Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Maddie waded through the shallow water as fast as she could and tried to breathe through the fear, but Charlotte still got to the boat before her and bent over the side to get a better look.
‘Don’t touch him! Wait for me.’
Sofia and Charlotte nodded and pulled back.
The sight of Thanassis lying on his back at the bottom of the boat almost took her feet out from under her, but Maddie knew she was the one who had to think straight and fast. The first aid courses she’d done at the care home always advised assessing the situation first and against moving the injured party.
Her friends were staring at her, waiting for their instructions.
If Sofia was fashion and Charlotte was facts, she wasn’t sure exactly when she’d been assigned life-threatening emergencies, but it was happening …
and right now. There was no way she was going to let another man die on her watch if she could help it.
Maddie half leant into the boat and managed to get close enough to Thanassis to discreetly check if he was still breathing.
A trickle of bright red blood made its way down the side of his face as she waited.
Her own heart stopped for a moment and started again when she felt his warm breath on her face.
‘OK, he’s still breathing. He’s got a nasty cut on the side of his head, which needs seeing to, but first we need to get him into the recovery position. Sofia, you’re the lightest. Get right into the boat and gently push him over onto his side.’
Sofia leapt on board and turned Thanassis’s inert body a few degrees to the side.
Maddie leant in again and doubled checked that there was nothing blocking his airway.
Fishing about inside his mouth with her fingers was a weird sensation, but she had to make sure.
She’d been present when a care home resident had swallowed his own tongue during a fit, and she’d watched someone else perform the same check.
They didn’t need a stray cigarette butt making things worse.
‘He seems stable. But we need to get him to a hospital as soon as we can.’
Maddie turned to Charlotte, who was still as a statue.
‘Can you try and ring emergency services, please? It’s…’ Maddie racked her brains, but her mind had gone blank.
Charlotte came to with a start.
‘One-one-two. I know. I programmed in into my phone.’
‘Thank God for your efficiency, Char. They’ll be able to send out the coastguard.’
Charlotte pressed the buttons over and over again and held her phone every which way in the air, but the precious seconds dragged by. After a brief run along the beach, she returned, panting, to the boat and shook her head.
‘There’s no service here at all.’ A white-faced Charlotte pointed up at the cliffs. ‘It’s because of those. I didn’t notice it earlier as none of us were on our phones.’
Any hope of immediate rescue, or indeed any sort of rescue, was gone. Maddie took a deep breath. Think, Maddie, think.
It was going to be up to them, or rather up to her, to get everyone out safely. They couldn’t let Thanassis spend a night out in the open. There was no guarantee he’d be alive in the morning without treatment for the head injury.
She had no idea if anyone was waiting for him at home and would alert the emergency services. He’d not mentioned a wife or girlfriend, but as a fisherman she presumed he’d keep weird hours anyway, so being out all night wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
And they’d not bothered to let anyone at the hotel know where they were because they were supposed to be back by sunset at the latest.
‘No one knows we’re here, do they?’ Charlotte’s plaintive voice proved she’d caught on quick.
Maddie exchanged a glance with Sofia.
‘Probably not, but we’re going to have to figure it out for ourselves. The good thing is that this was the last stop on our tour, and the sunset won’t be long, so we can’t be far away from our little harbour.’
She was using the same voice she used with the care home residents, slow and low, but they had to keep Charlotte calm.
They had more than enough to deal with without setting off one of the panic attacks their friend had suffered from in the past. To her knowledge, Charlotte hadn’t had one in recent years, but the situation wasn’t exactly stable.
‘I do have an idea though.’
Charlotte’s hopeful nod made her look away.
‘I watched Thanassis start up the engine when we left the port, so I’ve got a reasonable idea how it works. Tony’—Maddie stopped to regulate her breathing—‘had an old lawnmower with a similar engine … and the key is not to flood it.’
Maddie hadn’t meant to say the last bit out loud.
Charlotte’s look of terror had returned, but Sofia took over for a welcome moment.
‘Sounds good, Mads. If men can master it, there’s no reason why we can’t. We are the superior gender after all. Let’s give it a go, shall we?’
