Sarah Durham had been driving for three hours, she knew she’d taken a wrong turn and was now irrevocably lost. What should have been a pleasant drive through the picturesque scenery of the Transylvanian Alps had turned into a nightmare almost from the minute the rain began to fall. In fact ‘fall’ would be entirely the wrong description to apply to the deluge that had descended within an hour of her setting off on the road across the mountains from Sibiu to Brasov. Within less than two minutes it had become apparent to Sarah that the wipers on the battered old Lada she’d hired for the journey were woefully unsuited to the task with which they were suddenly charged. Though the car was sturdy and designed to withstand the most robust of Russian winters, this one was badly in need of some tender loving care, or at least some regular care and maintenance. The fall of Communism in Rumania had certainly done little to improve the standard of vehicle maintenance in the country; that was for sure.

     She knew she’d taken a wrong turn when the road on which she’d been driving suddenly seemed to change from a rough hardtop surface to little more than a farm track; trouble was, there didn’t seem to be a farm at the end of it, and she’d gone too far to attempt to turn back. The road was too muddy and too narrow for her to even attempt a U-turn safely. She knew she’d end up sliding off into the roadside verge and be stuck for ever!

     Sarah had tried the headlights, but all they seemed to do was reflect a distorted mirror image of the cascading rain into her eyes. The downpour was as impenetrable to the eye as trying to peer through a solid sheet of steel. She wanted desperately to stop, to pull over and rest until the worst of the storm passed, but again, she was taken with the fear that the car would become bogged down in impenetrable mud if she allowed it to come to a halt. She had to keep going and hope that she’d soon reach a village, a house, or just any refuge from the storm.

     She barely had time to see the tree that almost mystically appeared in front of the car, seemingly in the middle of the mud track that the road had become. She pulled the steering wheel hard to the left, and almost instantly realised she’d made the wrong decision. Sarah screamed as she felt the car begin to slide inexorably over what was obviously a precipice of some kind. In less than a second the old Lada was sliding down a hillside, the engine still screaming in protest as the wheels failed to make any impression on the slick mud beneath the tyres. Sarah closed her eyes, fearing what was to come, she felt as close to death as she ever had in her twenty four years. Suddenly the car seemed to lurch and then rolled onto its side, the drivers’ side, pinning Sarah against the door still clutching the wheel in panic, almost in a death grip. It was the only solid thing left in her world, the only recognisable thing she could hold onto. The Lada seemed to hop into the air and now Sarah found herself upside down as the vehicle careened down the sodden mud slope on its roof. She was tipped from the seat (there were no such luxuries as seatbelts in the Lada), and felt herself being buffeted and tossed like a rag doll as she tried to achieve a curled up foetal position on the roof, which had suddenly become the floor.

     As though to add to her fear and terror the inevitable finally happened. With an almighty thud the car struck something solid and Sarah’s world appeared to disintegrate before her befuddled eyes. She later remembered the stinging wet sensation of the rain hitting her face as she was thrown from the wreck of the car, but then little else until she opened her eyes and tried to take in her surroundings.

     Sarah groaned involuntarily and tried to force herself to think logically. Looking down again she saw that her skirt was torn along the side where her leg was damaged, an obvious result of something having ripped the material as she was thrown from the car. Her blouse was muddied but otherwise undamaged, and she wished that she’d kept her jacket on when she’d got into the car rather than placing it on the back seat where it was now of no use to her whatsoever.

     As for the car, she could see no sign of it.  She thought that it had probably continued its downward journey without her and was now a total write-off lying at the bottom of the hillside or mountain she’d tumbled down. She could see that she was surrounded by trees, and then realised that the rain had stopped. She was wet, yes, but at least the deluge had desisted.

     She knew that she had to move. To stay where she was would be to court disaster, perhaps even death. No one would think to come looking for her out here in the middle of nowhere, she wasn’t even on the road she was supposed to be on after all. Tears began to sting her face as she realised the enormity of the task ahead of her. She was lost in the middle of the Transylvanian mountains, bleeding and hurt, with no idea which direction to take to search for help even if she were able to move, and at that time she still had no idea just how much mobility her injuries would allow her.

     She wished she’d stayed put in town, remained at the hospital where she’d worked for just three short weeks, but the sense of adventure that had brought her to Rumania in the first lace had given rise to the need to explore, to see more of what she had rapidly come to see as a beautiful and romantic land of mystery. She wasn’t a doctor or a nurse (how she wished she was), but the job as hospital administrator carried responsibilities enough and Sarah was well-qualified to carry out the daunting task of helping to drag the beleaguered and ailing health care services of this country into the twenty first century.