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CHAPTER ONE
‘I CAN’T believe you f-found me. I’m s-so cold, Meg. Are we going to d-die?’
The boy’s words were barely audible above the angry shriek of the wind and although she’d been standing still for less than two minutes, Meg could feel the icy fingers of cold reaching inside the padded layers of her high-performance jacket.
Normally she would have relished the opportunity to pit her wits against the vicious weather, but she hadn’t planned on doing it with a badly injured teenager.
‘We’re not going to die, Harry. I can’t possibly die yet because I haven’t done any of my Christmas shopping…’ She raised her voice so that he could hear her, knowing he needed reassurance almost as much as he needed emergency medical care. ‘And there’s a lump of mouldy cheese in my fridge I keep meaning to throw away. If my mum finds that, she’ll kill me, so we need to get back home as soon as we can.’ Ignoring the voice in her head reminding her that the wind chill decreased the temperature to minus fifteen and that the teenager had nasty injuries, Meg tore open the top of her backpack and dragged out the equipment she needed. ‘I’ve called the rest of the mountain rescue team. They’re on their way. In the meantime, I’m going to get you out of this wind and keep you warm.’ As if challenging that promise, the wind gave a furious howl and buffeted her body. She reached out and steadied herself with her gloved hand, putting her body between the wind and the boy.
Behind them were snow-covered layers of jagged rock and beneath them the side of the mountain fell away into a deep ravine where icy water formed a death trap, waiting to finish off what the rocks and the wind had started.
Meg pulled the collar of her jacket over her mouth and tried to catch her breath, ignoring the nagging worry that it was going to be impossible to evacuate him from this treacherous site with the wind so high.
Her priority had to be shelter. The rest could wait. If she didn’t get him out of this biting wind in the next few minutes, there wouldn’t be anyone alive to rescue.
She gave a whistle and Rambo, her German shepherd search-and-rescue dog, nosed his way over to the boy and sat in front of him, offering still more protection from the wind while Meg found what she needed.
‘Right, Harry, prepare for luxury.’ She shouted to make herself heard. ‘What we need now is a nice, warm living room with a roaring log fire and a pretty Christmas tree, but this is the best I can do at short notice.’ She flipped the portable tent she’d removed from her backpack and for a terrifying moment the wind caught it and almost pulled her off her feet. ‘Oh, for… I need to eat more chocolate. I’m not heavy enough.’ As she felt her feet lift off the snow, Meg yanked the fabric hard and managed to anchor it. Within seconds she and the injured boy were inside. ‘Unfortunately no log fire and no Christmas tree,’ she panted, brushing the snow away from her face, ‘but this is better than nothing. All right, now I can look at you. What have you been doing to yourself, Harry? You look like an extra from a cheap horror movie.’
It was worse than she’d thought. In the fading light she could see the wicked gash on his head and the purple bruising spreading across his skin.
Harry lifted his bloodied hand to his head. ‘Is it bad?’
‘I’ve seen worse.’
‘But you work in the emergency department, so that’s not much comfort. You see people with half their bodies missing.’
‘You’re going to be fine, Harry.’ Meg pulled off her glove and undid the straps of her backpack. ‘You’re going to have a bit of a headache tomorrow, but it’s nothing that a few days in bed won’t solve.’ She kept her voice matter-of-fact, but she was listening to his responses, watching for any signs of confusion or disorientation as a result of the head injury. ‘Were you knocked out?’
‘I—I think so.’
‘Do you know what day of the week it is?’
‘Yes, it’s Sunday,’ he mumbled, ‘and I’m going to be in a shit load of trouble for going out into the mountains.’
‘Harry Baxter, you are not supposed to swear in public.’
He closed his eyes and leaned back against her backpack. ‘Aren’t you going to yell at me and ask me what I thought I was doing, coming up here on my own?’
Aware that hypothermia could kill him long before the head injury, Meg was busy covering him with extra layers. Another scarf. A coat. ‘That’s your mum’s line, sweetheart. Rambo and I just do the rescuing. We leave the lecturing to others.’
At the mention of his mother, Harry’s face went from white to grey. ‘She’s going to be worried sick. I told her I was only going out for an hour.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s part of being a mum. Goes with the territory.’ Meg examined the wound on his head, took a photograph with her
phone and then covered the injury with a sterile pad held in place with a bandage.
‘Why are you taking photographs of me?’
‘Because it will save the trauma team having to remove the dressing to see the wound. Just a precaution.’ In case he needed to be taken straight to Theatre.
The tent flapped against her and Meg pushed back against the fabric, relieved they had at least some protection from the raging blizzard. They weren’t exactly cosy, but at least they were out of the deadly wind. ‘When you’re a mum, you sign up for worry on a long-term basis. Someone on the MRT will have called her and told her we’ve found you. There’s not much else I can do for your head, so I’m going to take a look at this arm of yours now. Tell me what happened when you fell. Can you remember?’
‘I slipped on a patch of ice and fell over the edge of the gully. I remember falling and falling and then I smacked my head against a rock.’ The boy opened his eyes and looked at her dizzily. ‘When I woke up I had blood on my face and my wrist was a really funny shape. I could see the bone.’
Meg kept her expression neutral. ‘Right. Well, that’s something we’re going to need to fix. You can’t go around with a wrist that looks like that—you’ll gross everyone out.’
His face was a strange shade, now somewhere between white and grey. He clutched her arm with his good hand. ‘I thought I was going to die on my own here. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Rambo barking. You’re so cool, Meg. Dog-girl.’
Meg moved aside the extra layers and gently pulled up the sleeve of his jacket so that she could take a better look at his injuries. ‘Harry, when you’re a bit older you’ll realise that calling a woman “dog-girl” isn’t going to win you hearts.’ There was an obvious fracture of the bone, his wrist shaped like a dinner fork. ‘I don’t mind “wolf-girl” but I draw the line at “dog-girl”, if it’s all the same to you.’
