Leo hesitated. ‘No ambulance.’
Brianna looked at him, startled. ‘But she’s got to go to hospital!’
‘Trust me when I tell you that I have things under control.’ He squatted alongside them both. The time of reckoning had come and how on earth had he ever played with the thought that it wouldn’t? How had he imagined that he would be able to walk away without a backward glance when the time came?
Of course, he certainly hadn’t reckoned on the time coming in this fashion. He certainly hadn’t thought that he would be the one rescuing his mother because it now seemed that there was more conversation left between them.
‘You have things under control?’ Brianna looked at him dubiously. ‘And yet there’s no ambulance on the way?’
‘I’ve arranged to have her air-lifted to the Cromwell Hospital in London,’ Leo said bluntly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It should be here any minute soon. In terms of timing, it will probably get here faster than an ambulance would, even an ambulance with its sirens going.’
In the midst of trying to process what sounded like complete gibberish to her, Brianna heard the distant sound of an overhead aircraft. Landing would be no problem. In fact, there couldn’t have been a better spot for an air ambulance to land. The noise grew louder and louder until it felt as though it would take the roof off the pub, and then there was a flurry of activity while she stood back, confused.
She became a mystified bystander as the professionals took over, their movements hurried and urgent, ferrying Bridget to the aircraft.
Then Leo turned to her. ‘You should come.’
Brianna looked at him in complete silence. ‘Leo...what’s going on?’ How had he managed to do that? Who on earth could arrange for someone to be airlifted to a hospital hundreds of, miles away? She had thought that maybe he had been in computers, but had he been in the medical field? Surely not. She was uneasily aware that there were great, big gaps in her knowledge about him but there was little time to think as she nodded and was hurried along to the waiting aircraft.
‘I don’t have any clothes.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘What do you mean, it’s not a problem?’
‘We haven’t got time to debate this. Let’s go.’
Brianna’s head was full of so many questions, yet something in her resisted asking any of them. Instead she said weakly, as they were lifted noisily into the air and the aircraft swung sharply away, leaving the pub behind, ‘Do you think she’ll be all right?’ And then, with a tremulous laugh, because the detachment on his dark face filled her with a dreadful apprehension, ‘I guess this would make a fantastic scene in your book...’
Leo looked at her. She was huddled against him and her open, trusting face was shadowed with anxiety.
This was a relationship that was never going to last. They had both been aware of that from the very start. He had made the position perfectly clear. So, in terms of conscience, he was surely justified in thinking that his was completely clear? But it still took a great deal of effort to grit his teeth and not succumb to a wave of unedited, pure regret for what he knew now lay on the horizon. But this wasn’t the time to talk about any of this so he chose to ignore her quip about the book that was as fictitious as the Easter Bunny.
‘I think she’ll be fine but why take chances?’
‘Leo...’
‘We’ll be at the hospital very shortly, Brianna.’ He sighed deeply, pressed his thumbs against his eyes and then rested his head against the upright, uncomfortable seat. ‘We’ll talk once Bridget’s settled in hospital.’
Brianna shivered as he looked away to stare out of the window but she remained silent; then there wasn’t much time to do any thinking at all as everything seemed to happen at once and with impressive speed.
Once again she stood helplessly on the sidelines and watched as the machinery of the medical world took over. She had never seen anything like it and she was even more impressed at Leo’s handling of the situation, the way he just seemed to take charge, the way he knew exactly what to do and the way people appeared to listen to him in a way she instinctively knew they wouldn’t have to anyone else.
Like a spare part, she followed him into the hospital, which was more like a hotel than anything else, a hotel filled with doctors and nurses, somewhere designed to inspire confidence. The smallness of her life crowded her as she watched, nervously torn between wanting to get nearer to Bridget, who had now been established in a room of her own, and wanting to stay out of the way just in case she got mown down by the crisp efficiency of everyone bustling around their new patient.