LITMIR.BIZ

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that terrible day beyond a blur of cars and people and a need to be strong for both her mother and Billy, yet being uselessly emotional all day.

      In fact, it had been Billy who’d been strong for her, and for their mother.

      Maybe he would understand more than they thought if Tippy was sold and moved to another trainer. Maybe he’d transfer his love to a new foal—

      ‘Ka-a-a-a-te!’

      Her mother’s anguished cry brought her out of her reverie. Looking up, she realised the entourage was now some way ahead of her. But instinct had her running down towards the brood mares’ paddock, pushing through the phalanx of minders, seeing the taller man, eyes nearly swollen shut, red welts appearing on his face, pulling at his tie, his collar, trying to say something that sounded like ‘knife’.

      ‘He wants a knife,’ one of the men said, while Kate grabbed the man, trying to ease him to the ground, issuing orders as she did it.

      ‘Call an ambulance—emergency number is triple zero here—and you …’ she pointed to the closest ‘… run up to the stables and get the first-aid box. One of the stable hands will find it for you.’

      The stricken man was still struggling to talk, pointing at his throat and making gargling noises.

      ‘What’s his name?’ she asked Ibrahim, who was looking so pale Kate feared she’d have two patients.

      ‘Fareed,’ Ibrahim whispered.

      ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be all right,’ Kate assured the older man, before turning back to her patient.

      ‘Okay, Fareed, I need you to relax. Lie right back, you’ll be all right.’

      She’d fallen to her knees beside him as she spoke, straightening him out on the ground as best she could when he was still struggling, pushing at her and trying to talk.

      ‘Lie still, you big lunk,’ she yelled, and apparently shocked him into immobility. Seizing her chance, she tilted back his head in case CPR became necessary, automatically feeling for a pulse, counting his breaths, more gasps than breaths.

      ‘He was waving his hands then started gasping,’ Sally was explaining, but Kate had already found the tiny sting the bee had left behind, barely visible on the lobe of the man’s right ear.

      ‘It’s anaphylactic shock,’ she said as she pulled the sting out and felt in the man’s pockets for a pen. ‘Did any of you know he had allergies? That he was allergic to bee stings?’

      The men looked blankly at her but there was no time to explain.

      Tilting the patient’s head farther back, she leaned forward, refusing to even consider the lips she was about to touch as anything other than an anonymous patient’s. Although as she closed her mouth over his, breathing air into his lungs, trying to force it in through a passage she knew would be closing more and more, a shiver of something she couldn’t understand ran down her spine.

      Between breaths she reassured her patient, who was nearly comatose but still struggling, though feebly, against her.

      It was Billy who brought the first-aid kit, and Kate, knowing an ambulance would take at least another twenty minutes to reach the property, didn’t hesitate.

      Opening the big case, she searched for the epinephrine injection she’d told her father to keep there. Either he hadn’t bothered or it had been used, emptied and not replaced. She found a scalpel, still in its sterile wrapping, and a small roll of plastic tubing—heaven only knew its real use. Using scissors, she cut a small piece then pulled on gloves.

      The skin on the man’s neck was smooth and tanned, and her hand hesitated for a fraction of a second but she knew what had to be done.

      She’d drawn the scalpel from its sheath and moved her hand towards that smooth, tanned skin, when one of the entourage stepped forward and, to her astonishment, pulled out a gun.

      A small gun, but no less deadly than a big one would be, of that she was sure.

      He muttered something at her in his own language and Kate turned to Ibrahim.

      ‘His throat has swollen and he can’t breathe—I need to make a hole and breathe into it for him until he can manage on his own. I am a doctor, I can do this.’

      Ibrahim nodded and apparently translated but the gun didn’t disappear back to wherever it had come from.

      So if I do this wrong, he shoots me? Kate wondered in the distant part of her brain not focused on the job.

      Feeling carefully, she found the space between his thyroid cartilage and the cricoid cartilage. The scalpel blade bit cleanly, a cut barely half an inch deep, and she slipped her finger into it to open it, before sliding the tube into place.

      Ignoring the muttering going on around her and the distant yowling of an ambulance, she bent low and breathed into the tube. Two quick breaths, pause, another breath, pause …

      The man’s chest was rising so she’d got the tube in successfully, but he needed treatment—epinephrine to combat the shock, hospitalisation for at least twenty-four hours, and minor surgery to repair the gash she’d made in his throat.

      Somehow she didn’t think she’d have to worry about Billy missing Tippy. These people would want nothing more to do with the Andrews family.

      The ambos, once they’d given the patient an epinephrine injection in his thigh, were audibly impressed by her efforts.

      ‘Learnt about it, of course,’ one said, ‘but never had to do it.’

      ‘I’m an ER doctor,’ Kate explained, as they expertly attached monitors to their patient, then lifted him onto the stretcher. ‘Though I’ve only had to do it once before so I was a bit shaky.’

      ‘ER doc?’ the second man said, when he’d strapped Fareed onto the stretcher. ‘Don’t suppose you’d come with us—sit with him just in case.’

      ‘I think that would be an excellent idea,’ Ibrahim said, and to emphasise the point he actually nodded towards the man who’d held the gun.

      Or maybe that was her imagination running riot after the little bit of drama!

      Whatever! Someone would have to sit with him to hold the plastic tube in place and it might as well be her. She climbed into the back of the ambulance beside Fareed, who was breathing, somewhat raspily, through the hole in his neck. His eyes opened, the drug taking almost immediate effect, and his hand lifted to feel his neck.

      Kate caught the hand before he could dislodge the tube, and held it in hers so it could do no harm. It was a strong hand, with long, lean fingers that fought against her hold—a manly hand …

      She put the distraction down to her own shock—and disappointment.

      ‘You’ve suffered anaphylactic shock. You’ve got a tube in your throat so you can breathe and you’ve had an injection of epinephrine, which will combat the shock. Now you know you’re allergic to bee stings, you should carry a pen with the drug in it wherever you go.’

      The disdain she’d read in his eyes earlier returned, so blatant she wanted to turn away.

      And let him get away with it?

      ‘Not that I expect gratitude or anything for saving your life, but a smile wouldn’t hurt! ’

      Fortunately, before she could let off any more steam, which she knew was nothing more than a release of her own tension, they drew up at the hospital.

      A woman was beside him—a woman in big glasses and flaming red hair she hid in a plait, but nice skin—creamy skin, skin you’d like to touch but preferably when she wasn’t going on and on at him. Fareed closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.

      She was holding his hand.

      He must know her.

      She looked angry, but, then,

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