The Tortured Rebel (11 page)

He needed.
something
that might make him feel less at odds with his own life. Nothing was the same all right. His whole world was in chaos.

The only home base he had was going to be up for sale in the near future because Rick was moving on with his life and the perfect bachelor pad was no longer suitable. Jet could buy the warehouse himself, of course. It wasn’t as if
he
was going to need a family-type home.

But if he did that, there would be no good reason not to end up committing to a full-time job in the ED in Dunedin.

He’d be trapped.

His mates had partners now.

He’d be alone.

They hadn’t even understood what it had been like having to see Becca again.

‘She’s a helicopter pilot?’ Max had said. ‘Wow. Matt would be proud of her.’

She wasn’t just a skilled pilot. She was tough and courageous and feisty. Good grief … he was proud of her himself.

‘She still blames us, you know.
Me,
anyway.’

‘Nah …’ Rick had shaken his bald head in disagreement. ‘I don’t believe that. She knows we did everything we could. Did you tell her how much we still miss him? That we go on our anniversary ride every year to honour his memory?’

‘I told her that there was a baby named after him and she hit the roof. Said none of us had the right to have done that.’

The silence had been uncomfortable. Ellie had cuddled her baby and Jet had intercepted the look she’d exchanged with Max. They weren’t about to let Becca’s opinion undermine something so special to them. No one and nothing could diminish the bond they had.

The love in that glance had been the last straw.

The glue of absolute loyalty to the exclusion of anyone else that had held the ‘bad boys’ together as a unit for so many years had come unstuck. Rick had been unable to resist the pull back to the bone-marrow unit in the hospital, where Sarah and Josh were, a short time later, and it was then that Jet knew that he and Sarah would be sharing a similar kind of look.

He couldn’t shake the chill of feeling excluded. A tug back to a time when he’d been an outsider. When he’d first arrived at Greystones Grammar school. An angry teenage boy who’d had nothing he could count on in his life. To those days before the ‘bad boys’ had come into existence.

It was then he knew he had to get out of Dunedin. To leave with the breaking of a new day and see if enough
speed and distance might let him ride out the turbulence he had unexpectedly plunged into.

The heavy swell in the strait was great. Jet decided to leave his next beer until he got to his hotel in Wellington. It could be more than one, then. Maybe enough to let him get to sleep and not have his dreams filled with the taste and touch of a small, feisty helicopter pilot.

Finally. A job.

Becca was out the door and onto the helipad almost by the time her pager had finished buzzing. She was halfway through her pre-flight checks by the time her paramedic crew came running to climb on board.

She hadn’t even waited to get all the details of the mission. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Coromandel peninsula.’ Tom, the senior medic, was in the passenger seat beside her. ‘A lookout on a hill near Cathedral Cove.’

‘Cool. One of my favourite places in the world.’ Becca programmed the GPS with a few, deft movements.

Her glance sideways was brief. It was a good thing that Tom was wearing the bright, red flight suit of the rescue service. If he’d been sitting there dressed in black from head to toe, it might have been a lot harder to focus.

‘What are we going to?’

‘Status-one patient. Under CPR.’ Ben, the second crew member, was in the back, buckling himself into the seat. ‘Sudden collapse. Thirty-nine-year-old woman.’

‘Good grief!’ Becca had the rotors turning now, picking up speed nicely. She reached to flick a switch on the communication panel. ‘Flight zero three three, bound
for the east coast of the Coromandel peninsula. Request clearance for take-off.’

The control tower responded immediately. ‘Zero three three, you have clearance. Vector two.’

‘Roger.’ Becca lifted the chopper and used the designated air corridor to clear airport space. This wasn’t going to be a long job but it was a beautiful day for flying and they were, hopefully, off to save the life of a person who was far too young to be having a cardiac arrest.

That she would get to test this new machine over her favourite country was a bonus. She loved the forests and beaches of this peninsula and the jagged mountain range often provided a bit of fun with weather and wind conditions.

