‘Hey, Gio,’ she called out.
‘How was the date?’ He didn’t bat an eyelid that they weren’t alone.
‘Mind on the job,’ she scolded, half-joking. ‘I’ll tell you about it later,’ she assured him. She’d kept him abreast of her dating situation plenty of times over the years. He knew all about boyfriends who hadn’t lasted, all about the more serious relationship she’d had when she first graduated, only to find out the man was married. That one had stopped her dating for a while.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he declared.
Gio and Bess had been friends since they lived in a house share in Lancashire where she was at university studying paramedic science and he’d moved out of his family home. They’d known one another more than fifteen years. Gio was a good guy, fun, nice to have around since he relocated here from up north, but he wasn’t the sort of man you dated. At least not the sort of manshedated.
When they shared a house, there had been the odd time when Bess had thought Gio might become more than a friend. If she was honest with herself, she’d been a little infatuated with him at the start, not that she’d ever admit it to him. Four years older than her, he’d always seemed unreachable, wild, fun. He was good-looking, strong, the whole package in some ways. Buthis playful side came out whenever he was in a relationship and she’d seen enough girls broken-hearted by him not calling them back or by him not wanting to commit that she knew it was best to keep their relationship what it was: a friendship. She couldn’t deny that sometimes, she felt a spark with Gio but when Bess fell in love, when she found the right person, she wanted what her parents had once had as soulmates, both committed to each other.
She thought of the picture of her mum and dad on their wedding day, the photograph that stood on her mother’s mantelpiece cementing the beginning of their family. And if you looked really closely, you could see a small baby bump beneath Fiona’s dress that the bouquet she was holding didn’t quite disguise. Bess had always loved the fact that in a way, she’d been a part of their wedding too.
Gio was soon focused on the job and as Noah led the way towards the first vehicle, one of the two involved in the road traffic collision, Bess shared what she knew already. Gio would know some of it too but sometimes due to updates en route, one first responder knew more than another and those little bits of extra information could make all the difference.
‘The female caller told the call handler that her car had skidded into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Maybe the mud caused the skid.’ Bess held her footing in her clumpy boots as they passed over an enormous patch of mud at the edge of the tarmac, something that wasn’t uncommon in this area given the surrounding fields. This part of the county saw regular passage of farm vehicles and the deposits they left behind created a hazard, especially given the default speed limit for the single-carriageway road. You only had to hit a build-up of mud too fast, or when you were applying the brakes, for it to cause trouble.
A road ambulance was already in situ the other side of thesecond vehicle – usually it was the air ambulance who got to a job first. Given the nature of the remote location and the winding roads, they must have been in the area when they got the call to have arrived already. The road paramedics could deal with a lot on scene but often required the assistance of a critical care paramedic to administer stronger medications and sometimes to perform surgical procedures in the field. The air ambulance was also often the best option to transfer the patient to a medical setting, especially if they were time critical.
Gio and his crew assessed the scene while Noah and Bess attended to the patient in the closest vehicle.
Once Noah and Bess had evaluated the patient’s condition, Bess fitted a c-collar to the woman’s neck to prevent any potentially harmful movements should she have injuries they hadn’t picked up on. She appeared to have escaped without many at all.
‘I’ll go see if I can help with the occupant of the second vehicle,’ said Bess just as Gio ran back past them.
‘Road paramedics need you,’ he bellowed as he headed for the fire engine.
‘You got this?’ Bess asked Noah. The woman wasn’t far off being helped out of the car now her vitals had been checked and they were sure she didn’t have any injuries that would prevent her from being moved.
‘Yep, you go.’ Noah’s voice continued to comfort the young woman, who was obviously still in shock. Bess had told her a few times how lucky she was but she hadn’t wanted to listen. Her only concern was that she’d caused this; she wanted to know how the other driver was.
As soon as Bess started off for the second vehicle, a red saloon, she could see it had come off worse than the other. The driver’s door looked as if it was caved in to a fraction of its size. It must have been hit at speed to do that kind of damage.
Gio caught up to her again, this time armed with a tool called the jaws of life, which enabled the extrication of a person from their vehicle. He carried the piece of machinery on his shoulder as though it was nothing heavier than a handbag rather than a powerful tool designed to cut and spread metal.
They were almost at the vehicle when Bess did a double take at the woman sitting at the side of the road wrapped in a blanket.
Usually calm in a crisis, Bess experienced a different feeling when she called across, ‘Mum?’
Fiona’s eyes filled with tears as she spotted her daughter. ‘Please, help Malcolm.’
Malcolm? Who was Malcolm?
‘Mum, are you all right?’ Bess hovered there momentarily while Gio strode on ahead, his mind able to remain on the job, unlike hers, which had an unexpected distraction.
‘Please, go, Bess. Help him. I can’t lose him too.’
Bess’s mind went back to the day they’d each held each other tightly, the day they’d lost her dad. But her brain squashed away her emotions. She had no time to address the blatant fact that her mother had just announced that she had another man in her life.
And knowing that felt to Bess like losing another part of her dad, another piece of their family past that she was never going to get back.
2
Bess reached the car and the road paramedic updated her on what they knew so far. The man, who Bess had to treat like any other patient, even though she now knew that he and her mum were involved in some way, was talking a bit. That was always a good sign. But he was trapped inside the vehicle and they couldn’t fully attend to him until he was freed.
‘Malcolm…’ Climbing into the vehicle through the passenger side on her knees, Bess’s voice rose above the noise on scene, the first responders, her mother still crying out to help this man. ‘Malcolm, my name is Bess, I’m with the air ambulance. Do you remember what happened?’
‘A car…’ he croaked. ‘Hit us. Knocked us sideways.’
