A motorcyclist was slowing down, indicating that he wanted to turn right at a junction, and he had positioned himself in the centre of the road. All appeared to be well, except that in the background there was the aggressive, speeding drone of an oncoming car.
Sarah turned round fully to take a better look. On the brow of the hill, she saw that a driver of a black saloon was overtaking on a bend in the road, and he was heading straight for the motorcyclist. The woman who had been shouting was gesticulating now, miming a frantic warning, but Sarah was very much afraid that it had come too late.
At the last moment the man behind the wheel of the car seemed to realise what was about to happen. He wrenched the steering-wheel, swerving to the left as he tried to avoid the motorbike, but he was going too fast and it was clear to Sarah that his actions were too late.
She watched in horror as he hit the bike with the front wing of his car and then smashed into another driver who was innocently heading straight on in the left-hand lane of the road. The front of the black saloon crumpled like a concertina and the car that had been hit swung round violently.
Sarah ran towards the mangled cars and the bike, anxious to do what she could to help.
To her dismay, she saw that the motorcyclist was lying on his side, his leg trapped beneath the bulk of his motorcycle. He appeared to be unconscious, but after a swift check she discovered that his airway was clear and he was still breathing, albeit faintly.
Instinctively, she reached for her phone. ‘Emergency services—I need an ambulance,’ she said, her breath coming in short gasps as she realised the enormity of the situation.
‘Will you help me to lift the bike off him?’ Sarah flung the question at a man who had come to stare at the devastation all around.
‘Of course.’ Together they freed the young man from the weight of the vehicle that was trapping him, and Sarah knelt down to check him over more thoroughly.
The woman who had been shouting earlier appeared to be in a panic, flapping her arms wildly and running about as though she was unsure what to do next.
‘Do you think you could try to stop the oncoming traffic?’ Sarah suggested briefly. She could see that the biker had a thigh wound, with blood seeping through his jeans, and now she laid the heel of her hand on to his thigh and applied pressure. ‘Perhaps you could position yourself over the brow of the hill to stop anyone from coming any closer,’ she told the woman, ‘but make sure that you stay on the pavement.’
The woman nodded, and Sarah guessed she was glad to be able to do something useful. The man who had assisted her must have decided that was the best option, too, because he went with the woman, saying, ‘You take the near side to the brow of the hill, and I’ll go further along, to slow them down.’
Another man was already heading across the far side of the road to halt the traffic there.
Sarah took off her light cotton jacket and folded it up, making it into a tight wad. Then she whipped the leather belt from the waistband of her jeans and used it to strap the wad in place over the man’s thigh, close to the source of bleeding.
After that, she hurried over to the other two vehicles and she quickly checked the condition of the drivers. The man who had caused the accident was still sitting upright in the driver’s seat, looking dazed, and when she spoke to him he said in a thready voice, ‘What have I done? I didn’t realise…’
‘Don’t worry about that for the moment,’ Sarah said. It seemed that his air bag had failed to deploy fully, and his leg was trapped by crumpled metal. ‘Are you hurt? I’ve called for an ambulance. Is there anywhere in particular that’s causing you pain?’
‘My leg,’ he said, and then added in a shaky tone, ‘I’ll be all right. Will you go and see to the others?’
Sarah nodded. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t try to move.’
The driver of the other car was clutching his chest and his breathing was rapid and gasping. He was complaining of back pain, but his whole body was trembling, and Sarah guessed that he had gone into a state of shock. She stayed with him for a moment or two, trying to calm him and reassure him that he would receive medical attention soon.
It worried her that she had to leave the drivers, but her main concern had to be the young man who was lying in the road. He had been bleeding profusely from his leg wound, and she didn’t know whether her attempt to stem the flow would be sufficient. She went back to him and saw that the pressure pad she had put in place was soaked with blood. The only comfort she could take was that at least he was still breathing.
It was a relief, some time later, to hear the sound of the ambulance siren in the distance, and to know that help was on its way at last. She felt out of her depth, but she knew that these people needed to be taken to hospital at the earliest opportunity. She got to her feet.
The woman who had been stopping the traffic came to stand beside her. ‘The police have arrived,’ she said. ‘They’re setting up cones to keep the area clear.’
‘That’s good.’ The woman was much calmer now, and Sarah guessed that she would be able to give a good account to the police of what had happened.
She waited beside the motorcyclist as a paramedic walked towards him and knelt down. He tried to talk to him, but there was no response, and so he looked up at Sarah. ‘Do you know if he has been unconscious the whole time?’
‘Yes, he has.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘The two drivers were both conscious when I went to look at them. One seems to have a chest injury and is struggling to breathe, and the other is complaining of leg pain.’
‘Thanks. Perhaps you’d like to show my colleague the one with the chest pain.’ He nodded towards a second paramedic who was emerging from the ambulance.
Sarah did as he’d asked, and when she was satisfied that both drivers had been assessed and the man with chest pain was being attended to she went back to the driver who had caused the pile-up and tried to reassure him that help was on the way.
By this time a second ambulance had arrived, along with a fast-response car, and more emergency practitioners began to come forward.
Feeling a trifle redundant by now, Sarah went to see how the motorcyclist was doing. The paramedic she had spoken to earlier was working side by side with someone else now, a dark- haired man who was wearing the outfit of an emergency doctor.
Sarah looked him over. Something about this man caught her attention, but she couldn’t quite make up her mind what it was that was bothering her. He was kneeling down, but his demeanour was striking in that every move he made was decisive and self-assured. There was no hesitation, no doubting what needed to be done.
‘As soon as I’ve finished intubating him, we’ll splint that fractured limb,’ he said. ‘Once that’s done we can safely transfer him to the spinal board.’
Sarah felt the hairs prickle along the back of her neck. That voice was all too familiar, and she must have inadvertently let out a breathy sigh of recognition because the man shifted his head a fraction to look up at her. He frowned.
Sarah blinked. What was Ben doing here? Was this his job, working for the emergency services? Or was he based at the local hospital? The questions were on the tip of her tongue, but she stayed silent, because right now she didn’t want to distract him or in any way impede the work he was doing.
For a few seconds he held her gaze and the atmosphere seemed to be filled with tension.
‘It must be something in the air,’ he murmured. ‘We seem fated to meet under unusual circumstances.’ Then, almost as though that strange collision of minds had never happened, he simply turned away and continued attending to his patient.
It was only when the intubation was completed and the man was receiving life-giving oxygen that Ben looked