Someone To Save you by Paul Pilkington

they made their way for the door. ‘Quiet. No noise, please.’
    She nodded as they left the room and emerged into a narrow corridor, flanked with doors. It was the first time she had seen it, being blindfolded on her arrival. As they passed the door to the adjoining room, she heard the man inside let out a loud moan.
    ‘Come, in here,’ Yvette whispered, passing through a door into what looked like a large store cupboard. But at the back of the room, past the bed sheets and boxes, was another door. ‘Stairs,’ she said, pointing at the door. ‘Lead outside. Please, go, go now, quick. Otherwise they come.’
    ‘Aren’t you coming too?’ she asked.
    Yvette shook her head. ‘Please, go quick,’ she repeated.
    She nodded and pushed at the door, emerging into a dimly lit stairwell. The metal stairs wound around a central post, like a helter-skelter. She looked back just as the door closed, then turned and began running as fast as was safe down the steps.
    She neared the bottom, but on the last turn she realised too late that he was waiting for her. She tried to turn back, but he thrust out a powerful arm and grabbed her ankle. She tried to kick out, but instead slid down the steps, smacking her head against the handrail. He pulled her up, held her firm, and smiled.
     
     
    Never get too emotionally involved in your patients. Always keep a distance, for your own sanity. As a doctor you can’t afford to get too attached. Sam had always struggled to follow the rules that had been outlined to the class at medical school by their course leader on that first day of undergraduate studies. From those first days on the wards he realised that emotional attachment was a double-edged sword. Yes, it gave him sleepless nights, worrying about how a patient was doing. There had been times when he’d travelled back to the hospital late at night to check on their progress. It also increased the pain of losing people. But it made the job more fulfilling, more human, to feel something for the people under his care. They and their family put so much trust in you, so the least you could do was give something of your emotional self in return.
    But the way he felt about little Sophie Jackson was on another level. Sam knew he had got too close, closer than ever before, and that for this reason the stakes felt so very high. She was more than a patient. He searched frantically left, then right, looking for an available taxi. It should take about ten minutes to get back to the hospital, and another five or so to get prepped for theatre. Maybe he could get back in time. But with the deluge of rain, there wasn’t a free taxi in sight. Then, just down the road, on the opposite side, he saw a black cab pull up, having been flagged down. He raced diagonally across the road, darting between the traffic, narrowly missing a moped which had to swerve to avoid him. Car horns blared as he weaved in between two cars that had stopped, stunned by Sam’s presence in the middle of the road.
    ‘Hey!’ he shouted at the suited man, who was just getting into the back of the cab. ‘Wait!’
    The man saw him approach, but ignored his cries and closed the door.
    ‘Wait!’
    Without thinking of the implications, Sam raced up to the cab and stood in front of the vehicle, his palms flat against the warm, wet bonnet. The driver stared back at him with a look of bemusement.
    ‘I’m a doctor,’ Sam explained through the windscreen. ‘I need to get to St. Thomas’s hospital. It’s an emergency.’
    The driver just looked back at him.
    ‘A little girl might die if I don’t get there right now.’
    The driver turned around and said something to the man in the back. He turned back to face the front then put his head through the open window.
    ‘You’d better get in then, doctor,’ he said.
    Despite the driver’s heroic efforts, taking back streets, speeding around tailbacks, the drive back to the hospital was agonisingly slow in the choked late afternoon