Someone To Save you (2 page)

‘The hospital called me just as I was about to leave for the airport,’ Anna explained, taking his hand in hers. Her skin was warm and smooth and Sam breathed in her familiar, comforting perfume as she kissed his cheek. She’d bought the scent on a romantic break in Rome three years ago, and it always reminded Sam of that magical weekend in the Eternal City. ‘Louisa and I drove up here as quickly as we could.’

‘But what about the trip? The emergency.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ she replied, examining his face with concern. ‘Anyway, I’m pretty sure this classes as an emergency. Let me deal with one at a time, eh?’

Anna placed a comforting hand on his head, gently brushing away some stray hair.

‘It only comes in black and blue,’ Sam noted, referring to the nasty-looking bruising around his left eye that was throbbing to its own pulse.

‘Looks sore,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Sam replied. ‘Just minor bruising - nothing broken, no lasting damage. They’ve done all the obs. Said they might let me go in a couple of hours. Feel like I could sleep for ever though.’

He twisted to read his wrist watch on the bedside, wincing at the short stab of pain from his side. He’d been asleep for just over an hour, and it was now three hours since the crash. He’d slept most of the time since that horrific event, and everything was a bit of a blur. There were snippets of memories – the acrid smell of burning, the shouts and the moans, the wail of sirens and flash of blue lights, the squawk of radios, the young female paramedic talking him back to consciousness and then struggling to keep him awake, the first few minutes in the ambulance as it rocked and rolled away from the scene over the uneven ground.

Sam slumped back onto his pillow. ‘Did they tell you what happened?’

‘Not much,’ Anna said, perching on the edge of the bed. ‘There was a crash involving a train, a car, and you. I was so scared when they called,’ she added, squeezing his hand as her green eyes glistened with tears. ‘What the hell happened?’

Sam shook his head, thinking back to the events. ‘I was driving home and a girl ran straight out in front of the car. Somehow, I really don’t know how, I managed to avoid hitting her, and then she led me to her mother. She’d driven her car onto the railway track, with her kids strapped in the back. Her baby was in the boot.’

‘My God,’ Anna said, aghast. ‘You think it was a suicide attempt?’

‘Her daughter told me she drove the car straight onto the track, and that she wanted to kill herself,’ Sam replied. ‘I tried to talk to her, convince her to move, but it was like she was in trance, just staring straight ahead. I tried to move the car, but it wouldn’t budge. I got the children out, but I couldn’t get her before the train came.’ Sam thought of the woman in the driving seat, the emotional shutdown that he’d seen too many times before in the eyes of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, who had just lost a loved one on the operating table. ‘Did they say anything about the children and the mother? They wouldn’t tell me anything.’

Anna shook her head.

‘The people on the train?’

‘They didn’t tell me anything else.’

‘Who spoke to you? The hospital?’

‘The police. They’re waiting outside to see you. I think the nurses have been holding them back until they think you’re ready.’

‘I should speak to them.’

‘Only if you’re ready,’ Anna replied. ‘If you’re not, I’ll tell them to wait.’

Sam smiled – Anna was always ready to defend people in their hour of need, and now it was his turn. ‘I’m okay. Where’s Louisa?’

‘Getting some coffee - it was a busy, stressful drive. It took us two hours to travel the twenty miles from home. Louisa said she’s never going to travel through London at rush hour ever again.’

Louisa was a childhood friend of Sam and now good friend to Anna also. She was considered more like family. Probably the only aspect that Sam didn’t trust her completely with was her driving skills – her car, a rusting old style mini, had had more bumps and scrapes than a dodgem.

‘You didn’t have to ruin your trip for me you know,’ Sam said. ‘The people in Bangladesh need you more.’

Anna kissed his forehead tenderly.

Sam smiled. ‘But I’m glad you’re here. That’s all the treatment I need.’

The two plain clothes officers strode in, led by the Irish sister. As the sister left them, she exchanged a glance with the officers that Sam could tell was a warning to take it slowly with her patient. After twelve years on hospital wards, he was adept at interpreting the body language and expressions of staff.

‘Mr Becker,’ the taller of the two began, as Anna reluctantly stepped back from the bed and took up a place a few feet away, her arms folded across her chest. The policeman was pushing six foot four, and built like a rugby front row forward. His dark hair was shaved short, and his face was strong and sculpted. Sam placed him in his late thirties. His partner, the scribe, was round faced, noticeably shorter and older, maybe in his fifties. He sported a greying moustache. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m okay,’ Sam replied, sitting up straighter. He could smell diesel and smoke and noted that their white shirts were holding black dust.

‘That’s good,’ the officer said. His accent wasn’t too dissimilar from his own, somewhere around Manchester. ‘I hear you’re a doctor yourself.’

Sam nodded.

‘What speciality?’

‘Paediatric heart surgery,’ Sam replied.

The officer unfurled a lip, impressed. ‘Must be strange to be on the other side; being the patient rather than the one doing the looking after.’

‘It is,’ Sam agreed. And it was. Sam, like most doctors, was a terrible patient, as Anna had commented on the previous year during a dose of heavy flu. It felt completely wrong to be in the bed rather than the one standing over it. Maybe it had something to do with the loss of control; placing yourself in someone else’s care. When it came to it, most doctors were control freaks. ‘I don’t intend to be a patient for much longer,’ he added.

The officer suppressed a smile, getting back to the task at hand. ‘Mr Becker,’ he hesitated, ‘it is Mr, isn’t it?’

Sam nodded. He had successfully completed his training and royal college of surgery exams six months ago, and in the ironic world of medicine, the seventy hour weeks, the nights sleeping on the ward whilst on-call, the years of study, all those personal sacrifices, had resulted in the dropping of the Doctor title he had worked so hard for in the first place.

