Читать книгу Summer in Sydney - Fiona McArthur - Страница 22
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ОглавлениеRUBY leapt on the phone when it rang the next evening. Dressed for her shift, her heart leapt in hope that it might be Cort, that he might want to clear the air before she commenced her shifts, but the voice on the other end brought no relief. ‘ I just wanted to check that you’re coming to church on Sunday.’ Ruby closed her eyes at the sound of her mother’s voice on the phone.
‘I’m on nights,’ Ruby said, because even if it killed her, she’d at least have died trying.
‘You just said you were working Thursday, Friday, Saturday.’
‘Which means I’ll be home in bed on Sunday,’ Ruby explained as patiently as she could.
‘Your dad does whole weekends without sleep, and he’s doing a reading this Sunday. It would be nice if his family was there,’ her mum said. ‘It’s the nine a.m. service. If you take Adam’s car to work, you’ll get there in time. I’ll do a nice lamb roast.’
And that was it.
There was just no point arguing.
‘How’s your mum?’ Tilly asked when she hung up the phone.
‘Still keeping the peace,’ Ruby said. She was in her navy shorts and white shirt and her hair was tied tight. If you didn’t know how much she was shaking inside, she could almost have passed for a nurse. ‘Still keeping the chief happy!’
‘Come on,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ll walk with you.’
They walked up the hill under the lovely moon that had once held so much promise and Ruby was so glad to have her friend beside her.
‘Cort was widowed recently,’ Ruby said. Was it breaking a confidence to confide in her best friend when her heart was breaking? Probably, but she knew it would never be repeated by Tilly, not even to the others, and she was very grateful when Tilly said nothing for a little while and just walked on.
‘How recently?’ Tilly asked.
‘A month,’ Ruby said. ‘Well, it was a month when we …’ It still made her stomach churn to think of it. ‘She was in a car accident a few years ago—she had a head injury.’
‘It sounds like he lost her a long time ago,’ Tilly said gently.
‘Still …’
‘We had a couple the other week,’ Tilly said, ‘they were just so happy, so excited to be having this baby, and I found out halfway through labour that the baby wasn’t actually his—she’d lost her partner right at the start of the pregnancy.’ And they walked up the hill and Ruby listened. ‘It’s none of my business,’
Tilly said, ‘but I couldn’t get it at first, how she could move on so quickly. And then I saw the love, and I saw how happy they were and how he was with the baby …’ Tilly was the kindest person Ruby knew. ‘Don’t judge him, Ruby.’
‘He should have told me.’
‘When?’ Tilly asked. ‘You wanted him out the next morning …’
‘He hasn’t told anyone about her,’ Ruby said. ‘Even his colleagues don’t know or most of his friends.’ Tilly turned then and looked at her.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it? When someone you care about can’t confide in you?’ But Tilly didn’t hold grudges and she gave her friend a hug as the lights of Emergency came into view. ‘Maybe he had his reasons.’
‘I think I was supposed to be his get back out there fling.’
‘And what was he supposed to be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby admitted. ‘If I’d even thought about it for a moment it would never have happened. I’ve just made things a whole lot more complicated—not only do I have to face Emergency, I have to work alongside him, after all the terrible things that I said.’
‘Then say sorry.’
‘What if he won’t accept it?’
‘Then at least you’ll have said it.’ Which wasn’t the answer Ruby wanted, but it was, she knew, the right one.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Tilly said. ‘No running away.’
‘I won’t.’
At night the side door wasn’t open so she had to walk through the waiting room and already it was steaming, two people asking her on her way through how much longer they would have to wait. Already her temples were pounding, but she went to the staffroom, took out a little white teapot she had painted her name on in red nail varnish, made a big pot of herbal tea and told herself she could do this.
‘Evening, Ruby!’ Sheila gave a tight smile as she walked into the staffroom and Cort deliberately didn’t turn his head from the television. ‘Ready for some action?’
‘Bring it on!’ Ruby smiled.
Cort had been unable to comprehend that she, that anyone, could throw so much away for the sake of three nights, but as the weekend progressed, he started to see it.
See what he never really had before.
