Читать книгу The Emergency Specialist - Barbara Hart - Страница 8

THE following week, Anna changed from the day shift to the night shift. Although it played havoc with her sleep pattern, in some ways she preferred the night shift. The atmosphere in the hospital was completely different—a strange mixture of cosiness and danger.

During the long hours of the night shift, Anna was frequently reminded of why she’d chosen to specialise in A and E. It made her feel as if she was right in the centre of everything, with her finger on the pulse of life.

As she strode through the swing doors that led into the accident and emergency department, a small knot of tension formed in her stomach. It happened every time, particularly when she was on the night shift. She knew it would only be temporary and would disappear within a couple of minutes. It told her that the adrenalin rush had begun and that she was ready to swing into action without a moment’s delay.

She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when one of the nurses grabbed her.

‘Dr Craven, you’re needed in Resus One,’ she said. ‘Patient just admitted…young child…rescued from a house fire…extensive burns to his legs. Mr Harvey is in charge.’

She put on a sterile gown and walked briskly towards the resuscitation room. A light over the entrance was signalling a code blue. She quickened her pace. A code blue meant that a life-threatening crisis was on hand.

Resus One was a hive of activity. Several people in theatre blues and surgical gowns were circling the trolley and on it was the small, motionless figure of a child. The bottom half of his body was covered with the special wet dressings used for burns. Through the antiseptic-smelling air drifted another smell, the nauseating, never-to-be-forgotten smell of burnt flesh.

Jack looked up. Once again he experienced a chilling moment as the woman who so resembled his late wife walked into the resus room.

‘Glad to have your assistance, Dr Craven,’ he said, keeping his voice on an even keel, though his heartbeat had gone into overdrive. He’d get used to it, he told himself, working with her on a daily basis—and the shock waves would become less each time they met. Or maybe not…because these particular shock waves were becoming very pleasurable, he had to admit.

‘We’re prepping this young patent for a transfusion,’ he told her. ‘The burns are so bad that he needs blood as soon as possible or there’s a good chance he’ll die of shock.’

‘What’s his blood pressure?’ she asked.

‘Eighty over sixty,’ a nurse replied. ‘He’s showing signs of shock.’

‘How old is he?’

‘About six, we think,’ replied Jack. ‘We don’t know for sure because he was alone in the house when the fire started. His parents haven’t been contacted yet.’ He gave this information factually but Anna could see the rage in his eyes.

At that moment, the monitors surrounding the boy began to bleep erratically as the lines on the screens became jagged and irregular.

‘Get the defibrillator over here,’ Jack shouted. ‘He’s arrested!’

Anna and the rest of the team went to work. The boy’s oxygen level was increased and Anna moved forward, holding the defibrillator paddles.

‘One, two, three—clear!’ she called. Down went the paddles onto the boy’s chest. There was a loud buzzing and the boy’s small body was practically lifted off the operating trolley.

Everyone turned their attention to the monitor. The boy’s heart was beating regularly again but the rate was weak, the green lines barely moving up and down.

‘I think you should try again,’ said Jack. ‘Two hundred and forty joules again.’

Anna recharged the paddles and waited.

‘One, two, three—clear!’ she called, before again applying the defibrillator.

The team waited anxiously, all eyes on the monitor as the oxygen mask was clamped over the boy’s face. The green lines on the screen settled into a regular rhythm, this time stronger than before.

‘He’s stabilising,’ said Jack. ‘Good. Keep the oxygen at ninety-five per cent. Well done, everyone!’

He looked at Anna as he said this. He would have liked to have said more. He’d have liked to have said, You are terrific, Dr Craven, one of the best registrars I’ve ever worked with. But instead he just kept on looking at her, his eyes dancing—and even though he was wearing a surgical mask she must have known he was smiling at her.

Now that they’d stabilised the boy’s heart, the team turned their attention to his legs. Jack gently pulled back the wet dressings, revealing the young boy’s mottled, bleeding legs which had pieces of charred material stuck to them. The smell of burnt flesh intensified. But while his legs were very badly burned, the rest of his small body was mainly unaffected.

‘He must have been wearing just pyjama bottoms,’ said Jack as he set up the line for the blood transfusion, ‘and they must have been made of untreated cotton. That’s why they burst into flame with such tragic results.’

A nurse wheeled an intravenous pole across the room to the head of the trolley. ‘I thought pyjamas had to be made of flame-retardant material,’ she said. ‘I thought it was the law.’

‘It is,’ said Jack bitterly, ‘but this kid’s pyjamas were certainly not flame-retardant. Any news of his parents yet?’ He looked towards the door but no one was waiting outside.

