He looked up at her face again and swore as he saw the deep pain in her eyes.

‘You need morphine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Abbey, but I don’t have anything with me. We’re just going to have to get you to the hospital as fast as we can.’

‘Let me be,’ she said weakly, and tried to bend over to put her hands on her leg. ‘I’ll try and get it back in… ’

‘You!’ Ryan caught her hands and held them. ‘Abbey, you can’t…’

Abbey bit her lip, closed her eyes and curled her fingers into fists within Ryan’s hold. For all her strength, the pain in her leg was building to the stage where she couldn’t bear it. ‘Ryan, let me try. I must…’

‘But… I don’t understand.’ Ryan’s grip on her hands tightened. ‘Are you the district nurse? Doing house calls on your bicycle?’

‘Close enough.’ Abbey opened her eyes again then and met his look with a touch of defiance. ‘I knew you didn’t believe me all those years ago, Ryan Henry. I told you what I was going to be. I’m the local doctor.’

‘You’re the…’

‘Look, I hate to be rude,’ Abbey said wearily, ‘but let’s get my leg back to a straight line and catch up on career paths later, shall we?’

Abbey couldn’t. Ryan didn’t let her make the attempt, but a comprehensive examination of Abbey’s leg told him he couldn’t do it either. Not without a really hefty dose of morphine and sedative to relax her. The patella had twisted way out of position. She’d been incredibly lucky that the leg hadn’t snapped.

‘There’s morphine in my bag,’ Abbey told him. Abbey’s bag, by some miracle, was hardly damaged. Ryan retrieved it by simply reversing the car off the bicycle. At least there was something he could do then. Ryan injected subcutaneous morphine into Abbey’s thigh, considered trying to manipulate the leg then and there and decided against it. He wanted an X-ray first To try and manipulate it and then discover that there was a break…

He splinted the leg as best he could with crepe bandages and newspapers he had in the car, and then gathered her carefully into his arms.