‘My colleague’s a strong swimmer and he’s a doctor.’ Raina tried to calm the woman down. ‘And if he’s choking that means he’s breathing.’ The instinctive drowning response was a silent struggle, one that often didn’t alarm onlookers.
Raina looked around, trying to see how Alistair could get out of the water. The wash from boats travelling up and down the river was swelling against him, and he and the boy were in danger of being thrown against the river wall.
‘Hey!’ A pleasure boat was moored at a jetty nearby and she shouted at the top of her voice to the people on board. ‘Hey, there’s someone in the water...’
There was a scuffle of confusion on board the boat, and then a man ran to the railing, carrying a lifebelt. Throwing it into the water with as much force as he could, it landed with a splash, and Alistair started to swim towards it.
Raina ran for the jetty, clambering down the angled wooden ramp that led down to the craft. A man blocked her path.
‘I’m a doctor. Let me through.’ The man nodded, taking her arm and guiding her to where the boy was being lifted up onto the deck and laid down on a folded fire blanket. Alistair was still in the water and she barely had time to glance in his direction before the child claimed her attention.
A policeman had arrived on the scene and was shepherding the boy’s mother towards them. The boy started to cry when he saw her, reaching for her. ‘It’s all right, Jamie. Let the doctor take a look at you.’ The woman took hold of his hand.
He’d had a shock, and he’d obviously swallowed some water, which wasn’t good. But he was breathing and seemed alert, despite the bump on the back of his head. Raina examined him as well as she could, and then sat back on her heels, looking up at the policeman.
‘He seems okay, but he’ll need to be checked over at the hospital.’ The policeman nodded, taking his radio from its clip and speaking into it.
‘Will he be all right?’ Jamie’s mother caught hold of her sleeve, an imploring look in her eyes. Raina had seen that look so many times before, but hadn’t really understood the agony behind it until she’d become a mother to Anya.
‘He’s breathing, and he’s safe.’ Raina started with the good news. ‘But I want that bump on his head looked at. The doctors will be checking to see if there’s any water in his lungs, and they’ll have to clean any cuts very carefully to avoid infection.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ Jamie’s mother held his hand while Raina wrapped blankets around him that the pleasure boat’s crew had brought. She could hear the sound of a siren, and it seemed that they were in luck and the ambulance would be here soon.
As soon as she’d handed over to the ambulance crew, Raina looked for Alistair. She found him, sitting further along the deck, his arms resting on his knees and his head bowed. Someone had brought him a blanket and it lay draped across his shoulders. As Raina reached to pull it around him, he looked up.
There had been a time when she’d lived for the smile that flickered across his face and the golden heat of his eyes. Right now that time seemed much closer than she’d thought it would ever be again.
‘Hi, there. Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay. How’s the boy?’
Raina glanced across, and saw Jamie clinging to his mother, responding to the ambulance crew’s questions. ‘He doesn’t seem too much the worse for wear. But he needs to be seen at the hospital.’
Alistair nodded. He knew that Jamie was at risk from all kinds of infections from the dirty water, and that dry drowning could occur hours after a child was pulled from the water and seemed fully recovered from the experience. Not to mention the possibility of a concussion.
‘The ambulance crew are dealing with it?’ He was cupping his hand over his ear as if checking exactly how much he could hear.
‘Yes, they’ve got everything under control. They know exactly what the situation is and what the doctors need to look for. Is there something wrong with your ears?’
He shook his head. Something was wrong and it was more than just being wet through and covered in grime from the river. Raina wanted to reach out and hug him for his bravery, and then find out what the matter was and make it right. Instead, she pulled a paper handkerchief from her bag, dabbing at a small cut beside his left eye.
‘Don’t, Raina.’ His tone wasn’t unkind but he shied away from her impatiently. ‘It’s all right...’
‘So Jamie’s at risk of infection from the dirty water but you’re not. What are you, Dr Invincible?’
Raina bit her lip. That joke belonged to a time when they had been married. It didn’t sound half as apt now they were divorced. But seeing him like this... It awakened every protective instinct she had and it was killing her that Alistair wouldn’t take any help from her.
It was Alistair all over, though. When things had got tough when she’d become pregnant and then lost the baby, he’d shut down. When all Raina had wanted him to do was to share his feelings, when she’d wanted him to feel the same wild grief as she had, he’d pushed her away.
She swallowed hard. That had been then, and this was now. She was a doctor, and she had someone who might be hurt sitting right in front of her. That justified her professional concern.
Suddenly she could think clearly again. Put all the little pieces of the puzzle together to make a place to start. She turned her head away from him, speaking clearly.
‘You can’t hear, can you?’
‘What was that?’ Alistair frowned impatiently.
‘I said...’ She faced him squarely. ‘You can’t hear. Can you, Alistair?’
* * *
So much for thinking that he’d been doing a pretty good job in covering up. If he hadn’t been wet through and shivering from the shock of seeing young Jamie plunge into the water when he’d just been a hair’s breadth away from reaching him, Alistair might have been able to brush the question off. But right now he wanted someone to know.
Not just someone. He could have told the man who’d helped him out of the water and gone to fetch the blanket, but he’d had no inclination to do so. He wanted Raina to know. He wanted that sweet, dark-eyed concern that made his heart lurch.
‘It’s...it’s not a result of being in the water. It’s a pre-existing condition.’ Maybe if he kept this professional, he could ignore the tingle in his fingertips. The urge to have Raina kiss away all of his aches and pains, and all of the fears for a future that was anything but silent but which contained too much white noise to make any sense of what he did hear.
She gave him a searching look. ‘And I’d be right in saying you’ve seen someone about this?’
‘Yes, you would.’ However much he wanted her to stop caring, he felt it warm him. ‘I went to get it checked out as soon as it happened.’
He could almost see the cogs turning in Raina’s brain. As they did so, a look of determination crept across her face. ‘It’s none of my business...’
Then he’d make it her business. The urge to tell her was fast overcoming the feeling that he didn’t want to betray what seemed to him to be a weakness.
‘It’s SSHL.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Almost exactly two months ago. I felt a bit of pressure in my ear and thought I might have a cold. Then I heard a pop, and realised I was completely deaf in my left ear. My hearing’s impaired in my right ear but it’s not as bad. I’ve had all the tests and there’s nothing else wrong...’ Just that he was deaf. That was wrong with him, although