After the call, Noah grabbed a beer. He didn’t dare go in to check on Eva but he listened at her bedroom door, closed his eyes and picked up on the gentle snuffly sounds of her breathing, indicating she was asleep.
Outside, he leaned on the porch railing, his bottle of beer in one hand. The gentle swish and swirl of the river’s currentbeyond the back grass was a reminder, not that he needed one, of how much his life had changed. He missed his life in London but at the same time, he could see why Cassie had loved it here, why she wanted to settle here eventually. Whistlestop River had a peace he’d never find in the city, a peace he appreciated after having Eva sap him of every ounce of energy.
Finishing his beer, he slung the empty bottle into the recycling bin down below and locked the back door behind him. He stood at Eva’s door and opened the gap slightly more until a strip of light fell across her cot. She was sleeping on her back, both arms thrown over her head. She was like a tiny angel, a miniature version of Cassie.
‘You’ll be better off without me, you know,’ he admitted regretfully. ‘I’m not cut out for this.’
He tiptoed away quietly, tears pricking his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Cassie, I’m sorry I’m not good enough.’
15
Maya was first out of the hangar, into the rain, across to the helicopter. It might well be July and summer, but low cloud was forecast and there was a chance they’d have to turn back if visibility was terrible. But the call had been made to at least try to attend the job via aircraft because their patient was in the depths of the countryside and had suffered a cardiac arrest. Speedy transport by air ambulance could mean the difference between life and death.
‘We don’t have much to go on,’ said Noah from the rear of the helicopter once they were airborne. ‘The caller only gave basic details when they called the emergency in. We know it’s a male, in his twenties. CPR was performed and he hadn’t re-arrested.’
The caller had given the location and hung up. More details would’ve been helpful but people didn’t always think clearly in an emergency and if the caller had already performed CPR and needed to again, then they weren’t going to hang around on the phone once they’d called for help.
The weather was atrocious. Maya always checked at start of shift for notifications of airspace hazards and throughout her working day, but along with flocks of birds and low-flyingdrones, bad weather came with no such warnings. The danger of flying too close to the cloud base was that clouds brought turbulence, which could cause structural damage to poor Hilda, not to mention making it a flight the crew would rather forget.
‘Are we going to make it to our location?’ Bess asked over her microphone.
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Maya. A road ambulance would be on its way so if the air ambulance didn’t get to the patient, they would instead, although with road closures near the location, it might take them a while to get through. That was exactly why Maya had said they should try to get to the job in Hilda. Sometimes they took the rapid response vehicle if flying conditions weren’t on their side, but that option would’ve seen the crew encounter those same road closures.
The cloud level was manageable en route but visibility was nowhere near what Maya would like. Still, she’d trained for this, she’d flown in worse conditions. And the adrenaline pumping through her veins kept her going as well as her want to get to the patient and keep her entire crew safe. Luckily for her, both Bess and Noah had their heads screwed on, neither of them questioned her ability, neither of them panicked as wisps of cloud threatened to close in around them.
They were almost there.
Noah’s voice came over the microphone next. ‘I can see a hi-vis jacket on the ground, forty-five degrees west of our position.’
‘I see it,’ Maya confirmed. But she couldn’t see anyone else with them and they weren’t waving.
‘I can’t see anyone on the ground,’ said Bess. ‘Perhaps the patient is out of sight.’
‘Thank goodness for hi-vis,’ said Maya, ‘or we’d have had no hope spotting anything down there.’
Noah suggested landing in the field adjacent to the person in hi-vis.
‘Hang on,’ Bess called over her microphone, ‘there’s an empty car park on our right with easy access, no hedges to contend with.’
Maya made the decision. ‘I’ll head for that.’
Maya would need all the help she could get from Bess and Noah landing today with the grey skies and the rain. There was also the chance that an empty space could quickly become occupied, thus endangering whoever was on the ground and whoever was in her helicopter.
‘Clear to our left,’ came Noah’s voice as she approached the landing site.
The helicopter could withstand a beating from the weather but it didn’t mean that you wouldn’t feel those effects inside, with the wind moving them more than it ordinarily would as Maya finally landed on the tarmac.
With the rain lashing at every single piece of the helicopter, Bess and Noah grabbed the kit they needed. Maya wished them luck and stayed with the aircraft. They’d made it here in under eight minutes, she only hoped they were in time to save the patient.
Maya watched Bess and Noah battle the weather with their heavy backpacks. They left the car park and turned in the direction of the field.
Maya thought about Noah as she waited with Hilda. She now knew the circumstances surrounding his guardianship of Eva and it put him even higher in her estimation knowing what he’d given up, how he’d changed his life to look after his niece. She knew too that she thought about him a little too often, which might not be the best idea given they worked together. But she couldn’t help it. Every time she looked into those eyes or heard the cadence of his voice, she knew it wasn’t only platonic, at least from her side. And the thought both excited and terrified her at the same time.
She thought about the little girl descending into Noah’s life. Parenthood was hard, let alone when it was sprung on you all of a sudden combined with the pain of loss. But she bet Noah was a good father, or father figure, or whatever he was to her at the moment. He was strong, capable and clearly kind to have taken on the responsibility. She’d heard the way he talked to patients in the back of the air ambulance too, seen the way he was with them when they were transferred from the scoop to the litter in the helicopter. Patients felt safe with him and Maya bet his little girl would feel the same way, even if she couldn’t tell him.
When the HEMS desk radioed through an update, Maya’s heart sank. Bess and Noah were going to be furious, much like she was, and sure enough when they reappeared their faces said it all.
They paced their way across the concrete with their heavy bags with no sign of the patient of course because it had all been a hoax.
