‘So you grew up in Dundee?’

  ‘I did. With my older sister, Ella, and my two brothers.’

  ‘Older or younger brothers?’

  ‘Well, technically, they’re both older than me but only by a few minutes. We’re triplets.’

  ‘No way...’ Even Jodie had been startled by that information and the curiosity in her eyes as she glanced up from her paperwork made Eddie notice their colour properly for the first time. Her eyes were brown but a much lighter shade than his own. A kind of milk chocolate sort of brown. The same warm colour of those freckles, in fact.

  Nice...

  ‘So you got cloned before you were even born.’ Alex looked impressed.

  ‘We’re not identical. Ella’s dad died when she was a baby and our mum got married again when Ella was about six years old. She and Dad wanted a baby of their own but nothing was happening so they tried IVF. Didn’t work the first time with two eggs so they talked their doctor into chucking another one in on the next round for luck.’

  ‘And they got three of you?’ Gus was grinning. ‘Your poor mother.’

  ‘Ella was eight by then so she was like a second mum to us.’ He made a face. ‘I think it might have put her off ever having her own kids.’

  ‘What was it like?’ Jodie sounded still curious. ‘I had friends at school who were twins and I always thought that was special. You’re the first triplet I’ve ever met.’

  Eddie rather liked the way she was looking at him as if he could possibly be something special himself. He wanted Jodie to like him, he realised. So he held her gaze for a heartbeat longer as he gave her the smile that he had every reason to believe made women melt at least a little.

  ‘We were a pretty wild little pack by all accounts. Ella loves telling the story of how we nicked Mum’s nail scissors and gave each other haircuts when we were about three years old. She says we thought the whole escapade was even more hilarious when she told us it looked like someone had run over our heads with a lawnmower.’

  Jodie didn’t return the smile. ‘At least you didn’t come back from Australia with a mullet.’

  She went back to her paperwork, having dismissed his childhood reminiscence. It was definitely time Eddie stopped talking about himself and it was clearly far too soon to expect to hear any snippets of his senior paramedic partner’s early years.

  She wasn’t being unfriendly despite not smiling back. And he hadn’t found anything to account for that niggling disquiet about her during their work together so far today.

  Jodie Sinclair was just as competent as Gus and Alex. She was focused, quick but efficient, and seemed to be following protocols to the letter so automatically that it was easy to work with her. Not that they’d faced any particularly challenging missions so far—two interhospital transfers, a man with an evolving myocardial infarct who needed urgent treatment that a rural clinic couldn’t provide and a car accident that had ended up not needing the skills of the air rescue crew for the minor to moderate injuries involved.

  Not that Eddie had any concerns about how this crew would respond to a serious event. Not at all. He was looking forward to being part of such a call-out, in fact. It was just that...

  ...that something was still bothering him. Nothing he could put his finger on, exactly, but it was there at the back of his mind. An unknown. Perhaps it was because of a natural wariness on both sides as to how this crew would gel when they were tested with more than simply routine work. Or maybe it was a leftover antipathy from early this morning to the way he’d heard her talking about hurling herself off mountains. She might be winning some trust on a professional level but, personally—despite that curiosity about his own upbringing as a triplet, she was still a stranger.

  Maybe his disquiet was due to the fact that what was bothering him felt like a warning of some kind.

  One that went up a notch, for some reason, when the call he’d been hoping for came through just after their lunch break.

  ‘It’s near Fort William,’ Dion told them, coming into the staffroom as their pagers were sounding. ‘Closer to Glasgow than us, but currently we’re the only chopper available. A mountain rescue team has been activated but it’s going to take them some time to get to the scene. Sounds like the access is going to be a wee bit gnarly.’

  The crew were already moving—heading for the staircase that led down to the hangar, their boots clattering on the steel treads.

  ‘Mountain biker,’ Alex relayed, managing to read a screen as he kept moving. ‘Hit a log on a downhill run and went headfirst over the handlebars.’

  ‘Head, neck and chest injuries.’ Jodie was first into the cabin of the helicopter and clicking her harness into place as Eddie climbed in after her.

  ‘Have we got a GCS?’ he asked.

  ‘Apparently fifteen,’ Jodie responded. ‘Conscious and alert. The other rider with her is making sure she’s not moving but she’s in a lot of pain.’ She fastened the strap of her helmet. ‘Gus? What’s our ETA?’

  ‘Twenty minutes flight time or thereabouts.’ Their pilot’s voice was loud and clear in the helmet’s inbuilt headphones. ‘But we can’t know your ETA to the patient until we have a look at what the access is like. I’ve been in the area before and winching you in might not be an option, given the tree cover and the wind gusts we’re getting today.’

  Twenty minutes was more than enough time to remind himself of everything important Eddie had learned or dealt with when it came to potential head, chest and neck injuries. He knew they would have to check carefully for any major trauma and that anything compromising the airway or circulation took precedence over a potential spinal injury. He knew the whole raft of interventions and drugs that could be used to stabilise the patient enough to move them to the nearest major trauma unit in a tertiary hospital. He knew how to ensure the patient was appropriately immobilised, positioned and protected from any secondary injuries for that transport.

