Georgie looked up to find the helicopter hovering dangerously close to the mountainside. Didn’t they realise the danger?
‘Tell them it’s too risky,’ she yelled back in to the radio. ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’
But to her astonishment a figure was already being lowered from the body of the aircraft. She held her breath as the figure swung perilously close to the rock face. Then he was beside her, still suspended. Dr Logan Harris. What kind of doctor was he? No other doctor she knew acted as winchman.
He held out a harness. The noise of the helicopter was too loud for her to make out what he was saying but the message was clear and there was no time to argue. The longer the helicopter stayed in the air, the greater the possibility of it crashing. Georgie slipped the harness over her head. Then she was being gripped around her waist by strong legs. She unhitched herself from her rope and seconds later they were swaying in the wind as the helicopter lifted them up and swung them away from the mountain. Looking up, she found brown eyes glinting down at her. Unbelievably, he was grinning. If she hadn’t known it was impossible, she would have swore he was enjoying himself.
A few terrifying minutes later and helping hands were reaching out, pulling them into the safety of the helicopter. For a moment, Georgie lay in a heap, just getting her breath. It wasn’t as bad in the helicopter as she had feared. She couldn’t see outside and she could almost make herself believe that they were on the ground.
‘You okay?’ Logan Harris was searching her face. ‘You looked in real trouble there for a moment.’
Well, that was one way of putting it. If Logan Harris and the crew of the helicopter hadn’t risked their lives to get her off the mountain, God only knew what would have happened. She hugged her legs to her chest as a wave of nausea washed over her. Now she was off the mountain, she couldn’t stop shaking.
‘By the way, this is Toby.’ Logan indicated the man who had helped them on board. Toby flicked his finger at his helmet in a brief salute. ‘We dropped Jack off at the bottom. The ambulance is going to take him to Fort William General. He’ll be there by now.’
‘What about Jack’s mother?’ She managed to force the words past numb lips.
Logan’s radio buzzed and he listened intently. Then he and Toby moved to the open door and scanned the ground.
‘What is it?’ Georgie asked.
‘A call just came in. The hospital’s managed to get some more information from the boy. Apparently his mother’s definitely still out here. No one has reported a woman looking for the boy.’
‘She must be hurt. Probably unconscious. There is no way she wouldn’t have noticed what was happening with her son otherwise. She would have phoned for help at the very least.’
Georgie glanced at her watch. ‘It’s been an hour since we got the call about the boy. That means the mother’s been out there for at least that time.’
She and Logan looked at each other. If the mother had a head injury, time was critical. Georgie didn’t want to think of the alternative.
Suddenly Toby pointed to something. Two figures on the ground were waving their jackets furiously. It could only mean one thing.
‘I see her,’ Logan said.
Georgie crept across to the open side of the helicopter. Once again a wave of vertigo slammed into her as she saw the ground far below. What was going on? This had never happened to her before. The thought of being in a small plane again nauseated her, but she’d hoped it would be different inside a helicopter. But there wasn’t time to think about that now. The crewman was pointing to a flat piece of ground not far from where a body lay in a crumpled heap.
‘We can land there,’ he said, and spoke into his radio.
Mist was already covering the tops of the mountains, snaking ever closer to where the woman lay. Time was of the essence. If the mist got any thicker, visibility would make everyone’s job much more difficult. It was even possible that the helicopter would have to leave and they’d have to attempt to get the victim to hospital on foot.
As soon as the helicopter touched down, Logan jumped out. Georgie ran after him, struggling to keep on her feet in the wind of the slowing rotors.
The climbers, a man and a woman, had stumbled across the inert form a few moments earlier. It was a good thing they had, as Jack’s mother must have fallen some distance and had come to rest almost underneath an enormous boulder. It was unlikely she would have been spotted from the air or that a rescue team on foot would have found her either. The passing climbers had covered her with jackets, but looked relieved to have help.
‘I don’t know what happened. I think she must have slipped on the scree and banged her head, but I can’t be sure. I can see blood underneath her head, but we didn’t want to move her,’ the female climber told Georgie and Logan.
Georgie dropped to her knees beside Logan and the injured woman. Logan was checking her face. ‘Her airway is fine and her breathing seems to be OK too,’ he told Georgie.
‘Hello,’ she shouted into the woman’s ear, while Logan was searching for a pulse. ‘Can you hear me? My name’s Georgie and I’m a nurse. There’s a doctor here too. We’re going to help you.’
There was no response. ‘Pulse is weak and rapid.’ Logan said. ‘Can you check her level of consciousness?’
Georgie pressed the woman’s fingernail firmly. She groaned softly and pulled her hand away slightly. Good. At least she was responding to pain.
A spreading red stain under the woman’s head made it obvious that, whatever other injuries she had, she had taken a nasty blow to her skull and possible brain injury would be the main concern. Georgie slipped on gloves and felt around the back of the unconscious woman’s head to feel the extent of the blow. Her fingertips came away sticky with blood, but it was hard to tell how badly she had cracked her skull.
Logan was feeling along the woman’s chest and abdomen, checking for other injuries. ‘Nothing obvious,’ he said. Georgie knew that didn’t mean that there wasn’t something going on internally, though. Only a full examination at a hospital could verify that.
The unconscious woman groaned softly. Logan whipped out the small torch from the medical bag he carried with him and shone the light in her eyes. Although the pupils responded, the left pupil was bigger than the right.
The woman needed to get to hospital—and fast. Her initial head injury was bad enough but if there was more swelling inside the skull, the pressure would build up, causing permanent brain damage, possibly even death.
‘Has she been conscious at all?’ Georgie asked the climbers.
They shook their heads. ‘Not since we got here.’
Georgie put her mouth to the mother’s ear. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ she said, unsure whether the woman could hear her. ‘Jack’s okay. He’s off the cliff and being checked over in hospital. But he’s going to be fine.’
Without knowing more, Georgie knew they had to suspect a spinal injury. The sooner the woman was in a specialist unit the better. An A and E nurse she might be, but working in a well-equipped unit was entirely different from being outdoors in dying light in the wilds of Scotland with a woman who shouldn’t be moved unnecessarily until a proper asessment had been made of her condition. Thank God there was a doctor with her who obviously knew what he was doing. It was a good thing too that the RAF helicopter was standing by. If it wasn’t here, they’d be in much greater difficulty than they already were. She looked up to see Toby returning with a stretcher.
‘We need to get this lady straight to the Glasgow City General’s neurosurgery unit as quickly as possible. If we take her to the Fort William General she’ll only have to be transferred to Glasgow later. It’ll