A Heartbeat Away (2 page)

B
en stood on the pavement, feeling suddenly conspicuous, wishing he had worn his usual long jogging pants instead of the stupid shorts that appeared so out of place on the busy street.

He hadn't intended to run farther than Fletcher Park. Whenever he came to London, he always stayed at the same select guesthouse, right next to the park. The massive treetops were the first thing he saw when he woke in the morning and he loved to get up and go for a run through the small oasis of countryside in the midst of the sprawling, heaving city, taking delight in the fact that at last he could. Two years ago he would hardly have even been able to walk that distance.

He hated the city, but there was something about the park. Oak and ash and sycamore trees, tall and stately, overlooked the passers-by today, as they must have for well over a century. Nannies pushing large black baby carriages, ladies dressed in rustling silks—he liked to think that the trees had towered majestically over them all, and it gave him a sense of stability somehow to pass beneath their imposing canopy, imagining the changes they had seen, and would still see no doubt.

Ill health had made him conscious of the fragility of his own mortality, and his single-minded fight back to fitness had made him self-aware and independent. A lonely figure in a bustling world, needing no one, asking for nothing, just living day-today in his quest for survival.

Today, for once, he had broken his routine and strayed beyond the peaceful haven of the park, out into the teeming throng of cold-eyed strangers. Gray faces, office suits, a crying toddler dragged along by a pink-faced young woman with tired eyes.

He half turned, back toward the comforting sea of green that beckoned through the park gates. But something made him hesitate, some intangible inner force. Where was the girl in the crimson suit now? She was the reason he had strayed from his normal routine, and still he didn't know why. He wasn't one for picking up strange women in parks—or women at all, for that matter—but with her it had seemed inevitable somehow. Something about her had pulled at him—the unexpected vulnerability in her wide gray eyes, those crazy shoes, that vivid crimson suit. Even now he smiled to himself as he imagined her running across the carpet of autumn leaves, high-heeled red sandals sliding, face glowing with something he couldn't quite place—a kind of joy, he supposed.

He scoured the pavement, frantically searching for a flash of red, and suddenly there she was, face averted from him and long dark hair blowing in the breeze as she waited on the edge of the pavement. A gap appeared in the traffic. She stepped off the curb, and Ben froze in his tracks as she hesitated, looking back. Her eyes, inevitably, met his.

For an endless moment the impatient sounds of the city disappeared into the background. A second, merely one second—that was all it was. One second that lasted a lifetime and changed his world forever.

The big black car appeared from nowhere, driving too fast around the corner, racing the lights. He yelled at her, gesturing madly, struggling to run with wooden legs. And then she saw it, too, her eyes wide with horror, her arms flailing helplessly as she tried to get away…too late.

Her eyes met his again in the moment before the vehicle struck. Before she was tossed aside like a discarded doll onto the cold wet street. And deep inside himself, Ben felt something snap, something irreparable.

Her scream cut through the hum of traffic, shattering the air, and for an endless moment the whole street froze. Horrified faces. Eyes wide with fear and confusion. A deathly hush as the young woman's slight, crimson-clad body crumpled before the onslaught of the shiny black BMW.

The sickening thud of its impact against her soft, sweet flesh drew a heartrending gasp from a hundred helpless, shocked observers. They watched her limp form hurtle sideways to bounce helplessly into the path of an old white minibus. Its ashen-faced driver stood on his brakes, but the cumbersome vehicle just squealed in protest as it slid relentlessly on. The driver spun the wheel in desperation and the bus slewed to one side, almost, but not quite, missing her fragile body as it slithered to a halt, while the black BMW accelerated down the street into anonymity, leaving its victim broken and bleeding on the ground.

Ben was the first to breach the awesome stillness. He ran on instinct, with no conscious thought other than to get through the gathering crowd to where she lay. A dozen drawn faces glanced around uneasily, wanting to act but unsure of their actions. When he reached her, Ben fell to his knees on the pavement, eyes riveted to her lovely, ashen face. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep, and a trickle of crimson, garishly matching her suit, ran down her cheek from her forehead, like a tear of blood.

Was she alive? Please let her be alive. His fingers fumbled for a pulse, then shook with relief as he felt a feather-like ripple. When it died suddenly, panic flooded his brain and he glanced around desperately. Surely there must be someone better qualified to help her. He met a sea of blank faces, all confident in his ability and relieved to be left as observers.

“Ambulance is on its way,” remarked a small, anxious-eyed woman. She held her arms securely across her ample stomach, withdrawing instantly from his pleading gaze. His trembling fingers moved once again to feel for that tiny flicker of life, but still there was nothing. He put his ear close against the girl's fragile face, listening, willing her to breathe, a sob rising in his throat as he remembered the vibrancy that had drawn him to her in the park a lifetime ago.

He had to do something, had to help her hang on. His mind whirled, searching for the knowledge that was once at his disposal. Airways, breathing, circulation. A vague recollection of a first-aid course he had attended years ago swam into his mind. Clear the airways—that was it. Breathing. Check the pulse. Administer CPR.

Gently he rolled her onto her back, easing her slight form without moving her spine, wincing at the open wound that ran across her forehead. He carefully lifted her head and made sure that her throat was clear. Then, drawing on the information that clung to the fog inside his brain, he knelt above her with a prayer on his lips and felt for the inverted vee at the center of her rib cage.

One…two…three…How many compressions to breaths was it? Three to two? Or was it five to two? The two was important; he remembered that. Releasing his fists, he placed his fingers below her jaw and tilted back her lovely face. Desperation overtook his soul as he placed his lips over hers and breathed, willing his own life into her lungs.