‘Well, Mr Becker, Sam, I’m Detective Inspector Paul Cullen, of the British Transport Police, and this is my partner, Detective Sergeant Tony Beswick. We’re part of the accident investigation team examining this afternoon’s crash. We have a few questions, if that’s okay with you.’

‘Sure,’ Sam replied. ‘But can I ask a question first?’

Cullen nodded.

‘How are the children, and their mother?’

‘The children are all fine,’ he confirmed.

‘Even the baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the mother?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Sam wasn’t surprised but it still saddened him greatly. He nodded his understanding.

DI Cullen continued. ‘No-one could have survived a head-on impact at that speed. The train was travelling at fifty miles an hour when it hit. She would have died instantly.’

Sam took in the news. The woman had got part of what she wanted, but she hadn’t taken the children with her. Had she really wanted them to die too? And what about the other people who were affected? Did she think about them when she’d made the decision to crash through the fence and drive onto the track?

‘The passengers on the train?’

‘All okay,’ he said, ‘a few walking wounded – half a dozen or so cases of whiplash, minor injuries to arms and legs, and some people with shock. The driver is being counselled. As you can imagine, he’s pretty shook up about the whole thing. Thankfully, the train stayed on the tracks. If the thing had derailed, the situation would have been very different.’

Sam pondered on that thought. It was still hard to believe that he’d been a matter of metres from a head-on high-speed train collision, yet had survived with nothing more than a black eye and slight bruising. And for the baby to have been unharmed too, it was nothing short of miraculous.

‘Are you okay to answer some of our questions now, Mr Becker?’ the officer asked, his voice revealing a touch of impatience. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’

‘Fire away,’ Sam said.

‘Great,’ he replied. ‘We need to piece together what happened. How you became involved, what you did, what you saw, right up until the impact.’

Just then Sam heard a commotion outside and saw a flash of light up against the window of his private room.

Cullen spun round and pointed at the door. ‘Get that photographer ejected from the premises,’ he barked at his colleague. ‘And if they resist, arrest them. I told them, no-one is allowed up here.’

His colleague nodded and exited the room.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said, regaining his composure. We tried to keep the media away from this, but there’s a swarm of them down at reception. Somehow they must have found out which ward you were on.’

‘It’s okay,’ Sam said, exchanging glances with Anna, who was looking out towards the melee. You could hear DS Beswick directing the photographer back downstairs, in no uncertain terms.

‘Right,’ Cullen said. ‘First of all, what brought you to the location of the crash?’

‘I was driving back home from a family event in the North West,’ Sam explained.

‘Family event?’

‘My sister’s birthday,’ he added.

‘So you were with your sister over the weekend?’

‘Not exactly,’ Sam replied.

‘I don’t understand.’

Sam hesitated and Anna, who had been listening intently, picked up the baton. ‘Cathy, Sam’s sister, died when she was young. Yesterday would have been her thirtieth birthday.’

‘Oh, right,’ Cullen said, his brow creasing. ‘Sorry to hear that. So, it was a commemoration…’

‘Celebration,’ Sam corrected, ‘at least that was the plan.’

‘Okay,’ Cullen said, making some more notes. ‘So can you just talk me through what happened as you were driving back home.’

‘I was driving back; it was about five o’clock, when something ran straight out in front of me. It came from my left, and my first thought was that it was a deer or something. But I realised it was a girl, a teenage girl. I swerved to miss her, and then I followed her down to the…’

‘You were led to the scene by a teenage girl?’ he interrupted, his face expressing surprise, possibly disbelief.

‘Yes, Alison,’ Sam confirmed, noting Cullen’s reaction. ‘The woman’s daughter. What’s the matter?’

Cullen didn’t answer, simply raising a pausing hand as he brought a police radio receiver up to his mouth. ‘Hi. DI Cullen here. We’ve got a problem.’

3

The morning following the train crash, Sam prepared the breakfast, handling the knife with a surgeon’s skill as he buttered the toast and skimmed off the top of the boiled eggs. He’d been up for three hours now, since just before five, unable to stop his mind from racing and his body aching. For a time he’d just sat up in bed, staring at the wall while Anna slept, before tuning in to the early morning news. The main news items that had been replayed several times in the ensuing hours - a hurricane slamming into the Caribbean, and yet more killing in the Middle East, weren’t a recipe for sound sleeping.

Anna appeared, and Sam smiled as she approached. Her slender, almost fragile frame belied an inner toughness, and her youthful face disguised a wealth of life experience. She was wearing her pyjamas, with her chocolate brown hair tied back away from her lightly tanned skin in a loose ponytail - a style that always reminded him of the first time they had met, when a feisty, determined twenty-four year old Anna had burst into his sweltering corrugated iron outreach theatre room in the tiny rural Indian village, cradling a young girl who she had found lying by the side of the road having been hit by a motorcycle. Bypassing the security on the door, who had told her to wait, Anna had taken it upon herself to bring the child, Grace, to his attention. And for good reason – ten minutes later and she might not have survived her internal injuries. That meeting had sparked an instant and lasting mutual attraction. They grew closer throughout Sam’s year elective at the Verlore Christian University Medical School, and for the next two years after that, when Sam returned home, inspired to train in paediatric surgery following his experiences in India and Anna continued her work abroad, they stayed in contact by email and phone. Then one day Anna turned up at his flat. She’d been promoted, and her time would now be split between co-ordinating projects in countries around the world from the London offices, with occasional travel abroad to oversee the work. A year later they were engaged, and eighteen months after that married. It was only then Anna admitted that, with her father being a successful but work-addicted consultant neurologist, who always put medicine before family, she had initially been extremely hesitant about getting into a relationship with a doctor.