying about a journalist from her past when she had to get this little boy and his father to hospital? Their lives were more important than her battered feelings. Nothing else mattered, did it?

  They settled their patients inside the helicopter and checked the equipment and the drips, making sure that all was well. When they had finished and were ready to go, she glanced across at Rhys.

  His expression was bleak and his mouth was set in a taut line. She guessed that he must be recalling how his sister had been hurt that day at the restaurant. He didn’t need to say anything…Emma could almost read his thoughts, and she understood perfectly well how he must feel.

  ‘I’m sorry that we had to run into that journalist,’ she said. ‘He seemed to be all over us on the night of the explosion, and it was the same today. As soon as I saw him I was worried. He exaggerated what happened at the restaurant in his article back then, and I just wonder what kind of story he’s going to write about this incident. He can’t make too much of a simple boating accident, can he?’

  ‘He didn’t put anything in print that could be disputed, did he?’ Rhys’s eyes were dark, his features etched with brooding intensity. ‘He was right about the gas cylinder. It was in the wrong place and when it exploded it caused a lot of damage.’

  ‘But he made it sound as though my father was negligent…as though everything that happened was his fault…’

  ‘I don’t see that you can take him to task over that. He was pointing out the facts and, whether you like it or not, ultimately your father was responsible for what happened.’

  She sucked in an anguished breath. ‘But he said that he had stored the cylinder properly, well away from any risk of harm, and I believe him. He would never do anything to jeopardise people’s safety. He was never charged with negligence.’

  ‘Because nothing could be proved. Anyway, I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to be hurt, but that wasn’t how things turned out, was it?’

  Emma looked at him in despair. He would never believe that her father had not been to blame for that dreadful accident, and it grieved her that s
he had never been able to prove his innocence.

  ‘I wish that I could go back and change what happened,’ she said, swallowing hard, ‘but I can’t do that. Above all, I’m sorry that your sister was hurt.’

  ‘We’re all sorry,’ he said, his mouth making a bitter twist, ‘but there doesn’t seem to be much that we can do about it.’

  Emma’s heart sank. Things would never be resolved between them, would they? He blamed her father for his sister’s pain, and she could do nothing to put things right.

  Her father was a good man, a decent citizen who would never willingly harm others, and she knew in her heart that he had not been responsible for what had gone on that day. He always followed the rule book, and it was inconceivable that he had been negligent in any way.

  Why was it that she and her mother were the only ones who believed that? Would she ever be able to get Rhys and his family to see things from her point of view?

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE reporter hadn’t wasted any time at all, had he? Emma stared down at the newspaper, exasperation flooding through her. Up to now she had been enjoying the early morning sunshine, eating her breakfast toast at a table out in the paved courtyard at the back of her London flat, but now she put down the half-eaten slice.

  There it was, all laid out before her, the whole sorry tale of the boating accident, accompanied by photos of the ambulance at the scene, with the wrecked boats in the background. Along with that, there was another picture, one of the helicopter, showing Emma standing in front of it, looking straight into the camera lens.

  She sat back in her garden seat and scanned the article, her mouth tightening as she digested its contents. Why couldn’t he have left things alone? Not content with relating the details of the incident, the journalist had taken it on himself to dredge up a collection of facts about Emma, including a brief mention of the explosion that had taken place at her father’s restaurant some two years ago.

  A noise disturbed her and dragged her attention from the paper to the house that adjoined hers.

  ‘Don’t let Samson jump up at you like that, Kayla. He’s filthy.’ Emma’s neighbour came in off the footpath and pushed open the gate of the garden next door. ‘I just can’t believe how this dog manages to get himself in such a mess every time we go out. I swear he attracts dirt like a magnet.’ Lindsey took hold of the dog’s lead and marched the spaniel towards the house, stopping only to wave at Emma over the trellised fence that separated the two properties. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’ she called out.

  Emma nodded. ‘It’ll have to be a fairly quick one, though, because I have to go to work in a few minutes. Come round. It’s already percolating.’

  Four-year-old Kayla beat her mother to it, coming through the side gate to join Emma on the small paved terrace. ‘Samson went in the brook again,’ she said, shaking her head and making her blonde curls shimmer, ‘and Mummy’s very cross. She hasn’t got time to bath him, ’cos she has to go to work.’

  ‘Me, too. We’re all in a bit of a rush. I expect Samson will have to go in the bath later on.’ Emma smiled at the little girl. ‘Do you want some juice?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Kayla looked at the newspaper that was lying on the table and turned to Emma with an awed expression in her bright blue eyes. ‘Is that a picture of you?’

  Emma nodded. ‘That’s right, it is.’

  The child turned as her mother came to join them a minute or so later. ‘Look, Mummy…it’s Emma in the paper.’

  ‘I know…I saw it before we went out.’ Lindsey sat down and accepted the coffee that Emma pushed towards her, while Kayla went to examine the pots of flowering plants that decorated one corner of the yard. ‘Thanks,’ Lindsey said. ‘I’m well and truly ready for this.’

  She was an attractive young woman, with blonde hair that was cut into a shining bob and pinned back from her heart-shaped face with gold clips. Now, though, she was frowning as she looked down at the newspaper. ‘I didn’t realise that you had been caught up in an explosion,’ she said. ‘It must have been awful.’