It had given Maddie precious time to think and check the depth of the water in relation to how low the engine would hang.
‘I need to be inside the boat by the motor, but I’m concerned we’ve drifted in towards shore a little since we anchored, and it’s too shallow here.
So, first you two will need to push the boat a little further out to sea with me in it.
Once we’ve taken up the anchor, I’ll try the motor and then you two jump back in. OK?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
Sofia’s cheerful voice buoyed her, even if it was fake, although Charlotte remained worryingly mute.
‘Can you help me get into the boat now, please, Char? You’re the tallest.’
Giving someone in shock a specific task had also been mentioned as a good idea on one of her courses.
Her friend’s powerful leg up and over the side of the boat almost had her on top of Thanassis.
She stepped over the man without looking too closely.
She could see his chest still moving at least. The blood was congealing on the side of his face, and in a small pool at the bottom of the hull, but the most important thing was to get out of there while they still had a bit of daylight. There wasn’t any time to dress wounds.
The back of the boat was a mass of nets and cages, but Maddie stumbled to the narrow seat by the engine where she’d watched Thanassis steer their course and turned to smile back reassuringly at her friends.
She lowered the bottom half of the motor gently into the water and fixed the picture of Thanassis starting her up firmly in her mind.
‘Here we go!’
The first pull of the power cord produced a feeble splutter which died almost immediately.
‘Damn.’
She tugged harder on the cord and the engine started for a couple of seconds before fading again.
Maddie crossed the fingers on one hand while she pulled as hard as she could with the other.
‘Third time lucky!’
A sudden roar jerked her backwards as the motor sprang into life under her.
Maddie offered up a silent prayer as her friends clapped and cheered.
‘No time to celebrate! Quick! Jump in.’
She kept the fear to herself that the engine would flood or stall, thus stopping them getting away.
Sofia flung herself over the side of the boat like a fish who’d just been landed, which even made Maddie smile for a brief moment. Charlotte hesitated in the water for a heart- stopping few seconds, until Sofia held out her hand to pull her much taller friend aboard.
The boat bucked underneath them as Charlotte managed to clamber on board, and Maddie had to battle to hold the engine steady in the water.
‘Balance yourselves out. One on either side of Thanassis. Grab a seat and after that, don’t move, whatever you do.’
She glanced back to check her friends were in the correct position.
‘And we’re off.’
It took her a few moments on the tiller to work out which way was right, and which was left, but after one dramatic lurch that brought forth a scream from Charlotte and made Maddie fear they might actually capsize, the boat steadied under her hands.
As they pulled out from the bay into open water, the promise of a dramatic sunset touched the sky with delicate corals and pinks.
Under any other circumstances it would have been beautiful, but it just brought home to her how tight the race was against the clock.
They didn’t know these waters, so once they lost the light, they could be in an even worse position than they’d have been on the beach.
Her tactic was to hug the shore as much as possible, without going too close to the rocks.
It worked while she could still make out the outlines of the rocks, but it wouldn’t last much longer.
She wondered how much battery the others had on their phones, although a phone torch wasn’t going to help much once they’d completely lost daylight.
Why had they opted for somewhere so remote?
There were no other boats out at this time of night and very few signs of life along the coastline.
But there was no point thinking about the what-ifs.
She’d had enough of those after Tony’s death.
There’d been endless nights agonising over what she could have done differently.
Looking back wasn’t going to help the fisherman who’d shown them a wonderful day out.
A groan from the bottom of the boat had them all looking over at Thanassis, although Maddie quickly turned her face seaward again.
‘Stay where you are. Please don’t go to him. It’ll unbalance the boat.’
Sofia shouted into the insistent breeze.
‘He’s opened his eyes, and he’s trying to speak.’
Maddie kept her own eyes on the horizon.
‘OK, that’s a good sign. What’s he saying?’
‘Hang on. It’s a name… Eimear. He’s saying Eimear.’
‘God knows who that is. He’s probably got concussion.’
