Chapter 47 – Impact

The car flew around a bend, up a hill, then onto a bit of flat and up ahead I could see a car - blue - off the road on the right. It had to be Tommy's taxicab. And there was steam coming from it!

I braked rapidly and leapt out of the car screaming "Louisa!" I could see only one person and that was the driver! Oh my God!

The car had run off the road and smack into large boulder crumpling the entire front end in what must have been a brutal impact! "Louisa!" I yelled as I looked over the car again to confirm it held just one person, and that was Tommy.

Where was Louisa? She said she was in this taxi but where was she now? To find the car wrecked was horrible enough but now she was missing! Had she been injured and wandered off? Was she even now lying behind a boulder or in a gully dying of an intra-cranial bleed? And what of the baby? My head whipped about in shock, despair, and confusion.

Just as I was about to lose my mind, Louisa's head popped up in front of the car, behind the very boulder it was resting against. "Louisa! What are you doing?" If anything had happened to her… God!

She smiled with embarrassment as she stood and pulled her dress down. "I needed a wee!"

"Are you alright?" My lord I was glad to see her standing! I almost broke down and swept her into a hug, but Tommy had to be my main concern just then.

"Yeah, I think so," she said. Her hair was mussed and she looked a bit white. "A bit shaken. But it's Tommy! He's breathing but I can't wake him up!"

I pried the driver's door open. At least Tommy wore his seat belt and the airbags had deployed which was good - so he got energy absorption in the crash. I looked hard at Louisa and I wished to examine her first, but Tommy was clearly in extremis. "Are you in any pain or discomfort at all?" I asked her.

"Well, I think Tommy's more urgent than me."

"Yes, yes, he is. But you're sure you're alright?" I noticed her pregnant belly was much lower than in the last few days. She must be, let's see now, thirty-six or thirty-seven weeks pregnant, if my calculations were right. So she was dropping.

"Yes," she said and mustered a tiny smile. "I told you yes."

Tommy's exam was similar to that of his wife but he was nearly totally unresponsive. He must be the primary biofuel producer so likely got a more severe dose of the methanol. That might explain his massive headache as well.

I looked around and could see no building or farmstead. No even a utility tower broke the landscape but for one lone mobile tower far away. "Where's the nearest pub?" I asked Louisa.

She gave me an odd look. "Shouldn't we be looking for a hospital?" She pointed towards Tommy as if to say just look at the man!

I shook my head. "No. His condition means he needs alcohol." I'd heard the vodka bottle smash itself during the wild ride so we were on our own. "As soon as possible." I looked hard at Louisa. "So do you know or don't you?"

"No!" she said and wore an expression like I was totally mad.

Have to rely on Pauline then, I realized. I called and asked about a pub, given our location five miles east of Portwenn.

After a moment's thought she gave me an answer. "There's the Coach and Four a few miles up the road!" Pauline told me.

"Right. Call an ambulance and have them meet me there." I looked at Tommy who was now starting to writhe and I didn't like that at all. It meant his central nervous system was being affected more severely.

I dropped the phone into my breast pocket and pulled Tommy from the car where he fell on the turf like a half-filled sack of potatoes – arms and legs totally without rigor. This was going to be hard. The man likely weighed over eight stone. I took a deep breath, put my arms under his arms and around his fat chest, and began dragging him to my car.

"Martin, what's wrong with him?"

"He has methanol poisoning!" It was all I could do to grunt out the words as I tugged the man along and I wasn't doing very well. Occasionally I dropped his head on the ground which likely was doing his addled brain no good at all.

Louisa tried to bend down. "Let me give you a hand."

"No! No!" I waved her away. "Not in your condition!"

0000000

My condition? Yes, the obvious – I was pregnant. I've been hearing that for months and it made me quite cross lately. All I wanted to do was to help Martin and poor Tommy but the man was treating me like I was made of china. "You're not exactly doing a good job of it yourself!" I shouted back. Martin was being less than effective as a stevedore, constantly dropping Tommy and bashing his head. I'm not certain Martin's grunting was helping the effort either.

"I can manage!" Martin yelled at me in frustration.

Manage? Martin manage?

Well, Louisa, he did manage to save Peter Cronk's life and who knows how many others? He even managed to profess his love for you, after untold fits and starts, ask you to marry and make love to you! I know, I answered into my mind. He even managed to get you pregnant, and that has sure been a barrel of laughs, hasn't it? And he's even managed to overcome his blood problem so he can leave and go to London and be a surgeon again!

As these thoughts flashed in my head, they almost made me laugh as I knew that I still…

Still what? asked that nagging voice once again.

Yeah. I knew. I still respected Martin for what he had accomplished in Portwenn. Terrible and rude man that he could be, he was also - vulnerable. And aren't you too girl? If only…

And the impact he'd made on Portwenn! Certainly the general health of the village was better. And besides here he was playing ambulance for me and Tommy. Would old Doc Sims have done that? No. He'd not have stirred from the pub.

I watched Martin Ellingham former surgeon, and now former GP of Portwenn, struggle with all his might to haul the overweight Tommy to the Lexus. Martin's face was now flushed and his shirt beginning to show sweat marks but he succeeded.

The rear door flew open at his tug and the seat was awash in what looked like broken glass and fluid. Martin reached in without a word, pulled the seat belt off the gold Buddha there and slid it to the other side. There was a suit underneath it all, prickly with shards of glass and dripping with booze. He shook his head in disgust, heaved the suit out into the heather and levered Tommy's inert form into the car.

He smoothly belted him in then peeled open Tommy's eyelid for a look then took his pulse. He swore and looked up at me. "We'd better hurry."

We got in and he started to drive; quickly but also purposefully. He whipped the car about though a large puddle and I could hear things tear off the front of the bumper. Poor Lexus – damaged again.

Martin drove with a distracted face before he spoke to me. "You're sure you're alright? You'd say if you had any small aches or pains…"

"Martin, I'm not the one you should be worrying about." Still, it was some small sign of interest. Although he did express concern for my welfare yesterday. Wait a minute, Louisa! He came to the moor looking for Tommy and you! Yeah… he did, didn't he?

But right then he got all frantic with me. "Louisa! You are heavily pregnant and you have been in a car accident!"

"Listen! Tommy's the one you should be concerned about!" I looked into the back seat where Tommy and sat with a glassy eyed stare. I felt tears come to my eyes. "What's gonna happen to him?"

Martin gripped the wheel tighter I could see as his knuckles whitened. "If he doesn't get the right treatment - acidosis, blindness, potentially death." He said it in a matter of fact way, yet tinged with solemn edges of medical doom.

I chewed my lips as I heard Martin speak so. Meanwhile a Braxton Hicks contraction started but this one made my back ache, unlike any I'd felt before. It quite took my breath away.

Probably nothing - probably nothing, I thought to myself. Should I mention it to Martin? No. Something else he need not worry about. It was nothing.

I set my face and held onto the door handle as Martin played Monte Carlo race driver while my back hurt like hell.