Narrow Escape (11 page)

Happy go Lucky
, our previous boat, had been much better ventilated and used diesel for cooking and heating. After a few leaks had been got rid of she had been a lovely dry and warm haven.
Minerva
was older and much less forgiving about giving up her full complement of interesting moulds and spores. I spent a lot of time washing down mouldy walls and cleaning the dirt caused by a mixture of condensation and smuts from the fire from between the metal runners on the windows.

“So how are we going to fix that?” I stared up at the ceiling.

“That's where I took out that old light you hated.” Geoff studied the small damp patch above his head. “I think I've got something that will cover it. Tell you what …” his fingers rasped over his beard as he considered the problem, “… you pop down to the marina and pick up the post and I reckon I can have that fixed by the time you get back.”

Well, that seemed like a good deal.

As I trudged through the rain I could hear Drew's ancient Honda motorbike making its way down the long drive. I waved to him as he came past me. But soggy, windswept, and intent on getting home, he didn't see me and I lost sight of him as he went over the hill and down into the marina.

As I rounded the corner, I could hear the bike engine screaming and watched as people ran across the gravel of the marina car park. Increasing my own pace I found Drew lying in a heap on the gravel and ‘Swampy', his ancient green Honda, was flat on her side with her wheels in the air the engine revving as though trying to take off. A long gouge in the gravel marked the point of upright failure and the subsequent slide and fall.

Stepping over the tantrum-throwing motorcycle I hit the kill switch and the engine sputtered into silence. Bob, one of the boaters that lived in the pond, was already checking Drew over. He looked up at me. “I'll call an ambulance,” he said.

I nodded and wandered over to talk to Drew who was lying, groaning gently, on the grass beside the track.

I looked into his face and checked that he was conscious. I've known this man for a very long time and I know how many bike accidents he's had. “What's broken this time?”

He gave a shaky laugh. “Shoulder, maybe both but definitely one wrist.” He winced and hugged the particularly injured arm closer to his side.

I nodded and we chatted for a while about what had happened as we waited for the ambulance to arrive. Eventually I looked up as flashing blue lights turned into the long drive. They were still just under a mile away but from our vantage point we could watch their slow progress down the drive. “Cavalry's nearly here,” I said.

Drew nodded. Gritting his teeth and scrunching his eyes in pain. He tried to get to his phone. “I need to call Bill.”

I stilled his searching. “I'll go and pick her up from work; they'll be taking you into Addenbrookes. We'll meet you there. I've got her number, I'll call her now and if she doesn't answer I'll just go and hammer on the door.”

Drew gave me a shaky grin. “Hey,” he said. “I asked you to do all that without moving my lips.”

“Oh, shut up and get in the ambulance.” I watched as Bob chivvied the paramedics into a decent parking place and then stood away. While the two paramedics checked Drew over, wincing all the while at his terrible jokes, Bob and I pulled Swampy upright and stashed her out of the way. She didn't look good and how he'd managed to crush both the left and right handlebars, I'll never know. “Did you actually see him come off?” I asked Bob.

He shook his head. “No. I heard the scrape and crunch and a complete dictionary of swearing and when I looked up he was face down in the gravel.” He shrugged. “Why?”

“Well it's weird, look at the bike, it looks as though he's hit both sides of it. Did he flip it? Did it bounce? How on earth do you managed to crush both sides in one accident?

We stared at the bike and then at each other. Well, I doubted if Drew would remember what happened. Leaving the mystery for another day, I waved the ambulance off and, heading to the car, called Geoff to say he would have to pick up the post himself.

Within an hour Bill and I pulled into one of the staff parking places at the hospital. I waved to the nurse who had bandaged my head the night of the duckling-avoidance manoeuvre and she trotted over to see us.

“What have you done this time?” She stared at my head.

“Not me this time, we're here with her husband.” I gestured vaguely at Bill who was hopping from one foot to the other. “Motorcycle accident …”

“Another one,” Bill grumped with an irritated air.