‘I’ll go and find out, shall I?’ asked Tammy, one of the nurses whom Anna recognised from the triage desk—the reception area where patients were sorted into categories depending on medical priority.

‘Yes, please,’ said Jack. ‘There may be decisions to make about operating and we may need parental permission. Though what kind of parents must they be? People who leave a young kid alone in a house at night, while they, most likely, go out on the town! The police have been informed, I do know that.’

He watched as the first bag of blood was hooked onto the intravenous pole and the line attached to the patient. ‘Now we need to set up the intravenous antibiotics,’ he instructed.

Jack and Anna worked together smoothly and silently, each anticipating the other’s actions. He was good to work with, Anna thought. He was quick and efficient and he exuded a calmness and confidence that she found mentally stimulating and physically reassuring. He was the ideal surgeon for the kind of situations they constantly faced in A and E.

‘I wasn’t expecting to find you on the night shift,’ she said.

‘I’m not,’ he said wryly. ‘I’m on the day shift but was asked to stay on when we got the call from the emergency services.’

Tammy came back into the resuscitation room, followed by a distraught man.

‘This is the boy’s father,’ she said.

‘How’s my son? How’s Jamie?’ he asked anxiously. The medical team parted slightly, leaving a small gap through which the boy’s father was confronted by the gory sight on the surgical trolley.

‘Oh, my God!’ he said. ‘He’s not dead, is he? Tell me he isn’t dead!’

‘He’s alive but he isn’t out of danger by any means,’ said Jack, not wishing to soften the blow. His eyes were blazing. He was so mad that he wanted to put his blood-stained hands round the throat of the man who had allowed this to happen.

‘I feel it’s my fault!’ said the man, running a hand through his tousled hair.

‘I would imagine it is your fault,’ Jack shot back, ‘leaving a child as young as this on his own.’

‘But it was only meant to be for a few minutes!’ said the man wretchedly. ‘I had to go—I had to take my wife to the hospital! She’s eight months pregnant and she was bleeding and—’

‘I thought I recognised you,’ interrupted Tammy. ‘I remember you coming in with your wife earlier in the evening. You’re Mr Wyatt, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Todd Wyatt.’

‘Well, Mr Wyatt, why didn’t you call an ambulance?’ Jack asked him, his anger barely concealed below the surface.

‘I did, but it didn’t come! I thought my wife was going to die. I went upstairs to Jamie’s room and he was asleep. I thought I’d better not wake him up and bring him along with us because there was all this blood and everything. I thought it would really upset him. So when the ambulance didn’t come I decided to drive her to hospital myself, thinking it would only take a few minutes, but the car broke down on the way back. When I finally got home the whole place was in flames, fire-engines everywhere.’

He put his hands over his face and sobbed. ‘It was terrible! I thought Jamie was still in the house!’

Anna stripped off her latex gloves and binned them before putting a comforting hand on Todd Wyatt’s shoulder.

‘We hope it’s going to be all right, Mr Wyatt. Your son’s heart stopped at one point but he’s stabilised now. He’s been very badly burned and we’re now sending him to the hospital’s burns unit. They can do miraculous things these days with skin grafts. What happened to your wife? How is she?’

It was as though the man had completely forgotten about her for the moment.

‘Oh,’ he said, trying to cast his mind back to his other, earlier traumatic event. ‘They’ve taken her in for observation. The baby might be born prematurely, they said. I’ll go and check on her when I know what’s going to happen with Jamie. I’ll have to tell her, of course. Oh, hell, how am I going to tell her?’

‘I’d like to talk to you about Jamie’s pyjamas,’ said Jack, still extremely angry with the man but accepting that he had been placed in a terrible dilemma.

‘Pyjamas?’ said the man, still in a state of shock. ‘I don’t know anything about pyjamas.’

‘One of the reasons Jamie got so badly burned was because he wasn’t wearing flame-retardant pyjamas. They’re the only kind they’re supposed to sell for children. It’s the law.’

‘I think he’d gone to bed in his new judo outfit, or just the bottom half of it. He was very chuffed with it, wanted to wear it all the time. My wife made it for him from some material she got from the market, you know, to save money. She’s very clever with the sewing machine.’

Jack caught Anna’s eye. ‘Not so very clever, as it turned out,’ he said under his breath.

The trolley, with Jamie on it, was in the process of being transferred to the burns unit.