It was like finding out about sex when he had been younger. Suddenly it was there glaring at him at every turn—how on earth had he not noticed? Now, though, it was the dark side of A and E that was illuminated. All the stuff he usually just ignored or shrugged off or put up with was blazingly obvious, and there was this part of him that wanted to shield her from it. There were fights breaking out in the waiting room, angry relatives, abusive patients and the drama of sudden illness. He watched her face become pinched, even though she smiled; he saw her eyes shutter regularly as if another knife had been stabbed in her back; and he started to see that for some, the emergency room was damaging.
Not that he could do anything about it.
Once she tried to talk to him, but Cort was still too churned up, and he blanked her, then regretted it all through the next day when he couldn’t sleep, wondering if she’d be back.
She was.
To a place that was twice as busy and twice as angry as before, and he noticed it—all of it—even the little things he would never have seen before.
‘I’ll eat my supper here.’ Siobhan peeled off the lid of her container. Ruby had made it through Thursday and was back for round two—a busy Friday night and the patients were particularly feral.
Siobhan was in the grumpiest of moods because she’d been brought back from the staffroom as the numbers were too low for her to take a proper break. They had a young overdose in cubicle six and they couldn’t identify the tablets she’d taken, despite poring through books and the internet, and Sheila had asked Siobhan to make a phone call. Now Siobhan sat, stuck on hold to Poisons Information, as Cort tried to work out a drug dose. He watched Ruby’s shoulders tense as Siobhan’s bored eyes fell on the student nurse.
‘What are you doing, Ruby?’ she asked. Ruby was holding a newborn baby and screaming toddler, who’d cut his forehead falling against his toybox and had blood all down his pyjamas.
‘Mum’s just gone to the toilet,’ Ruby answered.
‘Well, can’t she take them with her?’ Siobhan asked. ‘We’re not a child-minding service.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘Actually,’ Siobhan answered, ‘if another emergency comes in, or someone goes off and you’re holding a baby, it becomes one!’
‘Ooh, that smells nice!’ Sheila’s only comment was about the smell wafting over as Siobhan stirred her supper. ‘What is it?’
‘Veal and noodles,’ Siobhan said, and just for a second, so small no one, not even Ruby, noticed, there was a shadow of a smile on Cort’s mouth as Ruby rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.
‘That’d be right.’
She hated it, Cort fully realised. Behind the smile she was in torture, and given what had gone on, he’d made it much worse for her.
‘Thanks so much.’ A tearful mum came and took her baby and tried to scoop up the toddler, who was on the floor.
‘I know I keep asking, but have you any idea how much longer?’
‘We’ll get to him as soon as we can,’ Siobhan answered before Ruby had a chance. ‘Only there are still a couple of patients before him and it will take two staff to hold him down and we just can’t spare them at the moment.’
‘But you’ve time to sit and eat,’ the mum snapped.
‘I’m eating my supper at the desk because I’m on hold to Poisons Information and I expect to be for the next half-hour,’ came Siobhan’s tart response.
‘I’m actually supposed to be on my break, but I’m here to hopefully free up a colleague.’
Yes, she was right, but it could have been handled so much better, because the mum promptly burst into tears. ‘There are drunks down in the waiting room. I can’t sit and breastfeed …’
And Ruby truly didn’t know what to do. There was literally nowhere to put them. Every cubicle was full, all the interview rooms were taken, and though, had it been up to her, she’d have popped Mum into the staffroom, the reality was it was needed for staff to get a break from the perpetual craziness.
‘Bring him through.’ Cort stood up. He didn’t have time, but he’d just have to make it.
‘Suture room’s not cleaned from the last one.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ruby said, and glanced at Siobhan. ‘And I can hold him by myself.’
Ruby scuttled off and did the quickest clean-up she could, then washed her hands and set up a trolley for Cort.
‘You’ll need a drawer sheet to wrap him in.’ Cort came in, but didn’t look at her. ‘Mum won’t be able to help with holding him.’
‘I know.’
He pulled up the anaesthetic so that the little boy wouldn’t see the needle, opened up the sutures then told Ruby to bring him in.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Adam,’ Ruby said, and flushed, and it was stupid and so, so irrelevant that it was the same name as her brother’s, but it just made a point, a stupid point, that they knew more about the other than they ought to officially. ‘I’ll go and get him.’
‘You don’t have to come in,’ Ruby offered, but his mum was sure that she’d rather.
