Emergency Reunion Read online

  “What’s the matter, Hannah?”

  Kyle’s arms tightened around her as he continued, “Is it this?” Lifting her face up to his, he kissed her lips fleetingly.

  She nodded mutely, but he did it again, and as her mouth sprang to life beneath his, the years rolled away.

  But maybe she was reading too much into it as, taking her key from her hand, he turned it in the lock and pushed her gently inside.

  “Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, and with a last backward look over his shoulder, he went to find the elevator.

  I’ll see you in the morning, he’d said, and it was true…he would…and the day after…and the day after that, she thought. Whatever he said or did, Kyle was back in her life again.

  Dear Reader,

  Seeing experienced emergency doctors exit from a brightly colored helicopter that has landed at the scene of a serious accident somewhere in the busy city of London, England, is a dramatic yet thought-provoking experience.

  It was this that inspired me to write Emergency Reunion, a story of not only the rapport between the lifesavers who come out of the sky, but also how two of them, having gone their separate ways years before, find that a bond still exists between them.

  There are many emergencies in the story, but only one reunion, and for the head of the helicopter emergency services and his new trainee, it is a time for coming to terms with the past as they take their skills to the streets of London.

  Abigail Gordon

  Emergency Reunion

  Abigail Gordon

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘WILL you, please, stand back and give the doctors some space and the injured person some privacy?’ a police sergeant was brusquely asking of the crowd that had gathered at the scene of the accident.

  Hannah flashed him a grateful glance. The fast-response team had been called out again into a busy London street. This time the victim was an elderly lady who’d been scuttling across the road in the middle of heavy traffic and had ended up trapped beneath a bus.

  As the curious onlookers moved back reluctantly Hannah could feel it again, the strangeness of treating a patient in an outside situation instead of within the enclosed facilities of the accident and emergency units where she’d worked previously.

  She was with Pete Stubbs this morning. It had been his turn to take her with him on a call-out during these first weeks of a six-month period with the helicopter medical service.

  Her time spent with them would be the final part of her training before taking up a consultancy in accident and emergency at a hospital yet to be decided. They’d been called out the moment they’d reported for duty that morning, and once the helicopter had put in an appearance from the airfield where it was based at night, they’d left the helipad and operations room, amongst the rooftops of a London hospital, and had taken off into the morning sky.

  ‘You’re going to miss the arrival of the new chief,’ one of the other doctors had called as Hannah and Pete Stubbs had sprinted towards the Eurocopter, collecting ready-packed medical kits and street maps on the way.

  ‘Too bad,’ the lanky doctor had called over his shoulder. ‘We have a lady under a bus.’

  Jack Krasner and his copilot had dropped them as near as possible to the scene of the accident, and as they’d crossed another busy road and skirted a small park, Hannah had checked the time. It had taken them three minutes to get airborne and another five to make the journey.

  They’d brought a paramedic along, which was standard practice at the unit, and as the three of them came hurtling round the corner they saw that the fire brigade were in the process of jacking up the bus so that the victim could be pulled from underneath.

  ‘I’ve got to check the lady out before we move her,’ Pete said. ‘There’s no telling what state she might be in.’

  ‘I’m going to crawl underneath,’ he told the fire chief who was in charge of the lifting exercise. ‘If there are spinal injuries she’ll need a collar and almost certainly an injection to kill the pain before we start to move her.’

  Hannah was observing the situation anxiously. This wasn’t the first time she’d been out on an emergency and it was frustrating that for this first month she was only allowed to watch.

  Once that period was over she would be the same as the others, left to make her own decisions on occasions such as this. But today Pete was in charge. Even so, it was like being thrown in at the deep end.

  He had seen her expression and the tall, thin doctor, who’d been eyeing up the amount of space beneath the bus, said laconically, ‘Fortunate that I’m just skin and bone, eh, Dr Morgan?’

  He was less casual as he told her with brisk authority, ‘Ring the trauma unit at the nearest hospital and warn them to expect us. Tell them to hang on for details of the victim’s injuries.’

  Pete then turned to the paramedic, ‘If she’s alive when we get her out, be ready to give her an anti-sickness injection. Travelling in the chopper makes some patients feel sick and the last thing we want is vomit in her airways.’

  As he got down onto his stomach and began to slither under the bus, Hannah clenched her hands. What was he going to find there? Was it safe for him to be doing this?

  Suddenly, and without warning, the bus shuddered and took a downward plunge.

  They heard Pete cry out and then he became still and Hannah yelled, ‘He’s been hurt. Get him out!’

  As some of the firemen raised the bus again, two of their number crouched down beside it and, each grabbing one of Pete’s legs, they eased him slowly from underneath.

  He was semiconscious and bleeding from a deep cut to the head. ‘See to Dr Stubbs,’ she told the hovering paramedic. ‘I’ve got to get to the old lady. That movement of the bus could have added to her injuries.’

