Suddenly, the sound of car brakes screeching and a woman’s scream filled the air, followed by a sickening thud.
‘Help! Someone help!’ The pleas came from the direction of the car park, and without consultation, Evan and Natasha instinctively headed towards the source, with Eddy trotting dutifully beside them.
‘What happened?’ Evan asked as he pushed his way through the gathering crowd.
There was a young woman lying on the ground, clearly in pain, with her young daughter crying beside her.
‘We’re doctors,’ Natasha added, so that people would let them through.
‘She ran in front of my car to grab the wee one. I hit the brakes but I think there’s some frost on the ground, and I skidded. Is she going to be OK?’ The driver of the car which had apparently hit the woman was standing beside his open car door, hands on his head, eyes like saucers, clearly distraught.
‘I’ve phoned an ambulance,’ someone shouted, letting them know help would be on the way.
Not that Evan or Natasha were going to leave the woman lying in pain without offering their assistance. Evan was already down beside her on the ground talking to her, reassuring her everything was going to be all right. Natasha trained her attention on the little girl standing nearby and kneeled down to talk to her.
‘Hey. My name’s Natasha, and this is Evan. We’re doctors and we’re going to take good care of your mum, OK?’
The child observed her warily with tear-filled eyes.
Eddy, perhaps sensing this was his cue, lay down on the ground between them. Natasha saw the flicker of interest on the little girl’s face and took it as an opening.
‘This is my dog, Eddy. Would you like to stroke him?’
A nod was quickly followed by lots of cuddles for an appreciative canine. With the injured woman’s daughter occupied, Natasha moved towards Evan. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Tony here has hit her head on the ground. I need to clean up some of the blood to see the injury. If you can stay with her, I’ll get my bag out of the car.’
As instructed, Natasha stayed with Tony, keeping an eye on the little girl and Eddy at the same time. ‘Can you tell me where else it hurts?’
‘Here.’ The woman put her hand on her hip.
‘OK. It’s possible that the impact might have caused a fracture or some internal damage, so we don’t want to move you in case it exacerbates the injury,’ Natasha informed her as calmly as possible.
‘Where’s Janey?’ The woman lifted her head to try to look around.
Natasha gently guided her head back down. ‘She’s safe. We need you to stay still. You’ve got a head injury but we can’t stabilise your neck until the ambulance gets here, so please don’t move.’
Evan returned with his bag and got straight to work cleaning the head wound. ‘There’s a deep laceration just at the temple here. I’ll clean it up and dress it to prevent any infection.’
‘There’s hip pain too,’ Natasha informed him.
Evan nodded. ‘We’ll let the paramedics know. They can X-ray the injury at the hospital. In the meantime, we’re going to keep you as comfortable as possible.’
He stripped off his jacket and covered Tony, presumably in an effort to prevent shock setting in. Natasha took some gauze and cotton wool from his bag and handed it to him once he’d cleaned the wound. As their fingers brushed, she looked up and caught his gaze. There was that increasingly familiar electricity when they touched, and her heart felt as though it had leapt into her throat.
Thankfully, the sound of sirens and the arrival of the ambulance interrupted the moment, refocusing both of them. Evan went to liaise with the paramedics, whilst Natasha stayed put to reassure their patient and her daughter.
‘You and Eddy to the rescue again.’ Evan smiled at her once they’d waved the ambulance away and the crowd had dispersed.
‘I think you did your bit too.’ Although his specialty was in burns, he’d been authoritative, and could easily run his own emergency department. It took a calm, confident, and sympathetic person to work in medicine. Evan was all of those things and more. Natasha would’ve been capable of dealing with the woman’s injuries by herself, but, as ever, Evan was that edifying presence for her. It was always nicer having him by her side than being on her own, and these days there was always that added spice to their interactions. Something which apparently wasn’t going away anytime soon.
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