‘Well, if it gets too much,’ Ruby said, just as she’d seen the others do, ‘just slip out.’
‘He’s going to struggle and scream,’ Cort explained, ‘and it will sting for a bit when I put the anaesthetic in, but after that he won’t feel a thing.’ He explained a little further as Ruby tightly wrapped the little boy. ‘It’s not fair to settle him down only to stick him with a needle, so once the anaesthetic is in, we’ll try and calm him.’
The only way one person could hold him was to practically use the weight of her body over the swaddled child and hold his face with two gloved hands as he screamed loudly in Ruby’s ear.
‘It will be finished soon, Adam,’ Ruby said, and she swore she felt the needle go in as he shrieked even louder.
‘That’s it.’ Cort’s voice was loud and deep and caught Adam by surprise. He paused his screaming for just a second. ‘All the horrible bit’s finished with,’ Cort said to the little boy, and then spoke to Ruby. ‘Loosen up on him while it takes effect.’
‘It’s okay.’ His mum tried to soothe him, but the baby was crying now too and she was about to as well—either that or pass out. ‘I think I’ll go out …’
‘We’ll take good care of him,’ Cort said, and then he looked down at the toddler. ‘I’m going to make it better in a moment and then you can go home.’ He spoke to him in a matter-of-fact voice and maybe all the fight had left him, but the little boy did stop screaming. ‘It’s not going to hurt now.’ He turned to Ruby. ‘Go round the other side.’ She did so and Cort changed his gloves and put a little green drape over his head, and they were back to where they started, away from the bedlam and shut in the suture room, but there was a whole lot more between them than a patient now. ‘You just look at Ruby,’ Cort said, which Adam did, and though he did whimper a few times, he was much calmer as Cort worked on quietly.
‘Could it have been glued?’ Ruby asked, because it would have been much easier.
‘It needs a couple of dissolvable sutures—it’s a pretty deep cut,’ Cort explained. ‘And it needed a good clean.’ He turned and smiled as a much calmer mum stepped into the room. ‘Just wait there,’ Cort said, but very nicely. ‘He’s in the zone. If he sees you he’ll think it’s over. We shan’t be long.’ There was one more snip and then as he went to clean it, Ruby could see what he meant by in the zone, because the second Adam sensed it was over, he shot up, saw his mum and not a tightly wrapped drawer sheet or Ruby could have kept him still a second longer.
‘Mum!’ He burst into tears all over again.
‘We’re finished!’ Cort said. ‘You get to choose your plaster now.’ And he would have left it to Ruby, but he didn’t, took just that one moment to help the little boy select.
‘Thanks so much. I’m sorry about before …’ the mum said.
‘We’re sorry you’ve had to wait,’ Ruby said.
‘That nurse …’ she explained. ‘I know she should get her proper break. I had no right to say anything.’
‘It’s fine,’ Cort said.
‘I don’t know how you do it.’ She looked at Ruby, who smiled back at her. ‘I don’t know how you can work in this place.’
‘You get used to it,’ Ruby said, because it was either that or fall into the woman’s arms like Adam and beg her to take her away from here.
‘Take him home to bed and let him sleep, but you need to check him regularly.’
‘I’ll have him in with me.’
‘Good. Stitches out in five days at your GP.’ He went through all the head-injury instructions as Ruby found a leaflet then started to clean up.
‘Cort,’ Ruby said, because it was the only chance she had to do so, ‘about—’
‘Leave it, Ruby.’ Because he just couldn’t do this.
‘I am sorry.’
So that made it fine, then. Mature he may be, but still it hurt and he just didn’t have it in him to accept her apology as easily as that.
‘You just concentrate on getting through your work.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘What do you want, Ruby?’ He glanced to the door to check no one could hear. ‘You’ve made your feelings perfectly clear.’ When she opened her mouth to dispute, Cort overrode her. ‘You’re right, things would never have worked out between us. I was looking for a diversion, missing Beth. We should have left it at one night.’
And he might just as well have taken a fist and pushed it into her stomach, but somehow she stayed standing.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Yeah, well, given the stuff you believe in you might need to take a reality check.’
Yes he was harsh, and perhaps a bit mean, but he couldn’t just stand there and accept her apology. It was far easier to push her away.
He didn’t want to forgive her, because then he might have to love her, and Cort just wasn’t ready for that.