  But this felt completely different to any other call he’d had to an accident like this.

  Because of Mick.

  Because he now had personal experience of just how life-changing an accident like this could be. Eddie had always been aware of the weight of responsibility that came with the job he did. Aware of the power he had to change the course of the rest of someone’s life. Or even save that life. But this was the first possible spinal injury he would be assessing since Mick’s accident and that awareness was so acute, his adrenaline levels were high enough to be making his heart speed up and his mouth feel dry.

  As if he was nervous?

  It didn’t help that the glance Jodie gave him suggested that she’d picked up on the tension he was feeling. Eddie knew she would be assessing every action of his along with her assessment of the scene and their patient. Nobody wanted a nervous crew partner. It also didn’t help that, as they circled the GPS co-ordinates they’d been given, it became apparent that Gus had been correct. There was no obvious place to land close to the scene and the tree cover on the steep hill was so dense it took some time to even catch a glimpse of the high vis vests the mountain bikers were wearing. A winch operation was well out of any safety boundaries.

  ‘There’s a clearing beside that hut on the summit,’ Gus pointed out. ‘I can land us there but you’re going to have to carry your gear down the track from there.’

  ‘The mountain rescue team are already on the track heading uphill,’ Alex added. ‘They’re carrying a basket stretcher which will make it easier to carry her back up.’

  The on-board portable stretcher was one less thing the crew needed to carry downhill, but they were approaching a patient who’d had a significant mechanism of injury and whose condition could well have deteriorated since their last update. They had to carry a life pack and oxygen, equipment to deal with any serious airway or breathing issues from an intubation kit to a suction device and a portable ventilation unit, as well as many other items, including IV gear, drugs, tourniquets, splints and dressings. Gus would be staying with the helicopter but there were packs for each of the others to carry and it didn’t escape Eddie’s notice that Jodie reached to pick up the largest one.

  ‘I can take that,’ he said.

  Her quick glance told him the offer was neither needed nor welcome. She slipped her arms through the straps and had clipped the belt buckle into place by the time Eddie and Alex had gathered the rest of the gear and then led the way towards the track opening from the clearing, with a quick look over her shoulder to make sure the men were keeping up with her.

  Eddie lengthened his stride.

  The real test had just begun, hadn’t it?

  * * *

  Jodie was watching her new colleague carefully but not overtly, with a sideways glance here and a look over her shoulder there when he might not expect it. Something had been bothering her ever since she’d noticed how tense he was on their flight to this scene, thanks to that bunched muscle in his jaw that told her he was gritting his teeth and the way his hand clenched into a fist when he wasn’t using his fingers to scroll through the information coming in on their tablets. She hadn’t considered him to be showing any nerves so far today, so what was so different about this job? Given his track record, he had to be experienced enough in being dispatched to a trauma case of unknown severity for it not to be a problem. Was his current level of tension because this was the first case that might demonstrate to his new colleagues just how good he really was at his job?

  If so, and he did have anything to worry about, Jodie wanted to know exactly what it was.

  After a sometimes slippery and unpleasantly steep descent on a few parts of this mountain biking trail, they had arrived at the scene of the accident and Jodie deliberately held back to let Eddie approach their patient first.

  The young woman was lying on her back amongst rocks on the side of the trail, covered with a coat and with a woollen jumper folded and tucked under her head. A young man wearing only a tee shirt was holding the helmet she was still wearing, to keep her head still. Eddie nodded at him but crouched low so that the woman could see his face.

  ‘Hey...’ The tone of his voice was as reassuring as a smile. ‘You’re Caitlin, yes?’

  ‘Y-yes...’

  ‘Sorry we took so long, sweetheart.’

  Ohh... Beneath that Crocodile Dundee casualness, as if they were just a bit late for a coffee date or something, Jodie could actually feel his sincerity. If he was acting, he’d nailed it well enough to win an Oscar. If she was in Caitlin’s position hearing those words and seeing his face that close to her own, she would feel as if she was the only person who mattered in the world in this moment.

  And what better way to feel when you were in pain and frightened and had no idea what was about to happen to you? Even if that was the only contribution Eddie was about to make to the management of this patient, making her feel that she was about to taken care of by someone who cared this much was priceless.

  ‘I’m Eddie,’ he was saying now. ‘And I’ve got Jodie and Alex with me. We’re going to look after you, okay?’

  ‘O-okay...’ Caitlin was shivering, despite the extra coat over her shoulders. And then she started crying. ‘It hurts...’

  ‘What’s hurting the most for you?’

  But Caitlin was dragging in a breath following a sob and couldn’t get any words out. Jodie could see that Eddie was doing a rapid assessment. He shone his pen torch across both eyes to check pupil size and reaction and moved the jacket covering Caitlin, gently unzipping the one she was wearing underneath, so he could watch the way her chest was moving as she breathed. He put his fingers on her wrist, checking for a pulse, and Jodie knew he was taking in her colour and heart rate, and an idea of how low her blood pressure might be at the same time as scanning the surrounding rocks for any evidence of blood loss.