Things were looking up. This was exactly what she needed to be doing instead of sitting around thinking far too much about things she couldn’t do anything to change.

‘I like it,’ she announced, with a grin, a minute or two later.

‘What? Being back at work?’

‘That, too, but I was talking about this baby. He handles like a dream.’

‘She,’
Tom corrected, rolling his eyes. ‘There are some rules that can’t be broken, Bec.’

‘Just as well you’ve never played Snakes and Ladders with me,’ Becca muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And just while we’re on the subject of rules, Ben and I have made a new one.’

‘And that is?’

‘No uncontrolled landings while we’re on board. Particularly when seawater might be involved. We don’t want to get wet, OK?’

‘No worries, mate. Been there, done that. Once was enough.’

More than enough. Not that Becca was about to admit it to anyone but her heart had skipped a beat or two on take-off that couldn’t be attributed to the excitement or satisfaction of finally being given an urgent job to do.

Yes. There was a new thread of tension to be found in her career now. An awareness of just what it was like when things went terribly wrong.

It wasn’t a bad thing. It might make her a much better pilot because she would be a little more cautious and make sure she was keeping everybody safe. She would certainly think at least twice before she ignored instructions from her boss or anyone else who might have a better handle on the level of danger she was in.

That crash might never have happened in the first place if she hadn’t had Jet beside her. Encouraging her to court danger because he was on exactly the same wavelength as she was. Becca sucked in a breath as she remembered those dark eyes gleaming with approval at her decision to flout authority and keep going.

They were way too alike. Bad for each other.

So, along with her new caution, it wasn’t a bad thing that they were so apart now.

So why did it feel so…
wrong?

Becca swallowed hard. Dipped her head as she turned to find distraction. ‘Look at that …’

They were over the craggy landscape of the Coromandel Ranges already. The radio message that came through was an update for the paramedics.

‘Ambulance on scene. Patient in asystole. CPR has now been in progress for sixty-five minutes and may be about to be terminated. There’s a doctor on scene, as well.’

‘Roger that.’ Tom’s tone was terse. Sixty-five minutes of CPR was unsurvivable. Especially if a doctor was present. Anything that could have been done in the way of drug therapy and defibrillation and intubation would have already been attempted. Was the mission about to be called off?

There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the transmission, as though the comms officer wasn’t sure the next information would be welcome.

‘The doctor is the husband of the patient.’

‘Roger that,’ Tom repeated.

Becca saw the glance he exchanged with Ben. There was no reason for them to continue when there was nothing they would be able to do. But there was a doctor there. A husband of a young woman who wasn’t going to make it. If nothing else, their presence would be a courtesy for someone in the same profession.

‘What’s your ETA?’

‘Less than five minutes.’

That clinched it. They were not ordered to return to base.

The location appeared deserted as they hovered over it a few minutes later. They could see the ambulance but its back doors were closed and there were no people to be seen. There wasn’t even another vehicle in this small car park that was positioned to enjoy one of the most spectacular views you would find anywhere on earth.

There was just enough room to bring the helicopter down beside the ambulance. Becca landed, pointing
forward, aware of how little space there was between the machine and a fence that kept people from going too close to the sheer cliff in front of them. Far below was the extraordinary blue of the sea and the irregular, green lumps of many islands. Turning her head to the side, she got a glimpse of the beach that was only accessible by boat or a long trek. Cathedral Cove was really two beaches, joined by rock that had an amazing, arched hole that allowed access to the second beach.

No. Actually, that wasn’t all she could see.

Beyond the fence, crouched right on the edge of the cliff, was the figure of a man.

Becca turned to alert Tom but he and Ben were already clear of the chopper, stooping as they ran, carrying gear towards the ambulance.

Who was he? And what on earth was he doing?

Becca had been planning to let the chopper idle, ready for a quick getaway because there was nothing her crew would be able to do other than confirm death and offer sympathy, but she couldn’t just sit here and potentially watch someone jump off a cliff. She shut the engines down and unbuckled her seat belt.

