The Doctor's Engagement

‘The phone, Holl!’

Holly watched helplessly as he ran down the path towards the rocks as fast as he safely could, the other men close behind him. She knew exactly what he was going to do. The same thing Mark always did when someone was in trouble. Take control. She closed her eyes briefly and faced reality. Mark was going to go into the water after the boy and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

But she could get him help.

Her hands shaking, she rummaged in his rucksack until she found his phone, switching it on and dialling with difficulty as she watched the three men descend to the craggy rocks at the bottom of the cove.

Despite her panic, her A and E training took over and she gave the details to the emergency services quickly and calmly before reaching into the rucksack to see what else Mark carried. Did he have a first aid kit? Yes. She dragged it out and tucked it under her arm. Probably not much use but still...

Stumbling slightly in her haste, she started down the path, aware that one of the women was close behind her.

‘He’s a brave one, your young man,’ she said, and Holly felt her heart lurch. She didn’t want Mark to be brave. She wanted him to be alive, and she knew how many people had drowned going into cold water to save someone.

But Mark was sensible and experienced, she told herself firmly, gasping as her feet slipped on the steep path. He’d been sailing and swimming almost all his life and he knew the rules. He wouldn’t take risks. Would he?

As soon as she arrived at the rocks she could see that he was taking as few risks as possible, masterminding the rescue attempt with a cool confidence that made her relax slightly.

He’d attached the rope firmly to his waist and had made one of the other men responsible for holding the end so that he had an escape route if he got into difficulties himself.

The third man was busy following Mark’s orders, yelling to the other teenagers on the yachts not to go into the water after their friend.

‘No point in having to rescue more than one of them,’ he muttered to Holly as she picked her way over the rocks to his side.

Holly watched, her heart in her mouth, as Mark waded into the water and started to swim, working his way towards the boat with a steady crawl, a powerful stroke that soon closed the distance between him and the boat.

‘He’s a bloody good swimmer,’ one of the men muttered in awe, and Holly nodded, her heart thudding unevenly.

‘He is a good swimmer,’ she agreed in a husky voice, ‘but it isn’t always the swimming that counts. It’s the current and the cold. The cold can kill.’

And with that awful thought in her head, she stared anxiously across the mounting waves, watching as Mark swam up to one of the boats, his head barely visible as he spoke to the boys who were hanging over the side.

And then he disappeared under the water.

Holly tensed as she watched, telling herself that he knew what he was doing, that he was still attached to a rope.

And then she saw him surface and take several breaths before diving down again.

Four times he repeated the dive and finally, when she thought she couldn’t stand the tension any longer, he surfaced, holding the limp figure of the boy.

Gasping for breath, he tilted the boy’s head and started to swim back to shore with him, his movements hampered and slowed by the extra load.

The man next to Holly gathered up the slack in the rope and frowned slightly. ‘I wonder why he didn’t take him onto the boat?’

‘Vertical lift,’ Holly murmured, her eyes never leaving Mark as he struggled back towards them. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably in her chest and her whole body felt limp with fear. If anything happened to Mark—

‘What did you say?’ The man standing next to her was looking confused and she shook herself.

‘He doesn’t want to lift him vertically. You should always keep immersion victims horizontal if possible.’

The man steadied himself on the rocks and glanced at her. ‘And what happens if you don’t?’

Holly’s eyes were still on Mark as she delved in her brain for the answer. Why was it? She couldn’t concentrate when she was this worried... She tried to remember what she’d learned in A and E. Circum rescue collapse or something—yes, that was it.

‘You can get a catastrophic drop in arterial blood pressure,’ she told him, never looking away from Mark, ‘for lots of reasons. Hypothermia means that the heart muscle can’t work as well, and if you lift the patient vertically then the effects of gravity tend to increase pooling of the blood in the legs. There’s more, I think, but that’s all I can remember.’

That and the importance of warming a profoundly cold patient.

She snapped into action and searched Mark’s first-aid kit, hoping, hoping—