  Before he or anyone else could argue, she was following Pete’s example, with better results, she hoped, this time. Her padded surgical suit was coming into its own. It was protecting arms and legs from the mechanisms under the bus, and as she slid forward Hannah saw the still body of the accident victim only inches away.

  As she drew nearer she was thankful to see that the stillness was due to fear rather than unconsciousness.

  ‘My legs,’ she whispered. ‘I think they’re broken.’

  Hannah nodded from her cramped horizontal position. ‘What about your neck and your back? Can you move them?’

  ‘There’s no room to try,’ she croaked.

  ‘No, of course not,’ the doctor said gently. Raising herself a couple of inches, she reached for the medical kit that Pete had been dragging along behind him and told her, ‘I’m going to give you an injection to kill the pain and then I’m going to try to put a collar on you before I place my hands under your armpits and try to drag you out.’

  There was so much shouting out there in the street that she doubted if the woman could hear what she was saying, but she nodded weakly and that had to be enough.

  She was tiny, no bigger than a child, and Hannah thought that was what had saved her. A bigger person would have been killed as the bus had gone over them.

  Suddenly they were no longer alone. Someone else was crawling alongside and she knew it wasn’t going to be Pete. He’d been well and truly put out of action.

  An arm came out towards her from the side and she saw that it had a white shirtsleeve on it and an expensive gold watch.

  ‘Give her th
e injection and I’ll try to get the collar on,’ a voice of authority said, and as she began to wonder if she was hearing things Hannah did as she was told.

  ‘Now, you take one arm and I’ll take the other,’ the same deep masculine voice said, ‘and we slowly pull.’

  She could have kissed him just for being there if she’d been able to see his face, but it was at the other side of the injured woman and so she had to be content with the arm and the voice.

  As Hannah and the stranger eased themselves out feet first, gently pulling the old lady with them, a cheer went up and the paramedics on the scene rushed to the accident victim’s side.

  For a second Hannah lay there limply, face down against the greasy surface of the road.

  ‘So we meet again, Hannah Morgan,’ a voice said suddenly from somewhere up above. ‘When I saw the name on the paperwork that I’ve been going through over the weekend, I did wonder.’

  As she rolled over slowly and her eyes moved upwards, Hannah saw smart grey trousers covered in oil and grime, a white shirt that was in no better condition, with tie askew, and above them a face that she hadn’t seen in many long years.

  ‘Kyle!’ she choked as the world tilted on its axle. ‘Where have you come from? And what paperwork? You can’t be…You’re not…?’ With a strangulated gasp, she finished, ‘The new chief!’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ he said abruptly, as if meeting on a London street, under a jacked-up bus, after years of separation, was nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘And in case you’ve forgotten, we have two patients to attend to,’ he went on in the same clipped tones. ‘So if you’d like to bring yourself upright…’

  Hannah’s cheeks flamed as she scrambled to her feet. He hasn’t changed, she thought angrily. There was no tribute forthcoming along the lines of, ‘Well done, Hannah!’ Or a concerned enquiry such as, ‘Are you all right yourself after that ordeal?’

  Just a reminder that she had a function to fulfil. Although, strictly speaking, she hadn’t. Her presence there should have been in an observing capacity, but Pete’s accident had changed all that.

  He’d regained consciousness and at that moment was being put in an ambulance with a temporary dressing on the head wound.

  Their new boss was examining the old lady and so she had time for a quick word with the injured doctor.

  ‘That was bad luck, Pete,’ she said in concern. ‘You could have been killed.’

  He gave a wan smile. ‘You, too, Hannah. You did a good job there. And what about the new guy turning up? That’s one for the book! Getting his hands dirty before he’s even got the crown on his head. I’d just come round and I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard him taking over. It won’t have done his designer suit any good.’

  After the ambulance had pulled away, Hannah hurried to where the man they’d been discussing was phoning the trauma unit at Charing Cross with details of what to expect when the accident victim arrived.

  Like herself, he was amazed at how the old woman had escaped serious injury. Admittedly there were two leg fractures and multiple cuts and bruises, but it could have been very much worse.

  When they’d lifted her into the helicopter and Jack Krasner was ready for take-off, Kyle said stiffly, ‘According to your notes you’re still training, but as this ended up being your emergency, you can go to the hospital with her if you wish. Or if you don’t feel up to it, I’ll go and you can take my car.’

  ‘I’ll follow it through,’ she told him firmly.

  No way was he going to guess the state she was in, and it wasn’t just because she’d had to treat a casualty beneath a jacked-up bus.

  A stranger had come to her aid. But when they’d surfaced together she’d found that he wasn’t a stranger after all. He was the man who had once been very much in love with her, but had turned his back on their future together because he hadn’t trusted her.

  She was reeling with shock at meeting him again after years of no contact, and the news that he was going to be her boss all the time she was with the helicopter emergency services was unbelievable.

  But believe it she must. He was there in the flesh. A figure down on the ground, getting smaller and smaller as they flew to keep another rooftop rendevous where some of the best of NHS care would be waiting.