Maddie scanned the shoreline and the land above where a few lights were coming on up the hill.
‘Surely we can’t be far away now.’
Charlotte held up her phone for the umpteenth time and waved it around.
‘Oh my God. I’ve got a signal! At last.’
Maddie heaved a big sigh of relief.
The voice of an operator asked for the details of their emergency.
‘Char, tell them we have a head injury and possible concussion on board. And also, we’d really appreciate an escort back to the old harbour, as we have no idea where we’re going or how much petrol’s left.’
She’d kept that particular fear to herself. She had no idea where Thanassis stored his petrol, and they were in no position to search for it. The thought of running out in the middle of the sea at night didn’t bear thinking about.
Charlotte’s voice on the phone was back to its usual efficient self.
Five minutes later, with the sun going down in a blaze of glory in front of them, the lights of a coastguard vessel flickered on the water and a boat steamed towards them.
The male voice on the Tannoy was loud and clear.
‘We have you. You’re safe and only two minutes away from the port. Please, follow us.’
Maddie thought her eyes were deceiving her, because as she rounded the harbour wall, it looked like a whole throng of people were waiting on the pathway. The most welcome sight was the waiting ambulance and the blue-suited paramedics on the dock.
She steered the boat towards the gap between two similar vessels and cut the engine.
It took some major concentration to nose the boat into the space, but the moment she did, a huge cheer went up and the crowd surged forward.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Maddie realised there were also several policemen holding people back.
They must have interrupted some sort of major celebration in the town, maybe a wedding or a birthday party.
Two men came through the cordon, grabbed the ropes to secure the boat and unfolded the gangway to allow the paramedics to board.
One of paramedics was speaking, although it was hard to hear what he was saying above all the noise.
‘Can you stay where you are please, until we have removed the patient from the boat.’
The three of them stayed still and silent as Thanassis was carefully taken off the vessel on a stretcher and placed in the back of the ambulance.
Maddie couldn’t stop herself giving him a little wave as he was carried away. She hoped they’d given him a fighting chance.
A policeman helped each of them off the boat in turn, as the crowd’s clapping and cheering got louder and louder.
Maddie could barely keep upright after being in one position for so long, and she ached in places she didn’t know she had, plus the noise was overwhelming. She just wanted to climb into a very hot shower.
‘What on earth is happening?’ she asked the policeman in a shaky voice.
The young man waved his hand encompassing the crowd.
‘It is for you. They are clapping for you. All of you. Thanassis is well loved on the island, and you three have saved his life.’
It was too much. They’d just done their best to help.
They’d done what anyone would have done in the circumstances.
Saving this man was a good thing, but she hadn’t been able to save the man she loved.
The memory of holding Tony in her arms and giving him CPR on the kitchen floor waiting for an ambulance was one she’d never be able to erase.
She’d failed at the biggest test she’d ever faced, and the last thing she wanted was to be hailed a heroine now.
The flashes of phone cameras left her dazed for a moment.
She turned back towards her friends, who looked as shellshocked as she felt. Sofia and Charlotte moved forward to link arms with her on either side.
‘Ow.’
The muscles in her arms that had held the engine steady and absorbed all the stress screamed in pain.
‘OK?’ Sofia whispered in her ear.
‘Fine, just need to get out of here.’
‘Agreed. All for one…’
‘And one for all,’ Charlotte finished the sentence.
Beside the ambulance, the smiling faces of Theo and Thea swam into view in front of their vehicle stamped with the hotel’s name.
Maddie fought back tears for the first time since she’d seen Thanassis fall into the boat. The peace and quiet of the hotel on the hill had never been more desirable.
‘Can we just go, please?’
Thea took her hand.
‘Of course.’
Before the ambulance doors closed on Thanassis’s inert body, Maddie caught a glimpse of a young woman with rich auburn hair, sitting holding Thanassis’s hand, tears streaming down her face.
As if she could feel someone looking, the woman raised her eyes and stared back at her for a moment. Maddie shivered in the warm air at the expression on the woman’s face. It was as though she’d just seen a ghost.