Her Emergency Knight. Alison Roberts

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ but at least it provided a distraction from the feel of Guy Knight’s hands as they held her legs, then her hips, as she wriggled past a mangled door and shredded metal to find herself standing on solid ground.

      Well, almost standing. Her legs felt like jelly and the light was bright enough to make her eyes water furiously so Jennifer kept them tightly closed. She clutched the red bag to her chest and didn’t protest as she felt herself being eased into a sitting position.

      ‘Were you knocked out?’ Strong fingers were palpating her head and neck.

      ‘I must have been, I guess. I remember waking up.’

      ‘Can you remember what day it is?’

      ‘Sunday. And it must be around 5:00 p.m.’ Jennifer was quite confident that her level of consciousness was not impaired despite her mild headache. ‘We got on the plane at four o’clock and that pilot reckoned it would take over an hour to get anywhere near Fox Glacier.’

      ‘It’s just after 5:00 p.m. now. Are you having any trouble breathing?’

      ‘Not anymore.’

      ‘Can you open your eyes?’

      Jennifer complied, blinking and squinting as she tried to adjust to the glare of sunlight. The GP’s face was very close to her own. Dark eyes fringed with long, black lashes were assessing her from beneath a flop of equally dark hair. A minor laceration on his temple had stopped bleeding but had left a smear of blood now mixed with grime over rather angular features. A strong face, Jennifer thought distractedly. And not a particularly friendly one.

      ‘Does anything hurt?’

      Jennifer felt as though she’d been run over by a train. Things ached and stung in all sorts of places but no single pain stood out as being unbearable. Even the arm she knew she had broken was just a dull throb now that she’d stopped putting stress on it. The man in front of her looked in worse shape. A nasty abrasion covered the side of one arm and bloodstains covered large areas of his white shirt and faded denim jeans.

      ‘I’m OK.’ Jennifer was still staring at Guy Knight’s legs. ‘Whose blood is that?’

      ‘Probably Bill’s.’ Guy didn’t bother to look down. He gave a brief nod instead. ‘You look OK.’ A hand reached out. ‘I’ll take that bag, then. Digger needs some help.’

      Jennifer released the bag she’d forgotten she was clutching. ‘Who’s Digger?’

      ‘The pilot.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘This wasn’t his fault.’ The swift reaction to any implied criticism in Jennifer’s tone was sharp. ‘If Digger hadn’t coped with that engine failure as well as he did, we’d all be dead.’ Turning abruptly, Dr Knight walked away.

      Jennifer pushed herself to her feet, pleased to find her legs working far more normally. She was standing in the space between a wing that had broken completely free and the bulk of the Cessna. The propeller blades of the single engine were crumpled almost beyond recognition and the front window and part of the plane’s roof had been torn away.

      Lettering on the other end of the fuselage was distorted. B…P…L. No. An echo of Jennifer’s dream sounded in her head. That last letter was a T.

      ‘Bravo Papa Tango…Mayday…Mayday…’

      Jennifer’s gaze slid involuntarily to her fellow passengers now lying beside the wreckage. She should check that they were, indeed, beyond any help a doctor could provide, but she didn’t move. Nobody could survive the kind of head injury Bill had clearly sustained and she had been in close enough contact with Shirley for long enough to know that she, also, was dead. Taking the time to confirm what she already knew was pointless. Turning her back on the fatalities, Jennifer picked her way over rocks and tussocks, following her new companion to where the sharply bent, sheared-off wing had created a kind of wall. The man with tufty grey hair lay behind the wing tip. Guy was standing beside him.

      ‘Digger? Can you hear me, mate?’

      The response was incoherent and Jennifer’s view of the other survivor was blocked as Guy crouched in front of her. It was tempting to focus on the injured man herself but Jennifer needed a moment or two to orient herself first. This was no well-equipped emergency department with extra staff and facilities available automatically.

      How ironic, to find herself in a situation like this, having travelled the length of the country to give GPs her expert advice on how to handle emergencies in precisely such situations. Now she was about to find out, at first-hand, what it was like to depend on limited resources and personal skills. Already she was listening for the sound of an engine. A buzz that would evolve into the chop of rotors as a rescue helicopter arrived to break the barrier of isolation.

      No sound broke the overwhelming silence around them, however, and Jennifer’s gaze was drawn as involuntarily towards the horizon as it had been to the bodies beside the plane. She knew she would see a reality she would rather not confront. She also knew that it had to be confronted before she could move on. Scanning the clear blue of the sky in the hope of seeing a sign of movement offered no reassurance, but what she did see took her breath away.

      Alongside and above for as far as she could see were the sharp peaks and valleys of the Southern Alps—a mountain range that provided a spine for the south island of New Zealand. Sunlight turned patches of snow into the blinding glare of mirrors and shadowed surrounding grey rock into inky darkness. Barren heights became the kind of tussock-covered terrain she was stranded on at present and bush-covered slopes fanned out below, a thick, green blanket softening variations in the terrain that were probably as sharp as those created by the towering peaks.

      Jennifer had grown up in this country. New Zealand was home and it had always offered the security of being small and relatively isolated from the evils the rest of the world had to endure, but there was nothing remotely small about this landscape. The vast emptiness made her feel astonishingly insignificant.

      No wonder people—and planes—got lost out here, never to be recovered. Even with a beacon sending out a distress call, Jennifer had no idea how long it might take for their exact location to be pinpointed. Maybe you had to fly within range to pick it up in the first place, and there were thousands of square miles to cover out there.

      She was alone.

      No. They were alone.

      Jennifer swallowed past the constriction in her throat as she dragged her gaze back to the crouching man in front of her. She found herself the object of a speculative glance.

      ‘If you’ve finished admiring the view,’ Guy Knight said mildly, ‘I could use some help here.’

       CHAPTER TWO

      ANSWERING a call to duty was automatic.

      Absorbing the reality of what had happened and where they were had taken only seconds, but the effect was an anchorage from which Jennifer could now function without distraction. Locking into the practice of what she was most competent to perform was a relief. A way of taking back control in the midst of catastrophe.

      ‘Airway?’

      ‘Clear.’ СКАЧАТЬ