“… came in by ambulance probably less than half an hour ago?”

The nurse nodded. “Come on, I'll take you through to him.”

By the time we found him, Drew had taken a fairly large dose of pain killers and was alternating between being in pain and terribly giggly. “I'm really hungry,” he said.

“We'll get you something when they've patched you up.” Bill shook her head at him.

Within a couple of hours Drew was sporting two rather nifty wrist braces and had one arm in a sling.

“Are we done?” I looked up at the doctor and started gathering my things together.

He nodded.

“Is he all right to have something to eat?” I could hear Drew's stomach rumbling from where I stood about five foot away.

He nodded and shrugged.

“Great, thanks.” I waited until he had wandered off before muttering. “Very informative.”

The hospital has a very large food court and soon Drew was ordering a burger and chips. With Bill holding the food we wandered back to the car. Drew clambered into the front and Bill hopped in the back. We positioned the food on his lap and made sure he was well belted in.

Munching away he seemed very chatty and bright. We drove through Cambridge and headed onto the A14. Concentrating on the road I wasn't really listening to Drew and Bill's conversation. It was only when she said, “What the heck are you talking about?” That I swung around to take a look at him.

The hand holding the chips dropped to his lap and, as he passed out, he was, silently, very sick.

Heaving in sympathy I hit the warning flashers and pulled the car on to the hard shoulder of the slip road. Bill and I leapt out of the car and between us man handled a completely unconscious Drew out of the car and into the recovery position on the grass verge.

A large set of headlights pulled up behind us and two very wary police officers climbed out of their car.

It must have looked very suspicious; two women dragging an unconscious man out of a car and towing him toward a dark hedge. It probably looked as though we'd murdered him and were trying to hide the body. It didn't help that I was still heaving and trying to control my stomach and Bill was desperately trying to get Drew to come round.

The silence continued for a moment. I honestly couldn't think what to say. Eventually I got my stomach under control and approached the female police officer. “Can you call an ambulance?”

Both police officers stared at me and then glanced at Drew then at each other. One took a step forward and asked, “What's going on?”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” I yelled at them. “He had a bike accident this afternoon, he's been in A&E, they've just released him, I'm taking them home, and he threw up and then passed out again.” At this they sprang into action, one called for an ambulance the other trotted over to have a look at Drew.

Within five minutes the ambulance had arrived. I couldn't believe it, it was the same flaming crew that had picked him up from the marina.

“Hello again,” one of them said as they stepped from the cab.

“Not again,” said the other.

After a brief conversation with the paramedics the police took off and Bill and I followed the ambulance back to Addenbrookes.

“This is ridiculous.” Bill stopped me as I was about to get out of the car. “You go home. We could be here for hours.”

I got the feeling that worrying about me being bored and fed up was playing on her mind so I nodded. “OK, just make sure you ring me when you need a lift home.”

She gave me a hug and took off back toward the emergency department. I was just getting back in the car when my phone rang.

“Hello?” I didn't recognise the number.

“Oh hello.” A cheery female voice on the other end of the phone chirped in my ear. “You're on call this week and we have a blaring unit on the children's ward can you attend?”

I sighed and then laughed. “Well, yes I probably can.”

“ETA?”

“About three minutes.” I laughed.

“Really?” My answer shocked her out of her professionalism. “Have you moved? It usually takes at least an hour for a call-out.”

“No, I haven't moved.” I locked the car and trotted back across the road toward the back entrance. “The hospital has become sentient and is exerting an unusually powerful force on me tonight. I can't seem to get away.”

“Well you were either in A and E or the staff bar,” she laughed.

“Bingo!” I slowed down as I walked past the travel agents and the solicitor's office, Addenbrookes is a large hospital and has its own tiny village. “A and E.”

“Oh dear,” she said. “If you're sure you're all right, I'll tell them you'll be there very soon.”

