Читать книгу A Kiss To Melt Her Heart - Emily Forbes, Emily Forbes - Страница 9

Date: March 8th

Temperature: -10°C

Hours of sunlight: 13.8

‘WHAT’S HAPPENED?’ SOPHIE asked, as she swung her legs out of bed. Gabe was standing right beside her and she tried to ignore the little frisson of excitement as she focussed on what he was saying rather than how close he stood.

‘The Russians have lost a helicopter. We’re sending out S&R and I need you to come with us.’

She mustn’t be properly awake. It sounded as though he’d said ‘Russians’.

‘Russians? What Russians?’

‘There’s a Russian station not far from here. One of their helicopters has gone missing.’

‘And you want me to go out on a search and rescue?’

He was nodding. ‘Time is critical. I need you with me out in the field. We don’t know what the situation is so we need to cover all contingencies—which means sending you out. I’ll meet you in the medical centre. Get dressed, you’ll need all your ECW gear and don’t forget your goggles and gloves.’

She was wide awake now but she didn’t bother asking how you lost a helicopter. Whatever had happened couldn’t be good and the only thing that mattered to her was what would be left for her to deal with. But she hadn’t expected to have to deal with a crisis somewhere out on the ice, not on her first proper day on the job.

She got dressed in a hurry. The Antarctic motto of ‘Hurry up and wait’ didn’t seem to apply to this station, she thought as she pulled on underwear, long thermals, socks, a shirt, pants and a fleece. She had her wedding ring, and Danny’s, strung on a chain around her neck and she lifted the rings to her lips and kissed them, before tucking them inside her shirt.

‘Wish me luck,’ she whispered, as she stuffed a balaclava, goggles, sunglasses and gloves into the pocket of her fleecy jacket, before heading to the medical centre to prepare to venture into the great unknown.

Gabe, Finn and a third man were already in the clinic. She’d met the other man last night but she couldn’t remember his name. So much of yesterday was a blur and she knew she would need time to get things straight in her head. Names, faces and routines would all need time to sink in but she feared she wasn’t going to get that time today. Today she was going to be thrown straight in at the deep end.

Finn was standing beside a sack trolley that Sophie didn’t remember having seen in the clinic before, and Gabe and the other man were gathering equipment. They weren’t waiting for her. They had laid a stretcher on one of the treatment beds and had put a spinal board on top of it.

‘Load anything you think you might need onto the stretcher or the trolley,’ Gabe said to her as soon as she stepped into the room, ‘and Liam, Finn and I will transport it for you.’

Liam, that was his name.

How did she know what to take? What would she need?

Sophie closed her eyes as she tried to focus. How did she know what she might need? How on earth was she supposed to figure that out? She’d been on the ice for less than twenty-four hours and she was terrified to think that perhaps she had taken on more than she could handle. Perhaps she wasn’t ready for this.

‘Are you okay?’ Gabe asked.

She opened her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She might not think she was ready for this but she was all they had. She had to do her job. ‘I admit I was hoping to start my stint down here with an easy emergency—frostbite, concussion, a broken finger, that sort of thing—but I’m okay, just trying to figure out what we’ll need. You don’t have any idea what we might be dealing with?’

Gabe shook his head. ‘It could be anything from concussion to burns to fractures to internal injuries. Bring what you would need if you were waiting for an ambulance to bring in survivors from a train wreck. I imagine it will be similar.’

Oh, God. If she’d been waiting for multiple victims from a train wreck she would want to be in a modern emergency department with a team of nurses and surgeons on hand, a suite of theatres at her disposal, state-of-the-art X-ray facilities and a well-stocked blood bank and pharmacy. But instead she had herself. She was the doctor, the nurse, the radiologist, the anaesthetist and the pharmacist, and she was going to have to work in sub-zero temperatures bundled up like a mummy. It was a nightmare.

She knew she had a medical support team but she had no idea how well trained they were or whether or not they’d had any experience in this type of situation.

But Gabe hadn’t finished. ‘Best-case scenario you will have patients to treat. Worst case—we won’t find them in time.’

It wasn’t just a nightmare, it was her worst nightmare.

But Gabe’s comments jolted her back to reality. She needed to get her act together, she needed to concentrate. She couldn’t afford any mistakes. Time was of the essence. They needed to get out of here. She looked around the clinic and started a mental inventory.

‘How many people on board?’ she asked.

‘Only two.’

Good. She grabbed the emergency kit that she’d gone through yesterday and put it on Finn’s trolley. It had sufficient supplies for two patients but she needed to add some more equipment. She grabbed extra blankets, an oxygen cylinder and bags of saline. She put a stethoscope around her neck and tucked it inside her thermals to keep it warm. It made a metallic chime against her wedding rings. She wrapped her fingers around the rings, squeezing them as she prayed for some luck.

What else would she need? In an ideal world she’d have some bags of blood to add to the pile but there was no blood stored. She knew that the crew would donate blood as needed but she was the only one who could take it. No one at Carey could donate blood if she wasn’t there. She stood in the centre of the room while she tried to figure out what to do. She’d have to get some donors lined up for their return, just in case. She hoped someone at the station was O-negative.

‘We’re here to help. Tell us what you need,’ Gabe said, and she knew he was trying to get her to hurry up but she was out of her depth. What she needed was reassurance.

‘Have you done something like this before?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly,’ he admitted. ‘Major incidents are thankfully few and far between and we have stringent occupational health and safety policies, but we have trained for these situations and we are trained to work in these conditions.’

His confidence was reassuring. Sophie had no idea if he was as confident as he seemed but she chose to believe him. She looked up into his dark brown eyes, drawing strength from him again. She trusted him and she knew that as long as he was with her she’d feel better about the situation.