The Consultant's Special Rescue

Almost as soon as the two of them had finished speaking, a paramedic came and strapped an oxygen mask to her face. ‘Breathe in as deeply as you can,’ he said. ‘The doctor will come and take a look at you.’

Someone—the doctor, she guessed—came over to her. She looked around for the man who had brought her here, but he had disappeared and she felt an odd, momentary sense of isolation sweep over her, as though she had been deserted. It was strange that she should feel such emptiness after the way she had resented his presence.

‘I’ll just listen to your chest,’ the doctor said, taking out a stethoscope. He placed the end of the stethoscope on her back, over what she was wearing, and listened for a moment. ‘I think we’ll give you salbutamol to help with the bronchospasm,’ he murmured. ‘It will dilate the airways and help you to breathe more easily.’

Amber stared down at her thin nightshirt. Apart from a pair of briefs, it was all she was wearing. The shirt was made of brushed white cotton, with a delicate scattering of printed flowers across the scooped neckline and the hem. She didn’t recognise it as belonging to her, but then through the fog that clouded her brain she remembered that someone had offered it to her last night. It didn’t do much to cover her, and a large expanse of her legs was showing, much more than she would have liked.

The man who had brought her here was coming back to her now. His gaze moved over her and she was suddenly conscious of her state of undress and tried to pull the nightshirt a little further down over her thighs. Her hands were shaking, and the helplessness of her situation wafted over her like a draught of cold air.

She stared up at him in confusion. Her nerves must be more frayed than she’d realised. She wasn’t usually this feeble.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Do you need anything?’ His expression was restrained, serious even.

She said, ‘No, I’m fine.’ She thought about that, and then added, ‘Actually, I have to go now. I have to go and check on my mother. I need to know that she’s all right, and I have to go and find my clothes.’

‘Is your mother in the building?’ He looked concerned, all at once, his expression urgent.

She rubbed her forehead and tried to clear her thoughts. ‘No. No, I…’ She tried to make sense of everything. ‘She hasn’t been well lately. She’s staying with my aunt.’ She started to get up out of the wheelchair. ‘I need to go and find my clothes and my bag.’

‘I think they can wait.’ He seemed to relax. ‘If your mother’s with your aunt, then there’s no need to rush away, is there? It’s very late, the early hours of the morning, and your mother is probably asleep. Your aunt will let you know if anything is wrong, won’t she?’

Amber nodded, feeling a little foolish. Of course he was right. ‘I’m sorry, I think I’m a little confused…disorientated.’

She began to shiver, and he said, ‘That’s only to be expected. It’s probably a result of all the smoke you’ve inhaled.’ He bent towards her. ‘Let me put this around you. You must be in shock, and it will help you to feel better.’ He wrapped a blanket around her, and gradually warmth seeped into her. ‘Do you remember anything that happened?’

‘Not really. I think I was asleep,’ she said, slipping the oxygen mask off her face, ‘and then you came and brought me here. I don’t know what’s going on. Is there a fire?’ Her voice rasped at the back of her throat.

He nodded. ‘It started in the kitchen of the building. Someone had left a pan of something on the hob and forgot to switch the heat off.’ Reaching out to her, he put the mask back in place. ‘Just try to keep breathing steadily.’

She held it away a little, so that she could speak. ‘I wasn’t in the kitchen. There was a party…someone’s birthday. I don’t remember an awful lot about it.’

‘Perhaps you had too much to drink.’ His expression was faintly cynical, and something in her instantly rebelled against being judged that way.

‘You’re assuming that,’ she said stiffly. Who was he to criticise her? He didn’t know anything about her.

‘It was very difficult to wake you. You didn’t seem to recognise the urgency of the situation.’

‘Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be because of alcohol.’ It must have been the smoke that had done it, that had clouded her brain. She wasn’t a drinker. She knew that much. Probably she’d had two or three glasses of wine at most.

Snatches of memory were coming back to her now, and she recalled that she hadn’t known many of the people at the party. She had only been there because she was new—and for some reason it was important that she get to know them. She wondered why that should be.

The answer came to her in a flash of inspiration— a new job, that was it. She was about to start a new post and she was going to be working with them in A and E.

It began to worry her that some of her new colleagues-to-be might have suffered in the fire. ‘Was anybody hurt?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps you should go and see to them. I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

His mouth made a straight line. ‘One of the men, a doctor, has burns to his hands. Someone’s jacket caught fire and he tried to put out the flames.’

‘Oh, dear…that’s terrible.’ She looked up at him, anguish in her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry.’ A coughing spasm overtook her, and as soon as it was over she asked, ‘Will he be all right?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’ He adjusted her mask once more, and she took a few moments to breathe in deeply. ‘He’s over there, being attended to by the doctor.’