‘Tammy,’ said Anna to the nurse, ‘would you help Mr Wyatt find out what’s happened to his wife?’ Turning to the distraught man, she said, ‘Jamie’s condition is under control now. He’s sedated and he’s in good hands, and he won’t really know whether you’re here or not, Mr Wyatt, so you may as well go and be with your wife, particularly if they’re delivering the baby. I’m sure you’ll want to be there to give her support.’

Todd Wyatt followed the nurse to the main desk area and she sat him down while she made enquiries from the maternity unit.

Anna and Jack went into the changing room where they removed their surgical gowns, masks and hats.

‘I must have a shower before I even think of going home, I’m so hot and sticky,’ he said, reaching for a clean towel from the overhead lockers. ‘You look as fresh as a daisy,’ he said to Anna, his body very close to hers. ‘It’s always the way with the shift hand-over. The freshly laundered taking over from the jaded, perspiring ones!’

As he stretched up and grabbed the fluffy white towel provided by the hospital laundry, the heady scent of fresh, male sweat invaded her nostrils.

She was a fastidious person. Normally she couldn’t stand being too close to a sweaty person—man or woman. But she didn’t find Jack’s glowing proximity at all repellent. Far from it. She amazed herself by actually finding it quite attractive. She breathed in again and almost felt like swooning. Must be something to do with pheromones, she thought with an inward laugh…although she’d always believed those special sexual chemicals were reserved for the animal kingdom—in particular, moths! She found herself laughing out loud.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

‘I was just thinking about moths,’ she said, then, moving away, added, ‘It’s too complicated to explain.’

‘Do you like Mozart?’ he asked.

She puzzled over the connection between moths and Mozart.

‘Give up,’ she said. ‘I know he wrote something about a bat, Die Fledermaus? Or was that another composer?’

Jack leaned on the metal doors of the locker, his body relaxed, all the tension from his long working day vanished. Her misunderstanding appeared to amuse him greatly.

‘Forget moths,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I’m talking about a Mozart concert at the Bridgemore Hall. Do you fancy coming along?’

Anna was about to refuse. Her mouth opened, but before she could get the words out he was one jump ahead.

‘I’ve checked your rota. The concert’s next week when you’re on the day shift.’

‘You checked my rota?’ She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or annoyed at this evidence of snooping on his part. When he nodded, all she could bring herself to say was, ‘Oh.’

‘Do you like Mozart?’ he repeated. ‘When I mentioned loud disco music the other day you implied that your taste ran more along classical lines. And the tape I was playing in the car on the way to the pub was a Mozart symphony. You said you liked it…so I thought it would be nice to go to a live concert.’

He’d certainly done his homework!

‘Well, I…’ began Anna.

He’d put her in an awkward position. She liked him, and she was even beginning to find herself physically attracted to him, but she wasn’t ready to start dating anyone at the moment. And yet it was going to be very difficult to turn him down, particularly when he said, ‘I do hope you’ll come, Anna. I haven’t been out to a concert or a movie, or anything really, since I lost my wife. Going out on your own can be a very depressing activity in those circumstances.’

‘I’m sure you could have found someone to go with you,’ she exclaimed, before realising how crass it sounded. She bit her lip.

‘I’m sure I could,’ said Jack. ‘But that’s not the point. I haven’t wanted to ask anyone to come with me up to now. That’s the difference. But if you don’t like Mozart, I’ll give the tickets to Christine and she can take a friend along.’

‘Oh, but I do like Mozart,’ said Anna, who was beginning to feel this conversation was leading in one direction only. Jack was so determined that she would go out with him that she might as well give in gracefully.

‘What day is the concert?’ she asked.

‘Thursday,’ he said.

‘I’d love to come, Jack. Thank you very much. Now, you’d better take that shower and I’d better get back on duty.’

* * *

The next day, when she got back home after the night shift, there was a message on her answering machine.

‘Hi, Anna, it’s Rebecca. Give me a ring soon as you can, will you, darling? Bye for now.’

It was the only message waiting for her and, even though she was desperate for a hot bath and a lie-down, she decided she’d better phone her older sister straight away and get it over with. Rebecca didn’t phone her all that frequently and she wondered if it could be something urgent, some family crisis perhaps? The tone of voice on the answering machine gave nothing away but then it never did as far as Rebecca was concerned. Her sister’s ‘telephone voice’ was always the same—bossy, assertive and with a touch of false jollity.

She picked up the phone and dialled her sister’s number.

‘Thanks for ringing back,’ said Rebecca at the other end. ‘I thought you might have been at the hospital or on call or something.’

‘I’ve just come off the night shift,’ she said.

‘Oh, good, then we can chat.’