  The helicopter had been hovering over the rooftops in the light summer night like a plump-breasted, clattering bird as Hannah had come out of the theatre the night before the incident involving the bus. But unlike a bird its plumage was of bright metal, its wings whirring propellers.

  She’d felt her nerve endings tighten. The fast-response team had been called out again into the busy London streets, and she’d wondered who it had been this time who’d needed them so desperately that the saving of a life might depend on the speed with which they touched down.

  A month ago she would have witnessed the helicopter’s progress through the night sky and thought little of it, but since then she’d become one of them…part of the unit that was always at the ready, waiting in the operations room beside the helipad on the roof of a nearby hospital.

  They were doctors who took to the sky within minutes of call-out. To the critically injured or very sick the sight of their brightly coloured surgical suits was a sign that help was indeed at hand.

  She’d done a year in general practice, then had worked as a registrar in Accident and Emergency at a hospital in northern England for some years and now, had decided to spend six months working with the helicopter medics, and one couldn’t get any closer to the nitty-gritty of Accident and Emergency than that.

  It was the longest that doctors in training stayed with them because of the excessive trauma the job brought with it, and most of them, on completing the allowed time, went on to specialise as accident and emergency consultants in various hospitals around the country.

  Hannah had been there just two weeks and it was her day off, hence the visit to the theatre. But it was long enough for her to feel that she belonged as the helicopter whirred on its way above the chimneypots on a golden evening.

  She felt Richard’s eyes on her, and even before she’d turned to face him she was bracing herself against the chill that anything connected with her new job brought forth.

  He was always irritated with her these days. She hadn’t been sure that she would be able to go to the play until the last minute because of the duty rotas, and that had annoyed him.

  When he’d seen her in the dazzling surgical suit which had taken the place of her dignified doctor’s white coat he’d been even more disparaging.

  ‘You don’t expect me to jump out of the chopper in the middle of the carnage of an accident in a London street in a white coat, do you?’ she’d said protestingly when he’d commented on the size and brightness of the outfit. ‘We need to be seen when we’re out there amongst the traffic, or we could end up as casualties ourselves.’

  She’d had to admit that it wasn’t the most charismatic clothing she’d ever worn, but its roomy proportions allowed movement in restricted situations and that was what it was all about.

  She was small and slender, with silver blonde hair cut in a short bob and wide blue eyes that were the clear pools of an uncomplicated mind. Hannah Morgan was twenty-nine years old and unattached, and there was no likelihood of her tetchy theatre companion filling the breach.

  They’d known each other when she’d worked in Manchester, and had travelled on the same train each morning. Richard Jarvis had been employed in a stockbroker’s office and Hannah had been working in Accident and Emergency at a nearby hospital.

  He’d been likeable enough then. But moving to a better job in London and up the social scale had made him not quite so pleasant and, though he didn’t know it, this was to be their last meeting.

  The young doctor had looked him up because she hadn’t known anyone else in London and she was lonely. But Hannah had decided that being alone was preferable to being alternately criticised and patronised by the likes of Richard.


  She didn’t know what ailed him and didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t as if she was looking for a relationship and maybe that was what was getting to him.

  On that score he wouldn’t be the first. She was attractive to the opposite sex and was always ready to socialise, but that was all. Hannah had only ever been really in love once, and to say that it had been a disaster would have been the understatement of all time. So much so that she’d never been ready to test the water since.

  ‘So, when are we going to get together again?’ Richard said as they waited for a taxi.

  ‘We’re not,’ she told him calmly, ‘and if you want to know why, Richard, just take a good look at yourself. You have no claim on me and I’m not prepared to continue listening to your critical comments about everything that concerns me.

  ‘If my job doesn’t have the appeal of the wards and the white coat, too bad. You might be glad to see someone from my team one day. None of us knows what lies around the next corner.’

  And on that parting shot she got into the taxi that had just pulled up and left him standing on the pavement.

  ‘Good to have you with us, Hannah,’ a burly, middle-aged man had said when she’d presented herself at the unit on her first day with the team. ‘We’ve got a guy on leave at the moment so your presence is very welcome. And we’re expecting a new chief.

  ‘The A and E consultant you saw when you came for interview has had to take early retirement due to family problems and we have a new guy starting in a couple of weeks’ time.’

  He’d gone on to say, ‘I’m Graham Smith, consultant anaesthetist, known as Smitty to the guys here at the operations centre.’ He’d pointed to a lanky six-footer engrossed in the morning paper. ‘This is Dr Pete Stubbs.’

  ‘Hi, there,’ the man in question said with a grin.

  As she smiled back at him she said, ‘I can’t see me being much use until I know the ropes. For one thing I’ve never been in a helicopter.’

  They both nodded understandingly and the other man told her, ‘You’ll just be observing for the first month so don’t fret about not knowing the routine. After a couple of trips in the helicopter you’ll be as easy with it as we are. It’s what’s waiting for you when you disembark that takes getting used to. We doctors are inclined to take the ambulance services for granted, but in this job we’re right in there with them…on the ground.