Ties That Bind
"Thank you Mrs Sudcliffe. Good bye." Jill Weatherill dismissed her last patient of Monday morning surgery. Mrs Sudcliffe, an elderly woman whom Jill considered to be very sweet if a little too talkative opened the door of the office and departed. Not two seconds afterwards, a knock came on her open door. Jill turned around from the notes she was making and smiled when she saw who it was.
"Have you got a minute?" Gordon Ormerod asked.
Jill pretended to consider his question seriously. "I suppose so, for you, Doctor Ormerod." She smiled, her eyes twinkling at him.
Gordon closed the door and approached her. He leaned down and kissed her softly, a kiss which Jill gratefully received.
"So, what can I do for you?" She leaned back in her chair, gazing at him with a soft smile playing on her lips.
Gordon moved to perch on her desk, next to the chair she was sitting on. "Nothing really, I just missed you."
"Two hours away from me too much for you was it?" Jill laughed.
Gordon kissed her again for an answer.
"I assume since you're loitering in here, that you've seen all your patients." She arched an eyebrow at him.
"Yep! And thank goodness for that! I don't think I've ever seen so many verrucae in a two hour period!"
She laughed, nudging him gently. "You love it really."
He pulled a face at her before bending down and sliding his hands around her waist. He pressed his lips gently to hers, tightening his arms around her as she returned the kiss. Unfortunately, as often happened when they finally had some time alone, they were interrupted. An urgent knock on Jill's door broke them apart. Gordon sprung away from Jill and stood a more respectable distance away from her as she called "Come in."
They both turned their attention to the door to see Lizzie Kennoway looking a little flustered. "Doctors, there's been a bad accident off North Cliff Road. Two cars have gone over the cliff. Both of you are needed."
"Thank you Lizzie." Jill grabbed her doctor's bag and her car keys and started out of the door.
Gordon grabbed Jill's coat and hurried to his room to collect his own bag and coat. He ran outside to see Jill already sitting in her car, engine running. He leapt into the little mini and as soon as he'd put his seatbelt on, she pulled out of the car park and drove with speed towards the accident site.
"I got your coat by the way." Gordon informed her.
Jill briefly glanced at him and smiled. "Thank you. What you do without you eh?"
"Freeze I expect."
With Jill's skillful navigation of the streets of Elsinby and out into the moorland, Jill and Gordon were stood beside North Cliff Road within ten minutes of leaving the hospital. They looked with some trepidation upon a helicopter in a vast grassy area a few metres away from them.
"We're not going to have to go in that thing are we?" Gordon said, his voice showing his obvious disdain for the prospect.
"'Fraid so Doctor." PC Belamy replied. The police and rescue helicopter had arrived some fifteen minutes earlier. "There's no other way. The cliff is too dangerous to climb down, and besides it'd take too long to get down there and far too difficult to the victims back up."
Jill took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves about dangling from a helicopter. She glanced at Gordon who looked just as nervous as she felt. She then looked away as she saw a man running towards them.
"You the doctors?" He shouted when he was still some metres away.
Jill nodded and the man beckoned them to follow him before running towards the helicopter. Jill and Gordon followed swiftly, ducking down as they ran beneath the helicopter's whirling blades. The wind created by the blades flattened the grass around the aircraft, and put pay to Jill's meticulous hairstyle.
"Put these on." The man shouted, handing them a harness and a helmet each. Whilst Gordon could place the helmet straight on his head, Jill had to slide the elasticated bands from her hair and loop them back round the strands to form a new ponytail at the base of her neck. This allowed her to both fit the headgear on, and keep her hair tidy, for safety and practical purposes. Harry, the helicopter crew member, secured the items he had given them, then directed the two doctors into the back of the helicopter before entering himself and sliding the door shut behind him.
As the helicopter rose slowly from the ground, Jill and Gordon sat clutching their doctor's bags in their laps and looking decidedly queasy. They looked at each other hoping to receive some reassurance from the other's face, but what they saw only served to make them feel worse.