Less than a minute later she was climbing—cautiously—over the fence. She stopped a few metres away from the hunched figure. Frozen to the spot, she realised that she’d probably done the wrong thing here. She should have gone to get Tom and Ben. Or radioed HQ and got advice from Richard. There were bound to be protocols for dealing with this kind of situation but they hadn’t been covered in her pilot’s training.

She was doing exactly what she thought she was over doing. Breaking rules. Doing what
she
wanted to do without stopping to think about how it might affect
other people. What if this guy looked up and saw her and that was the final straw and he hurled himself over that cliff?

He
did
look up.

Becca had never seen such desolation on anyone’s face.

No, that wasn’t true. She
had
seen just such a look once. In the mirror.

‘I know,’ she heard herself say softly. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know how you feel.’

The man stared back at her. A puzzled line creased between his eyes. ‘How?’

‘I’ve been there.’

‘You haven’t. No one has.’

Behind her, Becca was aware that the ambulance doors were open. That there was someone lying on a stretcher in there but nothing more was being done for the patient. The ambulance officers, along with Ben and Tom, were all standing, staring in horror. At her.

It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Any further attempt to resuscitate the female patient wasn’t a goer. The man close to her had to be the doctor. Her husband. The attempt at resuscitation had been stopped, probably only moments before their arrival. Why?

The man seemed to follow her thoughts as she looked over her shoulder and back again.

‘There was no point in really starting,’ he said brokenly. ‘I knew that. But I had to try, didn’t I?’

‘Of course you did.’ Becca sank down to a crouch. Somehow, she knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and get too close. Because she knew how tender that space was? How unbearable the intrusion of a stranger might be?

‘I lost someone once,’ she told him. She had to sniff hard and swipe at the moisture on her face. She didn’t need to tell him that she’d thought her world had ended. He would know.

‘It wasn’t your fault, though, was it?’

Becca’s breath caught and she held it. Carefully. As though breathing out would do something terrible.

‘She told me that she had a headache. I could have done something. I’m a
doctor,
for God’s sake …’

No-o-o.
Becca couldn’t let her breath go. Couldn’t take another one.

‘She wanted to come for a walk at lunch time. Thought it might get rid of her headache. We got here and she said it was worse … she gave this awful cry and then collapsed in my arms …’

He was crying now. Racking, painful sobs.

‘I didn’t even have my damn phone. I knew she was dead but I had to start CPR. Had to keep going until a car stopped and I could send them to call an ambulance. Had to wait until someone else could tell me.

‘It had to have been a subarachnoid haemorrhage.’ The doctor was talking so quietly he seemed to be talking to himself. ‘If I’d known, I could have taken her to Auckland. Got a CT scan or an MRI. They could have operated.’ His cry was heart-wrenching. ‘I let her take aspirin …’

Which would have made the bleeding worse but it was highly unlikely it would have made the difference between survival and death. His poor wife would have had an aneurysm. A defect in a major blood vessel in her brain. It had begun to get worse for some reason and then it had burst.

Just like Matt’s had.

Jet and the others had known he’d had a headache. They’d been doctors, too. Matt hadn’t wanted to go for a walk, though, had he? He’d wanted to sleep it off.

Had Jet ever felt this bad? So destroyed that ending his life might have been an option?

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Becca said fiercely. ‘Don’t ever think that.’

‘How can I not?’ The man shook his head. ‘It’s what everyone else will think. What am I going to tell the children?’

Becca’s jaw dropped. There were children involved?

The doctor saw her face. As impossible as it seemed, his face grew even paler.

‘Oh, my God … the kids.’ He edged himself back from the cliff face. ‘I have to get to the school.’

‘Of course you do.’ It was Tom talking, from close behind Becca. He stepped past her to offer a hand to the man and help him back over the fence. He glanced at Becca and she saw approval in his face, as though he thought she’d done something to help avoid further tragedy here.

But she hadn’t done anything.