Noah and Bess attended to the patient. To stabilise him, they administered a blood transfusion on scene.
With the patient on the scoop, Norm, the strapping, blond, Scandinavian-looking firefighter, was on hand to help. The muscles to lift the patient, who was on the heavy side, were welcome as he and Noah took charge of the scoop and Bess picked up the rest of the equipment.
As they paced towards the helicopter, Norm mentioned Gio to Bess. ‘The whole crew is rooting for him.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘It’s killing him that it might not happen.’
Bess’s wet curls stuck to the side of her face. With this crappy weather, it was impossible to keep a hood up, to stay dry. Hazard of the job but the sleet was particularly brutal tonight. ‘What do you mean, “it might not happen”?’
‘Spoke to him earlier. He had a visit with the doc,’ Norm called above the noise of the wind and everything else around them. ‘He’s not sure whether he’ll ever get back on the job.’
That couldn’t be right. He was recovering well, getting his strength back. ‘Surely it’s a matter of time.’
‘Time… patience… luck. And in this job, it’s physically demanding even on a slow day. You know how it is.’
He was right. There was recovery for a person with a regular job and then there was recovery for a person who climbed ladders, jumped on and off engines, hauled around heavy equipment.
Once at the helicopter, Norm left them to it and Bess and Noah transferred the patient to the litter inside.
The sleet carried on once Bess was in position as technical crew member next to Maya. It grew heavier as they reached the hospital’s helipad, and the entire crew gave a sigh of relief when they got back to base.
Marianne hadn’t mentioned anything about Gio seeing the doctor and being given bad news, which had Bess wondering whether Gio hadn’t told her because he didn’t want anything to rock her emotionally. He had to be hurting, though. It would be torture to a man like Gio to not be able to do the job he loved, be who he was before, full of strength and able to do anything when it came to saving a life.
And as Bess headed inside the hangar and out of the fat flakes of snow that had begun to come down in place of the sleet, much to Noah and Maya’s excitement, Bess wasn’t just preoccupied with her own issues; Gio’s problems were on her mind too.
Which meant she cared. More than she’d ever thought she would.
24
Gio didn’t feel any joy today. Not even when he looked out of the window at the blanket of snow covering the ground and weighing down the branches of the trees, muffling everything around. The world seemed so quiet – his head was anything but. He couldn’t get his thoughts in a good place at all. He was a grumpy sod.
The fact that he couldn’t even enjoy the snow felt like yet another setback to him. And it didn’t help that local kids were whizzing by outside on foot, dragging sledges behind them. Schools must be closed; it would’ve been declared a snow day today.
He knew where they were going. There was a steep slope not far from here in a public meadow; he’d been walking through it last year as the rain came down and he talked to his brother on the phone. His brother had had snow where he lived and Gio had looked at the slope and thought how much of a thrill it would be to go down it if they had snow in Whistlestop River.
He took his plate into the kitchen and dropped it into thewater in the sink, already brown from the baking tray he’d shoved a meat pie on. It had been left over from the stocks his mum had bought when she was staying here. It hadn’t tasted great – didn’t help that he’d burnt it – but he was in the sort of mood where thinking about anything other than getting food from freezer to oven to plate was too much.
As he let the plate sink into the murky depths of the washing-up water, he thought back to his doctor’s appointment the other day, the way he’d gone in with hope and an air of positivity and left feeling crap.
It was his fault. He’d pushed for straight talk, for blunt answers and facts, and he’d got them.
‘Gio, come in, sorry to keep you,’ the doc had apologised after keeping him waiting almost fifty minutes. ‘How are you?’
Gio recapped the physio regime he’d been following, they talked about painkiller use, the doc examined his knee and took him through exercises as if to prove his claims.
Gio pulled his jeans back on, sure his quad muscle on the bad side was half the size of the other. He’d have to work on that.
‘When can I go back to work then, doc?’ He had a smile on his face until he saw the doctor’s hesitation. He knew that expression – it was the one they used when they weren’t sure how to answer a question, the look which said they were buying time while the words churned over inside their head and would hopefully come out the right way.
‘You know I can’t give cast-iron guarantees on outcomes.’
They couldn’t, but surely by now, they knew more than they had at the start.
‘Ballpark,’ he pushed. ‘One month, three, six—’ The doc held up his hand and Gio filled in the blank for himself. ‘You don’t know.’
‘I’m not trying to make you feel worse or take away any hopebut if I tell you six months and you’re not back at work, you’ll be gunning for me. And your knee is a bit swollen again.’