It took me about an hour to fix the television. Under normal circumstances we were just supposed to cut the power and leave it till the morning but leaving a child without a television just seems to make the parents crazy. Before I left I called Bill to find out if she needed a lift home, she didn't.

“They're keeping him in,” she said. “He's asleep.”

At least some of us are, I thought. I stifled a huge yawn and checked my watch. Midnight, wonderful. “I'm working here tomorrow – give me a shout.”

She said she would and let me go. I staggered back into the boat at about one o'clock in the morning. Geoff was fast asleep and even the dog only opened one eye and then ignored me. My last thought before oblivion took me was that my car was still full of very smelly substances and that would all have to be cleaned out before I took the kids to school.

‘They' do say that no good deed goes unpunished. ‘They' may well be right.

Bill and Drew turned up the next evening. With two broken wrists, a mashed shoulder, and high as a kite on prescription pain killers it didn't take Drew very long to run out of steam. Bill helped him back to their boat and then popped back for the shopping that she'd left on our front deck.

Helping her with the bags I had a sudden thought. “I take it this means that Drew won't be working for a while?”

Bill shook her head. “I'm not really worried about him working,” she said. “With no hands and a broken shoulder he can't do ‘
anything
'.” She frowned. Not one to usually let the irritating little dips in life get her down she was obviously worried about this. She turned to look at me. “This is going to be very difficult I think.”

I contemplated all the things that we do on a day to day basis. She was right, it
was
going to be very difficult. I looked up at the cloud-filled sky. It had rained yesterday, today, and more was forecast for the rest of the week. So much for a drought, we were rapidly turning into a swamp. Without the use of his arms and hands Drew was going to find even simple things like climbing out of the boat and walking down the hill to the cars impossible. He'd do it, no doubt, but he would be in very real danger of face planting himself into the mud and breaking something else.

“Whatever you need.” I handed the shopping bags over the front deck to her. “Tell you what, I'll give your number a different ring tone so that I know it's important and won't ignore you like I do everyone else.”

“Oh!” She raised her eyebrows in mock outrage. “So that's why I can never get hold of you, is it?”

I decided to just pass that question by and laughed. “Any time for anything, OK?”

She nodded. “Thanks. I'll see you at the weekend.”

With a wave she disappeared into the dark depths of her boat, no doubt in an attempt to go and put Drew to bed.

I stared at the side of their boat. A broken Drew was very likely to be a grumpy Drew. I hoped the pain killers kept him asleep for a good long while, otherwise Bill was going to have her hands full of frustrated tantrums.

As I wandered back towards the lights of
Minerva
it started to rain again. This life is great as long as you are completely fit and healthy. It's hard enough to do what we need to do with all limbs working. It's no wonder that a lot of us are rather obsessive about safety. One false slip and it's not just a case of sleeping in an armchair for a week. It's your whole life that gets thrown into disarray. I thought about those that boat alone, and, unusually for me, just sent a little request to anything that might be listening that they'd be kept safe.

The next morning Geoff was all smiles.

“What's got you so cheerful?” I'd just peered into the coffee container and found only damp smears at the bottom; I was not a happy bunny.

Geoff dug around in one of the cupboards and emerged with a dusty box of ‘real' coffee in one hand and an ancient cafetière in the other.

Oh, you had to love the man.

“I'm working at the RSPCA today,” he said.

“Which one?” I stared at the thick black liquid in the cafetière, willing it to brew faster, the smell was fantastic.

“Wildlife,” he said shortly. “I'm cleaning out their extractor fans and replacing some lights. I always like it there. Last time they had some seal pups in and a young fox.”

“Lucky you.” I finally managed to get a mouthful of coffee, it was bliss. “I'm taking Sam to the dentist, then back to school, then I'm going to the launderette, then I'm walking the dog, doing the shopping, bringing up those last two bags of coal, going back to pick Sam up from school, and then we've got a doctor's appointment to see about his nose bleeds. Wonderful day.”