"Jac, be careful!" Sacha shouted as he ran after his best friend through the long grass towards the Scotsman who was on the ground.
"The girl…" Jonny croaked as his partner dived onto the floor next to him. "Make sure she's alright."
"She's fine Jonny; she's with her parents." Sacha said reassuringly but he couldn't help but share the look of concern that Jac had as they realised that he was clutching his ribs from the kick.
"Don't look at me like I've had a kick to the head, just give me a minute. I'm fine." He grimaced.
"If only. It would've knocked some sense into him." Sacha joked but Jac wasn't in the mood for jokes.
"Does it hurt when you inhale?" She demanded as she placed her hands either side of his ribcage to see if she could feel an obvious injury or any movement within his thorax.
"I've just been kicked in the chest by a horse, what do you think?" He remarked.
"I mean it Jonny." She hissed. "Is the pain worse when you breathe in?" She demanded.
"Jac, even if his ribs are broken – and I doubt that they are – you couldn't do anything about it, we'd just have to let them heal." Sacha said to put his best friend at ease, though Jonny felt a warm feeling inside of him as he realised that Jac truly did care for him – even Jac Naylor couldn't hide her feelings during a moment of pure panic.
"Is he alright?" Zosia asked as she and Arthur arrived after marching through the long grass.
"He's had a kick to the ribs." Sacha said simply.
"Ooh. Do you want my stethoscope?" Zosia offered.
"Why on Earth did you bring your stethoscope on this trek?" Sacha protested.
"It was in Arthur's car and I put it in my bag so that I didn't leave it in there again when we get back." She replied as she opened the top section of her hiking bag and then handed the cardiothoracic consultant her maroon coloured stethoscope.
Similarly, Guy, Dom, Mo, Jesse, Adele and Colette were walking through a field dotted with wild horses and they too had a problem. Well, one of them did – Dom was allergic to horse hair and so his throat felt incredibly tight, he kept on sneezing and coughing and rubbing his eyes.
"We must be nearly there, surely? We've been walking for hours." Dom complained before he rubbed his watering, itchy eyes.
"Yeah Adele, how much longer does the map say? We must be close." Guy asked.
"Um… just give me a minute." Adele frowned before she turned the map around clockwise in her hands, and then around counter-clockwise as she tried to get her bearings right.
"You do know where we are, don't you?" Colette asked. Adele had been left in charge of map reading, though clearly it had been a mistake.
"Oh Adele!" Mo moaned.
"I thought I knew where we were going. It was just once we'd gone past the farmhouse I lost where we were and I couldn't work out what direction we were going in."
"Can we hurry up please because every additional minute we spend near those retched animals, the smaller my airway gets."
"I think that's a bit of an exaggeration." Jesse raised an eyebrow. "Here, let me have a look at that map."
"Right, I do believe that this is our site for the night." Zosia stated as her group arrived at the campsite after following a set of shorted instructions that Jonny had given them.
"Oh thank god." The Scotsman puffed as he dumped his bag on the floor of the beautiful green field, where there were no other tents and just a small unisex toilet and shower block with a lake in front of them. "And I'm not having problems breathing; I'm just a wee bit out of breath." Jonny said sternly to Jac whom he knew had been concerned for the last hour since the incident with the horse.
"Well, it looks nice enough." Sacha shrugged.
"Right, shall we get our tent set up?" Jonny suggested.
"No no, leave that to us. I'll give Jac a hand." Sacha said sternly.
"Honestly, I'm alright." He protested but he grimaced as he bent down to drop his bag from his back to the ground.
"Mm, because someone can be 'alright' if they grimace in pain with every move they make." Jac quipped.
"Sweetheart, need I remind you about your 'backache' and 'headache' on the last trek?" Jonny asked as he maintained eye contact with her.
"Why do you say it like that?" Sacha frowned as he sensed that the pair knew something that he, Zosia and Arthur didn't. "Did she not have a headache or backache?" He asked. Jonny, meanwhile, noticed the look of both desperation and anger in Jac's eyes – she didn't want her condition to be publicly known.
"She did. I just wanted to remind her that not everyone wants a fuss to be made when you're not on top form." Jonny stated. "Come on, we'll set ours up over here." He forced a smile as he slowly bent down and took their tent from the outer straps on his bag and he placed it down on the ground about a dozen meters away from the toilet block and half a dozen meters away from the lake.
"Thank you…" Jac said simply once they were alone. "For not telling them."
"I'd never tell them Jac. You shouldn't have looked so worried."
"You were getting angry; I didn't know what you'd say." She admitted.
"I promise you, I'd never tell anyone without your permission. Not even Mo." He said reassuringly. "Not that it's something that I think you should be hiding but–"
"Shut up Maconie." Jac playfully moaned as she began unrolling the tent package.
By early evening, both groups had arrived and set up at the campsite. Jesse was just going through his bag to find his spare bottle of water when he found a pocket filled with several pebbles. He frowned in confusion as he felt the sides of his bags, found another area of roughness and he opened the other side pocket to find that that was filled with rocks too.
"That girl's gone too far this time." Jesse muttered to himself as he rose to his feet and exited his tent. He searched around and then saw the junior doctor coming back from the toilet/shower block so he stormed over to confront her. "You thought that it'd be funny to make me carry loads more weight did you?" He demanded as he held up one of the rocks.
"What on Earth are you going on about?" She frowned.
"The rocks."
"Quite frankly, I don't know what you're talking about."
"So you're not even going to take credit for it?" Come on Zosia! You need to get over yourself!" He shouted, and as he stepped forward, Zosia went to step back from the intimidating character but she tripped and fell down to the ground.
"Jesse?" Guy frowned as he came out of the tent to find his daughter lying on the ground on her back looking up to the anaesthetist.
"Guy, it's not what it looks like." He blurted out. Zosia then raised her hands from the dry ground to reveal grazed skin where she had caught it on some small stones.
"Zosh, are you okay?" Dom asked as he quickly went over and knelt down by her.
"I'm fine." She muttered.
"Come on, come back to the tent." Dom said kindly as he helped her to her feet and then they walked away.
"Guy, I swear I didn't push her. She stepped back and fell over." Jesse protested.
"Well then why did she look so scared?" Guy demanded. "If she'd have fallen, she wouldn't look so petrified."
"Ouch." Zosia gasped as Dom wiped an antiseptic wipe over the palms of her hands to clean the small grazes.
"Sorry." Dom apologised. "He didn't actually push you over did he? I didn't see it properly."
"No, I fell." Zosia admitted.
"I suppose I should probably apologise for filling his bags with rocks too because otherwise he wouldn't have kicked off."
"No, I'm glad you did it. Obviously, Jesse just can't take a joke well." Zosia shrugged. "Right, shall we get a campfire started?" She suggested. "I've got marshmallows and chocolate digestives."
"Yeah sure. I'll grab some of the others to give us a hand too."