in her ears, Sabrina ran on past a large tanker that was slewed across the road, totally blocking it both ways. She stopped and looked around. It was like some sort of war scene you saw on the TV. Some of the people from the concertina of cars either side of the tanker that were lining the road were standing in the road looking dazed and some were stretched out on the floor. Underfoot was the crunch of broken glass, everything grey in the pall of smoke that made her throat ache and eyes sting.
One distant car was already on fire, sending plumes of orange into the air, increasing the stench of smoke and fuel. If the fire reached the tanker... She pushed away the tendrils of panic and tried to think as, icy cold inside, she ran on past the groaning, blood-spattered victims.
The air left her lungs in one long hissing sigh of relief when she spotted Sebastian; even at fifty feet his tall, commanding figure was easy to spot. It was a couple of seconds later before she saw that he was carrying a figure. She had barely registered the green dress when there was a loud explosion, strong enough to knock one of the men standing close to Sebastian off his feet.
Sebastian swayed but managed to keep on his feet, not really registering the pain of the metal shard that sliced through his cheek. It wasn’t until he pushed himself forward that he saw the spark. Before he could brush it away it ignited Chloe’s dress.
He dropped her down on the ground and tore off his jacket, smothering the flames before they took hold. Another man joined him until the fire was extinguished.
Chloe opened her eyes and looked up. ‘Wow, you look awful...is that smell me? Mum is going to be furious about the dress.’
‘It’s OK. You’re OK,’ he said, hoping that it was the truth but in reality he didn’t have a clue.
‘Sebastian!’
The sound was almost drowned out by the whirr of helicopter blades above their heads.
Sebastian turned his head towards the cry and saw her running, stumbling, dodging the obstacles in her path. Sabrina was yelling something but he couldn’t make out the words above the helicopter and roar in his ears.
He got to his feet and swayed; he could make out Sabrina’s face now. See her mouth move, but the words and sounds of sobs and everything else were drowned out by the shrill whine of sirens as a fleet of ambulances and fire engines arrived on the scene en masse.
That was the last thing he heard before the ground came up quite quickly to meet him.
LATER THE SEQUENCE remained blurred in her mind. She remembered seeing Sebastian, then the blood that covered half his face, and she watched him fall, and then in her head it happened again and again until finally she got his name out.
‘Sebastian!’ Her cry sounded that way in her head but came out as a croak as she began to stumble past the debris that littered the area, her progress frustratingly slow across to where he lay—where he lay very still.
Heart drumming, dread like an icy hand around her heart, she knelt down to where he was lying face down, his head turned away from her. One arm was curved above his head, the other trapped under him.
He groaned and she felt a rush of relief that made her sob. ‘You’re alive. Oh, God, don’t die, don’t die...please, Sebastian! Help, someone, please, he’s...’
A wave of horror rolled over her; the extent of the destruction was too much for her to take in...too much... It was like the set of a disaster movie’s big scene only it wasn’t a movie—it was real.
On her knees she moved towards where her sister lay a few feet away, her eyes closed. Nobody had heard her cry for help, they were busy crying, wailing, bleeding or dying, but she tried again.
‘Help!’
Her throat was raw by the time someone heeded her cry.
A man with a torn shirt, his face smoke-blackened, appeared.
He dropped down beside Sabrina and felt her pulse. She shook away his hand—couldn’t he see she was fine?
‘You’re going to be OK.’
‘My sister... Sebastian...’ She touched her sister’s hair and nodded to where Sebastian lay close by.
She watched, her fingers on Chloe’s comfortingly strong pulse, as the Good Samaritan began to turn Sebastian over. He was halfway through the procedure before she realised what even someone with a scrap of first aid knew—and she was a doctor.
She was a doctor!
She left Chloe and grabbed the man’s arm. ‘No, don’t! He might have a spinal injury. He needs to be—’
The man stopped, not in response to Sabrina’s urgent plea but at the terrible groan that issued from Sebastian.
The sound cut through Sabrina like glass. ‘You’re hurting him!’ she wailed.
His hand fell away. ‘Sorry. I was only trying to help.’
They both turned as Sebastian completed the manoeuvre himself before sliding back into unconsciousness.
The man beside her swore as he stared at Sebastian’s face. ‘That’s a mess.’
Sabrina clenched her fists and hissed a fiercely protective denial. ‘He’s fine...oh, your poor face.’ She lifted a shaking hand and, on her knees in the dirt, touched the side of his face that wasn’t shredded and bleeding and stroked the dark hair back from his brow.
The man moved away.
‘Hey, he’s the guy who got the girl from the cliff.’
Two men walking past supporting a staggering woman between them stopped and looked down at Sabrina and Sebastian.
‘Hold on, they’ll be with you soon...’
‘I’m fine, but they—’ She stopped, her voice cracking with fear.
The man nearest nodded and raised his voice and yelled, ‘One over here, one for triage, severe facial lacs, blood loss, head injury!’
‘Brina!’
‘Chloe.’ Before Sabrina could react to her sister’s hoarse whisper two jumpsuit-clad figures reached them. She shuffled out of the way, watching as they examined her sister, inserted a venous line before lifting her onto a stretcher.
When Chloe saw Sabrina she struggled to pull the oxygen mask off her face.
Sabrina covered her sister’s hand with her own. ‘No, leave it.’ Chloe’s eyes closed. ‘She’s my sister,’ she explained to the two paramedics as she ran along beside them.
‘We’ll look after her,’ one said. ‘She’s being airlifted.’
She walked back to where Sebastian lay and stood there watching as her sister was stretchered away to the waiting helicopter. The explosion was deafening.
Sabrina reacted