Amber glanced to where he pointed, and saw the doctor applying something to the man’s hands. She guessed that it was silver sulphadiazine cream and that as an added precaution the doctor would protect the patient’s hands afterwards with polythene bags sealed at the wrists.

‘Please, go and check on him, and the others. You don’t need to stay with me. I’m fine.’

She took a moment to suck a desperate breath of air into her lungs. Across the paved courtyard, a sound alerted her, and she saw someone she recognized—a nurse who had introduced herself last night as Chloe. Chloe was standing with her little girl, a child of about four years old.

‘The little girl isn’t well,’ Amber said now. ‘I think she needs help.’ Even through the noise of all the activity all around, she could hear the sound of the child’s grating cough. She started to get up out of the wheelchair to go to her, but the man laid a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

‘Stay there. I’ll go and see if she needs any help.’

He strode away, and Amber subsided back into her chair, breathing fast, wearily battling against the rawness of her chest. She guessed that he would go and alert the doctor or one of the paramedics if there was a problem. As for herself, she doubted she would be much help in the circumstances. Her lungs had been filled with smoke and she was suffering from the after-effects, battling to stay on top of things.

She watched him from a distance, and couldn’t help noticing how very gentle he was with the child and her mother. He knelt down beside the little girl and put a hand on her back as though he would comfort her. A moment later, he was signalling for the paramedic.

Amber hoped that the little girl would be all right. She remembered seeing her last night, before her mother had put her to bed. She was an angelic-looking child, with hair that curled exuberantly and matched her mother’s golden locks. She had Chloe’s blue eyes, too.

The man gave Chloe a hug, and Amber wondered how well they knew each other. That wasn’t the sort of hug that he would have given a total stranger. It was a familiar, easygoing hug that said he cared.

He waited while the paramedic attended to the little girl, and then turned and spoke to someone nearby. He said something to Chloe, and knelt down once more to talk to her small daughter.

Amber pulled off the oxygen mask. It was high time she took charge of herself. She couldn’t sit out here all night. The doctor and the paramedics seemed to have everything under control here, but her own situation was fraught with difficulty. Her purse was in the building, along with her shoes and all her immediate possessions. How was she going to get herself home?

Perhaps she could call a taxi, if she could persuade someone to lend her the coins for the call, or maybe her aunt would accept reversed charges and make the call for her. Amber winced. It wouldn’t be fair to wake her in the early hours of the morning, though, would it?

She stood up, and felt the cold paving slabs beneath her feet. Maybe one of the paramedics had a mobile phone on him and would let her make the call. She started to walk towards the ambulance, her gait a little unsteady but purposeful all the same.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Her rescuer stood in front of her, blocking her path.

‘I’m just going to make a phone call,’ she said, gazing up at him in exasperation. Why did he always have to turn up at the wrong moment? She straightened up, drawing herself to her full height, which meant that the top of her head was just about level with his shoulders. What was he, six feet two?

She looked him in the eyes. She was doing her best to make a dignified exit, but as she tried to sidestep him, the blanket began to slip down from her shoulders, exposing a line of smooth, bare flesh, hampering her efforts and forcing her to make a strategic grab for the edges.

‘Why do you need to make a phone call?’ he asked.

Pulling the blanket around herself once more, she tried to answer and found that she was struggling to get the words out. ‘Why do you think?’ she managed, between breaths. ‘I need to go home.’

‘Not just yet,’ he said, leading her back to the wheelchair. ‘You really should be going to the hospital. I would be grateful if you would just stay put for a little while longer. You’re like a jack-in-the-box, and it’s very wearing, trying to keep pace with you. First you resist my attempts to get you to move at all, and now it seems that you can’t stay still for more than five minutes at a time. Please, do me a favour and sit down and try to relax.’

‘I’m not going to hospital,’ she mumbled.

Taking no notice of her mutiny, he manoeuvred her into the chair and leaned over her. Then he placed the oxygen mask over her face once more and she sent him a frustrated stare. She didn’t see that she had much choice in the matter but to stay in the chair. She couldn’t move if she wanted to. He was blocking her exit with every inch of his tautly muscled body.

She looked up at him, her eyes troubled. ‘I should thank you for getting me out of the building,’ she muttered, pushing the mask to one side. ‘I didn’t realise that you were trying to rescue me.’

‘I guessed as much.’ He smiled at her, a crooked half-smile that lit up his face and made her catch her breath all over again. She began to feel light-headed, weak in every limb, and she pulled in oxygen as though it was a lifesaver. He was incredibly good-looking, and those eyes—they meshed with hers and seemed to see right into her soul.

She looked away. Just thinking along those lines made her feel vulnerable. She said huskily, ‘What were you doing there?’ He wasn’t wearing the uniform of a paramedic or a fireman, and she didn’t recognise him from the party. In fact, he stood out from everyone here. He was dressed in an immaculately styled grey suit, and his shirt was pristine—or it would have been before he had battled the smoke.