began to push past the onlookers with frantic haste, Selina’s horrified gaze was on the small figure of her son, lying very still at the pavement edge.
A paramedic was bending over him and another was stepping down from the ambulance with a red response bag in his hands.
‘I’m his mother,’ she cried, falling to her knees on the other side of the small casualty with hands outstretched to do the things she’d done countless times…for other people’s children.
The man bending over her son was examining him with deft yet gentle hands. Beside herself with panic, she cried, ‘Have you checked that he’s breathing? For spinal injuries? That his tongue is free? That his tubes aren’t—?’
He didn’t lift his head.
‘Yes. I have,’ he informed her levelly, ‘as far as is possible under the circumstances. Now we need to get the boy to hospital as quickly as possible.’
‘Roll him onto a backboard,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t want Josh risking further injury by being handled too much.’
Selina wasn’t aware of the brief appraisal of a pair of dark eyes, or that the man’s voice when he spoke again wasn’t quite as impersonal as before.
‘We’re going to do that. So if you would, please, stand back?’
She could hardly bear to move an inch away from Josh, but heaven forbid that she should behave like other hysterical relatives she’d seen, hindering the progress of the ambulance team.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she cried.
‘Of course,’ he said crisply, and within seconds they were off, with the siren blaring and the light flashing above the fast-moving ambulance with its distinctive coloured flashes.
Instinctively Selina reached across for the advance support bag containing the equipment that would be needed if Josh went into cardiac arrest or if his airways became blocked. But a voice from beside her, which was heating up by the moment, cried, ‘Do you mind? I’m in charge of this vehicle. You may be the boy’s mother, but I’m the paramedic and I have everything under control. At least I would have if you could resist trying to take over. I understand your great anxiety but do, please, leave it to me.’
As if realising for the first time that he was in charge, Selina just sat and blinked at him.
‘As you can see,’ he continued, ‘we have your son on a backboard to prevent further spinal injury, should there be any, and we’ve tied his legs together as the left one is almost certainly fractured. The cuts on his head and arms are mostly superficial, except for the gash on the temple…and I will be monitoring his heart all the time we’re in transit. Does that satisfy you?’
The younger man, who had taken over the driving, turned his head at that moment. He could have been invisible for all the notice Selina had taken of him so far, but now he was registering, and when he spoke she recognised the voice and the face.
‘She’s one of us, Kane,’ Mike Thompson explained.
In his second year of training, and referred to by those in the know as an ambulance technician, he was a reserved sort of young man who never had much to say, but it was obvious that he felt some sort of explanation was due, and towards that end he went on to explain awkwardly, ‘Selina’s on the unit.’
The other man groaned, and said to Selina, ‘So that’s why you’re trying to take over. I get the picture.’
At that moment Josh opened his eyes, and as he did so both men were once more blurred figures on the edge of her nightmare.
‘Mum, I hurt all over,’ he said tearfully. ‘I was hit by a car. Where’s Dad?’ He’ll make it better.’
‘I know what’s happened, my darling,’ she said softly. ‘You’re in an ambulance on the way to hospital. They’ll make you better there.’
‘I want my dad,’ he wailed. ‘It’s not fair.’
Selina swallowed hard. In the shock of the accident Josh was trying to put the clock back and, aware of the man hovering watchfully beside her, she said soothingly, ‘I know. But you do know that he would have been here if he could, don’t you?’
Josh nodded glumly and turned his head into the flat pillow beneath it.
‘So he can move his neck,’ the strange paramedic said. ‘That’s good. And apart from the fractured limb, the rest of him seems to be flexible enough. They said at the school that the car driver wasn’t going very fast and that your son bounced sideways off the bonnet, which probably saved his life.’
Selina nodded bleakly. It was something to be thankful for, but there would be questions she would be asking about supervision in the playground. Though at the moment all that mattered was Josh.
The ambulance was turning into the hospital car park and as she raised herself from her kneeling position beside her son, the old coat that she’d flung on swung open and an expanse of bare midriff was briefly on view.
She must look like nothing on earth, she thought raggedly as she clutched it to her. Trainers, the briefest of bikinis…and a raincoat that didn’t button properly. A far cry from the neat navy trousers and crisp white blouse that would have been her normal attire had she been taking a call-out such as this while on duty.
As the bossy paramedic wheeled Josh into Casualty, Selina was beside him, holding his hand and hoping that Gavin would be on duty.
He was. He’d just come out of one of the cubicles, and as he swished the curtains together behind him he saw them.
His glance went first to Selina’s white face and then flicked to Josh.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked as he hurried across to them.
‘Josh has been knocked down by a car,’ she choked out. ‘The paramedic says he has a fractured leg and there might be other injuries.’
Light blue eyes in a tired face met hers. ‘And what’s your opinion?’
‘I’m so worked up I can’t even think straight.’
He patted her shoulder briefly. ‘Let’s get him sorted then, shall we?’
The moment Josh was rolled off the backboard onto the bed in an empty cubicle, Mike Thompson and his unknown colleague stepped back, their job done, and at that point Selina began to calm down a little.
Now that Josh was in hospital, with Gavin there to take over and with a nurse hovering, she was able to take stock of the man who must obviously be Charlie’s replacement.
Selina had worked with Charlie Vaughan ever since joining the ambulance unit, and now, at the end of her second year of training, she was having to part company with the man who had been with the ambulance service for thirty years and was about to retire.
If it hadn’t been for Charlie’s never-failing good humour and infinite patience during that time, both with herself and those he served, Selina knew she might have given up.
The hours were long, and there was always trauma of one kind or another awaiting them when a call came through, but
