Bachelor Cure. Marion Lennox
in the gloom.
‘He’s alive, Tess. Help me.’
‘Alive…’ Somehow Tess made her legs carry her over to where Mike was kneeling in the sand. ‘Oh, Mike, alive…’
Strop fell back. He’d been trained to do this. He wasn’t all stupid. When Mike’s voice hit a certain tense pitch, Strop knew enough to shove his butt down and wait.
‘How…? How…?’ Tess stared down.
‘He’s unconscious, Tess, but there’s a heartbeat. He’s so dry. Hell, feel his skin! His mouth is parched and his tongue is swollen. You’ll find a torch in my pack, and a saline pack.’ His hands were running over the old man as he spoke, moving with care and concern. ‘For him to have been here… He must have been here all this time!’
Tess was hauling Mike’s backpack from his shoulders and fumbling inside for a torch. The flashlight rested right on the top. She flicked it on and directed it down at her grandfather’s face.
The sight before her must be a dreadful shock, Mike thought grimly. Tess hadn’t seen her grandfather for ten years and Henry then would have been a vigorous seventy-three-year-old—healthy and strong and full of life.
Now… The eighty-three-year-old man lying on the sand seemed drained of everything. His skin was as white as alabaster under his tan, and it stretched across his old bones as if it were parchment. Henry’s eyes had sunk into their sockets and were staring sightlessly at the opposite wall. His cheeks were gaunt hollows and his lips were so dry they’d cracked, bled, half healed and cracked over and over again.
‘Find me a swab, Dr Westcott.’ Mike cast a glance up at Tess, hoping like hell she wouldn’t faint on him. His voice sliced across Tessa’s distress like a knife. ‘Tessa, you’re wasting time. I need a swab and then I need help to set up a saline drip. Fast. We haven’t found him to let him die now.’
‘Oh, Mike… He looks so dreadful.’ He looked like death!
But Tess didn’t intend fainting. She took a deep, steadying breath and somewhere in that breath she turned from a frightened grandchild into a competent doctor. The fact that this was her beloved grandpa was thrust aside. Henry was an emergency patient, dying under their hands.
‘What do you think—?’
‘He’s dehydrated,’ Mike snapped. ‘You just have to see his lips… If he’s lain here for days with no water… Everything else can wait, Tess, but we have to get fluids in.’
‘OK.’ She was already moving, sorting out swabs and syringes and tubing from Mike’s bag and handing them across in the dim torchlight.
Mike knew there were two people inside her head now. One was Tessa Westcott, scared-stiff granddaughter, and the other was Dr Westcott, efficient medical practicioner. For now, though, she was efficient and she was professional. The first lady had been sent outside for the duration to wring her hands in private. Henry needed Dr Westcott now, and so did Mike.
Two minutes later they had saline flowing. Mike had everything they needed in his backpack, and Tess found it, prepared it and handed it across at need as if she were in a properly equipped Casualty cubicle, rather than squatting in an ill-lit cave. Mike adjusted the saline to full flow. He took the stethoscope that Tess offered and held it to Henry’s chest—and then finally he sank back on his heels and looked across at her.
‘We have a massive chest infection here, and it’s no wonder after this long without attention,’ he told her. ‘There’s a mobile phone in my bag, Tess. Hand it to me and we’ll call in help. The ambulance boys will bring a stretcher in and carry him out.’
‘If it’s not too late…’
With everything they could do having now been done, it was time now for Dr Westcott to revert again to being just plain Tessa—and just plain scared. The theatre door had been opened and the relatives ushered in. Tess was now Tessa, the relative. She looked down at the man lying on the sand, and her face twisted. ‘Oh, Grandpa, don’t you dare die. Not when we’re so close…’
‘Don’t give up, Tess,’ Mike said roughly, putting a hand out and taking hers in a strong, hard grip. ‘He’s alive and that’s more than we hoped for. We’ve had a miracle. Let’s see if we can score another one.’ He gave her a tight, strained smile, and then turned to his phone.
He watched her sit and listen while he barked orders to unknown people at the end of the telephone link, and her hand stroked her grandfather’s face as she waited. That he’d been here for so long—alone. Her hand went down and gripped the fingers of her grandfather’s hand, willing life into his veins. By her side, Strop nosed forward and gave her spare hand a lick, and Tessa’s strained look eased, as though that one lick had been immeasurably—stupidly—comforting.
‘Grandpa… I’m here, Grandpa,’ she faltered. ‘It’s Tessa. I’ve come home.’
Mike’s eyes never left her face as he spoke into the phone. Home…It sounded right.
That was a crazy thought! This wasn’t Tessa’s home. She had no life here, and why such a thought had the power to jolt him he didn’t know. Tessa had nothing to do with this valley—nothing to do with him.
He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did he saw Tessa’s eyes widen as she stared down at Henry. He glanced down, and a muscle moved almost imperceptibly at the corner of Henry’s right eye.
‘Grandpa…’ She leaned closer, and Mike stared, unable to believe he’d seen the movement. He let the phone drop to his side. He wasn’t imagining it—Tess had seen the movement, too. He took Henry’s other hand.
‘Henry, it’s Mike Llewellyn here.’ He flashed an uncertain look at Tessa, unsure how she was reacting, and then he fixed all his concentration on Henry. ‘It’s Doc Llewellyn. You’re quite safe, Henry, and your granddaughter’s here, too. Tessa’s come all the way from the States to find you. We’ve been searching for days, but no one but Tessa knew where the cave was. Now we’ll stay with you until we can stretcher you out to hospital. You’re quite safe.’
Henry’s right eye fluttered open and he saw them.
His gaze wandered from Tess to Mike…and then back to Tess. It was clear that focussing was an enormous effort. There was confusion in his look. His left eye stayed closed, but the hand Tess was holding tightened convulsively.
Henry’s lips moved, ever so faintly, and Tess bent to hear.
‘Tess…’
The word was blurred to the point of being unintelligible, spoken through one side of his mouth and with a chest that rattled and wheezed and barely functioned, but they knew it for what it was. Tessa’s eyes filled with tears.
‘It’s really me, Grandpa,’ she murmured. ‘We’re here. Mike and I are here.’
‘Mike and I…’ It sounded good. It sounded reassuring, even to Mike’s ears.
‘Don’t worry, Grandpa,’ she said. ‘We’ll have you in hospital in no time.’
‘S-stay.’
‘I will.’ It was a vow, and suddenly, as she made it, Mike knew the vow she was making wasn’t a light one. She’d stay.
‘I’ll see that she stays, Mr Westcott,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
Now why on earth had he said that?
‘She’s gorgeous.’
‘Yes.’ There was no doubt in his mind just who they were talking about.
It was six in the morning. Mike had snatched a few short hours’ sleep, interrupted at two a.m. by a child with croup and at five by a drip which had packed up, and at six he hit the hospital kitchen for strong black coffee. Bill had arrived a few minutes earlier and the charge nurse was wrapping himself around a plate of porridge.