‘I’m very tired, Rebecca. Was there something special you phoned about? Otherwise I’d rather chat to you when I’ve had a bath and some sleep.’

‘I won’t keep you long, Doctor,’ said Rebecca, who reacted as if she’d been rebuked. ‘It’s about the Gypsies…about Dad, really.’

Rebecca had always referred to their parents as ‘the Gypsies’ ever since their father had retired, sold the large family home and bought a small apartment and a top-of-the-range motor home. Their parents now spent a good part of the year travelling around Europe.

‘What about Dad?’ queried Anna. ‘He’s not ill, is he?’

‘Good heavens, no!’ replied Rebecca. ‘I was talking to Jennifer and we were saying that as it’s Dad’s sixtieth birthday soon we should be thinking of having some sort of celebration. It’s only a few weeks away and they’re planning to be back in England for it.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Anna, her heart sinking at the thought of all the arrangements that would have to be made. ‘We ought to do something for him, but what?’

‘A party, of course,’ replied her sister. ‘That’s why I phoned. I’ve arranged to have a meeting with Jennifer one day next week so that we can discuss it. What about Thursday?’

The day rang a bell with Anna. She knew she wasn’t on night shift…but…oh, yes, that was the day she’d agreed to go out with Jack.

‘Can’t do Thursday, I’m going to a concert,’ she blurted out, before realising what she’d said.

‘That’s nice,’ said Rebecca. ‘With a man?’

Anna could visualise her sister’s antennae whizzing round like mad, hoping to pick up any signals regarding her closely guarded private life.

‘Yes,’ she admitted. She was too tired and too mentally exhausted to attempt to head her off.

‘You must tell us all about him when we have the meeting,’ said Rebecca gleefully. ‘Let’s make it Friday instead of Thursday—eight o’clock at my house. Yes?’

‘OK,’ said Anna wearily.

* * *

The concert was wonderful. In fact, the whole evening was magical. It was for Anna the turning point in her recovery from her broken heart. Not once during the Mozart evening did she give a single thought to Liam.

She settled down in her seat and gave herself up completely to the experience. As the lights were raised at the end of the concert and the hall resounded with applause, applause that seemed never-ending, she felt as if she’d been reborn and was now able to start her emotional life once again. The heartwrenching misery of the past weeks had vanished— thanks to Mozart. And thanks to Jack, too, she admitted. She came across him a lot at work—they always seemed to bump into each other at some point during the day. She found herself looking forward to catching a glimpse of him, however fleeting.

After the concert they went to a nearby Italian restaurant for a meal.

Anna chose agnello con fagioli—braised lamb with cannelini beans—and a green salad.

‘Sounds good,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll have the same.’

Sitting across the table from him, she was able to study him closely in a way she’d never previously done. His hair was very thick and vital-looking, even though it was clipped quite short. He was wearing a dark grey suit and the formality of it suited him. He was the kind of man, she judged, who’d look good in anything. Or nothing. As the thought entered her head she began, briefly, to fantasise about him naked. She felt herself colouring and banished the image from her mind.

‘How’s Saskia?’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ Jack replied. ‘She brought a picture home from nursery school today. One that she’d painted herself. It was of me, she said.’

‘Is it a good likeness?’ Anna smiled, imagining how the picture would look—probably a large, round head and stick-like arms and legs—the kind of paintings that three-year-olds did when trying to draw their parents. Rebecca and Jennifer used to have similar pictures stuck up all over their kitchen walls.

‘I think it’s a pretty good likeness, actually,’ said Jack. ‘You’ll have to tell me what you think of it when you see it.’

Anna looked away. How was she going to handle this developing relationship? For a start, did she want it to develop into anything at all? If she wasn’t careful she would get swept along and before she knew it she and Jack would be an item. She shivered slightly at the thought. She just wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted.

They were halfway through their meal when he said, ‘So who is he, this man who hurt you?’

Anna was taken aback. She had never mentioned Liam to Jack.

‘What makes you think that?’ she asked, giving nothing away.

He reached out and stroked the back of her hand with his long fingers. ‘I don’t need to be told. You’ve got it written all over your face. You look like a woman who’s been hurt…emotionally. Am I right?’

She stared at him blankly. That evening, for the first time, she’d managed to put all thoughts of Liam out of her mind. Why did Jack have to start talking about him? What business was it of his?

When she didn’t reply he continued stroking her hand, gently. He wrapped his fingers around hers, his eyes never leaving her face.

‘He must be crazy, that’s all I can say.’

She looked at him unblinkingly. Then she said, ‘Shall we have the cassata for dessert?’