‘Are my mates OK?’ Gaz asked.
‘Hold on there a second, and I’ll check with Seb,’ she said, and pulled Seb away from the car. ‘We need to get him out of there, fast. I’m not sure if we’re going to have time to get him cut out of the car.’
‘Bad haemorrhage?’
‘No, but probably crush syndrome.’
‘So the second we move him, he’s going to crash,’ Seb said.
‘We are not going to lose him,’ Alyssa said in a fierce whisper. ‘I’m going to try and keep him talking. He wants to know about his mates.’
‘Tell him that one of his mates was knocked out briefly so he needs to go in to be assessed, and the two in the back have whiplash and will be fine. I’ll check the lorry driver and I’ll be back.’
Alyssa went back to Gaz, who’d grown paler and more frightened. She held one of his hands. ‘OK. Seb says your mate in the front was knocked out, so we’ll check him over at the hospital. The two in the back have got whiplash but they’ll be fine—they just won’t be up to going clubbing or playing football for a couple of weeks. Seb’s checking the lorry driver, but he managed to get out of the lorry all right.’
‘Oh, God. He must be so mad with me.’
Yeah. And he’d be giving a statement to the police. So if Gaz had stolen the car and gone joy-riding, the police would throw the book at him. But that was the least of their worries right now. ‘It’s OK,’ she soothed. ‘The fire brigade is on its way and we’ll get you out of there.’
He shivered. ‘I’m cold.’
‘Hang on in there, Gaz. Do you want me to call your mum?’
‘I can’t reach my phone.’
‘It’s OK, I’ll use mine.’
‘I’m so scared,’ he whispered.
‘I know, love. I would be, too. But the lorry’s stable and it’s not going to fall on you, and the fire brigade will cut you out and lift the car off you. I’ve seen it lots of times before.’ And she’d coped as part of the trauma team in a major motorway pile-up. Several times. But this…this was different. It felt personal somehow. ‘Tell me your mum’s number and I’ll get her for you.’
But when Gaz had finished dictating the number and Alyssa had made the connection, the network message informed her that ‘this person’s mobile phone is switched off’.
‘She’s gone out, then,’ Gaz said. ‘Am I going to die?’
That depended on the crush injuries, but if she told him that, he’d panic. She needed to keep him as calm as possible. If he panicked, it would send his blood pressure up and cause more problems. ‘I hope not. How old are you, Gaz, twenty?’
‘Eighteen. Passed my test last week—first time,’ he added, with a hint of pride in his voice. ‘My old man bought me the car.’
So the lorry-driver had been wrong. Gaz wasn’t a joy-rider. Good. ‘Do you want me to call him, or is he with your mum?’
Gaz shook his head. ‘He doesn’t live with my mum. Never has. And he only bought me the car ’cause he thought it might stop her going on about the child support he owes her and never paid.’
Oh, yeah. She knew all about that one. A dad who didn’t give a damn and thought he could buy his way out of his responsibilities. Her teeth gritted.
‘I’m not going to walk again, am I?’ he asked.
‘Until we get you out of there, we can’t assess the damage,’ she hedged.
To her relief, before Gaz could ask the crunch question again—was he going to die?—the fire brigade arrived.
‘Don’t leave me,’ Gaz begged. ‘Please, don’t go.’
‘Of course I won’t. But I might have to get out of the way for a few minutes while they cut you out, OK?’
He nodded weakly. Seb had clearly briefed the fire brigade. When they asked her to move aside, she went over to where he was briefing the paramedics and gave them Gaz’s obs.
‘We’ve done all we can here,’ Seb said, when she’d finished.
Alyssa shook her head. ‘Gaz is panicking like hell. He asked me not to leave him. So I’m staying.’ She bit her lip. ‘As soon as they’re ready to take that car off him…’
‘Hey. There’s still a chance. A small one, but there’s still a chance.’
Not much of one, and they both knew it.
‘I said I’d get his mum for him.’ Alyssa hit the redial button on her phone. Ten seconds later, she cut the call. ‘Her phone’s still switched off.’ She turned to the paramedics. ‘The driver asked me to stay with him—he’s pretty scared. Can I go with you and hold his hand? It’ll help keep him calm. Plus, I’m a doctor in the ED at Docklands Memorial, so I can help out in the back as well.’
To her relief, they agreed.
‘I’ll meet you at the hospital and take you home,’ Seb said.
She shook her head. ‘Don’t put yourself out.’
‘Alyssa, don’t argue. I’m not going to see you stranded at the hospital or having to wait hours for a taxi.’
Both were distinct possibilities—possibilities she didn’t relish—so she wasn’t going to argue with him. ‘Thank you.’
She went over to the paramedics and held Gaz’s hand as they strapped him to a spinal board. They soothed him, but Alyssa had noticed the momentary tightening of their faces before they’d masked their expressions. They didn’t think he had much chance either.
‘I tried your mum again but couldn’t get her,’ she said softly.
‘If I d…If I don’t make it,’ he choked, ‘will you tell her I love her and I’m sorry?’
She forced the tears back. No time for emotion now: she had to be a professional. And if she told him the truth, what would it achieve? She’d just make his last few minutes as miserable as possible. ‘Sure, but you’ll be able to tell her yourself.’If she could get Gaz’s mum on the phone. ‘We’re getting you out of there.’
‘Will you go with me in the ambulance?’
‘Of course I will.’
And then it was the bit she was dreading. They lifted the car off Gaz, applied direct compression to his crushed legs and rushed him into the ambulance.
Seb finished giving his witness statement to the police, then climbed back into his car and drove to the hospital. Thank God he’d thought straight enough to ask which hospital they were going to rather than just assuming it was the nearest one.
He hadn’t planned tonight to be like this at all. It should have been fun, a night out, a good meal, and nothing more than that.
And the whole thing had turned into a nightmare. If they’d left five minutes sooner or five minutes later, Gaz and his mates wouldn’t have seen the E-type and behaved so stupidly. Probably egged each other on: Go on, Gaz, you can take it, give it some va-va-voom!
And Gaz wouldn’t be in the back of an ambulance right now with crushed legs—legs that might well have to be amputated.
If the kid even made it to the hospital.
Alyssa had been amazing. Cool, calm, collected and kind—she’d done all the right things in the right order. She hadn’t even worried about the fact that doctors’ professional indemnity insurance didn’t cover them at the scene of an accident, unless they were there on a shout as part of their job. And she’d cared enough to go with a frightened teenager in