Pulse(87)

And he was smiling.

‘You’re a real bloody menace, you are,’ he said.

I rushed towards the door, mistakenly thinking that I had a better chance against the smaller man. But jockeys are probably the strongest sportsmen around, pound for pound. If Mike Sheraton could control half a ton of horse with just his hands and heels, an alarmingly underweight doctor should be a pushover.

But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight.

I was still wearing the heavy hiking boots that I habitually used to run around on the muddy racecourse, and I kicked Mike Sheraton with one, hard onto the point of his right knee, exactly where he’d had the stitches inserted the previous afternoon.

He screamed with pain, clutching his leg while I made a dive for the door.

If I thought he was angry before, he was more so now, and his chum arrived as reinforcement, grabbing me round the neck from behind with his arm across my throat in a chokehold.

I kicked back at him too, but I couldn’t get the leverage. He simply tightened his grip, so much so that I was worried he would strangle me.

Physical assault is an unfortunate occupational hazard for emergency staff in our hospitals and, consequently, there were many self-defence courses available for doctors and nurses to attend. In my younger years, I’d been on two of them, and how to get out of a chokehold had been at the forefront. But this was the first time I’d had to put the theory into practice in a real life-or-death situation.

I took a deep breath; then, as I’d been instructed, I turned my head away from the man’s elbow and bent down, moving my legs backwards and rotating my body so that my head slipped out below his shoulder and I ended up behind him.

It worked!

But that was only the start of my troubles.

Two strong men against an undernourished female should have been a ‘no contest’, but desperation delivers resources beyond logic.

And I fought dirty.

I kicked and punched at places on their bodies not permitted under Queensberry rules, I elbowed and headbutted, scratched and even bit.

Their plan seemed to be to prevent me reaching the door but, otherwise, to let me run out of steam, which would be pretty soon at this rate.

‘Don’t mark her,’ Big Biceps said at one point, which I took to be both an encouragement and a concern. What other torment did they have in mind?

If I couldn’t get out the door, what else could I do?

Phone for help?

My mobile was in my anorak pocket.

I pulled it out and got as far as dialling the second of three nines before Big Biceps made a lunge forward and knocked it out of my hand, then he stamped on it in his size twelves. Even if the gubbins inside still worked, the touchscreen had shattered into a thousand pieces, rendering it useless.

How about the landline?

Every racecourse medical room had to have a dedicated landline, one that couldn’t be blocked by an incoming call, in case of an emergency.

Surely this was an emergency.

The phone here at Cheltenham was attached to the wall beneath the television monitor and I took my eyes off the two men for just a fraction of a second to look at it.

‘She’s after the phone,’ Mike Sheraton said, and he inched further to his right to prevent me reaching it.

So, there would be no summoning up the cavalry, not yet anyway.

Slowly but surely, they were forcing me back to the far side of the room such that my back was almost up against the medical store cupboard.

I reached behind me and opened it.

Big Biceps made a move towards me and I aimed a kick at his groin. He reached down and tried to catch my foot but I was wary of that, pulling it away sharply.

I was losing this game of cat and mouse, I thought, and I was certainly the mouse. One of the men would come forward and, while I was dealing with him, the other would try to outflank me. It would be only a matter of time before they succeeded.

I reached behind me into the cupboard.

I knew what I was after and I found it immediately without having to look. A box of ten size-11 disposable scalpels.

We’d only recently been required to have them, in case we had to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a jockey who had an obstruction to the airway.

I ripped open the pack and suddenly I had a scalpel in each hand.

Now it was the men who were on the back foot as I waved the highly honed blades at their faces. The scalpels may have only been short, but what they lacked in length they made up for in sharpness.

Now I began to circle, working my way back towards the door.

And, if I couldn’t use the phone because it took two hands, I could at least use my voice.

‘Help!’ I shouted as loud as I could muster. ‘Help! Help!’

I went on shouting, the noise bouncing loudly off the walls of the room. Surely someone must hear me? Why didn’t Whizz and the other valets come to my rescue? Because they were already on their way home in a van full of wicker baskets.

By now I had my back to the door but I daren’t turn round or let go of one of the scalpels to open it. The two men were getting inventive, with one of them using a pillow from the beds to try to smother the blade in my left hand, while the other had picked up a wooden leg splint and was using that to try and hit the one in my right.

I shouted even louder, terror causing the frequency to rise.

‘Help! Help! Somebody please help me!’

The door opened against my back.