right. They’ve been keeping in touch, of course, by phone. I rang the hospital this morning, and the staff nurse said that both of them were doing reasonably well. His father’s had an operation to fix his damaged knee, and Connor’s mother is up and about now, although she’s having to rely on crutches.’
‘That’s good. I expect it will have cheered Connor up to know that his parents are doing all right.’
Rebecca nodded, but her concentration began to waver as the pilot put the helicopter in motion, and she felt the pull of being lifted up into the air. A huge knot started to form in her stomach. For a moment or two she felt nauseous, and after a while she realised that she was gripping the arm of her seat so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.
She tried breathing in deeply for a while, but it didn’t seem to be having much of an effect. Pulling a tissue from her pocket, she dabbed at the clammy beads of perspiration that had started to form on her brow.
‘We’ll be going over Kielder Water very soon,’ Craig said. ‘You can already see the moorland and the pine forests coming into view. Keep watching and you’ll see that there’s a lovely hotel just beyond the lake. It’ll come into view any minute now. It’s a great starting point from there to explore the Chevin Hills and the woodland all around.’
Rebecca was trying to listen to what he was saying, but her heart was thumping in an erratic fashion, and she was finding it difficult to stay in control of herself. She had to get a grip on her emotions, because she was there first and foremost to watch over her patient, and what use would she be to him if she let her nerves get the better of her?
‘Take a look out of the window,’ Craig urged. He leaned across her, his chest brushing her arm as he moved to show her the view. ‘See, over there,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a beautiful log cabin, nestled among the silver birch trees. I’ve stayed there, it’s fabulous. There’s a veranda, where you can sit on a hammock and watch the sun sink below the horizon.’
He glanced down at her, a glimmer of teasing invitation in his eyes. ‘You should try it some time. There can’t be anything more satisfying than to simply laze away a summer’s evening with nothing more to do than snack on good food and sip cocktails.’
It might well be a pleasant prospect, but Rebecca was in no state to take in his advice. In fact, she was doing her utmost to try to ignore the way his arm almost wrapped itself around her as he pointed out the distant hills. It set off alarm bells in her head, and her heart, still pounding from the anxiety of take-off, increased its beat to a staccato, heavy thud.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to think about that log cabin for a while. At the least it might help to calm her down. The very image of a log cabin conjured up woodland scenes, fishing by the lake and long walks in the countryside.
Who had joined him on those walks? Of course, she didn’t imagine for a moment that he would have been there alone. Her brow furrowed. And why should that thought bother her, anyway? She hardly knew the man, and yet even now when she was at her most vulnerable state he had managed to permeate her consciousness and stir her curiosity.
Her mouth made a wry twist. ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ she said, ‘but I imagine you must have an affinity for that kind of leisure activity.’
Keyed up as she was, she regretted the words almost as soon as she had said them. After all, he might have come across as a kind of happy-go-lucky vagrant initially, but in reality he was nothing of the sort. It was only her heightened sense of apprehension that was making her so crabby and ill mannered.
He laughed. ‘Don’t we all?’ He sent her a fleeting glance. ‘Be honest, would you still be doing this job if you could swap places with a millionaire playboy?’
‘Probably,’ she said, her tone short. ‘There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that you’re saving lives and helping people to recover from unfortunate events, don’t you think?’
He gave a noncommittal shrug, as though he might be sceptical about that, and she frowned. Was he really as indifferent as he appeared? All her life she had wanted to be a doctor, to be able to take care of people in their hour of need. No matter what setbacks and dilemmas she had come up against in her career, none of that had ever changed.
She looked over to where Connor lay, casting a sweeping glance over the monitors. The child’s breathing was becoming more laboured and his oxygen level was gradually falling.
She unhooked the oxygen equipment from its mounting and, raising him lightly, showed Connor the breathing mask. ‘This will help to ease your chest,’ she told the boy. ‘I’m just going to place it over your nose. Try breathing in as deeply as you can.’
Connor did as she suggested, and after a while Rebecca began to relax a little as his oxygen level began to rise slightly.
Satisfied that she had done everything she could for the moment, she settled back in her seat. Or rather she tried to settle. There was no escaping the fact that they were still hurtling through the air, the rotors whirring above them, and far below her the landscape stretched out for miles around in all directions.
‘We’re heading towards the southern uplands,’ Craig said. ‘If you look closely, you might be able to see eagles nesting on the high crags.’ He pointed over to her left. ‘Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of one of them soaring through the sky.’
Rebecca gave a small shudder. ‘I think I prefer not to do that,’ she said. It would mean she had to look out over that broad sweep of land so far below. ‘I don’t believe my stomach could take it.’
Despite her words, though, she couldn’t help but let her gaze follow where he pointed, and what she saw was stunning. There were rolling hills and deep valleys, broken by occasional outcrops of rock, and as the helicopter began to veer to the left, heading in a north-westerly direction, the sight of the shimmering lochs took her breath away. It was beautiful, but when she looked more carefully, she could see that the water glistened and churned restlessly, whipped up by blustery air currents that eddied all around.
Rebecca frowned. When had the wind suddenly started up? When they had started out the sky had been relatively clear, helping to ease away some of the doubts she had about taking this flight. Now, though, things weren’t looking quite so calm. There were clouds up ahead, and the sky was turning grey.
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