  ‘It was. I was helping out in the restaurant at the time, during one of my weekends off. There was a lot of fallen masonry, but we managed to keep the fire back, with the help of people from the neighbouring businesses, at least until the firemen came and took over.’

  ‘The article mentioned a woman who was injured.’

  ‘Yes, she was a friend of mine…my boss’s sister, actually. Most people escaped with minor injuries, thankfully, but she was trapped under some rubble and the firemen had to pull her out. It turned out that she had a broken pelvis.’

  Lindsey winced. ‘That sounds nasty.’

  Emma nodded. ‘It makes me shudder even now to think about it. I can’t imagine how we would have felt if anyone had been killed.’

  ‘The person who wrote the article didn’t seem too sympathetic,’ Lindsey commented, sipping her coffee. ‘He put a bit of a slant on things, I thought. It was only a sentence or two, but it was all very negative. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes…I’d seen him around before any of this happened, when he was busy covering various local issues, and then, of course, he came to interview people at the restaurant. When it was all over, he tried to chat me up and ask me out on a date, but I turned him down…I tried to be diplomatic about it, but can you imagine how I was feeling? My friend had just been badly injured and my father’s business was in ruins.’

  Lindsey winced. ‘A case of really bad timing, I’d say.’

  ‘You’re right. I think that’s probably the reason why he’s a touch hostile towards me now.’ She sighed. ‘Still, it can’t be helped. There’s nothing much I can do about it. It’s just unfortunate that he’s decided to rake over everything again. It could start people gossiping, and dredge up old animosities.’

  They talked for a while longer, and then Emma finished off her toast and brushed crumbs from her fingers. ‘I shall have to go,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘I doubt they’ll keep the helicopter waiting for me if I’m not there.’

  ‘Me, too. I have to take Kayla to nursery school.’ Lindsey got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you later, Emma.’

  Emma watched them go, and then hurried to get the tube into work. She didn’t know whether she was glad to be seeing Rhys again or apprehensive. Where he was concerned, her emotions were in a state of constant turmoil, and it seemed to Emma that they had always been this way, ever since she had first come to know him.

  He didn’t appear to have any such qualms. When she walked into their headquarters, he looked at her in an odd fashion, studying her through narrowed eyes, almost as though he hadn’t expected her to turn up for work that morning.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. She sent a wary glance over the skirt and cotton top that she was wearing, and then checked the mass of her burnished curls with a hand to make sure that nothing was out of place. ‘I’m not late, am I? I went to check up on the patients we brought in yesterday.’

  ‘No, you’re bang on time.’ He frowned. ‘Checking up isn’t part of the job, you know.’

  She nodded. ‘I know, but I wanted to find out for myself how they were doing. It looks as though they’ve all come through just fine…the man with the head injury is awake and responsive now, but you knew that, didn’t you? The staff nurse told me that you’d asked to be kept informed.’ He was just as dedicated to their patients’ welfare as everyone else, if the truth were known. He just didn’t want to own up to it.

  He gave a brief smile. ‘You’ve got me there. I like to know whether or not we’ve had some success. It makes the job worthwhile when we manage to pull people through.’

  She went and changed into her uniform, and then came to join the team around the table. As she approached, Rhys moved to gather up his medical bag, pushing a newspaper to one side at the same time. Emma glanced at it, and there was a sinking feeling in her stomach when she realised that it was the same paper she and Lindsey had read.

  She grimaced. It
looked as though soon everyone would be reminded of what had happened two years ago and how her father was a figure of hate.

  There was no time to dwell on any of that, though, because Rhys’s grey gaze meshed with hers, and he said abruptly, ‘We’re on the move. We’ve just had a callout to an area near Swanley, south of the Thames. There’s been a riding accident. A woman has had a fall from a horse, and the paramedics say it’s a spinal injury.’

  ‘Will we take her to the nearest unit that specialises in spinal injuries?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they’re asking us to do.’

  They were already heading towards the helicopter as they were speaking, and Emma could only hope that the woman was not as badly hurt as everyone feared. If the spinal cord was badly damaged, it could mean that she would be sentenced to a life confined in a wheelchair.

  James took them up and away, flying over the city and heading southeast towards the Kent countryside. Soon they had left behind them the built-up area surrounding the Thames and the landscape beneath them turned to green fields and low-lying hills, dotted with scattered farmsteads and pockets of dense woodland. It was beautiful to look at, but Emma was tense, wondering what lay ahead.

  As soon as they had landed on a flattened area of ground bordering a meadow, the team jumped down from the helicopter and were met by a police officer.

  ‘She’s through here,’ he said, leading the way, and they hurried along a well-worn bridleway towards a small copse.

  The woman was lying on the ground, unmoving, and Emma could see that the attending paramedic had already placed a collar around her neck to secure her cervical spine, while his colleague was giving her oxygen. He came over to them.

  ‘I’m Simon,’ he said. ‘The patient is Melanie Thomas, and she’s twenty-six years old. She can’t feel her legs, but there’s movement and feeling in her upper limbs.’