Time was a vacuum that sucked at his resources as he worked to help her cling to life. One, two, three, against her rib cage, and two gulps of precious air into her lungs, again and again and again, until he felt the sweat begin to drench his face and his muscles ache. In the distance he heard a siren, and as the ambulance's blue light flashed in his eyes, at last he felt the faintest heartbeat.

“She's still alive,” he yelled at the green-clad figure with the calm, confident face.

“Well done, mate. We'll take it from here.”

Firm hands assisted him to his feet. He stood drained and powerless as the ambulance crew moved with quiet efficiency. Cautiously lifting her broken body onto a stretcher. Inserting tubes and needles. Checking monitors. And all the time she stayed the same, pale-faced and silent as if already dead.

For Ben, it seemed like a dream. He had known the vibrant laughing girl for less than a half hour, but now she felt a part of his life, a part he didn't want to lose. When they carried the stretcher, he walked close beside it, unwilling to leave her. They laid the stretcher carefully into the waiting ambulance and he noticed a blue-uniformed police constable heading toward him, notepad at the ready and eyebrows drawn into a frown of concentration as he paused to talk to the lady with the ample build and the anxious eyes who nodded in Ben's direction. He turned away for one more glance at the motionless figure in the ambulance. They were closing the doors and he didn't even know the young woman's name.

“You coming, mate?”

There was an urgency in the paramedic's kind brown eyes as he motioned toward the half-closed door, and Ben acted on impulse, jumping up the step into the bright, antiseptic atmosphere. He saw the policeman start to hurry toward him as the door thudded shut, then the engine roared into life and the vehicle edged out into the street.

He sat motionless beside her, staring at her lifeless form, holding her limp fingers as the paramedics fought to sustain the fragile life that he had given her.

The older of the two men, the kind-eyed one, placed a hand sympathetically on his shoulder.

“You did good, mate,” he murmured. “She has chance now, thanks to you.” His partner, a dark-haired man in his early thirties, spoke without looking around.

“Your wife, is she?”

Ben shook his head.

“No, just a friend.”

Was that all she was—just a friend? Was she even that?

The eerie wail of the siren filled the morning air, and as the flashing blue light sped by, people stopped to watch and wonder, relieved that the crisis had nothing to do with them or theirs. Ben settled back to keep vigil over the girl in the crimson suit, willing her to hold on.

At the hospital, the distinctive smell hit him in the solar plexus. After all the hours and endless weeks he had spent in such places, he should be used to it, or maybe that was why the very atmosphere made him shake. But that was all in the distant past, and this wasn't about him. This was about saving the life of the first girl to attract his interest since…since forever.

He clung to her hand as they raced the trolley along a gleaming corridor. Figures in white gathered around, speaking insistently, yelling out instructions.

“Name! What's her name?”

At first it didn't register that the blond nurse was talking to him and he looked at her vacantly.

“Your girlfriend…”

She took his sleeve, twisting him to face her.

“What is her name? I need it for the records, you see.”

He shook his head helplessly. “I—I don't know her name. I just…”

The nurse smiled, her blue eyes shining warmly. “I heard what you did for her, and it wasn't
just
anything. Dennis told me.”

He eyed her vaguely, and she pointed toward the paramedic with the kind eyes.

“Dennis, over there, the one who was first on the scene. He said that you saved her life.”

Ben shrugged.

“Anyone would have,” he started to say.

The nurse grimaced.

“Don't you be too sure. Anyway, I must find out her name. Do you know where she lived—or worked, maybe?”

He suddenly remembered, “There's this.” He removed a tiny purse from his pocket. “I picked it up off the road after…when the paramedics were putting her onto the stretcher.”

The nurse smiled and took it from him, already prying it open.

“Thanks,” she said. “Now, why don't you go and get a coffee. There's a machine just down the corridor.”

Ben hesitated and she ushered him off.

“Don't worry. I'll keep you informed.”

 

Strong black coffee hit the bottom of his stomach with a jolt, scalding his throat on the way down. He raced back along the corridor, needlessly spilling coffee in his wake, burning his fingers. Ward B, the nurse had said. His eyes scoured the signs above his head. That was it over there.

The door was closed, but he saw movement behind the glass panel. He peered through a gap. A white-coated doctor blocked his view, and impatiently he moved along. And then all of a sudden, there she was. His heart flipped over. She lay as still as death itself, her face as white as alabaster and her softly closed eyelids a pale translucent blue, but the heart monitor danced and bleeped to prove that she really was alive. He sank onto a chair to wait, sipping the scalding coffee without noticing it burning his lips.

For half an hour he sat motionless, listening to the bleeping machine, hope rising with every minute that passed. When a staccato sound filtered into his head, he glanced up, alarm bells already ringing

A man was approaching, a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties, with a sharply chiseled, handsome face and swarthy suntanned skin. He wore an obviously expensive well-cut navy suit, pale blue shirt, dark blue, unobtrusive silk tie. His shiny black leather shoes clipped along the corridor with purposeful strides.

“I am looking for Lucy McTavish,” he announced in a voice used to commanding attention. “I believe she was admitted this morning after an accident.”

Ben felt his whole world abruptly tilt out of focus.
Lucy
—the name that haunted his dreams. A familiar surge of guilt stabbed before common sense kicked in, bringing everything back on track again. There must be hundreds of girls named Lucy living in the city. He spoke her name soundlessly, rolling it comfortably around his mouth as he had done so many times before. He liked the fact that this girl was called Lucy, too.

The man stopped beside him, waiting impatiently. His jaw was set, his expression blank and he kept glancing at his cell phone as if expecting it to ring at any moment. Ben stared, mesmerized. If this man really was with the girl in the crimson suit, then how could he remain so impassive? Why wasn't he running down the corridor, searching for her…screaming out her name?