Towards the end of a long left turn, where the small road follows the cliffs very closely, a motorbike is lying on the side of the road. Faith immediately recalls the sound of the engine that had stopped so abruptly when she had been on the cliff. She had not stayed long out there, the weather was just too bad, what with the wind and the drizzle. She remembers having thought that it was not a good day to go for a spin on a bike, and who could be so stupid. Well, the answer is lying around somewhere right here. She turns down The Offspring, slows down and strains her eyes to see in the dark. There is nothing – oh yes, there is! She had been almost past it. There is a body. She stops the car and gets out.

  She has never seen an unconscious person before. Cautiously she approaches the body and realises that the person is tall. A man, it would seem. She kneels down and talks to him, but there is no answer. What now? She looks around. It is just him and her, and it is getting dark. She calculates the distance to the town, but she is just avoiding what is before her. The village is four miles away, and Wake Hall is two miles in the other direction. This man is her problem now. Tough luck.

  Find out whether he is still alive. She turns him onto his back, and he groans. Okay. Then she sees the blood. She has no idea where it is coming from, but he has been lying in a puddle of it. Mixed with the rain, it is everywhere on his leather jacket, and now on her hands and her clothes as well. Her jeans is soaking it up as she is looking on, horrified. It does not feel warm. Where does it come from?

  She examines the body more closely. Not from the helmet. His jacket looks intact, too. His legs are not bleeding either. One of them is twisted and probably broken, but it is not his legs. When she touches his left arm, she sees that there has been a puddle forming again, flowing from his glove, and now it feels warm. She pulls at the glove and screams because the hand seems to come off with the glove. O God! The hand must have been severed. Or smashed. Or both. She consciously has to direct her thoughts away from what the inside of the glove must look like. She turns away and takes a few deep breaths.

  When she is sure that she is not going to faint although she still has that awfully sweet taste in her mouth, she rushes to her car, finds the first aid kit, and sets to work. Having pried open the jacket, she puts a tourniquet on his arm. She also places the tin foil blanket her kit has yielded forth beneath and above him. Then she flips out her phone and dials 999. She is hot and out of breath, but she feels a weird sense of accomplishment. At the same time, she wants to cry.

  “Can you give your name and specify the kind of the emergency, please.”

  She takes a deep breath. “I’m Faith Casadoro. I’m on the coastal road from Craigan to Wake Hall. South of Oban. There has been a motorcycle accident. One man is badly hurt and unco…”

  “Craigan? C. R. A. I. G. A. N?”

  “Yes. Craigan. Scotland. Planet Earth.” This is going to be fun. “South of Oban. On the coastal road towards Wake Hall.”

  “Okay. A motorcycle accident? How many injured?”

  “One man. Unconscious, mostly, I’ve…”

  “When did the accident happen?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Half an hour?” Then she has enough. “Look, I don’t know who this is, but he is bleeding a lot, he has hurt his hand, and now please send me someone to take care of him because I don’t know how long he is going to last, will you.”

  On the other end of the line she hears someone tapping on a keyboard.

  “Okay, Miss. We’ll send…”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Oh shit. He is throwing up inside his helmet. Fuck it. I’ve got to go.” Faith flings her phone aside and loosens the injured man’s helmet.

  “Fuck!”, she mutters. “This is disgusting. Oh fuck.”

  When she pulls the helmet off, the vomit runs across her hands. The man coughs and pukes some more. She feels ready to join in, but then she takes off her jacket and places his head on it, talking to herself. “Thanks, man. This is brilliant. Fuck it all.” That a head is so heavy! “Oh God, I hate this. Calm down, man, it will be okay. Help is on the way. It’s going to be okay.”

  When the coughing has stopped and she has cleaned his face, she sees that it is Tom Healey.

  He must have come from Wake Hall, from visiting her grandfather. They would have met there if she had not taken a break and walked to the cliff. How kind of him to come to see the old man who was recovering from yet another stroke. She gently puts her hand on his forehead. He has passed out again.

  It has been four years since Burns had taken Tom on his team. Tom had risen to stardom very quickly – he had left Claymore after one year and went on to be the hottest newcomer in the circus, and now he is all set to become world champion. Well, maybe not any more. He might have ruined his chances today, and probably forever.

  How incredibly sad. When they had met, he had been an ambitious nobody. They had seen each other again and again, but they had never spoken, and since his career had taken off, she did not think he would know her at all if they met outside the paddock. He had outgrown Claymore so quickly, and left her grandfather’s team behind, which had remained luckless as always, but her grandfather would forever be the man who had discovered him.

  Suddenly she shivers, not so much from the cold, but from panic. If only she has done the right thing! She would never forgive herself for having ruined his career! Where is the ambulance? Why do they not come? Helplessly, she strokes his forehead, almost praying, but she does not know how.

  How old is he? Thirty, perhaps. He is not a boy any more. He has an interesting face, long, with strong cheekbones, very Irish. She remembers his eyes as green, but that might not be right. She has not been interested in him, really.

  At that moment, he opens his eyes, and they might be green, and he tries to say something, but she just shakes her head. Still stroking his forehead, she tells him that it will be fine, and he passes out again.

  She continues to stroke his face until the paramedics arrive and take him away. The doctor reassures her that she has done the right thing, considering the circumstances. “He was lucky that you came along, Miss.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  “Oban.”

  “Make sure he gets a good surgeon”, she says. “He needs his hand. He is Tom Healey, the Formula 1 driver.”

  “Oh”, the doctor says. Then he taps his headset and speaks to someone else, “We need a helicopter. The patient needs to go to Glasgow QEUH. Prepare them for emergency surgery. I’ll get back to you.”

  That does not sound good. The doctor turns back to her. “Don’t worry, Miss. He’ll be taken care of.”

  She nods, shivering despite the blanket around her shoulders.

  “Shall we tell him anything? You can visit him, of course, in a few days.”

  Before she can reply, a policeman comes towards them, and the doctor just waves her good bye.

  She explains to the police what she knows and how she had found Tom. Then she collects her belongings – her jacket, the remains of the first aid kit, her smartphone, everything wet and dirty – and his helmet. The police are taking away the bike. They ask her whether she feels well enough to travel on, to which she says yes. They will get back to her in a few days, but for now she is allowed to leave. Faith nods like a robot, gets into her car and drives off towards Wake Hall.

  She stops at the gate post and cries violently.

  Then she continues on her way, grimly aware of the fact that she would have to tell her grandfather what had happened.