  Jodie was doing the same thing as she was opening their packs and getting gear out. She nodded approvingly at Alex, who had also taken in the first impressions and was ripping open the package for a foil blanket. They had taken a while to get here and hypothermia was a risk factor. He had the vacuum mattress kit on the ground beside him as well, which was their best bit of equipment for moving a patient with suspected spinal injuries.

  ‘It’s her neck.’ It was Caitlin’s companion who answered for her when she just groaned again. ‘And I think she’s hurt her ribs because she said it hurt her to breathe and...and she’s going to be okay, isn’t she?’ His face was ashen. ‘She was going so fast when she hit that log and she landed on her head and just flipped over like a pancake and landed on these rocks. I’ve been too scared to let her move and...and it’s taken so long for you guys to get here.’

  ‘I know... I’m sorry. What’s your name, mate?’

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Good job keeping her warm and still, Ian. And getting help on the way. Was Caitlin knocked out by the fall?’

  ‘She was a bit out of it, but not really unconscious. Just groaning and stuff.’

  ‘You’re a friend of Caitlin’s?’

  ‘We’re getting married next year.’

  ‘Hey...’ Eddie was smiling again. ‘Congratulations. Caitlin? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Mmm...’ The sound was a stifled groan.

  ‘Can you squeeze my hand?’

  Eddie’s gaze flicked up to meet Jodie’s but she could see there was no movement at all in Caitlin’s hand as it lay completely limp inside his.

  But Eddie gave hers a squeeze. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get your helmet off now, very carefully, and we’re going to put a collar around your neck. I’m going to take care of your head so nothing moves that shouldn’t, but we do need to shift you a wee bit to get you off these rocks and onto something more comfortable while we find out properly what’s going on.’

  ‘No...’ Caitlin had tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Please don’t move me... It hurts...’

  ‘We’re going to take care of that pain for you right now, sweetheart. Are you allergic to anything that you know of?’

  ‘No...’

  ‘Are you on any medications at the moment or have any medical conditions we should know about?’

  ‘No...’

  Eddie got to his feet again. ‘Ian, I’m going to take your spot at Caitlin’s head there so I can look after her neck, but we’re going to need your help when we lift her off these rocks, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You go down by her feet so you can be ready to help lift in a minute or two. Jodie, can we get some pain relief on board for Caitlin, please? And, Alex, could you come and hold her head steady while I get this helmet off? Throw me a collar too, thanks.’

  Jodie slipped a cannula into a vein on Caitlin’s arm. If her blood pressure was as low as was indicated by how hard it was to feel her radial pulse, their patient was going to need more than IV pain relief. She would need fluids and drugs to maintain enough blood pressure to keep her spinal cord perfused.

  It was automatic to warn about the sharp scratch of the needle but her heart sank when it was obvious how little sensation Caitlin had in her upper limbs. It meant that her spinal injury was at a high level and, while it was impossible to know what the prognosis was when these signs could be due to something temporary like spinal shock, it was an ominous sign. It also meant they needed to keep a sharp eye on her breathing and it was an indication that intubation might well be necessary to look after her airway and keep her still enough during transport to avoid any additional damage when they couldn’t know how unstable a spinal fracture might be.

  Eddie had to be thinking about the same things, judging by how serious his face was as he directed everybody’s hand positions and issued instructions for how and when they moved, while he took responsibility for keeping her cervical spine in line with the rest of her spinal column as they did a log roll to get Caitlin onto the vacuum mattress that Alex had pumped air out of to make it a stiff board.

  ‘Up on the count of three,’ Eddie ordered. ‘One, two...three...’ He had his hands splayed on either side of Caitlin’s head to make sure her neck bones stayed in line with the rest of her spine as she was turned.

  Caitlin cried out in pain but, in her position controlling the shoulders, it was possible for Jodie to steady her body against her legs as she ran her fingers down her spine to check for any obvious deformities or painful areas. There was no bleeding that she could see. With Ian’s assistance they tucked the stiff mattress behind Caitlin and then it was time to turn her back again.

  ‘Down on the count of three.’ Eddie’s face was so focused it looked almost grim now. ‘One, two...three.’

  They could slide the mattress onto flat ground now, away from solid objects like smaller rocks that could cause problems. They let air back into the mattress so it could conform to her body shape and then took enough out for it to shrink and provide immobilisation support while they did a rapid but thorough primary survey, assessing breath sounds and chest movement more accurately and attaching monitoring equipment to get baseline measurements of blood pressure, oxygen saturation and heart rhythm.

  With that done, and the timely arrival of the mountain rescue team with their carrying power and expertise in navigating difficult terrain for an extrication, they were ready to take the remaining air out of the mattress and secure the straps which would provide the safest immobilisation and meant that Caitlin could be easily lifted into the basket stretcher the mountain rescue team was carrying. The high sides of the plastic basket and all the handholds were designed to help carry someone up steep terrain like this and having Caitlin cocooned in the vacuum mattress would make the switch to the helicopter’s stretcher seamless.