‘I need to get back on the road to call for an ambulance,’ he said. Adam looked up from his patient, sweat dripping down his face from his exertions. How could he possibly have felt cold just a few minutes ago?
Phil had turned towards the car when a lightning-bolt memory shocked him into immobility. ‘That pub last night. Wasn’t there an AED cabinet on the outside wall?’
The moon slid out from behind a cloud, illuminating the look of hope on Adam’s face.
‘There was! And it’s only a couple of miles from here.’
*
It took fifteen minutes for Phil to reach the pub, call 999, get the code to release the defibrillator from its cabinet and drive back to the beach. The sight of his car’s headlights splitting the darkened beach was one of the best things Adam had ever seen. His arms felt like they were on fire, and his own breathing was ragged, but his rhythm hadn’t faltered, not for a second.
He’d scarcely looked at the inert figure on the sand whose life he was desperately trying to save, but he did so now as Phil rapidly opened the defibrillator. The device was intended for hands far less skilled than theirs, and yet the men followed the machine’s instructions as though they hadn’t both done this more times than they cared to remember.
Adam winced as Phil tore open the woman’s nightgown to access bare skin and saw the mottled marble hue of her torso. He kept up the compressions until the very last second, stopping only when Phil shouted out the command: ‘Clear.’
When the AED informed them that a heartbeat had been found, Adam wasn’t ashamed of the tears falling down his cheeks. They were still there as the welcoming sound of a distant siren heralded the arrival of the ambulance.
1
The drone of the plane was soporific. I hadn’t expected to find sleep, yet I’d somehow managed to slip several layers beneath its surface when a panicked cry jerked me awake. There are several things in life you never want to hear: a fearful scream on a commercial flight is one of them, and your phone waking you up in the dead of night is another. I’d experienced both in the last four hours.
As I fumbled with the button to return my seat to its upright position, I noticed I wasn’t the only passenger to have been disturbed by the cry. Several seats had their overhead lamps switched on, spotlighting their occupants like actors on darkened stages. It took longer than it should for me to realise that whileIwas still looking around to see who had cried out, everyone else was looking atme. If further proof was needed, a member of the cabin crew was striding purposefully down the aisle towards me. The 747 was shadowy enough to hide my blush, but I could still feel it scorching my cheeks.
The flight attendant spoke in a hushed voice, not wanting to disturb my fellow passengers, although her thoughtfulness was probably redundant after my noisy outburst.
‘Is everything alright, ma’am?’ she asked gently.
I nodded, caught off-guard by the kindness in her voice. At this point, I’d have coped better with anger or irritation. Compassion could very easily unravel me.
‘I’m sorry. I must have been having a bad dream. I didn’t mean to wake everyone.’
Her smile came readily. ‘That’s okay. No one sleeps well on a red-eye anyway. You’d be surprised how many passengers have nightmares when they’re flying.’
I smiled wanly, because my nightmare was still very much with me, even after screaming myself awake.
‘Can I get you something to drink, or eat?’ I shook my head, declining the offer of food as I’d done several hours earlier, shortly after take-off. My body clock was still on New York time and unaccustomed to eating a meal with no identity in the middle of the night.
‘Maybe I’ll go and freshen up,’ I said, glancing up and noting with relief that the nearest WC was currently unoccupied.
I mumbled an embarrassed apology to the passengers in the surrounding rows, many of whom were still looking at me curiously, perhaps waiting for my next diverting outburst. There would be none, I was sure of that. Sleep would elude me now for the rest of the night until our plane touched down at Heathrow.
After sliding the lock in place, I leant back heavily on the bifold toilet door. The closet was as small as a sarcophagus and several hours into the flight was now borderline unpleasant. I pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and ran them under the cold water tap before pressing them to my heated face.No onelooks good under lighting that harsh, but the overhead fluorescent strip was particularly unkind to my pale skin. The freckles that could look like scattered gold dust on a good day now resembled splatters of mud. It was an unfortunate analogy.
She was covered in mud – her feet were thick with it.
My mother’s voice had scored into my memory and her words were still with me at 38,000 feet.
I stared back at my reflection as though I’d never seen it before. My cheeks were pinched, and my eyes looked huge – not in a cute, Disney-character way, but round and fearful, the way they’d been for the last four hours. My chestnut hair looked dull and flat and in desperate need of the shampoo it had been promised in the morning. But plans for the relaxed day I’d intended to spend had been erased by my mum’s frantic middle-of-the-night phone call.
Jeff heard my phone before I did. His left arm, which was flung wildly across both his pillow and mine, dropped to shake me awake.
‘Your cell is going,’ he mumbled, the Brooklyn twang of his voice disappearing into the memory foam of my pillows as he burrowed away from the sound.
After four years in the US, I still called it a mobile, but I knew what he meant.
I frowned as I reached for my phone, noting first the hour and then the identity of the caller. Some of my old UK friends still got the time difference wrong, adding when they should subtract, but not Mum. There were clocks set to New York time all over her house.
I swung out of bed, shivering in the cold air of my apartment – that term Ihadadopted. Grabbing a chunky cardigan from the back of a chair, I shrugged into it as I hurried into my narrow hallway, answering the call as I went.